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A WORKING THEOLOGY

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WORKING THEOLOGY

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CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK : : : : : 1909

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Copyright, 1909, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published February, 1909

WALTER W. LAW, ESQ.,

OF BRIARCLIFF MANOR, NEW YORK,

IN GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF TEN HAPPY

YEARS IN THE COMMUNITY WHICH ,

HIS GENIUS HAS CONSTRUCTED, AND IN

THE CHURCH WHOSE WALLS HE BUILT, WHOSE

SPIRIT HE CONSTANTLY ENRICHED

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PREFACE

THEOLOGY in its simplest sense is thought
about God and man and this wonderful
universe. A working theology is a theology
that works, one, that is to say, which closely
touches life, confirms itself in experience, and
issues in power. Its keynotes are reverence
and reality.

The theology set forth in these pages is
neither complete nor systematic. It leaves
many vital questions untouched, great gaps
unbridged. The aim has been not so much
to fathom the ultimate as to set forth a
religious faith which will prove a strong work-
ing-basis for everyday life. My hope is that
the book may prove useful not only to brother
ministers, but to many in our churches who
are earnestly seeking a point of contact be-
tween the older thought and the new.

MORRISTOWN, N. J.,

February, 1909.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Religious Attitude toward the

Newer Conceptions of Truth ... i

II. God the Loving Father; Man the Er-
ring Child 8

III. Divine Providence in the Play of Cos-

mic Processes 15

IV. Prayer in a World of Law 26

V. Miracles in a Scientific Age .... 39

VI. The Bible in the Light of Modern

Revelation and Inspiration .... 50

VII. The Sense of Sin in Modern Life . . 67

VIII. The Great Gospel of the Cross . . 80

IX. Things to Come 93

A WORKING THEOLOGY

THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE TOWARD THE NEWER
CONCEPTIONS OF TRUTH

A T the base of a wise working theology is a
frank recognition of the Hmitations of
human knowledge. Our Saviour once, at least,
confessed his ignorance; his Church in this,
more almost than in anything else, has hesitated
to follow him. Great emphasis has been placed
upon self-consistent systems of theology which,
mainly as a mental gymnastic, have been strong
and creative, when men have recognized (as,
alas! they have not always), that the truth of
God rn^ust be infinitely larger than the gropings
of men; that spiritual reality can be revealed to
men encased in the flesh, gripped by material
things, mainly in symbol; that "language is not
so much descriptive as it is suggestive, being fig-
urative throughout even when it deals with
spiritual truth." * Even in this age men do not

♦ Horace Bushnell.

I

2 A WORKING THEOLOGY

hesitate to dash ofF a theology at a sitting, or to
sum up the eternities in an epigram. It is well
to remember that a complete creed is always a
false creed; for we know in part.

The changes which have come over the re-
ligious thinking of men in recent years have
been repeatedly set forth. The universe, we are
told, is infinitely bigger than men thought it;
the world in which we live is infinitely older.
Our planet was not made in six literal days by
direct creative fiat, but coming no less from
God's hand, working out marvellously his will,
it grew up through the slow struggle and growth
of long ages, from cruder forms of life to higher,
until at last man himself came forth, and began
his wondrous career of self-discovery and world-
conquest. The emphasis of thought has passed
from God transcendent, dwelling apart from our
world, setting it going, interfering now and then
in mercy or in wrath, to God immanent, ever
present, ever potent, in every moment, in every
method, of its life. There are new views of re-
ligious authority; its seat, we are told, is within,
not without; in the God-illumined conscience,
not in church or book. There is a new psychol-

A WORKING THEOLOGY 3

ogy, which startles us with many a statement
about the mystery of personaUty, but makes
easier than ever behef in a spiritual universe, in
spiritual forces, and spiritual contact. "Science
is trembling upon the verge of something great."
So is faith. This might be called an age of
transition, save that every progressive age has
been so called. "In knowledge," said the hum-
ble-minded and godly Faraday, "that man only
is to be contemned who is not in a state of
transition."

What is the religious attitude toward the
newer conceptions of truth ? Can we believe
that they are simply profane and vain babblings,
and oppositions of science falsely so called.?
Can we believe that the last word about the uni-
verse was said centuries ago, and that the later
light is darkness .? Shall we be of the number
of those who fear constantly that something
may be discovered which will break down for-
ever the cherished hopes of the ages .? This
surely is cowardice and the rankest atheism.
Or shall we be of those, a great multitude, who,
because the mystery is great, give it up, because
some pinhead definition fails, give themselves to

4 A WORKING THEOLOGY

eating and drinking and making money ? This
surely is not only to deny God, but to degrade
human life.

The true attitude is that of men of open mind,
eager to learn, responsive to every v^hisper of
truth, from whatever source it comes. Largely
the business of life is to learn. God has not
given us a finished universe whose mission and
method are at once clear, but a world in the
making, a great kingdom of truth and love in
the germ, in which men groping and growing,
stumbling and rising again, in that very process
are to find themselves and to find their God.
Conviction which closes the mind to new light
is prejudice, and prejudice is the most fatal
form of ignorance.

But, eager to learn, we must be cautious to
conclude that the thing that is new is neces-
sarily the thing that is true. In this the leaders
of modern science set a good example. The
wisest of them still speak of the great principle
of growth which has revolutionized the thought
of men in the last fifty years as "the evolutionary
hypothesis." While there is one missing link
the chain is not complete. Again and again the

A WORKING THEOLOGY 5

confident conclusion of to-day has been the ex-
ploded fallacy of to-morrow. "That is possi-
ble," Louis Pasteur used to say, "but we must
look more deeply into the subject." The
thoughts of men frequently swing from one ex-
treme to another ere they light upon the central
pole of truth.

Again, a humble and reverent spirit is essen-
tial to a truly religious attitude. Our men of
science feel themselves in the presence of a
greatness that is far beyond them. " In ultimate
essence," says one of them, "we know abso-
lutely nothing." "Science," says another, "is
groping after a definition of life." "The natu-
ralist," says Professor Shaler, "ends always
with the sense that the known, however far his
knowing may go, must be to that which is to
remain undiscovered as one to infinity, as noth-
ing to the whole." The man who feels this will
be in no danger of pride of mind, he will be
humbled every day in the presence of the in-
finite greatness of which he is so small a part,
his every earnest thought will be an aspiration,
his whole life a prayer.

Most of all, the truly religious attitude tow-

6 A WORKING THEOLOGY

ard the newer thought of our time is that of men
who have the courage and expectation and
broadening vision of a rugged and fearless faith.
Upon this point the testimony of history is very
suggestive. Some of us can remember the
anxious fear with which men watched the ex-
periments of Louis Pasteur and others on the
spontaneous generation of Hfe, for, said many,
if this be estabhshed, the whole structure of
Christian faith will topple to destruction. But
to-day Christian biologists tell us that even if
spontaneous generation should be established,
as some of them believe it will, the only effect
would be to carry back the evolutionary process
one step further; the discovery would not
eliminate God, but increase immeasurably the
marvel of his method. So there are those to-day
who tell us that if the present philosophic ten-
dency toward monism should be established; if
it should be shown that the essence of a human
life, the things of which it is made, are not two,
body and spirit, but one single essence mani-
festing itself in two sets of phenomena, all hope
of the permanence of the individual as a factor
in the universe will pass from the thought of

A WORKING THEOLOGY 7

reasonable men. But no. History rings with
predictions of the extinction of Christian faith.
Voltaire says that in fifty years it will be dead;
and in fifty years the very house in which he
made the prediction is a depot for the circula-
tion of the Scriptures. "The foundation of God
standeth sure." The universe has meaning; it
speaks everywhere of infinite thought, of infinite
patience, of infinite purpose. "Our souls were
made for God, and they are restless until they
find him." Long ago, one of humble, self-less
spirit, whose earthly life was to human eyes a
tragic failure, forsaken by his few friends, cru-
cified upon a tree, dared to say, "Heaven and
Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not
pass away." Is not the past a glorious proph-
ecy of the future ^ Is it not reasonable to be
sure that " the best is yet to be " ^ Out of his
Holy Word, out of the exhaustless storehouses
of the natural world, out of the hearts of men
growing up into his image, God has yet more
light to break forth, more love to radiate, larger
life here and hereafter to reveal. "Oh how
great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up
for them that fear Thee."

II

GOD THE LOVING FATHER ; MAN THE ERRING
CHILD

A WORKING theology is born of another
conscious limitation, the hmitation of
power, the limitation of moral achievement.
The I, groping, stumbling, falling, saying "I
will," and living "I won't," misled by its own
confidence, starved by its own indulgence, craves
somewhere in the universe a Thou, stronger,
wiser, purer.

In a working theology, the doctrine of God is
summed up in the two words of Jesus, "God is
Spirit," and "Your Father and my Father."
The one tells us all we can know of his being;
the other all we need know of his character.

"God is Spirit" — more akin to the atmos-
phere we breathe, which no man sees, without
which no man lives, than to the physical forms
on which we look; more akin to thought which
flits hither and thither at will than to the physi-
cal brain; to love which is eternal, immortal,
invisible, than to the physical heart. "The

A WORKING THEOLOGY 9

wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest

the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it

Cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one

that is born of the Spirit." He is the first cause,

the final goal of all things, in all life, but above

all life. But according to the Scriptures, and

according to the rich testimony of experience,

God is not a mere vapor, an essence, a force; he

has those qualities imperfectly summed up in

the word personality — imperfectly, for no word

of human speech can fully define him — ^which

make it possible for man to know him, and to

love him, and to be like him. The thought of

God as a Spirit is ever to be balanced by the

thought of God as a Person; he thinks and feels

and wills as we do; he has self-consciousness

and self-direction. But the thought of God as a

Person is ever to be balanced by the thought of

God as a Spirit; he has none of our limitations,

the limitations of form and space and time. He

is everywhere and always and in all things:

" Centre and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near."

Jesus teaches us to bring to our thought of
God, who is Spirit, one of the sweetest and most

10 A WORKING THEOLOGY

sacred of human names, Father. It may be
freely conceded that the word throws no light
upon the great mystery of the being and essence
of God, and that it is not even a perfect expres-
sion of his character. But it is the most satisfy-
ing of all resting-places for the mind and heart
as they seek after the Infinite. It has often been
said that men made in the image of God have
made God in the image of man. This is true;
it has often been unfortunate, but in some de-
gree it is necessary. We cannot conceive God
save in the terms of our own thought, and in the
language of our own hfe. It is at this point that
many of the positions of the recent "new the-
ology" in England break down as parts of a
working theology. When we tell men that be-
cause of the essential oneness of God and man
and the solidarity of humanity you are I, and
I am you, and we are both God; or that it is
impossible to conceive of anything in the uni-
verse outside of God,* that which we say may

* There must be a region of experience where we shall find
that you and I are one. . . . My God is my deeper Self and
yours too. . . . How can there be anything in the universe
outside of God?"— "The New Theology," R. J. Campbell, pp.
34, 35 and i8.

A WORKING THEOLOGY ii

be true in the terms of some man's philosophy,
but to the men in our churches it is nonsense,
it rings false to experience, it is the offering of
a stone to men hungry for bread, and has, there-
fore, no place in a working theology. But when
we tell them that the Infinite Spirit who is in
all life and above it — its source, its strength, its
goal — has toward every man the thought and
purpose and energy of a father, we give them
a truth beneath whose spreading folds every
experience of life may be interpreted.

God, then, in a working theology, is Infinite
Life and Love in all life regnant. Jesus Christ
is Infinite Life and Love manifest. A working
theology concerns itself little with defining
Christ; he baflfles, surmounts all definition.
Always definitions divide men; simple loyalties
unite them. "Every definition," said Erasmus,
**is a misfortune." It is a commonplace that
the controversies of the ages have, in the main,
been controversies about words. Deity, divin-
ity, humanity, are after all but words in which
man concretes his ignorance, mere direction-
points in the seekings of the centuries. What
deity is in its essence, what humanity is, what

12 A WORKING THEOLOGY

in our Master was divine, what human, no man
can know until he knows what spirit is, and
what matter is, and what, in its essence, Hfe is;
and no man knows any of these things to-day.
As men beheld the Christ, they said, If God
has an only begotten Son, this must indeed be
he.* But is not even this sacred word of the
ages an accommodation to human thought .?
Must not the relation of God and of Jesus
Christ be too spiritual, too complete, to be per-
fectly expressed in the terminology of any human
relation I My own Christology — a very simple
and satisfying one — is summed up in the Mas-
ter's word, "I am the Way''; in the face, in the
life, in the death of Jesus Christ, I see God.
"If ye knew me," he said, "ye would know my
Father also." We know a man not when we
know his visible form — ^we see men every day
we do not know — we know a man when we
know his mind and heart and spirit. The hum-
blest man who knows Jesus Christ, who is try-
ing every day to learn of him, keeping his
words, seeking his spirit, doing his work, knows

* We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten from
the Father. John i, 14.

A WORKING THEOLOGY 13

more about God than all the wisdom of science
and philosophy and theology can teach him.
As I learn more of him, I find myself saying of
him, not at all as the last word of a dogma, but
as the utterance of a great love and a soul-satis-
fying devotion, "My Lord and my God."

Jesus Christ is God visible to man; God ex-
pressed in the form, speaking the language, do-
ing the work of a human Hfe. The Holy Spirit
is God vital in man. The great word of a work-
ing theology is power; its gospel that the weak-
ness of man may assimilate the strength of God;
that in every struggle of the soul outward and
upward, the infinite resources of the universe
may be his. And they are needed. For in a
strong working theology sin is very real and
very terrible. It is no amiable weakness, no un-
fortunate tendency, no blundering quest after
God. The depreciation of sin is the emascula-
tion of religion. It is true that sin is selfishness,
the assertion of the unit against the whole; that
punishment is from within, the normal fruit of
sin, essential not arbitrary; that hell is the re-
morse of the soul localized. There is no new
theology in this; one finds most of it in William

14 A WORKING THEOLOGY

Law in the early eighteenth century. But when
we are told that "sin has never injured God ex-
cept through man" * a note is struck which is
out of tune with every human analogy. The
boy who grows up to wrong his fellow-creature
hurts his own father even more. The great
utterance of Calvary is that the heart of God is
rent and torn with the sin and selfishness of
men; that God is injured, not in anger, not
wholly in that wrath which is the recoil of the
pure from the foul, not because the cosmic proc-
ess has gone wrong; but in the anguish and bit-
ter disappointment and great love of a Father's
breaking heart. The very essence of Chris-
tianity is the personal relation of God the
Father and man the child; we can never em-
phasize overmuch not only the blindness, the
folly, the self-defeat of sin, but the great wrong
it does to a Father's love. It is the manifesta-
tion of the love of God that has won the best in
men through the ages, and will to the end.

*"The New Theology," R. J. Campbell, p. 52.

Ill

DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN THE PLAY OF COSMIC
PROCESSES

/^^REAT emphasis is placed in a working
theology upon Divine Providence. By the
term is meant the guidance in all life of an In-
finite and beneficent Power, the slow, sure
working of a Plan, alike in the ages of history,
in the destiny of nations, and in the experiences
of individual men. This plan embraces in its ma-
jestic sweep no less the indifference, the folly,
the antagonism of men than their devotion and
aspiration and achievement; ever unfolding, it
is never complete; often hidden, it is never dor-
mant, and never wholly fails. Wordsworth
beautifully expresses the thought in its more
personal application in lines which Gladstone
used to quote:

One adequate support
For the calamities of mortal life
Exists — one only: an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, howe'er
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.
15

i6 A WORKING THEOLOGY

Huxley showed that he was in sympathy with
this great conception (though he declared the
evidence accessible to be wholly insufficient to
warrant either a positive or a negative conclu-
sion) when he wrote: "If the doctrine of
Providence is to be taken as the expression
*in a way to be understanded of the people'
of the total exclusion of chance from a place
even in the most insignificant corner of nature;
if it means the strong conviction that the cosmic
process is rational and the faith that through-
out all duration unbroken order has reigned
in the universe, I not only accept it, but I am
disposed to think it the most important of
all truths. As it is of more consequence for a
citizen to know the law than to be personally
acquainted with the features of those who will
surely carry it into effect, so this very positive
doctrine of Providence, in the sense defined,
seems to me far more important than all the
theorems of speculative theology. If, further,
the doctrine is held to imply that in some indefi-
nitely remote past aeon, the cosmic process was
set going by some entity possessed of intelligence
and foresight, similar to our own in kind, how-

A WORKING THEOLOGY 17

ever superior in degree; if consequently it is
held that every event, not merely in our plan-
etary speck, but in untold millions of other
worlds, was foreknown before the worlds were,
scientific thought, so far as I know anything
about it, has nothing to say against that hypoth-
esis. It is in fact an anthropomorphic rendering
of the doctrine of evolution." *

What light does modern thought throw upon
the working of Divine Providence, not only in
starting off the process in long aeons past, and
foreknowing its every issue, but in shaping its
smallest detail to-day .?

(i) Modern thought magnifies beyond hu-
man grasp the sphere of the Divine activity.
Truly in our Father's house are many dwelling-
places. Men have grown up slowly toward,
they are far from attaining yet, a fit conception
of the omnipresence, the vast universal interest
and energy of God. The God of the Hebrews
was a tribal God; he was their God, the one
true God; but his interests were local, his eflForts
confined to a limited area, narrowed by antipa-
thies and resentments like their own. The most

* Huxley's Life and Letters," Vol. II, p. 320.

i8 A WORKING THEOLOGY

difficult thing for Israel to learn was that God
cared at all for the foreigner. The tendency of
men always has been to assume a monopoly of
the plan and the care of God. In his name and
for his glory the nations have gone forth to kill
one another, each claiming his aid, confident of
his approval, forgetful as a rule that God so
loved the world, that his interests are vast and
deep as the sweep of human need. And to-day,
we who take the wider view, who are growing
up slowly into a world-consciousness, who real-
ize that God's thought and purpose embrace
the distant nations and the alien races, are apt
to forget that the earth, to us so vast, is but a
speck in the dominions of the Eternal, that
whether or not these distant realms, whose
number no man can count, whose dimensions
no man can conceive, whose distance from us
surpasses estimate, be peopled with beings in any
way like us, we are bound to them by the kin-
ship of a common creation and a common care;
their wondrous secret is the present thought of
God, their progress his toil, there as here God
is and God works. What new meaning the
thought gives to the word of Jesus, "My Father

A WORKING THEOLOGY 19

worketh hitherto." Who can ponder the
vast expanse of the divine thought and toil, and
not be impressed anew with the marvel and
mystery of the universe, and the infinite great-
ness of Him from whom it comes, whose will it
wondrously fulfils ? Who in the presence of
such a greatness does not feel humbled, is not
ready to say with Washington Irving that the
efforts of man to comprehend Divine Providence
— ^to set limits to them, and say. This thou
canst do, that never — are "like the eflForts of
the little blind mole running his tiny tunnels
underground to comprehend the marching and
countermarching of armies overhead."

(2) But modern thought about the universe
makes easier a reasonable faith in the Providence
of God. Men who thought of God as dwelling
in physical form on a great throne in distant
spaces thought less consistently of his daily
contact with all human life; but men who be-
gin to realize something of what is meant by the
sublime statement that God is Spirit, who feel
increasingly the reality of the spiritual uni-
verse, find it ever easier to believe that he who
is great enough to be the God of the infinite

20 A WORKING THEOLOGY

spaces is ever present in the life of the world and
the lives of his children. And if present, then
potent. It is impossible to conceive of God
simply as a presence, a mere vapor, inert, pas-
sive. Where God is, he achieves.

But here arise some difficulties v^hich perplex
many an earnest mind. One asks, does not
modern thought reveal to us a great realm of
order in which laws, fixed, relentless, work out
their sure results; where, in a universe of law,
is the place of a benign Providence } The an-
swer, of course, is that law and Providence are
never to be conceived of as antagonistic, that
"the course of nature is itself providential," the
relation of cause and effect, like the unfailing
sequence of the seasons, a part of the kindness
of this scheme of things, through which man
may know himself and the world around him,
and shape his life, and do his work, with confi-
dence. All law is love; all love is law. "The
very etymology of the word," it has well been
said, "should have taught us that Providence is
not afterthought, but forethought, foreseeing
and consequent foreordaining, not the tinkering
of a machine so clumsily constructed that its

A WORKING THEOLOGY 21

working fails to accomplish its designed pur-
pose, the shoving backward or forward of a
clock which fails to keep good time, but the
orderly working of infinite wisdom, whose eter-
nal plans need no modification because perfect
always.'* *

But what of special providences ? If by
special providences we mean that universal
laws are ever interfered with for the benefit of
the individual, no such conception can prevail
in this age. But if we mean that for each man
as for all men the course of nature is providen-
tial; if we mean, with Horace Bushnell, that
every man's life is a plan of God, this is a
thought as essential to any just conception of
the majesty of God, as it is precious to the
heart of man. Here, of course, some find diffi-
culty. "The God whom science recognizes,"
we are told, "must be a God of universal laws
exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a
retail business. He cannot accommodate his
processes to the convenience of individuals." "j*

*" Christian Faith in an Age of Science," by Dr. William
North Rice, p. 338.

t " Varieties of Religious Experience, ' ' p. 496, The quota-
tion does not, however, express Professor James' own view.

22 A WORKING THEOLOGY

But this is to place human limitations to the
work of God; it is to materialize and localize
him, and assume that because a thing is difficult
for man to conceive, it is impossible for God to
achieve. Depend upon it, the Lord God Al-
mighty does thorough work; in the greatness of
his toils he does not let detail escape him. "To
the Infinite Intelligence, all and each are alike
present. God does not forget details in gener-
alizations, nor lose generalizations in details." *
But where in a human life is the sphere of
Providence ? If my life is a plan of God,
mapped out before I was born, where do I
come in .? This is the problem, old as the
gropings of the human mind, of freewill and
foreordination. The answer that appeals ahke
to mind and heart is that God in the exercise
of his Divine sovereignty and love, for the
achievement of his great creative ends, has
given to man the sublime gift of choice, the
image of the Divine within him; that even
God cannot compel the choices of a free
being; that the plan of a man's life is not
mapped out beyond his choices once long ago

*Dr. Rice.

A WORKING THEOLOGY 23

by a distant Power, but that the great Planner
is ever with us renewing, reshaping the Plan,
out of our false choices making for us fresh op-
portunities, with wondrous patience working out
the purposes we have long resisted, bringing the
scattered ends of life into a glorious unity, say-
ing to us with every dawning day, "Behold, I
make all things new."

That there is the least reality in such a view,
no amount of argument will ever convince. The
testimony of experience alone is sure and strong.
There are men whose testimony on other things
the world trusts implicitly whose most confident
conviction is that God is with them. They are
amazed and startled often by the evidences of
his presence, by the unfolding in their lives of
a plan far beyond their own. Mysterious helps
come to them; strange guidances point the way;
they seem to feel in all life the touch of a Hand,
to hear the whisper of a still small voice. Where
others speak of coincidences, they speak of God,
and echo gratefully the Psalmist's words, " I am
poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me."

But what of those whose lives give no such
testimony .? Two things are to be remembered.

24 A WORKING THEOLOGY

{a) Divine Providence is never to be asso-
ciated only with strange guidances, mysterious
helps, marvellous coincidences. It may be
associated no less with great disappointments,
sudden shocks of sorrow, dread perplexities,
awful defeats. Of some of the great deliver-
ances of life we say sometimes, Things were at
their very worst, all was darkness and despair,
when suddenly a way was wonderfully opened
up, a great light flashed upon the horizon, and
we felt that God's hand was in it. But no less
truly might we say when blow after blow falls
suddenly in a dozen directions, and the life that
seemed joyous and confident is rent with an-
guish or blighted with defeat. This, too, is God's
hand, driving us into the wilderness, this, too,
his voice, saying, "Quit you like men, be strong;
my face may be hidden, but I will never leave
you nor forsake you." A great soul of old was
called wonderfully out of the darkness of blun-
der and folly into the sunshine of faith and
hope. As he puzzled out his new life-problem,
a messenger of God was sent to him, and this
was the message, "I will show him how great
things he must sufi^er for my name's sake."

A WORKING THEOLOGY 25

There was no room for the Saviour of the world
at his birth; he went by a lonely and thorny
way to a cross. Life as God plans it is never to
be identified with the life of ease and prosperity;
the gathering storm is in it no less than the
clearing path.

(h) There is rich suggestion in the remark of
R. H. Hutton that God's providences work
largely in the sphere of the choices. "The
minds that are alive to every word from God,
give constant opportunity for his divine inter-
ference with a suggestion that may alter the
course of their lives; and Hke the ship which
turns when the steersman's hand but touches the
wheel, God can steer them through the worst
dangers by the faintest breath of feeling, or the
Hghtest touch of thought." * This is the old
word of the Psalmist: " The secret of the Lord
is with them that fear him"; it is the word of
Jesus, "He that wills to do God's will shall
know." The man who resolutely chooses God's
will finds it ever more perfectly; the Hfe which
is eagerly sensitive to the divine touch feels and
follows that touch ever more confidently.
* " Theological Essays," p. 81.

IV

PRAYER IN A WORLD OF LAW

TX /"HAT is the place of prayer in the Hfe of
the man who feels himself to be living in
a great universe of law in which, with unchang-
ing order, the same causes or combinations of
causes always produce the same effects ? At
once, of course, we have to rid ourselves of the
thought that prayer is in any degree antagonistic
to law. Men have been wont to think of them-
selves as living in the presence of two great classes
of phenomena, the natural, the common order,
the expected sequence of events, and the super-
natural, the abnormal, the prodigious. In his
government of the universe God, it has been
assumed, has detailed certain work to subor-
dinates called laws; but ever and anon they fail
of their purpose, they get things all mixed up,
they rend and tear the hearts of men, and so, in
response to his children's cry, God sets them
aside, and steps himself into the fray. Now

modern thought about the universe, and the In-

26

A WORKING THEOLOGY 27

finite Spirit who in it is ever-present, ever-po-
tent, conceives all this very differently. It is not
that the reality of the phenomena commonly
classed as supernatural is for a moment ques-
tioned— those inexplicable happenings, those
providential guidances, those remarkable an-
swers to prayer. Far from it. Rather is their
sphere broadened, and their foundation deep-
ened and strengthened. But the conception of
two antagonistic methods in the universe —
law and Providence, nature and the supernat-
ural— is dismissed. We begin to see that the
course of nature is itself providential, that law is
love, that the supernatural is not the abnormal
but the supernormal, the higher-natural; those
perfectly natural self-expressions of the Infinite
Spirit of Life which the mind of man groping
dimly toward the light is as yet too blind to
conceive.

There follows at once from this a different
conception of the spirit, the atmosphere, of
prayer from that which men have sometimes
held. True prayer does not ask God to set aside
his laws, to interfere with the normal sequence
of events. There is a striking definition in one

28 A WORKING THEOLOGY

of the novels of George Meredith which goes to
the very heart of the matter. "Prayer," he
says, "is the recognition of law." That is true.
At the heart of all true prayer is the assent of the
soul to the unbroken order of the universe, its
sublimest utterance, "Thy will be done." Have
you noticed the habitual recognition of law in
the sayings of Jesus about prayer ? "If" is the
keynote of these sayings. " If ye abide in me,
and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye
will, and it shall be done unto you." "Ye have
not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and or-
dained you, that ye should go and bring forth
fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that
whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my
name he may give it to you." "He that believ-
eth on me, whatsoever he shall ask in my name,
that will I do." That is to say, if my spirit is in
you, if in you my words have become flesh, the
very longings of God will be yours, and they
cannot fail. The life whose passion it is to bear
fruit, to push on somewhere the great work of
God, will ask the things which God is far more
eager to give. "Prayer," says Dr. George
Albert Coe, "is the process of identifying our

A WORKING THEOLOGY 29

will and whatever effectiveness v^e may have in
the world with the will and work of God."
"The reason," said Henry Drummond, "why
so many people get nothing from prayer is that
they expect effects without causes, and this is
also the reason why they give it up. True
prayer for any promise is to plead for power to
fulfil the condition on which it is offered and
which being fulfilled it is in that act given."
A man never prays until at the heart of his
prayer is the assent of his soul to the unbroken
order of the universe, the desire that he may
take the place in it God means for him humbly,
bravely, completely, the longing that in his life
God's will may be wholly done. Prayer is the
recognition of law.

But does not this conception limit greatly the
scope of prayer .? It does limit somewhat the
scope of our asking, but it immeasurably ex-
tends the range of our receiving. The man who
has such a thought of prayer as this cannot ask
God to set aside the order of the universe for
his convenience, or to save him from the effects
of his own folly. For this reason Charles Kings-
ley refused to pray for the stay of the cholera

30 A WORKING THEOLOGY

epidemic in his time; it was the effect of men's
filth and indolence, and they should take the
consequences. Many a man has gone to his
knees when he should have gone to the axe and
the disinfectant. The man who has such a
thought of prayer cannot argue with God in
prayer, try to convince him that he is wrong,
counsel him confidently as to the conduct of the
universe or of a human life. Such prayer is
"teasing, not trusting." But how vastly the
higher thought of prayer expands the range of
our receiving, for it brings us into touch with
the interests, not of one or two human lives alone,
but of all, not with our own poor plans alone,
but with God's, it makes the achievement of his
work, the progress of his kingdom, and not the
getting of bread for our own hungry lives, the
ever-broadening interest, the ever-deepening
longing of our hearts. And is it not just this
which many a man's life needs above all else —
not the fulfilment of this petty plan and that —
but a broadening interest, a larger outlook, a real
grip upon the universal sympathy and interest
of God in Christ ?

It may be asked, is there not in this thought

A WORKING THEOLOGY 31

of prayer a limitation larger than any which has
yet been mentioned ? If we are living in a uni-
verse of unbroken order, if causes always pro-
duce effects, if God cannot be expected to
change his plan to please us, why pray at all ?
Did not Jesus say, "Your Father knoweth what
ye have need of before ye ask him" ? Yes, but
he also said, "When ye pray, say, our Father,"
and the greatest of all his followers said, "Never
cease to pray." But why ? For answer, I might
remind you of the great limitations of our
knowledge, of our weakness, our sense of need,
our longing many a day for strength, for guid-
ance beyond our own. Shall not this passionate
hunger of the soul find utterance .? I might call
the roll of the mighty men of achievement who
have also been men of prayer — Gladstone, with
his unfailing morning hour, saying to his inti-
mates in the hour of political crisis, "What we
need is more prayer, more prayer"; Chinese
Gordon, with the white handkerchief before his
tent which told that then he must be undis-
turbed; Wesley, of whom it was said that he
was much in the upper room; Matthew Henry,
confessing, "I forgot to ask special prayer on

32 A WORKING THEOLOGY

the day's work, and so the chariot wheels drove
heavily." I might speak of the great institu-
tions, such as those of Muller and Barnardo and
Quarrier, which have been built up on and sus-
tained by prayer. I might quote such a testi-
mony to prayer, from the standpoint of the sci-
entific psychologist, as that of the late F. W.
H. Myers. A friend wrote asking him what,
candidly, he thought about prayer, and this is
what he says: "I am glad you have asked me
about prayer, because I have rather strong ideas
about the subject. First, consider what are the
facts. There exists around us a spiritual uni-
verse, and that universe is in actual relation with
the material. From the spiritual universe comes
the energy which maintains the material, the
energy which makes the life of each individual
spirit. Our spirits are supported by a perpetual
indrawal of energy, and the vigor of that in-
drawal is perpetually changing, much as the
vigor of our absorption of material nutriment
changes from hour to hour. I call these facts
because I think that some scheme of this kind is
the only one consistent with our actual evidence.
How, then, should we act on these facts?

A WORKING THEOLOGY 33

Plainly we must endeavor to draw in as much
spiritual life as possible, and we must place our
minds in any attitude which experience shows
to be favorable to such indrawal. Prayer is the
general name for the attitude of open and ear-
nest expectancy; it is not a purely subjective
thing; in it spiritual power or grace flows m
from the infinite spiritual world."

But the best answer I know to the question,
why pray ?, the answer which never fails to sat-
isfy the man who has made it his own, is this:
Prayer is not simply the recognition of law;
prayer is the recognition of love, the love that is
in all law, the love that is in all life. The secret
of all true prayer, the unfailing rule for its ex-
ercise and interpretation, was given by Jesus
when he said, "When ye pray, say our Father."
We fathers know what is good for our children
much better than they do, why should they pre-
sume to tell us ? A sad day it would be for all
of us when our children ceased to come running
to us with their childish wants and troubles,
which are often so very foolish, for their coming
is the expression of the love which is our very
life, and of the trust which is our joy. And so,

34 A WORKING THEOLOGY

when the cannibal chief, of whom James Chal-
mers tells us, prays "We much want tobacco,
calico, and tomahawks and knives," I am sure
it pleases God even as it pleases us, for it is the
foolish child coming to his wise Father, and by
and by, coming often to that Father, he will know
better what to ask. And when the child of whom
Dr. George A. Coe tells us, seeing a storm com-
ing that will stop his play, kneels upon the lawn
and prays that it may not rain, it is prayer, for
it is the child coming to his Father, the child
making the truly Christian assumption that
God is interested in the games of childhood.
And when the farmer prays for rain for his
wheatfield, though the order of nature is un-
changed by his words, still this is prayer, for by
it the man assumes a relation of conscious de-
pendence and trust toward God, and by bring-
ing his daily occupation to God attains to some-
thing greater than wheat.* I must come to God
with my poor little human prayers because he is
my Father and I am his child, and if I do not
speak to him, nor he to me, the sweet relation is
lost. He is no more my Father, nor I his child.

* See Dr. Coe's " Religion of a Mature Mind," p. 357.

A WORKING THEOLOGY 35

And I may ask him for anything I like, because
he is my Father, but coming to him often I
learn, as our children soon learn with us, that
there are many things it is useless to ask, that
the things best for me are the things my loving
Father longs to give; that the best prayer is
prayer that I may know what these are, and de-
sire them above all, and love and trust him more
and more. For the best prayer is not asking for
things, it is the quiet, creative hour when the
child is alone with his Father, seeking his guid-
ance, receiving his strength, resting in his infinite

love.

And yet this is not the last word about prayer.
The most Christlike prayer is prayer for others,
that God's will may be done in them, that in the
world they may be kept from the stain of the
world, that they may be comforted in sorrow,
upheld in toil, guided into the fullest fruition of
their lives. Such prayer is not simply the nor-
mal utterance of Christian faith and love; it
achieves wondrous results; in it space is anni-
hilated, and soul touches soul. Devout men
have always believed this. Many a man has felt
around him all his life an impelling, restraining

36 A WORKING THEOLOGY

influence which he has ascribed to his mother's
prayers; in moments of moral peril he has felt
himself arrested as by an unseen hand. The
great missionary movement has been built up
largely upon the prayers of the faithful.

"Away in foreign fields they wondered how
Their simple word had power;
At home the Christians, two or three,
Had met to pray an hour."

To-day modern conceptions alike of the uni-
verse and of the individual make easier the faith
that such prayer is a positive force. True, we
are just reaching the first outlook upon an un-
known country; what wonders are beyond no
man knows. But the glimpses already opening
to the vision — the self beneath the sphere of
consciousness where some tell us spirit has its
meeting-place with spirit, and God with man;
the new emphasis upon mental suggestion in
healing diseases alike of the body and the mind;
the reality of telepathic communication, which
is probably the one thing thus far fully estab-
lished by psychic research — all these aid
the belief that when I pray for my friend I am
touching him with spiritual energy; when I

A WORKING THEOLOGY 37

suggest to him, even if he be distant from me,
that he can conquer his weakness, that he can
rise above his sorrow, that all things are possi-
ble to him that believeth, I am helping to bring
spiritual forces at least within his reach, I am
pleading for that very faith which the Master
always required ere his love wrought its won-
drous work. There is no peril in this of what
some may call a mere naturalism, the apparent
identification of God with the forces of the uni-
verse and the latent resources of the human
spirit. The man who is most keenly conscious
of the spiritual energies around and within him,
most eager to be a channel through which they
may work, will never lose in them the Infinite
Spirit of Life who is great enough to have
brought them into being; as he seeks to awaken
the latent resources of his own and his brother's
spirit, he will realize gratefully that by far the
greatest of these resources, from which none
that is strong and sure can ever for a moment be
separated, is God himself in the human soul.

To many a Christian the offering of prayer
"through Jesus Christ'' is no formal use of an
empty phrase. He so prays because he sees God

38 A WORKING THEOLOGY

in the face of Jesus Christ, because Jesus has
led him into a new understanding of the mean-
ing and the power of prayer; most of all it is
his thought that his prayer should pass through
the very heart of Christ up to the Infinite and
out to his brother, because he realizes that the
prayer that is purified by the Master's spirit of
self-surrender, of obedience, of perfect love,
unites itself with the Divine will and is bound
to triumph.

Such a conception of prayer as this of course
leaves many unanswered questions. But that
by prayer life is linked with life, the might of
God with the weakness of man, is in these days
a reasonable and a great working faith.

MIRACLES IN A SCIENTIFIC AGE

TN a credulous age, miracles were the fore-
most evidence of Christianity; to-day, to
many minds, they are among the greatest of
religious difficulties, while others dismiss them
wholly from their thought. "There is nothing,"
says Matthew Arnold, "one would more desire
for a person or a doctrine one greatly values
than to make them independent of miracle."

What is a miracle ^ In the simplest sense of
the word, a miracle is a wonder, a wonderful
thing, that is all. In the restricted sense in
which we commonly use the word, a miracle is
a departure from the known laws of nature, a
startling deviation from the common sequence
of events. From this definition two things fol-
low: (i) Miracle is not necessarily a departure
from law, but from known law; it is not neces-
sarily an interference with the order of the uni-
verse, but the calling in of a higher law. With
this view it is possible to define a miracle
accurately as "a divine restoration of the true

39

40 A WORKING THEOLOGY

order of nature/' * (2) The miracle of yester-
day is the commonplace of to-day. Had I told
a friend fifty years ago that, sitting in my study,
I had that day talked with a man a hundred
miles away, or that I had just heard from a
friend in midocean, I would have been deemed
untruthful, insane, or a worker of miracles;
but to-day the statement awakens no surprise.

Let it be clear, then, that in the light of mod-
ern knowledge of the universe, there is no diffi-
culty about miracles simply on account of
their marvellousness. In epoch-making words
Huxley made this very clear: "Whoso clearly
appreciates all that is implied in the falling of a
stone can have no difficulty about any doctrine
simply on account of its marvellousness." "I
am too much a believer with Butler that there
is no absurdity in theology so great that you
cannot parallel it by a far greater absurdity of
Nature to have any difficulty about miracles."
And again, "Science offers us much greater
marvels than the miracles of theology, only the
evidence for them is very different." f "Sci-

* Stearns, "Present Day Theology," p. 63.

t Huxley's "Life and Letters," vol. i, 211, 227, etc.

A WORKING THEOLOGY 41

ence," says a recent writer, "recognizes no mir-
acle because all the world has become mirac-
ulous." *

So much for the possibility of miracle. In
the presence of the infinite vastness of the phe-
nomena with which he deals, the observer of
reverent spirit stands humbled, feels profoundly
the limitation of his knowledge, and hesitates to
say of any wonderful thing. It could not be.
It is needless to assume that the processes of
nature as he who made them knows them, are
so clumsy and ineffective that he has ever to go
beyond them to effect his ends. But on the
other hand, it is alike presumptuous and illogi-
cal to assume that in the common order of the
universe as known to men, the Infinite Spirit
has exhausted his resources ; sane and reason-
able is it rather to believe that the latent forces
which man is gradually finding and making his
own are but a few of the infinite powers of the
exhaustless power of God.

The real question is not, are miracles pos-
sible, but have miracles happened ? Was the

*" Christian Theology in Outline," William Adams Brown,
p. 228.

42 A WORKING THEOLOGY

advent of Christianity heralded and accom-
panied by the working of inexpHcable wonders ?
Now, there are two avenues of approach to this
question. One is to go to Christ through the
miracles, because of them to believe in him.
The other method is to go to the miracles
through Christ, because of him to look at them.
The first method no longer appeals to our age.
We recall at once that the earthly life of Jesus
was lived in a credulous, unscientific age, in
which the air was peopled with ghosts and de-
mons, and the more marvellous a thing was the
more ready men were to believe it. We recall
that all religions, and especially the lives of their
founders and great leaders, have been associated
with stories of wonder-working. We recall that
some of the records of the Old Testament mira-
cles were written centuries after the events they
describe, and that a large legendary element
may have entered into them; and that even the
New Testament stories may well have been em-
bellished by tradition ere they were written down
for ages to come. In aword, this method quickly
brings us into a fog of uncertainty and doubt.
Take, then, the other method. But first, in

A WORKING THEOLOGY 43

deference to our pride of mind, let us make sin-
cerely the eflPort to banish the miraculous from
Christian faith, and see where it issues. Must we
not begin at one sweep with the character of
Jesus, for he is himself the greatest of his mira-
cles ? The noblest souls of the ages, as they
bowed before God, have felt ever the great gulf
that separated them from the Infinite; they have
felt keenly their sinfulness and unworthiness.
But here is One, humble in spirit, selfless in life,
the sanest soul of the centuries, who dares to
say, "I do always the things that please him,"
"I and the Father are one"; and after nineteen
centuries of research and criticism the testimony
of the ages is that of Pilate of old, "We find in
him no fault." In kindred words this testimony
was given by Matthew Arnold, who will not be
classed commonly as an orthodox Christian,
"Jesus himself is an absolute; we cannot ex-
plain him; he is the perfection of an ideal." If
the miraculous goes, the character of Jesus, the
ideal of the centuries, is a delusion, for it is an
interference with the common order, it is
wholly beyond the experience that leaves him
out. And of course his resurrection goes. It is

44 A WORKING THEOLOGY

one of the best-attested facts of human history.
It is impossible, without it, to conceive what
changed those bhnd, timid, self-seeking friends
of his into strong, resourceful apostles, men
with a message ever clear, ready to suffer, ready
any day to die for it, and for him. It is impos-
sible, without it, to account intelligently for the
survival of Christianity. " If Christ be not risen
your faith is vain." But if the miraculous goes,
the resurrection goes. And this is but the be-
ginning. All the most cherished convictions of
Christian faith — the Divine guidance of indi-
vidual lives, the reality and the worth of prayer
— are, as far as man's knowledge of the proc-
esses of nature goes, miraculous; they are be-
yond the common order, a departure from
known law. What is left .? " Let us eat and
drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die."

Rather let us begin with Jesus. What do we
find ? The Master is no mere wonder-worker,
playing with infinite powers, "omnipotence let
loose." Urged again and again to do some
showy trick that men might be sure of his
claims — to leap from the temple roof upon the
pavement beneath, to make stones into bread,

A WORKING THEOLOGY 45

to give a sign of some kind — he declines, saying:
"Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."
He manifests no pride in his works, ascribes
them all to God, tells men if they can but lay
hold on God they can do all these things, and
greater, too. "The Father that dwelleth in me
he doeth the works," "He that beli( eth on me,
the works that I do shall he do also, and greater
works than these shall he do." True, at times
he appeals to the works as an evidence of his mis-
sion, as when, to comfort his discouraged fore-
runner, he said, "Go tell John what things ye
have seen and heard: the blind see, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the
dead are raised up." But this is not their pur-
pose; they are not mere wonders, but works,
the outflow of divine sympathy in the presence
of human suffering and need. His miracles are
a consistent part of his redemptive work, the fit-
ting expression of his love; when we read of him
at the wedding feast in Cana, in the home of
the centurion, by the bier of the widow's son, we
feel a perfect sense of harmony between the
man and the work; the heart responds, "It was
just like him."

46 A WORKING THEOLOGY

But this is the Christ of history. What of the
Christ of experience ? I know intimately a man
who for years was a victim of the Hquor habit.
He drank degradation to the dregs. The habit
cost him friends, position, health, all on earth
but a mother's love and a mother's prayers.
Again and again he tried to reform, again and
again sadly failed. Child of a cultured home,
this man, tottering in limb, shattered in spirit,
drifted one day for food and lodging into a res-
cue home. A Christ-guided hand was laid upon
him. "Do you really want to reform V said the
stranger. "I do, but it's no use." "Have you
ever asked Christ to help you .?" "I have not."
They spoke of Christ, they knelt and prayed, the
stranger first and then the poor weak man. In
that hour he received not simply new purpose —
that he had often had before — but cleansing
power. "My appetite was taken away," he
says; "I have never since wanted to drink."
If this be true, and he is a very sane fellow, who
for years now has given his leisure to work for
men who are as he was, it was a miracle as won-
derful as any of the wonders of Scripture. An-
other man was for years bowed to the dust by

A WORKING THEOLOGY 47

a great sorrow; duty only deadened it; friends
were kind and sympathetic, but, ah, they did
not understand; now he has learned habitually
to look to Christ, to think of him, to pray to him;
somehow the look always brings courage and a
new hope; his smile returns, his step brightens,
his heart can find a song — he does not wonder
at the miracles. Another lived only to get; to
this end every effort of his life went forth; it
meant incessant struggle, restless fear, bitter
enmity, a prize ever sought and never found.
Then he learned of Christ to give, a very simple
change — new direction in life, a different way;
but so marvellous the change it has wrought in
the whole sweep of his life and in his own heart
that to him all the wonder-working of old seems
but a poor outward thing compared to the mira-
cle that has been wrought of Christ in him.

So is it ever. Begin sincerely with Christ,
and all else in this world of mystery begins to
have upon it the morning light. Of course, in
face of the miracles of old, the Christian will not
silence his thinking function, or accept anything
because it is associated with the name of Jesus.
He will not be blind to the human element in the

48 A WORKING THEOLOGY

Scriptures; he will not forget the wealth of Ori-
ental imagery and symbolism, so unlike our
matter-of-fact Western forms of speech. But as
he is led of Christ into the greatness of the Di-
vine Plan and the marvel of the Divine Love, it
will seem to him ever less strange that in that
crude age when first the law was given, by
strange signs the Divine presence was attested;
or that when first the prophets spoke, by deeds
as well as by words men were summoned to hear;
or, most of all, that when the great Revelation
of Love was given, when at last a human life
perfectly responded to the will and fully did the
work of God, in his presence latent forces of the
universe sprang into action, and all nature felt
upon it the touch of a Master hand.

In a working theology, the test of the miracles
is a very simple one. The miracles that seem to
the Christian to be like Christ, outpourings of
his love, manifestations of his spirit, he will
gratefully accept, and love to read about; those
that seem to him unlike the Master, trivial, arbi-
trary, the will put unhesitatingly from his
thought, awaiting upon them the light of a
clearer day. The counsel of the old Scotch

A WORKING THEOLOGY 49

preacher, "Let us look the difficulty in the face,
and pass on," was very wise, a frank recognition
of comparative values, a refusal to discredit the
sunlight because for the moment some pinhead
obstruction blinds the eyes.

VI

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN REVE-
LATION AND INSPIRATION

^ I ^HERE has been suggested constantly in
these chapters the new dignity of the nat-
ural. Of old, men were apt to think of God as
active mainly in the abnormal, the occasional,
the supernatural. Jonathan Edwards used to
open his windows in a thunder-storm; the at-
mosphere was so full of God, he said. To-day
we begin to realize that God is at work in every
blade of grass as in the earthquake and the
thunderbolt, in the commonplaces of life as in
its crises; that the laws of nature, being his
workmanship, cannot well be the clumsy and
ineffective weapons of his will, requiring peri-
odically to be superseded, which men have
sometimes supposed; that the supernatural so-
called is simply the supernormal, the higher-
natural, those perfectly natural self-expressions
of the Infinite Spirit which the mind of man,
struggling toward the truth, is as yet too dull to

understand.

so

A WORKING THEOLOGY 51

Now nowhere is the new dignity of the nat-
ural more manifest than in our modern thought
about the Bible. Many devout Christians have
been much troubled by the newer teaching; it
has seemed to them that the authority of the
Scriptures was questioned, their truthfulness
impeached, their value denied. But to-day we
are coming to see that the sum of the best mod-
ern thought about the Bible is this, that the
Bible is an infinitely more natural book than
men have sometimes thought it, and for this
very reason a far more precious and powerful
book than otherwise in these days it could be.
It is not that there is less of God in the Bible,
but that his methods here are seen to be more
like what he has been teaching men of his
methods everywhere.

How natural, for instance, was the origin of
the Bible as the Bible itself reveals it. Had men
claimed always for the Bible only what it claims
for itself, much harmful controversy would have
been saved. Needless to say, the book was
never dropped from heaven complete; it grew
up out of the life of a race chosen of God for
great service, the expression of all that was best

52 A WORKING THEOLOGY

in their history, their biography, their Hterature,
their poetry, their preaching, their legislation.
In very early days one writer from his stand-
point, and another from his, but both with a
strong religious interest, gathered together cer-
tain traditions long current not only in Israel,
but in Babylonia and elsewhere, as to the begin-
nings of human history; a later writer gathered
these writings into one without attempting to
harmonize them, and our book of Genesis — the
wonderful book of Beginnings — came into being.
Exodus is the history of the dramatic exodus of
Israel from Egypt. Leviticus is the lawbook of
the nation. Psalms, on which the devout spirits
of the ages have been nourished, was, with its
appendix the book of Lamentations, the hymn-
and prayer-book of the Jewish community.
Proverbs is a collection of the sayings of the
sages, the wise men who were in every village,
whose successors sought out the infant Jesus,
the counsellors of the people, men with a genius
for summing up truth in a sentence.. A certain
prophet of God, unable longer to reach his
audience, receives a command to write the
things that are throbbing in his soul; and one

A WORKING THEOLOGY 53

of the great books of the prophets is written.
An ancient philosopher faces the great problem
of the ages, why the good suffer with the wicked;
in dramatic form he weaves his thought around
a well-known story probably much older than
his time, and the result is the book of Job, the
great epic of the human soul. Gradually these
books, and others, written some of them centu-
ries apart, were gathered together, and the Bible
as Jesus knew and loved it, the cream of the
sacred literature of his race, had taken its place
in human history.

Quite as natural, and much more easy to
trace, is the origin of the New Testament as the
New Testament itself reveals it. The heart of
Paul, the great missionary apostle, goes out to
the little bands of converts, and the struggling
churches, he has left all along the line of his
progress; driven by persecution from their cit-
ies, he cannot go to see them; but he can write,
and he does; out of a full heart, out of a glowing
mind, out of a great experience, he pours out to
them his inmost soul on the great themes of life
and destiny, on the greatest theme, Jesus Christ;
in words he never thought would live after him,

54 A WORKING THEOLOGY

in words born of the immediate needs of the men
to whom he wrote, in words born of his great
love. To-day these letters of Paul, dictated most
of them to an amanuensis, with a brief postscript
sometimes in his own hand, for he was half-
blind — "See with what large characters I have
written to you" — constitute about one-half of the
New Testament; and upon them the religious
thinking of the centuries has been largely built.
Luke, the physician, has a friend Theophilus —
"loved of God" — ^who is also dearly loved of
Luke. He is eager, he tells us, that Theophilus
should have full knowledge of Jesus's life and
words, and a firm basis for the faith that is in
him; so "having had perfect understanding of
all things from the very first," he writes them
down in order, and the book he wrote for The-
ophilus is our Gospel of Luke, without which the
world would never have known the parable of
the prodigal son. Later he carried the story on
to the beginnings of Christian history, again for
the sake of Theophilus, and the book of Acts is
the result. Just as Robertson of Brighton, his
biographer tells us, wrote out his sermons after
they had been preached, for the sake of a single

A WORKING THEOLOGY 55

friend whom he thought they might help, and
the labor of love thus done by Robertson for his
friend has been used of God to mould the re-
ligious thinking of the world as have no other
English sermons for a century. As the days
passed, these books and others — gospels, letters,
poetic visions — came to be read in the meetings
of the early Christians for their comfort and in-
struction; they became a vital part of the
church's life; and after a time the church, in the
exercise of its wisdom, and ever seeking the Di-
vine guidance, chose the best of them, gathered
them together, and the New Testament was
wedded to the Old. How natural the origin of
the Bible as the Bible itself reveals it! -.^-^

And then how natural and human are the
books thus in this wonderfully natural way given
to the world. No claim to a miraculous infalli-
bility is made; no claim that the Spirit of God,
inspiring these men, breathing into them great
thoughts, large visions of truth, overthrew the
citadel of their individuality, crushed out crude
conceptions born of their age, made of them
sacred but slumbering penmen. No, the
human is ever quite as manifest as the divine.

56 A WORKING THEOLOGY

Sometimes Paul feels sure that he is writing
the very word of God for his children; some-
times he says frankly that he is giving his
own opinion. " I have no commandment of the
Lord," he writes to the Corinthians, "but I give
my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy
of the Lord to be faithful;" sometimes he thinks
he has the Divine approval, but is not sure — " I
think also that I have the Spirit of God," he says
in the same letter. Again Paul says frankly that
he knows in part, prophesies in part, sees
through a glass darkly. He says of Peter, an-
other of the apostolic writers, that he dissem-
bled, and walked not according to the truth of
the gospel; and Peter says of Paul that he some-
times writes things hard to understand which
ignorant men have twisted to their own destruc-
tion, a verdict with which many a modern ad-
mirer of Paul inclines to sympathize. No effort
is made by the various writers to harmonize
their accounts in detail; there has been no say-
ing. Let us be careful that we all say this and
that; strong evidence this of their perfect frank-
ness and truthfulness. Just as no two biogra-
phers of St. Francis give alike the names of the

A WORKING THEOLOGY 57

friends who accompanied him to Rome on his
great mission to the Pope; just as no two expert
reporters report a great event in just the same
way or agree perfectly in their statement of
facts; so these biographers and historians of
early ages tell their story each from his own
point of view as he understands and emphasizes
the facts. The conception of a Bible in its every
detail infallible — the great misfortune of Protest-
antism, which opened the way for such fiascoes
as IngersoU's "Mistakes of Moses," and for so
much misunderstanding of a higher order— was
born of an apparent historical necessity at the
time of the Reformation. To the man who
asked, "What is truth .f"' was ever ready the an-
swer, "Ask the church; the Pope, the vicegerent
of God, cannot err." Now this was changed.
But men still craved an infallible authority, and
so, in place of an infallible church, they put an
infallible book, forgetful that God makes his
approach directly to each individual soul, and
that each soul may come directly to him. As a
result, men eager to champion the sacred book
have bent backward in their devotion, and as-
sumed that opening it at random one could find

58 A WORKING THEOLOGY

an infallible guide in every experience of life.
When vaccination v^as first introduced in New
England, a sermon in opposition to it by one
Mussey of London v^as widely circulated; its
text was, "So went Satan forth from the presence
of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from
the sole of his foot unto his crown"; its argu-
ment, that Satan was the first inoculator. So
wise a man as John Wesley twice tried to find
guidance as to a call to Bristol by a random
opening of the sacred book, and when the second
time the verse that fell beneath his eye was
"And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they
buried him in the city, even Jerusalem," he and
his friends, for reasons which his biographers do
not explain, found here a confirmation of the
call to Bristol. But this is bibliolatry, not the
wise use of the Scriptures which the sacred
books themselves commend. Paul loved the
Scriptures, nourished his soul upon them, but he
quotes from them in a way that indicates either
a careless memory, or the use of a version not
now known, or more probably an emphasis upon
the spirit rather than the letter of the ancient
books. Matthew (27 : 9) ascribes to Jeremiah

A WORKING THEOLOGY 59

a record which is found only in the book of the
prophet Zechariah. The mind of Jesus was sat-
urated with the great writings of his race; but
unhesitatingly he puts himself far above them,
saying "Ye have heard that it hath been said by
them of olden time . . . but I say unto you,"
and again to the advocates of a literal interpreta-
tion of every word of the ancient law, "Ye search
the Scriptures because ye think that in them ye
have eternal life; and these are they which bear
witness of me; and ye will not come to me that
ye might have life.'' The true place of the Scrip-
tures in the life of the Christian is proclaimed by
Paul in a familiar passage, " Every Scripture in-
spired of God is also profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction which is
in righteousness; that the man of God may be
complete, furnished completely unto every good
work." That is to say, their mission is educa-
tional, corrective, inspirational; their great rela-
tion to the life of man, that he may be wise in
thought and strong for service. They are " able
to make thee wise unto salvation" — in them-
selves.?— no, "through faith which is in Christ
Jesus." "The word was never made verses,"

6o A WORKING THEOLOGY

well says an old Scotch minister of the last cen-
tury; "it was made flesh.'' "No other paper,"
says Phillips Brooks, "is fit to hold that awful
writing."

But now it may be asked, if the Bible is not,
in its every detail, infallible, if its conception of
the material universe is outgrown, and its mor-
als at times primitive to say the least, why read
the Bible to-day .? Is not God still revealing
himself to the spirits of men ? Are there not
still prophets inspired of God to proclaim his
will ? And the answer of course is, that revela-
tion and inspiration have not ceased; to every
age God is speaking as he spoke to the prophets
of old. But the Bible is not superseded. For
these reasons it has, and will always have, a
unique place in the life of men:

(i) It is the inspired record — inspired be-
cause in this wonderfully natural way men were
guided of God to do things far larger than they
conceived — of the great revelation of God in
Jesus Christ. The Old Testament, in ways the
men who wrote it never dreamed, is the record
of the progressive preparation of the world for
his coming; to him as with an index finger it ever

A WORKING THEOLOGY 6i

points; in the New in the fulness of the times he
stands before us, lives his life of love, speaks his
wondrous words, is crucified and risen; in the
New, too, we see the influence of his life and
words and death and resurrection upon the men
who were nearest to him, the small beginnings
of the Kingdom that, slowly coming even yet, is
destined everywhere to triumph. The perman-
ence of the Bible is the permanence of him into
whose presence it leads; as there can never be
a greater and more satisfying revelation of God
than the love of Christ, so there can never be a
greater record of that revelation than the Bible.
(2) The Bible is unique in all the literature of
the ages because of its wonderful adaptation and
appeal to the needs of all sorts of men in every
age. Outgrown in science, product of a primi-
tive age, unlike all other books it never grows
old. It speaks ever out of the experience of
yesterday, to the needs of to-day, and the long-
ings of to-morrow. And the reason for this
perennial freshness is that the themes with
which it deals, and the impulses it aims to kindle,
are the same in every time in every clime. As
Bishop Butler said long ago, it gives us an ac-

62 A WORKING THEOLOGY

count of the world in this one single view as
God's world; it lays bare the corruption of the
human heart, the self-deceit of its motives, the
sure disappointment of its selfish efforts, until
he who reads cries with Judas, "Lord, is it I ?";
it utters as does no other book the perennial
yearning of the longing soul after God and im-
mortality, crying with the troubled spirits of
every age, "Oh that I knew where I might find
him!" It is the great storehouse of religious ex-
perience, the exhaustless reservoir of religious
aspiration. As Coleridge said of it so tersely,
"It finds me."

(3) The Bible is unique in literature in that
it is the great channel of present revelation and
inspiration. As ever, God works by natural
methods. He seeks the man who seeks him.
He reveals himself to the inquiring soul. Many
a man has found that the days when, for one
reason or another, the Bible was largely a closed
book, were the days of dimness of vision and
languor of impulse, the days of doubt and dis-
couragement; and that, on the other hand, the
days when, not understanding fully its message,
often perplexed and troubled, not understanding

A WORKING THEOLOGY 63

God and his own heart, he yet sought earnestly
to nourish his soul upon the words of Psalmist
and prophet, most of all upon the blessed words
of the Master, these were the days of new illu-
mination and confidence, the days he was strong
to persist and patient to endure. As with life
itself, the richest treasures of the Bible are not
upon the surface. He who brings to it the most
gets from it the most. He finds that systematic
and prayerful study brings to him often the ex-
perience of which Thomas Fuller, one of the
wise men of the seventeenth century, spoke,
"Lord, this morning I read a chapter in the
Bible, and therein observed a memorable pas-
sage, whereof I never took notice before. Why
now, and no sooner, did I see it ? Formerly my
eyes were as open, and the letters as legible. Is
there not a thin veil laid over thy Word, which
is more rarefied by reading, and at last wholly
worn away I I see the oil of thy word will
never leave increasing whilst any bring an empty
barrel."

The recognition of the Bible as the great
channel of present revelation and inspiration,
suggests a satisfying answer to the perplexing

64 A WORKING THEOLOGY

question as to the ultimate source of authority
in the Christian Hfe. If the infalHbiHty of the
book is set aside, as was the infallibihty of the
church, where to-day are men to look for an
infallible authority ? The answer is that the
word of God, uttered once perfectly in the
mind and word and work of Jesus Christ, is the
one infallible authority. But how are men to
know with unerring accuracy the word of God
thus expressed ? The answer of Roman Cathol-
icism is partially right; the church through its
history more than through its decisions and
dicta interprets to men the Divine mind. The
answer of historic Protestantism is partially
right, marking a great forward step; in its spir-
itual leadership the Bible is infallible, the man
who opens wide his heart to its teaching will in-
evitably be led ever more perfectly into the way,
the truth and the life. The answer of modern
criticism is partially right, marking another for-
ward step; the word of God vocal in the soul of
man is the final authority; no external author-
ity is valid and vital until it is confirmed and
attested within. And yet all these answers are
partial. The forgotten truth in them is that an

A WORKING THEOLOGY 65

tnfallihle authority can only reveal itself com-
pletely to, can only utter itself fully through, an
tnfallihle life. This is the testimony of Script-
ure: "The secret of the Lord is with them that
fear him," "Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God." And this is the testimony
of experience; it explains the puzzling fact that
the word of God vocal in the souls of earnest
men seems often to speak with so many clashing
tongues. In this school of life God's revelation
to the individual as to the world is, and must be,
a progressive revelation, dependent upon the
growth of the man's soul; always for the seed
of truth there must be the soil of faith and love.
And commonly his method is to reveal truth not
in a flash, but in the friction through the years
of opposing half-truths. Wherever there is a
double allegiance, part for God and part for
self, the vision of truth will be blurred; wherever
there is cherished prejudice, there will be nar-
rowness of view and false emphasis; where but
one phase of truth is seen, the sense of propor-
tion will be lost. But where there is a docile mind,
a humble spirit, a pure heart, a surrendered will,
a life responsive to the lessons of history and

66 A WORKING THEOLOGY

nourished constantly upon the sacred Script-
ures, such a man will grow up increasingly into
the mind of Christ; more and more the word of
God will be vocal and vital in his soul. The
great word of Jesus to the man who is seeking
an infallible authority is this, "He that hath
ears to hear, let him hear."

VII

THE SENSE OF SIN IN MODERN LIFE

^ I ^HE decay of the sense of sin in our genera-
tion has often been noted. "The higher
man of to-day," says Sir Ohver Lodge, "is not
worrying about his sins at all, still less about
their punishment; his mission, if he is good for
anything, is to be up and doing.'* "There is
no virtue in thinking upon sin," says Dr. George
Albert Coe, "or in emotional experience with
respect to it, except as these are merely reverse
aspects of aggressive fighting, or of industrious
work upon the eternal temple." * Compare this
with Paul's consciousness of sin — "Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners, of whom
I am chief"; or with the self-estimate of Ber-
nard of Clairvaux, whose life was one of habitual
self-denial and beautiful devotion to the Chris-
tian ideal, "When I look at myself, I find myself
oppressed with such a burden of sin that no
other hope of salvation is left me save in the
mercy of Christ alone"; or with the confession

*"The Religion of a Mature Mind." p. 392.
67

68 A WORKING THEOLOGY

of Samuel Rutherford, "The world hath sadly
mistaken me; no man knoweth what guiltiness
is in me; I am a wretched captive of sin"; or
with the saying of Tholuck, addressing a gath-
ering of his students and of the learned men of
Germany assembled to do him honor on the fifti-
eth anniversary of his professorate in the Uni-
versity of Halle, " The one thing for which I have
most to thank God is the conviction of sin."

To-day men seldom talk in this latter way.
True, most of us have bad half-hours with our-
selves when we realize what fools we have been.
We are keenly conscious of limitation and im-
perfection, but the sense that we are downright
sinners somehow escapes the average man of
our time. He is distinctly respectable, certainly
as good as his neighbor. "I do about as nearly
right as I know how," is the self-satisfied verdict
repeatedly given by men to whom the claims of
Christianity are presented. The sense of sin
seems to be gone.

The change is sometimes ascribed to the
world's progress. Fortunately the moral stand-
ards of the sixteenth century are outgrown. But
there is still coarseness and vulgarity enough to

A WORKING THEOLOGY 69

give the common conscience of humanity many
a restless night. Vice may be more refined, but
it is not less vicious. If in some things we have
outgrown our fathers, in others they would be
heartily ashamed of us.

The modern emphasis on culture is some-
times supposed to account largely for the
change. Many people are not rascals mainly
because they are not fools. Men are finding
out that it is much more comfortable and hy-
gienic to live in a pure, healthy body, than in one
tainted and weakened by self-indulgence; that
a mind which habitually thinks broad, kindly,
hopeful thoughts is a much more pleasant trav-
elling companion than one which habitually
thinks petty, envious, resentful, selfish thoughts;
that a life of self-control dominated daily by a
sovereign will and a sublime purpose is infi-
nitely more satisfying than a life tossed by every
sudden squall. But of genuine culture the
usual effect is to open a man's eyes to summits
of attainment unseen before; to reveal to him
the vastness of the chasm between the man he
is and the man he should be. True culture
deepens rather than weakens the sense of sin.

70 A WORKING THEOLOGY

By others the change is laid to the purer re-
ligious thinking of our time. Fear, we are told,
was the characteristic word of the religious
thinking of our fathers; to-day love is the word
that goes to the heart of our teaching. This is
nearer the truth; of the contrast suggested more
will shortly be said. Yet who can believe that
fear was the impelling motive of the devout souls
of generations past, of Paul, of Bernard, of our
own sainted fathers ^

The source of the change lies deeper. With
multitudes of men the lost sense of sin follows
the lost sense of God. Recognition of respon-
sibility to God, and of the infinite meaning of a
human life, have disappeared from their horizon,
and with these has gone of course the sense of
sin. Restore the old-fashioned virtues — rever-
ence, humility, conscious dependence upon
God, daily loyalty to Christ — and the sense of
sin will quickly return. Others misconceive
wholly the nature of sin. They confuse sin
with sins. Sin fundamentally is not an act, it is
an attitude. It is the chasm of motive and
effort which separates my thought and life from
the thought and life of God. Reputable men

A WORKING THEOLOGY 71

who habitually think of sin as drunkenness, or
impurity, or profanity, or theft, will naturally
experience a decay of the sense of sin.

But is this the last word upon the subject ?
Is there really everywhere in the deepest things
of the spirit a backward movement ? Are our
best men worse than their fathers ? Is there not
rather possessing the minds, and animating the
hearts, and impelling the consciences of multi-
tudes of men to-day a new sense of sin, less
clearly defined, perhaps, but more real, vital and
truly Christian than the old. I believe confi-
dently that there is. It is a safe rule that there
is no virtue in a thing simply because it used to
be. On the contrary, if it used to be, and is not,
it is well commonly to inquire whether there is
not some good reason for the change. For to
believe that the world is going backward is to
lose the dominant note of Christian faith. Are
there not some things about the old sense of sin,
beautiful, humbling, creative, as it often was,
which the world has well outgrown, losing
which in the growth of its better thought it has
in the natural motion of the human pendulum
swung to the other extreme and for the time

72 A WORKING THEOLOGY

lost also much of the good ? If I mistake not,
there are.

For instance, the old sense of sin was often
more a theological inheritance than a practical
experience. The burden of Adam's sin was
upon men. A racial taint, hopeless, cruel, pur-
sued them. To-day, too flippantly perhaps,
men are disposed to let Adam take care of him-
self. In the mind of the average Christian, prac-
tical experience precedes, tests, controls, every
theological tenet; is this true ? means not, has
some one said this long ago ^ but, do men know
it to-day in the battle-ground of the soul .? Orig-
inal sin is not denied; it is lost to view in the
pressure of present conflict. The problem of
origins has not lost its interest, but its prece-
dence. Sin is not less real, but it is a great grim
fact to be bravely met, not an insoluble mystery
to be quarrelled about.

Again, the old sense of sin was apt to be mor-
bidly introspective. Habitually it looked with-
in. It dissected motives, longings, aff'ections;
it fed upon self-analysis; it revealed itself in
moods. Under its influence good men doubted
their own salvation, and were driven to despair.

A WORKING THEOLOGY js

How they suflFered, these pure, sensitive spirits
of old ! Pascal, sick, nerve-racked, wondered if
his affection for his sister, who had nursed him
through a long illness, was not sinful. One day
he wrote in his diary, "God forgive me for lov-
ing my dear sister so much." Afterward he
drew his pen through the word "dear." To-day
self-analysis has its place in the Christian Hfe,
but it is a minor place. Outward, onward, up-
ward is the Christian's look. God is not a jeal-
out taskmaster, but a loving Father, not a rival
of human affections but their source, their in-
spiration, their very life. The saving of one's
own soul is no longer possible as the ruling
thought of the Christian mind; as Job's cap-
tivity was turned when he thought of his friends,
so often the redeeming process, the "being
saved" of Scripture, gains reality only when a
man's thought and effort go forth to others that
they may be brought to their true selves and to
God. To be selfishly saved is to be lost.

Once more, the old sense of sin was apt to
look backward rather than forward. It mourned
over the past. It dwelt upon failures. The
new sense of sin is the response to a voice which

74 A WORKING THEOLOGY

says: "Behold, I set before thee an open door";
it has learned Phillips Brooks's message that a
man has nothing to do with his past save to get
a future out of it. Saddened by yesterday's ex-
perience, it is also strengthened by it; and its
face is toward the light. It is illumined by a
clearer vision of the Fatherhood of God. A
son, rebellious, wayward, eager for his own way,
leaves his father's home. By and by, coming
to himself, he comes again to his home, cries:
"I am no more worthy to be called your son;
make me as a hired servant." The father
requires of him no painful penance, no morbid
moping over the bitter past; to the boy's bleed-
ing heart goes forth the father's healing, reviv-
ing touch, he kills the fatted calf, calls in the
neighbors to welcome him home. The Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ requires of his children
no unhealthy lamentation over the past, but only
that confessing humbly our wrongdoing, learn-
ing watchfully its hard lessons, we go on in their
light to the better sonship of the days to come.
In the true Christian life there is never any time
for mere morbid regrets. The more wasted
time in the past, the less time to waste to-day.

A WORKING THEOLOGY 75

Once more, the old sense of sin saw mainly
things done; the new and better sense of sin
sees mainly things undone. Its heartbreak is
the gulf between the ideal and the real, the
things purposed and the things achieved. It is
active rather than meditative, less a review of
the feelings than a survey of the field.

And so the new sense of sin, already, if I mis-
take not, keenly felt in the lives of Christian
men and women to-day, and destined to be felt
ever more creatively as the kingship of Christ
gains ascendency in the hearts of men, has these
three kindred characteristics:

(i) It is social no less than it is personal. The
personal is not lost to view; it cannot be; for
sin seen to its heart is the absence of a personal
relation. But that of which men are conscious
in these days as never before is a broadening of
the personal relation. As Gregory, hearing of
a poor man's death by starvation in Rome, felt
himself to blame, and scourged and denied him-
self for his sin, so the Christian of to-day who,
in faintest degree, has caught the spirit of his
Master, cannot separate himself from the sin, the
sorrow, the struggle, the ignorance of his race,

76 A WORKING THEOLOGY

feels them as though they were his own, knows
his life to be a failure until it is going forth to
meet them. Wherever poverty, oppression and
selfishness are blighting human lives, wherever
manhood is missing its meaning and weakness
is sinking in the mire, there the Christian feels
within him a burning of shame and a passion to
help; it is the new sense of sin. New .? It was
the sense of sin which the Hebrew prophets felt.
Remember Amos: "I know your manifold
transgressions and your mighty sins" — ^what
are they? "They afflict the just, they take a
bribe, they turn aside the poor in the gate from
their right." "Woe to them that are at ease in
Zion, that lie upon beds of ivory and stretch
themselves upon their couches, and eat the
lambs out of the flocks, that drink wine in bowls
and anoint themselves with the chief ointments;
but they are not grieved for the afflictions of
Joseph." Micah is "full of power by the Spirit
of the Lord to declare unto Jacob his transgres-
sion and to Israel his sin," and what does he
say .? "Hear this, ye heads of the house of Ja-
cob, and princes of the houseof Israel, that abhor
justice and pervert all equity; the heads thereof

A WORKING THEOLOGY ^-j

judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach
for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for
money" — the grasping and the "graft" of the
age have aroused in the prophet the sense of
sin. "Cease to do evil, learn to do well," cried
Isaiah, but how? "Seek justice, relieve the
oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the
widow; come now and let us reason together,
saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow; though they be
red Hke crimson, they shall be as wool." And
what were the sins to which Christ was most
sensitive } They have been well classified in
this way: sins of the thought — envy, uncharita-
ble judgment, evil desire; sins of Pharisaism —
the pious tongue, and the proud, selfish, con-
temptuous life; sins against the Httle ones, the
young, the sick in body or in mind, the weak in
achievement or in will. All of them are sins that
touch some other life. Himself sinless, the
Master had as few have had, the sense of sin;
it was the burden of the cross, the pang that
made him cry, "My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me \ "

(2) The new sense of sin is closely related to

78 A WORKING THEOLOGY

the advancing kingdom of God. This was the
reason Jesus gave for calling on men to give up
their sin and selfishness; "repent, for the king-
dom of heaven is at hand." Christ seldom
spoke to men of the wickedness of that which
they were doing, but of the greatness and beauty
of that which they were missing. Change your
minds, he seems to say, about the real prizes
and pleasures of life, get into line with the
things that count, for God's day is coming,
slowly but surely his triumphant will is advanc-
ing to victory. To think what God is doing here
on earth — making men in his own image, bring-
ing forth a universal kingdom, of which right-
eousness and truth and peace shall be the at-
mosphere, in which all men shall be brothers
under one great Father — to think what God is
doing, and then to think what most of us are
doing; to think earnestly the thoughts of God
after him for the men and women around us,
and then to think our own: this is to feel the
new sense of sin, and it stings and rebukes and
renews as the mopings of monks and the scourg-
ings of ascetics could never do in this age.

(3) The new sense of sin is tested and quick-

A WORKING THEOLOGY 79

ened or quieted by the law and the Hfe of love.
To know oneself a sinner in these days it is not
well to dwell too long upon the Ten Command-
ments, lest in blindness to their larger meanings
we be like the royal duke whose audible response
to each of them was *' Never did that." The
enormity of sin in modern life is better brought
home in the thirteenth chapter of First Corin-
thians and the first Epistle general of John. " If
a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother,
he is a liar." "We know that we have passed
from death unto life because we love the breth-
ren.'' When a man brings the thoughts of his
heart and the efforts of his life to a test like that,
better still when he brings them to the test of the
mind and the life and the cross of Christ, he will
be ready to join with new and redeeming mean-
ing in the old confession: "All we like sheep
have gone astray, we have turned every one to
his own way."

VIII

THE GREAT GOSPEL OF THE CROSS

"^JOWHERE must the two keynotes of a
strong working theology be borne more
earnestly in mind than in any attempt to dis-
cuss this supreme theme. Reverence saves
from the contradiction of defining the infinite;
reality puts the emphasis upon those phases of
truth which touch the springs of life and are
pregnant with redeeming power.

Through the ages controversies about the
cross have been largely speculative and scho-
lastic. Many minute theories as to the effect of
the Saviour's death have been confidently ad-
vanced. It was a ransom paid to the devil, or
a price exacted by Infinite Justice, or an exhibi-
tion of Divine Love. The natural reaction has
been the modern mood which, accepting the fact
of the Saviour's atoning death for men, con-
fesses frankly that it has no theory to offer. This
is the position of multitudes of earnest men to-
day. But there is manifest in our time an im-
patience with this position. Some theory, we

80

A WORKING THEOLOGY 8i

are told, must go with a fact, or the fact is vague
and impotent. What is the fact about which
we have no theory ? Is it that the cross saves —
how, we know not ? But what do we mean by
the cross ? The wood on which the Master
hung ? Or the actual blood that was shed on
the cross ? Or his voluntary self-consecration
to the will of the Father ? Or his identification
with human sin and suffering ? And what do
we mean by being saved ? Through the cross
is a man saved from past sin ? From the power
of sin ? From the effects of sin ? From the pun-
ishment of sin here and hereafter ? These ques-
tions concern the fact, not the theory, of redemp-
tion; the "what," not the "how." This is the
discussion which is waxing warm just now in
England, where men who answer in one way
are ruling out of the faith men who answer in
another. In our own land similar questions are
being asked. The prevalent mood is one of
great uncertainty. Devout souls, incarnating in
their own lives something of the spirit of Jesus,
accepting gratefully the gospel of the cross, are
earnestly seeking clearer thought about its
meaning.

82 A WORKING THEOLOGY

Now all such discussion, when reverent in
spirit, is to be welcomed as a healthful symptom
of the search for reality in our time. Men are
resolved to be delivered from the tyranny of
well-worn phrases through w^hich the edge of
truth is often dulled; by them they will no
longer be driven into the kingdom. The most
sacred words, the cross, the atonement, the
blood of Christ, must continue to reveal truth
that illumines the mind, and warms the heart,
and transforms the life, or pass from the speech
of men. A transaction which squares accounts
with the Infinite, but effects no change in the in-
dividual, is a contradiction which will not appeal
to this age. I know a man, in earlier years de-
voted in Christian service, who has long aban-
doned all outward expressions of the life he
once held dear. He no longer attends church;
from his home all forms of reverence have van-
ished; he yields frequently to the sins of the
flesh. Yet he writes: "My life is nearly over;
I am trusting in the finished work of Jesus
Christ my Saviour." One realizes of course the
imperfection of all human judgments; and yet
the indications are strong that for this man the

A WORKING THEOLOGY 83

"finished work" is not merely an empty phrase,
a spiritual catchword, but a great peril of the
soul. For always real and redeeming is the
work of Christ in a life.

May it not be frankly and helpfully recog-
nized that the gospel of the cross is larger,
broader, more spiritual than any human con-
ception of it, and makes its appeal in varied
ways to men of varied thought and experience ?
The teaching of Jesus was always adapted to
the needs of the individuals to whom he was
speaking; to-day there is no mould save the
heart of need through which it must pass. The
fact of the atonement, the greatest of all facts, is
that God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto himself; to this sublime statement of the
fact nothing need ever be added. Every theory
of the fact, as to how God was in Christ, as to
how reconciliation was or is effected, as to the
relative value of his hfe, his words, his death, is,
comparatively, of minor importance; the eter-
nal destinies of a soul will never depend upon
his grasping of an intellectual proposition, or
his fathoming the relations of the infinite God
and his Christ. Yet every theory helps which

84 A WORKING THEOLOGY

makes vivid even to a single man the fact; when
through it reconcihation with God in Christ
becomes real and creative, every such theory
has surely caught some fringe of the garment of
Christ; it is false and presumptuous only when
it assumes to express perfectly the thoughts that
are not as our thoughts and the ways that are
not as our ways.

The man, for instance, whose life is stained
with the blighting memory of sin and shame,
upon whose soul lies heavily the bitter weight of
years misspent, of lives ruined, of wrongs that
never can be righted, rejoices to see in the
death of the Divine Master, sent into the world
by the Father, going freely to the cross for men,
the pledge of sin forgiven. At the cross his bur-
den falls away; the loving Christ has taken it
from him; he feels sure that even for him the
way is forever open to the Father. No man
who knows the sin-stained human heart will
doubt that the gospel for this age must have in
it clear and strong the note of forgiveness. The
peril of the man whose thought of the cross con-
centrates upon the forgiveness of sin is that,
saying, as a man in jail writes to me, "My hope

A WORKING THEOLOGY 85

is now that Christ died for me, and therefore I
can enter into Hfe eternal/' he may rest at this
point. But if a genuine love for his Saviour has
been kindled in his heart, he cannot rest there.
Forgiveness v^ill mean to him, not a clean sheet,
but an open door. His life will be reconciled
with God in Christ.

Another has lived a life outwardly clean and
correct. His experience has been the gradual
unfolding of the powers within him, a deepen-
ing desire to know the larger meanings of his life
as they are revealed in Christ, and enter into
them. Such a man is less impressed by the
thought of substitution in the work of Christ
than by that of identification; to him the gospel
of the cross is that Divine Love has made the
race struggle his own, identified himself with
human need to the limit of sacrificial love. His
great joy is not that Christ has borne his sin, but
called him to be a sharer in his great world-
burden. Beneath the shadow of the cross, he
has passed from anxiety about personal salva-
tion, and speculation about theories of represen-
tation, to the loving labors of the Christ. The
cross is to him an impulse more than a refuge.

86 A WORKING THEOLOGY

If his spirit be humble, and his dependence
upon Divine strength deep and constant, may
we not beheve that some part of the truth which
is so much greater than his faint gropings after
it, possesses his soul, and is making him free ?

Another emphasizes the sacramental view.
He thinks of Christ's work as in him rather than
for him. In his own strength he must fail. The
very life of Christ must be given to him, if he is
to win his battle and live a truly Christian life.
But ere Christ's life can be given to men it must
be poured forth; on the cross he beholds it
freely given for men; the Lord's supper, recall-
ing his death, is the perpetual pledge that it is his
who sincerely hungers for the bread of life.
There are both mysticism and symbolism here to
which some minds do not quickly respond; but
there is also the very heart of Christian faith
and experience. We can never emphasize over-
much the fact that if there is to be life achieved
there must be life received. The gospel of the
cross is preeminently a gospel of power.

Yet another cannot separate in his thought
the death of Christ from his hfe and his words.
To him the incarnation, the entrance of God

A WORKING THEOLOGY 87

in Christ into human life, is the beginning of the
cross. He does not depreciate Calvary; he ex-
tends and prolongs it immeasurably. But he
cannot think of the cross as a single event in
time; to him it is an age-long sacrifice, not a
momentary surrender, a divine life-v^ork, not an
infinite transaction. He speaks of the atoning
life more than of the atoning death. To him it
seems that Christ is still being borne to the
cross; the thought of Sigismund Goetze's great
picture, possesses his soul; he seems to see the
Master being crucified afresh not only on the
steps of St. Paul's cathedral to-day (as the pict-
ure suggests), but v^herever men are deaf to his
appeals, false to their true selves and their fel-
lows, blind to the rich meanings of their lives.
His soul responds to the pathetic cry of the Di-
vine sufferer, "Is it nothing to you, all ye that
pass by ?" All this may be very vague; it may
not always put the emphasis where it has com-
monly been put; but if it arouse in this man
a great love and loyalty, who shall say that the
gospel of the cross has not entered with recon-
ciling power his soul .?

To very many, baffled, burdened souls, the

88 A WORKING THEOLOGY

great gospel of the cross Is that it illumines as
does nothing else the dark mystery of life. He
to whom was given the wondrous testimony,
"This is my beloved Son," the sinless, perfect
Son, suffers to the very limit of human suffering
and loneliness and wrong, crying in anguish,
"O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass"; in loneliness, "My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me ?" Not only does he suf-
fer, he submits; bravely, patiently, without a
rebellious word, he treads the wine-press alone,
saying at the last in perfect surrender, " Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit." The
cross was in his life who did perfectly the Fa-
ther's will; no wonder it should be in ours. "I
have suffered a good deal of pain," said a work-
ingman on a sick-bed to me, "but not half what
my Saviour suffered for me." What a gospel
is here!

So one might go on indefinitely. All human
theories are partial and inadequate, relics, some
of them, of Jewish ritual, and Roman law, and
pagan rites, clever efforts most of them to read
our little human ways into the ways of God.
The theory for every man is the theory that

A WORKING THEOLOGY 89

makes vivid to him the fact, the theory that
warms his love for Christ, and quickens his
impulse to serve him. There may be crude
thinking, but if there is an open mind and a re-
sponsive will, the Spirit will guide him into the
larger truth. But there must be no mistake
about the fact. God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto himself. Reconciliation involves
separation, antagonism. Man self-governed
is alienated from God. Sin is separation from
the Infinite above and the Infinite within. The
gospel of the cross is that in Jesus Christ the
gulf is bridged; through him God comes to
man; through him man comes to God, and to
himself.

My own thought of the cross finds constant
illustration and illumination in that sphere to
which Jesus so often pointed men, the home.
A father's heart is rent by the sin and disobedi-
ence of his son. What is the longing of the
father's heart toward his boy I The first burst
of resentment over, the father-love speaks. He
would forgive the boy freely, fully. But forgive-
ness without change of mind and heart on the
son's part achieves nothing but the mastery of

90 A WORKING THEOLOGY

the father's spirit; its probable issue is indiffer-
ence and contempt and continued sin. And so
he must show his son his sin; in some way the
boy must see it as it is. Moreover, he must
bear with his son the effects of his sin; whatever
the boy has to suffer, he, too, for the love he
bears him, must suffer with him. Above all, he
must save his son from his sin, so that it shall
never stain his life again.

All this, I am sure, and much more of
love, there is in the great gospel of the cross.
The best in man is far beneath the least in
God. In the words of the old collect, it is
his nature and property to forgive. There
is no obstacle to forgiveness on God's side;
no necessity of his nature to satisfy by a
divine sacrifice; on God's side the only ne-
cessity is the necessity of love. The only ob-
stacle to free forgiveness is on man's side. For-
giveness that is simply the erasing of a record is
weak and ineffective; soon man writes another
fouler still. Man must see his sin as it is and
turn from it. The cross, the crowning revela-
tion of God's love, is also the great revelation
of man's sin. This is where it leads; this is

A WORKING THEOLOGY 91

what it costs; the rending of the Divine Suf-
ferer's heart, the betrayal and crucifixion of
purity and love by selfishness and hate. But
the cross is no mere exhibition of love suffering
for sin, no spectacular display of divine emotion.
It is all intensely real. Because he loves us, God
bears with us the eflFects of our sin. In the cross
the Divine Spirit regnant in Christ entered into
the sins and struggles and sorrows of men, bore
them as a mother bears the burden of her child.
All this he does to save; this is the great end of
sacrificial love. And how does the cross save ?
In the home the process is easy to trace. Touched
by his father's sorrow, seeing in its true light his
sin, what it costs, where it leads, won by the
love that shares with him its penalty, the boy
comes to himself, turns from his sin, henceforth
rejoices to take his father's way, not his own.
Just this it is to be saved. Wherever kneeling
at the cross, won by the love of the Father who
sent, or the love of the Divine Saviour who
came, a man sees his sin as it is, where it leads,
what it costs, comes to himself, dethrones the
baffled schemes of self, enthrones the love and
the will of Christ, he is saved. No longer a

92 A WORKING THEOLOGY

rebel, a malcontent, he is henceforth a son, a
humble learner of Christ, a glad co-worker in
the toils of God and the burdens of the Sav-
iour. He has taken his rightful place in the
great scheme of things; henceforth the re-
sources of the universe are his; the stars in their
courses fight for him. Delivered from the
tyranny of self, a free captive of a loving Mas-
ter, naturalized into the kingdom of Christ, he
is reconciled with God, and to him is given the
ministry of reconciliation. He goes forth an
apostle of the cross, his message this, "Whoso-
ever wills to lose his Hfe for Christ's sake shall
find it."

IX

THINGS TO COME

npHE doctrine of the future in a working the-
^ ology is concerned mainly with this after-
noon and to-morrow. It has not two gospels,
one for time and one for eternity, but one for
the eternity which is now. Its great guide and
inspiration is the priceless word of the Master,
"I am the Resurrection and the Life,'' and "He
that believeth on me hath everlasting life.'' The
moment of Christlikeness is the moment of
deathless life.

The great words of the gospel are these two,
life and death, and we are false to the Master
when, charmed by the glory of the one, we for-
get the dread reality of the other. The more
one reads of the sacred book, or learns of the
cruelties in nature; when one reflects that of
the thousand million species of animals and
plants which now tenant this earth not one in
100,000 individuals ever reaches maturity; when
horror after horror sends a chill to the heart,
and he that sitteth in the heavens is silent; the

93

94 A WORKING THEOLOGY

more the conviction is likely to grow that In all
the strange discipline and tragedy of life God Is
teaching his children the cheapness, the noth-
ingness of life as men commonly conceive It, the
life of sleeping and waking, of hungering and
feeding, of making and spending, the life of the
senses and the appetites — It is the cheapest thing
in the universe. But ever with this God Is teach-
ing us the other lesson — and of It every Christian
is the herald — the priceless value of life as God
conceives It, the life of finding by losing, of get-
ting by giving, of having by doing, the life which
Is the harmonious play of all the powers to high-
est ends Intent, the very life of God In the soul
of man. The cross on Calvary, on which One
brought near to us as the only begotten Son of
God gives his life for men. Is the divine estimate
of the Infinite and eternal value of life Hke this.
And so this Is our gospel, "He that hath the
Son," — he in whom the love of the Father has
awakened the loyalty of the Son — "hath life":
that life in which death shall be a mere Incident
issuing In fairer forms and larger toils beyond.
"He that hath not the Son hath not life."
The full content of life or of death hereafter

A WORKING THEOLOGY 95

Jesus has not told us. Doubtless the veiled
future is part of the kindness and the wisdom of
this scheme of things. "Eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard" — ^we would not understand it if we
knew. There are, indeed, many unanswered
questions, and they weigh heavily at times on
the minds of thoughtful men. There are ear-
nest Christians who expect the Master to return
very soon and reign upon this earth; the pro-
phetic Scriptures seem to them to make this
clear. There are others who believe that in the
Spirit the rich promises of another coming have
already been fulfilled; their interpretation is
more spiritual and to them more helpful; they
are nearer to Paul when he says, "To me to live
is Christ," or " Christ in you, the hope of glory, "
than when he says, "We which are alive and
remain shall be caught up together with them
intheclouds." Menask: where is h eaven .f* what
shall we do there ? shall we know our loved ones
again .? must not a loving and omnipotent God
triumph at last in every soul he has created ? will
not all punishment prove remedial .? how could
a mother live in bliss while her son suffered or
was lost ^

96 A WORKING THEOLOGY

A wise working theology leaves these ques-
tions, and many others, trustfully in the hands
of Him who doeth all things well. It emphasizes
the Master's own words "Watch, and pray";
be ready for whatever God's plan for you may
any day reveal. It balances the larger hope,
the apparent logic that an omnipotent God who
is Love must triumph at last in every life, by the
tender Saviour's emphasis upon the great alter-
natives, his pictures of the offal heap into which
the city's refuse was cast and the great gulf
fixed, his word of the tree that bore no fruit,
"Cut it down," of the man who made nothing of
his talent, "Give it to him that hath ten." It
feels the clear words of the Master to be a far
better basis for the business of living than the
vague hope that somehow everything will turn
out right at the last. It recalls that love is not
a pretty sentiment, a weak emotion, love is the
most compelling force in the universe; love is
tender, but also love is stern; love seeks, but
also love shuns; love is passionate, persuasive,
but also love is pure. May there not be beyond
tremendous spiritual realities, to us as we think
of them sadly blighting, which God in his

A WORKING THEOLOGY 97

wisdom and love will see to be wholly good?
Perhaps no wiser words have been written on
the problems of destiny than those of the ten-
der Whittier:

" Forever round the mercy-seat,

The guiding lights of love shall bum;

But what if, habit-bound, thy feet

Shall lack the will to turn?

What if thine eye refuse to see

Thine ear of heaven's free welcome fail,

And thou a willing captive be

Thyself thine own dark jail?

O doom beyond the saddest guess,

As the long years of God unroll.

To make thy dreary selfishness

The prison of a soul."

But there will be no shadow upon the bliss of
those who enter at last into the fulness of life
beyond. If there be a contradiction here, God
holds the key, and his secret, we may be sure, is
far better than the loftiest of man's groping.

In a working theology the great question for
every man is not, Is there a future life? what
sort of life will it be? but. Is there anythmg m
my life that is worth a future, anything which
an Infinite God who has the business of a uni-

98 A WORKING THEOLOGY

verse on hand — the making of men, the defeat
of sin and selfishness, the establishment of a
universal spiritual kingdom of righteousness
and peace and truth — can reasonably be ex-
pected to continue to all eternity ? In a word,
what is there in me of the things that are un-
seen and eternal, the fabric of which through
the ages God is building his spiritual uni-
verse.

From the vagueness and uncertainty of the
future there is but one sure refuge; it is to be
found in a life of love and loyalty, sincere and
thoroughgoing, to the great Master who even
here leads us to heavenly summits, and who
dispels all fear of death and the mysteries be-
yond by his confident word, "I have the keys
of hell and of death." To him, one must
notice, it is all intensely personal; he does not
simply say, There is a future life, but "I am
the Resurrection and the Life," "I go to prepare
a place for you," *^ To-day shalt thou be with
me in Paradise." It is an unfailing stay and
strength that he, who was so selfless and
so humble, who has never deceived those who
have trusted him in deepest things, whose

A WORKING THEOLOGY 99

boldest words have been so marvellously ful-
filled, spoke here without the shadow of uncer-
tainty. To him it was clear and sure; there
will be enduring personality; there will be life,
boundless and beautiful, reaching on to the
infinitudes of God.

M -4 ^''v ^-^