Theology

Bible Text of the Month: John 7:37

Rudolph Besser

In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink (John 7:37).

Great Day of the Feast—A few days after the ceremonies of the great day of the Atonement, in which solemn expiation was made for the sins of the people, the Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated. This feast commemorated the passage of the Israelites through the wilderness, and was celebrated with such joy that both Josephus and Philo call it “the holiest and greatest feast.” It was kept for seven consecutive days, from the 15th to the 21st of Tisri, and the 8th day was celebrated by a holy convocation. Each morning a vast procession formed around the little fountain of Siloam down in the valley of the Kedron. Out of the flowing waters the priests filled a large golden pitcher. They proceeded to the temple and one of the priests poured the water upon the altar. As the water was poured the people joined in the song of praise, “God is my song, He also is become my salvation! Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.”

In the midst of this magnificent festal rejoicing, Jesus cried aloud, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. It is the cry which resounds throughout the whole of Scripture and which had already been laid upon the kindly lips of prophets. Jehovah’s invitation, “Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,” Jesus here distinctly appropriates to himself. In this cry the Lord Jesus delights to reveal his readiness to save all souls needing salvation, from the time of his pronouncing those blessed who thirst, in Matthew 5:6, on to the word in Revelation 22:17, “Let him that is athirst, come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely!”

Quenching Of Thirst

He stands there on the great day of the feast, and around him are men who for seven successive mornings have witnessed acts and uttered words telling, though they know it not, of the true satisfaction of spiritual thirst, and thinking of the descent of showers on the thirsty ground, and in some vague way of the Holy Spirit’s presence. They are as the woman of Samaria was by the side of the true well. For every one who really knew his need, the source of living water was at hand.

C. J. ELLICOTT

Christ calls on the thirsty soul to come and take of that water freely. How pleasant to find that all this is in harmony with the grand invitation of the Evangelical Prophet, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price,”—showing the same spirit pervading as well the Old Testament Scriptures as the New, illustrating the unity and harmony of the whole Book, and pointing to the fact that from the very beginning the same salvation has been preached as the pure and free gift of God.

P. W. GRANT

Thirst, like hunger, is something of which we are acutely conscious. It is a craving for that which is not in our actual possession. There is a soul thirst as well as a bodily. The pathetic thing is that so many thirst for that which cannot slake them. Their thirst is for the things of the world: pleasure, money, fame, ease, self-indulgence; and over all these Christ has written in imperishable letters, “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again.” But in our text Christ is referring to a thirst for something infinitely nobler and grander, even for Himself. He speaks of that intense longing for Himself which only the Spirit of God can create in the soul.

ARTHUR W. PINK

The expression thirst is to be here referred to that strong and quenchless desire which springs up in the soul, ill at ease through the upbraidings of a wounded conscience and a sense of the hollow and deceitful nature of earthly good, for something better, more substantial, and congenial with the cravings of the immortal spirit within. Under the imagery of one thirsting for water, which everywhere, and especially in countries like Palestine where the want of water is so frequently experienced, would be well understood, our Lord proffers to all such persons that which will forever satisfy the longings of the soul and give it permanent rest.

JOHN J. OWEN

He who thirsts is just the man who is conscious that he needs something to make him happy, and who is desirous of obtaining it. It does not matter whether he be right or wrong in the estimate he has formed of that, the want of which, he thinks, is the cause of the uneasiness he feels, and the attainment of which, he thinks, would remove that uneasiness. He may be thirsting for that which, instead of quenching, would inflame his thirst. He may be desiring and seeking that which, were he to obtain it, would make him still more miserable. To bring him within the range of our Lord’s invitation, it is enough that he thirst—that he is destitute, and desirous, of happiness.

JOHN BROWN

When our Lord represents himself as the fountain which can quench the thirst for happiness of all mankind, he intimates that he is capable of making men, however miserable, truly happy,—that he can supply all the wants, satisfy all the desires, of the human soul. Man has a mind, and, as an intellectual being, he is naturally destitute of the knowledge of the truth about God, which is necessary to the true happiness of a being constituted as he is. Jesus is the great revealer of God; he is the truth. Man has a conscience; and as an accountable, guilty being, he needs pardon and acceptance with God. “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” Man has a heart; and he needs a suitable object on which to place the affections of supreme veneration, and love and confidence; and God in Christ is the suitable and satisfying portion of the heart, the appropriate object of the supreme esteem and entire confidence. Man is weak, and he needs strength; and Christ can “strengthen, with all might in the inner man.” Man is mortal, and needs deliverance from death, and the grave; and Jesus is “the resurrection and the life.”

JOHN BROWN

Gracious Invitation

Jesus is no longer visible upon earth; but he has promised his spiritual presence to abide with his word, ordinances, and people, to the end of time. Weary and heavy laden souls have now no need to take a long journey to seek him: for he is always near them, and in a spiritual manner, where his gospel is preached.

JOHN NEWTON

It does not appear that those to whom our Lord spoke in person were so much perplexed as many are now, to know, what coming or believing should mean; he seems to have been understood, John 6:30; 19:36, both by friends and enemies. Many questioned his authority and right to exact a dependence on himself; but they seemed to be at no difficulty about his meaning. Coming to him implies a persuasion of his power, and of their own need of him help. They knew that they wanted relief, and conceived of him as an extraordinary person empowered and able to succour them. They depended on him for salvation, received him as their Lord and Master, professed an obedience to his precepts, accepted a share of his reproach, and renounced everything that was inconsistent with his will, Luke 9:23–61.

JOHN NEWTON

Come signifies our approach to an object or person. It expresses action, and implies that the will is operative. To come to Christ means, that you do with your heart and will what you would do with your feet were He standing in bodily form before you and saying, “Come unto me.” It is an act of faith.… Make sure that nothing whatever is substituted for Christ. It is not come to the Lord’s table, or come to the waters of baptism, or come to the priest or minister, or come and join the church; but come to Christ Himself, and to none other.

ARTHUR W. PINK

And drink—It is here that so many seem to fail. There are numbers who give heart-exercise, or a conscious need of evidence of an awakened conscience, of Christ; and there are numbers who appear to be seeking Him, and yet stop short at that. But Christ not only said, “Come unto me,” but he added, “and drink.” A river flowing through a country where people were dying of thirst, would avail them nothing unless they drank of it. The blood of the slain lamb availed the Israelite household nothing, unless the head of that household applied it to the door. So Christ saves none who do not receive him by faith.

ARTHUR W. PINK

Whosoever drinketh of the water I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

JOHN 4:14

World News: September 16, 1957

G. B.

People usually write growling letters to the editor about policemen.

Conrad S. Jensen, captain of one of New York’s roughest police precincts, the 23rd, switched the procedure. He wrote one to the editor of Life magazine on the unlikely subject of Billy Graham and his critics.

It was in relation to the views in Life of a theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, and a practicing pastor, Dr. John Sutherland Bonnell, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Since the letter isn’t likely to see the light of print, unless it appears here, portions of it are quoted, as follows:

“I am aware that my scholastic background, as compared to Mr. Niebuhr and Mr. Bonnell, leaves me only a rung or two off the ground … because I am a policeman I encounter the danger of being put into the category of a ‘dumb cop.’ Notwithstanding, I have no ulterior motives and God knows my heart.

“Nineteen hundred years ago a centurion (a police captain like myself, if you will allow this parallel) stood by the foot of the cross of Christ and made this statement: ‘Truly this was the Son of God.’

“He had just witnessed the crime of all crimes. No doubt he was reluctant to carry out the order to crucify ‘this just person.’ Whether or not the centurion had time to reflect on the worth of this sacrifice and recognized it as a ‘bargain,’ as Mr. Niebuhr puts it in his closing statement, I don’t know … Perhaps the centurion saw the peace of God in the face of the penitent thief and then looked at the other malefactor who refused a ‘bargain.’ However, both men came to a decision without the benefit of ‘Christian historical scholarship.’

“It has been my experience to witness the ‘gospel’ of some of those taught by Mr. Niebuhr. The message is mostly ‘birth control’ and ‘rent control …’

“When Mr. Niebuhr calls the gospel preached by Billy Graham a bargain, he must realize there will come a time when he will have to justify this remark. Jesus also had his critics—his greatest being the intellectual, religious, self-righteous pharisee, who, no doubt, had a lot of ‘historical scholarship.’

“Throughout Mr. Niebuhr’s views, he refers to the fact that Billy Graham’s approach is ‘too simple,’ ‘less complicated,’ ‘over-simplified’ and ‘uncomplex.’

“If America ever needed something simple and uncomplex, it is now … The vitals of America are being chewed out by plain ordinary sin and lawlessness.

“It is easy to understand how Mr. Niebuhr has difficulty with the simplicity of Christ. Nicodemus, a religious ruler of his time, asked Jesus, ‘How can these things be?’ He tripped over his historical scholarship and fell flat on his face when Jesus said, in simple words, ‘Ye must be born again.’

“God establishes his Word by picturing for us the attitude of some people when they hear the gospel. ‘For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.’ When Mr. Niebuhr puts the gospel of Christ, faithfully proclaimed by Billy Graham, into the basement with other bargains, close-outs and items reduced for clearance, I believe he verifies the verse above.

“Apparently, man will ever labor to put God into a pattern that fits his miserable, finite, inadequate intellect.

“I thank God that Jesus was not ‘marked down’ for my benefit, but was ‘sent down’ to pay the price of my sinfulness. Also, I thank God that I am just foolish enough to believe that salvation comes by faith in the sinless Son of God. As long as Billy Graham preaches the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’ I shall pray for him and those that labor with him.”

Lots of folks probably will disagree with Captain Jensen. They can tell him so most any day at the 23rd precinct headquarters. It will be easy to spot him. He is the big, tough-looking fellow in charge.

Romance Over

Meeting in Oberlin, Ohio, on the threshold of the World Council’s Faith and Order Conference, an estimated 40 professors of ecumenical theology grappled with the problem of vitalizing ecumenical Christianity on the level of the local church and laity.

“We are in a post-Evanston period,” lamented one spokesman. “The romance of the ecumenical impact is now over.”

The dilemma facing the theologians, chosen from 120 teachers of ecumenical theology (there are none in Canadian seminaries as yet), was confessedly that of making “abstract institutionalism” intelligible to the laity. No effective transition from “ecumenics in general” to “ecumenics in particular” has been achieved; ecumenical concerns seem remote from the normal church program.

Ministerial enthusiasm is lacking also. Ecumenical journals have attracted unimpressive subscription lists. While many of the 945 Councils of Churches in the United States breed ecumenical enthusiasm, a large number of member ministers and congregations remain unenthusiastic. Ecumenical institutes this year met failure as often as success.

Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft of Geneva, WCC General Secretary, expressed fear, however, that the ecumenical movement may be growing too fast. He noted that the term was not introduced in the U. S. until 1937. He warned that its result might be “the opposite of what we want” unless there is “a deep change in the content of preaching, an orientation to the authority of the Bible and to Christocentric teaching (as Karl Barth would tell us) as the climate in which ecumenical education becomes meaningful.

President John A. Mackay of Princeton Seminary declared: “Despite my commitment to the ecumenical movement, I say it is becoming too impersonal through its concern for group relations and is apt to lose sight of the individual.” He urged “a mission in which people can work together, such as evangelism, that grips the soul-hunger of the people.”

One professor noted that “ecumenical conversion” from an “unconverted ecclesiology” is no easy achievement. Another lamented that although half the seminaries give some scope to ecumenical theology, the remaining half have no particular theological interest.”

Presided over by Dr. Charles L. Taylor, executive director of the American Association of Theological Schools, the theologians outlined plans to ecumenize both the church community and theological curriculum. Seminarians will be discouraged from a final theology before study of a wide range of theologians and ecumenical attitudes. The inner seminary movement is expected to yield a theological preparation for ecumenical leadership.

Ecumenical institutions henceforth will utilize existing schools instead of creating new study situations. More denominational programs of ecumenical study will be sought.

Evangelical observers noted the dominating assumption that ecumenical concern is validly expressed only through participation in the WCC inclusive effort; evangelical interdenominational movements were unmentioned as a valid ecumenical expression. While an occasional voice was lifted for the primacy of Christ and the Bible, there was no emphasis that ecumenicity is genuine only when it is evangelical and evangelistic.

The Day It Began

Evangelical churches of America are being urged by the Spiritual Life Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals to plan special prayer observances on September 23, the centennial anniversary date of the beginning of the great spiritual awakening of 1857.

September 23 was the day the famous Fulton Street noonday prayer meeting began in New York City. Soon prayer meetings had sprung up throughout the country, bringing one of the most powerful revivals of the nation’s history. Within two years, 500,000 people were converted to Christ.

“Revival for America” has been suggested as the general prayer theme. The commission is under the direction of the Rev. Armin Gesswein of Pasadena, Calif.

Evangelical churches also will be asked to observe October 20–27 as “NAE Week.” The theme will be “The Strength of Spiritual Unity,” with emphases on the many services provided evangelicals for the last 15 years by the NAE.

Worth Quoting

“Strength and effective Christian witness do not come from organic union.… Too close organic union, especially under compulsion, may well defeat the good relations and effective cooperation necessary to achieve the common goal.”—Congressman Walter H. Judd, Minnesota.

“Berlin is like an island completely surrounded by the communists. The only answer for these people is to look up.”—Darlene Janzen, Youth for Christ.

“God is using Billy Graham to shake towns, cities and whole countries out of their indifference. Wherever he goes, he preaches Christ! God has changed thousands of lives through this man. He has also changed mine … May I ask a pertinent question? What is your job during this time of awakening? Are you supposed to stand by with your hands in your pockets and complain because Billy Graham has not done all the work single-handed? The situation would be comical if it were not so extremely tragic.”—John Bolten, director of General Tire Co.

Celebrations

Plans for marking the 400th anniversary of the founding of Calvin’s Academy in Geneva and the 400th anniversary of the first synod of the Reformed Church are being made by the executive committee of the World Presbyterian Alliance.

Dr. Ralph Waldo Lloyd, president of Maryville College (Tenn.), who is the alliance’s North American secretary, announced the plans. The Calvin Academy anniversary, he said, would be observed during the first week of June, 1959 and the anniversary of the Reformed Church’s first synod in May of that year.

Dr. Lloyd said the committee was issuing a call to all churches affiliated with the alliance to observe Sunday, May 31, 1959, as a day of special remembrance for the Reformed faith.

The preceding day, May 30, he said, will mark the 450th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin at Noyon, France. An International Day will be observed under the auspices of the Reformed Church of France in Noyon on that day.

Racial Freedoms

Rep. Brooks Hays, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, urged that ministers “be freed from economic, political and social pressures” in dealing with the race issue.

The Arkansas Democrat spoke to 2500 Baptist laymen and women in Atlanta, Ga. He outlined a three-point program that he feels could help churchmen in facing racial problems:

  • The sentiment of the churches, even those completely dedicated to segregation, must be pointed towards a nonviolent settlement.
  • The rights of ministers to raise their voice on all current issues must be protected.
  • Efforts must be made to seek justice for all people in all specific situations growing out of racial tensions.

Twin Sessions

The 12th annual National Sunday School convention of the National Sunday School Association will be held October 9–11 in Los Angeles and October 30-November 1 in Grand Rapids.

Each city is expected to register an estimated 5,000 people for the assemblies. There will be 134 different sessions in the two places.

The eight major sessions in each city will feature Dr. Edward Simpson, president of NSSA; Dr. Bob Cook; the Rev. Burt Webb, vice president of NSGA; Dr. W. A. Criswell of Dallas, Texas; the Rev. Norman Townsend of Providence, R. I.; Dr. Henrietta C. Mears of Los Angeles and the Rev. Arthur Gaglardi of Kamloops, B. C.

Youths Unite

Seven hundred delegates from Young Calvinist Societies of the Christian Reformed Churches of the United States and Canada met for their first combined convention in Chicago recently.

The convention completed the merger of the Federation of Young Women’s Societies and the Federation of Young Men’s Societies which until this year had been separate organizations holding separate conventions.

The newly organized group, called The Young Calvinist Federation of North America, includes 432 societies, according to its director, Richard Postma.

New Science Film

Moody Institute of Science has announced four premiere showings of “Red River of Life,” a movie more than four years in the making and reportedly the first attempt to depict on film the spiritual significance of the blood.

The premieres will be the first week of October in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia.

Africa

Appeal In Ghana

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah has called on the Christian Council of Ghana “to support the Government in all moves they may make to preserve the independence of the judiciary.”

The Prime Minister was replying to an appeal sent to him by the Christian Council asking him to withdraw the special Deportation Bill under which two Moslem leaders were recently deported from Ghana. The bill violated the principle of justice, “whereby every citizen possesses the right to defend himself against any charge preferred against him,” the council claimed.

In his reply, addressed to Dr. Richard Roseveare, Anglican Bishop of Accra, Dr. Nkrumah explained that the special bill, which gives power to deport “without appeal to or review in any court,” was needed to protect the judiciary from attack. “The reason why the bill was necessary was, first, that those supporting the case of the two men were engaged in a systematic campaign to provoke with the object of coercing the government and bringing pressure to bear on the court,” he added.

Christian leaders have been concerned since the two Moslems and a leading nationalist editor were deported because of criticism of the government. They see in it a dangerous precedent that would be used as a weapon against missionary activity in the future.

W.H.F.

Journal Folds

New Nation, monthly journal supported by missions in Ghana (Gold Coast), will go into voluntary liquidation this month, Director David C. B. Smithers announced.

London journalist Smithers left his job on Reuter’s Africa desk two years ago to start New Nation in an effort to encourage indigenous Christian writing. The Christian Council of Ghana officially backed the publication, but chief support came from the Methodists.

With a staff of three missionaries and three Africans, the 20-page paper reached a monthly circulation of 17,000, selling at 6d. Because of lack of adequate commercial printing facilities in Ghana, editorial copy was sent to England to be printed. Rising costs, dropping sales, (down to 7,000) and lack of financial support forced Editor Smithers and his colleagues to decide to stop publication.

New Nation has turned its unexpired subscriptions over to the Sudan Interior Mission’s African Challenge, which has a current monthly sales of 28,000 within Ghana (160,000 throughout Africa.)

Training Center

Plans to set up an industrial training center for young Africans were announced in Nairobi, Kenya, by the Church Missionary Society. The proposed project was hailed by Kenya civic and government leaders as a “true example of practical Christianity.”

The center is intended to train youths who complete school at 13 but must wait until they are 16 before they can work. Such boys often join street corner groups of “loafers” and drift into undesirable company, Anglican officials said. They said the training center will seek to meet this problem.

Far East

Riot In India

A mob of 5,000 Hindus burned down a four-story American Protestant missions community center in Raipur, India, after its superintendent, an Indian clergyman, protested against the use of a Hindu idol during a meeting in the center’s hall.

Eyewitnesses said the mob sought to kill the superintendent, the Rev.Gurbachan Singh, who went into hiding. Missionaries and many Indian Christians also fled this central Indian rail junction and district seat.

Police fired on the demonstrators in an effort to restore order, killing a 14-year-old Hindu youth. They later arrested nearly 50 persons for arson, attempted murder or looting.

Damage to the center was estimated at $200,000. It was operated by the Evangelical and Reformed Mission Board in Philadelphia working through the United Church of Northern India. The building included about 50 hostel rooms, a dining room, auditorium, clubrooms, library and bookshop.

The center’s auditorium had been rented by a committee of Hindus for a program commemorating the centenary of the first Indian uprising against British colonial rule. When an idol was set up on the stage for a dramatic number Mr. Singh objected. He said organizers of the program had not informed him that such a dramatic performance would be staged.

Hindu elements resented the clergyman’s stand. This resentment was fanned by inflammatory articles in the local paper and the activities of what a Madhya Pradesh government communique called “anti-social trouble-seeking elements.”

The stone-throwing, shouting demonstrators, including many students, marched on the building and thwarted the efforts of 170 policemen and scores of firemen to protect the mission property.

Demonstrators stoned Mr. Singh’s house and burned effigies of him.

The demonstrations spread to other areas. At Jabalpur, 70 miles away, students abandoned classes and 5,000 of them held a rally at which they condemned American missionary activities.

They also demanded that the Madhya Pradesh government implement a report by a state committee in July, 1956, recommending that all foreign missionaries engaged primarily in proselytizing be withdrawn from the country. The government has not yet acted upon the report which was denounced by Christian leaders.

Protest In India

Meetings are being held by Christians of South India against the Education Bill sponsored by the communist government of Kerala State.

The proposed law would put all schools in the state under government control.

Protest rallies were launched after 26 archbishops and bishops of various Christian communions issued a joint statement condemning the measure. Signers included prelates of the Roman Catholic, Mar Thoma and Jacobite churches, the Church of South India and the Church Mission Society.

They charged that the bill is “clearly aimed at the liquidation of private agencies” and seeks to “regiment the educational system on a communistic pattern.”

The China Visit

It is obvious from a number of sources that some of the Japanese Christians who recently visited China saw only that which it was planned they should see.

As a result, they came away with glowing reports of the church in China, reports often at considerable variance with authentic stories coming out of China from uninspired sources.

Commenting on this trip, the Asahi Evening News, Japan’s largest newspaper, carried the following:

“A Japanese Christian church leader has urged that Japan oust foreign missionaries to gain the same kind of freedom of religion now prevailing in Communist China.

“Kaneyo Oda, a Free Methodist who returned from a recent visit to Red China as a member of a 15-man Christian mission, made his statement during a ‘welcome home’ rally … at the Tokyo YMCA.

“Mr. Oda, who was a pastor in Peking 12 years ago, said before he made the trip to Communist China, ‘I received many letters and warnings from missionaries and others telling me not to go … for they said I would become brainwashed, Communist and pink: but I had to go in spite of their protests.’

“He said he found no more robbers or prostitutes; no tipping was demanded and no more discounts were asked.

“Mr. Oda added that the Red Chinese offer people freedom of faith.

“Mr. Oda added that if it had not been for the concerted efforts of the Chinese Christian church, the nation would not have been able to win its independence from foreign missionaries.”

Evangelical observers wonder if Mr. Oda understands the “kind of freedom of religion now prevailing in Communist China.” Freedom bought at the price of collaboration with an anti-Christian regime is a high price for “religious liberty.” China is not the only place where a communist government has endeavored to make the church an agent for its own ends.

People: Words And Events

Defends ‘Do-Gooders’—Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council of Churches, calls upon Christian “do-gooders” to be unconcerned with derisive cynical criticism. He said: “Too often for complacency the sober man is called a killjoy, the moral man a prude, the honest man a Milquetoast, and the idealist a simpleton. A wastrel is now often called a good fellow. A loose woman is ‘emancipated.’ A cheat is ‘clever’ and ‘smart.’ ”

Christian Athletes—Clarence (Biggie) Munn, athletic director at Michigan State University, elected president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Succeeds Dr. Louis H. Evans, minister-at-large for the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Others elected: Don McClannan, executive secretary; O. C. Glenn, treasurer; directors, Branch Rickey, George Kell, G. Herbert McCracken and Tad Wieman.

Modernistic Chapel—The House of Representatives has approved a $3,000,000 appropriation for construction of an ultra-modern chapel at the Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs. Previously the lawmakers voted tentatively to withhold funds after critics had called it a “monstrosity” and “garish monument.” One legislator said the 19-spired design looked like “a rectangular accordion stretched out on the floor.”

Children’s Mite—The Southern Baptist Convention received a $2 check recently for use in the Cooperative Program. The money came from children who attended a Vacation Bible School in Korea. They wanted to help other people.

Clergy Fares—Northeast Airlines, effective September 15, will grant a 50 per cent discount on passenger fares to clergymen traveling in the U. S. Other companies now offering lower rates to clergymen include Central Airlines of Washington, Bonanza Air Lines of Las Vegas, Nev., and Cordova Air Lines of Anchorage, Alaska.

Another View—Citing incidents in which at least 23 airliners in the last two years were seriously endangered by drunken passengers, pilots and stewardesses asked a Congressional ban on liquor service aboard aircraft.

They described instances of drunken passengers forcing their way into the cockpit, creating disturbances in the cabins and creating fire hazards in flight.

Spiritual Values—Sir Edward Appleton, Nobel prize-winning scientist and vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, urges fellow scientists not to forget “the sustaining values of the spirit” in research. He said: “At the opposite pole from our scientific endeavor there are many ways of thought which don’t change, whose concern is with what is not now, with things not to be superseded.”

Christian Statesman—Dr. Austin Crouch, executive secretary emeritus of the Southern Baptist Convention executive committee, was hit and killed by a car in Nashville August 28 as he crossed a busy thoroughfare about a half block from his home. On the day before his death Dr. Crouch had returned from a visit to McKinney, Texas, where he was ordained to the Baptist Ministry 64 years ago.

Upper Room Award—Warner Sallman, Chicago artist who is internationally known for his paintings of religious subjects, will be presented the 1957 Upper Room Award for World Christian Fellowship at a dinner in the National Press Club, Washington, D. C., on October 3. Millions of copies of Sallman’s “Head of Christ” have been purchased by people of many countries. Toastmaster at the award dinner will be Maj. Gen. Charles I. Carpenter, chief of the Air Force Chaplains.

Digest—Christian Life Commission of Southern Baptist Convention elects A. J. Moncrief, pastor of First Baptist Church, St. Joseph, Mo., as its new chairman. Succeeds Rep. Brooks Hays (D.-Ark.) who was serving second term as chairman when elected president of Southern Baptist Convention … Dr. Frank Woods, Bishop of Middleton, England and chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II, elected Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne. Succeeds Archbishop Joseph John Booth, who retired last year.… Gordon W. Ward Jr., 21, student at Philadelphia Theological Seminary, elected president of the Lutheran Student Association of America.

Books

Book Briefs: September 16, 1975

Edward J. Young

Christological Themes

Jesus of Yesterday and Today, by Samuel G. Craig, Presbyterian and Reformed, Philadelphia, 1956. $2.75.

As one reads this book of Christological studies by Dr. Craig, retired Presbyterian clergyman, editor and author of another outstanding volume Christianity Rightly So Called, he realizes that the historic Reformed faith is not wanting today for able exponents. Taking as his point of departure Hebrews 13:8—“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and for ever”—he analyzes the wide variety of roles which the Son of God has taken to himself, e.g., Lord, Redeemer, Example, Teacher, Social Reformer, Judge. Central to each analysis is the author’s keen perception based on the text of Hebrews that what he was in the days of his flesh, so he is now and everlastingly.

Craig begins his studies with an incisive exposition of the person of Christ by virtue of which he is not merely the supreme example of faith—not the first Christian as the liberals affirm—but the divine object of faith. He closes the book with a discussion of the cosmic relations sustained by Christ that provide the foundation for personal confession of his Saviourhood and Lordship. Here he reaches the summit of his theme and sets before us an exalted view of Christ which too often is lost by those who see only his relationship to humanity.

On every page, but especially in the chapter “Jesus and Miracles,” the reader is impressed with the author’s irresistible logic. With the scalpel of logical reasoning he probes to the very core of his subject and extricates it from the confusing tissues which have gathered around it. In this way he not only expounds but defends classical orthodoxy. Nowhere does he take shelter in obscurantisms, ambiguities and vaguenesses. With deftness and a zeal for truth cradled in genuine Christian love he exposes and demolishes the diluted Christologies which have dominated the American theological scene. We ought to add that nowhere, however, does the author make logic a substitute for the authority of the biblical witness. In his hands logic is the handmaiden of Scripture.

The theologically untrained, as well as the advanced scholar, will find this book both readable and convincing. It is the outgrowth of years of laborious study, research and mature thinking, although Craig’s erudition to some may be concealed beneath his simplicity. The parish preacher will find here an excellent basis for a series of Lenten sermons on Christological themes.

RICHARD ALLEN BODEY

Concept Of Messiah

He That Cometh, by S. Mowinckel, Abingdon, New York. $6.50.

Few books in the Old Testament field of recent date can have the significance and importance of this one. The author, Dr. Sigmund Mowinckel of Oslo, Norway, is without question one of the foremost Old Testament scholars. For years he has been an advocate of the method of form-criticism as applied to the Old Testament books. He is known for his thorough studies on the Psalms and for his presentation of the idea of the enthronement festival of Yahweh. In this volume we have his most mature thought on the concept of the Messiah as that concept was supposedly held by Jews of the Old Testament period and later.

The work proceeds upon the assumption that the principles of a negative criticism, i.e., a criticism which would deny the full trustworthiness of the Scriptures, are legitimate principles. Hence, one who does accept the trustworthiness of Scripture will find much in this book with which he cannot agree. He will also find that there are places where it seems that the author has presented his position upon the basis of very slender evidence. Such an instance appears, for example, in the translation of Isaiah 52:7b as “Your God has become King.” (p. 141). Such a rendering fits in well with the idea of Yahweh’s enthronement, but whether it is an accurate rendering of the Hebrew of Isaiah is another question.

Dr. Mowinckel does believe that the content of the Old Testament must ultimately be traced to divine revelation. One wonders however, just what connotation that word revelation is made to bear. For if the Old Testament truly is revelation from God, i.e., special revelation, it simply follows ipso facto that the reconstruction of Old Testament religion which is offered in the pages of Mowinckel’s book cannot be correct. Thus, to take but one example, the discussion of the Servant of the Lord, scholarly as it indeed is, can only be disappointing to one who is willing to accept at face value the claims which the Bible makes concerning the Servant. The same is true with respect to the learned discussion of the Son of Man.

This book should he read and reread by all who are interested in present-day study of the Old Testament. It is filled with erudition and with ideas that are provocative of thought. We greatly admire the author and the tremendous capacity for work which he possesses. On the other hand, we can only assert that this hook will not promote a more correct understanding of the Old Testament. Those who wish to know what the Old Testament teaches concerning the Messiah should still consult the works of Hengstenberg, Keil, Delitzsch, and men of their school of thought. For these men built upon the assumption that the Old Testament is true and trustworthy in its statements, and it is only so that one can truly come to understand it.

EDWARD J. YOUNG

Scope Of Lutheranism

Lutheran Churches of The World, Bishop Hanns Lilje, et al., Augsburg, Minneapolis. $3.50.

There are 70 million Lutherans living in 29 countries of the world, included in 57 branches of Lutheranism. Their representatives met in Minneapolis in August for the Third Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation. Bishop Lilje, of Hannover, Germany, was president and this book was published in conjunction with the LWF gathering.

“The purpose,” says Dr. Carl E. Lund-Quist, who wrote the foreword, “is to interpret the life and work of our Lutheran churches. At the same time it will give the reader information on the issues facing these churches.”

“The situation we face,” points out Bishop Lilje, “charged with tensions and burdened with old problems and new tasks, demands a continuing and thoroughgoing self-examination on the part of the Lutheran Church in Germany.”

In India a dilemma presents itself. Should a Lutheran give up membership in the denominational fellowship for union with other churches in a land where there is need for a united Christian witness to a non-Christian world?

In Asia, the churches are more and more identifying themselves with the people, sensing a responsibility to the millions around them.

After much persecution in Latin America, today the Lutheran church taken together is probably the largest single Protestant fellowship in the former Iberian Empire. Such are some of the conclusions of sections of the book dealing with geographical areas of Europe, the Scandinavian countries, Africa, Asia, North America and Latin America.

Bishop Lilje, Pastor Laszlo G. Terray, Dr. Ragnar Askmark, Dr. Theodore Bachmann, Bishop Rajah B. Manikam, Dr. Fridtjov Birkeli and Dr. Stewart Harman are authors of various chapters.

A hopeful prospect is expressed concerning theological discussions regarding Christian unity which may be the outcome of the LWF meetings in Minneapolis. Pointing out how Lutherans in North America not only have learned how to adapt themselves to survive, but now are learning to lead, Dr. Bachmann says, “Lutherans today are thus obligated to re-examine their relations (1) to other Christians, and (2) to each other in the light of their own heritage.”

With mergers being talked by numbers of Lutherans, such a volume adds substantially to available material to help in understanding these groups and for what they stand. The book will serve both as a means of orienting the general reader concerning Lutheranism’s scope and as a reference concerning organizations and leaders in the branches of the Lutheran Church.

RICHARD L. JAMES

Christian Moralism

Christian Faith In Action, Foy Valentine, Ed., Broadman, Nashville. $2.00.

This is a book of 14 sermons on subjects dealing with ethical requirements of Christianity as applied to significant areas of everyday living, written by prominent clergymen in the Southern Baptist church. This volume was prepared “in the conviction that the Christian faith is practical, that God is concerned about the great moral issues with which Christians daily grapple, and that Jesus does have a message for our day in these significant areas.”

The first sermon, by Dr. J. B. Weatherspoon, provides a setting and finds a basis for moral concern in the Christian profession of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The confession of Jesus’ Lordship “is not just a statement of faith, a theological creed; it contains a moral challenge.… For one to say … that Jesus is Lord is to face a moral obligation to obey him, which cannot be refused without betraying the faith.” Subsequent sermons are a discussion of the problems of civic duty, honesty, materialism, sex, love and marriage, divorce, alcoholism, race, pride, segregation, daily work, juvenile delinquency and freedom. The volume concludes with a sermon which offers the readers “a charter for Christian living.”

These sermons are an attempt to set forth a statement of a Christian ethic on the basis of a conservative, evangelical theology, and are written in the consciousness that only too often evangelical Christians have failed adequately “to proclaim … the moral and social responsibilities of the new life.” If one wonders how these Southern preachers would treat the subject of race and segregation, he will find they have taken seriously their concern to speak the Christian faith to the issues of the day and are keenly and penitently aware of the sinfulness that lies at the basis of race discrimination. Commenting on the traditional Baptist struggle for freedom and their mighty confession that “all men have equal rights,” Dr. Marney expresses concern about “our common practice—‘some white men have equal rights.’ ” Biology and theology have been employed to resolve this contradiction. “But,” says Dr. Marney, “here in the South we Christians used a butchered biology to bolster a biased theology, and it threatens to destroy not only our major principle of equality, but our very personality as a people of God.” Again, “the tensions of Asia and Africa spill over into our countyseat towns, our school boards, our deacons’ meetings, our coffee houses.” It is needful to repent, and return to “the belief that in our Lord Christ’s name men are really men, ends in themselves, never means to an end.”

The sermons are not strictly textual, but are for the most part tracts for the day, but written from the viewpoint of the Christian faith. The call to a Christian ethic, because it is the demand of the Lordship of Jesus, and the requirement of a right relationship to Jesus Christ, is a necessary call. One might have wished that the volume had touched more fully and deeply on the meaning of union with Christ in his cross and resurrection for Christian living. If that were done it would have relieved the messages of what appears to be a simple Christian moralism, i.e., a statement of the problem of Christian living in terms of knowledge of and courage to do the right. But to live a Christian life one needs more than enlightenment and courage. One must become a new creature in Christ, by dying and rising again with him. Christian living involves the anguish of self-crucifixion and the profound dynamic of a life caught up in the risen Christ. And Baptists certainly do know the meaning of being buried with Christ and rising with him to newness to life.

GEORGE STOB

Religious Poetry

Garment of Praise, by Helen Frazee-Bower, Humphries, Boston. $2.75. Above the Thorn, by Johnstone G. Patrick, Pageant, New York. $2.50. Rhythm and Rhyme, by B. B. and Ella Allen Edmiaston, Stamps-Baxter, Chattanooga, Tenn. $1.25.

The most obvious fact about the poems of Helen Frazee-Bower is their overwhelming homage to Christ as Saviour and Lord. The book is divided into fourteen parts with such titles as “Praise,” “Bereavement,” “Motherhood,” “Easter,” and “Second Coming,” but Christ is paramount in all of them. What is unusual in such books is the fact that the sonnet form is used in nearly half the poems. The sonnet is too intricate for most religious versifiers, but Mrs. Frazee-Bower has used it with skill. There are phrases here and there showing her acquaintance with such masters as Tennyson and Browning and reflecting her conceptions of what poetry ought to be. With some exceptions she shows a sensitivity to penetrating language and seldom falls into the trite phrase. Sometimes she is too facile with rhythms and rhymes. In recent years Mrs. Frazee-Bower has suffered an accident which left her as invalid, and some of the poems give testimony to her faith in this severe testing.

Johnstone G. Patrick is a Scotchman who is now pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Sayre, Pennsylvania. His poems have appeared in such publications as Christian Century, Canadian Poetry Magazine and the British Weekly. His best poems have a crisp, staccato quality which permeates sense as well as sound. He often demonstrates the oblique approach which constitutes genuine poetry. For instance, in “The Lodestar” the cock of Peter’s denial is heard crowing in the manger and the Magi’s star moves over Calvary as well as over the stable. His allusions to nature are appreciative without being sentimental. One section of the book consists of prayer poems, and “Prayer for Peace” illustrates Mr. Patrick’s incisive thought:

Attack me, Father, now,

As when the sea

Rushes the rising rocks

Relentlessly;

Then, with the easing done,

Gather increase,

Circle my stubborn soul,

Lap it in peace.

Considerably less can be said for the third book, which has perhaps three times as many verses as the other two, but verses which are chiefly noteworthy for triteness of phrase, rhyme and rhythm. Many of them belong to the class of writing which assumes that turning the Bible into rhyme constitutes poetry. Phrases like “wings of the morning,” “zephyrs in gentleness,” “helped a sick soul to grow strong,” “a song came winging its way,” and “greet life with a song” show the general quality, or rather lack of it. As with many such privately printed volumes, the printing and proofreading are poor. The best thing about this little book is not what is in it but what it suggests about the authors as wholesome, enthusiastic and pleasant people.

However difficult it is to make a book of verse pay for itself these days, it would nevertheless be better if authors and publishers refrained from recommending their verses as fitting for use on “occasions,” a practice which inevitably cheapens the true poetic value. It would be well also if publishers avoided such sweeping and false generalizations as the one on the dust cover of Above the Thorn: “This slender volume … may be the precursor of a veritable renaissance of religious poetry,” as if a renaissance of religious poetry had not been under way for twenty years.

CLYDE S. KILBY

Impact Impaired

Discoveries Made from Living My New Life, by Eugenia Price, Zondervan, Grand Rapids. $2.00.

Eugenia Price, radio script writer and former producer of the program “Unshackled,” shares in this book experiences and thoughts out of her brief years as a Christian.

Under the headings of “Discoveries Concerning Discipleship, My Reason for Living, and Concerning a Number of Wonder-filled Things,” she gives her testimony to the love and faithfulness of God. Certain verses form a kind of refrain through the book: “Go and make disciples of men,” “To me to live is Christ,” “Learn of me,” etc.

The book is a challenge to the Christian to live in closer relationship with his Lord. It should prove a blessing to the reader who will apply its suggestion to his life.

Miss Price gives evidence of being of mystical bent, with little time for “theology.” Perhaps when she has had longer experience in the Christian life and has had time to see the dismaying results of the disparagement of theology, she will modify her view.

“If for some reason Jesus Christ came to me and said that he had made a big mistake, that there was no eternal reward, and no heaven and no hell—would I still follow Him?” (p. 111). This reminds me of the words attributed to a certain liberal who claimed that Christianity would be valid even if it could be proved that Jesus had never lived! We cannot but register our horror! A Christ who could make “mistakes” would not be able to save us. He would not be God. A Bible that contained “mistakes” would not be the infallible Scripture of orthodox Christianity.

It is unfortunate that tendencies such as these weaken the impact of a book which would otherwise be an even more appealing testimony.

NORMA R. ELLIS

Pragmatism Applied

John Dewey’s Thought and Its Implications For Christian Education, by Manford George Gutzke, King’s Crown Press, New York, 1956. $3.80.

The problem which the author confronts in this study is whether the Christian Gospel can be presented to the modern mind in harmony with the method of science. His basic thesis is that, “when experimental analysis and interpretation are applied in the exposition of religious experience there will be neither reduction nor impairment of the values cherished by men, but rather enlargement and improvement of such values to the general advantage and benefit of all concerned” (pp. 228–229).

The writer is obviously well acquainted with the philosophy of John Dewey. He quotes extensively. Whether he interprets Dewey’s statements accurately in all instances may be open to question.

After discussing the operation of intelligence, the nature of man, the meaning of religion, and instrumentation in religious experience, he comes out with the following conclusions:

Since religion is a part of experience it is subject to the method of critical intelligence. Through the method of science one is able to study antecedent causes and results. Having identified these instrumentalities, one may use the method of critical intelligence to improve both instrumentalities and results. These improved instrumentalities are not to be held with finality but are subject to constant revision. Finally, as in Dewey’s philosophy so in religion, these effective instrumentalities must lead to action that will benefit the total experience of mankind.

The findings of this book are neither startling nor unusual and it is most difficult to read.

FINDLEY B. EDGE

Review of Current Religious Thought: September 16, 1957

John H. Gerstner

Ecumenism, or the movement toward the visible unity of the Christian denominations, is the most conspicuous fact on the ecclesiastical scene. We say conspicuous because it may or may not be the most significant. Or, it may be significant but not particularly valuable. Or, it may be all these things. But, in any case, it is, at least, the most conspicuous fact on the ecclesiastical scene.

Whatever the value of ecumenism may be, it has a by-product of undisputed value. It has inevitably led to—demanded—a general and intensive study of the nature of the Church. Still, even this is more apparent than real. In many instances the study of the nature of the Church is really merely a study of how to discover essential similarities on which to build the ecumenical church. This drive to ecumenism, therefore, has sometimes produced a calculated shallowness of investigation. To take but one example—the study of biblical ecclesiology was much more intensive in seventeenth century England than it is in twentieth century England.

Be all this as it may, current periodical literature abounds with studies of the nature of the Church. In our bit of space here we note briefly several articles. One of these presents the exclusivist viewpoint (which regards a particular denomination as the only true visible church); another the inclusivist viewpoint (which regards various denominations as equally constituting the visible church); and the third a viewpoint mediating between these.

The Very Rev. Georges Florosky gives us a most informative discussion of the Eastern Orthodox tradition in his, “Orthodox Ecumenism in the Nineteenth Century” (St. Vladamir’s Seminary Quarterly, Spring-Summer, 1956). This learned historical survey succinctly, though incidentally, reveals the general outlook of Eastern Orthodoxy. “It would,” says Father Florovsky, “always insist upon an identity of doctrine and make the ‘reality’ of the church itself dependent upon the purity and completeness of the faith.” But, Christian life was recognized as possible in the schismatic bodies also (p. 13). Nevertheless, “identity of belief was stressed as an indispensible pre-requisite of communion, and a reference was made to the answer given by the Eastern Patriarchs to the Non-Jurors in 1723.” One of the most outspoken clergymen was Metropolitan Anthony who in 1914 contended that:

What is outside of the Orthodox Church is just ‘this World, foreign to Christ’s redemption and possessed by the Devil.’ It makes no difference, Anthony argued, whether the non-Orthodox have or do not have ‘right beliefs.’ Purity of doctrine would not incorporate them in the Church. What is of importance is only the actual membership in the Orthodox Church, which is not compromised by doctrinal ignorance or moral frailty. ‘Doctrinal agreement’ by itself means little. Membership in the Body is the only thing that counts.

But, in spite of this global exclusion of all non-Orthodox from Christendom, Anthony was wholeheartedly in favor of Orthodox participation in the proposed ‘Conference on Faith and Order.’

This view may not be shared, in its rigor, by all of orthodoxy, but there can be no denying that this tradition regards itself as alone perpetuating the original, true and catholic doctrine and order. While it has been especially friendly to the Anglican Church, as Florovsky shows, inter-communion, not to mention union, has not been achieved, partly because it suspects the Calvinistic strain in the Anglican denomination, which is regarded as heretical as well as schismatic.

The inclusivist view is such because it does not regard church order or even all church doctrine as belonging to the esse, or being, of the Church, but only to the bene esse, or, well being, of the Church. It may be quite as strict in its adherence to a particular doctrinal and governmental position, but it does not regard itself as the only legitimate denomination. It usually regards itself as the most biblical but will not deny that other bodies may be true churches nonetheless. This outlook is shared by the generality of Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and, indeed, most of the Protestant groups. Even the generality of Lutherans, it seems to us, belongs to this group; but, it must be remembered that the more strict among them think that their specific doctrines are essential.

The study illustrating the inclusivist viewpoint does so only incidentally to its purpose of tracing the English origin of some of the inclusivist churches. James Fulton Maclear’s “The Birth of the Free Church Tradition” (Church History, June, 1957) while no less learned than Florovsky is more interpretive and more difficult to summarize. The following paragraph is a remarkably concise statement of the way, according to our author, modern denominationalism arose.

With the fall of the Anglican Establishment and the pathetic condition of its nominal successor, the ‘lame Erastian presbytery’ (soon to be further maimed by its duel with the sects), the real religious situation throughout the 1640’s was free denominationalism. The revival of the Establishment principle in the Cromwellian church in the 1650’s was an unobtrusive superimposition on this reality rather than a serious challenge to it. Hence 1640 inaugurated an age of embarrassment for the sects when there was no substantial national church to repudiate. Witnessing for the holy community could still take place in this situation, as in the agitation against tithes, but deprived of its foil, it was necessarily less dramatic and less emphatic. Furthermore, the relevant problem which faced individuals in this milieu was not national church versus holy community, but which holy community. Of course, variety and competition had existed in the sectarian underworld before the Revolution, but it was not until the advent of freedom that this became the prime characteristic of its environment. Thus everything conspired to emphasize the factor of choice. And choice was exercised. The religious culture of the Interregnum was saturated with personal experimentation as scores of spiritual pilgrims made their way from form to form seeking an elusive satisfaction. To this situation it required only the addition of the principle of mutual recognition among the sects for voluntaryism to be exhibited in the form which it had assumed among the modern free churches.

When the Anglican Church is called the “Bridge Church,” we ask: “Which Anglican Church?” It has already been inferred that the rightist wing always tends to a rapprochement with Orthodoxy on the basis of a virtual identity of doctrine and polity with the East. While the Anglican Church builds this bridge to the Orthodox Church, it is burning its bridges to the rest of the Protestant churches. But, on the other hand, there is another wing, apparently much larger, which sits much more loosely astride the Apostolic Succession and anti-Calvinist theology. It is this segment which made the Church of South India possible (though the other segment has prevented official Anglican recognition of it). Its thinking approaches much closer to the inclusivist view to which we have referred. If the reader asks why we make a separate classification, the answer is that it insists, at all costs, on remaining an episcopal church. It is inclined, for example, to unite with Presbyterians, but it will insist on episcopal order.

This mediating, inclusive episcopal viewpoint is well articulated by Harlow Donovan in the April issue of the Anglican Theological Review. The conciliatory tone of the article is apparent throughout. Perhaps these sentences, in which the writer disclaims any belief in the absolute rightness or completeness of his own tradition, or the absolute wrongness or emptiness of other traditions, show this as clearly as any other.

… the Church is out of full relationship with itself. What is more, the question as to whether this lateral continuity has ever existed in fulness calls for some close examination. The study of early Christian writings, beginning with First Corinthians, discloses incipient division from the beginning. Solutions which have been offered from time to time for the healing of divisions sometimes have involved pretentious judgments concerning the opposition and have resulted in mutual exclusion of each other from real relationship. Offers of reconciliation have sometimes amounted to little more than overbearing demands for unconditional surrender.

The signs of hope now becoming apparent in the Ecumenical Movement would seem to indicate that we of the alienated churches are learning something of the essential need for repentance, both as members and function-bearing persons, on the part of the Church.

If anyone wishes to see this attitude—we are not saying whether we think it good or bad—at work in current negotiations between the Anglican and non-Anglican traditions, he may find some interesting reading in The Ecumenical Review (July, 1957): “Relations Between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches”

Cover Story

Secret of Power: Revive the Prayer Meeting

Alan Redpath

One day a few months ago I opened my mail to find enclosed in a letter from a member of my church an old letter of Dwight L. Moody’s written to his grandfather. Dated Baltimore, October 27, 1878, Moody’s letter was encouraging Mr. Aitchison, sexton, prayer meeting leader, Bible teacher and later senior elder of the old Chicago Avenue Church, to seek through intensive and united prayer fresh blessing from the Holy Spirit both personally and in the work of the church. That letter, quoted below, reveals the great evangelist’s confidence that definite, believing prayer is the means to power.

My prayer is that you may be full of the Holy Spirit. Why should we not lay hold of Matthew 5:6? Surely there is a promise for us and why should we not make it real and enter into its fullness? Acts 1:8 comes to my soul over and over again and it is a mighty blessing to my soul and I trust it will be to you.

Now do you not think it will be a good thing to get all who are hungry for the same blessing together once a week in prayer? I would not give it out in the meetings, but get hold of them one at a time and if you do not get but a few you will find it a great help to you. I hope you will not rest until you get the full blessing. God has a mighty blessing for you and he can use you to do a great work.

I do want to see that church made a power in Chicago for good.

My heart thrilled because Mr. Moody’s burden almost 80 years ago for the church he founded and which now bears his name was also the present longing of my heart.

Our Great Danger

We live in days when our churches are in great danger of substituting busyness, activity, committee meetings, even evangelistic services, for men and women on their knees in travail before God. In so many cases Christian people do not recognize the fact that witness to Christ is inseparably connected with communion with Christ and prayer to God in his name. The result is that in many churches today the midweek prayer meeting has been discontinued altogether. In others it is just another church service where the members sing some hymns, offer a few trite prayers for the success of the church services, then the pastor makes announcements and delivers a small talk.

Prayer Is Warfare

Prayer is not mere prattle, it is warfare; real prayer engages in battle. That kind of prayer God answers: prayer grounded in the Word, founded on the promises and rooted in God’s past dealings. Prayer is not primarily a means of getting something done; it is a concern for the glory of God.

Every week we receive a number of requests for prayer. Is it, however, a reflection upon the general standard of our praying that virtually all of these requests center around physical needs? Seldom do we get a request to pray for a real spiritual issue, a revelation of the will of God, the glory of God in a life, the breaking through of the power of God in hearts. Our prayers are usually asking God to bless the work or to keep us plodding along.

Was prayerlessness on our part the reason that there was a lack of conviction of sinners in our services? I asked myself, were we seeking to do by program planning and committee procedure what could be accomplished only by sacrificial prayer? By that I mean praying which refuses to let go until God blesses. The disciples waited and the power came; we do not wait and the power does not come.

Among the problems that faced us constantly were lack of reality in our personal lives, lack of effectiveness in our witness, lack of effort in our prayers. What we needed were prayer warriors, a few humble, ordinary souls anointed with the fullness of God’s Spirit. That is the ministry through which God convicts of sin, transforms lives and promotes revival.

Even when we prayed, could it be that we were living and acting in such a manner that it was impossible for God to answer our prayers? We can be so aware of sin in the life of the unbeliever, or of breakdown and failure in the life of our brother or sister in Christ, when the Holy Spirit of God is trying to speak to our own hearts and convince us of the sin in our own souls. The secret of every discord in Christian homes and communities and churches is that we seek our own way and our own glory. Obedience and humility are the only attitudes through which God can hear and answer prayer. We cannot in sincerity bring our requests in the name of the Lord Jesus unless we are living so that it is possible for God in righteousness to hear and answer us. If sacrificial living and self-denial cease, then prayer becomes meaningless and righteous conduct impossible.

Some people come to church, even to prayer meeting, carrying the resentment of years, the bitterness of a lifetime, and when they ask God for blessing they wonder why their prayers are not answered. A condition of restored fellowship with Christ is a forgiving spirit and without that there can be no fellowship in prayer with one another. What separations develop, what resentments arise out of injuries and slights, real or imagined! What an appalling revelation of how we love ourselves and how important we think we are!

During the major part of my ministry at Moody Church thus far the emphasis in my preaching has been upon this need for holy living, because it is my deep conviction that only through holiness in the lives of Christians can the unsaved be challenged to come to Christ.

Times Of Refreshing

When individual lives were cleansed and principles of prayer practiced, we noticed increasing burden for prayer spreading throughout our church. We made innovations in our scheduled prayer meetings, the executive committee leading out by setting aside alternate meetings especially for prayer. We created separate prayer meetings for young people and adults and added other periods such as all-night prayer meetings and cottage prayer meetings in an attempt to enlist all the people in some kind of public prayer.

The first of our all-night prayer meetings on New Year’s Eve 1953–54 proved to be such a great time of refreshing and blessing we have had several more. Sometimes we take an hour or two of waiting upon God for special requests following a midweek service. At a night of prayer for foreign missions in connection with one of our missionary conferences the Lord drew very near to us and we were confident that our missionaries felt the impact. We shall never forget the hour spent in praying for revival in the church; truly heaven seemed to open on us and our hearts were melted—there were few dry eyes in that meeting.

Our next step was organizing groups in the homes of our people for prayer and testimony. The need for fellowship, Bible study and prayer among our scattered members was quite sufficient reason for setting up 27 districts for monthly or bi-monthly cottage meetings. Most of the groups started studying the Gospel of John, using a set of guide questions for analysis and personal application. We found this method stimulated helpful discussion and greater participation in study of the Word. A large percentage of time was devoted to ministry of intercession, and virtually all who attended took part in prayer, especially for a gracious visitation of the Holy Spirit upon all the life and ministry of the church. In many ways we witnessed the increasing impact of such prayer.

Charting A New Course

D. L. Moody suggested that Mr. Aitchison seek out one by one those whom he felt shared this burden with him and call them to prayer. I had half a mind to do that very thing, but then I remembered that we met for prayer for revival every Friday morning at seven. That was a difficult time for prayer meeting, of course—very inconvenient; it meant getting up and leaving home very early. For some people it was impossible, but the ten to twenty who came found a family-like spirit of oneness.

In January 1956 we put into operation a new plan for midweek prayer service—a supper fellowship at 5:30, prayer meeting at 6:30 and Bible study at 7:30. The response was most encouraging and the unhurried season of prayer paved the way for an evening of real blessing. By having a smaller group and a smaller room than the 7:30 service, we could hear each other’s prayers and those present felt more freedom in prayer.

However, the young people who came seemed to feel a hesitancy in praying before older people, and the next step was a separate meeting for those under 40. This proved the principle that “you can multiply by dividing,” because within a few months both groups were as large as the original group. “After a single month, the prayer meeting has become an almost indispensable part of our work week,” one young person wrote, “and we can only wonder why we hadn’t done it sooner!”

Praying To God’S Glory

But real prayer is more than just meeting together. The Lord said, “When you pray, do it not to be seen of men.” That applies to public prayer also. Unfortunately, it is all too easy for one or two people to ruin a prayer meeting and deprive others of blessings they might otherwise receive. A prayer meeting is no time for fancy phraseology, unnatural tone of voice, needless repetitions and long drawn-out prayers. Simplicity is a necessary ingredient of prayer and testimony in public gatherings. Above all, we should be thoughtful how we use the name of Deity; it is too sacred to be repeated without veneration or put in terms of human affection. We found that these principles of public prayer had to be emphasized at the beginning of each meeting and sometimes enforced.

When our praying is for his glory and our hearts are drawn together in love to God, in love to Jesus Christ and in love to each other, there is a triumphant note of victory in the church that drives out discord and brings liberty in work and worship. I find in my diary a few months back this entry: “The presence of the Lord has been very manifest today. It has been great encouragement to find our prayer meeting attended by many more people … How constantly we have to be taught that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

“Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled,” was D. L. Moody’s conviction and the promise he claimed. Is it yours and mine?

Let us keep our chins up and our knees down—we are on the victory side!

END

The Rev. A. Dallimore, B.Th., is pastor of the Cottam Baptist Church, Cottam, Ontario, Canada. He was for some years editor of The Union Baptist and writes a monthly column for its successor, The Fellowship Baptist. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Seminary of Toronto, and for some years has been doing research on the life of Whitefield in preparation for a new biography to be called, George Whitefield and the Eighteenth Century Revival.

Cover Story

Christians and the Economic Order

Norman C. Hunt

The Christian Church is under fire from many quarters. The criticisms are legion. A common charge is that Christianity is “out of date” and “irrelevant” to the practical problems of the day, to the so-called “real” issues like war, poverty, color, privilege, totalitarianism and so on. On such issues the Church, it is claimed, is either silent or inconclusive; if she speaks at all, it is with no note of authority or conviction.

Many of these criticisms are mere rationalizations, excuses for indifference towards Christ and his Church. Nonetheless, some are justified. All too often Christians, and perhaps especially evangelicals, have failed to work out the implications of their faith for the urgent, practical problems of daily life. They have been understandably wary of anything which savors of a mere “social gospel,” and anxious to make clear the biblical revelation that man needs not reformation but regeneration. In this the position of the evangelical is unassailable. As George Whitefield, when asked why he so often preached on the text “Ye must be born again,” replied, “Why, simply because ye must be born again.” Ours is a personal Gospel; apart from personal faith in Christ there is no salvation and no true Christianity. Nevertheless this personal Gospel does have social implications and if our witness is to be effective in this sophisticated twentieth century the challenge of these social implications must be faced with courage and a thoughtfulness that is both prayerful and crystal-clear.

Inevitable Involvement

The challenge is inescapable because our involvement in society is inescapable; we are in the world although we are not of it. As Christians we cannot contract out of our social responsibilities, for we are dependent upon our fellows for maintenance of life itself. Moreover, we should not even if we could, for our economic and social activities have their beginnings in the creative work of God. It is of course true that, like the rest of creation, the economic order is subject to the fall and spoiled by sin, which expresses itself so clearly in exploitation and misuse of economic resources, sharp practice, industrial unrest and bad human relations.

In this situation the Gospel is the only answer. However much men may criticize it because of our failure as Christians to realize and live out its fullness, the Gospel is relevant to the economic crisis of our time. After all, the Bible has a great deal to say about our life and responsibilities in society. Writing to the Colossians, Paul has a word for workers and employers: “Servants, obey in all things your masters … not with eyeservice as menpleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God; and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men”; and again, “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.” Can anyone deny the vital relevance of such principles of action to the critical problems of labor relations, wages and motivation that bedevil the economic scene today?

Indeed, Paul’s epistles are never exclusively doctrinal; they invariably move on to practical questions of social relationships. The great burden upon the soul of James is that faith may make itself manifest in works of social as well as personal righteousness. Peter’s epistles, written to Christians some of whom were dispossessed slaves suffering under a totalitarian government, are intensely practical and vividly relevant to the social crisis of our own time. In an earlier age Isaiah, Amos and Micah were equally practical. The message of the Old Testament as of the New issues not only in personal salvation but also in social righteousness.

The supreme word for the Christian must be that of the Master himself. In reply to the lawyer’s question as to which was the great commandment, Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Here is a clear principle governing relationship of the Christian to social and economic activities of the community; he must engage in nothing which cannot be done to the glory of God; all his work must be dedicated to the fulfillment of God’s purpose in the world; and his attitude to his fellows, employer, employees, suppliers, customers and all the rest, must be governed by the love of Christ.

The Taint Of Sin

What, in practical terms, are the social implications of the Gospel? First, there is responsibility upon every Christian constantly to seek to relate his faith to the great social, economic and political problems of the day. He must avoid that dualism which, as one historian has put it, empties “religion of its social content and society of its soul.” There are two great dangers here. The liberal tends to argue and act as though the Kingdom of God can be brought in by social reform. He neglects or minimizes two great biblical truths: the sinfulness of man and the second advent of Christ. His solution is often some form of collectivism. On the other hand the evangelical too often makes the truth of the second advent an excuse for inaction in regard to social reform and gives uncritical support to free enterprise capitalism without challenging its imperfections and injustices. Since man is sinful it follows that all forms of human society must be imperfect and marred by sin; the Kingdom can only be fully established by the King, and will be at his coming. It can only do harm to the cause of Christianity to identify it completely with any existing order of society. All are the product of human history and human philosophy and contain features which cannot measure up to Christian standards.

Capitalism Versus Collectivism

That is not to say that capitalism is inconsistent with Christianity. That charge can rather be leveled against collectivism which in all its forms does violence to individual liberty and is unbiblical in its attitude to human sin and self-interest. In an imperfect world it is folly to try to operate a system which is predicated upon a false view of human nature. Collectivism is just such a system. It is based on an unbiblical concept of man. It minimizes or disregards his fallen nature and depends upon motivation which cannot work effectively in a free society made up of sinful men and women. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that attempts to make it work frequently end in loss of human liberty and, ultimately, terrors of totalitarianism.

The Christian, however, cannot simply say that capitalism is Christian and collectivism un-Christian and leave it at that. He must be prepared to admit and seek to remedy manifest imperfections of the system. The best evangelicals have done this down through the centuries. Although the Reformation released springs of individualism which were so essential to development of free enterprise capitalism, Luther denounced with the same vigor that he used against Rome the view that prevails so widely today, that the world of business can be divorced from authority of laws of God. Calvin proclaimed a message which sought not only salvation of the individual but also penetration of the whole of society with the influence of the Christian religion. The Reformed church at Geneva made a great effort to organize an economic order worthy of the Gospel it preached. Calvin’s Institutes declare that no Christian “holds his gifts to himself, or for his private use, but shares them among his fellow members, nor does he derive benefit save from those things which proceed from the common profit of the body as a whole.”

Among the Puritans, to whom our free enterprise economies owe so much, Richard Baxter insisted that the Christian was committed by his faith to certain ethical standards which were just as binding in the sphere of economic activity as in private life. He must do business in the spirit of one conducting a public service; he must not “get another’s goods or labor for less than it is worth” or indulge in “extortion, working upon men’s ignorance, error or necessity.”

Challenge To Social Evils

Many specific social evils have been challenged by stalwart evangelicals. As the late Archbishop William Temple wrote, “the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery itself were political projects; but they were carried through by evangelicals in the fervor of their evangelical faith.” Like Wilberforce and Buxton, the evangelicals who pioneered the abolition of slavery, Shaftesbury, Sadler and Oastler, all evangelicals, were leaders in the campaigns against the social evils of nineteenth-century capitalism. Their work gave Britain much of its legislation for protection of workers, especially women and children, against exploitation in mines and factories. These men and many others such as Barnardo, Muller and Booth, were convinced that the Gospel was not only concerned with the life of the individual but also that of society. They refused to allow their Christianity to be divorced from social problems of their day. Moreover they knew what is too often forgotten nowadays, that social reform without the Gospel of Christ is ineffective, self-frustrating and dangerous. Just as faith without works is dead, so are works without faith.

The clear duty of the Christian in society, then, is to uphold loyally and steadfastly those biblical principles by which all economic and social activity must be judged. He must never allow his faith to be isolated from his conduct as employer, employee or citizen. This is both difficult and costly, but it is essential if his Christian witness is to make sense to the man in the street. Indeed the Christian’s concern with social problems should always be conceived as extension of his witness for Christ and not as an end in itself.

Biblical View Of Vocation

One important aspect of this is the question of Christian vocation in daily work. The distinction often made between those who are in so-called “fulltime service” and those who are not is invalid. Nor is there justification for the view that a layman’s Christian service must be confined to spare-time activities, with his daily work merely providing necessary finance. Every Christian should be in fulltime service, all day and every day, but this does not necessarily mean he has to be a minister or missionary and give up his secular job. Writing to the Corinthians, some of whom were chafing at the apparent limitations of their daily work and were eager to enjoy what seemed to them a wider sphere of service in itinerant preaching, Paul said, “Let everyone abide in the same calling wherein he was called.” Clearly we must not use this as excuse to neglect the claims of the ministry or mission field; the needs there are urgent and those who are called of God must go, but it does mean that Christians must look upon their daily work as a “calling” in which they are to make their witness and which they are not to leave unless clearly called to something else. Evangelicals have a great tradition here for the concept of “calling” was at the very heart of Puritan teaching. God does not call men to withdraw themselves from the world, Puritans taught, but rather to engage in labor for his glory. Wrote Richard Steele, “God doth call every man and woman … to serve Him in some peculiar employment in this world, both for their own and the common good … and let him be never so active out of his sphere, he will be at a great loss, if he do not keep his own vineyard and mind his own business.”

Opportunity For Witness

This attitude to work is sorely needed in the world today. What desperate need there is for Christian politicians, doctors, teachers, business men, foremen, workers and trade unionists. One of the great problems in British labor relations at the present time is that a small number of communists are active in factories and trade unions, exerting an influence out of all proportion to their numerical strength. They are able to do so only because of apathy of the great bulk of trade union members. How different things would be if the many Christians in those same factories and trade unions were ready to take office and bring their Christian influence to bear in this workaday sphere.

Opportunities for Christian witness in journalism and authorship, in national and local government, in business and professions are so obvious and yet neglected. Many people today are outside the reach of church and the minister but are accessible to those who work alongside them in office and factory, who do the same job but in a different way and with more joyous spirit because they have found something more purposeful in life than mere money-making and material security. Many mission fields are closing to professional missionaries, but they remain open to engineers, chemists, architects—the men who do ordinary jobs with extraordinary purpose. This attitude to work as extension of Christian witness is costly; it does not permit slacking or shoddy workmanship, or coming in late because one has been to prayer meeting the night before. The Christian must be a first-rate worker because he is a Christian not in spite of it. As Macaulay put it, “The Methodist revival improved the quality of West of England cloth.”

Christian Stewardship

Finally, the Christian must work out the implications of his faith in terms of stewardship. If it is important that he should be prayerfully responsible in the way in which he earns his income, it is equally important in the way he spends it. This too is in the evangelical tradition. It was the great Puritan Richard Baxter who wrote, “Every penny which is laid out … must be done as by God’s own appointment.” In a free enterprise economy the consumer is sovereign; the way in which he utilizes his income is the prime determinant of the way in which scarce, God-given economic resources are used for production and consumption. Thus the principle of Christian stewardship involves the Christian inevitably in the working of the economic order. He cannot, he must not, live unto himself; he is personally responsible for the effects his economic activities as well as his words have upon others. Although his citizenship is in heaven, he must live and witness in the world of men. For the man in Christ, “all things are become new”; there is no deadly dualism of secular and sacred but a life that is both whole and holy.

END

Dr. Paul S. James is Pastor of The Baptist Tabernacle in Adanta, Georgia.

Cover Story

The Holy Spirit in Preaching

William Still

Preaching is more than lecturing. It is more than exhortation. It brings Christ home to the hearts of men and confronts them with his living grace and power. It is not only that Christ is discussed—it is too easy to discuss people in their absence—but that he is proclaimed; even that he proclaims himself by taking over the personality of the preacher and speaking through him.

John the Baptist was such a “voice.” Pilate also, in his way, was nearer to proclamation than many preachers. He stood before the mob with Jesus at his side and proclaimed “Behold the Man!” There were two factors in his proclamation: (1) he proclaimed Jesus in his presence; (2) he proclaimed him, not to the winds, but to the people present. In his hour of crisis, Pilate was both “Christ-conscious” and “people-conscious.” Both are necessary for effectual preaching. Soliloquy will not do, however spiritual and “Christ-conscious” the speaker may be, for it is not directed toward men and their needs. Nor will “discussion” do, however aware the preacher may be of the human situation. Christian preaching must bring God down to men—to particular men.

How often on the radio we hear a sort of religious recital, as if a man said, “I am speaking: you may listen or not, but I will speak. It is fine to have an audience, but I can speak without one, for I get great pleasure from my own speaking.” How vain! Preaching must have direction—from and to. It should make men sit up and face Christ, as corporate prayer should make them kneel down and worship him. For the true preacher is saying, “Christ is here and is speaking to you. You had better hear him now, for you will have to later!”

It is all very well to compare preaching to Pilate’s presentation of Christ to the people, but they are not the same. No, but in true preaching Christ is just as present as he was then. It is often lamented that the Holy Spirit is the least understood Person of the Trinity, but surely we see why this is so; for the Holy Spirit comes not to speak of himself, but to glorify Christ. Where preachers are intent on glorifying Christ (and only crucified men can do so!), the Spirit is there with all his aid. All true showing forth of Christ is by the Holy Spirit. We are, therefore, to consider how the Holy Spirit manifests Christ in preaching.

Christ And Scripture

Christ is proclaimed in his Word and by his Word. The first qualification of the preacher, therefore, is that he acknowledge the Bible to be the Word of God, and that he understands that it was Christ by his Spirit who caused to be written “in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” There is no use saying that the Bible “contains” the Word of God if in our modern understanding of the word we mean to infer that it does so inter alia. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable …”; its truth is therefore not partial and intermittent, but complete and permanent.

A prevailing wind of doctrine fails to see this because it confuses revelation and inspiration with illumination. Revelation is what God has made known to us once and for all by the inspiration of his chosen writers; illumination is the work of the Spirit in bringing the truth of the “closed Book” to light. The art treasures of London’s National Gallery remain intrinsically the same during the hours of darkness when they cannot be seen. We remain as essentially alive during the hours of unconsciousness in sleep as when we are awake. It is because we are alive that we can awake. It is surely a plain error of fact to say that the Bible “becomes alive” in the divine-human encounter, when what we mean is that it awakes and shines forth its light and truth into the dark mind of man. The revelation of Christ in the Holy Scriptures is a work of God established long before we were born, and owes nothing to us, nor can it be subtracted from or added to by us. It is the “word of the Lord which liveth and abideth for ever.”

The Spirit’s Illumination

But revelation and inspiration without illumination are useless; for man is by nature dark and cannot see the truth in the Word of God until he is enlightened. Why is it that one man preaching can bring spiritual light to bear on the sacred page and make the Book live, while another makes it seem the dullest book on earth? Because the Holy Spirit who was active in revelation and inspiration is present and active or is not present and active in illumination. The difference between a good and a poor preacher is not one of natural gift. That “gift” is necessary, we agree, but not necessarily natural gift. Some preachers can make people listen to them, but the test of a true preacher is whether he can make men listen to Christ, and that not with a little temporary interest but with lasting effect. What we hear by natural gift, of language, logic, passion, and powers of persuasion, may stir profoundly, but all this may be done equally well on the secular rostrum or in the theater. A true preacher may have a natural gift and aptitude for peaching. God is not foolish or perverse in his choices, but since God loves to do a hard thing, he may well choose men of no natural gift to do his work and add to them the spiritual gift of utterance. Who shall distinguish between natural and spiritual gift in preachers who have been used of God? The endowment of power and anointing of the Spirit sounds so “natural”! In this matter the need of the naturally eloquent is just as great as the need of the naturally tongue-tied.

Unfortunately, these things are too little understood by listeners to sermons, who are often quite unable to distinguish between the soulish-and the spiritual, not to say between the spiritist and the spiritual, in preaching; whereas the writer to the Hebrews tells us that the Word of God in action “pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” Many who for the first time come under the sound of Holy Ghost preaching are mortally offended because while they may consider themselves expert sermon-tasters, having much experience of eloquent preaching, they have never been exposed to the white light of the Spirit. The atmosphere of the theater and the concert hall is so native to modern man that when it is produced in church he is pleased to believe that it is right and that the Holy Spirit is there. But while the Holy Spirit in former revivals produced overpowering experiences and created deep emotional sensations in many, that is not his essential work, but to convince of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come, and to be a savor of life unto life and death unto death.

The Spirit’s Power

How can a man ensure the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in his preaching? The Word must become flesh again; the preacher must become the vehicle of the Holy Spirit, his mind inspired and his heart inflamed by the truth he preaches. This will depend not primarily on what he preaches or how he prepares, but on what he is in himself. As his physical presence cannot be hid, no more can his spiritual condition be hid from the discerning. This is terrifying. In a vestry in Aberdeen these words used to confront the preacher ere he mounted the pulpit stairs: “No man can glorify Christ and himself at the same time.” If the Holy Spirit is to speak through the preacher and the preaching he must have clear passage—not through a void, but through a mind and personality laid open in all its delicate and intricate parts to the operation of the Spirit, to the end that his total powers may be willingly and intelligently bent to the present purpose of God.

What are the requisites of such dedication? A man must know Christ personally as his Saviour and Lord. He must also be sure of his call to the ministry, as sure as he is of his conversion; for God will never anoint a man for service to which he has not called him. We are sometimes dismayed when a man steps down from the ministry to follow a lesser calling, but is it not a good thing when he realizes that he had intruded into holy things without divine authority? When a man knows that he knows Christ and is called by him to minister his Word, he must believe the truth and accept the authority of that Word, for himself, and for those to whom he is sent. It is here that what he is and what he believes, however privately, is exposed to the discerning. Men may have private and secret reservations concerning the Word of God, and these not only as to Genesis and science, literalism and infallibility, but with cardinal doctrines, such as holiness or hell. These may never be aired in public, and so the preacher may gain a reputation for evangelical orthodoxy, but there is no converting or edifying power in his preaching. No one is very different for it, nothing much happens. Why not? Because while a man may hide from men, and from himself, what he doubts or disbelieves, he cannot hide it from God, and God will not give his Holy Spirit to those who doubt and disbelieve.

The Spirit’s Sword

There can be no doubt that the underlying secret of fruitfulness in preaching is in one’s attitude to the Word of God. The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit, but when men sheath it in the scabbard of their own limited conceptions and beliefs, it is powerless to do its two-edged work of saving and judging. To listen to and sense the multifarious quibbles, qualifications and guarded cautions with which a preacher hedges his utterances is to understand why the Spirit of God is not let loose among the people. The man does not believe. He strangles the Word he is supposed to be declaring even in preaching it; for it is faith, not un-faith, that brings God down to men. Yet preachers seem so proud of their unfaith. Is it because we think we have the Almighty in a corner bowing to our superior intelligence? Surely it must be because we think we can add something vital or subtract something superfluous, that we hedge with so many reservations and provisos. Think of an eminent scholar and eloquent preacher using nine weaker words apparently to avoid saying that Jesus bore our sins.

How should we think that we are personally involved in the content of the Word of God? We are only errand boys, trusted to be faithful and to deliver what is sent. To tamper with a parcel is grave misconduct on the part of a messenger, and has serious consequences: That we are more than errand boys is a lie of the devil and of our own conceit, for the only living preachers are “dead” ones, who know that they are no more than a “voice” sent to deliver what has been given them, without personal interference.

But there are further considerations. The prophets of old were called not only or always to be “preachers” for a lifetime, but to deliver specific messages (cf. 2 Chron. 20:14). The man who knows Christ and is called to be a prophet may yet find the Holy Ghost “desert” him because he is preaching out of turn or without specific commission. He may be preaching in the wrong place, or from the wrong motive, or the wrong message. He may be powerless for no other reason than that he is not in God’s appointment. He may have left his God-given post for personal or domestic reasons, to please his wife or educate his children or to escape persecutors. Though none of these are trivial reasons, if they do not please God he certainly cannot bless disobedience and has promised that “if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.”

The Sermon Itself

What of the sermon itself? What kind of sermon does God bless? It is not a question of whether it is carefully prepared or not, or written or not, but whether it is the Word of God for the occasion and for the people gathered to hear it. In this connection, although the same sermon may be preached many times because it is a God-given burden on the heart of the preacher, it is doubtful if the same manuscript is adequate to very different occasions. A man may fashion his utterance into an expression which he cannot improve (happy man!) and into which he cannot subsequently read new, deeper or truer insights, but if so, is he not in a dangerous state of “perfection”? It is surely not unworthy of each occasion he preaches the same sermon that he revise it! A well-known preacher nonchalantly stuffed two sermons into his pocket as he set out for a village church, not sure which he would preach and apparently not very exercised about it either. It was not surprising that discerning folk who came from afar to hear him preach were bitterly disappointed at his lack of conviction. We must get the Word for the day and for the occasion. This is not too much for our hearers to ask of us.

Walking In Fellowship

But the Word may be right, and the occasion also, and yet the sermon flat. Is there no end of the considerations that govern effective preaching? They are not few, but this above all—that the preacher be walking in close fellowship with the Lord, all known sin confessed and forsaken, forgiven and cleansed. For each message he must go down again into personal death, and probably into spiritual agony, ere he come up with a living word for his hearers. God will only give his unction to those who do his work in his way.

Unction may not be experienced before the service or even before the sermon begins: it may be quarter, half or more delivered before it seems to grip. It may not seem to grip at all. We must beware subjective judgments on our own work. If we know that all is well as we essay to preach, then we are to go through with it faithfully and leave it with God. Before we begin there may be a burden, or not; there may be coldness of heart that strikes fear into us; there may be accusings of the evil one, or the congregation may be restless, or some disconcerting face may catch our eye, or it may suddenly seem that the Word is inappropriate—the devil has a thousand ways of putting God’s servants off.

But if the preacher knows that he is the man for the moment and has the word for the people, if he has sunk himself into Christ for the message, its preparation, and its delivery, and has also prepared the hearts of his hearers by previous private prayer, he may expect the living Word of God to come forth. And he must believe that it will come forth and that it is coming forth, and must thereafter go home in this steadfast assurance and leave it with God.

No man who fulfils these conditions, however hard or unrewarding or discouraging his task, can ultimately fail. He must succeed, for God is faithful. But the important things are these: He must be sure that the Holy Spirit gave the Word and that only the Holy Spirit can preach it. For the Spirit is not a Preacher, but the Preacher. If we want an audience to applaud us, let us rely on all the tricks we know; but if we want fruit from our preaching, holy and lasting, let us rely on the Holy Spirit.

Paul Harvey was still in knickers and not yet 16 when he made his first radio announcements. After World War II, in which he served as Director of News and Information for the Office of War Information in Michigan and Indiana, his rise to radio fame was meteoric. One station alone received 10,000 requests for his obituary of President Roosevelt, which started, “A great tree has fallen.…” Monday through Friday he is heard over the American Broadcasting Company at 12 noon, CST.

Cover Story

Fourth R in American Education

Renwick Harper Martin

Never in history has any nation invested as much in education and depended as much on it as the United States. At the beginning of 1957, 41 million Americans—one in every four—were in school. The cost of their schooling amounted to $15,544,000,000, or almost $400 per pupil. Our investment in school property was over 16 billion dollars in 1953 and today would probably reach 20 billion. Truly, education is Big Business with us.

Public And Private Education

In our early history education was almost entirely a private enterprise, provided by parents, churches and other private agencies. Now it is very largely a public enterprise, provided by institutions under state control.

In our public (state-controlled) schools in 1955–1956, 33 million pupils were enrolled at a cost of 10.5 billion dollars; in private schools, 5 million were enrolled at an expenditure of 1.5 billion dollars. Thus, there were 86–1/3 per cent in public and 13–2/3 per cent in private schools.

In higher education the enrollment was 3 million and the cost 3.4 billion dollars—divided into 2 billion dollars (56.3 per cent) in public and 1.4 billion dollars (43.7 per cent) in private schools.

Notwithstanding this vast expenditure of effort and money on education, we are confronted with an appalling crisis in morals, youth delinquency and crime. With reference to the latter J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI informs us that last year a total of 2,563,150 major crimes were committed in the United States, a 13.3 per cent increase over the preceding year; that since 1950 the increase in crime has been 43 per cent, while that of population has been 11 per cent. This is a worse criminal record than that of any other civilized nation. Hoover also says that crime is increasingly becoming a youth problem, that young people still in their teens are “committing crimes that are almost unspeakable,” and that in 1956 persons age 17 and younger accounted for 24.7 per cent of the arrests for robbery, 53.9 per cent of the arrests for burglary, and 66.4 per cent of all auto arrests. The underlying cause is the lack of the moral and spiritual training of American youth. Mr. Hoover says: “People for the most part commit crime because they do not have the moral stamina and traits of character to withstand temptation.… The criminal is the product of spiritual starvation. Someone failed miserably to bring him to know God, love him and serve him.”

Education And Character

The secular public schools cannot escape a large measure of responsibility for this frightening crime situation. It has taken over the major portion of time that can be given to formal education of American youth during the character-forming period of their lives—six hours a day, five days a week, for a period of 10 to 12 years—leaving the church only one day for youth education and only about one hour on that day. The public schools, backed by our compulsory school laws, enroll 83 per cent of our youth population, but the churches, relying on voluntary attendance, enroll no more than 50 per cent. Thus the average young person receives 30 hours of secular state education weekly compared to 1 hour of church religious education.

If the fourth R has anything to do with building moral character and preventing delinquency and crime, no wonder we face this perilous situation. Back in the early days of our nation’s history, all education was basically religious, public as well as private. Our founding fathers set forth its religious character in these words from the Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory: “Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.” This has been called the “Magna Charta of American Education.”

The Retreat From Religion

This was the type of education our forefathers established: The fourth R—religion and morality its foundation; and the three R’s—knowledge built on this foundation. This continued until about 1870 when a great change took place in public education. The order was reversed. The three R’s became the major and the fourth R the minor role. We have sown to the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind.

To meet our nation’s perils and save our beloved country it is imperative that we again give religion its basic place in education. Our basic task is to build strong public sentiment for the right and duty of the state in its own schools to give adequate and effective moral training to American youth.

How shall we go about it?

The Bible In The Schools

We must build public sentiment for giving the Bible a place of importance in our public schools. There are many reasons for this: Its matchless English, its biographies, its history, its great moral and spiritual truths—to sum them all up, its contribution to our nation. We submit a few testimonies to its contribution to our nation and government: Justice Brewer of the United States Supreme Court said, “The American nation from its first settlement at Jamestown to this hour is based upon and permeated by the Bible”; President Andrew Jackson, “The Bible is the Rock on which this Republic rests”; President Thomas Jefferson, “The Bible is the Source of Liberty”; President William McKinley, “The more profoundly we study this wonderful Book and the more closely we observe its precepts the better citizens we will become and the higher will be the destiny of our nation”; President Woodrow Wilson, “There are great problems before the American people. I would be afraid to go forward if I did not believe that there lay at the foundation of all our schooling and all our thought, the incomparable and unimpeachable Word of God.”

To deprive American youth of the opportunity of coming to know this Book in their education is an injustice both to them and to the nation.

We must make the moral and spiritual development of youth the major objective in education. “Good education,” says Frederick M. Raubinger, Commissioner of Education of New Jersey, “has always been concerned with more than knowledge. Its ultimate objective is the development of persons of honor, integrity, vision and high purpose—in short, persons of character.” To achieve this objective will require much greater emphasis and more effective methods of developing it, namely, emphasis upon religious motivation that, because of secular influence, is rare in public education.

Perils Of Irreligious Education

We must show the peril of education from which the fourth R is excluded. Education multiplies power. Inventive science has put into man’s hands power not even dreamed of a century ago. That power can be used for good or evil. Long ago Alfred the Great said, “Power is never a good except he be good that has it.” In the hands of evil men such power over forces of nature can destroy our civilization. Someone has said: “It is not the ignorant, the primitive people who terrorize the world today, but the most educationally advanced peoples who have made learning a road to power without bringing that power under ethical control.”

We must correct the prevalent wrong idea that our laws and court decisions are nearly all against religion in public education. The opposite is true. They are indeed against sectarian religious instruction. The attempt to introduce sectarian views has been a leading cause of opposition to religion in public education.

Religious Liberty

We must correct the mistaken idea that the American principle of religious liberty and of separation of church and state excludes religion from public education. No one’s religious liberty is infringed on if he is not required to participate in religious exercises of the schools. For him to insist religious instruction be denied those who want it, when he is free not to take part, is not religious liberty but religious bigotry. Properly interpreted, separation of church and state is separation of control. That is, each of the two organizations is independent in its own sphere of action. Not separation of function—that is excluding religious instruction from state schools and restricting it to church schools and the home.

The carrying forward of such a program as this is imperative. Professor Ernest Johnson of Teachers College, Columbia University, has said, “The divorcement of education and religion is the most basic defect in American life.” This defect must be remedied. Let every Christian patriot help.

Alan Redpath is minister of Chicago’s Moody Memorial Church, which maintains a vigorous prayer life under his ministry and leadership. Born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, he studied at Durham University and began a career in London as an associate chartered accountant. From 1940–53 he served the Duke Street Baptist Church, Richmond, Surrey, and then was called to Moody Church. He has spoken frequently at English Keswick, and the Mid-America Keswick Convention is one of his interests. His books include Answer for Today, Victorious Christian Living and Victorious Praying.

I Rest in His Love

I rest in His love, as a ship in a storm

Takes rest on a restless sea:

Knowing the currents that bear it up

Are steady and strong and free.

I rest in His love, as a tree in the wind

Takes rest through the bitter blast:

Feeling the pull of the deep, deep roots

That anchor it sure and fast.

I rest in His love, as a babe on the breast

Takes rest from the world’s alarms:

Hearing the beat of the parent-heart,

Locked close in the parent-arms.

I rest in His love. He will bear me up

And anchored my soul shall be:

As a storm-swept ship, as a sleeping child,

I rest—as a wind-tossed tree.

HELEN FRAZEE-BOWER

Cover Story

Oneness with Christ

John Henry Strong

He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17).

How close does Jesus Christ come to the lives of those who have trusted in him? Is he spectator solely, or is he an active participant in the lives which believers live? If a participant, does he help only at points and at moments, with intervals and absences between, or is his influence continuous? And if continuous, how close does he come? Is there some inner life connection? Are our lives somehow so related to his that, could we scan the inner foundations where the two join, we should find ourselves in some manner actual sharers of what he is?

Men may hesitate before such questions, but there is no hesitation in the New Testament Scriptures. Whatever the mystery involved, there is no fact which the New Testament sets before us more variously or plainly than our vital union with Christ. The Spirit of the Lord is represented as so interpenetrating and energizing the spirit of the believer that the two are—oh, the marvel of it!—“one spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17). This is not metaphor, but fact. Not a figurative “oneness,” a harmony of spirit, an identity of aim, but a literal oneness of life. Union with Christ is represented not as loving Christ, following his precepts, sympathizing with his aims. In this sense I might be one with Martin Luther or George Washington. The believer is one with Christ in a sense far deeper than that in which he is one with patriots, fellow Christians, or friends. He has become a participant in Christ’s life. The believer lives in Christ as truly as he lives in the atmosphere about him. Christ lives in the believer as truly as the air fills his lungs with the breath of life. For the believer has become “one spirit” with his Lord.

The Reality Of Oneness

How much we lose by taking substance to be shadow, by allegorizing the great truths of the Bible, by treating as mere orientalisms statements that otherwise

would startle us with their grandeur and open miraculous vistas of Christian living to the hopeless and despondent. The traveler in the desert sometimes sees upon the horizon waving palms and sparkling pools of water that lure him on and on, only to fade into thin air. But how much more tragic if he mistakes reality for mirage, and when he might press forward and be saved, sinks fainthearted upon the sand!

Oneness with Christ is a truth that baffles all description and confounds all philosophy. Intimations, foreshadowings of it there are, to be sure, in the world around us. The tree standing in front of my house depends on God. His power lives in it, sustains it, and he clothes it in a leafy robe. Yet God is not the tree. In cutting it down I should do no violence to God. And God lives in man’s natural life. He gives me strength to think, to strive, to lead my daily life, while all the time not destroying my independence. My sins are mine, not God’s. Yet how poor are all analogies beside the unique relationship which comes to pass when Christ enters into the human soul and makes it, not a Leyden jar, a mere receptacle for his energy, but a temple resplendent with his presence, a tabernacle for his personal indwelling!

This is the astonishing truth that our Lord set forth under the figure of the vine and the branches. A vine with leaves and branches, with arms stretched forth laden with fruit, may seem a thing far removed from the life and relationships of responsible and free men and women; yet our Lord never would have employed the figure had it not imaged forth the half-concealed reality behind it. A vine is a unity. Its branches are only individualized stock. Stock and offshoots together form one organism. One life pervades the whole; and the supreme “concern” of the branch is, as it were, to live in the uninterrupted power of the union on which fruitfulness depends. “Abide in me,” Jesus told his disciples, “and I in you.”

More impressive still is the vastly significant fact that Jesus likened his oneness with his disciples to his own oneness with the Father. “I in them,” he prayed, “and thou in me” (John 17:23). That sets the thoughts soaring. Was our Lord’s union with his Father not a life union? Nothing less, then, is his union with his followers. This is a mystery. It was to his disciples; these babes in understanding did not at once grasp even the fact of it. But a day of revelation was coming, Jesus promised, when they should know that he was in his Father, and they in him, and he in them (John 14:20).

“Christ In You”

The Apostle Paul stands out as the most potent human examplar of vital relation. He is the man God chose to put Christianity into the form in which it has won its greatest victories for nineteen centuries. How did Paul live his life and do his work? This same life union with the Master is the answer. Union with Christ is the secret of the life of Paul. It is the cornerstone of his theology, and the key to unlock all the mysteries of his epistles.

“In Christ,” “in Christ,” “in Christ!” How the phrase recurs on Paul’s familiar pages. “I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you.” “I trust in the Lord to come to you.” “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all.” Is there anything this man thinks, feels, believes, prays, hopes, plans or remembers, except through the will and power of the One within him?

A discouraged evangelist, so Bishop Moule once told us, was making his way through a field in solitude, his forces spent, his obstacles and burdens mountainous and hopeless. Suddenly, as though Spirit-prompted, these words stole into his mind: “When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also be manifested with him in glory.” Then He came into view, of whose fulness we have all received, and who quickens whom he will. The burdens were rolled upon His shoulders, and a revived servant of God once more turned courageous steps into the path of surrender and faith.

Christ The Believer’S Life

How plain it is that our union with Christ is not “fidelity in the free imitation of the Master,” as some would have it, to whom every soul is severely separate and discontinuous and a teaching like that of the vine and the branches nothing more than a figure for the moral harmony that should exist between the disciple and his Lord. Trees do not root themselves in the air. Souls are not self-subsistent. Christ is our life. Those are bereft indeed whose little systems will not allow for a vast underground relationship lifting the strain from life, discovering our true glory, and making our chief task the joyous experience of abiding and believing.

How plain it is, too, that to receive the “life of Christ” is to receive the Christ who lives it. Life has no existence by itself, as though it could be stripped from a person as a coupon is stripped from a ticket or a skin from an onion. Life is a property, a function, of someone. If it is imparted at all, it is imparted only in and with the person who possesses and lives it. Why then should we build these abstract barriers between ourselves and Jesus our Master? First we build them, and then we deify them. But if his life is in us, it is because he himself is within us, living that life as his divine and blessed function. It is because, whether our intellects penetrate to it or not, he and we are one in a union divine and indissoluble.

Results Of Oneness With Christ

Now if union with Christ is as wonderful as this, what of its results? Must they not also be wonderful? It is simply a question of the wealth and potency of the wonderful divine being we know as our Lord and Master. Paul hints at one result when he says, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.” How could it be otherwise? What is the new birth but the beginning of the new life which now is come, revealed to the eyes of faith by the Spirit of the Lord dwelling within us?

Another result of union with Christ is hinted at when we read, “There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,” and we find that the law of the new relationship in Christ makes us free from the old law of sinning and dying. Nothing could be more triumphant than the assurances which meet us on every hand of an immediate, complete, and continuous deliverance, wrought by Christ within us, from the seductiveness and strength of long-entrenched sinful habits.

A lovely fruit of this union is disclosed in the unity of the spiritual life which springs up between all believers. Severally members of Christ, they become together the Church, the Body. Possessing Christ as individuals, they have this supreme experience in common. Only Christians understand one another and are truly at home with one another. The Epistle to the Ephesians sets forth the glory of the Church of which Christ is the head, and which, drawing from his inexhaustible life, enters joyfully into the length and breadth and depth and height of the purposes of God.

A crowning result of this oneness with Christ remains in the eternal life with which Christ even now blesses his followers. How shall I live forever unless I am joined to him who is “the Life”? Cut off from the source of life, the “well of living water,” I shall surely die; but if I have trusted Christ, if I have cast in my lot with him, if I have become one spirit with him, then who shall separate me from his love? “For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.”

“Abide in me, and I in you.” There lies the emphasis. What we yield to Christ is as nothing beside what he bestows upon us; and even our power to yield must be drawn from his storehouse of grace and power. Yet even this becomes possible because he abides in us.

To abide then, what is it? It is to give and to take. Both are absolute. Both are continuous, calling for daily and hourly renewal. We are entirely Christ’s—that is the first step; we have deeded ourselves over, body and soul, with every faculty and power, to be his exclusively. And then he is entirely ours, with the wealth of his nature, with the riches of his wisdom and strength and love. We live for Christ, and Christ lives for us. We make the self-renunciation involved in the first. We claim the riches involved in the second. And we do both, because “Christ lives in us, the hope of glory.”

END

Professor Norman C. Hunt occupies the Chair of Organization of Industry and Commerce in the University of Edinburgh. He is a Sir Edward Stern scholar and a first-class honors graduate in Commerce at the University of London and holds the Ph.D. from Edinburgh. He is a member of the British Institute of Management and a director of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. An elder of Charlotte Chapel, the largest Baptist church in Scotland, he is also president of the Edinburgh Evangelistic Union and president-elect of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship of Great Britain.

Theology

Form in Religion

Clyde S. Kilby

Christianity Today September 2, 1957

Selden Rodman’s The Eye of Man, which Time magazine calls one of the most provocative books in its field in recent years, is pivotal because of its pronouncements on art in our day, but it has, I think, some interesting implications for Christianity as well. On the art side this book boldly raises the question whether the artist is obliged to weigh human values and communicate spiritual truth. Conversely, it asks whether the artist’s refusal to acknowledge such responsibilities denies to him on the one hand the driving force which has motivated the great arts of the past and on the other hand the audience without which the artist is doomed to exclusive communication with himself alone. Many people will rejoice to know that Rodman, whose critical acumen and insight are well known, gives no uncertain answer to these questions. The artist, says he, is a man among men and cannot abdicate his position as a responsible member of the human race. He has not the right to retire into a world of esoteric inner experience and thus separate himself from his fellow men. Rodman examines the history of Western painting and attempts to show that in times of cynicism or retreat from positive values in life, art has tended to move away from subject and toward form, but, says he, only in our day has this movement away from content suffered a total eclipse.

Rodman’s book is devoted to a minute description of the relation of subject and form. Form he defines as “the appropriate shape an artist discovers in the process of saying what he has to say.” To make form an end in itself is to fall back upon the old and sterile doctrine of art for art’s sake. If form in art simply calls attention to itself, it thereby falls into a trap as clearly obvious as is the trap of didacticism. He goes so far as to declare that form is mere decoration unless it is integrally connected with subject. These doctrines enunciated by Rodman are entirely at odds with both the theory and the practice of many prominent artists of our time—beliefs which reach their extreme expression in Mallarme’s statement, “A beautiful line without meaning is more beautiful than a less beautiful one with meaning,” and Flaubert’s notion of writing a book without any subject at all. Rodman feels that it is only when artists have lost every social and spiritual conviction that the frivolous notion prevails that art’s function is “to define forms and arrange them in space.” There are signs, thinks this critic, of a return to content, to responsibility, and to communication.

It is important, however, to point out that Rodman feels many artists have been forced into the nonobjective world because of the public’s insensitivity to genuine works of art. He is fully opposed to an aesthetic norm which loves sterile copying of natural objects, such as manifested at its worst in so-called calendar art, and opposed also to easy Hollywoodish symbolism that plays up to this same unworthy aesthetic norm and produces people devoid of all true humanity. He describes the Hollywood “star” as having “a face untroubled by thought which smiles blandly at the citizen in a thousand disguises from birth to death.” Thus there are two distinct sides to Rodman’s position: At one extreme he opposes the nonobjectivity and noncommunication of much modern art; at the other he is equally opposed to the unthinking cliches of popular art and the level of public taste in general. His entire book is rather well summed up in his remark that “content without supreme conviction never achieves convincing form.”

It may be profitable to discuss some ideas not explicitly put forth in Rodman’s excellent book but applicable to Christianity by implication.

The Form And The Spirit

One is that form does not mean simply the method of doing something. It is much more deep-seated than that and more nearly related to being than doing. Rodman believes that in a genuine work of art, form and content are indistinguishable from one another and that form by itself is nothing but decoration. The implication for Christianity is that form is the shape discovered and manifested in the living of a Spirit-filled life. It is not simply the outward actions of a life but the essential shape of a life at its roots whence all its motives take their beginning and their genuine nature. Form is never obvious and sterile but always dynamic and potent. Form is the eternal shape of truth making its impact upon the Christian. It is the thrusting power which molds his reborn “content” into convincing reality. Of course form will finally manifest itself in outward actions, but if it is genuine it will first of all be effectually and uniquely inner. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. meekness, temperance—all these have infinite possibilities of manifestation in the Christian. An easy and outward definition of such Christian virtues may eventuate in a static, limited, and sometimes even unbiblical, notion of them. There are no “ten easy steps” to any of these virtues, and their manifestation in the Christian will be most telling when their “appropriate shape” has been hammered out in the unique depth of individual experience with God.

The literal translation of Ephesians 2:10 is “… we are his poems.” A poem, like any other work of art, is, above everything else, unique. There is only one of its kind in existence. God is a God of variety, whether it be in the making of snowflakes, the leaves of trees, or men. An identical twin recently said to me, “My sister and I don’t think we are alike at all.” God is a God of variety also in the re-creation of men into Christians. Phillips translated 1 Peter 4:10 as “the magnificently varied grace of God.” Form is the dynamic by which that varied grace is shaped into the unique “poem” which God wants to make out of each of his children.

Divine Poetry In Our Flesh

It is most unusual when a minister alludes to the self in us other than to denounce it. I think we might be nearer the truth if we distinguished two kinds of self. There is the self whose manifestation is selfish—the self which is everywhere condemned in the Bible. But there is also the self which God uniquely created and which he uniquely re-creates in the Christian. Nowhere in Scripture are we taught to be a zero for its own sake but only to withdraw from the selfish self so that God can mold the inner man after his own fashion; “… he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” George Macdonald says that God’s wrath will consume what men call themselves so that the selves God made shall appear. It seems to me that this distinction is almost totally neglected in pulpits. The implication of much preaching on the theme of denial of self is that God is seeking to produce not poems but robots. The totally yielded Christian is a man much more “himself” than is the natural man, and his new freedom is as unique and varied as heaven itself. He is genuinely God’s handiwork, God’s craftsmanship, God’s poem. D. E. Harding has well said that of necessity God’s love “individuates its objects.” Form is the eternal shape of the truth which God is manifesting in his twice-unique creatures.

Cliches Move No Mountains

Since the Reformation orthodox Christianity has very properly laid great emphasis on the fundamental doctrines of the faith. It has made the repetition of the Apostolic Creed a part of its worship and has written innumerable platforms and declarations with the intent that the faith once delivered should not be allowed to deteriorate. Orthodoxy will continue to be vitally concerned to promulgate the purity of the faith. At the same time it must avoid implying that language itself is sufficient to corral Deity. The genuine danger that men may think there are many ways to Christ must not lead to another extreme in which the recitation of a cliche becomes the only language which is thought to be good theological specie. We have concluded too often that accepting Christ and “accepting Christ” are identical, where the latter phrase means going to the front during an evangelistic campaign, getting on one’s knees, saying certain words, standing up and shaking hands, and afterward giving one’s testimony. Too often we are not willing to leave the work of the Holy Spirit to the Holy Spirit himself. God’s purpose to form the new man in Christ is fully as vital as what Rodman would call the subject matter, i.e., the doctrines of Christianity. Without denying the Bible as our rule of faith and practice and as the perspective for every part of life, we may say also that the Bible was never intended as a yardstick by which the orthodox should pharisaically measure their fellows and then attempt to whip them into line. God will not form a new man any different from the standard indicated in Scripture, but he may form that man different from our own redaction of Scripture into case-hardened language.

The calling of a Christian is to lead “naturally” a supernatural life. His conduct is expected to proceed from the deepest Spirit-stirred motives. He is expected to be, paradoxically, himself in the completest fashion and at the same time nothing at all. If the right sort of result is to prevail, God must be allowed to shape his materials after a unique pattern. The Christian will be involved in never-ending growth based on experience with the master artist. Instead of this we often place the accent on outward manifestation alone. The loudness or even jazziness of our singing is assumed to be the measure of its spiritual vitality. We listen to sermons and seldom come to any deep movement of soul. Bodily presence is substituted for communication and communion with God. In such ways superficial outward form replaces that genuine sort of form which Rodman claims for art. Every such act tends to seal over or sear the point of our spiritual sensitivity until, as C. S. Lewis has so aptly declared, “The more often [man] feels without acting, the less he will ever be able to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel”; or, as Rodman says, the religious images become “cold, intellectually self-contained, erudite and completely out of contact” with reality. The orthodox thus may be no better off in actuality than those who, again to cite Rodman, see religion so completely as history that it becomes remote and static and picturesque, “something to be endured passively Sundays as … a Tournament of Roses on New Year’s Day.” It is possible for a Christian to denounce every implication of the word form while at the same time manifesting a formalism of his own that leads to almost complete spiritual sterility. He becomes a practicing “materialist” who can never understand that God is more than the sum of his attributes.

The Gospel’s Strange Power

We must not teach the Christian, directly or indirectly, that he is to fear and denounce his own personality. Rather he is to yield it to God for the creation of a product—an artistic product if you will—after God’s own ends, in which none of the man’s God-given uniqueness is lost. Such a man is one who is at once completely himself and completely God’s, a man in whom Christian experience is daily being shaped into a product worthy of a high and holy Omnipotence. We need to feel the terrible reality of Christianity. Too often we manage to tame it. In our intensity of desire to preserve it uncontaminated, we turn it into a groove, or perhaps we should say a rut. Christianity is really a dangerous enterprise.

William Still is a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, who turned from a career as musician and teacher of music to the ministry. Formerly assistant minister to Dr. W. Fitch at Springburnhill Church in Glasgow, he has served since 1945 as minister of Gilconston South Church, Aberdeen.

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