An illuminating article has recently appeared in The Twentieth Century on the attitudes and values of university students in America. The article is entitled “Sex, Success and Sympathy” (Feb. 1957, pp. 116ff.). It is written by an English university lecturer, Malcolm Bradbury, who was on an exchange lectureship in the United States. He says that American university students are desperately anxious to abide by the values of their social group, to do the right thing, to conform to social patterns, and to achieve future success. Most students, in this connection, think that religion is a “good thing”; they think that it gives a person poise and self-assurance; that it enables a person to become adjusted—what is generally described as “a well-rounded personality.” One American freshman says: “Religious qualities and high moral character are essential to success.” The implication is that it pays to be good. Religion is a good business investment. Another student says: “The warmth derived from spiritual satisfaction is a prime requisite in success. Religion and business serve one another.”

It is worth noting the reasons advanced for the practice of religion. It is not that religion is true; it is simply that religion makes you feel good. One student speaks of the importance of feeling contented, and the business value of plentiful smiling; and he says: “In one of Dale Carnegie’s books he gives six ways to make people like you. One thing he stressed was a ready smile. It not only makes you feel better, but helps your appearance.” Now the question is: Is religion simply a matter of self-interest, a technique of self-improvement, a road to success? Is it true to say (as one student does say): “Jesus Christ was the greatest success of all time”?

Using God For Our Ends

Jesus—in the days of his earthly ministry—rebuked the insincerity of Jews who sought him not because he was the truth but because their bellies were filled (John 6:25). We are often guilty of the same sin. We do the right thing for the wrong reason; we seek God, not for his own sake, but for our own. We forget that God cannot be exploited; he may only be worshiped. When we seek to use him as an instrument of our wills, for our own selfish purposes, we are guilty of the blasphemy of turning the Creator into a creature, and we thereby invite his judgment upon our insipid insincerities.

We are all exposed to this temptation. It is specious and insidious. Again and again we are urged to proclaim the Christian faith in Asia and Africa: it is, we are told, our only defense against the ongoing march of communism. According to Dr. Frank Buchman: “We need to find an ideology that is big enough and complete enough to outmarch any of the other great ideologies.… Today we see three ideologies battling for control. There is fascism, and communism, and then there is that great other ideology which is the centre of Christian democracy—Moral Re-Armament” (Remaking the World, Washington, D. C., 1947, p. 167). But Christianity must be proclaimed, not for its consequences, but for itself; not because it pays, but because it is true. We dare not treat Christianity as a cement for Western democracy; as a means towards an end. We must proclaim Christianity for itself alone (cf. Sydney Cave: “The Christian message is not to be commended because it meets … the needs of modern man. Were it merely useful, it would soon cease to be of use. It demands attention not because it may be helpful, but because it is true, and it speaks not of comfort only but of judgment” [The Christian Way, London, 1949, p. 22]).

Again, in the personal realm as in the political, there is often the same crude appeal to self-interest: such as, “Come to church, and cure your stomach ulcer.” Of course, it is true that the person who comes to church is less likely to suffer from stomach ulcers than the person who absents himself; of course, it is true that the service of God gives serenity of mind, a feeling of tranquility, a sense of inner peace. But this is not the motive which should inspire our worship.

Jesus was well aware that men would be tempted to seek him for the wrong reasons. That is why he refused to win the allegiance of men by any appeal other than the appeal of love. In the wilderness he refused the temptation of the Evil One to win men by the offer of bread, or the display of miracles, or the power of the sword. Again, after the feeding of the five thousand, when the crowd attempted to take him by force to make him a king, he immediately withdrew himself. He was aware of the material and economic considerations which moved them; he understood only too well the secret and hidden desires of their hearts. He refused to be a party to their selfish purposes.

Jesus steadfastly refused to satisfy the idle curiosity of men or to become a party to their private ends. On the Cross he was urged to prove his claims by exercising his divine power. “If thou be the Son of God come down from the cross.” They mocked him: “He saved others; himself he cannot save” (Matt. 27:40 ff.). Their taunts were unheeded: Jesus would win men by nothing save his Cross: and he would offer to men nothing save a cross. “If any man will come after me,” he said, “let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).

Searchlight On Motives

What are our motives for professing Christianity? Are they selfish and prudential? How despicable to serve God for gain; to seek him for personal profit; to pursue him for rewards; to treat the Sovereign Lord of the universe, the Creator of heaven and earth, as a magic charm or a lucky mascot!

The only adequate reason for the service of God is gratitude. We are debtors to God. We owe him an infinite debt of gratitude: a debt we can never pay. Jesus died for us! He endured buffeting and spitting, scourging and torture, excruciating agony and lingering death; and the recollection of this fact should move us to grateful and adoring love.

The central fact of the Christian faith is to be found in the Cross. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation”—the atonement—“for our sins” (1 John 4:10). God incarnate—a naked figure upon the gallows—that is the measure of God’s self-giving love. The only adequate response to such a love is an answering love. That is why the Apostle John exclaims: “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

In the Nuremburg War-Crime Trials, a witness appeared who had lived for some time in a Jewish cemetery in Wilna, Poland. He had miraculously escaped from the gas chamber; the cemetery was the only place in which he could hide in safety. There were also others hiding there for safety. One day, in a grave nearby, a woman gave birth to an infant boy. The old Jewish grave digger, aged 80 years, assisted at the birth. When the newborn baby uttered his first cry, the devout old grave digger said, “Good God, hast thou finally sent the Messiah to us? For who else than the Messiah himself can be born in a grave?” But after three days the witness said that he saw the baby sucking his mother’s tears because she had no milk for the child (quoted from Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, London, 1949, p. 165).

It is a story of profound poignancy, of moving emotional power. And yet we forget that the Son of God—the Messiah himself—was born in an animal’s feeding trough, in the stench of an Eastern stable, and that he died in loneliness and dereliction on a cross, having drunk to the bitter dregs the cup of human tears. The prophet Isaiah states the truth in immortal words:

He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him.… He was oppressed, yet when he was afflicted he opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away … they made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth (Isa. 53:5–9).

The remembrance of this fact should humble our pride and subdue our selfishness. It should move us to penitence. It was our sins which nailed him to the Cross; it was in our place that he bore the penalty. And it is the recollection of this fact—this fact above everything else—that should evoke our gratitude and win our love and inspire our service.

My God, I love Thee; not because

I hope for heaven thereby,

Nor yet because who love Thee not

Are lost eternally.

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me

Upon the Cross embrace;

For me didst bear the nails, and spear,

And manifold disgrace.

And griefs and torments numberless,

And sweat and agony;

Yea, death itself; and all for me

Who was Thine enemy.

Then why, O Blessed Jesus Christ,

Should I not love Thee well?

Not for the sake of winning heaven,

Nor of escaping hell;

Not from the hope of gaining aught,

Not seeking a reward;

But as Thyself hast loved me,

O ever-loving Lord.

So would I love Thee, dearest Lord,

And in Thy praise will sing;

Solely because Thou art my God,

And my most loving King.

(Translated by Caswall from a 17th century Latin hymn.)

S. Barton Babbage is Principal of Ridley College and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia. Previously he was Dean of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney. Among his published works are Puritanism and Richard Bancroft and Man in Nature and Grace. His sermons appear in several important compilations. Periodically he contributes an essay to this magazine’s “Review of Current Religious Thought.”

The renewal of the crisis over school integration in the South raises issues which go to the heart of the relations between the Gospel, the Church and the world. The Christian commitment to brotherhood and love is as much at stake as the central idea of democracy—the dignity of the individual.

The crisis makes us ask again some ancient questions. What is the role of the Church of Christ in a democratic society? If it be granted that the Gospel requires us to seek to have its truth applied to the social situation, are we to declare principles only, or programs for action? In any case, is it the organized church or individual Christians acting in their capacity as citizens who must bear this witness?

Such questions as these lie subordinate to another one whose significance the worldling often fails to see. It is this: can Christians speak or act unlovingly to gain the ends of brotherhood and love? Dare we compromise the means to reach the goals? Surely, our answer here is no.

The Slavery Crisis

All these issues resemble closely those which the slavery crisis raised among evangelical Christians a hundred years ago. Then, as now, an institution of long social and legal standing came to seem contrary to both God’s law and democratic principle. Then, as now, churchmen debated whether the Christian witness against social evil was the task of the regenerate citizen or the believing community. The unity of both church and nation seem to be at stake. And the same law of love which condemned the Negro’s bondage held Christian men back from direct action to strike away his chains.

The tensions of that crisis of long ago found resolution at last in the outbreak of a tragic civil war. In time, antislavery churchmen who had not wanted nor expected war came to see the bloody conflict as a work of divine judgment upon both North and South. Julia Ward Howe set this thought to unforgettable words and music in her famous “battle hymn.” An awakened generation had learned at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville a new conception of the Coming of the Lord. The wine of liberty was to flow blood-red from the sword of his wrath. Likewise Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural, reminded a sorrowing nation that the judgments of the Lord were true and righteous altogether.

What are evangelical Christians to do in the social crisis of our times, therefore, when they remember the involvement of their spiritual forbears—Charles G. Finney, William E. Boardman, Dwight L. Moody, and Gilbert Haven—with the conflict of that age?

The question comes with particular force when we realize that today’s trouble arises from an evil expressly forbidden in God’s Word, whereas slavery itself is not so condemned. The antislavery preachers had to establish the point that the Bible enjoined upon both masters and servants such commitment to personal respect, to brotherhood and mutual acceptance in the fellowship of the Gospel, as to make slavery in the long course of Christian history unthinkable.

How, then, can today’s Bible-believing Christian justify any permanent status for the racial injustices of our time? The essence of discrimination is a rejection of persons and a violence to the spirits of men which Christ and the Apostles clearly condemned. The Sermon on the Mount is very explicit at this point. Murder you have been taught to abhor, Jesus said. “But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca [of which a free translation might read, ‘you nigger’], shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”

Ought we not to ask ourselves in the light of these words what happens to the spirit of a sensitive Negro youth when he sees the sign “white only” over the cleaner drinking fountain, the more decent rest room, the more respectable tourist court and restaurant? Can we escape responsibility for the wounding of minds and hearts which goes on every day when bright young Negro couples try to escape the crowded colored districts of New York, Chicago and Detroit?

Is not the murder of the spirits of men which goes on every day, in my native Southland as well as in the North, a more literal contradition of the Word of God than chattel slavery ever was?

To say this does not of course alter very much the roots of emotion and feeling which lie beneath every southerner’s struggle with his conscience on this issue. This is especially true for someone reared among the small-farmer class of southern whites. Nor does seeing the reality of the evil resolve our dilemma concerning what we may do about it.

However, it is good to ask ourselves what courses of action or expression evangelical Christians, North and South, might follow in this crisis.

Courses Of Action

Let us begin with first things. In whatever we say or do, we dare not violate the spirit of love and brotherhood into whose rich enjoyment we wish the Negro to be brought. The Kingdom of love cannot be enlarged through deeds of violence. For this great lesson’s recent underlining we must be grateful to the colored population of Montgomery, Alabama.

A second mutual resolve seems open to us, namely, that we shall not allow ourselves to become partners in a conspiracy of silence. The editor of The Arkansas Gazette has said recently that the conflicts over the Supreme Court decision on school integration have turned the clock back 50 years, and undermined completely the freedom of “moderate” southerners to speak on this issue. If this be so, Christian men can have no business bowing to it. When in the history of Christ’s church have men of piety had license to be silent in the face of evil?

There are ways in which we can speak lovingly. Agitation may not be the Christian’s task, but intercession and witness ever are. In our public prayers, frequently in our sermons, in our Sunday School classes, and in the things we write and publish, we can find quiet but effective ways to say again and again that there is unfinished business at hand, that a great evil in our midst is not yet forsaken.

We must speak. Often enough for our hearers not to forget our concern and their duty. Lovingly enough for the world not to forget the crying compassion of a crucified Lord.

Absolutizing A Program

Yet a third common stand invites us. Ought we not to forswear putting the Church of Christ in bondage to a particular program of reform? Confronted with the mystery of God’s will and man’s perverseness, can we presume to declare in Christ’s name a specific solution to a social problem?

We can know the principles upon which the right answer may be based. We can believe that the Gospel must judge in truth and love all solutions which fall short of those principles. As individuals, we can and must seek and support practical programs which we believe will accomplish ours and the Saviour’s ends. But the task of the Christian community is not agitation. We are commissioned to reach men’s hearts with a saving gospel, and to prepare them for a better world.

The citizens of this country, and especially of the southern part, are the ones who must find the way to real progress toward a Christian and a democratic brotherhood. If they fail, and if the evangelical Christians within the citizen body contribute to that failure, the judgments of the Lord will again turn out to be true and righteous altogether. In any case, the Church itself must not seek to force a program of reconciliation on unwilling men nor assume the moral responsibility which lies upon the nation as a whole.

The Christian Fellowship

One final suggestion to believing Christians seems worthwhile here. The regulation of the inner life and fellowship of the Church is indeed the clear responsibility of the Christian community. The New Testament speaks very plainly about it, particularly on the point of respect of persons. Ought we not, then, prayerfully to consider the segregated condition of the Church in the light of the Scriptures and a burning world? If we can not transcend it now must we not set our course toward a point where we can?

The writer is aware of the thousand and one problems which consideration of this problem calls up. Sometimes, it is true, the integration of congregations has turned out to be a way in which a company of Negro Christians, however unintentionally, have secured a building for their use at no cost to themselves. Moreover, as many will readily remember, the separated church was one of the chief desires of the enslaved Negroes, and one of their first and most permanent achievements after emancipation.

But the fact is that today the pressure to keep the church officially segregated is coming from the white people. In all too many cases, this pressure is part of the widespread campaign to prevent desegregation of the public schools. Wherever churches have gone further and promised the use of their buildings for schools organized solely to resist integration, they have brought shame to their fellow Christians.

It is no doubt true that only a small minority of Negroes actually wish to worship with other than their friends and fellows. However, the one who feels most keenly the rejection of closed pews, the one who senses when he cannot see the sign “white only” over the church doors, is the very person who most deeply needs the compassionate love of his white friends. The Negro preacher in his town may not be able to reach him at all, because of the wounds of conflict over race.

There was no segregated church in the first century. There was no segregated church in pre-Civil War America. Dare we commit ourselves for the long run now to an organization of church fellowship which requires men to be excluded from association with others in the house of God because of their skin?

What makes all these questions absorbing is their portent for the fate of both Christianity and democracy in the world beyond our borders. A hundred years ago, evangelical leaders believed that our nation’s destiny was to nurture both Christianity and liberty for the benefit of the whole world. Then, as now, patriotism and piety flourished side by side. But its thrust was outward, rather than inward. The modern missionary movement was borne forward on its strength.

Again, today, human destiny hangs largely on the willingness and ability of America to remain a beacon of faith and liberty in a world of lawlessness and totalitarianism. Let judgment begin at the house of God. And the day may come, if Christ our Lord tarries, when the power of an awakened Christian conscience will stir the conscience of the nation and the world.

And so may we in that day see our children praying, with greater assurance than we now have, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.”

Timothy L. Smith is the author of Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, which won the Frank S. Brewer Prize for 1955 from the American Society of Church History. A graduate of the University of Virginia, he received the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard. A minister in the Church of the Nazarene, he is currently serving as chairman of the history department at East Texas State College.

Recently Dr. Yigael Yadin of Jerusalem gave a lecture in London on the subject of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Epistle to the Hebrews (now published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem). In it he propounds in a stimulating manner the view that the epistle to the Hebrews was written for the express purpose of counteracting some of the distinctive doctrines of the Dead Sea Scrolls Sect. To begin with, he draws attention to the fact that hitherto there has been much confusion among New Testament scholars as to the identity of those to whom this epistle was addressed. Some have held firmly that it was intended for Gentile Christians; others, no less firmly, that it was intended for Jewish Christians; others again that it was addressed neither to Gentile nor to Jewish Christians, but simply to Christians as such. Dr. Yadin attributes this confusion to “the fact that the only type of Judaism of which we have had any thorough knowledge up till now was the so-called normative Judaism,” which would help to explain the verdict of a scholar of the standing of James Moffatt that the situation which called forth the epistle to the Hebrews “had nothing to do with any movement in contemporary Judaism.”

In the opinion of Dr. Yadin, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has opened up an entirely new perspective, which has led him to the conclusion that those to whom the epistle to the Hebrews was addressed “must have been a group of Jews originally belonging to the DSS Sect who were converted to Christianity, carrying with them some previous beliefs.” The epistle to the Hebrews, Dr. Yadin points out, is concerned to show the superiority of Jesus (1) over the prophets, (2) over the angels, (3) over Moses, and (4) over Aaron. Thus the epistle opens by affirming that God, who of old spoke by the prophets, has spoken by a Son “in these days at the end,” thereby indicating that no further prophet is to be expected. The DSS Sect, however, looked for the coming of an eschatological prophet who would be a personage quite distinct and separate from any Messianic figure. This expectation was linked with the well-known promise of God to Moses that he would raise up for the people a prophet like unto him (Deut. 18:18).

The New Testament, so far from dissociating this figure from the Messiah, identifies him with Christ (cf. Act. 3:22 ff), and the writer of Hebrews is careful to display the superiority of Jesus to Moses by speaking of Him as “the Mediator of a new covenant” (9:15; 12:24) which is also “a better covenant,” implying therefore that His is a more excellent ministry than that of Moses (8:6 ff.).

In their Messianic doctrine the Sect expected the advent of two Messiahs—a lay or royal Messiah and a priestly Messiah of the house of Aaron. To the angels, however, they assigned a role and status so exalted that “the Angel of Light (that is, the Archangel Michael) with his heavenly subordinates is, in addition to his decisive eschatological functions, to have control over the world to come, far above the control which might be exercised by both the human Messiahs.” But the author of Hebrews reminds his readers that to no angel did God ever say, “Thou art My son; today I have become thy Father” (1:5), and that the world to come, of which he is speaking, has not been placed by God under the control of angels (2:5).

Of the two Messiahs expected by the Sect, the priestly is to be superior to the royal Messiah and will reinstitute the sacrificial ritual of the Mosaic dispensation. In contrast to such teaching, the epistle to the Hebrews explains at length and with great care that the one and only eschatological High Priest is Christ, that his priesthood is not of the order of Aaron (or Levi) but of the order of Melchizedek, to which the former has now given place, and that his sacrifice of himself was offered once for all, so that there can now be no further sacrifice or succession of sacrifices as was previously the case under the Levitical priesthood.

As Dr. Yadin observes, Hebrews is “full of quotations and references to Pentateuch material, mainly in connection with the sojourn in the wilderness and the Tabernacle”; and this he believes is best explained in the light of the literature of the Sect, which would seem to indicate that it “organized itself in as exact as possible a replica of the life of the tribes of Israel in the wilderness,” its members even calling themselves the “Exiles of the Wilderness.” It is suggested that “there could be no stronger appeal to the hearts and minds of people descending from the DSS Sect than in those metaphors which are abundant and characteristic in Hebrews.”

Dr. Yadin’s thesis is certainly one of the most suggestive and constructive so far to have emerged from the welter of scholarship and theorizing with which the Dead Sea Scrolls have become surrounded, and it deserves to be taken into serious account. We can do little more than draw attention to the main points. The more technical questions involved will receive critical consideration in a suitable publication. Indeed, Dr. Yadin, with commendable humility, expresses it as his “sincere hope that more competent students in the field of New Testament studies will either refute (his) suggestion or, if they agree to it—wholly or partially—will submit more data.”

Meanwhile, though some of his interpretations are likely to be disputed, we are indebted to him for putting forward a thoughtful theory which is in many ways attractive. It is a natural temptation for every father of a theory to overwork it by attempting to explain too much, and it may be felt that Dr. Yadin has not entirely avoided this danger. For example, would it not be true to say that what the author of Hebrews writes concerning the Mosaic dispensation, and the annulment of the Levitical system of priesthood and sacrifice in view of the once-for-all perfection of Christ, must have been full of significance to all converts from Judaism, whether or not they had previously been associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls Sect—and even more so if the epistle was written after the conclusion of the 40 years which intervened between the event of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension and the destruction of Jerusalem with its temple and sacrifices in 70 A.D.

Dr. Yadin’s hypothesis is perhaps most illuminating at the point where it is related to the eschatological role assigned by the Sect to the angels, for there can be no doubt that one of the aims of the epistle was to combat a doctrine of angels which currently threatened the supreme position of Christ as the unique Son of God. The author of the epistle may well have had in mind the necessity for counteracting this and other distinctive teachings of the Sect, while his over-all purpose was more general, namely, to demonstrate how the old dispensation had been consummated in the new age inaugurated by Christ, and superseded by it.

Main Line Protestantism

The Church Faces the Isms, Arnold B. Rhodes, editor, (Abingdon Press, 1958, 304 pp. $4.50) is reviewed by Paul Woolley, professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.

The authors of this book are members of the faculty of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. The book is based upon a course given there, and much of the information is most valuable. But in spite of a full explanation of the title (Unit II), the title is unfortunate. One cannot get away from the negative effect of applying the term “ism” to a set of ideas. The movements considered herein are classified in 12 broad units and are even more numerous in actuality. They range from “Perfectionism” to “Secularism,” from “Roman Catholicism” to “Ecumenism.” The bias is in favor of what the book calls “main line Protestantism.”

In spite of a great many worthwhile analyses, the authors have, too often, failed to understand the viewpoints with which they are not sympathetic. A preliminary indication of this is seen in the bibliographies. While books directly opposing the point of view of a chapter are not always excluded, they are not adequately included. The bibliography on ecumenism lists no book in opposition from either the liberal or the conservative viewpoint. The list on Communism has 17 items, not one of which represents the communist position.

One of the less helpful chapters is “Dispensationalism.” The statement of its teachings which opens the chapter is misleading because its emphasis is wrong, and because its natural interpretation would be partially repudiated by dispensationalists themselves. At one point Scofield is completely misinterpreted (p. 106). The chapter on “Fundamentalism” is good, and a great deal is said in small compass. The author’s wide-eyed innocence about Ivy Lee puts one on guard, however, and the statement about J. Gresham Machen is a caricature. No indication is given anywhere that the trouble at Princeton was initiated by the persons opposed to Machen. Contrary to this chapter, the Auburn Affirmation held that the inerrancy of the Scriptures, one of the “five points” of Fundamentalism, actually “impairs” the “supreme authority” of the Holy Scriptures and furthermore “weakens testimony of the church.” The intention of this book is good, and at places it is successful. It remains true, however, that one can never effectively promote the truth unless one is fair to the opposition. This volume has not attained that goal.

PAUL WOOLLEY

Dispensationalism

Christ’s Kingdom and Coming, by Jesse Wilson Hodges (Eerdmans, 1957, 233 pp., $3.00) is reviewed by Loraine Boettner, author of “The Millennium.”

This is an excellent book. The author has performed a real service in clarifying many of the issues prominent in the present day discussion of eschatology. A subtitle, An Analysis of Dispensationalism, brings out the primary purpose of the book. The distinction between historic premillennialism and dispensationalism is clearly drawn, and the latter is shown to be a comparatively new approach to Bible interpretation. In fact dispensationalism is shown to have had its rise in the Brethren organization in Ireland and England about 1825 and to have been brought to this country by John N. Darby about 1850. Dr. Hodges writes from the viewpoint of amillennialism, although that view is not stressed.

According to dispensationalists Christ came into the world for the purpose of re-establishing the Davidic Kingdom with himself as King and with the Jews in a position of authority over the other nations. But since the Jews rejected that Kingdom, its establishment is said to have been postponed until the Second Coming. In the meantime the Church was established as an interim agency primarily as a mission to the Gentiles, and the Holy Spirit was given in order to make that mission successful. At the Second Coming the Church and the Holy Spirit will be withdrawn simultaneously, the Jews will accept Christ as their King, and the Kingdom will then be established with overwhelming power. In order that the dispensational position may be presented fairly and accurately, numerous quotations are made from the writings of representative dispensationalists such as Scofield, Gaebelein, Chafer, Gray and Ironside.

The author undertakes to show that the dispensational interpretation is contrary to Christ’s statement, “My kingdom is not of this world,” that the Kingdom is consistently set forth in Scripture not as earthly and political but as redemptive and spiritual and as founded on justice and righteousness, and that the Church is not a temporary nonessential phase of the Kingdom but rather the precise development to which the Old Testament economy looked forward. Historic premillennialists have visualized a thousand year reign of Christ with the saints before the end of the world, but they have not believed many of the things which modern dispensationalists have worked into the picture, such as, for example, that this reign is to be Jewish, political and legalistic, and that the Church is to be lifted from the earth completely before the millennial reign begins. “The great weakness of the dispensational view,” says Dr. Hodges, “is that it interprets the kingdom of God in terms of the Jewish state instead of in terms of the people of faith, the true Israel” (p. 33). Probably no other book since Dr. Allis’ Prophecy and the Church has presented such a thorough and readable and, to this reviewer, convincing treatment of the dispensational problem as is set forth in this volume.

It is further shown that the Kingdom promised to Abraham was spiritual at heart rather than political, that Christ, rather than the Jewish people, is the true seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:16), and that it was through him that the blessing from Abraham was to flow out to all the world. “The true children of Abraham are not his natural descendants but his faith line. These are the children, the heirs of the covenant promises, and they are the only ones who really count with God” (p. 79). The covenant with Abraham was not unconditional, but was dependent on obedience; and it related primarily to spiritual, not material blessings. And in harmony with this the Gospel that Christ preached was the Gospel of personal salvation from sin, a spiritual Gospel with no political overtones whatever.

Dr. Hodges is a Southern Baptist minister. At present he is superintendent of missions for the First Baptist Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

LORAINE BOETTNER

Doctrine Of Man

Man in Nature and Grace, by Stuart Barton Babbage (Eerdmans, 1957, 115 pp., $1.50) is reviewed by Heinrich P. Eiler, minister of the United Presbyterian Church, Bloomington, Indiana.

The author of this contribution to the recently begun Pathway Books serves as the Dean of Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia, largest of the Anglican seminaries in that dominion. This position, in addition to the work under review, speaks highly regarding the author’s knowledge of and ability to discuss theological issues confronting the modern Christian.

A quotation in the preface introduces the reader to the subject at hand: “We are the first epoch in which man has become fully and thoroughly problematic to himself; in which he no longer knows what he is essentially, but at the same time knows that he does not know.” Babbage then proceeds to lay down the foundation for the book in his first chapter in which he outlines the biblical doctrine of man. In its light, he then discusses man as he is found in classical thought, Christian thought, contemporary political theory, modern existentialism, and English literature. Before concluding in a brief epilogue, the author treats the subject of man and death.

The biblical view of man is that he is a “psychophysical unity: both a body and a soul, completely and simultaneously, in indestructible order.” The image of God in man is conceived to be basically one of man’s relationship to God, “a saving dynamic relationship of faith.” Sin is, therefore, defiant, arrogant, self-willed rebellion against God and man’s proper relationship to him. Death, a simple biological event, has been given the added dimension of being the divinely instituted penalty for sin. “The saving work of reconciliation effected by Jesus Christ” is the only deliverance from sin’s bondage and penalty. Apart from the biblical doctrine of man, there is no adequate solution to the riddle of man’s humanity. “All other attempts … are only fragments of meaning, broken and distorted, parts of the whole, which cannot be fitted together again because they are distorted.” The remainder of the book attempts to illustrate the truth of this thesis.

The classical view of man, regardless of form, is accused of treating man too abstractly, analytically, and philosophically. Its essential dualism is pointed out. In such an approach, evil becomes intellectualized. The development of Christian thought regarding man is rapidly scanned. It is seen basically as a struggle between the biblical and classical views. “To preserve the biblical doctrine of man, and therefore the doctrine of grace, entire and whole” was the concern and contribution of Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and Pascal. Political theory, whether theological or non-theological in expression, is correctly understood as resting upon an implicit anthropology. Views such as those of Hobbes, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hitler, and Marx are touched upon. Babbage contends that any serious study of the anthropologies of recent political theories will lead one to the conclusion that “the horrors of twentieth century totalitarianism … are a reminder of the appalling consequences which result from a repudiation of the Christian doctrine of man.” The survey of existentialism notes its beginning in the rejection of a traditional distinction between man’s “essence” and “existence” by Nietzsche. Kierkegaard is, obviously, touched upon and various present day views summarized. This movement is seen as reminding “us that there are concrete problems of primary importance” “concerning the facts of alienation, anxiety, sin and death in human existence” “which are not discussed by analytic science … and philosophy.” The treatment of man as found in English literature is analyzed, using Nicholson’s categories of liberal man (Pelagian), natural man (brute), and imperfect man. Representatives of each are discussed well. The conclusion of the chapter comes in a quotation from Pascal that man has been told either of the angelic aspect of his nature or of the brutish aspect or he has been told about neither. Pascal’s answer is that man must be told both. The chapter on death and man’s adjustments to it merits reading and thought. The book, then, closes with the thought that it is a matter of utmost importance that the biblical doctrine of man be “rehabilitated and re-established.”

Babbage is to be commended for his extensive and excellent footnoting. If such a book is to stimulate and aid further study, such a mechanic is indispensable. The summaries and criticisms are usually of quality and fairness. It is interesting to note that the chapter on existentialism is lacking the usual critical analysis. The book, due to its purpose, is a survey and not a full treatment of a man as he is treated in the various areas of thought under consideration. Such may tend occasionally to generalization but Babbage has done well in this respect. Some of the transitions are not as clear as they could be which will slow down the reader unnecessarily. The design of Pathway Books is “to help keep teachers, students, preachers, and laymen informed on important subjects and crucial problems.” This book will not fail in this respect. The subject is both important and crucial and the treatment well done.

HEINRICH B. EILER

Pithy Insights

What Jesus Really Taught, by Clarence B. Macartney (Abingdon Press, 1958, 176 pp., $2.50) is reviewed by Paul R. Pulliam, minister of the First United Presbyterian Church, Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Macartney’s ability to marshal pertinent illustrations and to summarize biblical data in pithy insights make this book typical of his many books of sermons. The 15 chapters embrace Jesus’ teaching on almost every subject of Christian doctrine and practice. Here are some samples: What Jesus taught about God, himself, the Holy Spirit, man, money, marriage, death, the second advent, and heaven. To cover this ground in a brief 176 pages is possible because Macartney states only his own convictions (conservative) on each topic in succinct language. His method is to collect all material in the Gospels either from the life or teaching of Jesus pertinent to each topic, and to show by single sentence and paragraph expositions its meaning. This method has one weakness; there are pages that read almost like an entry in a Bible dictionary. Particularly good is his chapter on the Sabbath.

PAUL R. PULLIAM

Solid Preaching

The Reformed Pulpit (Vol. 1, Society for Reformed Publications, Grand Rapids, 1956, 145 pp., $2.00), is reviewed by Horace L. Fenton, Jr., associate general director of the Latin America Mission.

The Reformed Church has always stressed the importance of preaching, and these fourteen sermons by ministers of the Reformed Church of America are evidence of the fact that such a wholesome stress continues to this day.

As might be expected, the sermons differ considerably in technique, and even in quality. But the significant thing here is not the variations in these respects, but the consistently strong doctrinal position maintained and the evangelical zeal characteristic of all of them. These men preach on basic themes of sin and righteousness and judgment, and they do it with a passion. It is a noteworthy thing when a denomiation in our day can summon such examples of preaching as these.

In a day of much pulpit weakness in many denominations, it is good to be reminded by this book that there are still not a few faithful ministers of the Word who preach Christ, and in doing so preach to the needs of their people. The hungry sheep will not look up in vain when they receive this kind of preaching. We recommend this book.

HORACE L. FENTON, JR.

AMOS

During the eighth century B. C. there were four great prophets ministering unto the people of God. Two of these, Micah and Isaiah, conducted their ministry in the south, preaching to Judah, and two, Amos and Hosea, carried on their work in the north, bringing God’s Word to the northern tribes. Amos was from the town of Tekoa, about five miles to the southeast of Bethlehem. By occupation he was a herdsman, or sheepraiser, and also a dresser of sycamore trees (cf. Amos 7:14). While tending his sheep, the Lord called him into the prophetic ministry. Strangely, he was not to prophesy to Judah, but rather to the northern tribes of Israel, whom the Lord identifies as “my people Israel.”

It is difficult to date the prophecy with precision. Amos says that he prophesied two years before the earthquake during the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash. It was a period of material prosperity, and the nation was confident that no evil or harm could befall it. At the same time there was a lack of justice in the land, and a stem prophet was needed, who would not only point out the sins of the nation, but would also make clear that a day of judgment and a time of reckoning were coming. Such a man was found in the shepherd of Tekoa.

Analysis Of The Prophecy

The following will serve as a brief analysis of Amos’ prophecy, and should help the reader in its study:

1:1—Superscription of the prophecy.

1:2–2:16—Prophecies against the cities and nations, culminating in a message directed against Judah herself.

3:1–15—The Lord sets forth the quarrel which he had with his people.

4:1–13—Israel has been the object of previous chastisements, yet she has not returned to the Lord.

5:1–6:14—A lamentation over the tragic condition of Israel.

7:1–9:15—Five visions of the coming judgment.

Content Of The Prophecy

Amos 1:2 mentions the theme of the entire prophecy. The Lord will speak forth in judgment, and the result of his uttering his voice will be that there will be devastation in Israel. It should be noted that in this verse there is implied a rebuke to the divided state of the kingdom. The Lord speaks from Zion, the capital of Judah; and in this fact it is shown that the Lord still dwells in Judah, and that the Temple is the place where men are to worship him. The divided condition of the nation is something that ought not to be.

In the following prophecies, 1:2–2:16, Amos uses a particular framework for each of the messages of this section, and this adds a certain force and strength to what he has to say. First he utters the statement, “For three transgressions, yea, for four, I will not turn away.” This phrase simply means that there are transgressions, many of them, and that they are not to go unpunished. The form of expression is one that was also employed in ancient times even outside the Bible.

Amos next announces the sin which characterizes the people under discussion and then the judgment that is to follow. He begins with Damascus, the capital of Syria, which had often been an enemy of Israel. There is psychological wisdom in the prophet’s approach. The Israelites would gladly have listened while the prophet denounced the people who had often been their enemy. They would have heard what judgment was to be meted out to such a people, and they would also have agreed to the justice of the punishment.

Damascus had engaged in cruelty, the result of which was that the Lord would take action, sending fire against the house of Hazael, and removing the ruler from the throne. From Damascus Amos turns his attention to Philistia, thence to Phoenicis, then Edom, Ammon and Moab. One can well imagine the Israelites listening with rapt attention as the prophet condemns one after another of the enemies. Then comes Judah. Would Amos dare to turn to Israel? He does, and proceeds to condemn her for her lack of justice, and for her unfair treatment of the poor. He closes this section of his message, after reviewing the goodness that God has shown to Israel, with an announcement of pending judgment, a judgment from which no man may escape.

In the third chapter the prophet sets forth in somewhat greater detail the quarrel which the Lord has against his people. God has chosen Israel of all the families of the earth to be his own. For that very reason he must punish Israel for her transgressions. Divine election, whether concerning nations or individuals, is always unto holiness. It would seem that there were those in Israel who thought that election gave them license to sin. At least, they felt that because God had chosen them, no evil could come upon them and that, as a consequence, they had nothing to fear.

By a series of examples, however, the Lord speaks through his prophet that he must punish sin wherever it occurs. Two cannot walk together unless they be agreed; no more can God allow sin to go unpunished. There will come a day in which God will smite Israel, and the nation must be apprised of that fact.

That Israel’s continued sin is without excuse is in chapter 4 illustrated. Although the Lord brought chastisement upon the nation in order to bring her to repentance, Israel did not turn unto him. In this section the words, “yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord” occur like a mournful refrain. The doctrine is clearly taught that God is truly the God of providence. It is he alone that controls the rain and the produce of the soil, the blasting and the mildew, the pestilence and the welfare of the cities. He is the God of providence, He is supremely sovereign. As he controls the events of men’s lives, so he leads men unto repentance for their sins.

The section closes with further announcement of coming judgment and also with an appeal to be ready for it. “Thus will I do unto thee,” says the Lord, and in these words he has reference to the exile which he is to bring upon the nation. He has determined to bring the judgment upon the people, and because he has determined to do this, they are commanded to prepare to meet him. It is a gracious command. Such an announcement, of course, reveals the Lord’s goodness and mercy who is not willing that any should perish. Man must prepare himself to meet God, and this passage stresses that doctrine of human responsibility. No false security of trusting in one’s own ability is given here. Rather man must prepare to meet God, as Amos later points out, by repentance for sins and belief in the words which God has spoken. Amos shows himself thus to be a true evangelist, preaching the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.

The central section of the book, chapters 5 and 6, is one of great power. It contains a lament over the true condition of the northern kingdom, a condition brought about by sinfulness. Here there occurs one of the strongest condemnations of mere formalism in religion to be found in the entire Bible. Amos introduces the Lord as speaking (5:21), and the Lord proclaims his utter contempt for mere sacrifice and religious form in itself. The words which the Lord speaks here (namely Amos 5:21 ff.) have often been misunderstood. There was dominant in the earlier years of this century a view maintaining that Amos taught that God had never enjoined sacrifice at all. If God had enjoined sacrifice, so the argument went, then Amos would never have dared to speak as he does here. The conclusion was then drawn that the earlier parts of the Old Testament, wherein the laws of sacrifice are contained, had not yet been written and were to be dated at a period subsequent to that of Amos!

Such a conclusion is erroneous, for it conflicts with plain statements of the Bible, and is based upon a misunderstanding of the prophet’s words. Amos is not condemning sacrifice as such. He is condemning the misuse of sacrifice. The Israelites of his day apparently believed that inasmuch as God had chosen them, brought them out of Egypt, and given to them the land of promise, no evil could overtake them (cf. Amos 9:10). They believed that the nation’s “election” in itself would preserve them from outside evil. Consequently, they lived as they pleased, thinking that as long as they went through the forms of religion, they had nothing to fear. This was hypocrisy, and the prophet vigorously speaks against it. He makes it clear that God does not want sacrifices for their own sake, but rather a righteousness of heart. Thus Amos enunciates the great principle that faith without works is dead; that a religion which consists of form alone is one that God despises. These are the prophet’s words: “Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (Amos 5:23, 24).

In the last section of the prophecy, chapters 7 through 9, there is a series of five visions, having to do with the general theme of the book, namely pending judgment. These were probably visions in the technical sense of the word. The prophet was shown some things in a condition when he could see (with the inner eye) the message which God wished to reveal to him. The vision was not a dream, nor did it consist merely in the prophet’s subjective reflection upon words which God had spoken. Rather, it was something objective to the prophet, a genuine revelation from God. It was the communication of information from God to Amos.

Beginning with verse 11 of chapter 9, the prophet points to the present and sad condition and says that it will not always continue. The time will come when God will build up the booth of David that is fallen. The prophet looks to the future and sees the work of the Messiah, and in the New Testament his words are interpreted by James as the gathering of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God (cf. Acts 15:15 ff.). To Amos it was not given to depict the work of the Messiah in detail. Such was the privilege for his contemporary, Isaiah. Amos was, however, permitted to picture the blessings which the work of the Messiah would introduce, and this he did in words which may well serve as encouragement for missionary endeavor. “In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old; that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the Lord that doeth this” (Amos 9:11, 12). These words are followed by a beautiful description of the Messianic age, and with this the prophecy concludes.

The Significance Of Amos

Although Amos is a short prophecy, and is reckoned as belonging to the minor prophets, it nevertheless is one of the most helpful of the prophetical books. It is a practical work, for it points out sin clearly and exalts at the same time the purity of God. Amos stresses several doctrines, always in need of emphasis. He speaks of God as the truly sovereign one, in control of the forces of nature, and doing what he will. He also shows that God is no respecter of persons. If Israelites sin against him, he will condemn them as readily as other nations.

Amos makes it clear that there is no ground for false hopes. A man who claims to believe in the election of the Lord must live as one who is so elected. And the service which the Lord demands is one which flows from a heart devoted to him. God hates hypocrisy.

It has sometimes been claimed that Amos was a forerunner of the social gospel. That claim, however, misunderstands the situation represented. Amos was a prophet of the Lord, and was revealing the truth of all Scripture that right belief demands right practice. There can never be a divorce between doctrine on the one hand and ethics on the other. True faith will seek to honor and glorify God in every realm of life. And for this very reason is the true believer to be interested also in social problems. He must have a concern for the welfare of people, and he must use his influence to see that justice is provided for all. The prophet cries for justice and announces judgment.

The Literature On Amos

The minister desiring to preach on this prophecy will do well to read the book straight through several times (preferably in Hebrew) until he is well acquainted with its content. A good survey of the book is found in the article, “Amos,” in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Notes found in the commentary of Edward Pusey on the minor prophets (Baker) are useful. So is Keil’s Commentary on the minor prophets (Eerdmans). References to further literature may be found in the above mentioned works.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Professor of Old Testament

Westminster Theological Seminary

“That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.”

—Isaiah 41:20

This was the motto of the thirteenth annual convention of the American Scientific Affiliation, its first of the Sputnik age, held at Iowa State College in Ames, August 26–28.

Describing itself as “a group of Christian scientific men, devoting themselves to the task of reviewing, preparing and distributing information on the authenticity, historicity, and scientific aspects of the Holy Scriptures in order that the faith of many in Jesus Christ may be firmly established,” this evangelical organization pursues its goals not only through national conventions but also by means of local section meetings, book publication, and circulation of a quarterly journal.

ASA membership, up from an initial five in 1941 to more than 700 today, presumes a harmony between correct observations of science and “simple, direct interpretation of the Bible narrative,” inasmuch as Holy Writ and the physical world have the same Author. The scientists confess their faith as to the “inspired origin of the Bible” and “find in it a stimulating, satisfying, and irreplaceable contribution to their scientific picture of the universe.” As they seek to bracket the world of nature evangelically, they are reminded of two perils: “a too-ready acceptance of anything in the name of science and a forcing of scriptural interpretation to fit,” and the other extreme of a “stubborn clinging to some doubtful biblical exegesis which distorts the whole outlook.”

The stated chief function of the ASA is “to survey, study, and to present possible solutions”; and results of a convention are of necessity tentative, the conferees more often being dealt a delineation of the problem areas than rewarded with enduring answers.

Perennially, if not inescapably, the favorite topic of the conventions is evolution with its related subject matter. The 1958 convention was no exception. Consideration of this was delayed only until the afternoon of the first day when a panel discussion took place entitled “What Is a Kind?—the Species Problem.” Dr. J. Frank Cassel, chairman of the Zoology Department at North Dakota Agricultural College, set the mood with his stock reply to inquirers, “Tell me what a species is; I’ll tell you whether a Genesis ‘kind’ could be a species or not.”

Dr. Frank L. Marsh, professor of biology in Emmanuel Missionary College, Berrien Springs, Michigan, gave a paper on “The Genesis Kinds in our Modern World” in which he pointed out that basic types in Genesis, appearing through an act of special fiat creation, are described as “not only being formed each after its specific morphological pattern, but also with a reproductive mechanism which caused each type to produce new individuals like itself.”

In opposition to the doctrine of “extreme fixity,” Professor Marsh sees Genesis as neither excluding “the possibilities of variation within the kinds” nor asserting that “plants and animals were created in their present details and set down in the areas where we find them today.” But Darwin failed to observe that variation “is not without bounds” and is limited to basic type or Genesis kind.

Today’s creationist turns to nature to discover the degree of fixity indicated by Genesis. The existence of gaps between the basic types of organisms, with the discontinuity among the fossils, is one of the great problems of the evolutionist. More faith is required, claims Dr. Marsh, for the belief that “all modern types have evolved gradually from one or more simple blobs of protoplasm” than for the belief in “the theory of special creation.” Fossil evidence supports the Genesis-taught fixity of group characters (not all individual characters). There is no one category of classification today which corresponds to the Genesis “kind.” In different cases the created unit may be species, genus, family, or order.

Wheaton College’s Dr. Russell L. Mixter found himself “more or less” in agreement with Marsh’s conclusions but felt it unwise to think of these as the only possibility. The lack of fossil intergrades is “negative evidence” and with new discoveries “the gaps have been closing.”

Others commented on the fluidity of the definitions of species and Genesis kinds, said to make premature the arguments for their immutability.

General Chairman Walter R. Hearn, Iowa State College chemistry professor and confessedly “a sort of radical wing” of the ASA, asked his fellows whether if new Genesis kinds did arise, would this not simply be the result of God creating by process. He wondered also if the content of Genesis in regard to the kinds could not be reduced to meaning simply that offspring “resemble their parents to a certain degree.” “Theistic evolution is a legitimate concept for a Christian,” even as the spontaneous (natural) origin of life is a “legitimate working hypothesis.” Dr. Hearn also held out the possibility of man’s soul being created by God through an evolutionary process even as the theory concerning his body.

Such sentiments expressed in ASA meetings have caused concern in some quarters, amazement in others. And this division upon certain variations of the evolutionary theme persists in evangelical colleges. While the philosophy of scientific naturalism is of course rejected, the relationship of the evangelical’s God to the idea of evolutionary process is developed concessively or obscurely, some observers argue. The doctrines of sin and redemption are not considered threatened. But warnings are heard concerning assumptions of the finality of prevailing scientific theory and failure to do justice to certain statements in Genesis.

Though such issues loomed traditionally large on the convention agenda, members also found time to consider the following: a scholarly paper on “Frontiers of Space Research” by Dr. Robert M. Page, director of research, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C.; the moral implications of the nuclear fallout problem; a plea for support to agencies striving for world peace; and an endorsement of the proposed World Calendar as not contrary to Scripture.

The ASA is projecting its second volume, for next year’s Darwin centennial, on the theme of Christianity and evolution (the first: Modern Science and Christian Faith, Wheaton, Illinois, 1950).

Sadly neglected by this able group of scientists and completely overshadowed by biological and evolutionary disputations, is the much-needed formulation of a Christian philosophy of science. Recognition of this lacuna by the ASA is seen in their scheduling a joint conference with the Evangelical Theological Society for 1959, the subject being “Toward an Evangelical Philosophy of Science.”

Evangelicals, appreciative of the ASA’s worthy contributions of the past, will wish them well in this new endeavor. Too often has the charge been leveled with justification that science teachers in evangelical colleges simply teach science and fail to transmit simultaneously the mutual implications of science and Judaeo-Christian revelation. How futile then the cry against the “secularization of science.”

The issue is rendered more acute with the Sputnik-Age emphasis upon science. Where does science fit, in the economy of God? Is not Jesus Christ, the Logos, key to creation as well as redemption? Science needs her King. With growing apprehension she courts morality which must lead her to a rendezvous with religion. But if she proudly demands a religion of her own prescription, destiny’s hour will pass and science will still not be saved.

Graham At Charlotte

In the fall of 1947, a young evangelist held a campaign in Charlotte, North Carolina, his home town. He went on from that series of meetings to gain recognition as the most popular spokesman for twentieth century evangelicalism.

This week, Billy Graham was “back home” for another crusade. He could look to Charlotte in 1958 not only for a sympathetic reception, but for a new opportunity in television evangelism. More stations than ever before have lined up to transmit Saturday night rallies at Charlotte Coliseum. The first hour-long telecast is scheduled for the ABC network the evening of September 27.

The crusade itself begins Sunday, September 21. Charlotte Coliseum seats 12,500 in its main auditorium. Closed circuit television is being installed in an adjoining auditorium to accommodate another 2,500 persons.

Preparations for the Charlotte crusade were encouraging. More than 2,000 were registered for counselor training classes. By the beginning of September, there were a total of some 900 churches cooperating or participating.

Three thousand prayer meetings were organized. More than 2,000 choir member applications were received.

The crusade was scheduled to run for four or five weeks. An outdoor stadium rally may provide the climax.

To give himself a rest, Graham kept summer speaking engagements at a minimum. Following California meetings, he held a rally at San Antonio, Texas. Thereafter, his only public appearances were at Bible conferences at Lake Junaluska and Ridgecrest, North Carolina, and Winona Lake, Indiana.

More than 30,000 people gathered at Alamo Stadium July 25 to hear Graham speak of the end of the age. A 2,500-voice choir sang. Eight hundred servicemen stationed near San Antonio sat together. Delegates included groups from below the Mexican border, 125 miles to the south. Three thousand decisions were recorded.

On the San Antonio platform was Texas Governor Price Daniel, who told the audience: “To me, Billy Graham is the most important man in the world.”

At Lake Junaluska, Graham warned that “if the church does not meet its responsibilities in this generation, it may go into an eclipse.”

The evangelist spoke to a crowd of 3,000 which overflowed an assembly hall on Sunday night, August 10, and to more than 2,000 the next morning.

After Charlotte, Graham’s next big move will be in Australia, beginning in February. Two major campaigns are planned to run consecutively, one in Melbourne and the other in Sydney. In addition, meetings are planned in other Australian cities and in New Zealand.

Graham announced that he still hopes to conduct a crusade in Chicago despite a decision by the Church Federation of Greater Chicago against taking up the sponsorship of such an endeavor.

Christian Unions: Labor For The Gospel

Advance representatives of Billy Graham, in Sydney to prepare for his 1959 Australian crusade, recall that in Britain in 1953–54 some of the most valuable cooperation came from “Christian unions” operating in business organizations. “They came to light like gophers popping out of their holes,” said one team member.

At first glance, few such unions were apparent in Sydney; only 10 organizations were known to have Christian fellowship groups. With diligent research, some 25 were found, and on June 27 Graham representative Jerry Beaven addressed 450 potential “Christian unionists” in the large Central Baptist Church, Sydney.

This month, with nearly 60 groups already organized and oprating, the 1,600-seat Assembly Hall was booked for the first rally of the Sydney Christian Employees Fellowship. First practical undertaking of the organization: the supplying of a regular staff of capable volunteer workers for the Graham crusade office.

“Unionists” in the Municipal Water Board office were amazed at the growth of their group, one of the most active. “Just a short time ago there were only two or three of us praying together,” commented one. “At our last meeting there were nearly 100.”

To The Jew First

Christian witness to Hebrew peoples is a highly fruitful ministry, according to the American Board of Missions to the Jews. The board oversees Christian missions to the Jews in six countries.

Considering the number of missionary personnel and the amount of money invested, officials say, Jewish missions are three and a half times more productive of converts than Christian missions as a whole.

Christians who seek to win Jews still have a great challenge, however. Last month, an Israel Embassy spokesman in Washington said there are some 12 and a half million Jews in the world.

Europe

Wcc Anniversary

The World Council of Churches marked its tenth anniversary with a Sunday service at the Cathedral of Odense, Denmark. The service was attended by more than 1,000 persons, including churchmen from all over the world.

The pulpit was shared by Anglican Bishop George K. A. Bell of England and Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin, head of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Both are presidents of the WCC.

Russians And The Wcc

Back in Moscow after an initial ecumenical encounter, Metropolitan Nikolai of Kroetitsky and Colomna said the Russian Orthodox Church will “probably” join the World Council of Churches.

“It is difficult to define now all the forms of contacts,” the second-ranking leader of the Moscow Patriarchate told Religious News Service, “but they will possibly include sending observers to World Council sittings and to meetings of other various Christian churches.”

Two weeks earlier the metropolitan had met with top leaders of the WCC at Utrecht, The Netherlands. At that time, he said he would recommend to Soviet churches that they join the WCC.

The metropolitan also disclosed in a Moscow interview that a conference of “sister Orthodox churches” had been scheduled for November to discuss his report on the WCC meeting.

He made no mention of the possibility of sending a Russian Orthodox Church representative to the August 21–29 meeting of the WCC Central Committee in Denmark. The possibility had been discussed at the Utrecht meeting. However, no Russians appeared at the meeting, Religious News Service said.

Ecumenical Measles

Is the Conference of European Churches in competition with the World Council of Churches?

The question came up at a meeting of the conference held at Nyborgstrand, Denmark, on the eve of the August 21–29 meeting of the WCC’s Central Committee in the same Danish seacoast town.

Delegates had gathered to discuss the structure of their new organization and its relationship to the WCC. The meeting was the first since the conference was formed last year at Liselund, Denmark, by representatives of Protestant churches in 10 countries of Eastern and Western Europe.

It was generally agreed, Religious News Service reported, that the conference should not compete with the WCC.

Two of the delegates, Dr. John Baillie of Scotland and Anglican Bishop Ivor S. Watkins of England, said that British churches would oppose a new permanent ecumenical organization but would cooperate in “occasional” conferences.

Baillie warned against “meetingitis” as being the “measles of the ecumenical movement.”

City Of Contrast

The following account represents a theologian’s impressions of Berlin, a great metropolis split by the Iron Curtain for the past 13 years. The writer is Dr. Harold B. Kuhn, Asbury Theological Seminary professor who spent the summer in Germany.

The divided city of Berlin, surrounded entirely by the Soviet Zone of Germany, contains in miniature the two opposed worlds of Western freedom and Communist tyranny. Economic contrasts are conspicuous enough. Free Berlin is, despite grave economic and social problems, a show-piece of life as the West knows it. The Soviet sector, on the other hand, reflects the predominantly bleak form of Communist life.

This reporter has conversed with those who have experienced first hand the tyranny which exists in that gray world. Some have been refugees, who have found life in the German “Democratic” Republic intolerable. Others have been from the settled population of East Germany, who are still trying to exist and maintain their integrity. Newspapers from the East Zone, including the National Zeitung and the Berliner Zeitung, are also revealing. In the Red world, everything has political meaning and political significance. No event, however trivial, is overlooked in the attempt of the Red masters to exploit every situation for propaganda purposes. To the Western reader, newspaper fabrications are fairly easy to detect. One wonders, however, how the continuous drumming of such propaganda affects the mind without counterbalancing access to truth. The only possible antidote available to East German persons is the occasional unjammed broadcast from the West—with hearing always accompanied by grave risks of imprisonment or deportation.

Red propaganda instruments seize upon every scrap of news which can be turned to their purposes. For example, when the auto industry shut down factories to retool for 1959 models, East German newspapers dramatically presented Detroit as a “dead city.” In a parallel column, a garish article with a Budapest dateline appeared, declaring that the United States had deliberately falsified the unemployment figures, so that more than 11 million were (so the story went) unemployed in the United States.

Meanwhile, East Germany maintains its pose as a model satellite. However, wages are depressingly low, and prices of basic foodstuffs and clothing rise to impossible levels. Reprisals of the most crude form are employed to keep the population in line. Meanwhile, an average of over 500 flee East Germany daily, creating a fantastic problem for West Berlin, and indeed for the free world.

Every conceivable form of harassment is employed against the forces of the free world. The latest was the surrounding of the borough of Steinstuecken (part of the U. S. sector) by 800 Red police, and the kidnaping of a refugee who had taken shelter there.

The pattern seems progressively clearer. The Soviet Union hopes to achieve world domination by whatever means may appear best to serve her ends. She overlooks no twist of language, no distortion of facts. As one highly placed man in the U. S. Berlin Command told this reporter, there is no logic or reason in the Communist use of words. Their twisting such terms as freedom, peace, democracy and truth is such that one can only hope to “play by ear” in dealing with them, since no basis for a policy based upon the supposition of Communist honesty exists.

The most vicious propaganda turn is, it seems to this writer, the way in which every “liberal” plea for the recognition of Red China or of the East German government by one of our citizens is hailed as a proclamation from one of the last remnants of decency in the “corrupt American order.” Even the words of well-meaning members of the U. S. Congress have been thus used.

From the religious point of view, the struggle for the minds and hearts of the youth continues without abatement, and with increasing cleverness. Secularized versions of baptism and confirmation, namely the Communist “naming” ceremony for children and the jugendweihe or youth dedication, have become the absolute essential for youth who wish any education beyond elementary school. Family life is being increasingly disrupted, particularly in those families in which the parents are seeking to maintain Christian ideals.

Pastors in East Germany face problems hard to comprehend in the Western world. With meager incomes, subject to every sort of subtle and hidden pressure, isolated from the rest of the Christian world, and often estranged from their own parishioners, they stand above all others in the need of prayer from “this side.”

Their courage and resoluteness are a standing source of challenge and inspiration. Their tasks and responsibilities are stupendous, matched only by the resources of their divine Lord.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: T. W. Tippett, retired Baptist Sunday School secretary of Georgia … Rev. Herman Frederick Hegner, 93, minister and educator, in Chicago … the Rev. Emmette Rigdon Spencer, treasurer of the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Church, in Baltimore … the Rev. Basil Kusiw, 71, honorary president of the Ukrainian Evangelical Alliance of North America … Dr. Anson Phelps Stokes, 84, retired canon of Washington Cathedral, in Lenox Massachusetts … Dr. Arthur Chichester Hobsen, 78, noted Anglican missionary, in Colombo, Ceylon … Miss Mary Frances Turner, 90, retired Presbyterian missionary-educator in Latin America, in Pasadena, California … Mrs. Ellen Camp, 72, Conservative Baptist missionary to Congo, at Ruanguba, Congo … Methodist Bishop Z. T. Kaung of Peiping, 72, who baptized Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, in Shanghai.

Elections: As president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, president of Rutgers University … as president of the European Baptist Federation, Dr. Erik Ruden … as president of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, Dr. Ernesto T. Schlieper, who has been acting president since 1956 … to the board of directors of the Evangelical Alliance Mission, Dr. Robert A. Cook, vice-chairman of Scripture Press Foundation … to the executive committee of the Baptist World Alliance, Mrs. R. L. Mathis … as president of the Lutheran Student Association of America, David Kruger.

Resignation: As director of the Winona Lake, Indiana, Bible Conference, Dr. J. Palmer Muntz.

Appointments: As president of Lorne Park College, Dr. C. H. Zahniser … as a professor at Louisville’s Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. E. Earle Ellis … as chairman of the Bible department at Belhaven College, the Rev. Norman Harper … as an associate professor of religion at Furman University, Dr. Jesse Morris Ashcraft.

Digest: Four persons were killed and 29 others injured when a bus carrying members of an ecumenical work camp ran off the road and upset near Mettlach, Germany. One of those killed was an American, James McGaffin of Troy, New York … A new film depicting the work of the American Bible Society, “Bearer of the Book,” will be premiered October 9 at Miami Beach, Florida … The Rev. Paul B. Smith, associate pastor of Peoples Church in Toronto, is conducting a series of evangelistic crusades in the Far East … September 23 marks the 101st anniversary of the “Fulton Street Noon Prayer Meeting.” Prayer meetings are held every business day at a location only a few hundred feet from the original site of the prayer meeting which sparked world-wide revival in 1857 … The Southern Baptist Convention Home Mission Board is to undergo a major reorganization “to take its increasing mission responsibilities in America.” New divisions besides administration include missions, education and promotion, evangelism and chaplaincy.

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

The following report was written by Richard J. Coates, who holds an M.A. degree from Bristol University and is a lecturer at Tyndale Hall, Bristol.

The Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops came into being in 1867, when through developments consequent upon colonization, emigration and missionary endeavor, the Church of England found itself parent to many new churches overseas. Exact relationships with regard to discipline and doctrine between these bodies and the parent church had not been defined. In the case of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, the link apart from that of common origin hardly existed. A request from the Provincial Synod of the Canadian Church for consultation on the welfare of the whole Anglican communion rose out of a problem created by the deposition of the notorious Bishop Colenso of Natal by Bishop Gray of Cape Town. Despite his modernism, Colenso had some friends in high office in the church at home. An appeal was made on his behalf to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, highest legal authority in the Realm, which decided that he was still Bishop of Natal and not deposed. The Archbishop of Canterbury raised the matter in a convocation of his clergy, and despite misgivings of some, including the Archbishop of York and other bishops, he decided to call a conference. Out of 144 bishops invited, 76 attended. Since that first gathering in 1867, seven others have been held. The number of bishops invited to the 1958 conference was limited to 350.

Question Of Its Authority

What authority has the Lambeth Conference? It has none legally. The Anglican communion is a loosely knit fellowship of churches with a commonly derived episcopal ministry linked with Canterbury. Most of these churches are autonomous with properly constituted synodical government. The bishops who attend Lambeth (the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury) can bring back with them to the councils of their own churches and their deliberations the wider knowledge and experience of the members of the world-wide family to which they belong. Conference decisions are published in the form of resolutions and an encyclical letter, based upon reports of the various committees. The decisions are not binding or coercive. Nevertheless, they exercise considerable moral influence within and without the Anglican communion. The deliberations and conclusions of Lambeth, 1958, are included in a book of 240 pages published late last month.

The immediate reaction to the Report (as the book is generally called) was widespread. Comment and publicity fastened at once on the subjects uppermost in the public mind—the H-bomb and marriage problems. A frank admission is made that the conference could not speak with unanimous voice on the subject of the use of nuclear weapons in war. The majority agree that the manufacture and possible use of such weapons might be a regrettable necessity, not contrary to Christian morality, in the modern world. A minority wished the conference to advocate the complete banning of atomic warfare as contrary to the teaching of Christ. The bishops decided that contraception within the married state, and as a means of family planning, could not be condemned as immoral and unchristian. The statement is perhaps the clearest yet made by such a responsible Christian assembly on this grievous problem.

Consideration Of Other Issues

When the dust of controversy aroused by the immediate public reactions to the pronouncements on nuclear warfare and marriage problems has settled, Christian leaders will want to consider carefully the other Lambeth resolutions on more specifically theological issues.

The first item on the agenda and in the resolutions is “The Holy Bible; its Authority and Message.” On this great subject the conference had nothing very strong or vibrant to say. A welcome emphasis is placed on the need for re-establishing personal and family Bible reading and on the importance of expository preaching, but the general atmosphere is that of the post-critical and post-tractarian doldrums. Sections of a committee report discuss “The Bible and the Church” and “Criticism and Authority.” These are followed by a long section of “The Drama of the Bible.” This last is very like a platitudinous and uninspiring sermon, very much dated by our times, which may make sorry reading a few years from now. There is not, as far as can be seen, any direct reference to fundamentalism which the chairman of the committee, the Archbishop of York, recently described as a heresy. Deference is paid to the assured results of critical biblical study and the revival of biblical theology. A veiled reference to evangelicals may be contained in a short paragraph which refers to some who in their hunger for authority have turned to the Bible to find authority within it and who have often interpreted it in an extravagant and sectarian sense, without giving due heed to scientific methods and the accumulated experience of the church.

Before the conference was another great issue arousing the concern of evangelical churchmen: The question of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper and its expression in liturgical worship. The present widespread nature of the Anglican communion, and the passage of time, both demand a revision of the Book of Common Prayer which has remained unaltered since 1662. Much controversy in the church in the last 100 years has centered on proposals to revise the service of Holy Communion. Alarm has been rightly felt by those who value the doctrinal purity of the old service. Now the conference resolutions seem to accept the view that new knowledge, gained from biblical and liturgical studies, enables an approach to the old controversies in a way different from the disputants of the sixteenth century. It is said that the conception of consecration which is scriptural and primitive is that it was effected by the thanksgiving (eucharistia). Thus is avoided the old controversy about the effects of the use of the words ‘This Is My Body.’ But is it? It is not without significance that the resolutions and the report of the committee do not touch the burning issue of the practice of reservation which involves a belief in a change in the elements and which has led to the revival of the adoration of the sacrament in many parts of the Anglican communion. In similar manner the report of the committee accepts and endorses the view of the Eucharistic Sacrifice propounded by Dr. A. G. Hebert, well-known Anglo-Catholic writer. One important outcome of the conference is the resolution which requests the Archbishop of Canterbury “to appoint an Advisory Committee to prepare recommendations for the structure of the Holy Communion service.”

Much is highly commendable in the Report. Reconciliation was the key-note of the conference, operative even in controversial doctrinal issues. As a whole the Report deserves the most careful study and assessment.

Toward Temperance

The number of drinkers in the United States has decreased 30 per cent in the last 10 years, according to Mrs. T. Roy Jarrett, recording secretary of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

Mrs. Jarrett told the WCTU executive committee that despite mounting alcoholism and arrests for drunkenness, trends indicate a “growing reaction” against alcoholic beverages that “may lead to a new era in temperance.”

“Most dependable polls,” she said, “indicate that non-drinkers now total about 45 per cent of adults, as compared with 33 per cent 10 years ago.”

Mrs. Jarrett’s remarks were publicized earlier this month in connection with the WCTU’s 84th annual convention in Washington, D. C.

Mrs. Glenn G. Hays, WCTU president, told delegates that alcoholic beverage agencies are attempting to use public institutions to increase sales.

Mrs. Hays said that the agencies are pressing for slanted “alcohol education” in schools to assure “future customers for the liquor sellers.”

She named Licensed Beverage Industries, Inc., as one of the agencies. This group, she said, makes “increasingly aggressive attempts to force state education departments and school systems to adopt an educational approach favoring moderate drinking.”

Legislative Tally

Among actions attributable to the 85th Congress and the administration;

—President Eisenhower signed into law a bill increasing the penalty for mailing obscene literature, or transporting it in interstate commerce by any other means, and making violators subject to indictment and trial at the point where the material is received, as well as where it is sent. Another measure enacted closed the “copyright loophole” in the federal mail impounding law directed against obscene literature.

—The Senate Commerce Committee failed to act on a bill to prohibit liquor advertising in interstate commerce, the eighth time in 11 years that such a measure has gone through congressional hearings only to be killed in committee.

—Private educational institutions exempted from federal excise taxes.

—Adopted children and alien spouses of American missionaries abroad may become naturalized U. S. citizens without completing residence requirements, if otherwise qualified for citizenship, under terms of an act signed by the President.

—Interstate manufacture and shipment of switchblade knives, favorite weapons of juvenile delinquents, made illegal.

—Duties taken off imported religious vestments and “regalia” intended for use by non-profit organizations.

—A measure to permit duty-free import of religious art by non-profit institutions died in the Senate.

—The Senate failed to take action on a House-passed bill exempting clergymen from being required to testify in District of Columbia courts on matters committed to their confidence.

—The Senate defeated a bill to subsidize school travel in the capital.

—A bill providing clergymen with limited exemption from federal transportation taxes introduced in the House just before adjournment, too late for any serious consideration.

Cadet Chapel

Classes began at the new Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs this month, but cadets were without a permanent place to worship. Still on the drawing boards was one of the most controversial pieces of religious architecture in our day.

Construction of the Air Force Academy Chapel, according to a spokesman, may begin in late November. The spokesman said that despite severe congressional criticism, no official action has ever been taken to bar the Air Force from using its original ultra-modern plans, which have been called “too extreme.”

Lutheran Moves

A doctrinal statement reaffirming a literal approach to biblical revelation was adopted by delegates to the 45th biennial convention of the Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, in Cleveland, Ohio.

The statement was hailed by leaders and delegates as a turning point in relations between the four constituent groups, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Synod, the Slovak Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (formerly referred to as the Norwegian Synod).

The statement was drafted by a 40-man intersynodical committee which held five meetings in two years on differences between the synods.

It reaffirmed the authority of Scripture and asserted the belief that “all Scripture (that is, all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments) is given by inspiration of God and is in its entirety, in its parts, and in its very words inspired by the Holy Ghost.”

The statement said that “where Scripture speaks historically, as for example, in Genesis 1 to 3, it must be understood as speaking of literal, historical facts. Where (it) speaks symbolically, metaphorically, or metonymically, as for example, in Revelation 20, it must be interpreted in these terms.”

Synodical Conference Lutherans, the statement said, “reject and condemn” any attempt to treat the miracles as myths.

The canon—the 66 inspired books of the Bible—is not the creation of the church, the statement asserted. “Rather, the canon has, by quiet historical process … in the worship life of the church, imposed itself upon the church by virtue of its own doctrine and authority.”

The report said, however, that “because of our human limitations and frailties, we find ourselves in disagreement as to the scope and application” of Scripture to disputed areas, which include the practical application of the Christian life to scouting, fellowship, unionism, discipline and the military chaplaincy

The Wisconsin Synod at its 1957 convention voted down a proposal to suspend relations with the Missouri Synod. The Evangelical Lutheran Synod has suspended relations with the Missouri Synod, although its delegates attended the Synodical Conference meeting. Both bodies have accused the Missouri Synod of “unionistic” practices, meaning cooperation with groups with which they are not in doctrinal agreement.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, Washington, the 81st annual convention of the 23,000-member American Evangelical Lutheran Church adopted a resolution calling for continued negotiations toward eventual merger with the United Lutheran Church in America, the Augustana Lutheran Church, and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church (Suomi Synod).

Wedding Rings

Communicants can wear wedding rings under action taken by the 47th biennial General Assembly of the Church of God headquartered at Cleveland, Tennessee.

Delegates voted, 918 to 841, to except wedding rings from their traditional condemnation of jewelry. A spokesman at the assembly held in Memphis said the move originated among “young married people who had been put in embarrassment at times by not wearing them.”

New Appointments

Dr. Theodore A. Gill, managing editor of The Christian Century, will become president of San Francisco Theological Seminary in November.

In announcing Gill’s appointment by the board of trustees of the seminary, affiliated with the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., the Century said that one of its contributing editors, Dr. Martin E. Marty, was being elevated to the post of an associate editor. Gill will continue an association with the magazine as a contributing editor.

San Francisco Theological Seminary has been governed by a “president’s cabinet” since the retirement in June, 1957, of the Rev. Jesse Hays Baird.

CARTOON OF THE MONTH

Some Sunday Schools have given up the time-honored custom of having platform recitations on Rally Day, no doubt because the teachers could not bear to hear the same old doggerel once more. The acrostic below is from the new collection I have edited, Rally Day Revived. The cartoon above is one of the many charming illustrations which your own children may color during the program.

RALLY DAY ACROSTIC

Remember, your neighbors

expect it of you:

To send us to church

is the least you can do.

Although we are little

and somewhat naive,

We know every Sunday

you sleep when we leave.

Long live our dear church school,

for teacher is nice;

Her stories are sticky

with pious advice.

Let’s get to our sandpile,

our crayons and cake;

When this thing is over

we’re off for the lake.

Yet, messing and glueing

and learning by doing,

We share the great insight

that makes us all one:

To quote our director,

“Religion is fun!”

AN ENGLISHMAN’S SALUTE

CHRISTIANITY TODAY (May 12 issue) brought me the news that Nyles Huffmann of the Air Mail from God Mission had been killed in an air crash in Mexico. I knew something of Huffmann and his work and a few years ago I visited his mission station and made a study of his methods and the results that he had achieved. I came away with the feeling that I had been in touch with a man of the Livingstone build.

While still a schoolboy Huffmann made up his mind to be a missionary in Mexico. The war crashed in upon his plans and for some years he was in the air force. He was a typical G.I., tough, determined, fearless and dogmatic.

On demobilization the first thing he did was to make a kind of reconnaissance flight over some of the less known parts of Mexico. That done he went back to college, completed his studies, was ordained as a Baptist minister, and made it clear to the girl he wanted to marry that he was going to a risky, pioneer job, and if she didn’t like the prospect they would not go on with the marriage. A few weeks later they were on their way together to Mexico. It was all rather breathless and unusual. But that’s the kind of man Huffmann was. He knew what he wanted and he hated to waste time.

That was in 1948. Into the 10 years between his start and the final crash … he crowded as much as most men achieve in a normal lifetime. He didn’t bother to join up with a missionary society. He just told a few friends what he was going to do, asked them to pray for him and to send him from time to time just what financial help they could.

Some 50 miles or so south of Mexico city they found a hill with a sufficiently flat top to serve as a rough kind of runway for the plane. In a little hamlet they acquired a bit of land where, with their own hands, they built their home. Their living room was nothing more than a mosquito-screened veranda, while their bedroom was also the office, the walls of which were plastered with large-scale maps of Mexico. It was all rather bare and spartan and was clearly a place for work, not for taking one’s ease.

Huffmann had his own ideas of missionary strategy. He was convinced, for example, that the traditional methods of making the Gospel known were too leisurely, and that unless some speedier way was found the end would come long before the task was complete. He was also convinced that the printed Word should be put right in the forefront of the attack. He accordingly bought a second hand two-seater airplane, secured some thousands of copies of the Gospels from the World Gospels Crusade in Los Angeles, as well as a gift of Bibles from the Gideons in Chicago, all of them in the local vernacular.

The practice that he worked out was to load up the plane with copies of the Gospels, squeeze in with his Mexican mechanic, and take off. In an hour or so they would be over some of the less known parts of Mexico, straining their eyes to spot a village or a hamlet that had an open space suitable for dropping the booklets. Having found one he would fly as low and slow as he dared, and at the right moment he would give the word to the mechanic to open a tiny aperture in the base of the plane and drop out a thin stream of Gospels. The villagers would, of course, come rushing out to see what was happening and pick up this “airmail from God.” Some would even climb into the trees or on to the roofs of huts to recover copies that might be stuck. In 10 years, Huffmann had distributed—so it is said—something like two million copies of the Gospels.

But that was only the first wave of his attack. He followed it up by sending a couple of Mexican evangelists to the village a few months later. Their task was to contact those who had secured copies of the Gospels, find out if they had read and understood them, answer questions, and expound and press home the Christian message.

A month or so later there would be a third and final stage when a man would arrive in the village for a prolonged stay. His task was not to preach the Gospel or distribute the Scriptures, but to sit down with individuals and prepare them for leadership and responsibility in the little Christian group that was beginning to emerge in the village. All this was carefully recorded. Huffmann had his card index showing what progress had been made in this village and that hamlet and who were the likeliest leaders in each instance.

Today in scores of remote Mexican villages there are little groups of Christian people meeting regularly for worship and for the study of the booklets dropped by Nyles Huffmann, the man who found a new way of getting the Gospel to the people.

Ballard Glebe

Studland, Dorset, England

CASE OF IDENTITY

C. B. Underwood is committing a solecism in writing of “Nonconformists” outside England (Eutychus, July 21 issue). Presumably he means “non-Anglicans,” but in England Roman Catholics are “Nonconformists” to the Established Church no less than Methodists and Baptists. In Scotland, where the Established Church is Presbyterian, it is the Episcopalian who is a Nonconformist! Mr. Underwood is really betraying his theological and ecclesiastical prejudices in his use of a word which in the U.S.A. has had no meaning since colonial days.

C. P. M. Sharpe may also be interested to know that throughout Ireland, Protestant North and Roman Catholic South, “chapel” means a place of worship of the Roman Catholic church. Somehow, I doubt whether he would use the term “chapel people” to describe his brethren of the Roman obedience. Again an obsolete term is being used, a survival of English, Victorian, insular snobbery, and unworthy of use in an international religious magazine.

Scarva Rectory

Portadown, Co. Armagh, No. Ireland

THE NEW BIRTH

Your editorial “Evangelism and the New Birth” (July 7 issue) was a masterpiece which thrilled my soul! Such writing is much in need among us Lutherans and, no doubt, among others too.

Hauge Luther Inner Mission Federation

Minneapolis, Minn.

I understand that one cannot be a Christian unless the new birth or union with Christ has taken place—I also understand that this union is actually accomplished in immersion (commonly called baptism) as Romans 6 so clearly delineates. This event can be remembered and pointed to as the moment when one became a member of the Church of Christ Jesus. Your statement that the “great majority of Christians” would find it difficult to “determine either the time or place when they passed from death to life” punches holes in the foundation of Christianity.… I fear that your teaching and that of Billy Graham on the subject of the new birth—leaving out … immersion … is leaving thousands suffocating in ignorance and confusion.

Sunset Beach Church of Christ

Haleiwa, Hawaii

FACT AND IMPRESSION

Your searching review of the American Baptist Convention (July 7 issue) observed that we rejected by two to one a movement into the Interchurch Building in New York. The correspondent notes that this was shortly after “an address strongly advocating ecumenicity by Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, American Baptist pastor and current president of the National Council of Churches.” This is factual, but it might leave the impression that Dr. Dahlberg tried to influence the Convention toward the New York location. This would be incorrect; a year before, Dr. Dahlberg had spoken in behalf of a Midwest location and not for the Interchurch Building. He advocated a closer tie with other Baptist bodies as well as an interest in cooperation with different denominations.

Ex. Sec.

Nebrasba Baptist State Conv.

Omaha, Neb.

CHURCH AND STATE

In regard to “Religion and the Presidency” (June 23 issue) …, Pope Leo XIII declares, “The state must not only have care for religion, but must recognize the true religion.… It would be erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be as in America, dissevered and divorced.…”

“Again, it is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual to hold in equal favor different kinds of religion: that the unrestrained freedom of thinking and of openly making known one’s thoughts is not inherent in the rights of citizens, and is by no means to be reckoned worthy of favor and supported.…” John A. Ryan and Francis J. Boland Catholic Principles of Politics, Macmillan, New York, 1947, pp. 315, 300.

Can … any American citizen reconcile the above quoted “Catholic” doctrine with the qualifications of a “loyal American president” who “shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution” wherein “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office” and which also specifically states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?” Certainly not!

Oklahoma City, Okla.

Perhaps the most significant thing about the failure of Mr. Spivak to play the “gentleman” in his case is that it proves the existence of the very forces which Mr. Spivak seemed most anxious to deny existed.

Rector

Church of the Holy Nativity

Chicago, Ill.

I think you should become more liberal in your views about competing ideologies.… No doubt there are many things wrong with Roman Catholicism, secularism, Judaism, atheism, agnosticism, and so on, but I think the more advanced viewpoint is that we should be tolerant of others’ beliefs.

East Chicago, Ind.

Roman Catholicism … is definitely out to capture America. This unfortunate situation is developing fast as Protestantism becomes more and more tolerant of all religious dogma and less and less tolerant of sound doctrine.…

Washington, D. C.

THE REAL IMPERATIVE

Edward W. Greenfield made some criticism of the faith in public education expressed by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (May 12 issue). In general, however, Mr. Greenfield was far too favorable toward the Assembly’s pronouncement, and he failed to set forth the real educational imperative confronting Christian people today. The statement by the … Assembly had no time for the private Christian school.… This … is disgusting; for the U.S.A. church is theoretically committed to the Reformed Faith … which has historically stressed the relationship of all of life and of all aspects of education to the living, sovereign God of the Scriptures.

Pulaski, Pa.

Thanks for an exciting issue (July 21). Dr. Cullmann, Mr. Mahler and Mr. Bodey all speak convincingly and hearteningly. I should like to see Mr. Bodey’s thesis followed up with attention to Christian Day Schools. My experience in the past three years has pointed up an almost frightening lack of training in these grades which might give our children the means to grapple with matters of God in a right way. I do not believe our school has found a completely satisfactory way of doing: but I am convinced we are on the right track and that others can contribute independently once they reach out to do the job of training for Christian intellectual strength.

St. Thomas Epis. Ch. & Southwest School

Houston, Tex.

GREEK ORTHODOX MISSIONS

How can any well-informed Christian resent the lack of Eastern Orthodox enthusiasm for “Protestant Missions” in Greece where Orthodox churchmen are doing a great work for Christ?… Is the precious thing called “evangelical effort” a peculiar treasure of “Protestants”? I know of no church in Christendom more concerned with … “evangelical zeal” and “evangelical effort” than the Eastern Orthodox Church.…

Priest-Diocese of Erie (Episcopal)

Youngsville, Pa.

• In History of the Orthodox Church, Constantine Callinkos writes of the growing interest in union between Anglicanism and Eastern Orthodoxy. He attributes their friendship to “the recognition by the Orthodox Church of the validity of Anglican Orders, which has always been disputed by the Roman Church; secondly, to the abstention of the Anglican Church from efforts to convert the Orthodox; and thirdly, to the exchange of letters of peace on ceremonial occasions” (p. 132).—ED.

AN AFTERNOON IN WALES

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in 1940 I was conducting evensong at a country church called Cwmcarvan, near Monmouth, Wales. No sooner had I started the service than I noticed a gentleman coming in, and who sat in a pew in front of the pulpit.… The visitor was none other than the famous philosopher, author, and professor, the late Dr. C. E. M. Joad, whom I knew had been an agnostic and rationalist for 40 years since his college days at Oxford.

The rest of the congregation consisted of ordinary country people and I began to wonder how Dr. Joad would react to the sermon, which strange to say, dealt with three challenging questions as if they were meant for him: Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Christ? Do you believe in immortality?

I did not have long to wait for his answer, because the following Sunday, Easter Day, with the rest of the parishioners, Dr. Joad walked up and knelt before the altar to receive Holy Communion for the first time in 40 years.

Mathern Vicarage

Chepstow, England

As a result of reading your scholarly and objective book reviews …, I have gained much guidance and inspiration.

Phoenixville, Pa.

VACATION FROM BINGO

In regard to the poor underpaid ministers (July 7 issue) …, do you recall the establishing of most of our churches by men who … worked six days on the farm and rode horseback for Saturday night and Sunday service with no pay?… In Kansas … I was told … if a sinner should die in August …, he would be a “goner” as all the pastors are on their vacations resting from their bingo parties, ice cream suppers and organizational programs.… No work today offers the leisure, benefits, and comforts as the ministry. Ask the average man … about the supposed watchman on the wall … grabbing every penny he can.

Evansville, Ind.

THE GREAT MIDDLE AREA

I have only one thing to ask concerning the magazine and that is, Can’t you make it a little more simple …?

Rockford, Ill.

Provided you keep the academic standing of your magazine high, it is destined to carry much weight in the religious world for many years to come.

Lookout Mountain Baptist Church

Lookout Mountain, Tenn.

Far and away, you have succeeded in one of the original intentions of the magazine—providing a responsible journal on the intellectual level of The Christian Century, from an evangelical standpoint.

Bethany Baptist Church

Philadelphia, Pa.

Your defense of ecumenism by compromise is, to use an understatement, extremely disheartening.… I would much rather have The Christian Century in the hands of my people than your paper. At least they could detect the open denial of biblical truth.

Johnstown, Pa.

I have found the articles to be thought-provoking, scholarly, sane, and intelligently tolerant—qualities lacking in much so-called conservative literature. This is the sort of publication a conservative may proudly commend to his liberal friends.

First Baptist

Washington, N. J.

We are praying that it will continue to meet the need for a religious magazine in that great middle area between the devotional or how-to-do-it magazines on one hand, and the theological and scholarly journals on the other.

Wheaton Coll.

Wheaton, Ill.

Your journal is the most inspiring reading and fundamentally meets my needs in teaching my Sabbath school class which I have been doing for the past 26 years.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Your publication is most stimulating, fresh, constructive and charitable. It is now a priority in my reading and I look forward eagerly to it.… I find that your paper helps to keep us together in the English-speaking world.

St. Paul’s Vicarage

Finchley, England

One cannot accept some articles inspired by the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures but they are so enlightened that they command respect and our differences become clear. They reveal our oneness in Christ rather than our different approach to the word of God. Its virile Protestantism and its advocacy of evangelism is most reassuring and a joy to read.

Bournemouth, England

I find it thought-provoking, and an excellent means of keeping in touch with current religious trends.

Australasian Missionary College

Cooranbong, N. S. W., Australia

Congratulations on a magnificent paper! Always stimulating, fruitful and appropriate to today’s conditions. It is much appreciated “down under.”

Ashfield Baptist Church

Ashfield, N.S.W. Australia

I find it very stimulating. I am the Vicar of a suburban parish in Cardiff with a big Council Housing Estate on it and it is very hard work with little opportunity for intellectual stimulus.

Cardiff, Wales

I read [it] with avidity.

Eccleshill Cong.

Bradford, England