THE E-BOMB

Pundits, statesmen and educators have commandeered the little moons as space platforms to lecture us about the scientific revolution. Survival now demands mind-power more than manpower. Only through education, say the educators, can we keep up with the Jonesevitches.

Publicity-minded pedagogues call it the E-bomb. It surely has a critical mass in our metropolitan schools. Is it clear how it helps to have the thing go off? Are the radioactive kids jiving in the new gym part of the fallout? The gang warlord who made his switchblade in the school shop is not well-educated, but would the E-bomb still be a dud if he learned to make a missile?

Even the “vision of greatness” as a neutral educational morality is not promising if the gang known as “The Egyptian Kings” happens to be most attracted to the greatness of Nero, Napoleon, or Nietzsche.

It is no solution, however, for evangelicals to throw rocks through the window walls of progressive education. Our stained glass windows are also vulnerable, especially those of abandoned churches in gangland. Courageous school teachers face young mobsters deserted by the churches in this flight to the suburbs.

A major breakthrough in Christian education is overdue: from the hour-a-week Sunday School (where no saint is more secure than Miss Fixture, whose practiced ineptitude has alienated generations of teen-agers) to a program of Christian nurture joining home and church in a curriculum to remove biblical illiteracy and train servants of Christ.

The Gospel once illumined all higher education in America. Another revival is needed—of Christian colleges, primary and secondary schools. The positive accomplishment of Christ-centered education can show the sweep and relevance of God’s Word. We have a margin of luxury our fathers never knew. Do we have their vision? Even an atomic age cannot match the dynamis of Pentecost!

WORLD GOVERNMENT

Commander Lippincott’s article on “World Government and Christianity” (Feb. 3 issue) should be read by all supporters of the U.N.; then they should read Paul Blanshard’s “Protestant Freedom” in the Christian Herald. Then they might attempt to swallow the Bahai idea of world federalism. Then read the history of the tower of Babel. Then study the history of governments in relation to the Chief Corner Stone which builders did and still reject.…

Monmouth, Ill.

Not only do I think Mr. Lippincott has an improper evaluation of our present United Nations, but his feeling that our lack of majority in the world as Christians means we are not to trust anyone else is also unChristian.… He states that the 800,000,000 Communists (the amount of real Communists I doubt) are all militant atheists. Did he read your article of a copy or two ago concerning the church in Russia? Secondly concerning the 700,000,000 Moslems that they are all anti-Christian. Mr. Lippincott cannot find facts to substantiate his statements. Emanuel Evangelical

United Brethren Church

Huntingburg, Indiana

Does that man know anything about Bible prophecy? It does not look like it.

Berkeley, Calif.

You and the author are to be commended for bringing to your readers some pertinent (but less favorable) aspects, of what, has in the eyes of many, become something of a “sacred cow.”

Lakehurst, N. J.

In the midst of the continuing hue and cry about World Government, Mr. Lippincott’s article seems like a good dose of calming and thought-producing medicine.

There is still another area in which we also need some such kind of medicine! And that is the issue of Church-State relations!…

My reason for raising this question is this: unless the apathetic attitude of the voting public is aroused, we are going to awaken quite soon, to the fact that the “wall of separation” has been quietly removed … not tom down … not demolished … but just quietly picked up and set aside, much in the same manner as some of our other solid American distinctions have been museumed!

The Methodist Church

Chicora, Pa.

UNCERTAIN TRUMPETERS

In recent years I have been considerably disturbed by the uncertainty displayed by some young men and women seeking to be taken under care of Presbytery in view of full-time Christian service, all fine young folks having high ideals and purpose. It would be unreasonable and unfair to expect these candidates to know the answer to some of the perplexing questions voiced by theologians, yet it would seem that there are certain truths, revealed in the Scriptures, upon which there should be no doubts. I refer to the Person of Christ, his sinless life, atoning death, bodily resurrection, ascension, and coming again to reign. Should our Presbyteries ordain any such young people before they have planted the feet of their faith on solid ground? Should we send forth trumpeters whose trumpets have an uncertain sound?

Madison, Wis.

UN AND CHRISTIANITY

If UN gets the power, for which it is striving, and which Christian leadership in our country seems determined to give it, Christianity, much less Protestant Christianity, won’t have a chance, not even a hope.…

Christian Freedom Foundation President

New York City

ICCC MISSIONS

In reference to … “The Drive for IMCWCC Merger” (Sept. 30 issue) I want to convey to you … that in addition to the organizations of mission agencies which you list … there is in existence, The Associated Missions of the ICCC, otherwise alphabetically known as TAM.… The approximate number of missionaries involved … is one thousand and the finances passing through these mission agencies will approximate not less than one million five hundred thousand dollars.…

The Associated Missions has and will continue to take a clear-cut stand with reference to these issues which involve separation from apostasy and refusal to co-operate with the false teaching of modern religious liberalism as represented by both the World Council and IMC.

Associated Missions of ICCC

Cleveland, Ohio

RECESSION POSSIBILITIES

Ministers should be reminded of the tremendous opportunities that a “recession” and “layoffs” afford. It is true that “materially” it is not good, but we dare not overlook … other aspects.

Christian men … affected by layoffs need guidance.… They need to be guided to profitable use of the time that they find on their hands. The reading of the Bible and good books should be encouraged, along with prayer. Also now is the opportunity for the church to utilize this time needed for calling!… It is also a time of “change” when [people] may be more “fluid” and pliable—more receptive to the Gospel or an invitation to hear it.…

Wellington, Ohio

HILLBILLIES AND POETS

Concerning the “Gospel on the Radio.” Sometimes it appears as if the gospel is only for hillbillies and the like.… The hillbillies need saving, but so do Doctors, Lawyers, Professors, Senators, Actors, Authors, Philosophers and Poets.

Alexandria, Va.

GOOD HOPE

CHRISTIANITY TODAY … is one of the most hopeful indications of evangelical life in American Christianity.

Gordon Divinity School

Beverly Farms, Mass.

The fact that extreme Fundamentalists scourge you as being a liar, and extreme Neo’s and Liberals likewise condemn you should be a source of inspiration to you, in that this must be the result of the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Maywood, Ill.

Why not endeavor to be neither ‘Fundamental or Modernistic’ but Christian?… I thank God for Fosdick (Social Reformer) and Graham (Evangelist) both God’s men of our day.

Methodist Church

Grant Park, Ill.

I regard it as a MUST for every minister and Bible student who is willing to remain open and receptive to all the light and strength that better means and methods of Bible study can bring.

Dallas, Texas

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Two young women learned that the “best” literature in the nation’s capital is readily available to them, even though they are ministers’ daughters.

On a special research project for CHRISTIANITY TODAY, they found easy access to the magazine stocks of three newsstands in downtown Washington. One of the girls is the daughter of a Dutch Reformed minister, the other the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman.

Within three blocks of the White House, they were able to buy:

—The May issue of Hush-Hush, which features “the inside story of the nude model who pinch-hit for Princess Meg.”

—The April issue of Ace, which includes the story of “a voluptuous wench.”

—The spring edition of Sunbathing Review, with more than 85 pictures of nude women and children. One series of photographs portrays the activities of two teen-aged girls in a California nudist camp.

—The March edition of Night and Day, carrying several advertisements that offer by return mail pictures of women posed to order.

—Three undated publications, all of which have pictorial sequences of nude women. In one publication, the sequence is in full color and runs next to a fictional description of brothels in Algiers. Another depicts an “actress model” in her bath and performing “the neatest trick of all … (bra-ing that 38-caliber bosom).”

The magazines were purchased two days after “Sex and Smut on the Newsstands” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Vol. II, No. 10, Feb. 17, 1958) was incorporated into the Congressional Record (Vol. 104, No. 125, Feb. 19, 1958) by Democratic Representative John Dowdy of Texas.

The first newsstand, just around the corner from New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, was crowded with men. One of the inquiring young women pointed to a group of magazines and inquired of a clerk, “Are these the best sellers?”

“They’re the best read,” the clerk replied.

The question was repeated. This time the clerk answered:

“Let’s just say they’re the best.”

At a second stand, this one across the street from the Treasury Building, magazines were stacked on boxes on the sidewalk. Only at one of the three stands did a clerk show any misgivings about selling indiscriminately to a nattily-dressed young woman. The elderly man behind the counter “didn’t know whether she would want to buy that type of magazine.” He sold it anyway.

A CHRISTIANITY TODAY reporter also discovered that indiscrimination extended to Sunday sales policies among literature sellers of the Washington area. The last Sunday in February he found available in a drugstore within sight of the White House such pocket novels as Peyton Place, Deer Park and Erskine Caldwell’s Place Called Estherville.

The first Sunday in March, he visited a newsstand along a main thoroughfare in suburban Arlington, Virginia. The proprietor was counting change when the visitor picked up a copy of Sir Knight (Vol. I, No. 1, undated) and asked, “Is this a good one?”

“Uh-huh,” answered the proprietor.

“Is it the best one?”

“It’s as good as they come.”

Here are introductory “greetings” from Sir Knight:

“Here, in his first appearance, is the Collector’s Edition of Sir Knight, a brand-new, adult man’s magagazine [sic] dedicated solely to fostering the proposition that every male with corpuscles pink and surging in his veins has the right to pursue all the happiness he can grasp for himself in this time of external tensions and uncertainty.

“The single constant in the constantly changing world of today, is the enchanting biological relationship that has existed between men and women since long before the dawn of known history.” Sir Knight embarked on its maiden voyage containing such themes as “Outhouse Art,” “Four-bill Date,” “First Night” and “Hollywood Heat.”

Lack of discrimination is even more evident among pornography peddlers of the mail-order variety. Mailing of obscene matter to teen-agers is currently of chief concern to post office inspectors. Here is an excerpt from an advertisement (found in the possession of a minor) for slides and movies of nudes: “The censors say we have blown the lid off and may have stepped out of bounds. Because of this situation, it may become necessary to destroy our negatives. We, therefore, urge you to order immediately.…

“Because of the torrid quality of this merchandise, it may become necessary at no extra cost to you to ship your order by means other than the United States Post Office.… After you have placed your order, please destroy this letter.”

The following is taken from another advertisement that gives the appearance of being a hand-written note signed by a model:

“I know exactly what you want (all of you men are alike), and I’m one of the few gals you’ll find who enjoys pleasing you all the way.”

Legal Counteraction

Legislation to crack down on the spread of lewd reading material is under consideration both in the Senate and in the House. Hearings on one such bill were scheduled for this month.

A spokesman for the Churchmen’s Commission for Decent Publications reported a wave of indignation among ministers over the recent lack of restraint in publishing. He said that in two weeks following the date of publication of “Sex and Smut on the Newsstands” the commission received more than 200 inquiries, many from clergymen who stated a desire to take action through local ministerial groups.

A Roman Catholic priest has suggested that Communists are behind the rash of indecent publications and objectionable comics. The Rev. Joseph P. Lamanna of Delhi, New York, said the association has been brought to light in the testimony of former Communists before closed Congressional hearings.

Editorial Apology

The publisher of a Vermont newspaper apologized for having run an advertisement for the film “Peyton Place” in a Sunday edition.

William Loeb added in a signed front-page editorial:

“One of the terrible things in these days is the filth that passes for literature. For weeks Peyton Place stood at the head of the best seller list of the United States. Such writings have always existed but generally they were confined to scribblings on bathroom walls.”

Publisher Loeb, a Protestant, said the money charged for the ad would be donated to the diocesan office of the Legion of Decency, which makes moral evaluations of current films for the guidance of Roman Catholics.

Catholics In The News

The beginning of March found Catholic leaders in headlines throughout the world in a variety of developments:

FLORENCE, Italy—Bishop Pietro Fiordelli was convicted of defaming a couple married civilly. The husband in the case is an ex-communist who renounced Roman Catholicism and now professes to be an atheist.

VATICAN CITY—Pope Pius XII named Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago, to the newly-created office of Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, then suspended the nineteenth anniversary celebration of his own coronation as head of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope, who was 82 March 2, was reported grief-stricken over Bishop Fiordelli’s conviction.

VATICAN CITY—Vatican Radio reported that the Holy See has officially recognized the new United Arab Republic.

HAVANA, Cuba—Roman Catholic leaders appealed for President Fulgencio Batista to form a national union government to include some of his opponents. Batista rejected the appeal and sources close to him were reported to have accused the church officials of “direct, glaring intervention in Cuban political affairs.”

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—President-elect Arturo Frondizi paid a courtesy call on Coadjutor Archbishop Fermin Lafitte, encouraging Catholic hopes for fair treatment from the 49-year-old lawyer swept into office with votes from communists and Peronists.

NEW YORK—Fordham University, a Roman Catholic institution, acquired a two-block plot of land from the city at marked-down prices. Court appeals claiming the transaction illegal still are pending.

Salesman Of A Sort

Evangelist Billy Graham received the “Salesman of the Year” award from the Sales Executive Club of New York. The citation honored him for “selling religion to millions of people throughout the world.”

Graham is scheduled to deliver an address at the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Chicago April 14–18. His eight-week San Francisco crusade opens April 27.

The evangelist said total decisions in Latin American rallies numbered 20,700.

More Rsv Rights

Starting in 1962, at least four publishing firms besides Thomas Nelson and Sons of New York will be authorized to print the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

The National Council of Churches’ Division of Christian Education, owner of the RSV copyright, announced the names of the new publishers at its annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.

Thomas Nelson and Sons have exclusive RSV publishing rights until 1962. At that time the rights will also be distributed to William Collins and Sons of New York, A. J. Holman Company of Philadelphia, Oxford University Press of New York, and World Publishing Company of Cleveland. A contract is being negotiated with a fifth publisher, Harper and Brothers of New York.

It was reported that nearly 6,000,000 copies of the RSV Bible have been sold since 1952, plus an additional 3,500,000 copies of the RSV New Testament.

Hour Of Sharing

Overseas relief agencies are making a special appeal for funds to help the needy.

Last week Protestants observed “One Great Hour of Sharing,” with offerings in many churches going toward relief work.

More than 100,000,000 needy persons abroad received help during 1957 from religious relief agencies. Food, clothing, medicine and tools were sent to ease suffering.

A “United Jewish Appeal Rescue Fund” also is conducting a relief campaign.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Methodist Bishop Frederick Deland Leete, 91, in St. Petersburg, Florida; Dr. H. Crawford Walters, 69-year-old former president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain, in Eastbourne, Sussex.

Appointments: The Rev. Alex E. Dandar, as field director of the Religion and Labor Foundation; Dr. Walter W. Leibrecht as director of the Evanston Institute for Ecumenical Studies; the Rev. Arnold A. Dallimore as editor of the Canadian Fellowship Baptist.

Publication: The first complete and unabridged edition of The Works of John Wesley to be released in nearly 100 years, by the Zondervan Publishing House, starting in May.

Resignation: After 20 years as pastor of the First Covenant Church of Minneapolis, Dr. Paul S. Rees, to return to evangelistic work.

Results: Of a 10-day Methodist evangelistic crusade in Cuba, 2,357 persons enrolled in training classes for church membership.

Fire: At Montreat College, Presbyterian school for girls in North Carolina, caused $250,000 damage, no injuries. Merchants and townspeople freely replenished girls’ personal effects.

Matriculation: At Georgetown University, the Rev. Paul Adenauer, son of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer, 35, is a Roman Catholic priest studying American small business.

Service: Commemorating 200th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Edwards, held at First Church of Christ in Northampton, Massachusetts, March 9. Edwards served as pastor of the historic Congregational church for 23 years.

Trend To The Modern

Church buildings of contemporary design have won all except one of fourteen awards bestowed by the Church Architectural Guild of America.

This year’s winners in the annual competition sponsored by the guild were announced at the National Conference on Church Architecture held last month in Detroit. The conference, also annual, is co-sponsored by the guild and the National Council of Churches’ Department of Church Building.

The delegates to the conference heard a warning from Dr. George M. Gibson of McCormick Theological Seminary, who said that a church building “may be well planned as a work of geometry and well built as a fabric, yet through ill-considered furnishings, symbolism and decoration may falsify the message of the church.”

Many of the new churches built during the last 30 years are “virtually denying in their architecture what they are saying in their doctrine,” Gibson said.

Meanwhile, Architectural Forum magazine predicted that church construction will soar for the next ten years. The magazine predicted that United States churchgoers will spend $920,000,000 in 1958 on new religious edifices, a gain of 6 per cent over last year’s record.

Ncc Commitments

Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, president of the National Council of Churches, called for stepped-up non-military aid to help disperse the misery which “hangs like a fog” over Africa and Asia.

The Religious News Service reported that Dahlberg spoke on behalf of the Council in calling upon major political parties to “rise above party alignments and provide for the basic needs of our own people and the world’s people” through mutual aid programs.

Dahlberg made his remarks to a Conference on the Foreign Aspects of U. S. National Security, sponsored by the International Advisory Board in Washington.

In New York, a resolution supporting non-military mutual aid programs and reciprocal foreign trade agreements was passed unanimously by the NCC’s 250-member policy-making General Board.

Action For Peace

The presidents of the American and Southern Baptist conventions say they will propose the establishment of committees to further the cause of world peace.

Democratic Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas plans to introduce the idea for a peace committee when the Southern Baptist Convention meets in Houston, Texas, May 20–23. Dr. Clarence W. Cranford is to draft a similar proposal to submit to the American Baptist convention at Cincinnati, June 12–17.

The function of the committees would be to set up a world-wide prayer chain and a suggestion program. Missionaries would help implement the program to pray for peace while soliciting suggestions from various peoples as to how peace can be achieved.

Representative Hays and Dr. Cranford also have announced plans to visit Moscow Baptists next month if they can obtain Soviet approval. Hays said he did not hope to preach in the First Baptist Church of Moscow, but added, “I’ll testify if they want me to.”

A Washington, D. C., clergyman stepped up to one of the nation’s most influential Unitarian pulpits last month and publicly renounced Christianity.

Said the Rev. Ralph W. Stutzman, acting minister of All Souls Church:

“I had to rethink my position.… My personal beliefs now exclude the possibility of my being a Christian.”

Thus with disarming candor he gave added saliency to the continuing theist-humanist division in the house of Unitarianism.

Only last May, at the urging of the American Unitarian Association, the denominational magazine changed its name from The Christian Register to The Unitarian Register, pointing out that this meant no change in editorial policy. That considerable reaction followed, particularly in New England, is attributed by Mr. Stutzman to the extreme social consciousness of that area, “where the loss of the Christian veneer seemed to be a loss of social stature.”

The Unitarian Drift

To note the drift in Unitarian thought, one need only turn from Pastor Stutzman’s doubt of the Fatherhood of God, because of its being couched “in such anthropomorphic terminology,” to that eminent American representative of Unitarianism, William Ellery Channing. For him the Christian revelation could not be reduced beyond two articles of faith: the Fatherhood of God and the immortality of the soul. There was revelation. And there was a view of Christ long forgotten among modern Unitarians. The immortality of the soul was evidenced by the physical resurrection of Jesus, the greatest of his miracles. Take away the miracles and you take away Channing’s Christ. Along with his spotless character and matchless teaching, Jesus was considered to be supernatural in his acts, if not in his person.

But here Channing wavered. Christ was a pre-existent rational creature who had taken on human flesh. He was neither truly man nor truly God, but more like an embodied angel. This crude halfway house of an ill-defined Arianism could not hope to halt the ferment that Channing, with others, had begun.

Anthropologically, emphasis fell more on the infinite possibilities of man than on the glory of Christ, and the doctrine of sin was never properly grasped. Regeneration was largely reformulated in terms of education.

With the role of the Saviour thus undercut, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s denial of the authority of Christ and of the reality of special revelation was an easy step. Then Theodore Parker could proclaim the miracles of Christ to be myths and Christianity to be one of many natural religions, its truths to be known intuitively.

The Parker mode of rationalism largely carried the day, but certain Unitarian tensions continue to this hour. On one hand we see Unitarians paradoxically belonging to the Greater Philadelphia Council of Churches, which “requires” member churches to “accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.” On the other hand there is Mr. Stutzman calling upon true Unitarians “to be honest enough to let go of our claim upon Christianity. This growing issue within Unitarianism is important because truth is important.” His rather uncertain call is for “a continual acceptance of emerging truths; on the growing edge of God’s evolutionary insights … knowing that if all else is wrong, our way of openness must be right!”

Rejecting Kierkegaard’s Leap

The Rev. Mr. Stutzman confessed that it is “painful” for one to outgrow his spiritual heritage, much as for the child to outgrow his conception of Santa Claus. He posits Kierkegaard’s definition of Christianity as the determinative one, involving the offense of the God-man’s death. “The challenge of the leap of faith” is quite clear, but “I refuse to leap.” “I concluded that Kierkegaard was right in claiming that to believe the doctrine of the Christian Church one had to sacrifice his mind.”

Former Evangelical United Brethren minister Stutzman not only bows out from Christianity because of hostility to the doctrine of the Incarnation, but he is unwilling to accept the “human Jesus” as a model, asserting the unworthiness of the celibate ideal and mistakes and contradictions in the teachings ascribed to Jesus. If Christianity be further watered down to mean that one is simply to follow the high ideals Jesus apparently lived by, such as kindness and compassion, then “any good Jew is … a Christian by that definition.”

Theism Goes Naturalistic

To the writer the young minister declared that he is “basically agnostic,” holding a “naturalistic theism.” His convictions are divided between “operating on a theistic level” in some areas and on a “humanistic level” at other times. Both traditions are represented in his congregation, which up to this point seems to stand unanimously in favor of the minister’s latest pronouncement.

Thus the debate goes on, but in an almost purely speculative vein. Unitarian lack of missionary zeal is patent, but why spend large sums of money carrying abroad a message that may be radically different tomorrow?

Unitarians historically have shown greater enthusiasm for attacking orthodoxy than for presenting a positive formulation of beliefs. They currently contemplate merger with the Universalist Church which belies its name by omitting all creedal reference to a future life but rather seeks to spread God’s love within a chronologically limitless evolutionary setting.

Jesus Christ The Divider

It is heart-rending to behold the historical procession of Ebionites, Alogi, dynamic Monarchians, Arians, Socinians, along with contemporary Unitarians, Universalists, Modernists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, echoing their lamentable denial of Godhead to Jesus Christ. Though sometimes learned in biblical literature, they give evidence that twenty centuries after Jesus’ trial before Annas and Caiaphas, the central divide of the Christian religion remains the deity of the Son of God.

F.F.

Masters Of Deceit

Try as he did, Karl Marx could not avoid embracing a religion. From his very repudiation of all gods there emerged “a secular religion with its own roster of gods.”

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover devotes a 12-page chapter to “Communism: A False Religion” in Masters of Deceit, “the story of Communism in America and how to fight it” (Holt, 1958, $5.00). The book was released March 10, four days before the 75th anniversary of the death of Marx.

An erroneous assumption that he had escaped religion was not the least of the fallacies in the thinking of Marx. Hoover’s 39-year study of Communism, begun when he was aide to the attorney general in 1919, has enabled him to knock props of logic from under many a Marxist tenet. Hoover’s compilation of facts enables his reader to sense many contradictions within the communistic philosophic framework.

Dialectical materialism would do away with capitalism as an alleged exploitation of man by man, the inference being that exploitation is bad. Yet the Communist Party in the United States, according to Hoover, “is today engaged in a systematic program to infiltrate American religious groups,” to exploit organizations of persons. The infiltration reduces to its own form of exploitation of man by man, the very thing Communism purports to eliminate. That communists try to “use” Christian organizations further discloses another weakness in their philosophy.

True communists have no qualms whatever about committing wrong to advance their cause. (Would they resort to immorality if their position were strong?) Communists assert that they do have morality of a particular type. Hoover quotes Lenin, “We repudiate all morality that is taken outside of human, class concepts.… We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle.…” In other words, anything goes, as long as it’s for the party.

Great concern over Communism, even the extensive printing of books, would hardly be necessary had not so many Americans been duped by its claims. Says Hoover, “When the Communist Party was at its peak in the United States it was stronger in numbers than the Soviet Party was at the time it seized power in Russia.” According to the FBI chief, these are among communist objectives within religious groups: To gain “respectability,” to provide an opportunity for the subtle dissemination of communist propaganda, to make contact with youth, to exploit the churches in the party’s day-to-day agitational program, to enlarge the area of party contacts, to influence clergymen.

“A dedicated clergyman,” Hoover states, “being a man of God, is a mortal enemy of Communism. But if he can, by conversion, influence, or trickery, be made to support the communist program once or a few times or many times, the party gains. If, for example, a clergyman can be persuaded to serve as sponsor or officer of a communist front, to issue a testimonial or to sign a clemency petition for a communist ‘victim of persecution,’ his personal prestige lends weight to the cause.”

Hoover’s note of caution to ministers might be taken to imply that a number of clergymen already have fallen victims to communist trickery.

The atheistic attributes of Communism are only too evident. Hoover says “the most basic of all communist comments about religion is the statement of Karl Marx that religion is ‘the opium of the people.’ ” William Z. Foster, former national chairman of the United States Communist Party, is quoted as having described religion as “historically inevitable” but now made obsolete by science.

Hoover adds:

“This communist teaching glosses over the fact that science never has given an ‘irrefutable’ explanation of ultimate reality, neither materialistic nor any other kind.”

Communists nevertheless have a form of respect for the Church, at least in terms of recognition as a formidable enemy. Hoover again quotes Foster: “… the Church is one of the basic forces now fighting to preserve obsolete capitalism and its reactionary ruling classes, in the face of advancing democracy and socialism.” Communists cannot sanction churches because their philosophy “cannot permit man to give his allegiance to a supreme authority higher than party authority.”

This is not to say that party members make the religious question a well-advertised issue. On the contrary, followers are told to play down or conceal the Marxist religious position. States the author:

“The party’s aim, in addition to that of exploiting the Church, is to neutralize religion as an effective counterweapon. At present virtually nothing is being said in open party propaganda that is anti-religious.… When tactically expedient, the communists even liken themselves to the early Christian martyrs suffering persecution for attempting to aid mankind.”

(Roman Catholic Archbishop Richard J. Cushing of Boston reported having received an advance copy of Masters of Deceit with a handwritten inscription, signed by Hoover, to “His Excellency … whose magnificent fight against Communism inspired the writing of this book.” Hoover is a Presbyterian and a Mason. He has attended Notre Dame, St. John’s, Oklahoma Baptist and Georgetown universities, as well as Seton Hall and Holy Cross colleges.)

South America

Roman Hostility

On successive Sundays in February (1) a bomb damaged a home in which an American missionary was sleeping, and (2) a military mayor ordered the closing of a Presbyterian school after a week of newly-instituted classes. The hostile hand of Catholicism in Colombia had prevailed again.

“The Senorita Janet Troyer is stubborn and rebellious,” blared the loudspeaker on the little Catholic church of Supia. Miss Troyer, a Wisconsin native representing the Gospel Missionary Union of Kansas City, was seeking to establish new evangelical witness in a community which had heard the Gospel only intermittently for 25 years. The Rev. Ramon Hoyos, parish priest, made it clear that she was not wanted. Forced from one home, the missionary found refuge with a woman who was sympathetic despite threats of persecution.

Ironically, it was through the disparaging blare of the loudspeaker that the Senora Raquel Arias heard of Miss Troyer’s distress. Neighbors’ attitudes toward the two women grew more hostile. They were refused a water supply. Then they heard rumors that three men had offered themselves to Father Hoyos to attack the home.

Mrs. Arias, the missionary and a little girl were sleeping when the blast ripped the pre-dawn calm. The dynamite bomb had been planted just five feet from Miss Troyer’s bed. The doorway was wrecked, plaster was loosened, pictures and mirrors were shattered, but the occupants escaped injury.

The debris was cleared away in time to hold Sunday School that day. Several newcomers helped to swell the attendance. Persons returning from mass quoted the priest as saying that now it was up to the people: Should they try fire or resort to more dynamite?

A week later in the neighboring province of Tolima, Mayor Major Lopez ordered the closing of Colegio Americana in Villarrica. The Presbyterian school was founded in 1934 by Mrs. Viola Warner Ruiz, but unsettled political conditions precluded continual operation. Classes resumed Feb. 10 upon fulfillment of government requirements. According to the Rev. Lorentz D. Emery of Schenectady, New York, who directed a reorganization of the school, the Villarrica parish priest spearheaded the drive to close it. The closing left 91 children without educational facilities because Villarrica’s inadequate school system prohibits Protestants.

Americans having been involved in both the bombing and the school closing, the United States Embassy in Bogota brought the incidents to the attention of the Colombia Foreign Office and asked for an investigation.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, public affairs secretary of the National Association of Evangelicals, says that his files contain “more than 700 documented cases of persecution” of Protestants in Colombia.”

Last October, the Rev. John E. Kelly, Bureau of Information director of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, branded newspaper reports of Colombian persecution “one-sided.” Father Kelly made the charge in messages to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the American Newspaper Publishers Association and Sigma Delta Chi, journalistic fraternity. The NAE subsequently asked all three organizations to see for themselves and opened their Washington files.

Far East

Film Controversy

Actress Ingrid Bergman is to play the leading role in a Twentieth-Century Fox production depicting the story of an English missionary. The movie will be filmed on Formosa.

“Inn of Eight Happinesses” is based on the life of Miss Gladys Aylward, who worked on the China mainland before settling in Formosa.

The decision to star Miss Bergman has been protested widely, but Miss Aylward, now an advisor to the film studio, approves:

“We’re setting people to praying all over that Miss Bergman may be converted as a result of being in the film.”

The Far East News Service reported that President Chiang Kai Shek has made provision for 5,000 Nationalist Chinese soldiers to participate in the making of the film.

Europe

Reformed Congress

Invitations to the 1958 International Reformed Congress have been sent by the Executive Committee of the Synod of the Reformed Churches of Alsace and Lorraine. The International Association for Reformed Faith and Action will sponsor the Congress July 22–30 at Strasbourg, France, a city rich in its associations with the Reformation and its leaders.

The theme of the conference will be, “How to Confess our Reformed Faith,” and speakers will include writers and church leaders from England, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany and the United States. Delegates are expected from many countries of the world.

Among the public lectures will be the following: “The Reformed Faith and the Modern Concept of Man,” by Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, of Amsterdam; “Witness by Word and Deed,” by the Rev. Pierre Ch. Marcel, of St. Germain-en-Laye, France; “Witness in and Through the Church,” by Dr. P. Jacobs, of Munster, Germany; “Confessors of the Reformed Faith,” by Dr. Jean Cadier, of Montpellier, France; “Witness in and Through the Family,” by Dr. Gwyn Walters, of Wales; and “Christian Witness in the World of Industry,” by H. J. Bonda, of Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Others participating in the program will be Dr. Philip E. Hughes, of London, and Dr. Ned B. Stonehouse, of Philadelphia.

Secretary in charge of plans for the Congress is the Rev. Pierre Courthial, 11 Avenue du Colonel Bonnet, Paris 16.

Day Of Prayer

Evangelical churches of Spain observed Sunday, March 2, as a Day of Special Intercession for legal means to obtain civil marriages for Spanish evangelicals.

Spanish Baptist leaders who cooperated in the observance said a governmental decree “seemed to provide a legal basis for the civil marriage of Spanish evangelical Christians,” but that applicants were being asked for impossible “proofs of non-Catholicity.”

Africa

Congo Withdraws

The Congo Protestant Council voted to withdraw from the International Missionary Council. The vote was 39 to 9 with three abstentions.

“It was gratifying,” said one observer, “to see that the large majority of the missions in the Congo were more concerned about maintaining unity locally than about external affiliations. Among them were several missions whose supporting churches are fully cooperating in the World Council of Churches and its affiliates.”

The council’s action was believed to be the first such since IMC constituents voted “in principle” to merge with the WCC.

Worth Quoting

“One man can last thirty years on radio, but one man does well to last thirty minutes on television”—Mrs. Betty Ross West, Supervisor of Public Affairs and Education for the National Broadcasting Co., in Chicago.

“We are living in what is sometimes called an ecumenical age.… There can and ought to be unity. By unity I mean a unity of spirit. I do not mean organic union. I agree with a Methodist bishop who said that if all the churches were to be merged into one denomination, he for one, would vote against it—even if they were all to become Meethodists. Our country, he said, couldn’t stand it.… He went on to ask: ‘Is there any country where Protestantism is as vital as it is in Canada and the United States? Compare it,’ he said, ‘to countries where there is a state church.…’ The attempt, someone said, to modify the diverse branches of the Christian Church until they form but one organ is like trying to find the lowest common multiple of eye, ear, hand and mouth. It cannot be done; and if it could, the result would not be a living body, the agent for the doing of God’s wise and loving will.”—Dr. C. Howard Bentall, president of the Baptist Federation of Canada, in an address before the Federation Council at Edmonton, Alberta.

“The paramount task of our time is to fight materialism in all its multitudinous forms. The ogre of materialism can be slain only by reviving men’s faith in God. Spreading the Gospel and reading that Book of books, the Bible, constitute a means especially conducive to attaining this end.”—Chancellor Adenauer of West Germany, a Roman Catholic.

New York Crusade

God in the Garden, by Curtis Mitchell, Doubleday, 1957. 195 pp., $2.50.

This is an immediate, on-the-scene report of the biggest mass evangelism drive in Christian history, and it has the swift, crackling flavor of good journalism. No doubt time will bring further light to bear on the 1957 phenomenon of Billy Graham and his New York crusade, but for the present, this book ably tells the story, in its many facets, as it happened.

Mr. Mitchell, a polished feature writer for the American Weekly, has done a fine job of pulling together all the varied strands of the vast undertaking, and weaving them into a smooth, vivid pattern.

He roves over the whole complex anatomy of the campaign, its planning, participants, proceedings, its colorful sidelights, its partisans and critics and the response of press and public. A personal diary of Mr. Graham himself provides some of the most unusual, revealing passages in the volume. Excerpts from the diary are sprinkled throughout, showing Mr. Graham’s feelings as the effort progressed.

For instance, before the crusade began, Mr. Graham, at his rural mountaintop home in North Carolina, wrote wistfully that he wished the Lord would just let him stay there the rest of his life and never go to New York. “All the forces of hell will probably be turned on us,” he wrote. He lamented the “concentration of publicity around my name … This gaze on me and our team must be shifted to the person of Christ … God will not share his glory …”

The evangelist also tells how at first, when his work was lampooned or denounced by others, he was “tempted once or twice to lash back. But then scores of scriptures began to echo in my ears … Gradually the spirit of God shed abroad in my heart an everwhelming love for these brethren … I have thanked God a thousand times … that he gave me the grace … never to answer back.”

In the book, Mr. Mitchell does not attempt any settled appraisal of the crusade, or long-range conclusions. But he clearly points it up to a spiritual manifestation of unprecedented proportions in our time.

The author himself carefully stays in the background, relying on statements and actions of others, and brisk, graphic description to give the picture.

As a result, and as in most writing about contemporary events, the book is heavily laded with quotations from newspapers and individuals, and with portions of letters from unnamed persons who made “decisions for Christ.”

The volume begins with a rapid-fire, stacatto recitation of the crusade’s record-setting statistical scope, then moves into detailed accounts of its varied aspects.

A short biography of Graham himself is also given … his uneasiness prior to the crusade; the complex organizational preparations, the widespread prelude of prayer, the opening, the “team” members, the volunteers, the broadcasts, the special meetings in Times Square and elsewhere and the crusade’s unslacking pace.

Mr. Mitchell provides some nice vignettes of Graham as he moves through the whole process, at news conferences, on radio and TV shows, in telephone calls, at luncheons, meetings and in public and in private.

One of the best chapters is devoted to a Graham sermon on the spiritual chemistry of conversion.

GEO. W. CORNELL

The Sovereign God

The Five Points of Calvinism, Sovereign Grace Book Club, Evansville, Indiana, 1957. $3.95.

Among the writers whose works appear in this book are two Presbyterians, two Baptists, one Reformed, and one Congregationalist minister. The first major section presents a general discussion of the famous “five points” which distinguish Calvin’s distinctive doctrines from those of the rival system, Arminianism: Total Inability, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible, Efficacious Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints.

The first major section is from the pen of Horatius Bonar, a Scottish Presbyterian minister and hymn writer. Andrew Fuller (1754–1815), a Baptist minister in England, treats the doctrine of Total Depravity. The discussion of Unconditional Election is from the works of John Calvin (1509–1564). John Gill (1697–1771), a learned Baptist minister, discusses Limited Atonement. Thomas Godwin (1600–1679), ranked as “among the top three Puritans,” writes on Irresistible Grace. And Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the only American included, writes on Perseverance of the Saints. In conclusion there is a long sermon by Thomas Goodwin, on Christian Patience, based on James 1:1–5.

All of the writers set forth the sovereignty of God and the total dependence of man on God for salvation. There is no pretense at being able to solve all the difficulties that arise as this relates to the free agency of man. It is acknowledged that here we see through a glass darkly. But there is coming a day of light and harmony when all will be made plain. Until that time we hold both truths, acknowledging that God is sovereign and that man is free and responsible within the limits of his nature.

In the matter of salvation it is maintained that God’s will comes first, and that his work of regeneration is the cause for the sinner’s becoming willing. In regard to free agency it is pointed out that while Christ was to be born in Bethlehem, that did not make any less voluntary the coming of Joseph and Mary to that town. Likewise, it was certain that Judas would betray Christ for thirty pieces of silver, as had been predicted long before; but that did not lessen the guilt of Judas or make his act any the less free. To say that the Holy Spirit is doing all he can to convert a sinner, but that he is unable to do so, is to make the creature mightier than the Creator and so able to withstand, or even to overcome, omnipotence.

In the Calvinistic system the doctrine of limited atonement is the one most often and most violently rejected by opponents. It is here pointed out, however, that if Christ died for the sins of all men so that the punishment for their sin was inflicted upon him, then all men must be set free from the penalty of sin because punishment cannot be inflicted twice, once on the surety and again on the sinner. If one man pays another’s debt, it is unjust for the creditor to exact payment again from the debtor. Ultimately the alternative is this: Christ died for certain ones, his people, and they are effectively saved; or he died for all men but his sacrifice is not efficacious to save any, but must be supplemented by faith and good works on the part of man. The atonement of Christ is therefore set forth in this book as a specific work which made the salvation of his people certain, rather than as a general work which made the salvation of all men possible but uncertain.

When we read the old Puritans we do not expect to find light, airy discussions of popular themes. This book is no exception. The style is heavy and requires close attention. It therefore will be more useful in the hands of ministers and theologians than in those of the average reader. But anyone who gives it the time and attention that it deserves will find it rewarding. In all cases the treatment is based on Scripture as the final and authoritative Word of God.

LORAINE BOETTNER

Psychotherapy

My Inward Journey by Lorraine Picker, Westminster Press, 1957. 187 pp., $3.00.

This is the autobiographical account of a girl who had crippling asthma from an early age. She writes graphically of the unsuccessful efforts to control the illness through her childhood and adolescent years. After unsuccessful and frustrating efforts to gain relief by medical treatment, she is encouraged by an understanding physician to undergo psychotherapy. As insight into her emotional entanglements develops over a three-year period, the asthma disappears. Still aware of neurotic tensions, she submits to psychoanalysis. My Inward Journey is the story of the unraveling of childhood memories and experiences, the reconstructions of the analyst and the interpretations that the author eventually accepted to explain her maladjustment. The story is intense, absorbing, well written.

The author’s account of her struggles gives a vivid view of futile medical effort against a psychogenic illness. Her story provides a first-hand account of psychotherapy in action. Psychoanalysis leads, as Freudian procedure always does, straight to the Oedipal conflict and female envy of the male.

Many readers will find elements of their own problems reflected in these pages, and some may gain helpful insights directly or be encouraged to seek psychotherapeutic assistance. The optimism toward psychotherapy aroused by this story should be tempered by two considerations. The first is that psychotherapy has its failures, too, but patients seldom write books about them. The second is that religion apparently played no significant role in the author’s life. While some Christians may benefit by psychotherapy, even Freud noted that religion is a good protection against neurosis. If the author had embraced the Christian faith with as much open-mindedness as psychoanalysis, would there have been any “inward journey?” Was this trip really necessary?

ORVILLE S. WALTERS, M. D.

Human Interest

Autobiography of George L. Robinson, by George L. Robinson, Baker, 1957. $2.50.

For many years Dr. George L. Robinson taught the eternal truths of the Bible to young men preparing for the ministry. He is especially remembered for his professorship at McCormick Theological Seminary. He lived a long and influential life, and his family persuaded him to record the story of his life in autobiographical form. Throughout this volume the author shows us God’s guiding hand in his life through all these years.

The reader will find in the book a number of interesting observations. For example in the chapter in which the author tells of his student days at Princeton Theological Seminary he wrote that in the second year, the first volume of Driver’s Dictionary of the Bible appeared. He said the faculty lost no time in denouncing it as unorthodox. It was contemporaneous with the three years that the trial of Dr. C. A. Briggs was taking place, which ended in his condemnation by the General Assembly in 1893. Dr. Robinson comments, “Their successors today would think long before denouncing it. Today Princeton is teaching the chief claims which Briggs advocated: that Moses did not write all that is ascribed to him in the Pentateuch, nor Isaiah all of the book ascribed to him. My own views were the traditional ones and still are.”

The latter section of this book shows one how to grow old gracefully and make the latter years of life count. These memoranda should be of interest especially to Dr. Robinson’s many students and also of help to those who like autobiographical material. The volume is crammed full of human interest. The author’s smooth-flowing style and delightful sense of humor adds to the readability of this autobiography.

JOHN R. RICHARDSON

“There is no possibility of demonstrating the existence of God … there can be no way of proving that the existence of a god, such as the God of Christianity, is even probable … no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance … all utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical … to say that there is something imperceptible inside a man, which is his soul or his real self, and that it goes on living after he is dead, is to make a metaphysical assertion which has no more factual content than the assertion that there is a transcendent god … unless (the theist) can formulate his ‘knowledge’ in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may be sure that he is deceiving himself.” Such are some of the statements made by Professor A. J. Ayer in his celebrated book Language, Truth, and Logic (which was first published in 1936 (second, revised, edition, 1946). If the contemporary linguistic philosophy, also known as logical positivism, of which Professor Ayer is so dynamic an advocate, is right, then it is folly for Christians to talk about God.

A vigorous criticism of the position propounded by Professor Ayer and others has now appeared with the publication of Dr. E. L. Mascall’s latest book entitled Words and Images (Longmans, 12s.6d.). Dr. Mascall complains of Professor Ayer that, “having made the apparently innocent and plausible assertion that all meaningful assertions must have some reference to experience, he then goes on to limit the meaning of experience in the narrowest and most arbitrary way to the experience of the bodily senses.” It is contended by Dr. Mascall that “the fundamental criterion of meaningfulness is not “sense-verifiability but intelligibility” and that “the intellect does not only reason, but also apprehends,” in fact that its function is contemplative as well as logical, and that “it is the neglect of this twofold functioning of the human mind that has so drastically impoverished the mental life of the modern world and has produced the glacial and spectral character of much modern philosophy.” The world of the linguistic empiricists is, he charges, “a world in which depth has been sacrificed to clarity, and in which nothing has any inside, a world in which there are no questions left to answer, not because they have all been answered but because they have been condemned as being no questions at all.”

The driving force behind this modern philosophical movement is discerned by Dr. Mascall as “an over-anxious determination to avoid the possibility of error even at the expense of a quite ruthless impoverishment of the range of human knowledge.” Over against this he sets “another ideal of knowledge as involving commitment, contemplation and penetration beneath the phenomenal level,” and in this we believe him to be undoubtedly right. The logical positivist must not complain if he is caught in his own net. If he dismissed all theological, ethical and metaphysical statements as meaningless and nonsensical because they fail to meet his requirements of verification, he must also renounce the concept of logic itself, for this too is something which is not demonstrable through the medium of sense-perception. And how, in accordance with his own principles, can he find a place for the imagination, the emotions and the dreams of men?

What, moreover, does he say about the amazing developments of modern nuclear physics, which is constructed upon a foundation, not of sensible phenomena, but of theoretical probability? “If,” says Dr. Mascall, “we try to interpret the statements of relativity or the quantum theory as statements about the world of sensible phenomena we shall be driven from one nightmare to another and shall finally abandon the task in despair. And then, if we believe that the world of sensible phenomena is the real world, we shall say that scientific statements are not about the real world at all. If, however, we believe that the real world is an intelligible world with a structure different from that of sensible phenomena, we shall see the statements of relativity and quantum theory as expressions of the kind of intelligibility that the real world has.” Dr. Mascall’s thesis is, in brief, that “it is of the essence of reality to be not sensible but intelligible.” With his insistence on the importance of intelligibility we are, of course, in agreement; but we question his wisdom in suggesting (if we have understood him aright) that the real world is something other than the world of sensible phenomena. We would prefer to say that the latter is an aspect, and only one aspect, of the former, and that the information it imparts, though fragmentary and imperfect, is still not lacking in validity.

Dr. Mascall very properly points out that while our knowledge of the physical world no less than our knowledge of God is partial knowledge, and frequently knowledge that is not free from inaccuracy, it is still knowledge. He views the world as “essentially mysterious and yet not entirely alien from us, a world into which we can penetrate in part and which we can know in part.” The point he makes is that “in order to penetrate the phenomenal skin of the perceptual world, in order to grasp either physical objects or human persons or the God who is the creator and sustainer of both, we must learn to contemplate them with humility and wonder and not merely to record their sensible qualities and analyse their relationships.”

In logical positivism we are confronted with what is but a modern version of the age-old arrogance of man, finite and sinful, desiring to make himself the measure of things, the centre of reality, and the judge of what is and what is not possible. The weakness of Dr. Mascall’s rejoinder is his failure to oppose this philosophy with a clear and consistent biblical doctrine of man in relation to God his Creator. The Christian position, if it is true, means that man is dependent on God not merely for his being but for his knowledge also.

It is an integral truth of Christianity that the realm of nature by which he is surrounded and to which he belongs constantly declares to man the glory of God, and that the invisible reality of the eternal power and godhead of the Creator is clearly to be grasped by way of the sensible entities of our universe. The Christian must further insist that man, being formed in the image of God and himself being a part of the created whole, knows himself instinctively and by his very constitution to be God’s creature; but that man in his sin suppresses the truth in unrighteousness and, though knowing God, fails to glorify him as God, exchanges the truth of God for a lie, and worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator. The scriptural diagnosis of the condition of man and its implications is essential to the task of a truly Christian apologetics.

Has America, like Rome of old, crossed its Rubicon? Some observers say yes. They have begun charting the republic’s decline and impending fall. Apart from any threat of sudden international war, they insist, America is tottering on the brink of tragedy. A decisive turn in national thought and life assertedly has placed the United States beyond redemption; the only hope that now remains is for emergency rescue and ailing survival.

The Sense Of Doom

Pronouncing judgment on America is no longer an exclusive franchise of a few weeping Jeremiahs. Nor is it peculiar to evangelists constantly reminding the nation of its spiritual decline, its neglect of a great Christian heritage, its whoring after false gods of money and ease. Many pulpiteers are indeed swift to show that despite America’s religiosity no sweeping repentance and faith, no decisive change of heart and life, places social forces in our great cities conspicuously in the service of the living God. Billy Graham readily admits this even of New York City. Religious analysts are finding America spiritually and morally second-rate.

While indisposed to talk much about the one true God, students of American culture likewise decry the idols of the masses. Determination of the right by mere majority opinion, and an infatuation with popular approval, have inseminated a cheap and artificial sense of values into modern life and thought. Broadway measures worth by length of run. On television or on radio, Neilsen and Hooper ratings and audience polls determine contract renewals. What is popular is right, not to mention “good” business. Thus the god of conformity snares individuals into group thinking, and loyalty only to society. Detachment of responsibility from the will of God has led to a vanishing sense of responsibility. American culture has accordingly become mediocre.

Scientists no less than religionists are doom-conscious. Pointing to Soviet superiority in the satellite sphere, they question America’s capacity to reverse the balances of strategy to overtake and outdistance the Soviet program. They decry our loss of scientific leadership. By late 1959, they warn, the United States will be less than 15 minutes from 75 Russian ICBMs capable of wiping out the Strategic Air Command’s existing bases.

A similar verdict of retrogression attaches to still another sphere, our traditions of government. In the disregard of inherited values that hinder controls and centralized power, and in the subtle restriction of individual freedoms, some students of political science see the nation drifting toward the whirlpool of a secret totalitarianism (while congratulating itself for having avoided the Soviet variety). In this matter of controls, former editor of The Washington Post Felix Morley is not alone in his conviction that “the Rubicon has already been crossed; nobody can any longer think escape from this trap an easy matter.” Adventure on the collectivistic toboggan slide both explains and evidences America’s demotion to a second-rate republic.

Leaders in economics report similar disturbances. Soaring costs of government, the temptation to accept inflation as a way of life, the control of credit for political purposes, national prosperity geared to the federal budget (especially to growing defense expenditures, perhaps leading ultimately to a vested interest in regard for other world powers as a military threat), the endless spiral of punitive taxation (personal income taxes estimated at $32.5 billion for 1956 alone)—to many economists these tendencies disclose America’s permanent surrender to the squeeze of socializing forces. Since it is politically unfeasible for either major party to repudiate this centralizing trend, the process may never be reversed but only modified “here” and “there.” Some warning voices like Frank Chodorov’s once mounted soapboxes as young radicals to espouse socialism. Today these same political theorists recognize the symptoms of cancerous collectivism in our national life and lament a blind economic policy. They warn us that America has already taken the decisive collectivistic turn. Not only Big Labor but Big Business also often seeks its own special privilege above the principles of freedom. Free enterprise is now so frequently pushed to secondary importance that the populace is no longer shocked nor chagrined. A controlled economy meanwhile nourishes the worship of mammon. The multitude tolerates and approves, and even demands and clamors for this household god, while the almighty state perpetuates the existence of the idol. The masses have thus enlarged socialistic concession through leaders endorsing the tawdry popular values and thereby perpetuating their personal power and office. Leaders, the masses and the “privileged groups” alike, therefore, have all sown the wind. Obscured by the resultant whirlwind is the heritage that once made America unique among the nations of the world. Both the visibility and the vision of the nation are impaired.

The Clouded Vision

The extraordinary origin of the American republic the Founding Fathers ascribed to divine providence. To them the United States represented the major political effort in human history to limit the powers of the state and to guard human freedoms under God from the encroachment of tyrants. As clearly set forth in the American Constitution, establishment of a federal government with powers restricted, divided into separate branches, balanced by states rights, dependent on the consent of the governed, envisioned the preservation of specific human rights and values.

The basic and sustaining principle of these values and freedoms—that government is limited—is directly antithetical to that by which the U.S.S.R. abolishes individual rights (viz., that all power is concentrated in the state). One constitutional provision that dramatically enforces limited government is separation of Church and State, which boldly contradicts the long European traditions of the church-state and the state church. This disjunction was both to limit political power and guard human rights, and also to protect the nation against a monopoly of political interests by one sectarian tradition. Separation of Church and State did not aim to isolate spiritual from political concerns so churches lost significance in political affairs; least of all did it aim to subordinate the spiritual to the political order. There was no desire to weaken the role of the churches in the life of the nation; rather, restricted state power was intended to support and strengthen those spiritual priorities through which a nation remains virile and noble.

In this debate between limited government and state absolutism, the position of Christian conscience is obvious. In Romans 13 Paul delineates the Judeo-Christian view: political authority derives from God and is answerable to God. Likewise, man’s obedience to the state is under God. Man bears inalienable rights by creation, the Declaration of Independence insists, and these the state is to preserve, not to destroy nor to curtail. The Bible asserts that the state must not frustrate the obedience man owes to God; it gives no quarter to the doctrine of the omnipotent state. The Old Testament prohibited even kings from seizing the private property of the people (1 Kings 21).

Skepticism over absolute values underlies the Soviet thesis that human rights are relative. Marxist evolutionary philosophy forces modern culture to choose between supernaturalism and naturalism; human dignity and human degradation; absolute truth and values and state-determined and imposed opinion and ideals. Totalitarianism compels its citizens to comply with whatever the state defines as right and good. Skepticism over changeless values creates the void into which the state rushes to propound temporary values with absolute rigor.

If all values are unfixed and ever-changing, political leaders in a democracy no less than in a totalitarian state may assert and enforce personal expediency in the name of principle. Majority opinion is not inconsistent with self-government, but self-government becomes impossible in the absence of values. If human preference alone determines policy, political theory simply vascillates with the changing tides of prevailing opinion.

The Loss Of Freedoms

In the present century Marxian Communism has whetted the world’s lust for power and state controls. During the past 25 years the cancerous philosophy of state power, civilian controls, transient values and principles, has so penetrated even America’s heritage and life that suddenly the United States appears incurably riddled with disease.

The federal government’s encroachment into many areas of American life shows up especially in affairs once considered the responsibility of the Christian churches. Education, for example, was long the concern and duty of the family and of the churches. (Few people any longer realize that much of the impetus for mass education rests ultimately on the biblical conviction that every person must be reached with a core of information vital to his temporal and eternal happiness.) But during the past century has come the rise of mass public education. Influenced in our generation by the naturalistic and relativistic philosophy of John Dewey, educational administrators have by and large nurtured socialistic tendencies, including the growing clamor for federal support of public schools. Like education, charity and welfare also were once the concern of the churches. (The effective alleviation of human suffering owes more to the biblical view of God than twentieth century humanism allows us to remember.) The state has assumed increasing direction of these responsibilities, too. On the domestic scene, social security and unemployment insurance have won their way; socialized medicine now waits in line as a hopeful government project.

More could be said to illustrate the government’s assumption of responsibilities once belonging to the churches. But equally striking is the fact that in the aforementioned areas of enlarging state power, as well as of civilian controls not directly involving Christian traditions, the churches have shown little resistance. How far the Christian conscience had lost its sense of heritage in some of these matters, e.g., education, is evident from the official statement on The Church and the Public Schools approved by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in 1957. This report not only throws the weight of Christian approval behind the public schools as such; it also throws the weight of Presbyterian influence against private schools. This is exactly what could have been expected from a committee dominated (as it was) by public schoolmen, but it hardly represents one’s expectations from the Presbyterian conscience. Such surrender of responsibility could hardly augur resistance against additional inroads of the state.

If America has crossed the Rubicon; if the nation’s heritage is now beyond preservation; if the drift to the power-state and to a controlled society cannot be stayed, communist penetration from the outside is not alone to blame. Equal judgment falls upon the churches for indifference and ineffectiveness in the hour of America’s greatest trial. Amid the world’s subtle conflict between political and spiritual loyalties, the churches sin by their silence. Today not Nero but the churches fiddle while Rome burns. The churches have even approved leaders who support socializing and collectivistic trends in the name of the Christian community, and have permitted them without protest to speak for Christian conscience.

When The Churches Failed

What explains this deadly lassitude of the churches? In America’s tragic transition from limited government to the power-state where is the churches’ repellent force?

1. Pre-empting the right to speak for all Protestant churches in politico-economic affairs, the National Council of Churches (formerly the Federal Council) has tended in its social pronouncements to support collectivism and controls in national life. In two respects the NCC has failed to undergird the tradition of limited government and human liberties; its social declarations, bold and specific, veered to the left, while its theological affirmations were nebulous and obscure, since NCC’s inclusive policy subdued doctrinal issues for the sake of peaceful ecclesiastical co-existence. While neglecting a Christian theology of government and freedom, the massive voice of American Protestantism approved socializing tendencies in American life. The entrenched leadership even violated the conscience of its own constituency by often pledging that conscience without its consent. Sensing its repressive force and fearing its coercive and punitive power, local member churches and ministers seldom protested such organizational commitments; ministers hesitated to contradict the official statements. The Protestant churches themselves thus became vulnerable to the fetters of ecclesiastical control.

2. Although some independent agencies publicized official resolutions of protest against the National Council’s collectivistic pronouncements, they offered little guidance in positive Christian social ethics. Inside or outside the preaching ministry, they seldom faced the matter of God and government, faith and freedom, with active concern. While NCC spokesmen abetted the pressure for controls, most evangelical pulpits lacked a careful recital of man’s rights and duties under God.

3. Though becoming increasingly amoral, the state preened itself with morality and many trappings of religion. Some politicians espoused the indispensability of religion in national life even while they voted for more socialistic controls. They shaped plaudits “appropriate to the constituencies,” which not only approved special interest but basically revealed political expedience. Certainly, to doubt unduly the sincere churchly interests of many government leaders is unwarranted. One of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S contributing editors, Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, properly insists that piety must not be suspect simply because it dwells by the Potomac. Whenever the state speaks with a sacred voice, however, it requires special scrutiny. In its beginnings even the German Nazi movement attracted many people by “spiritual qualities” that obscured its evils. In recent decades, one American president on re-election eve made political use of the Episcopal Prayer Book. Examination of public speeches discloses American politicians to be more gifted with complimentary references to Deity than with sustained expositions of the theology of politics. Labor, business and government all become more inclined to locate a religious justification for their objectives. Labor uses its Religion in Labor Movement to propagandize its legislative goals; management and labor resort to clergymen to propagandize their positions. This tendency of big government, big labor and big business to “use” religion in support of their programs is a reflex of America’s growing religiosity that calls for careful scrutiny. Rather than being flattered by it, the churches need to challenge it. Behold the terrors of Communism, tolerating only as much “freedom” for the churches as serves the tyrant’s whim!

Misguided Social Action

Leaders who endorse specific social measures in the name of the Church may think thereby to make “the Gospel relevant to our times.” Usually they only embarrass the Church. There are many reasons for this:

1. For every churchman who endorses a particular organization and its program (cf. the forthcoming CIO-AFL propaganda effort for the closed shop, as against “right to work” laws), there is another to oppose it. The public soon wonders if the Church does not know her own mind, or whether she is a propaganda agency for whatever social movement best exploits her endorsement. The competing and conflicting proclamations of ecclesiastical leaders not only lessen the Church’s stature in the eyes of the outside world, but also confuse the membership within the churches themselves.

2. Such pronouncements tend to be divisive. Often “social action” declarations by ecumenical and denominational leaders agitate their constituencies. Admission is long overdue that such statements were often ill-advised and represented only the personal opinion of certain individuals and pressure groups.

3. Such proclamations frequently do not express the thinking of the local churches and therefore ought not to be issued in their name by the top echelon. An element of pressure shadows the church member’s affiliation with organizations professing to speak “for so many denominations” or for “so many millions of Protestants.” A movement that not only propagandizes the views of certain leaders, but catapults those convictions into prominence by exaggerating their known support, becomes a vehicle of misrepresentation rather than of truth. Mr. Leonard Read, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, recently criticized both clergy and laity who do not protest social action pronouncements that misrepresent their convictions. Mr. Read suggests that the minister who disagrees with ecumenical social policies but feels obliged to “stay in” and “straighten things out” should apply that logic to the Communist party. The best way to “straighten things out,” he contends, is to decline support. Mr. Read further contends that membership in organizations which repeatedly violate politico-economic views of their constituencies [theological and economic views of most American churchgoers are considered far to the right of ecumenical leadership] weakens the very personality of the members. Integrity requires an individual to represent his convictions accurately to those about him. Each unprotested misrepresentation of one’s beliefs, each unprotested identification with groups that do not express one’s convictions, weakens and finally destroys an individual’s character. Mr. Read warns that personal integrity always suffers when loyalty to a group takes precedence over loyalty to the truth.

What Can Be Done?

What is the churches’ responsibility when a nation’s decline is concealed by a proud front of military power, of scientific genius, of commercial efficiency and is undetected by the self-satisfied masses in pursuit of luxury or pleasure? The Christian community is not without biblical guidance in this matter. In apostolic times many conditions in the old Roman Empire were not far different from ours. In treating social ethics in his epistle to the Romans, Paul writes the believers: “You know what hour it is.… The night is far gone.… It is full time now for you to wake from sleep …” (13:11ff., RSV).

Christianity neither deifies nor humanizes the state. Romans 13 no more means the God-state (the state is God) than Revelation 13 means the Beast-state (the state is inherently demonic). Human government is divinely willed to preserve justice and to restrain evil in a sinful society. Government may indeed deteriorate, overwhelmed by the very injustice and wickedness it ought to restrain. The Book of Revelation warns that government most readily becomes a Beast-state when it thinks itself the God-state. It then arrogates to itself the right to control every phase of human experience and to require the worship of itself.

Romans 13 speaks not only of the powers of the state, but refers as well to Christian social responsibility. Paul declares that the state is to be supported by taxes, by honor and by good works in general. More than this, he obligates Christian conscience to social fulfillment of the Commandments in a spirit of love. “Render … to all their dues.… Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery … kill … steal … bear false witness … covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (13:7–9).

Limits Of The State

The first conclusion to be drawn is that the state, deriving its authority from God, cannot require of its citizens anything that violates the revealed commandments; since the power is ordained for the good of the people, passive obedience is not required when it ceases to be good. The second is that the Christian citizen by obedient fulfillment of these commandments in the spirit of love exhibits the highest patriotism.

The Scriptures here provide another equally important guideline. That is the directness with which the Apostle proceeds to the governing principles of revealed morality to fix Christian social responsibility. The Bible contains tenets that define love of God and love of neighbor in greater detail than the Ten Commandments. Biblical ethics asserts, for example, such specific rules as to pray for rulers, and to pay one’s taxes. But one thing characterizes biblical social ethics: it nowhere endorses specific contemporary movements and organizations in such a way as to throw the sanction of Christianity behind them. Rather, it states the great social concerns of revealed religion in terms of divinely disclosed ethical principles that must determine and motivate social responsibility and action. It does not even condemn slavery, though it states the principles that sounded the death knell of that evil.

Rule Of Christian Action

This norm for Christian social responsibility guards the Church from two errors so frequently committed by modern ecclesiastical spokesmen. First, it exhibits Christian duty as performance of the revealed will of God. This deters the churches from social action of merely humanitarian and humanistic nature. (One major turning point in recent American life was prominence of “the welfare of man” as the dominant social goal. Under the umbrella of this cliche, and detached from any of the priorities of revealed religion, the masses gave life a purely materialistic interpretation. Furthermore, many political leaders successfully proclaimed the solution of all problems (international relations, unemployment, education) to be simply the spending of more money.)

To frame Christian social action primarily in terms of revealed principles of social morality protects the church from a second error, that of indiscriminately approving or disapproving specific movements and organizations and even individuals in the name of authentic Christian action.

In this time of confused principles in national life the Church surrenders moral leadership by supporting isms and temporary movements, instead of conspicuously exhibiting the divinely-revealed principles of social ethics that define human liberty and human duty. Besides the primary duty of evangelizing a lost society, the Church is responsible for upholding the will of God in social life, expressed in biblically revealed principles and values. To endorse particular movements and specific activities in isolation from this primary social orientation cuts the Church adrift from her moorings. Although presuming to represent God and Church, her spokesmen become insensitive to those revealed verities, and even support movements and positions whose attachment to those principles is often obscure and sometimes nonexistent. Certainly the Church must be specific, must not confine social interests to platitudes. The revealed principles of right, however, are never platitudinous; nor is the absolute less absolute because it is neglected and scorned. Revealed principles may illuminate contemporary movements and actions by the pulpit’s use of illustration and example. Always, however, the revealed will of God must predominate and must be the gauge for everything else. Who then dare validate the Church’s permanent endorsement of a movement? (The Church is on the side of the worker rather than of the idler, but is she therefore eternally committed to AFL-CIO? The Church is on the side of the poor and oppressed, but is she therefore committed to a program of government subsidy and a welfare state?)

In the decline of the American republic the Church will count for little in a rear guard action for national survival unless she returns to the great realities of divine revelation and unless her social message centers in personal regeneration and in fidelity to revealed morality.

Betraying A Heritage

Today influential men are selling the nation’s birthright on every hand. In an official decision in 1955 even a member of the Supreme Court endorsed the denial of absolutes. The Church did little to challenge this assertion of relativity, a theory quite in keeping with the Soviet philosophy of political expedience. In fact, the Church today harbors a theory of knowledge that engenders skepticism over the very existence of revealed truth and principles of right. Neo-orthodox theology has not reversed the modernistic trend that considers revelation as inexpressible in words and propositions.

But absolutes do not cease to be absolutes, imperatives do not cease to be imperatives, because of failure to recognize them as such. Biblical theology and ethics give little credence to the modern notion that God does not articulate permanent principles. Unless the Church accepts her biblical heritage and enunciates the great ethical principles that sustain our tradition of freedom, her own liberties may vanish together with those of the nation she fails. There may not always be a U.S.A., but there will always be a Church. As the believers in Russia can eloquently testify, however, the Church sometimes is chained and imprisoned not alone for her courage to affirm the superiority of spiritual over limited political loyalties, but as penalty also for her silent and unprotesting subjection to the power-state.

We Quote:

FELIX MORLEY

Educator and Journalist

The men who wrote the Constitution of the United States had few conveniences at their disposal. But in two respects, at least, their thinking was greatly superior to that which passes as currency today. They were at home in the field of abstract ideas upon which, much more than upon the production of material wealth, the continuation of the American way of life depends. And they were thoroughly familiar with those eternal truths that alone give a sense of conviction and significance to human existence.—In The Power in the People.

The peril of the artist is his constant temptation to an idolatrous worship of the beautiful creature rather than the beatific Creator. This results in service of the holiness of beauty rather than the beauty of holiness. Nevertheless, art and religion are inextricably bound, and the Christian faith finds its pure expression in artistic forms just as truly as it does in intellectual works of theology or practical works of mercy.

Spirit With Spirit

Of all the art forms, painting is the most peculiarly Christian. Although the ancients and the orientals engaged in painting, it is a historical fact that Christian culture has excelled in this medium. The reason for this excellence lies in the spirituality of Christian reconciliation. While pagan art, where it has made an attempt at reconciliation at all, has sought a resolution of matter and spirit, Christianity with a surer and more reverent realism has found the need to reconcile Spirit with spirit. In Semitic and Hindu art there is no real attempt at reconciliation. The resolution of life is expressed in terms of release (Moksha for the Hindu and an apocalyptic longing for the courts of the Lord for the Semite). Thus there is no reconciliation with either matter or the course of this world—and consequently there is a glaring aesthetic indigence. In ancient Greek and Chinese art there is a serious attempt to reconcile matter and spirit in the form of moderation (sophrosune and tao), a balance between the Dionysiac and the Apollonian, between Yang and Yin. But Christian art does not reconcile matter with spirit by means of a humanized rationalization; rather reconciliation is found only through death and resurrection, death to both matter and spirit and resurrection in newness of life with the Holy Spirit.

Painting is wonderfully suited to express this reconciliation because it is more attenuated than sculpture; more suggestive with its nuances of light, shade, and color; more supple in expressing variety and individuality; more potentially spiritual in its ability, through the use of perspective, selectivity, distortion, and accent, to quell an atomistic self-assertion and to foster the grace of sacrifice. According to the Christian Gospel this world is redeemed not by balancing it properly with an idealized spirit, but by killing it with the Word and raising it anew. Painting is peculiarly fitted to express this revelation because it can show with its suggestiveness both the depravity of the things of this world and the purity of the regenerate life in the Spirit. The Spirit is invisible and believed, yet it is precisely the visible matter and stuff of this world that is redeemed in the Word become flesh.

I submit that art is that form of service to the ruling spirit of the age in which men try to express the will of that particular spirit by means of some kind of patterned arrangement of space. Art is either spiritual or demonic depending upon whether the spirit of the age is in the service of Christ or Satan. Art is never for art’s sake. Sometimes it is done for the artist’s sake or for Satan’s, but only when it is for Christ’s sake is art true and beautiful and holy.

This view clearly cuts across Plato (art is a copy of a copy) and Aristotle (art is the representation of the universal in the particular for the purpose of catharsis) and Hegel (art is the manifest unfolding of the Spirit in history through conflict) and all the modern theories which try to reduce art to the will (Nietsche, Freud) or the feeling (Santayana) or the mind (Maritain).

One example will suffice to show what I mean. When the Western church fell under the spell of the spirit of this world, she became corrupt. Her great culture lost its salutary grace and gradually became humanized. Thus the last expression of church art, seventeenth century baroque, became a debased concern for nothing but the frilleries of nature. The Puritan reaction to this was healthy in its disciplined resistance against the intoxication of the pretty, but the priggishness of Puritanism was just as devastating to Christian art as was Plato’s prudery to classic art. In each case art fell into the service of the spirit of the age and died with the demon of its choosing.

When the humanist idolization of the natural had reached the end of its moribund journey, the reaction was violent. A new spirit, the spirit of existential integrity, convulsed a new generation of artists. Some of these were called Les Fauves because like wild beasts they tore up all the rules and traditions of the past, and after shattering the fake dead world of their fathers they set out honestly to create a new world as far as they had insight to see. In place of the naturalism of Corot, Millais, and Rubens we find now the “supernaturalism” of Picasso, Bracque, and Mondrian.

Fatigue In The World Of Art

Philosophical pluralism in our age makes analysis complex, for no simple Weltanschauung can be defined such as characterized classical, oriental or medieval art. And yet it is possible to detect a dominating spirit ruling over our age with singular authority in every area of historical activity. In all governments throughout the world today, for example, there is a general weariness in the laissez faire expression of natural law. This is coupled with an anxious concern to manipulate the state according to a new social law. Likewise there is a parallel fatigue in the world of art in its repudiation of sweet romanticism. This is coupled with the frantic attempt to express the deeper realities of the soul by means of unconventional and chaotic abstractions. This new spirit has introduced a new heresy.

The old spirit has degenerated so much that it controls now only the calendar art of the unsophisticated. In Sallman’s Head of Christ we have a pretty picture of a woman with a curling beard who has just come from the beauty parlor with a Halo shampoo, but we do not have the Lord who died and rose again!

But the new spirit is similar to the Gnostic Zeitgeist in Paul’s day when he complained of “spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.” Instead of holding up a mirror to nature, the artist today deliberately distorts nature in order that he may mirror the human soul. Just as the old naturalism idolized matter, the new abstractionism idolizes spirit, but neither serves the incarnate Lord who redeems matter and spirit, and redeems them not by adjustment and compromise with nature nor by revolt and release from nature but by the killing judgment of God’s wrath upon nature and by the regenerating mercy of his grace.

It is interesting to see that some of the modern painters express their Gnosticism in a legalistic way and some in an antinomian. Mondrian and Rothko, for instance, abstract all natural content in the interest of pure form. Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, on the other hand, are concerned only for matter, shattering all norms of painting in the interest of an antinomian expression. But all alike have despaired of this world, and at the expense of communicability they have run to a mystic realm of the soul, a huperouranios topos, where conversation is limited to the coterie who have the esoteric gnosis. In some cases this is a mentalistic gnosis and in others it is emotionalistic, but in every instance it is exclusive.

Others among the modern painters are not so unintelligible. Picasso’s Guernica is disgustingly unbeautiful but shockingly true because it tells those with eyes to see that this world is shattered to pieces. But while this is worth saying it leaves unsaid the profounder truth that the broken world is bound together by the bleeding wounds of Christ. And Dali’s Madonna, his two Crucifixions and his Last Supper, far from being pictures of the Incarnation, are surrealistic escapes into a mystic world of dreams. It is not accidental that the corpus on the cross had no wound prints, nor is it just for effect that the Lord of the Last Supper is so ethereal that a fishing dory floats through his midriff. With both of these artists, as with the pure abstractionists, the common denominator is Gnostic weariness with this world. Thus we have seen how with an amazing lubricity modern artists have expressed dangerously appealing half-truths which have captivated the avantgarde sophisticates of our age and put them in the service of a new ruling spirit.

Where Are The Prophets?

But where are the prophetic painters like El Greco, Grunewald, and Van Gogh who preached the Lord’s death till he come? Certainly Rouault can claim “apostolic succession,” but he is by his own admission the child of an age different from our own. Perhaps this is the requisite we seek: that the artist belong not to this age ever, but always to the coming age. In any case, painting, which is not in the service of the spirit of this age but of Christ, must convey more than the fragmentization of this world and more than the mystic dreams of another world. It must bear Christ in passionate Incarnation and triumphant Resurrection, in suffering witness in this age and confident hope in the coming age, sub crucem cum magna spe.

We Quote:

DAVID LAWRENCE

Editor, United States News and World Report

Those of us who do believe in God avow a faith in the rightness of moral teachings as derived from the Bible.… But we are dealing with men who boast of their contempt for religion—they do not believe in God.

In the Western world, theism is the basis of every constitutional right, every principle of free government.…

The world is not going to be safe for any of us as long as atheistic Communism is enthroned in Eastern Europe.… At the same time we can fervently speak what is in our hearts to the peoples behind the Iron Curtain and pray with them for deliverance. For in the millions of them who still believe in God rests the hope of mankind.—In an editorial, “They Don’t Believe in God,” United States News and World Report, Dec. 27, 1957.

Robert Paul Roth is Professor of New Testament Study at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina. He holds the Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

“Behold the Lamb of God who is to take away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).

Some weeks ago, not far from the entrance door of the United Nations in New York, I found a tiny chapel for meditation, an unpretentious place in which, as you enter, all you notice are the curtains on the walls, a table with a vase of flowers on it, and the quietness and stillness of a chapel. This chapel is all that has been able to be introduced into the United Nations because of the Moslem bloc, solidly opposed to anything Christian, and the Russian section, officially atheistic and opposed to any emphasis upon the world of the spirit.

But I am not thinking of the matter particularly from a political standpoint. I found myself asking, as I stood in that silent place, “Is this chapel and what it contains enough for a man to find God? Is this a sufficient highway into the presence of our God?” And I found myself facing the questions, “Where does Jesus Christ come into the picture? There is no symbol of him here. There is no cross nor Bible. Do we really need him whom Scripture calls the Son of God? Or is religion of itself sufficient? Is silence and these emblems of nature enough to help us toward God?”

Around the world today, and especially in America, there is new interest in religion. But is it enough that people are turning religious, that they have vague ideas about a Supreme Being and occasionally perhaps feel like praying? Is there any need of Jesus Christ in the picture? This is the question I pose.

The Christian God

First of all, I suggest that Jesus Christ is absolutely essential to the picture because only through him can we come to the Christian God. But what a man believes about God is all-important. It is not sufficient anymore to answer, “I believe in God.” There are too many different conceptions of him for this statement to be meaningful. The simple statement is not enough.

This was posed to me very vividly two or three years ago when I was taken from Australia to the Middle East for what happened to be the first convocation between Moslems and Christians. There for six days we sat round tables, thirty-five representing each faith, and we tried to find the points of likeness and the points of difference between these two great world religions. It was not long before it became very apparent that the point where we differed was regarding our conception of God. I remember early in the piece a debate developed as to whether in the Republic of Lebanon, where roughly half of the people are nominally Christian and half are Moslem, it would be possible to find a prayer for the schools so that each school day could open with Moslems and Christians saying the same prayer. I remember saying naively, “Would it be possible for a Moslem child to repeat the Lord’s Prayer?” And at once an old sheik from Saudi Arabia jumped to his feet and said, “Impossible! We could not repeat ‘Our Father which art in heaven,’ for God is not our father. God has no sons. He’s God!”

Later on another scholar of Islam said, “You can talk about the slaves of God if you like, but not the sons of God.” Later we discussed the difference of our ethical standards. There was heard a justification of polygamy; there was a defense put up for slavery that still operates in Saudi Arabia. But when you penetrated to the heart of it, where it all began was in our different pictures of God.

In America, we have become used to a society that is penetrated by the Christian understanding of God. And although many reject Christ, we hardly know what it is to live apart from his revelation of the Father. What would we know of God, for instance, if we stood only under a towering mountain, or in a woodland, or by a lakeside? What would we learn of him if we tried to interpret him only in history, or listened only to our own whirring minds and the voice of conscience within us? Without the special revelation of Jesus Christ we would have no clear understanding of the one true God whom we may come to know and love.

D. T. Niles, Ceylonese leader in Australia, was once asked the question, “You live in Hindu Ceylon; how do you present the necessity of Jesus in a society where everybody believes in God or gods?” This was his answer: “Oh, I just repeat to them the words of Jesus, ‘No man cometh to the Father but by Me.’ ” And he went on to say, “One may come to some imaginary kind of god through Hindu idols and such, but no man can know the living God apart from Christ. And I would again pose the question of the chapel with the silence, the curtained walls, and the table with roses. Could this of itself reveal who God is?

The Fact Of The Church

Secondly, I suggest that Jesus Christ is essential to the picture because he has given to us the community of Christians called the Church. The Church as a fact is part of the fact of Christ, part of the essential contribution Jesus Christ makes to man. It is significant that in the early chapters of the Book of Acts, Christians, before they were called by that proud title, were known as the “People of the Way,” a new community of people, who practiced the virtues of magnanimity, forgiveness and love in a world that reserved its plaudits for materialism. And so, as people watched this new community of people move through the world, they said, “Ha, People of the Way.” And it was precisely because these “People of the Way” took their historic journey through the earth that that ancient world of Greece and Rome was arrested. Presently, its decadence was halted; new life sprang out of these cells of “People of the Way.” And precisely because there was a new community of people that emerged, a new culture, the Christian culture, came into being.

Over in Australia, or in any country where your country is represented, we have a little bit of American territory. Right at the heart of Canberra, our national capital, there is the American Embassy. And there is a certain little piece of land which is really America; and if, as an American citizen, you step on that piece of soil, the laws of the Queen of England and the Commonwealth of Australia do not operate. You are under the President of the United States. There it is. A little bit of America! By normal diplomatic usage, that is America! And we, if we are obedient to Jesus Christ, are set down in a colony of heaven, down where the laws of heaven operate, and where the ways of the people of God are to be seen.

We need a “People of the Way” today to challenge the world again. And we need a “People of the Way” to remind the world again that Jesus is indeed “the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Otherwise, how is this world ever going to be deflected from some of its poverty-stricken living and its evil activities unless there are a “People of the Way”? How do you think, for example, the purity of Jesus is going to stand in our sex-saturated society unless there are people who express in their lives the purity of Jesus? How do you think this floodtide of liquor that is moving out all over our communities is going to be stopped? How is it going to be stopped in its fallacious propaganda and from gripping human society in its tyranny unless there emerge people who say, “As for me, I can’t touch it, I will not succumb to its appeals. I follow another way.” So also this can be carried into the questions of race and war. How shall this world be challenged unless there be emerging people who think differently from contemporary sub-Christian America, or contemporary sub-Christian Australia? How shall there be an elevation of our society unless there are people who begin to be truly “People of the Way”?

The Conscience Of Jesus

Thirdly, I suggest that Jesus Christ is essential because the conscience of Christ is the need of us all. I wonder has it ever struck you what a miracle is the conscience of Jesus? He lived two thousand years ago in primitive, out-of-the-way Palestine. And yet no one can say Jesus was ever a brake on human progress. No matter what issue arises, you will not find him away back in the past dragging humanity backward! Mohammed and Buddha do at certain points. Jesus is not away back there; he is far ahead. His conscience stands far beyond the point we have yet reached. The conscience of Jesus is one of the miracles of history.

We have reached a day when the conscience of man has rapidly to expand. Middleton Murray in one of his books says, “The time has come when man’s mind must jump forward.” And that word “jump” is well-chosen. A gulf has developed. We must gather our strength; we have to jump forward to catch up. Here we are in the atomic age. The peril of today is that we are taking into the atomic age stale old ideas that belong to the pre-atomic age. And man is lost unless he can find something that will cause him to jump forward in conscience and conviction.

The Need Of A Saviour

Lastly, I suggest that Jesus Christ is essential to man’s faith because every one of us needs a Saviour. It is not long since we were treating sin rather lightly, as though it were a growing pain of the human family. Throw a man a bit more education, let him become more civilized and he will grow out of sin and will leave it behind. But we are not talking this way so much anymore. We have seen too much of evil, and are now prone to talk of it as being a cancer—deadly.

What is the answer to the fundamental problem of evil? Deep down in the basement of our life there is a twin issue. Most of us are grappling with both the problem of ignorance and the problem of evil. They are both there. We have imagined that education grapples with both ignorance and evil. But education grapples only with ignorance; it does not necessarily touch evil. That is why a very clever man can be a clever devil. That is why George Buttrick says, “The only thing worse than a devil is an educated devil.” Education may just sharpen the wicked wit of man. It is time we saw clearly the limitations of education. Education does not solve the problem of evil! Only God in the Lord Jesus Christ and his cross and resurrection overcomes evil. The need of man is to have education come to grips with ignorance, and religion, that is, the Saviourhead of Jesus, come to grips with evil. Every one of us needs Jesus Christ as Saviour.

A little while ago I was over in Los Angeles. I had one Friday there. It was one of the most thrilling days I ever had. I went to see Roy Rogers’ ranch. I did not see him there, but I saw Dale Evans, his wife, and talked with her. I had heard something of her story before; here was the confirmation of it. I saw those little adopted children running around the house. She feels as a Christian that she must do something to answer world need, and has therefore adopted a little Korean child, a little American orphan, a Scottish orphan, and a little American Indian. As I talked with this woman, now a mature Christian, I realized that five or seven years ago she was just another actress in Hollywood. But something had happened to this woman. Christ had come into her life, and into her home.

I was speaking a little later with a man who told me, “You know, I’m in training for the Christian ministry. How long have you been a preacher?” I told him. “Oh,” he said, “I’m older than you are, and I’m only just beginning.” Later I heard his story. He had been a criminal in Kansas City, right down in the depths, one of the wicked men of the city. Then one night, distraught, he stepped into a church, and there a minister found him and began to talk to him. Something happened. Jesus Christ, the Saviour, came into his life. He felt, though he was getting older, that he ought to do something for Christ. Then one day he read the story of Peter, and how he was over 40 years of age when Jesus finally picked him. “I suddenly took heart,” he said. “I was over 40.” And therefore, he is today in theological school, getting ready to give what is left of his life to the service of Jesus Christ.

I thought of the wonder of it. Dale Evans on the top of the entertainment industry of America; another from the depths of an underworld of a great city—each finding the same Christ, the same Saviour, the same answer to the need of their lives.

Why is Jesus necessary? He is necessary because a Saviour is necessary. Have you received him? We need not a chapel with silence, curtained walls and roses on a table, but a lonely hill with a cross at its rim, an empty tomb in a garden, and a risen Christ, Lord and Saviour. This is the need of our hearts.

This is an abridgement of a sermon preached in Riverside Church, New York City, by the Rev. Alan Walker, who served from 1954–55 in Australia as director of The Methodist Church’s “Mission to the Nation,” and in 1956–57 under the Board of Evangelism of American Methodism. A native Australian, son of the onetime president of the Methodist Church of New South Wales, he has received an honorary D.D. degree from the Bethany Biblical Seminary, Chicago.

When the Incarnate Son of God lived on earth he did really pray. That is a fairly obvious thing to say, but it does require to be said because the chances are that we do not take sufficiently seriously the fact that Christ did pray when he was on earth.

Christ showed us how to pray by praying. It was when he was “praying in a certain place” that one of the Twelve said, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). The request leaped to the lips when one day the disciples, with hushed and awed hearts, actually watched the Son of God at prayer. Looking at Christ praying they suddenly realized what prayer was. If that was prayer they had not yet started to pray.

Christ’s Prayers Intensely Real

It requires to be emphasized again and again that our Lord’s prayers were real prayers; as real and intense as any ever uttered. It may be true that the majority of references to Christ’s prayer life concern intercessory prayer; but he did pray for himself, both in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:39) and in the high-priestly prayer in the fourth Gospel (John 17). And therefore we may well be justified in assuming that during those many sleepless nights, far away from the haunts of men, when he communed with the Father in prayer, the Son would recuperate his strength for the task of redeeming a fallen world, and would make his task, and his needs on his human side, the subject of prayer. We should remember that the Son of God found that the best preparation for a long hard day of demanding work was entering into fellowship with the Father in prayer, there beholding the Father’s glory with no veil between except the thin veil of his true humanity.

There are some 17 references to Christ’s active prayer life, and these may be grouped under four heads: His prayers at the great events of his life, those in the course of his ministry, those at his miracles, and his prayers for others.

Prayer Was His Life

There is a sense in which it is not accurate to speak of our Lord participating in prayer at different times and on different occasions. The fact of the matter is that when we study his life of prayer we find that prayer was not simply a part of his life; it was his life. Prayer was a habitual attitude of his mind and heart. Prayer was the atmosphere in which he lived, it was the air he breathed. So true is that that the Hebrew original of Psalm 109:4, “But I am prayer,” or, “But I am a prayer,” was literally true of our Lord. Surely, this is remarkable when one recalls how much our Lord crammed into the three brief years of his ministry.

Although it would be more accurate to say that prayer was our Lord’s life, yet he did, at particular times and on particular occasions, turn aside to engage in prayer.

Our Lord paused to pray in the midst of an almost incredibly busy life, and when subjected to a constantly high pressure of work and ministry. Preaching, teaching, casting out demons, healing individuals or large crowds of people, and always surrounded by excited, jostling, seething multitudes whose pathetic eagerness to see and to hear must ever have moved our Lord to pity—all this demanding service, all this eager self-giving, was carried on in the atmosphere of prayer.

No matter how busy he was, so steeped in prayer was his spirit that he could immediately, and without prolonged preparation of heart, turn aside for long seasons of prayer. Indeed, our Lord insisted on these extended times of prayer. For example, we read in Luke 6:12, “He went out into the mount to pray, and he continued all night in prayer to God.” Again, Mark 1:35 informs us that “in the morning, a great while before day (the morning of a day of incredible toil), he rose up, and went out, and departed into a desert place, and there prayed.” Or turning to Luke’s gospel again, “Great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed of their infirmities, but he withdrew himself in the desert and prayed” (Luke 5:15f).

The significance of this important factor in the life of our Lord is the more easily understood when we try to discover the real meaning of Christ’s ability to calm, in an instant, the tumultuous seas and the storm-tossed hearts of the Twelve in the midst of the tempest on the lake. We have not exhausted the significance of that moment when we attribute his miraculous power over nature to his deity. Part of its significance lies in the fact that he emerged from high converse with the Father on the mountaintop to march straight into the heart of that raging sea (Matt. 14:25). A lesson indeed for all Christian workers! If we would speak the Word with power, or exercise the healing, soothing touch, there must be in the background, unseen, our own conscious communion with God. How soon our puny resources are exhausted unless constantly replenished from the reservoirs of God. How mechanical is our work, how ineffectual is our witness, how powerless is our word, unless carried on in the atmosphere of prayer. The harder Jesus’ days the longer were his prayer times, the busier he was the greater his insistence on the practice of the presence of the Father. He recognized no substitute for the daily practice of the shut door, the bent knee, the secret communion.

In Sorrow And In Joy

Our Lord turned aside to pray when, as truly man, he was subjected, as we are, to upsurges of deep emotion, especially of profound sorrow and of great joy. Alas, these emotions make us men and women of conflicting moods which inevitably affect our life of prayer; but not so our Lord. We have hints in the gospel records that the deep emotions that upsurged from his heart were inevitably turned into prayers. For example, we have a hint of this in Mark 8:11f, where, when the Pharisees asked a sign, “He sighed deeply in his spirit.” Again, when a deaf man was brought to him, “He looked up to heaven and groaned” (Mark 7:33f). Whereas similar emotions in us produce moods and mental conflicts that make us neglect prayer, the Lord took these very emotions and blended them into a glance and a prayer heavenward.

We cannot, as is so commonly done, restrict the significance of that profound word to Gethsemane and Olivet. It must be taken as a window into the total life of Jesus Christ. Through that window we can dimly see the agony of soul in the Son of Man when confronted by suffering humanity, and also in the long, still night of retirement, in the desert or on the lonely mountainside, where his anguished soul sent up unutterable sighs to the Father. We, the victims of mood, neglect prayer; when human emotions invaded the spirit of Christ they only drove him the more insistently to prayer. Yes, even in the awful agony of soul and fluctuation of spirit in Gethsemane and on the Cross, his spirit was in undisturbed communion with the Father, still anchored in that one haven of security—prayer. That is a lesson we need constantly to learn. The varying winds of moods and gusts of emotions that blow upon our spirits should not be allowed to disturb our communion with God. They should be made rather to contribute to our fellowship with God by turning them into “strong crying and tears, with prayers and supplication,” as did the Son of God in the days of his flesh.

The Lord turned aside to pray in the midst of spiritual conflict and death. Certain Greeks came seeking an audience of Christ, saying to Philip, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” On hearing of this the Lord began to say, more to himself, perhaps, than to the Twelve, that the hour of glory had arrived. The moment had come when the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, and thus bring forth fruit. He says, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour!” And then this hour of spiritual conflict, which had driven him to prayer, issued in triumph: “Father, glorify thy Name!” And then the voice, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

Another incident is that of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39–46). In trying to understand this event in our Lord’s life it is necessary to realize that this was not an isolated or sudden acceptance of the Father’s will. “I delight to do thy will” (Ps. 40:8) had been the ruling principle of Christ’s whole life. But this should not blind us to the fact that because Jesus Christ was truly man, as well as truly God, it was “natural” that he should desire, if it were possible, not to experience the anguish that this part of the Father’s will might involve.

But having said that, it has to be pointed out that this “natural” desire in the human side of Christ not to have to face this part of the Father’s will was not due to opposition to that will. His prayer that the cup should pass from him never for a moment conflicted with his habitual and perfect submission to the Father’s will, whatever that will might involve.

Such an incident in our Lord’s life is of profound significance for the study of his doctrine and practice of prayer because here in Gethsemane he shows, not by word but by act, what real prayer is. Real prayer is absolute self-surrender to, and absolute correspondence with, the mind, the will, the character, of God. And we require to remind ourselves that this was not a cold, unfeeling acceptance of the Father’s will. “He began to be exceeding sorrowful.” He began to tremble and faint, and therefore he took refuge in prayer. Indeed, so powerful was the pressure on his soul that an angel from heaven came to strengthen him; and to strengthen him for a still fiercer conflict, that of the Cross. “And being in an agony, he prayed the more earnestly: and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44).

Another extremely significant incident is that of the Cross. As our Lord’s life ebbed away, and the horror of contact and conflict with sin and death filled his soul with anguish, again he found refuge in prayer. “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” Then that dread cry of dereliction in the darkness was succeeded by another agonized prayer. Ere death sealed his lips Jesus Christ’s last words were a prayer, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” To the last, despite the horror of the past hours and of the present moment, our Lord is still in communion with the Father.

So when the sorrow and anguish of some dark spiritual conflict comes upon us, let us remember the Lord who prayed, “O Father, since this cup cannot pass away except I drink it, thy will be done.” And when at the last death draws near to us, and strength is ebbing away, and Jordan’s cold river rolls at our feet, let us remember that Jesus Christ the Son of God died praying.

Rejoicing And Thanksgiving

Prayer, for the Lord, was thanksgiving. When the Seventy returned exulting in the subjection of the demons to the Name of their Lord, Christ rejoiced in spirit saying, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth” (Luke 10:21). Again, just as he was preparing to utter the word of power at the grave of Lazarus, Christ lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And when he had spoken thus he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth!” (John 11:41f).

Again, before Christ fed the five thousand “He took the loaves, and gave thanks” (John 6:11). And so also when he fed the four thousand “He gave thanks” (Matt. 15:36). The most solemn prayer of thanksgiving took place, however, when Christ sat down with the Twelve to keep the last paschal feast. It must have been with profound emotion that the Son of God “took the cup and gave thanks” (Matt. 26:27). And yet again, in the evening of the Lord’s resurrection in Emmaus “He took bread and blessed it (or gave thanks) and brake and gave” (Luke 24:30).

The main point to notice in these references to our Lord’s prayers of thanksgiving is that whether he was walking in the light or in the shadow, gratitude was an integral part of his life of prayer. It was not only in life’s shining hours that thanksgiving leaped to his lips. Indeed, it would seem that it was especially in the darkest times that praise poured forth from his heart.

Prayer, for our Lord, was also the taking of solemn counsel with the Father. The choice of the Twelve was, to our Lord, a decision fraught with such grave consequences that it was only after spending the preceding night in prayer that he made the choice (Luke 6:12f).

It was through eleven of those men then selected, and later ordained and commissioned on the evening of the day of the Lord’s resurrection, that the world was to hear the gospel, and receive the faith once for all delivered to the saints. They had to be men who would be prepared to preach only what their eyes had seen, and their ears had heard. Men who would rely, not on their choice of Christ as Saviour, but on the Saviour’s choice of them as his disciples.

Christ’s Intercession

Prayer, for our Lord, was also intercession. In this connection there is one phrase in particular which should be noticed, and which will help us to understand how prayer was for Christ intercession. The phrase is, “for their sakes,” or, “for your sakes.” For example, in John 11, where our Lord announces the death of Lazarus, he remarks that he was glad for the disciples’ sake that he had not been in Bethany to heal Lazarus, that they might believe. That is to say, the Lord raised Lazarus, not only because of his love for Lazarus, and Martha, and Mary, but also in order to bring the Twelve to see that he was the Resurrection and the Life.

Now, for whom did our Lord intercede? For example, he prayed for Peter (Luke 22:31). “Simon, Simon, behold, satan hath desired to have you that he might sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you, that thy faith fail not.” That Peter did not fall as Judas fell was doubtless due, in part, to a radical difference between the two men; but finally, Peter was kept from falling away by special grace granted to him in answer to the Lord’s prayers for him. That Christ’s prayers were answered is clear from the sequel of Peter’s denial. The proof is seen in the melting grief, the bitter weeping, the frank confession. What a blessed commentary is Peter’s experience on the Pauline phrase, “by grace are ye saved.” And how precious is the thought that the Lord who prayed so effectively for Peter now prays for us as our High Priest in glory.

Finally, Christ interceded for those who crucified him. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). What amazing grace! How hard it is for us to forgive. How seemingly impossible it is to forget injury. How fatally easy it is for bitterness to linger on, deep-rooted in the heart; and how ready it is ever to break out again, and this even after the lapse of years. But here our Lord, in the midst of extreme injury, intercedes on behalf of cruel, violent men.

However, prayer was, for our Lord, primarily and supremely communion. This is especially clear from Luke’s account of Christ’s Transfiguration: “And it came to pass (that) he took Peter, John and James, and went up to a mount to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. And behold Moses and Elias appeared in glory but (the disciples) were heavy with sleep, and when they were awake they saw his glory” (Luke 9:28–32).

The Transfigured Life

The significant point for us in these moving words is that Christ was transfigured while he was praying. Prayer was the cause; the Transfiguration was the effect. Surely the lesson here is that the transfigured life is the result of the prayer life. Compare also Moses’ experience when he emerged from communion with God. His face reflected the glory of God with whom he had been communing as a man communes with his friend.

It is on the holy ground of Christ’s prayer life that we learn that only through prayer that is face-to-face communion with God can we receive the grace indispensable for the transfigured life. The grace for that transfigured life is indispensable because it includes identification with Christ in his sufferings.

I lay in dust, life’s glory, dead;

And from the ground there blossoms, red,

Life that shall endless be.

The Mount of Transfiguration shows that divine glory is unveiled, and the divine voice is heard, only after the preparation of prayer that is communion. Here it stands revealed that for Jesus Christ prayer was communion. Prayer that is communion is the prayer that goes to God, not for what he gives, but for what he is. And in the prayer that goes to God for himself alone, God comes forth to meet and to greet the seeking heart, “a blessed invasion of God’s Presence” takes place, and lo, an earth-born son is transfigured with heaven-born glory.

There is a path open to us along which lies the possibility of translating the truth and the reality of Christ’s prayer life into our own lives. That path is the path of prayer; a path which Jesus Christ has marked out for us by his living example, as well as by his teaching. By his own present intercession for us, and by his indwelling our hearts by the Holy Spirit, he has provided a spiritual dynamic to enable us to walk that path of prayer which we have seen him walk. The pathway of prayer becomes the pathway of power. He stands upon that very pathway now. Let us, then, respond with glad obedience to our Lord as he beckons to each of us saying, “Follow Me.”

James G. S. S. Thomson is associate professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He was formerly at New College, Edinburgh, where he taught for six years in the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Languages. Previous to that he was missionary to Arabic-speaking Muslims in Algeria. He holds the B.A. degree from Oxford, and M.A., B.D. and Ph.D. from Edinburgh University, from which he also received the Aitken Traveling Fellowship. At Oxford he was a Casbred Prizeman. This article is an abridgment of a chapter of a book on prayer soon to be published.