What is new theology?

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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

PRINCETON, N. J.

PRESENTED BY

the Ssto.te of
Finley DuBoic Jeiilvins

BL 51 .P38 1921

Paul, John.

What is new theology?

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By JOHNPAUL. D. D.

OF ASBURY COLLEGE

LECTURER FOR INTERDENOMINATIONAL CONVENTIONS. JAPAN.

1917. SPECIAL EVANGELIST.

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^^^ DEPARTMENT OF PUBLICATIONS, ASBURY COLLEGE.

WILMORE,KY.

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■^' BY JOHN PAUL. ^ J^^^-LU A ,

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INTRODUCTION.

v. -*'' The author of this volume preceded his ef-
fort with lateral readings and review work
"/ in science, philosophy and theology intended
to lead up to a large volume or two of sys-
tematic theology. With all deference to the
superior works we now have in systematic
theology, it was thought a work was needed
from an evangelical source which addressed | —f-
itself more to the new points of emphasis and
the issues which have arisen from these new
angles of discussion. The so-called liberal
works in systematic theology, which lay
principal claim to the field so far as new pub-
y/ lications are concerned, have narrowed the
' '■' province of the subject. In keeping with the
modern method of specialization, they have
broken it up into many topics, some to be
handled by scientists, some by linguists,
some by sociologists or historians, and some
by preachers. It is implied that one individ-
ual takes too much upon himself when he
undertakes to adhere to the old method of
presenting the tenets of theology in a com-
prehensive system. While there is a defence
for this new division of labor in the field of
theological literature, it is believed by many
that a comprehensive approach to the great
subject offers peculiar advantage to the av-
erage reader.

'jS.j^ ^m

But we have turned aside from our task
to deal first with the vitals of our subject, in
undertaking to introduce our readers to the
new theolog>^ sifter and call attention to the
old theology wheat. We would not be so
conceited as to liken this little volume to
Moses' challenge, "Who is on the Lord's
side?" Yet the book is confessedly a feeler
for the theological pulse of the hour, and
its writer desires to hear personally from
every one who reads, even if the expression
is adverse. We venture to assure the reader
that this is an unsectarian exposition of
those verities of religion without which no
church may have final success; and that,
though our illustrations and methods of ap-
proach may be new, the volume contains no
J eccentric views in religion, while in its

/ 'i science it takes care to exclude everything

i:^^*^, .,/ that the scientists kn^ to be incorrect,
though many of them may think differently.
It is expected that every reader who believes

^ »■ in the fundamentals of the gospel will find

*'• here reflections which will refresh his faith,
and that those who think the formula of or-
thodoxy needs to be rewritten will find them-
selves in an arena of fair and healthy dis-
cussion for testing the soundness of their
own views.

In these chapters we undertake to offer a
statement of the case. Whether we shall go
on and produce the extended work in system-
atic theology depends upon providential indi-

^«'^^"

cations. Is it needed? If needed, will some
one better qualified, or with more leisure to
do the work, be raised up to supply the ■^ ^"^"^^uWCul
need? This writer is quite willing to let the ji^^^.
small volume here introduced end his part of L - '^^'^
the task by serving as a kind of signal in. r**"**"*^ *-
the theological mulberry trees. It assumeal'^ ***^*-^ -'
to furnish to its readers the gist of thoughtj -t^^^j^ J
which they may need to write their own! >f / /
chapters or build their own sermons, and itl "^

may be that divine providence will indicate! •'^•i-^^c-*^
individuals to write the chapters and build " ^ '

the sermons needed, and leave the architect
of this small blue print at liberty to go on
with an evangelistic message.

Our first thought was to have an intro-
ductory expression from serious chief pas-
tors of the several evangelical denomina-
tions. There are such, in every church, who
are deeply concerned with the light manner
in which the fundamentals of Bible Chris-
tianity are being revised at the behest of an
uncertain modern philosophy. Some have
read our advance chapters, and have evi-
denced a willingness to lend them such a seal
of approval. It is not conceit that has made
us avoid this ; but, in keeping with the above
explanation, a desire that in its first editions
the work should be like Gideon's fleece of
wool, getting responses on the merit or de-
merit of its pages, without a borrowed
prestige.

Wilmore, Ky. JOHN PAUL.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER. PAGE.

Introduction 3

I. The Parting of The Ways 9

II. Evolution and Faith 18

III. The God of The New Theology ... 34

IV. 'Christ And The New Theology. . . 55i

V. The Authority of The Bible 79

VI. The Atonement and Modern

Thought 104

VII. The Gospel Program 129

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CHAPTER I.

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.

By the new theology we mean that system ^

of Christian doctrine, identifying itself as "TZf >
theistie,^' Svhich is entirely amenable to \h&_ {^^^^^^
po&l^n of modern science; especially toi —————'
those assumptions of induction known
as the conservation of energy and the
uniforynity of nature; and to the
doctrine which is the historic out-
growth of these assumptions, namely, the
evolution of the earth and its inhabitants.
By a process of analogy, the whole scheme of
origins is brought over from the physical to
the social, religious and political, and made
to dovetail with data which seems to con-
firm the theory. The injection of new forces, '
under the head of the supernatural, is impps- ) '"^ "
sible in the premises. The ethics of the ten ^i%/MA '
commandments could not have been handed ^

down from Sinai by the Almighty, nor could
any other epoch-making contribution have
come in from outside the natural order. Many
in the evangelical field who undertake thus
to defend the integrity of natural law and
find common ground for evolution and* re vela-
tion will think our boundaries too sharp in

9

^

1 10 / WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

^^»^

» jidefining new theology; but anything less
khan one hundred per cent consistency in
fcis field is inconsistency. A new theology
that leaves a niche for the spiritual or the
supernatural is new theology improperly so-
called.

Let it not be supposed that we question

Hhe common ground of true religion and
true science. There is no area which they

/ would dispute, any more than there could be
an area disputed by sunlight and at-
m^osphere. Atmosphere is a mundane quan-
tity and sunlight is a solar quantity ; but the
eartli and the sun were devised by the same
^. a- architect, "^e have no fanatical brief to
.t^v^'^^f^V maintain against evolution. The point is
this: The conservation of energy and the

. uniformity of nature explain all that exists

I today and determine all that shall take place
tomorrow, or they do not. Clearly, there is
no middle ground.

LAISSEZ FAIRE RELIGION.

While the big interests of German, Eng-
lish and American culture have furnished us
men with nothing to lose or to fear, who do
not trim from the new theology any of its
logical implications, the evangelical schools
have furnished us some grown men in the
new theology, who can eat its strong meats,
but who recognize the need of giving milk to
them that are not of full age ; hence the form

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WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 11

of the new theology as we find it in the sem-
inaries and Biblical departments of colleges
of evangelical churches does not answer
literally to our definition. This is not be-
cause our definition is wrong, but because
they have arbitrarily modified the system of
new theology, under the influence of the yet
unspent momentum of orthodox traditions.
There is here a more sympathetic type of
teachers of the new theology, who refuse to
be ruthless. They believe in journeying
gently with the tender children and the
flocks and herds. Unlike the Esaus of ra-
tionalism, they feel that their crude brethren
of the old school are worth saving. They
speak caressingly of the old tenets, and
make a place for them that are too deeply
rooted as yet to be uprooted. This form of
d^iplomacy or casuistry is given ethical
standing by no less an authority than Her-
bert Spencer, who says in his autobiogra-
phy:

"I have come more and more to look calmly on
forms of religious belief to which I had in earlier
days a pronounced aversion. Holding that they are
in the main naturally adapted to their respective
peoples and times, it now seems to me that they
should severally live and work as long as the condi-
tions permit, and further, that sudden changes of
religious institutions, as of political institutions, are
certain to be followed by reactions."

The people who submit to these modifica-
tions, these mixtures of wool and linen in the

12 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

same garment, do not care to have their
teaching classed as "new theology" ; but per-
manent bodies of philosophy or theology go
in systems, each part related to the others,
and constituting a strong argument if not an
absolute proof for the other parts in the
system. Any point that does not thus fit in-
to a system of teaching may at its worst be
incompatible; but, it may abide in the sys-
tem as innocent alien matter, harmless in
he absence of inflammation, like a splinter
ncysted in the flesh of a man, which got
here in his childhood. Such is the doctrine
jot angels, good or evil; for which science
has no place. Such is the thought of a sep-
ty in. man, known as the soul. In
his list come miracles and all forms of
supernaturalism, as: divine providence, the
immediate operation of God's Spirit in con-
viction, regeneration or assurance; answers
to prayer, excepting as in mere subjective
consequences; the inspiration of the Scrip-
tures; the miraculous element in prophecy;
the preternaturalness of the origin of sin;
the doctrine of divine judgment, with its
logic of rewards and penalties; the super-
naturalness of the birth of Christ and his
divine person ; the Biblical doctrine of atone-
ment for sin. Not one of these "tradition-
al" positions has a consistent place in the
new theology, but it may readily be seen

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 13

that all these conceptions cannot be uprooted
at one stroke. Indeed there are scholarly-
men, with reverence for the past, for whom
the new theology has charms, but whose
whole nature would revolt against a proposal
to renounce all these incompatible old tenets.
But these old doctrines are excrescences in
the new theology, the tenets of which,
under present day prestige, are so
much more virile that the old doc-
trines tend to slough away or pro-
trude so conspicuously that they have to be
pruned away. The strain in a mongrel breed
which decides the classification will cause all
other kinships gradually to be forgotten;
nor is that strain always the superior strain.
It has been observed that the evolution of'
the new theology usually requires more than
one generation; that what a teacher with
"liberal" tendencies cannot himself spare,
can be easily dispensed with by his diciples
and cordially antagonized by their disciples.
The regressive evolution from orthodoxy to
new theology, if evolution it is, has illus-
trative specimens in all stages, each in his
ecclesiastical stratum; from the slightest re-
shapement to the handsomest reconstructed
state.

THE AGE OP ORIGINALITY.

Enough of the mental bacteria of our new
age has entered the psychology of educated

14 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

orthodoxy to remove its maiden reserve, its
primitive tenseness, in the presence of criti-
cal deliverances on fundamental truth, and
to save it from strained literalism. In the
name of this improvement, the nev^^ the-
ology camel often gets his head into the or-
thodox tent. The inability of the average
preacher and Bible teacher to distinguish an
interpretation or doctrine which fits only in
the new theology system leads to an unde-
fined sense of awkwardness, a want of men-
tal rest, when once such a doctrine is ac-
cepted. In course of time tliis will culminate
'in a virtual surrender to the new theology as
,a system. The awkward situation may be
lendured for one generation, but the next
generation will probably find relief along the
line of least resistance. Throwing tradition
to the winds they will enforce consistency in
the body of their doctrines.

The arbitrary way is often the easier way
to hold a doctrine, even when that doctrine
is true. The habit of eliminating all misfits,
of putting nothing but round pegs in round
holes, of requiring comity between the neigh-
boring units in a body of doctrine — in short,
the ability to escape the necessity of doing
business partly upon borrowed or reflected
convictions is thought to belong only to a few
profound theologians. In the true situation,
it should be popularized. We should seek in

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 15

the Church a high level of enlightenment,
where the average disciple of Christ can see
his faith as a system and be able to sense
every vain philosophy that is incompatible
with faith.

When an individual has a derived convic-
tion, when he believes a thing because of his
breeding, because it represents the atmos-
phere in which he became a Christian, or
the school in which he was educated, we say
that the reason for his belief is psychological
rather than logical. We cannot deny that
such a basis of belief may be valid and
useful, .^cience or Scriptural truth may
be held this way, just the same as error;
doctrines that bless, the same as doctrines
that blight. But a man who holds a true
doctrine for psychological reasons, who ac-
cordingly lacks originality in his convic-
tions, suffers two disadvantages. He will
not be intelligently aggressive, and he will
not be proof against encroachments. Referr-
ing to the former, a conviction must be part
of a man before he can represent it with due
effect ; he must not only have it, but it must
have him. A man who holds a position under-
standingly and consistently will not be want-
ing in the psychological ground of his faith,
but is the more irresistible in his conclu-
sions because he has "the reason of the
hope" in him. To illustrate the latter disad-

16 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

vantage, a Calvinist of the psychological type
may accept or reject any of the ''five points"
at will. He can teach final perseverance and
reject unconditional election or irresistible
grace; or, he can teach unconditional elec-
tion and reject limited atonement, without
suffering a moment of mental unrest in the
fact that he has bisected his system and let
in principles that cannot be assimilated.
An eclectic theologian is like a nursery-
man who tries to graft a mulberry branch
into a walnut stock. Faith has its psycho-
logy and its logic ; it is not good for these to
be put asunder and one of them to be alone.
The faith that lacks originality of conviction
is quite becoming and efficient in a child, or
in one whose status must needs be like that
of a child. But if it is a faith worth pro-
moting, the time is due to come, in all nor-
mal instances, when it must be one's own,
by which the fitness and unfitness of every
thought that is companion to it will be ad-
judged, and such thoughts accordingly will
be rejected or espoused. Thus are we to be
invulnerable on the one hand and irresistible
on the other.

It is not forgotten that bigots who ride a
hobby without any sense of orientation are
sometimes "invulnerable" and "irresistible",
and that in bringing all Scripture to serve
their point of contention, and repelling every

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 17

counsel that crosses their preachments, they
seem to illustrate in more immediate per-
spective the thought developed in the
latter part of this chapter. But they only
illustrate this thought as a counterfieit bill
illustrates a genuine. A bigot is one whose
convictions are intensive without being
comprehensive; whose belief is more in the
nature of an obsession, which unfits him to
estimate the harmonies of thought, puts a
temperamental bias in his exegesis, and
tends to make him intolerant and impatient
of contradiction. A man is not a bigot be-
cause he maintains powerful convictions.
Something is bound to be definitely true;
and when a man has powerful convictions
he may be living just where a man ought to
live.

CHAPTER II.

EVOLUTION AND FAITH.

If we are permitted to assume some un-
certainty in regard to that doctrine of evo-
lution which so largely holds the viewpoint
of the average author of text books in
science and philosophy today, the uncertain-
ty must transfer itself immediately to the
\ new theology, and its pressure must fall
equally upon almost every part of the sys-
tem. We shall, therefore, deem it in keeping
with the unity of this book to insert here
some considerations on the status of the
doctrine of evolution down to date. The ap-
propriateness of this is more apparent when
we remember that the new theology has
eliminated its departments on cosmology and
r^ anthropology and passed them over to be

» decided and explained as branches of natural

science, refusing to have a voice in the de-
^ " cision. Even those not wholly committed to
the rationalistic program have adopted this
method,* thus showing their whole-hearted
faith in science and in the illuminated judg-

*F.O'r illiusttratv;)n of this, see "An Outline of CihrLstian
Tbeologv" by W-illiam Newtomi Clarke; D.D., p. 222 f.

18

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 19

ment of scientists, even upon questions
which are beyond the reach of scientific an-
alysis.

That there is something true in evolution
we need not undertake to deny. But we
shall not need to rehearse any arguments in
defense of this concession. As the library
shelves are groaning with arguments favor-
ing evolution in its full twentieth century
connotation, we can afford to reserve the
space in this book to examine its weak
points. In recent years, a directly adverse
view has been hard to find among teachers
of good attainment in scientific thought.
Since the last decades of the nineteenth cen-
tury the bold materialism of the doctrine
has been greatly softened, and its atheistic
notes largely silenced. Until it showed
these better tendencies, its influence among
theologians of the conservative school was
scarcely discernible ; but in the last third of
a century the new alignment in text books
and modes of thought has been almost cat-
aclysmic in most of the leading evangelical
seminaries. There is an impressive para-
dox in the fact that "old" theology means
less than fifty years old in evangelical
Christendom; that the definite revision of
everything to match the hypothesis of evo-
lution has proved to be a veritable revolu-
tion. Some reasonable doubt might be pre-

\

20 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

sumed as to the dependableness of a new
position reached almost by stampede when
that new position is so far reaching as to
require the digging away of materials which
but yesterday were unanimously acknow-
ledged to be the essential foundation of
Christianity.

THE BLENDING OF FACT AND FICTION.
The story of biological evolution, heard of,
is uninviting; but actually heard, it may
possess a hypnotic charm. Darwin's fas-
cinating style gave this beautiful fable a
momentum in thought by which it has as-
sumed the attributes of reality for many
who write upon it today. It has become an
affair of the heart with certain great schol-
ars, and their primitive religious instinct,
formerly inhibited for want of terms in
which to express itself, bursts forth in elo-
quence as it pronounces its eureka over
what they willingly conclude to be a har-
monious, self-consistent hypothesis. Enforc-
ed with series for motion screens and pic-
ture books, with missing links filled in by
invention, showing the progress of organic
life from a protozoan to a United States Sen-
ator, evolution bids fair to become a part
of the average man's creed for several gen-
erations. As a story estimated by a stan-
j dard of facts, and taken from its alpha to
! its omega, the evolutionary hypothesis

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 21

ranks half w^ay between Jack and the Bean
Stalk and the engineering of the pyramids.
It is sustainable at certain points and it
floats in the air at other points. But it is one
of those departments of conception where
the imaginative easily fuses with the historic
and the mind instinctively gives historic re-
lief to the entire composition.

Since the acceptance of evolution as a
principle in the scientific world there has
been quite a checking up and revision of
views, as the specialist in physics showed a
doctrine that would not work, or the special-
ist in chemistry broke down an "explana-
tion," or the specialist in astronomy found
a conflicting fact, or the specialist in geology
made a new survey, or the specialist in
biology became exceedingly frank, or the
specialist in archaeology unfolded yester-
day's comment upon the "psychozoic" mil-
lenniums. Consequently, the schools contain
no fifty-year-old text books in science, and
no scientist believes there will be any fifty-
year-old science texts in the schools fifty
years hence, or a thousand years hence.

The "old" science, fifty years ago or less,
believed in the nebular hypothesis as an ex-
planation of the origin of the solar system ;
but this was upset by modern physics, and
displaced by a belief "dynamically more
satisfactory," that the sun was the original

22 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

posit,* and that a tidal disruption was caus-
ed in the sun by a passing star, and thus
were the planets and asteroids formed. This
is accepted as a resort, in face of the admit-
ted fact presented by the specialist in math-
ematics, that our sun has only one chance in
1,800 of having- been near any star in the
last billion years ;t but it is conceded that
our sun may have drawn the lucky number.
Other difficulties have to be met in this more
recent, and, we may grant, more probable
hypothesis as to how God made the worlds,
but we will leave the student to read of these
elsewhere. Suffice to say that this theory
had to have a supplement in the theory of
the ''growth of the earth," which also is
plausible, and meets the requirement until
finite man can develop something better. It
assumes that in the disruption of the sun by
a passing star the region between the sun
and Neptune's present orbit was filled with
material from the size of dust to the size of
an asteroid. That gradually, as conjunc-
tions of position were favorable, the molten
earth, through thousands or millions of
years, it is not yet agreed which, grew from'

♦■We ishalil not go baek to tihe more mythical phase of
the newer hypothesis, -which traioes the oriigin of the hot
orb from eolifl, dark materials, scattered through space.
The theory of tidal disruption is not 'new; ibut in its re-
vised state.inent, as accepted today, it is a recent annex to
sfientiflc hypothesis.

tLectui-e by Prof. Joseph iBarrell, of YaJle University, in
'The Bvolutioni oif the Earth omd Its ImhaMtants", p. 23.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 23

about half its present diameter and one-
eighth of its present volume, until in its
heated condition it was from two to four
hundred miles greater in diameter than it is
today.

THE NEW GEOLOGY.

It may be profitable here to tabulate a list
of the statements, representing the position
of the "newer geology" at this date upon how
the present world evolved from the situation
presented in the above paragraph.

During the molten condition of the earth,
the outer crust of its substance where the
continents now stand was, as it is now, a lit-
tle lighter than where the seas now are;*
and, before the cooling and chemical trans-
formations which formed water, the ocean
beds sank and the continents rose. The old
Geology is declared to be wrong in teaching
that continents have changed their position.

Volcanic conditions, of which we still have
small lingerings, were common, as the crust
formed and the molten matter repeatedly
broke through the increasing pressure. This
condition continued, covering not less than
one-eighth of geologic time. Possibly forty
million years after the earth was "grown."

In view of the assumption that the volume

*The speciflc gravity of the beds of the sea now averages
about three per cent more than that of the •continents; but,
instead of this causing the seas, imay it mot be due to the
<;on)den'sin,g, consolidatijig effect of the seas?

24 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

of water has increased, it is believed that the
continents were at one time near twenty-five
per cent larger than now. By erosion the
continents constantly flow out into the sea,
making sea shelves which displace the water,
which, in turn flows over the lower parts of
the continents, to find room for its displaced
volumes. Hence we have the historic "trans-
gressions of the sea."

The earth has shrunk in diameter from
two hundred to four hundred miles, from six
to twelve hundred in its girth, since it
"grew." This has taken place in epochs, in-
cluding several minor readjustments and at
least six major, in which new mountain
ranges were formed and continents were in
some instances literally lifted for miles, to be
dragged down through another geological
cycle. The time intervening between these
major readjustments, according to the latest
authorities, would seem to range from ten
million to a hundred million years. The cal-
culation is based mainly upon the length of
time necessary for the dissolution of rocks,
to produce the present percentage of salt in
the sea.* Fifty or sixty miles must have
been the aggregate lift, as, according to their
calculation, this much of continental crust
has been dissolved in the geological ages. It

*But iis it not possible that the young earth fosteretl
Immense mines of sodium chLorid o-n Its orlg-inal surface?
If so, -would mot this basis oif calculation be valuelesg?

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 25

has not been "long," possibly a few hundred
thousand years, since the last major read-
justment, as all of the continents are now
"standing far higher above sea level than has
been the rule throughout geologic time." The
ice ages have been due to these epochal con-
tinental elevations and the rarity of atmos-
phere, though some admitted difficulties re-
main at this point.

LIFE PROBLEMS ARE DISTINCTIVE.

Thus far in the premises we are not asked
to believe anything that violates any known
law of nature, nor is it contrary to the word
of God to assume that matter and force have
been in existence for measureless ages past.
Furthermore, we do not have a right to fly in
the face of facts and say that there has been
no evolution in the vegetable and animal sub-
kingdoms and in human society; but we
should not be asked to ignore the equally po-
tent law of regressive evolution and the oth-
er laws of spiritual and moral inertia which
have in all time circumscribed the human
race, excepting as we got help direct from
our Maker; nor should any theory demand
our patronage when it forbids us to heed
nature's immutable proclamation that all
progress must be within the impassable
boundary lines of the species, which we are
taught were created by divine fiat, and the
denial of which upon purely hypothetical

26 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

grounds is intolerable presumption. Not
that we would deny to anyone the personal
privilege of regaling himself with Darwin-
ian speculations upon the origin of the spe-
cies, so long as he does not demand that these
speculations shall be standardized and en-
forced through educational channels as a
part of the thought life of our children, and
so long as his theory does not vaunt itself as
a militant opinion, proposing destruction to
the religious faith which has been the chief
factor in producing the greatest civilization
the world has ever knovni.

We are required to grant that there are
many more species today than existed at the
beginning of historic times. But these have
usually been developed, not spontaneously,
but under the direction of rational mind;
and they are not species in the fundamental
sense. More species of dogs or chickens or
bugs or cabbage or melons simply means a
looser employment of the term, which makes
a genus out of the real species and gives the
dignity of species to various subspecies
which are not susceptible of having impassa-
ble boundaries created between them. If a
Plymouth Rock chicken is ''species" number
one and a game is "species" number two,
"species" number three can be produced in
less than a year, by combining these and
obliterating their boundary.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 27

The origin of such "species," therefore,
has nothing to do with evolution in the tech-
nical use of that word, but is due to another
set of laws in which the time element varies,
and where the word evolution, though often
used, is a misnomer.

A recent re-reading of the effort of great
scientists to account for the origin of life re-
minds us that we are no nearer the solution
of this mystery than they were in the days
of Aristotle. The strained hypothesis of
highly compounded chemicals on the bosom
of the warm sea water and of life germs rid-
ing in upon meteorites are discarded as un-
tenable or as merely shifting the problem to
a more remote shore, and the frank admis-
sion is made that the origin of life is possi-
bly involved in some metaphysical explana-
tion.*

HELP FROM HIGHER UP.

On the point of regressive evolution, nat-
uralists observe a widely prevailing uniform-
ity in the vegetable and animal kingdom,
which expresses itself in the decline of most
any species or group left to itself, whether it
be a patch of strawberries or a tribe of hu-
man beings. They try to account for this in
such high sounding terms as over-specializa-
tion, but it is a weird law residing in mys-
tery, a mute but stubborn answer to the

♦Lecture on "The Origin of Life" by Prof. Loranide Losg
WoQidruff. Itiid p. 86.

28 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

hasty conclusions which we find in the specu-
lative realm of science. It is found, on the
other hand, that almost all upward develop-
ment, illustrative of progressive evolution,
among plants, animals and men, is due to
outside aid, supplementing and manipulating
the potential laws embosomed in the species
or tribe. Thus are the finest fruits, vegeta-
bles and flowers developed ; thus are the best
animals produced, and to this do the best il-
lustrations of human civiHzation owe their
existence, without a proved exception. The
Biblical assumption is that the pre-Christian
nations which possessed a civilization got
their cue or contribution: (1) from an an-
cestry in fellowship with their Maker, or (2)
from a direct revelation of God, or (3) from
another nation which got its help in one of
the two ways. We calculate that the ascent
which any of them took would have been im-
possible under nature's uniformity as every-
where illustrated today, except there had
been with them an exotic influence ; an agen-
cy, personal or impersonal, which, though
in them, was not of them. Always, where
progress is the watchword, the creature has,
figuratively or literally, an upward look ; the
look is not backivard, to some metaphysical
god of mystery that planted its original seed,
but to an ever present higher agency, whose
intervention to water the plant seems as es-

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 29

sential to progress as was the germ of the
original planting. That higher agency in the
non-rational universe is usually man; in the
rational universe it is God, or else it is a
more advanced race or tribe who derived
their facilities of advancement directly or in-
directly from God. In the Christian centur-
ies, all that is best in human advancement
harks back to Jesus Christ.

Out of the identity of all protoplasm, the
similarity of all cell life, the similarity of
blood, the similarity in the anatomy of cer-
tain creatures, and the similarity of life
functionings and reproduction, coupled with
the very skimpy and sometimes contradic-
tory illustrations of the fossil world, the phi-
losophy of the spontaneous origin of the spe-
cies is composed. In estimating the length
of the inductive leap in reaching this conclu-
sion men are usually influenced by the at-
mosphere in which they do their thinking.
That the conclusion does not have a one hun-
dred per cent existence in the premises, that
an inductive leap is necessary, all serious
thinkers will admit. Nor does a man have
to live in an atmosphere of superstition and
ignorance for the leap to seem too long to be
logical. All these things prove the fact of
unity in the source of animate creation, but
where we employ the same data to prove
the form or method by which that "Source"

30 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

gave us these species, we must read into our
data conclusions which are not there. It is
entirely rational for us to exercise faith in
revelation's statement that God made them.
It is not irreverent for man to pry into the
modus operandi of creation, but he should
not permit his prejudice or his irreligious
predisposition to cause him to forget that his
field is inevitably speculative, for all time to
come, that schemes have been worked out in
other generations by brilliant minds who be-
came arrogantly sure of their ground, but
that their conclusions are now as grotesque
to him as his will appear to scholars a few
generations hence.

) PRACTICAL RESULTS OF THE THEORY.

Many have undertaken to estimate the
practical effect of the doctrine of the sponta-
neous origin of the species, when educated
society loses consciousness of its hypothetical
character and begins to confuse it with the
verified tenets of science.

First of all, it exerts a super-normal strain
on the joints of human judgment, in those
students who try at once to hold on to their
Bibles and to keep "up with the times." The
strain is so great that many yield their faith,
under their imagined necessity of surrender-
ing to the decree of "science."

Evolution as thus stated furnishes us a de-
cree with reference to the philosophic rela-

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 31

tion of all historic events, and the origin of
all institutions of society, the Hebrew and
Christian religion not excepted. This de-
cree is iron clad, and alternatives or parallel
assumptions can no more be tolerated than
could a Quaker be admitted to heaven by a
strong advocate of baptismal regeneration.
Thus wc have a form of "higher criticism,"
as discussed in another chapter, which,
though devoutly accepted by some suscepti-
ble religious people who would rather be
dead than out of the fashion, was devised to
harmonize with the assumption that the in-
stitution of religion as represented in the Old
and New Testament did not come to man by
means of divine revelation, but in the process
of evolution; which by its own criterion of
consistency feels compelled to iron every
contrary indication out of Biblical history
and out of the history of Biblical books.

'■'The survival of the fittest" grew as a
theory out of the doctrine of spontaneous
origins. Unlike the latter, there is much in
nature to illustrate it, if illustrations could
provide sufficient proof. Because it is so
available as a text from which to expound a
philosophy of life, the doctrine of the survi-
val of the fittest, traced to its sequences, ia
found to be a medium for raising evolution
into a working force. If there is no intelli-
gent providence presiding over the phenome-

32 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

na of creation, if all the changes of the nat-
ural world are due to an unfolding of ener-
gies residing within the creature or in na-
ture, competition must be as truly a law as is
the unfolding, and also as sacred. If "duty"
is merely another name for compulsory com-
pliance with necessary law, and if the strong
do compete successfully with the weak in the
sub-kingdoms of vegetation and animal life,
it is the duty of intelligent beings, where
coUision of rights is threatened, to fit them-
selves better than their competitors and de-
stroy the competitors. If evolution of the
species is true, evolution of politfcal, social,
and religious institutions is also true; and
if might was the only argument for rights in
the lower realm it must at least be legiti-
mately the final argument for one's rights in
the higher realm. Thus are we brought
within a short step of the doctrine that might
is right ; and, while few leaders have permit-
ted their lips to pronounce that doctrine in
plain terms, some have lived up to it ; and its
subtle influence in certain systems of educa-
tion is held by various writers* to have en-
tered into the main causes of the world's
greatest war. There is a way to evade the
doctrine that might is right and still hold the
doctrine of spontaneous generation. This is
done by introducing the supremacy of the

••Cf. "The Science of Power." By Benjamin Kidid ; p.
62 fif.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 33

principle of sacrifice and service over force.
This evasion is by a very narrow margin,
and is hardly valid without a doctrine of
divine interposition ; but it has produced a
distinction between the national policies of
the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon peoples.
While the Teutonic people have been more
true to the logic of the doctrine of the sur-
vival of the fittest, the English speaking
world has escaped its worst consequences
simply because Anglo-Saxons are more prac-
tical than logical.

Only outside or superior forces can pre-
vent the operation of a grim law of the sur-
vival of the fittest, with its conclusion that
might is right. But since we recognize ev-
erywhere the presence of Him who controls
the wind and flood and knows the sparrow's
fall, our faith refuses to ascribe the dignity
of a "law" to the mere coincidence of the
survival of the fittest, however replete may
be its illustrations. "The race is not to the \
swift nor the battle to the strong, neither yet I
bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of. (
understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill ; a
but time and 'chance' happeneth to them '
all"* and "Promotion cometh neither from
the east, nor from the west, nor from the '
south: but God is the judge; he putteth down
one, and setteth up another."!

♦Boclesia Sites 9:11.
tPsalim 75:6, 7.

CHAPTER III.

THE GOD OF THE NEW THEOLOGY.

"Theistic evolution" mu'st draw the line at
spontaneous generation, with its logical se-
quence in religion, or blunt its perception of
truth and lose its soul. Current develop-
ments are serving constantly to illustrate the
truth of this assertion.

In recent centuries, many new lessons have
been learned by reading the oracles of na-
ture, God's other book. In the light of a fan-
cied conflict between nature and revelation
some scientists who were not religiously in-
clined have grown arrogant ; and some
churchmen who were not scientifically in-
clined have become panic stricken. The lat-
ter was due either to an unconscious weak-
ness of faith in the divinity of the Scriptures
or a stupid assumption that there was lack
of unity in the universe of truth. A few de-
vout patriarchs thought that a general belief
that the sun was the center of the solar sys-
tem would send all the Bibles to the garret.
A zealous church tribunal wanted to ana-
thematize a man when he advanced the in-
duction that the behavior of Uranus implied
the existence of an eighth planet. Seven was

34

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 35

a sacred number; and any cold hearted
worldling who disturbed people in this val-
uable collateral of faith would hurt the cause
of religion as well as spoil man's apprecia-
tion of "the music of the spheres," But the
discovery of Neptune grew out of this, and
the Christian faith stands firm as ever; and
the heavens declare the glory of God with a
majesty that fails not with the flight of
years.

Evolution in its modern meaning, as first
expounded in the nineteenth century by
Haeckel and his kind, was atheistic. A cer-
tain class of more alert and sensitive Chris^
tian thinkers feared it as an itinerant ped-
dler would fear a prairie fire. At the first
challenge it seemed like a death struggle. To
the sanguine believers it would finally mean
the death of an evolutionary philosophy; to
the despondent, the death of Christian
theistic faith. For a while, in many circles,
there was no thought of assimilation or com-
promise. But atheistic evolution had scarce-
ly begun to utter its brusque tones when it
met with answers so conclusive that its
champions vanished, or lost the ear of the
thinking world, and theistic evolution was
accorded the courtesies of the arena.

Apprehensive, and not knowing just how
much of their old articles of faith would
have to be dismantled, an influential element

)

36 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

of Christian scholars availed themselves of
this opportunity to make terms and conclude
a compromise which would enable them to
hold caste with higher education in its new
attitude. Naturally, there could be no con-
cert of action among the various segments
of Christian thinkers to determine what con-
cessions m.ust be made to square up with
facts, or where the line should be drawn in
the interest of facts already in their posses-
sion. Some were like a man unacquainted
with the markets, trying in war time to buy
a suit of clothes from profiteers, when its
actual value was seventy-five dollars and the
merchant had it marked five hundred dollars.
After a distressing argument, the customer
agreed to a price of two hundred and fifteen
dollars and fifty cents and went home with
a triumphant feeling.

EVOLUTION AND PROGRESS NOT IDENTICAL.

A "theistic evolution" that substitutes an
unproved ascent of man for the necessary
truth of divine creation must so revise its
idea of God as to make him purely a creature
of the human imagination. It must adduce
a private interpretation of the Bible that
makes the God of Genesis inferior to the God
of Paul's epistles. It must hold a theory
with reference to the inspiration of the
Scriptures which denies them the dignity of
a revelation from God and makes each book

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 37

of the Bible merely a reflection of the age in
which it was produced.

This is one of several turns taken by the
new theology which appear to have some-
thing in fact on which to hang its conclu-
sions. It is a fact that the requirements of
divine law in each succeeding age as repre-
sented in the Bible are in advance of the pre-
ceding age; that divine judgments are ad-
ministered differently and on a more ad-
vanced plane in each age; that in the stand-
ard of worship for the new dispensation the
appeal to the senses by symbols of faith is
at a minimum, and spiritual excellencies take
the place of material splendor; that in each
era God seems to have been bringing the hu-
man custodians of his revelation steadily to
the advanced plane which should character-
ize the age ahead of them.

These are facts which lend themselves to
the imagination of those already convinced
that man ascended from the level of lower
animals, and that the ages of biological his-
tory contain some kind of tropic of cancer or
Capricorn marking his passage into the
estate of a human being, at which time,
whether gradually or in the presence of some
august ceremony, man's "Maker" imparted
to him a living soul. This extraordinary fea-
ture has to be injected into the scheme of
evolution by those who would unite Chris-

38 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

tianity and spontaneous origins; a thing
which must be very amusing to the non-
Christian evolutionist, and a position so inar-
ticulate in itself that it affords a stumbling-
stone , causing many a new theologian to
"backslide" during his study of functional
psychology, and cease from trying to cor-
relate his "science" and his "religion."

JEHOVAH, THE SAME IN EVERY AGE.
A fuller consideration of the evolutionist's
assumption that each book of the Bible is a
reflection of the age in which it is written
will be given in our chapter on the "Authori-
ty of the Bible" ; but we will here take time to
observe that the Scriptures, when intelli-
gently interpreted, furnish no support for
the statement that our idea of God is evolved.
The Bible professes the very opposite. Man
is represented as getting his idea of God
from God himself, by direct revelation. That
man, because of sin, was slow to apprehend
God's will or comprehend his attributes is
recognized throughout, and that a "lost" race
was dealt with on its own plane, borne with,
instructed, and brought forward from one
dispensation to another on progressive
scales, is an express admission which the Bi-
ble makes. But it requires a most cunning
invention to show that the standards and
methods of the succeeding eras prove dif-
ferences in God and set forth the evolution

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 39

of the idea of God. The God who winked at
men's errors in the times of their ignorance*
held the same standards then that he did
when he commanded all men everywhere to
repent. While ceremonial laws, with pro-
found objects of tuition and discipline, were
made to vary with the centuries, one will
seek in vain for a fundamental moral law in
the New Testament that is annulled by di-
vine approval in the Old. The New Testa-
ment goes deeper into the inner meaning of
the law as revealed in the Old, but it is ab-
surd to say that this is due to an improve-
ment in God. The Old Testament in its
frank, unvarnished record gives account of
specific sins or persistent low standards in
some men w'ho worshipped God, and some-
times fails to record God's disapproval; but
the absence of such a record would not mean
anything unless a man had a theory to take
care of. The fact that men escaped chal-
lenge in Old Testament times with sins for
which they were rejected in New Testament
times means nothing but that they had more
light in the latter period.

The changing character of divine judg-
ments in succeeding dispensations is thought
by many to support the evolutionary view,
and has presented difficulties for honest
souls who have taken no interest in the evo-

*Acts 17:30.

40 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

lutionist's contention. Outstanding among
these difficulties are the use of God's people
to execute judgments upon perverse nations;
the ehmination of entire families, including
children, by judicial or military execution ;
the imprecations or curses upon the enemy
as we find them pronounced in the Psalms.
All this, we are reminded, has much in com-
mon with the customs of the nations general-
ly in those days.

We shall not try to handle this to the sat-
isfaction of those who do not believe in di-
vine judgments. Our point will be that the
King and Judge of this universe, as revealed
then and now, has undergone no change ex-
cept in the methods and agencies employed.
His view of death is different from ours.
With him, the passing of a child or an inno-
cent victim of other people's sins may take
place appropriately, accompanied by violence
or suffering, which in itself may carry a re-
flex ministration that we cannot fathom ; but
for which no doubt he has provided compen-
sations that we fail also to understand. The
souls of the children who were torn by bears
after they had laughed in derision at the re-
ported ascension of Elijah,* and sportingly
challenged Elisha to "Go up, thou bald
head," were in better keeping than if they

*2 Kings 2:24.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 41

had remained under the nurture of parents
who had instilled such sentiments in them.

We grant that it is hard in our day for one
to see how God's chosen people could have
been used as his chastening scourge, as he
now uses storm, earthquake, or pestilence,
without involving hurt to themselves. Per-
haps it was possible then, but a decided ad-
vance in human sensibilities calls for a dif-
ferent economy now. It still remains a fact,
however, that God believes in death, and that
he takes people from the earth sometimes by
special dispensations, of an exceeding sad
character, for administrative reasons. But
there is one identity in his law for all dis-
pensations, namely, he teaches us to hold sa-
cred the person of our fellow man ; and, out-
side of the execution of a direct judgment,
conferring Jehovah's own prerogative of life
and death, his law at all times has forbidden
the taking of human life.

THE PSALMS OF JUDGMENT ARE IMPERSONAL.

A few suggestions and illustrations for in-
terpreting the Psalms which pronounce a
curse upon the enemy may help some honest
soul to see that no theory of a change in God
is necessary, but that we can identify in
these excellent expressions of the ancient
worshipper the same Jehovah whose ethics
shine through the sermon on the mount and
the twelfth chapter of Romans. A compari-

42 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

son of Hebrews 3:7 with the 95th Psalm, be-
ginning at the seventh verse, will show that
in the estimation of the New Testament the
Psalms represent the utterances of the Holy
Spirit, rather than the individual sentiment
or animosity of the persons who penned
them. If we read Psalm 129, a judgment
Psalm, and note carefully verse one in con-
nection with the Psalm, we will observe that
the language is put in the mouth of Israel,
and that the judgment is pronounced upon
the nation's foes instead of some one against
whom the Psalmist has a personal grudge.
It may always be safely assumed that the
judgments are prophetic, and imply no in-
dorsement of personal revenge. If the new
theologian thinks that the God of the thir-
teenth of 1st Corinthians had not evolved in
the Old Testament, and that emulators of Je-
hovah could not think in terms of non-resis-
tance, he ought to review those instances, so
full of pathosi, where David had Saul repeat-
edly in his own hand and spared his life. It
will be remembered that David wrote some
of these imprecatory Psalms, yet it may be
safely said that in all his wonderful life he
never resented personal insults or permit-
ted a man to be harmed for wronging him
when it was purely a personal matter. But
when it came to the defense of Israel, or the
execution of what he understood to be a

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 43

righteous judgment of God, no man could
stand before him, and no personal feeling
could prevent the firmness of his hand. At
times the Holy Spirit represents Christ as
speaking in the Psalms, and the enemies
mentioned, instead of being enemies of the
inspired writer, or even of Israel, are ene-
mies of Christ. An illustration of this will
be found in the 86th Psalm, the ninth verse
of which directs special attention to our
point.

paganism's derelict conception of god.

Outside of revealed religion, the "progres-
siveness" of the idea of God is a pure inven-
tion. Just as plants and animals of higher
grade deteriorate when left to themselves,
just as man also when left without help from
the outside goes down hill instead of up in
civilization and the scale of being, just as
animate nature commonly illustrates the ab-
sence of any law of advancement within it-
self, tending more to regressive than to pro-
gressive evolution, so the religions of the
world as observed in historic times usually
fail to show any improvement in their idea
of deity, excepting as they catch reflections
from Christianity. Indeed there is good
reason to infer that many of the great hu-
man religions have had nobler ideas of God,
but have lost them through this universal
downward tendency. Zoroastrianism, the

44 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

religion of Cyrus the Persian, shows its evo-
lution in Parseeism today. Tangora , the
Polynesian deity, is an illustration of the
same tendency to decline in human ideals of
deity. Proof is very scarce for the conten-
tion that the idea of deity even among the
crudest barbarians is v^holly the product of
evolution. Among the various heathen re-
ligions of the world evidences are frequently
found that they have witnessed better days,
with a higher instead of a lower conception
of deity, and some possess traces that make
it entirely reasonable to assume that in the
remote past their ancestry had in some de-
gree a knowledge of the true God.

NEW THEOLOGY NOT THEISTIC.

The new theology in its doctrine of God is
unwilling to be identified with deism, which
separates God from his universe; a philoso-
phy which so frankly challenged, instead of
trying to swallow, Christianity two hundred
years ago. It boasts a more modem par-
entage on the scientific side. It insists that
it is not against Christianity as were the
deists, but that it is Christianity in the most
highly evolved form, the only form that can
stand the full exposure of the rays of scien-
tific light. It denies the charge of plagiar-
ism, and does not think it in any sense con-
stitutes a case of history repeating itself, -
though many of us who have escaped the in- ' ^

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 45

fatuation of the new theology think that his-
tory is replete with instances of conclusions
and modes of apprehension which answer to
what the new theology is now giving us.

While the new theology identifies itself as
theistic, we make the point that a system
which denies all supernaturalism is not
theistic* Suppose God did ordain the for-
ces. The conservation of energy forms a
closed circuit; it is held by all who do not
spoil the system with ill fitting, antiquated
doctrine, that the original deposit of the
Creator held all the laws and potentialities
necessary to the unfolding of the present
order, and much beyond this. It therefore
follows that God answers prayer by immuta-
ble laws reposed in nature millions of years
before the prayers are uttered; that the
special providences in which the Bible
abounds, and in which evangelical Chris-
tians delight as a warm token of God's near-
ness, were timed by law in the beginning of
the ages; that miracles are the operation of
natural laws for which there is no visible ex-
planation, and never an interception of Him
who presides over his universe; that indeed
he does not preside ; that his immanence con-

*"Without a iSU'pernatupal providence we islnk irnto the
bleakness of deism, and might as well sink into material-
IsiDi or pantheism. Theism ds supernaturalism. If there
is a personal G-od there Is a isnperniatural providence."
"Systematic Theoloig-.y," by John Miley, D.D., LL.D., Vol. I,
p. 1'36.

46 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

sists in the fact that he is inseparably iden-
tified with nature, operating with unaltera-
ble regularity through its channels, as he or-
dained them in the beginning of the ages.

And so we find in much of our modern re-
ligious literature the innate religious nature
of man, bursting forth in primitive form,
treating the phenomena of nature as mani-
festations of God and referring to them in
terms of worship which belong to a personal
God.* They do not worship these forces of
nature as if some immanent deity were
slightly hidden in their bosom awaiting the
homage of man, but it is easy to believe they
are traveling the same road of decline from
true theistic faith that was traveled by the
ancestors of the sun and moon and nature
worshippers of the great prehistoric civili-
zations. It will not be understood that we
are apathetic in our attitude to nature. The
proper appreciation of nature brings man

*"A flre-mist and a planet,

A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-flish and a saurian,

And caves Tvihere ttbe cave-men dwell.
Then a sie^nise of law of beauty,

And a face turned from tbe clod —
iSome call it Evolution,

And others call it Gad.

"A haze on the far ihorizon.

The infinite, lender sky.
The ripe, rich tints of tJhe cornfields,

And the wild geese isadling 'bigh.
And all over upland and lol^^'land
Tihe cfhiarra of the goldenrod —
ISome of us call it Autuimn,
And others call it Goid."
Fro.m poem, "Each In His Oiwn Tongue" ; by Wm. Herbert
Carruth.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 47

closer to his Creator. Our criticism is di-
rected at the class of homilies now popular
in some circles which would make a pious
play into the adoration of nature to escape
all assumptions of the supernatural; which
would offer nature's phenomena as a substi-
tute for the consolations of the Christian as-
surance that God in his providence presides
personally over his universe every moment.

THE DOCTRINE OF "DIVINE IMMANENCE."

A generation ago a certain class of writers
gave form to what they deemed a better ap-
prehension of God. Their conception was
expressed in the words, "Divine immanence"
or "the immanence of God." The literature
of Tennyson and other beautiful writers, con-
sciously or unconsciously, inculcated the
view ;* and no doubt it has served as a spir-
itual tonic in the meditations of many aes-
thetic souls. It has put a new beauty and
majesty in all of nature, and induced a spirit
of reverence in all who caught the idea.

This doctrine of divine immanence has
'been appropriated by the new theology. It
fits admirably into the system ; and, while it
does not assert itself pro or con upon the

*Dark is tlio AvorkI to thee: rtiyse'lf art b'lie reason wliiv ;
For is He not all hut thiou, ttoa't hasit ipowpr to feel "I am I"?
******

Speak to Him thou for He 'hears, aind Spirit with Spirit

can lueet —
Closer is He than breathinig, and nearer than .hiands and

feet.

—The Hiigher Pantheism, by .\jlfred, Lord Temniyson.

48 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

subject of miracle and supernatural provi-
dence, it prepares the way for the new theo-
logian's adverse position, in which he is free
to do away with the supernatural by overdo-
ing it or resolving everything into the super-
natural. It is like the argument that if a
man gives all, he does not need to give the
tenth ; if he keeps every day holy, he does not
need to keep the Sabbath. So great is the
subtlety that some of the most orthodox be-
lievers have taken to it ardently. The late
Methodist philosopher, Dr. Borden P. Bowne,
in his book, "The Immanence of God," quotes
an illustration from that ultra champion of
orthodoxy, the Sunday School Times, to show
the homology of miracle under natural law.
A young man looks into a clear pool which
portrays an acorn as it falls on the landscape
and, while he gazes at the reflection, the
acorn bursts, sprouts, springs into a sapling,
and then a massive oak. The observer ex-
claims that this is a miracle ; but his instruc-
tor awakens him to the fact that he has lost
his sense of time. That eighty years have
flown since he began to gaze in the pool, and
that his hair and beard are long and gray
and his garments are threadbare and rotten.
Then the observer recalls his words, and
says, It is no miracle, it is only nature. The
conclusion they draw is that miracle is na-
ture in the role of the unusual, but that na-

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 49

ture in the usual with its sunrise, sunset,
and bud and blossom, is just as truly miracu-
lous, as truly the work of God. It is divine
activity all the same, whether mediated or
not.* "The presence of God in nature," says
Dr. Bowne, "does not mean that God is here
and there in the world performing miracles,
but that the whole cosmic movement de-
pends constantly upon the divine will and is
an expression of the divine purpose."! Me-
diaeval Calvinism had a way of making ev-
ery miracle and supernatural providence,
along with the ordinary phenomena of life,
part of a stereotyped plan laid out by the Al-
mighty, with drastic precision, before the
foundation of the world. With them, God
does everything, and moral agency, in men
and angels, is an illusion. The more sane
champions of this view did not contend that
the divine activity in history was unmedia-
ted; but a more fanatical subdivision of the
fatalistic view, under the doctrine of Occa-
sionalism, taught that God caused the fall of
every rain drop and the bursting of every
bud, by an act of his will, and that he thus
actuated every event, including the ordinary
movements of the human body. This was
mysticism, denatured by being carried furth-
er in the direction of its own excess.

*"Tbe Immanence of God," by Borden P. Bowne; p. 48.
(IMd. p. 43.

50 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

Indeed every new error of our age is an
old error dressed in modern clothes. The
subtle fallacy which gives standing to the
doctrine of divine immanence today finds
good soil for growth in the group psychology
of two classes : the theological sons of the old
ultra Calvinists who have a left over meas-
ure of the momentum of middle age theology,
showing itself in their notion of providence
and the supernatural; then the rationalists
of the scientific world, who, if they must tol-
erate God, are only content to make his per-
sonality at present as meaningless a/s possi-
ble, and if they must grant that he caused
anything, let it be understood that he was
the first cause, but that with the initiation
of the world order his freedom ended, so that
now he is restricted merely to the upkeep of
the system he caused, without freedom to de-
viate from any course laid down from the
foundation of the world. Indeed such free-
dom is not needed under this scheme of de-
terminism. All this is very bald unless we
feature it with the fond embellishments of
the divine immanence, as conceived in
Bowne's philosophy and Tennyson's poetry.
Yet when one has soared in these heavens of
Bowne and Tennyson he must sometimes
light to meditate upon the distinctions be-
tween divine providence and natural law.
Dr. Bowne grapples with this in these

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 51

words: "An opportune storm, a drouth or
flood, a good or bad harvest, an outbreak of
an epidemic would he far more significant
to many than the greatest mental and moral
progress of society."* "Sometimes the his-
torical crisis is such, and the co-working of
complex factors so marked that we seem to
he aware of a divinity that shapes our ends.
Then we speak of a guiding or overruling
Providence. But commonly life runs on in
the familiar routine, and we seem left to our
own judgment to find the way. At such times
we have nothing to say of Providence. But
it is clear that the only difference is that
sometimes the divine purpose seems mani-
fest, while at other times it is hidden."*

If we admit that there is a third factor in
the world, due to a doctrine of moral agency
in men and angels, good and evil, — if there-
fore we admit that God has a set of laws
dealing with persons instead of forces, it is
our privilege to expect interceptions of the
divine Ruler, to meet situations which may
arise. We may not always be able to distin-
guish these interceptions, because of their
resemblance to natural events. If there are
circumstances connected with the "oppor-
tune storm, drought or flood" which afford
proof that there has been a special intercep-

*I.tiicl. p. 45.
»I.bid. p. 53.

52 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

tion of the divine hand it is quite proper to
attach peculiar significance to it, and out of
place to confuse the value of a providential
manifestation by making- an invidious com-
parison between it and some great general
order like ''the mental and moral progress of
society." It would be easy thus to chide peo-
ple with the charge of misplaced emphasis,
but it is quite as intelligent as it is human
for us to be eager in such events to get a
glimpse of God ; and no man is a true theist,
and no man has his orientation as a student
of the Bible, who says that the speech uttered
by the flowers and sunshine and recurring
seasons constitutes as much of a manifesta-
tion of God as does an obvious providence or
a direct answer to prayer, in which we see
the workings of a sympathetic, personal
God. This is proved in the fact that atheism
and its slightly less pernicious allies of pan-
theism, deism and polytheism have never
found it necessary to break camp under na-
ture's manifestations of God, whereas, the
slogan of the supernatural, with its creden-
tialed prophets, its divided Jordans, its an-
swered prayers, its risen Lord and its reveal-
ed Bible, has caused whole nations to recog-
nize God.

If our chapter may descend to a criticism
we should say that Dr. Bowne hands every-
thing over to rationalism when he says: "It

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 53

is clear that the only difference is that some-
times the divine purpose seems manifest,
while at other times it is hidden." Putting
divine providence everywhere is equivalent
fo putting it nowhere, in our system of teach-
ing. Just as extreme socialism, which makes
government everything, becomes identical
with anarchism, which makes government
nothing; just as two men traveling in oppo-
site directions to get as far apart as possible
will finally arrive in the same neighborhood,
the divine immanence people and the deists,
when the former have worked their logic to a
finish, give us a teaching identical in its ef-
fect, however much the one may sing their
pious anthems and denounce the wickedness
of the other.

No finite man can comprehend how mani-
fold and how vast are the forces in this
world aside from the chemical and mechani-
cal, which, except as God restrains, checks
or overrules, may shorten human lives, de-
stroy souls, or spoil nations. These forces
are explained by the multitude of spiritual
and human intelligence which surround our
glob-?. Personality and free agency have
never been understood, but it is too late in
the day to ignore them. In denying or ignor-
ing them, the theologian takes himself back
to the middle ages, and the scientist buries
his head in the sand. The true and living'

54 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

God is he that upholds all things by the word
of his power; who presides over all the
forces, known and unknown to us, and who
must reign till all enemies are under his
feet.*

Our position is, that if we exempt the new
theology from being classified under deism,
it must be identified as a modern form of
pantheism. Pantheism holds that the uni-
verse is God, that it evolved or emanated
from, him, and that in all its phases it is
simply a manifestation of him, a part of him.
Essentially, that is the position of the new
theology. However, in its practical work-
ings, the absence of an intensely religious
spirit and of all tendencies to fetish devo-
tion would seem to save the new theologians
from classification under pantheism; but
since the universe of creatures which are
capable of some conception of divine being
is included under the five heads of theism,
pantheism, deism, polytheism and atheism,
we shall have to ask these brethren to choose
their position under pantheism or deism.

*1 CorintJilans 15:25.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHRIST OF THE NEW THEOLOGY.

There are just two great generic truths in
the universe of thought; Creation and Sal-
vation. Almost every other topic with
which man has to reckon may be classified as
to its subject matter under one of these
heads. The position upon either of these
questions will have almost everything to do
with our body of doctrine as a whole, pro-
vided we are coherent. None can deny the
ills of life and the evils of the world ; but he
who contrives a scheme of creation without
God will most certainly devise a plan of re-
demption without God, usually having theo-
rized t?ie world's ills into as mild a form as
rhetoric and analogy can effect, extenuat-
ing sin and abolishing Satan. Again, he
who reduces to a minimum the divine ele-
ment in creation will reduce to a minimum
the divine element in redemption.

The scientific mind wishes to conceive the
universe in as simple a form as possible. It
shrinks from ascribing complexity to any of
its data ; but whatever the complexities of a
problem, the tendency is to revolt against
the supernatural. All things must be re-

55

56 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

garded as belonging to a closed system,
whose laws articulate with nature's other
laws, admitting no exotic forces. If it finds
something that fits none of its classifications
and answers to none of its known laws, it
reacts to that something as to the nearest
resembling familiar object; as did the coun-
tryman who drank out of the finger bowl.
This is not a fact peculiar to the scientific
mind ; it shows rather that in a more refined
and lofty fashion a law that inheres in the
psychology of the illiterate persists in the
mind of the world's scholars. Obedient to
this bent of nature, leaders of thought in ev-
ery century have been trying to interpret the
person of Christ and fix a self-consistent es-
timate of him without the aid of faith, not-
withstanding the statement of his greatest
disciple that he cannot be properly estimated
except in the realm of the supernatural.*
Science has no articles of faith. The mo-
ment it enters the realm of faith it becomes
philosophy. But nearly all scientists are
philosophers; and, in our day, nearly all
philosophers expect to be listed as scientists.
Modern philosophy has articles of faith with
reference to subjects beyond the reach of in-
vestigation, if the removal be in time or
space ; but it has no place for either the pre-
ternatural or the supernatural.

*"No man can say that Jesus is the Liord, but by the
H'>ly Spirit." 1 Corinthians 12:3.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 57

HISTORIC ERRORS CONTRASTED.

During apostolic times, the person of
Christ was disparaged by scholars outside of
Jewish circles, not because of its supernat-
ural challenge, but because they were averse
to giving preeminent recognition to a Jew.
The over confidence which belongs to a peo-
ple who have made vast conquest of the ele-
ments and laws of nature did not belong to
that age. A few Greeks were slightly af-
fected with this, but usually all were dis-
posed to admit the existence of a class of un-
solvable data. With the Jews who were un-
friendly to Christ he was disparaged because
of his Galilean origin and other particulars
aside from a sober estimate. The early
Christian Jews did not get their conception
of Christ from a sound interpretation of
Isaiah and the other prophets, but from;
the sectarian interpretation of their time,
which recognized his Messiahship [to the
Jews and failed to see him as the world's Re-
deemer, the Mediator between God and man.
The facts were placed before them by the
Master in the early part of his ministry, and
they were permitted gradually to develop in-
to the true apprehension of him. Peter's
"coinfession"t was the result of extended ob-
servation, sober reflection and divine revela-
tion. Instead of being forced out of a pre-

f'Thou art the Clrrist, the Son of the living God." Mat-
thew 16:16.

58 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

disposed belief by an abrupt disclosure, John
was brought steadily, by all the laws which
enter into a normal conviction, up to where
he could declare : "He is the propitiation
for our sins, and not for ours only, but also
for the sins of the whole world."*

With the new theology, all things emana-
ted from God in the original posit, endowed
with manifold natural laws which stand in
God's stead; and all things proceed back in
the direction of God, as represented in the
highest manifestation of evolution's law, the
"fittest" surviving, the inferior being doom-
ed. This doom involves the elimination of
inferior individuals of the highest species
and the ultimate dissolution of the lower
species. It supposes immortality only for
the fittest ; and the more common tendency is
to make this immortality racial instead of
individual. Under this interpretation, it is
consistent also to concede the immortality of
all the higher and more fundamental species
of living creatures. t This illustrates the
fact that the new theology in its conception

*1 Jcyhin 2:2.

tThis is made relative by the pihitosoptoers' view of the
durability of the solar system. It lias been calculated
that in la given number of miiillions of years the sun would
burn down to a dharred imass aimd life would disaippear
frem our system. Then, of course, -with the physiological
correlate would pass tlie ipisychic p'henoimena ! PhyiSics
canmot flgure around the net'essiity 'Of putting a time limiiit
on tlhe longevity of onr universe. But even soience ad-
mitis that there' is a way around some things that mairt
cannot figure around because of the magnitude of the cal-
culation and the absence of some of the terms.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 59

of deity seems at once to share the view of
pantheism and deism.

With the conservation of energy granted
in such a way as to make the universe a
closed system, and with the Darwinian doc-
trine of origins assumed, it is impossible to
grant that Christ came down from heaven. J
There is only one place to accord him; he is
an outstanding result of progressive evolu-
tion ; a kind of promontory in a distant con-
tinent, which humanity's ship is approach-
ing; the first fruit of a golden period yet to
come, creating by his personality and exam-
ple an idea of a millennial age, the idea it-
self being "the kingdom of God", gradually
fastening upon the imagination of mankind,
by means of those instrumentalities invoked
by the Church. That he was mistaken in
himself and his mission, it is logically nec-
essary, from this standpoint, to conclude;
also that, with his perfect moral and spir-
itual conceptions, he was intellectually
crude, trammelled by the supersti-
tions of his day, and in no sense in-
formed ahead of the uninformed schol-
arship of the time of his ministry.* It

J'No man hath ascenrled up to heaven, but he that came
down from heaven, >sven the Son ;of Man whioh Is in
heaven." John 2:1?..

*"JeS'Us sharerl the iginiora.nce of men, not only in his

boyhood, but thrwrglhout 'his life was possessed dn

the last months or years of his liLfe by a paissdonate convic-
tion ■wihioh in its Mteral form can only be called a ipatlhetic
delUiSion." "ProMems of Religion," iby Durant Brake, p.
143.

60 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

will be seen readily where, in the estimation
of the new theology, is placed the incarna-
tion, the preexistence of Christ, which he
teaches us to recognize, the virgin birth, his
resurrection from the dead, and other re-
lated doctrines. Instead of admitting that
these facts corroborated the truth of his di-
vinity, the new theology holds that they are
inventions, on a par with fables, growing
out of the assumption of his divinity .f Ev-
ery estimate of him, every account of his
works, set forth in his biography, must be
levelled by a steam roller of a priori reason-
ing till it tallies with the Christ of modern
philosophy.

NO MIDDLE GROUND.
While skepticism or avowed infidelity is
more logical than the new theology in that
it refuses the impossible task of disparaging
Christ and at the same time trying to cling
to him, the new theology is more logical
when it recognizes that he cannot be evaded
or ignored. The simple fact, announced by
him and verified a thousand times since, is
that every one who is sufficiently enlighten-
ed to reckon with him at all must be wholly
for him or wholly against him ; that is, he
must yield his allegiance as to an undi-

flt is alwiayis to be remembered, howerer, that it is the
character and life of Jesus, which ied us to believe in the
virg-in birth, and not the virgin birth which led us to be-
lieve in Jesus." "New Testament History," by Harris
Franklin Rail, p. 35.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 61

minished, undisparaged Christ, the eternal
Son, as he represented himself, or be identi-
fied with those who, admitting that he was
a genius, regard him as an imposter.* In so
regarding him they make him the perpetra-
tor of the world's greatest fraud, the perpet-
uation of whose name and influence reflects
the idiocy of mankind. Unitarianism and
all forms of humanizing Christology are
committed to an impossibility. Attempt has
been made, under the strongest patronage,
to found great ecclesiastical systems around
the conception of a disparaged Christ, but it
has been a uniform failure. Such a Christ is
less than no Christ, and there is no cohesion
in the nucleus formed around him. The
Unitarian Church is today one of the most
respectable and cultured bodies in the world,
with antecedents of scholarship dating back
to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment;
yet, they number a membership of less than
a hundred thousand. They symbolize the
shelter and church life of those who are too
consistent to ignore Christ, and not consis-
tent enough to accept his own representation
of himself. Due to the fact that modern
thought has prepared a favorable ground,
they have been a leavening influence in many
of the great orthodox denominations during
recent decades. Some of the seminaries of

*"He that is not with me is against me: and \he -that
g-athereitli not with me, soattereth abrotad." Matthew 12:30.

62 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

evangelical Churches would easily pass for
Unitarian schools today. But what is the
result? A shortage of candidates for the
ministry, and a decline in the average num-
ber of additions to the Church, with sages
shaking their heads in perplexity, and ec-
clesiastical philosophers trying to show
where the trouble lies. The alternatives of
this age are Christ and anti-christ ; and the
imoment we dlisparage the personality of
Christ we cease to gather with him and be-
gin to scatter abroad.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES.

In some of our seminaries today, teachers
are accorded shelter who advance the sophis-
try that the doctrine of the virgin birth of
Christ is not necessary to Christianity; oth-
ers say that the doctrine of his resurrection
from the dead is not an essential among
Christian evidences. To declare unessential
a truth that is essential amounts to the an-
nulling of that truth, and paves the way in-
fallibly to a policy of opposition to it if it
works a hardship upon the new program;
and certainly these truths make such hard
sledding for the new theology that we can-
not regard it a mere incident when some
professor rises in his place to pronounce
them "unessential." We are bound to sus-
pect in him a fellowship for the new pro-
gram, and we have never heard of an in-

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 63

stance where developments proved the sus-
picion unfounded.

It is a favorite fallacy in new theological
literature and with a certain class of clever
professors who even assume sympathy for
the virgin birth and kindred mysteries con-
nected with the beginnings of our Lord's
earthly history, to say that the volume of
his influence accruing since he left the earth
is necessary, to prove the virgin birth in
the logic of the times. The inference is,
that such presentations as the virgin birth
are superfluous among Christian evidences
now, though valid and useful at the outset,
and that we would gain a point in our mod-
ern statement if we quietly dropped these
things as encumbrances. Dr. Lyman Abbot
includes the resurrection of Jesus among the
encumbrances of modern faith.* This is
as intelligent in sound as it is defective in
sense. Those things in the beginning were
among the evidences ; and we cannot disen-
tangle them without suspending our whole
system in mid air. I might as consistently
say that the Bible was my proof that the Son
of God had power to forgive my sins, but
since I had experienced forgiveness, the
practical proof had annulled the necessity
for the initial proof, and I did not need that
part of my Bible any more.

♦Article on "A Relig-ious Revolution." "The Ou'tlook,"
'Siepteimiber, 1915.

64 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

The difficulties of believing in the virgin
birth are not specific. They come and go
with man's general aversion for the super-
natural. It may be held that this constitutes
a phase of the supernatural gratuitously in-
jected into the situation ; but this is not for
finite man to decide. No one holds that God
could not have devised some other way to
bring about the incarnation ; but those who
accept the fulfillment of prophetic utter-
ances as something more than an accident
or an invented dovetail are bound to take
seriously the report of Matthew and Luke
and the early Christians regarding the vir-
gin birth. A bona fide prophecy, from one
of the least questioned of all prophetic
sources* reads : "Therefore, the Lord him-
self shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin
shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall
call his name Immanuel." Evasive writers
might say this meant no promise of an un-
usual thing, referring merely to the first
child of a young woman ; but the prophet
protects us against this interpretation by
saying that it was to be something unusual,
a '"sign", which "Jehovah himself" should
give. There is no chance of historic mistake
in the fact that Jesus Christ was begotten
out of wedlock. No one would have thought

♦Isaiah 7:14. If tbere were "two Isaiahs" this was the
original one.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 65

to invent this as an advantage in founding
a fraudulent religious enterprise. With a
minimum credit for the historicity of the
story as a whole the sequence shows that
Mary and Joseph were people of chaste char-
acter, with ideals which were strenuously
high. Clean things do not come out of un-
clean things ; and we remember that the
greatest enemies of Christ paid tribute to his
character. This argument should have its
required supplement for the modern Chris-
tian critic when he remembers what the pur-
ifying stream of Christianty has meant to
the world. He would violate all his instincts
of logic to say that it sprang forth under
false pretenses ; or, assuming the doctrine of
the virgin birth to be a subsequent inven-
tion, he would go back upon his conception
of moral coherency in saying that such holy
results could come from such unholy as>-
sumptions.

INCARNATION FALSE AND TRUE.

It is a fact brought out by the study of
comparative religions, that the idea of divine
incarnation was not peculiar to the Hfe^
brews, and not new at the time Christ ap-
peared. The schools of skepticism and or-
thodoxy have used this fact as the basis of
conclusions which are diametrically opposite,
the former accusing the church of construct-

66 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

ing its idea of the person of Christ out of
borrowed material. But, on the side of the
truth, it has been shown that the church got
its idea of Christ from himself*, whose
credentials were and have continued to be
so imposing that to challenge them is like
questioning the validity of the tides or au-
diting the source of a sunbeam. If the sun
looks in through your window and says, I am
Sol, the day spreads its mantle over the land
to confirm his profession.

Everything is grist for the evolutionist's
mill; and the evidence from antiquity of a
widespread wish among the nations for a
manifestation of God in the flesh has been
taken as a symptom of an innate outreach
which has explained man's rise from the
animal kingdom. They accept this as a
part of nature's wisdom; but, while they
credit nature with great precision in reach-
ing her objectives on other lines, they fail
to recognize the possibility of a valid an-
swer to humanity's cry for an incarnation.
The outreach of humanity's heart for "the
desire of all nations" is to them like the ten-
dril of a climbing vine, reaching for a shad-

*"I .amd my Father nve one." .Tohn 10:30.

"I ciiine fnirt'h from the Father, mnd am come into 'the
WiOiid: A sain. I leiave the world aud go to the Father."
John n:28.

"The Jews »ns\s'ered liim, sayin,g, For a giootd work we
stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou,
being a wjn, miakest thyself God." .John 10:33.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 67

ow or a fictitious rafter; whereas, when
things go as nature would have them the di-
rection of the tendril's reach may be taken
infallibly as the direction of the pole. The
widespread expectancy of the incarnation,
working itself out in mythical compositions
and concrete impostures is a voice of the
ages proclaiming the advent of Immanuel.
This is confirmed by scores of analogies. As
light is made to answer to the eye, as sound
to the ear, as food is made to answer hun-
ger, and the same God made them all, so the
cry of man's worshipping nature, startling-
ly portrayed through the findings of com-
parative religions, was induced by the same
God, who manifested himself among men in
the person of Jesus Christ, with adequate
facilities to answer that cry in all who vv^ould
receive him.

THE CLIMAX IN MIRACLES.

It is not necessary to encumber this chap-
ter with a formula defending the fact of
Christ's resurrection from the dead. It was
prophesied that he would rise, that he should
not see corruption*, and he foretold his own
resurrection,! The report that he did rise
could not have grown out of a buoyant ex-

^PsMilim 16:10; Acts 2:27.

f'Fpam that time fortih beg.an Jesus to slhow unto hts
(lliiseipleis, liow that he must go unto Jerusalem, amd suf-
fer many thinars of the elders .and chief priests and s<?ribes,
and he killeii, and he raiised Again the third d'ay."
Matthew J 6:21.

6'8 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

pectancy in the minds of his disciples, for,
having been unable to believe that he would
die, they had failed to arm themselves with
a faith to offset the shock when he did die.
Consequently, they were resigned to an un-
certain prospect, and would only believe he
had risen when compelled to do so by stub-
born evidence. t In its more extreme form,
the new theology would have us believe that
the Lord did not die, but simply passed
through a trance, to retire into obscurity,
and later die a natural death ; or else that
his friends did probably steal his body and
start a false report, as was stated among the
opposing Jews. The evidence of his resur-
rection has been clearly pointed out in many
ably written volumes, and is before us in
the very life of this age. Every attempt to
explain it away is so palpably weak and so
evidently due to a desire to take care of
science or something else, that we may gain
nothing here by trying to reckon with it.
This outstanding event of history, the cer-
tainty of which increases in volume with
each turn of the wheel of time, serves as an
immortal pro of -text for the gospel we
preach. The fact that Jesus lives, that he
lives on the triumphant side of the grave,
has explained not only that contagious cer-
taintv which has marked the successful ex-

^.Luke 24:11. 31, 22. Jo'lin 20:25.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 69

ponents of the Gospel in every age, but this
thrilling fact, settled beyond all chance of
refutation, has put into the disciples of
Christ a spirit of daring, a sentiment of self
denial, a willingness to invest their all, which
has been the amazement of every thinking
man who was unacquainted with the under-
lying secret. As the sun at his rising would
dissolve the halo of the street lights, so this
has been the miracle that swallowed up all
other miracles. So loftily does it stand out
upon the horizon of the past that no other
miracle is deemed necessary as a credential
for the gospel. Miracles may be worked
today, bringing consolation or relief to the
servants of God, but they are no longer need-
ed, and should be no longer offered as cre-
dentials for the Gospel. The resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead renders the Gos-
pel no longer an unconcluded argument, but
a grand proclamation. However the faith
of men of other ages might have come,
'■'faith comes by hearing"* in every normal
instance of our day. If a man can be justi-
fied he can be glorified;! but he cannot be
justified without faith. J The resurrection)
of Jesus Christ is offered by the Scriptures
as a sufficient basis for justifying faith.**

*Riomams 10:17.

tRomans 8:30".

JRomans 5:1. Hebrews 11:6.

**Romans 4:20-25.

70 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

THE FAILURE OF LABORATORY ANALYSIS.

The "traditional" view of the person of
Christ is not traceable to mere traditions of
the past, nor is the "critical" view the result
of scientific findings. The new position gets
its support rather from the psychology of
the present time. "The Christ of the new
theology" is the natural product of a line of
emphasis in the education of today, which
line is bound to be shifted after the spot
light shines on it a few more decades.
Those who would bring the person of Jesus
Christ to the laboratory for analysis, or who
would subject him to an investigation in the
matter of his genesis, his advent, his pro-
gram and his future, may expect to be baf-
fled with more than one unanswerable ques-
tion. The difficulties are not reduced by
turning to evolution or the new theology for
a solution. To be consistent, evolution must
compliment him with the distinction of be-
ing in his day the highest product of pro-
gressive evolution ; but it must also, to be
consistent, expect a greater than Jesus, as
the millenniums pass. Even a new theo-
logian would regard such a position as anti-
Christian ; but honest, outspoken infidels,
who, instead of trying to supplant and take
the property and title of Christianity, are
frankly declaring themselves against Christ,
will admit the logic of our position. It is a

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 71

case of trying to accept him and reject him
at the same time, when one holds him as the
Christ for every age and at the same time
refuses to see in his advent a new addition
to the cosmic system from the divine uni-
verse above us; an exotic force, beyond the
natural order.

Naturally, there are many problems en-
countered when we begin to study the per-
son of Christ. His existence from eternity,
his relationship with the Father as the
"only begotten" Son, his incarnation, his
temporary humiliation while in the flesh,
with the question of his resignation of rights
and limitation of knowledge, his subjection
of himself to the necessity of meeting human
conditions, including supplication and obed-
ience unto death. These, more seriously
than his subsequent "glorification" and his
coming majesty, present us themies which
are hard to comprehend, and in the accept-
ance of which we must have recourse to
faith. We cannot figure them out or expound
them after a rational scheme. We can re-
concile our intelligence, however, in two re-
flections : All thes€ phenomena, w^hile beyond
reason, are not contrary to reason ; and all
other schools, being bound to accept Christ
as a fact, have tried in vain to account for
him on a basis which involves any less of
difficulty or which brings half as much bene-

72 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

fit and blessing to mankind as that which
accepts him just as he represented himself.
The careful student of the life of Christ is
well aware that pre existence from eternity
and divine attributes were claimed for him
in the days of his ministry and in apostolic
times ; and the man of reverence and faith
will also recognize that the claim was back-
ed by overwhelming credentials during those
times and it has been unceasingly confirmed
by the results of his influence in the world
through the ensuing centuries; an influence
which was never so great as today, after
nineteen centuries have passed.

PREEXISTENCE, SONSHIP AND LIMITATIONS

How, then, shall we dismiss our difficult
questions? There is no syllable of proof
that the supreme being is triune in his man-
ifestation, with a person in the Godhead
called "the Son," excepting as we find it in
holy writ, or get it from the statement of
Christ. It is a fact which vaguely appears in
the Old Testament, but awaits its clear de-
finition in the New. We may infer that "the
Son," being a term borrowed from the an-
alogies of this life, presents one way, of
which there are others, for enabling the
human mind to form a profitable apprehen-
sion of Christ's place in the Godhead. It fol-
lows, therefore, that the word "begotten,"
when applied to the eternal Son, is entirely

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 73

free from one of its meanings as we iholdi it
in the analogy of human generation, and is
employed, not to imply that there was a
time when Christ was not, but to impress us
with the vital oneness of Christ with the
Father. A small minority of orthodox teach-
ers have narrowed the reference of this term
and its equivalents to the work of the Holy
Spirit in the natural generation of Jesus,
assuming that his existence in the Godhead
from the eternities past was to be appre-
hended under some other analogy; but the
sound position, which orthodoxy generally
favors, recognizes the fact that from the be-
ginning, when God out of his love contem-
plated the gift of Christ as the world's
Savior (John 3:16) he was the "only be-
gotten Son." The problem of his incarna-
nation we have already studied, to the satis-
faction of one who has faith; but if one is
predisposed to unbelief, it is a part of the
divine economy to give him a way of escape
from the necessity of believing, as no con-
scripts are wanted in the way of faith.

It is evident that Christ represented some
of his divine attributes as being suspended
during the yeans that he lived in human
flesh and subjected himself to natural laws.
He refers to an item of knowledge which
was kept from him during his humiliation,*

•Acts 8:33; Mark 13:32.

74 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

and we may infer that, though during the
period of his Spirit-filled ministry his dis-
cerning power was extensive,! other items
of knowledge were temporarily put away
from him as a part of his emptying. $ His
authority while in the flesh, vast as it was
over disease, devils, and forces of nature,
may have had limits; but it was made in-
finite after his resurrection.** Exactly to
estimate the status of the great Christ after
the measure of a man or after the measure
of God, during the several periods between
the nativity and the ascension, would be im-
possible. It was never intended that he
should be an available specimen in anybody's
laboratory of psychology or metaphysics. It
is easy for the unsympathizing critic, read-
ing the conversations and sermons of Jesus
and the record of his deeds, to say that his
knowledge was circumscribed, and that he
partook of the superstitions of his day. But,
in ans'wer to the former, we may be remind-
ed that though Jesus made free use of near-
ly all the subjects which now furnish the
basis of the several sciences, he never made
a scientific blunder. This is the more re-
markable when we remember that most any
preacher or orator today drawing topics
from subjects in which he is unread is liable

t.Toihn 2.24-25; Lmke 5:22.
tPhiJipipians 2:6-8.
•♦Matthew 28:18.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 75

to make conspicuous mistakes, and when we
bear in mind the fact that other literature
coming to us from that time commonly ex-
hibits a crudeness of understanding when it
undertakes to handle scientific data and a
very quaint flavor in most of its philosophy.

DEVILS AND DISEASE.

About all the charge of superstition hinges
around his recognition of the existence of
devils, and his seeming accord with the pre-
vailing belief, still common in certain pagan
nations, that there is intimate relationship
between ordinary physical afflictions and
the possession of evil spirits. The most that
can be got out of this is that Christ admitted
that such a relationship sometimes existed.
It is quite certain that he ascribed some af-
flictions to the sins of the individual, with-
out reference to demoniacle possession.* It is
also clear that he admitted the possibility of
grave physical affliction without any sin
whatever being connected with the cause.f
To what extent he deliberately adapted him-
self to the erroneous views of those who
waited upon his ministry we have no way of
telling; but a resort to this is a doubtful
method for explaining difficult questions.
His recognition of the existence of devils,
especially of the existence of Satan, needs

*John 5rl4.
tJohn 9;3.

76 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

no apology, excepting in the arena of the new
theology, where apology is needed also for
his miracles, and for all that pertains to the
supernatural, including the experiences of
grace in the Christian heart. That the word
devil, as employed in the New Testament,
might sometimes stand for an evil disposi-
tion or a sinful principle is quite generally
conceded. Casting out devils is the New
Testament expression for what we mean by
getting people converted ; but the question of
belief in devils resolves itself to the ques-
tion of whether we shall believe in the super-
natural or the spiritual realm at all. When
the latter is settled there is no difficulty
about the former. The repeated efforts of
such scholars as those composing the So-
ciety for Psychical Research to grapple with
the phenomena of the occult, the divided
courts which have often resulted from these
investigations, the unsolved metaphysical
problems which continue confessedly to
hang over the horizon of science, including
the sublime phenomena described in Begbie's
Twice Born Men, all serve to make us in-
fallibly sure that science is not infallibly sure
there is no devil. Any discussion, therefore,
which would reflect upon the intelligence and
integrity of Jesus Christ, whose phenomenal
assets are so great, with so few liabilities to
offset them, should be shifted from those

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 77

points where modest scientists can claim no
certain knowledge, and confined to questions
of established fact.

THE LAST WORD IN EVIDENCE.

This done, and we believe that the un-
friendly critic will soon become as silent as
the lawyer of old, who durst ask him no
more questions. The communities where the
Lord Jesus Christ has been fairly and fully
represented present a marked advancement
over all other communities. The better in-
fluences now dominant in the world are
traceable to him; whether it be in the in-
stitutions of mercy for the afflicted, the open-
ing of the door of equity to the poor, the
humble and the toiler, the elevation of wo-
man from vassalage to the queenly position
for which she was made, or the movements
for man's higher developement mentally and
spiritually. But when a proponent eludes
these proofs and satisfies himself that the
world without Jesus could have had all these
things, we have remaining, as facts of his-
tory past and current, thousands of men and
women redeemed from shackles of habit and
depths of degradation from which no cult of
earth has ever been able to bring them, and
no device of science at its best has ever been
sufficient to recover them.. The Mary Mag-
dalenes and the erry McAuleys are not the
least among the glorious credentials of the

78 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

Christ of orthodoxy. The question arises,
could the Christ of the new theology have
cast the devils out of them?

This Christ who has such a significant
past, to whom the present bears such vol-
uminous testimony, claimed for himself a
future more glorious than all ; and, after all
that has come in the way of proof, who is
so hardy as to doubt that there is something
in his claim? The inducements for one to
identify himself with this same Christ
through an unquestioning faith, accepting
his progTam and not trying to make a new
one, supporting his standards without trying
to trim them, were never more attractive
than today. Not only does his way present
to us the brightest path that wisdom has
ever found, but it is the only safe way for
nations or for men to reach the desired
haven.

CHAPTER V.

THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE.

It is generally believed that when a man
goes beyond what he can learn through his
sense faculties, his knowledge is only ap-
proximate ; and that it must undergo re-
vision and seek improvement till he goes
hence into the light of a clearer day. This is
true, as it touches fields of speculative
thought ; but on questions vital to human sal-
vation and hope a more sure word is needed.
As the need is so natural and so uniform, it
is in harmony with all the analogies of na-
ture for us to expect a supply, to answer the
need. Orthodox Christianity affirms that
such a supply is found in the Bible. To the
Bible we ascribe an infallibility for human
guidance which is only qualified by imper-
fections of copying, translation, and of in-
terpretation. It is admitted that these three
sources of error have produced quite an ob-
scuring effect, varying in its density in dif-
ferent generations, and in different circles
in the same generation. It is held, neverthe-
less, that these obscuring factors do not
place the sincere student at a hopeless disad-
vantage ; the facilities for determining all

79

80 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

the books that are canonical have furnished
conclusions which are almost as exact as a
process in mathematics, and the resources
for checking up the work of copyists and
translators are so manifold as to make the
list of disputed renderings surprisingly
small. Most of the confusion of tongues,
ecclesiastically speaking, has grown out of
conflicting or diverging interpretations. To
the opposer of divine revelation this is a
proof that the Bible contradicts itself ; an asi-
sertion which two generations ago was left
to Thomas Payne and Robert Ingersoll; but
which is now made by "devout" scholars in
our seminaries and in theological litera-
ture with a seriousness which would imply
that a caveat is entirely out of the question.
It would require a master of metaphysics
to explain the manifold divergencies in in-
terpreting the Bible. He would have to show
how sentiment, the fruit of environment or
heredity, would color the premises of a syl-
logism; how prejudice or selfish ends could
influence the processes of thought; how
habit in reacting could make individuals and
groups mistake a psychological process for
a logical method ; how beliefs could become
epidemic, whose subjects admire their skies
and pay little attention to their grounds ; how
personal equation would make a dozen as-
tronomers write as many different reports

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 81

of an eclipse of the sun, or produce a per-
ceptible difference in the rendering of the
same piece of instrumental music by artists
at Berlin, London, Rome, Boston, Nashville,
and Tokyo. It is certain that without any
strain he could account for the conflicting
interpretations of the Bible and not have to
charge that sacred book with inconsistency
or self contradiction. And as for the minor
disagreements in the text, men who have
made so much of the debauching results of
the copying and interlining of old manu-
scripts cannot turn and charge minor dis-
parities to the Biblical writers without ex-
hibiting prejudice or betraying lack of sin-
cerity. Indeed the small verbal contrari-
eties in the Holy Scriptures have been met
and explained in our standard commentar-
ies by methods of exegesis entirely satisfac-
tory to sympathetic readers.

THE FIRST DESTRUCTIVE STROKE.

Modern destructive criticism frees itself
for action, first by denying the peculiar au-
thority of the Bible. This is accomplished
by puncturing every theory of inspiration
that has historic standing. The believer is
relieved of the breath-taking result of an ab-
rupt fall by the assurance that Jesus Christ
had authority, that historic methods can
sufficiently determine the gist of his teach-
ing to make us safe in having something to

82 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

guide us, and that this gist, supplemented by
the results of his life, projected down
through the centuries, serves as a touch-
stone by which to interpret the allegories of
Old Testament history, and to correct the
crude standards which are imbedded in the
sixty-six books; especially in the thirty-nine.

The spirit that negotiates this high hand-
ed denial of inspiration does not believe in
the supernatural. In former centuries its
school could not get together on a slogan for
substituting the Biblical account of the ori-
gin of the earth and its inhabitants and of
civilization, morality, and religious institu-
tions. Now, these are all solved in the one
word evolution; and a key is at hand with
which to account for each book of the Bible
and to interpret its contents.

It follows, therefore, a priori, that the first
five books in the Bible were written at a date
much later than Moses. They teach that God
creat-ed all things, that man in his lowly
condition, where history first finds him, re-
presents a descent from diviner conditions
instead of an ascent from animal forbears.
They teach that the religion that has typed
the world's chief civilization originated by
revelation in an epochal compass of time
and that the fundamental ethics of life,
while true to nature's criteria, did not orig-
inate from nature, but were given in one day

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 83

from the hand of God, and that the revela-
tion which God made of himself at that time
included the tuitionary system of Levitical
laws with a magnificent ritual, unfolding al-
most in a day, in the camps of a "primitive,
barbarous, illiterate" people. Such teaching
must be false if spontaneous generation be
true. The institutions and civilization im-
plied in the Pentateuch had to come about
gradually, allowing centuries of time for
their developement after the exodus.

Consequently, we are asked to look for
proof that the five books of Moses were
written hundreds of years after Moses, in
the ripe years of the history of the Hebrew
nation, by clever literary men who collected
old documents containing the myths and
folklore of the centuries and wove them into
a history interspersed with legend, to give
their highly developed laws and ritual an
ancient setting, and, in keeping with the
customs of the nations, assign to themselves
a past full of fictitious glory. This is the
key, the Rosetta stone, of the modern critical
method, in the schools which deny the doc-
trine of divine revelation ; and much of its
method has been taken over by schools that
still claim to believe in an orthodox inspir-
ation of the Scriptures. But it is self-evi-
dent either that such schools do not believe
in the inspiration of the Scriptures or that

84 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

they have not yet thought their problem
through and found the ground on which
they really belong.

PRO AND CON OF MOSAIC AUTHORSHIP.

All our readers will not count us fair in
saying that the first assumption against the
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch was a
priori ; that students were "asked to look for
proof" against the orthodox position. It was
not a priori to those who learned it as par-
rots. Students of the seminaries today,
where denial of Mosaic authorship is incul-
cated, are usually brought into this hypo-
thesis from inductive sources. After being
shown a presumptive ground against the
Mosaic authorship in the thought that Moses
was a man of action, a practical man of af-
fairs, and that writing was out of his line,
they are offered as concrete proof against
Mosaic authorship, the argument that Bib-
lical history from Joshua to the exile "ig-
nores Levitical law" ; that geographical des-
ignations in the Pentateuch, such as, "On the
other side of Jordan," etc., indicate the au-
thor as located in Palestine, where Moses
never entered; that certain weights and
measures and other objects of Moses' time
are defined by the writer of the Pentateuch
as if he were writing later; that historic
source books and other features belonging to
Moses' time are quoted in the Pentateuch as

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 85

belonging to a date earlier than the time in
which the author was writing; and, finally,
that the original Hebrew gives the books of
the Pentateuch a stratified or composite ap-
pearance, as if they had evolved or had been
compiled from miscellaneous sources, the
streaks being manifest in the translations ;
as, e. g., the two accounts of creation in the
opening of Genesis.

These arguments point out difficulties so
elementary that the average reader may sur-
mount them in a few moments of re-
flexion, after comparing contexts. A brief
discussion from a safe source is found in
"Old Testament Introduction" by Dr. John
H. Raven, pages 93-114. It is easy to as-
semble chapters of proof in favor of the
Mosaic authorship that is highly assuring to
those who are not pre-induced by an oppos-
ing atmosphere or obsessed with a theory
which makes Mosaic authorship impossible
in the premises. The following is a line of
proof in gist which is susceptible of most
satisfying development : (1) A large part
of the Pentateuch professes to have been
written by Moses. (2) References to it, by
Old and New Testament writers uniformly
ascribe it to Moses. (3) Jesus Christ always
treated it as the work of Moses. (4) The
Jews of Christ's time believed that Moses
wrote the five books. (5) Many texts in the

86 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

Hebrew, referring to Egypt, prove the au-
thor's familiarity with that country. (6)
The original contains Hebrew words of
Egyptian flavor, not usually found in the
other Old Testament writings. (7) Customs
peculiar to Egypt are referred to as existing
when the Pentateuch was written. (8) The
laws, said by critics to be of later origin,
show marks of having originated under the
author's circumstances, e. g.. Lev. 25:1, 2.
They also show a primitive intermingling of
civil, economic, moral and religious codes.

But the men of originality, who founded
this new hypothesis, approached it by deduc-
tive methods. They were ultra evolution-
ists, and they felt that the Bible had to be
for their theory or not be at all. They began
their investigation expecting to find that the
Pentateuch was a more modern document;
and, true to a maxim of psychology, they
found what they expected. They found it
not, however, till they had borrowed the
shrewd arguments that European deism had
framed in the past three hundred years for
the destruction of the authority of Moses'
writings and the annihilation of revealed re-
ligion, and had analyzed with pathetic
minuteness the smallest philological tech-
nicalities of the Hebrew manuscripts. About
all that we must concede is that this ancient
charter of revealed religion contains diflfi-

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 87

culties ; and this concession was made before
evolutionary criticism arose to magnify the
difficulties.

"contributions" of destructive criticism.
It is diverting to read of v^^hat this "scien-
tific" method of investigation has done for
Biblical interpretation. Let us inquire
what new facts have been brought to light
by evolutionary criticism. What do they
know that the scholars before them did not
know in the form of data for estimating the
books of the Bible? Some other manu-
scripts have been found, but these make no
special contribution to Biblical criticism,
excepting to add weight to orthodoxy and
increase the critic's problem. Some excava-
tions have been made, but destructive critics
are usually shy of the spade, for it has flatly
disputed their word and driven them from
their former assertion that people could not
read in the days of Moses ;t and as the arch-
aeologists continue to dig there is immanent
danger to evolutionary critics, for they
have found the ancient city of Troy which
the "critical method" pronounced a myth,*
and they are likely at any time to dig up a
section of the Pentateuch among the antiqui-
ties of Moses' time. What have they new to
offer us on the subject of Mosaic authorship?

tThe Deciding Voice of the iMonuiments on iBilblLoal Clrit-
'icism." by M. G. Kyle, LL.D., p. 83 f.
*rbid. p. 38.

8S WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

Nothing but a fond doctrine of evolution and
a clever formation of rhetoric which, deny-
ing the Mosaic authorship, makes a forgery-
out of the first five books of the Bible, and
then shows us how to exercise respect for
that forgery and derive help from its moral
teachings.

The doctrine of inspiration denied, the
theory of allegory, fable, fiction and super-
stition easily provides explanation for all
that we have from the pens of the Old and
New Testament writers which might em-
barrass the assumptions of science ; and time
is so magnanimous in its burial of circum-
stantial evidence that it has been found pos-
sible to manipulate authorship and dates of
the several books so as to protect the plausi-
ibility of allegory and fiction theories. Pro-
tection for the plausibility of a thing is all
that a man wants to warrant its use as a
keystone in his arch, provided it is the only
thing that will fit in well enough to keep his
arch from falling. The subtleties of argu-
ment are always sufficient to give scientific
airs to any theory which does not fall upon
the mishap of a categorical refutation.

Happily for the interests of the Church of
God — and, since a divine decree has guar-
anteed the Church's interests so that it needs
no human defenders, — happily for the in-
terests of unsophisticated humanity, the ef-

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 89

forts of destructive criticism to treat the
first five books of the New Testament by a
method parallel with their method of treating
the Pentateuch have failed. If the position
could have stood unexploded, that the synop-
tic Gospels were written by ingenuous
preachers of the second century, over the
names of Matthew, Mark and Luke, it would
have been just as consistent as saying that
the Pentateuch was written by a clever pen-
man several centuries later than Moses, and
it would not then have been so difficult to
say that the Christ of the Gospels was manu-
factured by his disciples, who, at a period so
late that no one would be in a position to
deny their assertions, took a life a little
above the ordinary, which ended with a
tragic death, and exalted it into a life of
deity, covering it with a fictitious halo and
filling it with legendary miracles. It is now
conclusively proved* that these Gospels orig-
inated before the death of the Apostle Paul,
at a time when much literature could have
been launched in answer to the extraordin-
ary claims ivhich they set forth for Christ,
had not the world been so aghast at the time
with the astounding facts of his life that no
one in that generation felt warranted to
make reply. It turns out that the centuries
of the Christian era have not been long

*Cf. "Freedom of Tihoug'lit in Reldg'LOTis TeaoMng," toy R.
J. Cooke, D.D.. DL.D., p. 68 fif.

90 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

enough to bury the circumstantial evidence
proving the apostolic origin of the Gospels.
Even the rationalists of the present time
who make any pretence to broad investiga-
tion concede this; and, though they are not
disposed to let this inning of orthodoxy agi-
tate much attention, we are quite sure that
when history records the rise and fall of de-
structive criticism it will mention this as
their Waterloo.

CREATING AND OPPOSING CARICATURES.

It is destructive to the new theologj^ and
contrary to its spirit to admit any theory of
inspiration which would give unqualified au-
thority even to a correctly rendered, rightly
interpreted Bible. It is committed to a pro-
gram of opposition at this point. The method
of administering this iconoclasm is ad pop-
ulum. They first pit the authority of the
Scriptures against the authority of Jesus
Christ, and please the orthodox reader by
deferring to Christ, choosing a person in-
stead of a document. Seemingly, his utter-
ances are treated as a higher form of inspir-
ation to be preferred before the other writ-
ings of the Bible ; but it soon turns out that
his authority is taken to the exclusion of the
authority of the Scriptures, of which he
says, "They are they which testify of me";
and eventually, when Christ has been used
to substitute the Scriptures, we are asked

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 91

to deny his deity and treat his authority as
that of a man. The treatment of the subject
of inspiration is illustrative of the treatment
of the subjects of atonement, depravity, fu-
ture punishment and other phases of ortho-
dox teaching. The crudest mediaeval modes
of apprehension are described and then de-
molished, the work of destruction not ceas-
ing till the pupil is brought securely over to
the side of rationalism. The straw men
which have been destroyed in new theology
pulpits and class rooms during recent de-
cades would make a considerable decoy regi-
ment. In preparing a nauseating gorge on
the subject of inspiration we are reminded
of the Greek oracles, of heathen trances, and
of the rhapsodies of pagan priests, during
which times they are supposed to make
exalted utterances, and we are asked to view
this as illustrative of the evangelical con-
ception of inspiration. We are told that
there is no middle ground between this and
the poetic muses of Tennyson, which, while
they may have secured him against prosaic
and mediocre expressions, were no guaran-
tee against inaccuracy.

The essential doctrine of inspiration as
retained by Christianity holds the following
maxims.

EVIDENCE THAT GOD HAS SPOKEN.

1. Things cannot be made without a mak-

92 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

er. A cause must be equal to an effect, and it
is easily presumed to be greater. It is un-
thinkable that he who formed the eye cannot
see, or he that planted the ear cannot hear.
It is inevitable that average humanity in its
best stage of reflection should feel sure of
the existence of a Supreme Being in no
sense averse or indifferent to the interests
of those creatures which represent the high-
est product of his creative power, and en-
tirely able to occupy their viewpoint.

2. Without attempting to account for the
obvious chasm between the Creator and his
intelligent creation, by which direct and
common communication is excluded, only one
inference is possible in the average judg-
ment, and that is, that our Maker is disposed
to communicate with us. (a) Instinctively
we want to hear from him and express our-
selves to him. (b) It is plainly seen by

malogy and contrast that we are in trouble;
something is the matter, (c) We have a will,
and we know he must have a will ; and we are
almost unanimously assured that if some
way is devised by which his will can be
communicated to us it will be better for us.

3. It is inevitable, therefore, that man in
his mood of better intelligence should expect
to find on the earth a communication in some
form from his Maker. True to this assump-
tion, investigation proves that virtually all

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 93

peoples, throughout human history, have
been expecting a communication from God;
and in their eagerness they have fostered
manifold superstitions as fancied fulfill-
ments of their felt need. Like travelers in a
desert, crazed with thirst, they have chased
the mirage and drank the libations of their
ow^n feverish imaginations.

4. It turned out, as the centuries advanc-
ed, that certain men of exalted character,
the moral and spiritual elite of the world,
claimed to have received communications
from God. Certain ear marks different
from all figmental revelations should have
lent plausibility to their claims, (a) The one
speaking out from the shadows demanded
holiness, separation from sin.* (b) Though
choosing a family or tribe through which to
make effective his communication to man-
kind, he represented himself not as a tribal
God, but as recognizing the unity of the
world of created intelligences, and as having
ultimately an equal interest in all.f

5. The influence of these men and of their
professed divine revelation has never per-
ished, has had essential causal relation to the
best philanthropy and the best ethics of the
modern civilized world; and these chosen
representatives of humanity have, as a re-
sult of their alleged mediation between the

♦Genesis 15:6; 17:1.
tGenesis 18:18.

94 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

Creator and the creature, become citizens of
the world, inhabitants of the centuries, co-
adjutors with the world movers of every gen-
eration since their time. There is scarcely
one of them who could be called an exception,
whether they figure in the revelation of the
old or the new dispensation.

6. From the hands of this outstanding
group of humanity's peers have come manu-
scripts out of which have been sifted, with
painstaking care, by the profoundest
scholarship, a collection of books, sixty-six,
as they are now divided, whose authors im-
plied by tone or express statement that they
were writing in the capacity of seers, "moved
by the Holy Spirit,""' whom deity had select-
ed as representatives of the ages to record a
collection of facts, illustrations, counsels and
laws in such a shape as to embody in avail-
able form the essential truth pertaining to
man's origin and destiny and a disclosure of
the will of his Maker.

7. The writings of these professed receiv-
ing agents of humanity originated within a
period of about fifteen centuries of the
worlds' history; and, notwithstanding the
variations of temperament, education, or
chronological vantage ground, they show a
uniformity in their ideals and breadth of
sympathy and a unity in scheme and objec-

*2 Samuel 23 :2 ; 2 Peter 1 :21.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 95

tive which argues for the fact that they were
all under the dominion of one central, gov-
erning mind. The presence of the local color-
ing of the age of each writer, with the re-
lentless portrayal of human nature as a set-
ting for these gems of divine thought, are
more confirming to our faith in the authen-
ticity of the documents than would be a
studied uniformity which undertook to re-
fine away all sensuous data. Like the stars
of the heavens observed with a natural eye,
the Scriptures present a unity of lustre in
their ideals, and a uniformity in their ma^
terials, with no apparent systemization ; but,
like the stars again, under the lens of devout
analysis they present a system, so manifold
in its conjunctions and so extensive in its
reach that scholars not blinded by the conceit
of unbelief have felt that this life was too
short to complete even an elementary chart
of the heavens of divine truth.

8. Wherever the salt waters of the sea
transgress the earth, the fruits and flowers
fail and the desert wastes abound. If we had
no other way to determine the quality and
chemical content of these waters this would
be sufficient. The Koran, the writings of
Confucius, the oracles of Buddha, indeed
every formula for solving man's problems
and enriching his hopes, when given suffi-
cient time for the dead weight of its inertia to

96 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY ?

consolidate, has constricted the germ of civ-
ilization and given us a community that had
to have outside help to prevent its going
from bad to worse. But the Bible, fairly
placed in any community or nation, or as-
similated in the life of any individual, has
taken away sterility, released the best germ
forces, and brought bud, blossom and fruit-
age as when irrigations from a mountain
lake are turned upon the alluvial valley.

9. When a man has in his mine a sub-
stance that will fuse metals or absorb gas
or exert some other singular influence, and,
in trying to convince me of the merits of his
mine, he gives me some of its product and
challenges me to try it, I am not fair if I lay
it away on a shelf to be covered with dust
and use my influence as a gainsayer to heckle
him in the sale of his stocks to develop his
mine. The Bible contains many striking
prophecies which have been fulfilled and are
being fulfilled before our eyes. Scholars can
only fail to see this by having their minds
prejudiced through abstractions about the
Bible. It contains scores of promises which
the sincere heart may put to a test any day,
and which have been tested and brought
blessing to thousands of people whose in-
telligence and ability to estimate proof would
not be questioned on any material subject.

10. There is no questioning the malignity,

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 97

and, sometimes, the sincerity, of the age-
long attack which has been made upon the
Bible. There is scarcely any thinkable re-
source which has not been drawn upon as a
means of opposition. We grant that opposi-
tion is a good advertiser, and sometimes a
generator of sympathy for the victim; es-
pecially where it is actuated by animosities
or emotions of fancied virtue. But there is
a form of opposition which is laid in deep
design; which forgets no law of psychology;
which takes its time and calls to its service
an alliance of all the available weapons, di-
rected by the best generalship that training
can produce. This form of opposition has
buried philosophers, destroyed armies, sunk
navies, annihilated cities, and so completely
destroyed nations that the historians cannot
unearth data to write a chapter of their
history. That same style of opposition,
spanning centuries with its persistency, has
been directed against the Bible, shaped and
reshaped by kings, statesmen, philosophers,
ecclesiastics, false prophets, blackguards and
outlaws. The weapons have been in all forms ;
from the bonfire, the shaft of sarcasm and
the profane curse, to that of denaturing
sophistry, perversion, substitution, destruc-
tive lower criticism and destructive higher
criticism. Laws of state and laws of church
have been invoked. Although laws are

98 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

multiplying' to safeguard religious liberty,
and although we hear no one profanely
swearing at the Bible today, it was never in
history subjected to an attack which had a
better show of success than now. It was
never opposed with less apparent spleen,
never with more confidence of success, never
with more serene complacency, never with a
greater illusion of superior scholarship, and
never with a more subtle intoxication of the
sense of their own noble virtues. But this
word of God is a thing of life. Its claims of
divine origin are sustained in the way it hasi
■stood the test of opposition and remained
proof against breakage and proof against
alloy. Its elements are so unique that it
will not take up a mixture which earthly
alchemists may devise to denature its con-
tent; and in the matter of stability it is as
permanent as the mundane heavens.* The
names of most of its opposers of former gen- ^
erations have disappeared from history.
Many of them have come to a sad end. Move-
ments revolving around other centers, con-
trary to the Bible, have cracked and crumb-
led and been abandoned by the children of
their own champions; but the word of God
abides. In estimating this unanswerable
credential of God's word, a humble author
of thirty-five years ago wrote a four verse

*MattluMv r,:17, 18; Luike 1G:17; 1 Peter 1:23, 25; Isaiah
40:8; Psialm 119:89

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 99

poem, from which we quote the first two
verses, neglecting the latter, in which he
makes his application :

/ "Last eve I stood before a blacksmith's door a

And heard the anvil ring its vesper chime;
Then looking in I saw upon the floor
Old hammers worn with beating years of time.

" 'How many anvils have you had,' said I, V

'To wear and batter all these hammers so?' /

'Just one,' he answered; then with twinkling eye-—)
'The anvil wears the hammer out, you know.' "t

THEORY AND FACT.

There are short-sighted people who sup-
pose that the fact of inspiration must be held
in suspense till the theory is determined.
They suppose that the point at which the
student must first go to work is to determine
whether it is "verbal" or "substantial,"
whether God elected to employ the maximum
or the minimum of miraculous elements to se-
cure the accuracy of Holy Writ, whether Bib-
lical writers lost themselves in the Spirit or
whether their personal traits, education and
peculiar mode of expression were appropri-
ated by the Holy Spirit and used as they
were found; whether historic events were
refined out of the crudities of profane his-
tory and the then existing traditions, or
directly given from the Lord ; whether
events and conversations of the time of the
Biblical writer were miraculously represent-

tC B. Cake in "The Curreat" ; OMeagio-, Dee. 27, 1884.

100 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

ed to the writer, or whether he kept notes
with a view to his purposed authorship, or
only gave the substance of those convei'sa-
tions which are ostensibly verbatim, being
preserved against error in essence and
meaning, but not against deviation in mode
of expression. Whether the inspiration of
different parts of the Bible varies all the way
from a passage from the very mouth of Je-
hovah, one hundred per cent verbal inspira-
tion, to a genealogical document, copied
from the archives by a clerk on routine duty.
It is said that a gentleman unacquainted
with law. when called upon to preside over a
court of law, asked some advice of Lord
Mansfield. The advice was: ^\^len you are
called upon for a ruling, give it directly, and
firmly, according to your best judgment, and
you will nearly always be right; but do not
try to expound your reasons for a ruling, for
in this you will nearly always be wrong. In
the light of the fundamental proofs of the
fact of inspiration it is hard to see how any
can remain unsettled, excepting they have
previously been spoiled through vain philoso-
phy;* but when we leave the fact and under-
take to expound the modus operandi of in-
spiration we are nearly sure to make some
mistakes, because the acceptance of facts
was God's original design for us, and the fa-

•Colossians 2:8.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 101

cilities for constructing an adequate theory
explaining the how of inspiration have not
been placed in our hands. We would not on
this account shut the door of research or
hush the instinct of interrogation in the hu-
man mind ; indeed we would not object to un-
folding our views on all the questions above
suggested, if space permitted ; but we must
hold ourselves to recognize that the main
point of emphasis is in the fact of inspira-
tion, which is gloriously settled ; and if we do
not know just how it took place, which we do
not, this limitation need not affect the con-
sistency and vigor of our faith.

INDISPENSABLE AND SUFFICIENT.

In every age there have been scriptures
(writings) which seryed their purpose and
perished, or were filed with the antiqui-
ties, but the Scriptures are inbreathed of
God,* who knew that there was one branch
of knowledge which could not be extorted
from the bosom of nature, or built from the
materials of this world. Man may begin
with a hand full of pebbles and a string, and
attain a system of mathematics by which he
x:an measure the dimensions of the universe ;
but if he wishes to correct his own heart he
must turn to the Word of God. He can begin

*"A11 Soriptnre is ftiven by Inspiration of God, and is
prafltable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in-
stniction in rishteousness; that the man of God may be
perfect, thorong-hly furnished unto alll good works." 2
Timothy 3:16, 17.

102 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

with the primary laws of thought and write
volumes of worldly wisdom; but if he wants
reliable instruction in the way of righteous-
ness he must turn to the Bible, He may syn-
thesize the fragrance of flowers in his labor-
atory or coax the fruits of the field into high
degrees of perfection ; but he who is highest
among created things must turn to the Most
High when he would seek the perfection of
his soul. This recourse to God is had
through the exceeding great and precious
promises of his word.* Man can find the
fuel for his winters and tap the cooling veins
of the earth for his summers ; but when he
wishes to furnish his life with good works
and become skilled in the higher arts of ser-
vice to God and man, he must take counsel
from the Holy Scriptures.

The sufficiency of the Scriptures has been
alluded to as an inductive proof that they
came from God. He who claims that they
need something added to fulfill the object for
which they are given, proves his lack of ac-
quaintance with their manifold instructions.
Consciously or unconsciously, the writers of
the libraries of the world have derived from
this Book the best ideals of their own pro-

*2 Peter 1 :S, 4. "Acoordling as hits divine power hath
griven unto us alil tlhing's that pertain unto life amd godli-
ne.sis, througlh i!he kncwled'ge of him that hath called us
to glory and virtue: Whereby ^are given unto us exceeding
great and precious (promiiises; that by theise ye might be
partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corrup-
tion that is in the world tbr<>ugh lust,"

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 103

ductions, their most impressive imagery, to-
gether with the spirit of their strongest ap-
peals and the keynote of their every psalm
of hope. Take its influence out of the libra-
ries of the world, and they would be sterile ;
take its influence out of the social life of the
world and all ideals of human brotherhood
would stagger into the shadows. Take its
influence out of the political government of
the world and the average civilized man
would wish for death.

It is up to date. Like a highly polished
mirror it reflects the scenes of the passing
days; and when it does not supplement the
intuitions of wise men so as to show them the
major events of the world in advance of their
arrival, it so interprets the output of time's
revolving wheel that when events do come
their meaning is more promptly defined and
their issues more wholesomely solved by
leaders who read and respect the Holy Scrip-
tures.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ATONEMENT AND MODERN
THOUGHT.

The objection of the new theology to the
atonement in the blood of Christ is based
upon a new theory of man's relation to hia
Maker. The new theory of relationship be-
tween God and man is contingent upon the
doctrine of spontaneous generation.

If we are to view man in a higher scale to-
day than he has ever been before, if we are
to think of his attainments in a line of grad-
ual unfoldings, starting at zero, in archaic
ages, and neglecting all epochs in his ascent,
each millennium in our backward glance will
show man less responsible, less amenable
to law, and less capable of apprehending law,
till the imagination follows him back to a
stage of consummate innocency, with a nega-
tive sinlessness like that of a post or a head
of cabbage. In line with this reasoning, sin
means nothing but that man is below the
standard. Not that he was above and fell
below, but that he has never been above ; he
is only on his way up, and hence there rests
upon the race no great generic blame, no
"Adamic sin;" and no preternatural system

104

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 105

of evil exists in the world.* Man has not
broken the law, but has simply come in sight
of its ideals and begun to learn to keep it
with uncertain degrees of constancy, which
improves with the advance of centuries. Un-
der this scheme, his responsibility is no high-
er at any juncture than his attainments. Not
that individual offenders are to be excused ;
they may even be cut off, as false branches
that spoil the symmetry of a tree in its
growth; but sinners, even criminals, are to
be regarded purely in the light of unfortu-
nates, who have no part in the breaking of a
fundamental law of the universe, who there-
fore need no atonement to make possible
their recovery to rectitude and blessedness.f
On this thought is built a doctrine of salva-
tion through education and human uplift.
The more favored members of the race are
the saviors of the less favored. In this

*"T'he race -was born with passHons of animailiism aind
self-wi!il that -were not sinful until the ihlgiher life of the
spirit hart beciome developed. But when the leistate of gen-
■ndne ihumanity hiaid been reiached, animalism amd self-will
were not nonmal to it, bait were false and ideigrajding ele-
ments, fatal to the Ihig-her life unlesis they were rejected ;
and througrh the consent of the ^huiman will *o the now ab-
normfal rule of lower po-niers, what haid ibefare been inno-
cemt paissed Into sin."

"An Ontline of Cihrastia;n Tiheoilogy", p. 240. William
Newton Clarke, D.D.

iiSo far from being new or exalted In its antecedents,
this in substaince is the same view on sin and atonement as
iheild by :\Iohaimimed'anism. With ifihem it is said : "The
poteiaey of .sin is mot recognized; evil is only an indilvid-
Uia'l, not an hisitorical power; hence there is no need of re-
demption." "Isikum: A ChaMenig-e To Faith," p. 120 iSa.m-
nel M. Zwemer, F. R. G. S.

106 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

scheme Christ is indeed accorded the highest
place ; but he differs only in degree from oth-
er champions of human salvation. We fol-
low him when we serve mankind unselfishly ;
and the unperishable magnitude of his influ-
ence at this point, including the climactic
sacrifice in his death, makes him the leader
of all leaders in the upward march of hu-
manity, and justly entitles him to be called
the Savior. In keeping with this thought,
Christ's death was an unfortunate, unnec-
essary tragedy ; but good has come out of it,
because of its powerful appeal to motives of
unselfish service; and that which need not
have been becomes a mighty asset to the
church as an incentive to noble service and a
basis of appeal to erring humanity.

As for the hope of humanity, the salvage
scheme of the new theology is characterized
with undimmed optimism. In answering the
question, "Watchman, what of the night?"
it holds all the cordial that a heavy hearted
inquirer could wish. The faithfulness of the
church may hasten the realization of a sin-
ner's hope, but nothing can finally defeat
this realization. Human nature may be re^
lied upon to reform and come to its own,
somewhere down the line. If man has an
immortal soul and a future life, inductions
based upon the nature of God and the known
instances of human response lead the new

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 107

theologian to say that there is a probation
beyond the grave, in which, somewhere in
the vale of mysterious shadows, every sinner
will finally get to God.*

PRESCRIBING FOR THE WORLD'S EPIDEMIC.

Thus in brief have we stated modern relig-
ious thought in its effort to carry forward
the allegiances of the past and connect the
proposed Christian institutions of tomorrow
with the revered, but discarded Christian in-
stitutions of yesterday. It will be seen that
we have not undertaken to prejudice their
case by an unfair emphasis or ironical de-
scription. While this statement cannot em-
body all the inflections of individual expo-
nents of the new theology tendency, its terms
in the mean would be proudly espoused by
scores of the foremost instructors of theolo-
gy in our seminaries and Biblical depart-
ments of Church colleges, as well as by a
large number of forward looking city pas-
tors, in evangelical denominations.

No one can deny the cleverness of the new
theology plan of salvation. Its diagnosis of
its patient's ailment is hypothetical ; but, as-

*Even one who has been accorded a place in the orthodox
class boirrows this view from the "progressives" and 'han-
idles -sympathetically the theory that "it is not like G-od ibo
fix a lime heyiomd ■wbicTi he win not allow change, if change
is iposslble in the nature of the case; that judgment upon
the deeds done in the body, final so far as thiis life is (con-
cerned, does not preclude judigments UipoTi future pertiodiS
in their season; that the ihints of Scripture in 1 Pet. 3:18-
20, 4:6, denote in the apositolic mind the thought that
ohaoge is posaiible In ithe. life beyond." Ibid, 474.

108 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

suming the diagnosis to be correct, the reme-
dy is rational and scientific; and the most
inconsistent people in the world, religiously,
, are those evangelical Christians who are ed-
j ucated up to the Darwinian view of man's
' origin and still try to make place for an
, epoch of spiritual regeneration. While the
\ rank and file of evolutionists may feel that
their position on the nature of sin is in its
substance final and conclusive, the profound
philosophers who lead the procession of hu-
man thought are not quite so sure. With
them, it is felt that another word may yet be
spoken upon the meaning of sin, upon the
weird mystery of heredity, along with the
unexpounded metaphysics of the psychic
world. But, while they wait for that more
illuminating word, the old prescription re-
jected, there must be an emergency formula.
The new theology gospel of social service
and education is the emergency prescription
for a very sick man, upon whom a diagnosis
has been made, but one which, in the judg-
ment of the greatest doctors, is not final,
since it fails to demonstrate the origin of
the trouble. But, painful as it is, in the mind
of one who wishes to be expert in his pro-
fession, it sometimes becomes necessary to^
prescribe for an epidemic before the malady
is perfectly understood. This prescription
is called empirical. It is like grandmother's

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 109

treatment for appendicitis; it may help, but
it does not cure.

The preachers of the old gospel
which weathered the Roman persecu-
tions of the first centuries after Christ,
which turned cities upside down, to which
we owe the founding of all the great mission
movements of the pagan world, and which
has sustained its martyrs in the lion's den
and at the fiery stake, believe in education
and social service. They rejoice that social
seivice is being reduced to a finer art in this
more enlightened day, and they recognize in
it a child and a handmaid of the gospel of
Christ. They are certain, however, that it
may be a palliative but not a cure, and that
he who in this connection would substitute
the tvord "cure" has imposed a criminal de-
ception upon a suffering world. Education
and social service treat the symptoms of a
disease which no human mind can compre-
hend, but which has been identified by our
Maker, through his revealed word. It is held
by the old gospel, and verified with a good
show of success, that though sin is a disease
whose symptoms will persist in this life,
after the basic trouble has been healed, edu-
cation and social service can relieve the
symptoms, and that this indeed is their func-
tion. These movements of humanitarianism
are good in their place, they are a fine emer-

110 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

gency prescription ; but soothing syrups can-
not take the place of cathartics, and oint-
ments cannot remove gangrene. If the old
gospel must go there must be a better substi-
tute than has yet been found ; but, since this
gospel cost the supreme sacrifice of the Son
of God, we may be sure that a better substi-
tute is unavailable.

ATONEMENT BASED ON HUMAN NEED.

What is the gospel of the cross? Just as
there is a modern thought denaturing or re-
jecting it, there is a modern thought appre-
hending it. It is not rational to say that the
analogies by which we appreciate the atone-
ment cannot be better understood. Nothing
is gained by a dogged contention for the
theoretical phases of the question, the inflec-
tions of the doctrine which do not affect the
fact ; and the orthodox writer who excites
himself into seeing "logical" sequences from
analogical premises, and who berates his
brethren, either pro or con, upon irresistible
grace, final perseverance, or the necessary
content of substitution, need not feel that all
who treat him as mediaeval do thereby class
themselves as unorthodox and destructive.
It will be in place at this time for us to go
briefly into the essentials of the Biblical fact
of the atonement.

Divine law is revealed to man, not evolved
in human society. While man's appreciation

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? Ill

of this law has been progressive, he has
known from the beginning its essential point,
calling for obedience and loyalty.

We have no obligation to explain moral
agency, which can only be understood in the
light of a more perfect world ; but man had
the power to violate divine law, and he did
so, early in the history of the race, placing
himself subject to a penalty without which
law could not exist; and, by the one act,
bringing the entire race into an automatic
condemnation.

Man not only placed himself subject to a
penalty when he sinned, but the penalty
went immediately into effect,* producing
spiritual death. Spiritual death is a synonym
for separation from God. It is the first, and
only immediate penalty for sin. There are
dire consequences, of every description, ex-
pressed in the words, "The way of transgres-
sors is hard"t, "The wicked shall come to
sheoljt, and "These shall go away into ever-
lasting punishment."**

Separation from God, which in the fact of
the fall is the portion of the whole human
race, has in itself no demerit, but it results
from the demerit of sin. It followed man's

*"In tbe day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt isairelv
idie." Genesis 2:17. Cf. also Isaiaih 59:2; Romans 6:23;
2 Corintihianis 5:14 and 1 Jiohn 3:8.

tProverbs 13:15.

tFsalm P:17, R. V.

**M.itthew 2o:4C.

112 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

sin as a direct execution of justice, to pre-
serve the sanctity of law and the integrity of
divine government. As a result of this sep-
aration there is a separateness of nature, a
divergency from the will of God, in the heart
of every child of man. This, we call de-
pravity or original sin. The words of Paul
could have meant no less than this when he
said that in Adam all die, and all have come
short of the glory of God.** We have
ground to believe that this separateness of
nature, resulting automatically in the fact
that man is separated from God, is also en-
hanced by the direct perverting energy of
Satan. The situation is therefore so complex
that no one can analyze and expound "origi-
nal sin." To assume the universal sinfulness
of man is necessary to make intelligible the
class of utterances bearing upon the subject
in the Scriptures. It is necessary to explain
the universality of the atonement revealed in
the Scriptures,* and the universality of the
need of justification by faith, f which proofs*
are valid only to those who believe the Bible.
evolution's failure to explain.

But, laying the Bible aside, the inherent
sinfulness of man is the only explanation for
the universal trend to perverse conduct, base

**1 CorintManis 15:22; Riomaims 3:28; Epheisirans 2:3.
*Jobn 3:16; 2 CorintMans 5:15; 1 Timottny 2:6; 1
J«hn 2:2.

tRomiaas 3:19-31.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 113

actions, and violation of natural and moral
law, in every human tribe on earth. No-
where among the creatures below man do we
find a widespread inherent tendency to vio-
late the laws of their being. In this respect
the chasm is measureless, between the most
innocent human tribe and the most degener-
ate species of animals; the animals, follow-
ing the bent of their nature, unrestrained,
come out as animals ought to come ; but the
people, unbridling their tempers, their lusts
and their avarice, go in as men and come out
as devils. If the evolutionary hypothesis
were true, of the ascent of human tribes by
radiating sectors from primal apes, we
should expect occasionally, on some side of
the earth, to find a tribe of people who had
not strayed any farther from the laws of
their being than have the apes ; and we
should expect, also, to find some of the tribes
of higher civilization in whom evolution had
done its best, arriving at a high level of
hereditary rectitude, where simple training
could insure universal virtue. But in this
latter field of proof the new theology's expla-
nation of sin breaks down more seriously
than elsewhere; for it is almost invariably
the case that people in the middle walks of
life, with medium attainments, are naturally
freer from diabolism and perverse living
than the upper strata of society.

114 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

THE SYMBOLISM OF BLOOD.
While the principle of sacrifice and substi-
tution is deeply written in the analogies of
nature and the annals of human history, all
that we know about a divinely conferred
atonement is what we learn from the Scrip-
tures. When they say that without the shed-
ding of blood there is no remission of sin,*
and carry that assumption consistently
through the era of tuitionary types, to be cli-
maxed in the voluntary suffering, as an al-
leged necessity,! of Him around whom all
sacred writings find their center of gravity ;
when they find in the blood of the most
worthy One a mysterious voice of authority
Iby which alone ultimate deliverance may
come to the souls of men,$ the human phi-
losopher may be amazed; but only he who
denies the existence of mystery will set him-
self to making light of that which he cannot
understand. A tribe is growing up today,
very near the altars of the sanctuary, who
are so sure that the saints of all ages have
made a one hundred per cent mistake in
their faith in blood atonement that they are
free to laugh in derision at the crude con-
trition of their brethren. It is wondered
how the same generation could contain such

*'Levltlcus 17:11; Hebrew »:22.

tJoJhn 10:17, 18; Matthew 16:21; Mark 6:31; »:12; Luke
9:22; Acts 17:3; Hebrew 9:16; Daniel 9:26.
JHebrew 12:24; 9:14; 10:12.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 115

extremes of deficient and ample attainment;
could hold a class of people so far behind the
norm of truth and a class so well up. But
we might be reminded that a religion
whose refinements left out the revolting sym-
bolisms of blood is not exclusively new and
modern,** nor does it necessarily follow that
its champions have reached a more dependa-
ble plane in their ideals of kindness, mercy
and justice.*

DOGMATISM AND ITS CONTRAST.

A fact is a theory which has reach-
ed the experimental stage; which has
been verified by the tests of a unanimous
jury. A theory, if correct, is a symbol or
apprehension of a yet unrealized fact. A
matter may therefore exist in the form of
theory, espoused or rejected, in one segment
of humanity, when it has taken the propor-
tions of a fact with another class. Such, for
instance, was the Copernican "theory" that
the sun is the center of the solar system.
When this first began to take the place of the
Ptolemaic theory that the earth was the cen-
ter of the solar system, there were two

**"In prooS'PiS of time it came to pass that Cajin broug'lit
of tlie fruit of the griOiund an ofEering unto tJhe iLord. And
Abel, he also brought of the flrstlingSi lof Ms flock and of
the fat thereof. Amd the Lord haid respect unto Abel and
his offerings-. But unto Caiiu and ihis offering he had not
respect." Genesis 3:3-5.

'"And Cain wis very wrotth, and his oountenanee fell
.... And Cain talked with Ihis brother : and it came to
paisis, when ithey -n'ere In the field, that Oain rose up
against Abell 'Ms brother and slew ihim." G-e'nesis 4 :.5-8.

\

116 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

schools of thought; but, finally, that which
though seemingly a fact, had never been any-
thing but an illusion, was forced out of re-
cognition, as the world received a mathemat-
ica] demonstration of the Copernican "the-
ory." Today we are so friendly to the doc-
trine that none but a Parson Jasper would
feel like using the word theoiy. It is a fact.
Here is the province of dogmatism. Dog-
matism consists in that note of confidence
with which an individual announces a fact,
as distinguished from the spirit of investiga-
tion and tolerance in the tone with which he
announces a theory. A dogmatist, in the
worse sense of that word, is one who allows
no quarters to his audience when he an-
nounces a theory. Some of our modem in-
structors want their students to come with
"open minds," meaning that they would have
them scrap their facts with their theories
and start anew. The thought is, that the
spirit of the age demands freedom from
dogmatism; but this is a fallacy. The age
demands facts, and the ear-mark of a mes-
sage from a man who has the facts is a kind
of serene, respectful dogmatism. This kind
of authority is what gave power to the words
of Christ* If I know that I am seated on a
chair, I gain nothing for the reputation of
scientific discourse by weighing the specu-

•Mark 1 :22.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 117

lations'of men who wish to take my time and
the time of the audience asking me to make
sure that it is not a boulder. A theo-
logical professor who asks a student to treat
as untrue and prove again the experiences of
grace which are in his heart or the fact of
the atonement and the essential verities of
the gospel which have been confirmed by a
million witnesses and tested thousands of
times in the audiences of mankind, has re-
quired his student to stultify himself. The.,
way to study theology is to put down the
facts as a posit and build around them; not
lay them down and go oif with "open mind"
and leave them, promising to return and take
them up when school is out, provided we do
not find something that suits us better. If a
man is led to commit such a presumptuous
blunder he is sure to find something that
suits him better, for when a man tampers
with his faculty of perception it goes back on
him and puts him in a world where things
are not what they seem.

MEANING OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST.

As Christians, we are authorized to teL
people that Jesus Christ died for them.. Thig
is found to attract attention everywhere.
There is a catchword in this announcement
that human psychology may account for. It
is like many other wonderful and beautiful

118 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

things that have happened in the history of
mankind ; and as such it marks a line of
thought that never fails to impress the finer
sentiments and move the emotions of the un-
sophisticated ; of all, indeed, but those whose
glutted ears have spoiled the law of reac-
tion in their souls. Naturally, the New Tes-
tament announcement of Christ's death ex-
ceeds all similar sacrifices in its appeal be-
cause of its compass of sympathy ; and the
sincerity and intelligence of this vast
scheme of substitution is confirmed in his
deliberate appraisal of all human beings,
which preceded the tragic transaction, and
in the coolly wrought out program for carry-
ing to the last man due information of the
efficient sacrifice which was being made in
his behalf. Both of these measures were
revolutionary in their day. The world wag
made up of castes; and the thought of an
equal intrinsic worth of the soul of a slave
and the soul of a king* was exotic. It was
peculiar to Jesus Christ; there was nothing
in the soil of the human thinking of the
times that would have produced it. It in-
cluded that thought of the equality of the
rights of labor and capital and of the equal
footing of man and woman before the door
of opportunity, which has characterized the
higher civilization of our day. The concept

* Revelation 1:6; 5:10.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 119

in the opening words of the American "Dec-
laration of Independence"* could hardly
have been sprung in the human mind had it
not been initiated and fostered as the ration-
al background of the purpose of Jesus Christ
to lay down his life for "the whole world."
And as for the publicity program, the plan
of "world evangelism," which Christ coupled
with this theory of human worth, his view of
the value of souls and the reach of his vision
into the future made that so ambitious in its
aspects, so unlike the wildest dream of any
living sage, that the human imagination of
his time could only grasp at it, without be-
ing able to entertain it.

But in accounting for the effect on the
human mind, produced by the Gospel's main
announcement, that Christ died for us, we
are called to appreciate another law. Deeper
than the natural appeal of unselfish sacrifice,
deeper than the revolutionary effect of hisi
levelling appraisal of mankind, is that heav-
enly mystery of the atonement, upon which
the human mind, unspoiled by vain philoso-
phies, so readily lays hold by a kind of in-
tuition. There is something wonderful, a
wisdom superhuman, involved in the death
of Christ. This is attested by the thousands
of volumes in which the wise men of the cen-

*"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endoT\'ed by thetlr Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that lamong these are
Life, Liibeity, and the pursuit d Happiness."

120 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

turies have tried to interpret the mystery, or
make it sufticiently available for mankind
to realize upon its provisions. It was so
outstanding in its significance that prophets
foresaw it and spoke of it with a wisdom not
of themselves or of their time. We are not
certain but that angels have been students
of the philosophy of the atonement. f

THE UNDISPUTED FACTS.

The early church had less leisure for in-
vestigation and was more serene in the pres-
ence of mystery, perhaps because they wit-
nessed more mysteries and were not flushed
with so much success in the field of analysis
as is the modern man. At any rate, they
confined themselves to preaching the atone-
ment as a fact, under the slogan that Christ
died for us ; and they gained much by their
concentration and simplicity.* The greatest
breach in Christendom grew out of a depar-
ture from this, when the philosophy of the
converted Greek mind undertook to elaborate
and extend the Scriptural analogies upon the
subject and insist upon their having an es'-
sential logical sequence.

There are two lists of utterances upon the
atonement ; one under the head of facts and
the other under the head of theories. These
maxims are not disparate, and it is not im-

tl Peter 1:12.

*1 Peter 2:24: Isaiah S3.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 121

possible for an item under the latter head to
be shoved up to a place under the former, ac-
cording to the rule by which theories turn
to facts. But the atonement is such a divine
affair that its facts are patent, and theories
usually are destined to remain theories till
we go hence into the realm of more perfect
understanding.

The utterances of New Testament preach-
ers may be safely accepted as facts. They
taught :

1. That the atonement made by Christ
necessitated his suffering and death ;

2. That it was an extreme demand grow-
ing out of the fact that the whole human
race was fallen and hopeless;

3. That the one making the atonement
had and must have unique qualifications —
divine attributes for the sake of worthiness
and human attributes for the sake of media-
torial fitness;

4. That the one making the sacrifice
must make it voluntarily on his own part, as
well as by bequest or free gift on the part of
the Godhead with which he was identified ;

5. That the atonement was a measure in
the mind of God long before its execution, to
meet an anticipated need;

6. That it was adequate in its merit and
eflnciency to save from the lowest depth of

122 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

sin to the highest level of holiness and hap-
piness.

These are the facts undisputed in the main
channel of the Christian system from the be-
ginning; and there is no change of verbiage
or new statement for the sake of modern
modes of thought that can budge one of these
unequivocal facts without introducing a pro-
cess which will infallibly denature the
Christian religion. Two more "facts" may
be added, which received the cool treatment
of mere theories for a long period but which
were evidently assumed among the earliest
preachers of the gospel and which are rap-
idly gaining the support of the exponents of
the gospel in this modern, practical age with
its feeling of internationalism and human
equality. They are these :

7. The atoning blood of Christ has full
provisional value for every human being,
and all may accept its benefits.

8. Its benefits are conditional, to all who
are able to meet conditions of obedience and
faith ; and all who are able to meet the sim-
ple conditions and neglect or refuse to do so
shall fail to realize any benefit from the
death of Christ excepting the stay of execu-
tion which they will have enjoyed during
their days of grace.

Frequently in this study our references
have included passages of Scripture plainly

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 123

supporting one or another of this list of
facts; but we are simply giving the New
Testament as our proof text for this formal
list of axiomatic positions on the atonement,
which are accepted without question by the
great bulk of active, orthodox Christians in
the world today.

THE MOOTED QUESTIONS.

The theories of the atonement ask the
questions: Is justice absolute, or is it only
relative, having no abstract existence? Is
the justice, therefore, which made impossi-
ble the sinner's recovery without an atone-
ment purely rectoral, something that in-
heres in government; and does this alone
make necessary the punishment of sin, or is
there a mysterious something in the very na-
ture of God which makes true the assertion
that God must punish sin in order to be
true to his perfect nature? The doctrine of
relative justice belongs to the "governmen-
tal theory" and the doctrine of absolute jus-
tice belongs to the "substitution theory." In
the less modern centuries we had theologians
who thoroughly understood those distincr
tions, who saw no middle ground, and spent
much time on the metaphysics of the ques-
tion. But later, theologians began to appear
who saw satisfaction analogies in the gov-
ernmental theory, and governmental analo-
gies in the satisfaction theory. We are to-

124 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

day more modest in denying remote con-
ceptions that we cannot disprove, and carry-
ing analogies into identities, as if an analogy
were a photographic exposure of the real
thing instead of a suggestive mode of ap-
prehension not applying at all points. We
know that God's thoughts are higher than
ours, and that we are such lame thinkers
that we have to go on crutches, made from
the timber of every day experience; that we
have to pass from the known to the unknown
in a very childish way, and that we should
be modest on the theoretical side. Men on
crutches should not strut. Perhaps rectoral
justice is also absolute and absolute justice
is rectoral. Perhaps man is mistaken when
he thinks he can conceive of a period ante-
dating the time when God first had a gov-
ernment, with intelligent subjects whose re-
lation to each other and to him had to be
standardized in terms of law.

The theories of the atonement ask the
question, further: Is separation from God
the only decreed penalty for sin for which
an atoning Savior would be needed to find
a remedy? Are all the other consequences of
sin, the miseries of life and the horrors of
perdition, automatic, following as a sequence
similar to natural law, so that a man goes to
hell by a kind of gravitative necessity, be-
cause of the fact that he is not fit for heaven

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 125

and for no other reason? One form of the
governmental theory answers yes; the satis-
faction theory in its old standard form
knows no difference between an event of nat-
ural law, a "'consequence," and a direct fiat
of divine will as when man sinned and was
cut off. It knows no "permissive provi-
dence" ; and all the afflictions that a sinner
brings upon himself are sent of God because
they were eternally involved in the organi-
zation of the universe. So, also, his banish-
ment into hell is an act of the great Judge.
On this theory, the atonement in Christ was
accepted as an equivalent sacrifice in substi-
tution for our deserts in hell as well as our
penalty of separation from God.

SUBSTITUTION.

So far as we know the philosophical as-
pects of the atonement which take rise from
the above questions were never even consid-
ered by the preachers and writers of the
early church. Substitution, where life is
given for life, or imprisonment taken for
imprisonment, is impossible under the more
perfect modern theory of government; for a
citizen's life is "unalienable", as is his liberty
also. This is because he owes himself to so-
ciety, and cannot ignore this debt to assume
that of some other. But if the individual
were to come in from another realm, having
none of these obligations on his own account,

126 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

the situation would be different, and he could
give his life or liberty in substitution for
another. The grandfather of this writer,
having no military obligations, because he
was below military age, gave himself in 1815
in one of America's greatest defensive bat-
tles, to be shot at as a substitute for a man
who had a family and was subject to con-
scription. Substitution prevails today also
in the discharge of civil obligations, where
the state lays a requirement upon its citi-
zens of a certain age, and where the substi-
tution is offered by exempted citizens or cit-
izens of another state. Equivalent substitu-
tion is also true to governmental precedents,
as when some years ago an indigent citizen
of a certain nation was sentenced to banish-
ment for an offense, the alternative being ten
thousand pounds in gold. A wealthy rela-
tive, not known in the community of the
condemned man, came down and surprised
the court by paying the ten thousand pounds,
which, by the way, he had inherited from an
ancestry which was common to him and his
poor relative.

The references of the New Testament
compel us to concede that these analogies
of equivalent substitution are on some scale
germane for setting forth atonement in
Christ. The mistake has been in trying to
be too exact in insisting upon the "logic" of

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 127

the analogy. Analogies have no logic.
Wherever they fit they are available, and
where they fail to fit they are annulled. The
great mass of old style writers have rea-
soned that if Christ was our substitute the
substitution must have been in the nature
of paying all penalties, which amounted to a
man's absolution before he was born and
made his salvation inevitable and his regen-
eration non-forfeitable if he should be among
the elect. Whatever may be the direction
of truth in the questions of election and
final perseverance, modern thought is en-
tirely too practical to accept a view that ex-
empts men from obligation and makes inevi-
table the salvation of all for whom Christ
died. Such a position forces us to say one
of two things : That Christ died for only part
of the race and that the damnation of the
rest is decreed; or that Christ died for all
and the salvation of all is decreed, regard-
less of their impenitence. Both positions are
so destructive to true evangelism and para-
lyzing to the untrammelled better judgment
of our day that they are found only in musty
creeds, to be recited by the habitually devout
in their absent minded moments.

It is here, in matters beyond the human
understanding, that Christendom has wasted
its strength in centuries of division; but
this is a valley in which the Christianity of

128 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

today is un wiling to sojourn and waste the
time that it should devote to its appointed
task. We may study dispassionately these
metaphysical intricacies; but no longer can
we let them be sources of friction without
condemning ourselves before the world and
at the bar of our own moral judgment.
Back to the uiiity of pentecost in our pur-
poses, and back to the simplicity of the
apostles in our expression, should be the
watchword of all contenders for the faith.

CHAPTER VII.

THE GOSPEL PROGRAM.

It is agreed that the death of a divine Sa-
vior was necessary, to provide salvation for
man. This divine Savior has died ; and now
all men are provisionally saved. All men
are saved, except as they lose themselves by
personal sin. Adam's sin, though its effects
linger with us in the weird mystery of "orig-
inal sin," can damn no one. Its legal re-
sult is unconditionally removed in the vica-
rious death of the Son of God.* But though
the decree of the fall is provisionally ended
by one stroke of a Savior's love, the effect of
it in human society is an open sore ; and the
mighty agencies of moral and spiritual de-
struction occasioned by man's break with
God cannot be dismissed in a day. More-
over, it is sad to say that these agencies of
destruction cannot be stemmed in time to
avert the eternal loss of countless thou-
sands whose blood is on fire with the spirit
of evil and whose minds are too dark to ap-
prehend the plan of salvation.

The main task of the church is to publish
the good nev^, to let men know that they

*Romaas 5:19; 1 Carlnthiams 15:22.

129

130 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

are saved through the death of Christ; and
"T;hat now they have the privilege to hand
themselves over to the restoring agencies of
^heaven and turn their faces back toward
their lost paradise. Modern orthodox!
thought makes much of the restoring agen-
cies of heaven. It sticks to the contention
that blood atonement for sin was necessary ;
(but it is not unanimous in supposing that
blood atonement was necessary for the re-
pair of misfortunes, the enrichment of pov-
erty, the binding of broken hearts, the heal-
ing of disease, the dispelling of ignorance,
and the restoration of Edenic glory. It is
easy to believe that angels can do those
things when the right is given them by
blood divine — when the sinner gets by the
cherubim and flaming sword that guard the
gates against guilt. If a man could have
fallen over the battlements of heaven, down
into some quagmire of material corruption,
and become battered and helpless, and if his
calamity could have been overlooked for a
millennium, until he had lost touch with
heavenly light and his intelligence had be-
come encased in confusion and ignorance,
there would have been no need for any to
die in his behalf as a vindication of justice
or to protect the integrity of divine govern-
ment in bringing him back. Angels could
have spanned the chasm and brought with

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 131

them all things necessary for the man's re-
covery. There would have been a thousand
different agencies of repair available in the
kingdom above. So, we may say, only man's
break with God, and not his innocent miser-
ies, has cost the blood of God's dear Son.*
And once this legal barrier of condemnation
is surmounted, through repentance and faith
in Christ, man's lost inheritance is restored;
and heaven's resources are as open to him as
if he had never sinned; and heaven's agen-
cies will address themselves to repairing the
wreck as rapidly as the wrecking crews can
connect up with the various scenes of disas^
ter.

What angels are having to do with the gos-
pel program we cannot say.** They are a
force in the background, an unseen host,
available as God may will.t Perhaps they
have no direct part in the ministry of the
gospel proper. But after the gospel has
ibeen published and accepted, we have rea-
son to believe that they are eager allies with
the "wrecking crew," which represents no
small part of the gospel program. When re-
ceiving the atonement for sin one becomes
an heir; and heaven shows great eagerness
that everything necessary to his restoration
should be supplied.J

*1 Peter 3:18; Romanis 5:10; iColasslans 1:12-14.
*Heb. 1:14; Matt. 4:11.
tMat. 26.53: 2 Kings 6:15-17.
JRomans 8:32; 2 Peter 1:3.

132 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

The ministry of human relief, uplift, and
education, is a distinct department in the
mission of Christ and the task of world evan-
gelism, a distinct department. In theory it
is event number two, ultimately worthless
without salvation from sin, and very disap-
pointing" in its results. But it may progress
along side the direct dispensing of the good
news, serving as a nucleus to reflect the light,
as an illustration to corroborate the gospel
message in the mind of the multitude, and
as a concrete inducement for men to turn
from idols and serve the living God.

The "wrecking crew" needs no credentials,
excepting to be free from the marks of
selfishness and to have a respectable qualifi-
cation for its task. By this sentence we
mean to say that the vast field of human re-
lief and uplift may be entered by any person
or group of persons or cult or government.
And it is quite natural that an impulse in
this direction should be felt by many, es-
pecially since Christianity has imparted the
vision of service to the world and begotten
the impulse. Works of mercy and human
relief have been taking form in the better
civilization ever since the Master introduced
his examples of sympathy and relief in Pal-
estine and Phoenicia. From the impulse of
the first Christian revival grew the world's
first hospitals and asylums for the unfortu-

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 133

nate. But we are only playing with the re^
construction and relief of a race broken by
the fall, as compared with the restoration
program of God and the angels* after this
broken race has made confession of sin and,
being reconciled to God through faith in the
merit of the atonement, has acknowledged
the Lordship of Jesus Christ. To get peo-
ple Scripturally converted may not be as big
a showing to the superficial observer as to
get them scrubbed and doctored and educa-
ted ; but it takes this conversion to put them
in line for the major program of reconstruc-
tion which God has scheduled for the age to
come; an age which they cannot even enter
except as they have salvation in Christ. The
repairs that human organizations can bring
to a race which has suffered breakage by
the fall are ample to show a loving heart;
but they are quite inadequate. And as for
the uplift, we can only bring them to the
level where we are, which in the case of
many a social service movement will mean
but little in terms of spiritual values.

INFORMATION AND EVIDENCE.

First and foremost, the program of th«
gospel is to preach the good news to every
creature. t The assumption is that every re-
sponsible creature, in order to be saved, must

♦RevelatioTi, Ch«iptws 31 »nid 33.
tJtt* 18515.

134 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

believe the gospel; and it is impossible for
one to believe a thing that has not been in-
troduced to him.* Ignorance and faith are
incompatible. It does not follow that all
who hear shall be expected to believe. They
must have more than the mere announce^
ment or even the urgent discourse indicated
by the word "preach." They must have the
evidence in the form of witnesses, whose life
and speech proclaim the power of Christ to
save from sin. The responsibility for serv-
ing in this capacity and inciting humanity
on valid grounds to trust Christ's provision
for their salvation and follow him is not con-
fined to an ordained ministry. Every one
who is saved through Christ goes automat-
ically upon the invitation committee, becom-
ing himself a sample of the work and a wit-
ness with a personal knowledge of facts to
reinforce the proclamation. f

"State what you know in this case" is the
method by which the courts give recognition
to one in the capacity of a witness. It re-
fers to a knowledge resultant from personal
experience and not from inductive conclu-
sions. This also is the "knowledge" of the
Bible; and a witness is one who knows. In
earlier apostolic times the word witness re-
ferred to one who had seen Jesus personally ;
Tbut this high function was widened to make

•Romans 10:14.

tAjote l:ld; Mattbaw 90.4-16; 2 Oorintbians 3:2.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 135

eligible the discipleship of all the centuries'
to come, when they shall have met the con-
dition for the fulness of the blessing of the
gospel in their own souls. $ The simple sit-
uation is, there is in all the world one remedy
for sin, and we have found it. In finding
it we found attached to it an order to bear
the information of our find to the last man,
and to supplement this information by per-
sonally showing what the remedy had done
for us. An innate law of propriety should
have saved us from a quietness which would
have made our salvation virtually a secret
reserved for our selfish use, a quietness
which must condemn us either as being ab-
normal or as having missed in our ovvm soul
the deeper meaning of the secret. The Great
Commission does not ask the Church to as-
similate an alien mental state or fuse into its
life a new set of emotions. It tallies with
the feeling of every truly awakened heart
and only reinforces us with an added ex-
cuse and an authority from higher up, for
coming to the tribes of earth exactly as the
better dictates of human nature would have
us come.

RESULTS THAT WE MAY EXPECT.

The painful slowness with which the gos-
pel claims response from the human race is
due to one of three things: As in the last

JActs 5:32; 1:8.

136 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

stage of drowning, the race is so badly de-
pleted in the effect of the fall that it is moral-
ly unable to perceive an agent of rescue and
so maddened as to make the work of rescue a
dangerous adventure; or, the agencies of
rescue are down in their efficiency by not
being duly saved from that from which they
are seeking to save their fellows — ^the res-
cuing swimmers are strangled; or, there is
some mistake about this sublimely conceived
plan of salvation and we must set about look-
ing for a better way. The latter hypothesis
has influenced many an ill advised educator
and reformer ; but it is too late even to con-
sider an agency that proposes to rival Jesus
Christ in presenting to all mankind the ideal
that challenges and the agency that saves.
The two former explanations are sufficient
to account for the slowness of the spread of
the gospel, and each stricture bears in its
very face the evidence of fact, which would
retard the success of any salvage movement
that infinite wisdom could produce, the same
as it frustrates the gospel program.

But how, and to what extent, are we war-
ranted in hoping to overcome this in the
sweet by and by, and to have the kingdoms
of this world become our Lord's ?* Any one
fairly informed with reference to God should
know without consulting a document that he

'"H'tmleMon 11 :1S.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 137

will finish what he has begun. The doctrine
of personal freedom applies to individ-
uals, but divine decrees are back of poli-
cies and involved in the destiny of nations
and the orbit in which worlds must swing".
Throughout the pages of Holy Writ the for-
tune of the world is told, the destiny of
devil, the fate of the Man of Sin, the future
of Christ, together with all who follow him
and choose to have their destiny bound up
with him.t

True, the mills grind slowly; and worthy
authorities differ as to the relative part to be
played by the activities of the church and the
cataclysms at the coming of the Lord and the
end of the age; but none who read the in-
spired fortune Book can doubt that it
promises success to the enterprise of the
Redeemer, whatever may be the unrepaired
casualties of the fall in the form of lost
souls; and this is the one grievous misfor-
tune that ultra optimists have tried in vain
to evade.*

Whatever may be one's tentative views
as to the situation that must characterix^e the
end of this age, and however his tempera^
ment and conviction may incline him to fear
a climax of carnage, the gospel program
should be put on foot as if he expected to be

tisaiah 11; Zechariah 14; DaDiel 2:44; 12:3; 2 Thessta-
lonians 2:8; Rievelation 11:15; 19:19, 20; 20:1, 2.
•PflaJm 9:17; MabUbew 10:28; 25:46; Lube 16^26.

138 WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY?

crowned ultimately with one hundred per
cent success. It is the power of God unto
salvation. It has saved as discouraging and
improbable cases as any now dwelling amid
the fellowships of ignorance and vice. It
must, by the decree of its author, be pub-
lished among all nations before the history
of this age can be written. f Just after the
Master gave two discouraging parables ac-
counting for the slow progress of the gospel
because of the depraved and unresponsive
situation of the human heartj and the mal-
ignant intelligence that opposes** it, he re-
assures us with two more parables,*** fore-
casting the sure progress of the gospel. That
"the gates of hell", the aggressive forces of
evil, shall not prevail against the church of
Christ seems to be a divine decree, independ-
ent of the mistakes of its human custodians.
These may be set aside and deprived of their
charter; the invisible ark may not continue
in the same camp; the leadership in world
evangelism may be transferred tomorrow
from the hand of those who held it yester-
day; thousands may prove unfaithful to
their trust and lose their crowns ; but "many
shall be purified and made white and tried" ;

tMairk 13:10.

tTbe parable of ttoe soiwer; Matthew 13.

•♦Parable of the itares; Ibid.

***The miustard seed lamd the leaven ;, Ibid.

WHAT IS NEW THEOLOGY? 139

and though in the sifting time workers may
drop out of the ranks, and though the grim
reaper shall take his annual toll even from
the ranks of the faithful; God, who anon
may change his workers, will carry on His
work.