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Page 3
[Footnote 1: Denney. Studies in Theology.]
[Sidenote: Bible Appeal for Verification.]
[Sidenote: Gracious Ability.]
[Sidenote: Huxley's Passionless Impersonality.]
[Sidenote: Gracious Conditions for Belief.]
[Sidenote: Ethical Conditions for Faith.]
I now wish to declare my own confidence that the verification of the
truths contained in the New Testament was never intended to rest upon
an absolutely inerrant record or on an inspiration which dictated to a
personality rather than expressed itself through a personality. The
Bible presupposes a power in man to test and verify its statements and
doctrines. It makes its appeal to this steadily from the earlier books
to the later; the appeal growing in content as the soul has developed
its power of recognition. This is the familiar law of knowing and doing,
of proving by practice, of perceiving the leadership of Jesus Christ
through the leading of the Holy Ghost. As to doctrine, there is left in
man the power to make the beginning of a faith. On this beginning
devotion builds a belief in the greater mysteries. Thus reason deduces a
First Cause, then the unity of the First Cause. This is as far as reason
can go. Huxley, looking out on the universe with this power, said:
"There is an impassable gulf between anthropomorphism, however refined
and the passionless impersonality underlying the thin veil of phenomena.
I can not see one tittle of evidence that the great unknown stands to us
in the light of a Father." Nor could he. Religious truth is conditioned
in a way in which the apprehension of physical truth is not. There must
be a certain condition of the heart, conscience, and will to see the
truth of the Godhead of Christ. One may resist this evidence.[2] Only a
living Christian is competent to look at the subject--"unto you it is
given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God." In physics "nothing
is needed but open eyes and a sound understanding."[3] Moral character
has nothing to do with it, except as vice may affect vision and
deteriorate the judgment. But in a soul's relation to the Christian
religion, the ethical element is that which is fundamental. "The pure in
heart shall see God." The foul soul has no vision for the eternal
purities. In the days of idolatry "there was no open vision." So in the
heart of sin there is no light of spiritual truth. The higher verities
appear fully founded to the Christian consciousness only.
[Footnote 2: Cf. Denney.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Denney.]
[Sidenote: Natural Ethical Canon.]
Yet, let us remember that below this Christian consciousness lie the
substrata of reason and ethical canon common to all men. Religious truth
rests on these in its first revelations. Above the first and simplest
revelation, truth rests on Christian experience as to those matters for
which reason and natural ethical canon are insufficient.
[Sidenote: General Calm of Methodist Episcopal Church.]
[Sidenote: Wesley's Advanced Views.]
This having been the teaching of the Methodist Episcopal Church from the
beginning, she has been little disturbed by the critical school. While
holding that the Bible is the sole rule of faith, she has not committed
herself to any one theory of inspiration. She has not believed the
Scriptures because they are written, but, being written, she has found
them true. She has believed in the supernatural power of the Gospel
because in her sight its leaven has wrought in the individual and in
society what it claims for itself. John Wesley believed that there were
God-breathed teachings outside of the Bible. He believed this because of
his feeling that the Divine Fatherhood must have spoken to other than
His Jewish children. Inheriting from our founder these thoughts, we have
kept a high degree of calm in these later days of inquiry and doubt.
[Sidenote: Wide Range of Unbelief.]
[Sidenote: Natural Immortality.]
[Sidenote: Reward and Punishments.]
We have already admitted that the present tendency to unbelief has wider
range and fresher foundations than our fathers knew. The belief in the
natural immortality of the human soul whether of Platonic or Christian
origin is shaken to an extent not known in a century. The doubts of
Huxley, the denials of H�ckel had a purely scientific basis. The
suspension of consciousness by sleep, by accident, by drugs, the decay
of mind by old age and by disease are freely put forth as proofs that
mind can not exist without the mechanism which supports and manifests
it. If this last be true a doctrine fundamental to Christianity must be
abandoned. The doctrine of immortality through Christ does not meet the
new objections. The scheme of redemption and the doctrine of future
rewards and punishments are involved in the fate of the doctrine of
natural immortality. We have thus shadows of doubt thrown upon two great
doctrines, the virgin birth of Christ and natural immortality. The
miracles, Resurrection, and Ascension must be added to the shadowed
list.
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