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twg_000000034000 | or strength, or comfort. If he receive but chaff!-- Theology is not a dry thing, and ought not be made so. It is quick with the life of the race. Each dogma is a mile-stone of human progress. It is the sifted and garnered wisdom of the centuries, concerning God, and His ways with men. Each student should feel, not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034001 | that a system is being driven into him, as piles are driven into the stream, but that he is being put in philosophic contact with the thought of the race on the great topic of Religion, with liberty himself to experiment, think, and add to the store. Homiletics is not a series of nursery-rules for man--formal, didactic droppings of a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034002 | pedant's tongue. Homiletics is the appeal of man to man, for the welfare of his soul, and the true progress of mankind. Exegesis is not a matter of Hebrew or Greek alone. It includes the spiritual interpretation of the great problems of the race. Homer, Tennyson, Browning, and Dante are exegetes, no less than Lightfoot, Lange, and Schaff. Pastoral Divinity | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034003 | is not the etiquette of a polite way of making calls: it is an entering into the social spirit of the time; the learning of friendliness, unreserve, sympathy, persuasion, and a way of approach. It is the mastery of spiritual _savoir-faire_. Outside of this group of technical subjects there are yet others of vital importance from a scientific understanding of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034004 | the world, and of one's work. They are Psychology, Ethics, Sociology, and Politics. Since we have known more of the psychological meaning of adolescence, a new theory of Conversion has sprung up; and whether or not we accept it, the whole outlook over the underlying principle of conversion has been changed. We must at least recognize that conversion is a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034005 | scientific process, as much as digestion is, or respiration; it is not a purely emotional occurrence. The minister must learn what society really is, and how the far still forces of time act and react upon each other, producing group-actions, institutions, customs, ways. There are social fossils as well as physical ones. Sociology is not a system of fads and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034006 | reforms. It is the scientific study of society, of its constitution, development, institutions, and growth. He must also breathe largely of the great governmental life of the race--understand the primary principles of politics and administration. He should have some knowledge of commercial interests, of the formulas, incentives, and right principles of trade. There should also be in the seminary an | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034007 | inspirational atmosphere of music, literature, and art. Literature is a revelation of the life of the soul. The man who reads literature and comprehends its message is receiving a fine training which shall fit him for a thorough understanding of the heart; of its practical, ethical, and spiritual problems; of its domestic joys and sorrows; of its human cares and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034008 | burdens; of the appeals that will come to him for sympathy; of the temptations that beset the race; and of the hopes and trials of the world. Literature is one of the best tools a minister can have. He should be read in the great literary and sermonic literature, the work of Bossuet, Massillon, Chrysostom, Augustine, Fnelon, Marcus Aurelius, mediaeval | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034009 | homilies, Epictetus, Pascal, Guyon, Amiel, Vinet, La Brunetire, Phelps, Jeremy Taylor, Barrows, Fuller, Whitefield, Bushnell, Edwards, Bacon, Newman, Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, Davies, Law, Bunyan, Luther, Spalding, Robertson, Kingsley, Maurice, Chalmers, Guthrie, Stalker, Drummond, Maclaren, Channing, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks, yes, even John Stuart Mill. All these men, by whatever name or school they are called, are writers of essays or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034010 | sermons which appeal to the most spiritual deeps of man. He should read the novels of Richter, Thackeray, Dickens, Scott, Eliot, and Victor Hugo. He should know intimately the great verse which involves spiritual problems, and human strife and aspiration,--Milton, Bewulf, Caedmon, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, ballads, sagas, the Arthur-Saga, the Nibelungenlied, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Herbert, Tennyson, Browning, Dante and Christina | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034011 | Rossetti, Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, to say nothing of Goethe, Corneille, and the Greek, Roman, Persian, Egyptian, Hindu, and Arabian verse. In music his heart should wake to the beauty of oratorios, symphonies, chorals, concert music, national and military music, and inspiring songs, not to speak of hymns and of anthems, the progress of Christian song! The _Creation_, the _Messiah_, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034012 | _Redemption_, Bach's _Passion Music_, the _St. Cecilia Mass_, Spohr's _Judgment_, Stainer's _Resurrection_, the _Twelfth Mass_, Mendelssohn's _Elijah_,--these are monumental works and themes. What is a hymn? We think of it as being some simple churchly words, set to a serious tune. A hymn is the rhythmic aspiration of the race. No one can look through a good hymnal--through _Hymns Ancient | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034013 | and Modern_, for instance, or the Church Hymnary--without feeling that therein is bound up the devotional life of the world. The spiritual outlook is cosmic. Our every mood of penitence, praise, and aspiration resounds in melodious and time-defying strains. In art, the religious spirit broods over the great work of the world. In Angelo, Francesca, Veronese, Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Tintoretto, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034014 | and Correggio, the brush of the painter has set forth the adoration of the Church of God. Thus, taken all in all, to be educated as a minister should be to be educated in the Higher Life of the race. Finally, above all else is the spiritual study and interpretation of the Word of God. A minister may be fearless | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034015 | of the investigations of scientific criticism. Every truth is important to him, but not all truths are vital. When a man such as Caspar Rene Gregory speaks, something of the holy mystery and inspiration of biblical research, as well as a scientific result, is presented, and one gains a new conception of what it really means to study and to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034016 | understand the Word of God. Under all is the life of ceaseless and prevailing prayer. By the life of prayer, many mean merely a way of learning to make public petitions, an objective appeal to God. The true life of prayer is as simple, as unteachable, and as vital as the life of a child with its mother--the little lips | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034017 | daily learning new ways of approach to its mother's heart, and new words to make its wants and interests and sorrows known. Prayer is the true World-Power. Just as there are vast stretches in the world where the foot of man has never trod, so there are unmeasured regions whereon prayer has never been. The more we pray, the more | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034018 | illimitable appears this spiritual realm. And all about us in the universe are also great hidden forces: nothing will lay hold of them but prayer. Each prayer enlarges the soul. The measure of our praying is the measure of our growth. No man has reached his full possibilities of achievement who has not completed the circuit of his possible prayers. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034019 | Power is proportionate to prayer. And last of all, there is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What it is, who may say? But that it is real, who can doubt? To read the lives of Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody, is to feel a strange, deep thrill. They are men who spake, and men listened; who called, and men came | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034020 | to God. Others, alas, so often call, and there is no response. They cannot make headway through the indifference, the sloth, the materialism, and the inherent vulgarity of the world. The life itself is arduous. After all is said, it is not quite the same task to examine and classify either protoplasm or the most highly organized forms of nature, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034021 | that it is to analyze and understand the mysterious workings of the heart, the intricacies of conscience and conduct, the possibilities of spiritual development or of moral downfall, and the many questionings, agonies, and ecstasies of the soul of man. And they are to be studied and understood with the definite and positive aim of the absolute reconstruction of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034022 | world-bound spirit--a change of its motives, purposes, affections, ideals. More than this, there must be at the heart of the more thoughtful minister a philosophic basis for the reconstruction of society itself. Youth is not an adequate preparation for this task: a man must live and grow. To deal with such themes and occasions, there must appear in the world | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034023 | lives of such vigor that they can command; of such charm, that they can attract; of such wisdom, that they can guide and comfort; of such vitality, that they can inspire. And hence there rises before the mind's eye a figure that is both knightly and kingly--a man earnest in the redress of wrong, and who yet holds a subtle | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034024 | authority over the forces that make for wrong; a man burdened with the cares and sorrows of many others, and yet conducting his own life with serenity, enthusiasm, dignity, and hope; a man to whose keen yet tender gaze a life-history is revealed by a word or tone, but whose own eyes receive their light from God. A prophet and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034025 | a father, a priest and a counsellor, a brother, friend, and judge, a sacrifice and an inspiration should he be who, in reverence and love, brings before a waiting congregation the very Word of Life! SECOND: OF SPIRITUAL RULE . The primary rule is over conscience. The man who sways a conscience sways a human life. The man who sways | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034026 | a nation's conscience controls that nation's life. To rule conscience, a man must himself be unprejudiced and well informed. He must strive, not to keep up an unhealthy excitement which shall make conscience introspective and morbid, but to preserve a sane moral outlook, to encourage freedom of thought and judgment, and to develop a normal conscience which reacts promptly against | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034027 | wrong. Conscience measures our inner recoil from evil. The power of a preacher is in direct proportion to the energy with which he reveals sin in the heart of man, and wakes his whole nature against its insidious power. Sin is. To-day, sin is thought a somewhat brusque word, lacking in polish. To use it frequently is a mark of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034028 | lack of '_savoir-faire_! Indeed to speak of it at all is as archaic as to speak of the Ichthyosaurus. But sin is a root-fact of the life of man. It is the office of the spiritual teacher to pluck out sin; to pierce the heart with a recognition of the enormity of sin, and of its far-reaching consequences; to stir | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034029 | the seared conscience, rouse the apathetic life, thrill the spiritual imagination, and to quicken the heart to better love and to nobler dreams. He rebukes the private sins of individuals and the public sins of nations. In the _Faerie Queene_, the "soul-diseased knight" was in a state "_In which his torment often was so great, That like a lyon he | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034030 | would cry and rare, And rend his flesh, and his own synewes eat_." But Fidelia, like the faithful pastor, was both "_able with her word to kill, And raise againe to life the heart that she did thrill_." This power has at times been misunderstood and misapplied. No human authority can bind the conscience, nor set rules and regulations for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034031 | the soul of man. The prerogative of final direction belongs to God alone. No man may arrogate it--no pastor for people, no husband for wife, no wife for husband, no parent for child. The sadness of the world has been, that men have not always been spiritually free. Freedom has been a social growth--a phase of progress. It has taken | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034032 | wars and persecutions, revolutions and reformations, the blood of saints and martyrs, the sorrow of ages, to plant this precept in the mind of man. The evangelist warns. He speaks of sin, death, hell, and the judgment to come. It is for these things that he is sent to testify. These are not the catch-words of a new sort of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034033 | Fear King who uses oral terrors to affright the soul of man. Heaven and hell are not a new sort of ghost-land: retribution is not a larger way of tribal revenge. No. The latest facts of science present this universe as not only progressive, but as retributive. There is a rebound of evil which makes for pain. Each broken law | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034034 | exacts a penalty. Each deed of sin is a forerunner of personal and of social disaster. The generation that sins shall be cut off, while the stock of the righteous grows strong from age to age. The scientific vista opening to the eye of man is impressive and appalling. Each man has within himself a future of joy or sadness | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034035 | for the race. Do you remember the sermon of Horace Bushnell on the "Populating Power of the Christian Faith"? Do you recall the history of the infamous Jukes family? That of the seven devout and noble generations of the Murrays? The Day of Judgment is not only the Last Great Day--it is to-day and every day. "Every day is Doomsday," | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034036 | says Emerson. Nature is unforgetful. Nature is accountant. Each iniquity must be paid for out of the resources of the race. It is of these grave omens that the Man of God must speak. He dare not be tongue-tied by custom or by fear. He must proclaim hell in the ears of all mankind. For wherever hell may be, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034037 | we do not yet know, and whatever hell may be, and we cannot even imagine, Hell _is_; and the soul of man must be kept mindful of these great things. The evangelist comforts and consoles. The heart of man is wayward and goes oft astray. No one can be belabored into righteousness. The true lover of souls allows for the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034038 | hereditary weaknesses of man, for his infirmities of will and temper, for his excuses, wanderings, and tears, and presents to him Jesus, in whose sight no one is too wretched to be received, too wicked to be forgiven. We must have forgiveness in order to know God. The most comforting thought in the world is that God knows all we | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034039 | do. There can be no misunderstanding between us: He cannot be misinformed. The evangelist must come close, in sympathy and counsel, to the personal and individual life of those whom he would help. Perhaps the best way to emphasize this point would be to insert here words written by a woman who has been thinking on this subject. She says: | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034040 | "I have never had a pastor. It is the one good thing lacking in my life. I have grown up among ministers, and have had many friends among them--some of them have cared for me. But there has never been one among them all who stood in an attitude of spiritual authority and helpfulness to my life. We church-going and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034041 | Christian men and women of the educated class are almost wholly let alone; apparently no one takes thought for our souls. We are not in the least infallible; we come face to face with fierce temptations; we have heart-breaking sorrows; we are burdened with anxiety and perplexity. But we are left to grope as blind sheep; there is no one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034042 | to point out the path to us, however dimly; no one to say, at any crucial moment of our lives, Walk here! "Once, however," she continues, "one of my friends, a minister, knelt down by me and prayed. It was a simple and ordinary occasion--others were present. But every word of that prayer was meant for the uplifting of my | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034043 | heart. In that hour, I was as if overshadowed by the Holy Ghost; new aims and purposes were born within me. My friend loves me--that does not matter--it is his spiritual intensity I care for. And this is his reward for his fidelity and tenderness: In the hour when I come to die, when one does not ask for father | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034044 | or mother, or husband or wife, or brother or sister, or friend or child, but only for the strong comfort of the man of God--in that hour, I say, if I be at all able to make my wishes known, I shall send for that man to come to me. He, and no other, shall present my soul to God." | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034045 | Reading the above words, more than one minister will cry out, his eyes blazing: "I say the same to you! Who is there that tries to shield the minister from sorrow and from pain? Who is there to comfort and help _him_? You think we can just go on, and preach, preach, preach, standing utterly alone, and with no one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034046 | on earth to keep our own hearts close to God! I tell you, it is a lonely and weary work at times, this being a minister!" Yes, there must be a people, as well as a pastor. The relation is reciprocal. Wherever there is a strong man, leaning down in fire and tenderness to help the lives about him, there | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034047 | must be a loyal and loving congregation, with here and there in it some one who more fully appreciates and understands. Nothing beats down and discourages a man more than to feel that he is preaching to cold air and not to human folks, and to get back, when he offers sympathy, a stare. A congregation is a mysterious and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034048 | subtle social force. Its effect on a minister he can neither analyze nor explain. But he knows that its power is mesmeric and cannot be escaped. He goes into its presence from an hour of exalted and uplifted prayer, serene, happy, strong, and prepared to speak words of power and life. Gazing at his people--he can never tell why--the words | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034049 | freeze on his lips. An icy hand seems laid upon his heart, and he makes a cold and formal presentation of his glowing theme, and wonders who or what has done it all. Something satanic and repelling has laid hold of his tongue and brain. Or again, he may have had a worried and troubled week, full of personal anxiety | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034050 | and sorrow. He has not had full time to study--he feels quite unprepared, and enters the pulpit with a halting step, and a choking fear of failure at his heart. In a moment, the world changes. Something imperceptible, but sweet and comforting, steals over him,--an uplifting atmosphere of attention, sympathy, affection. He begins to speak, very quietly at first, with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034051 | quite an effort. But the congregation leads him on, to deeper thoughts, to nobler words, to modulations of voice that carry him quite beyond himself. His voice rises, and every syllable is firm and musical. His language springs from some far centre of inspiration. He is conscious of superb power, and as sentence after sentence falls from his lips----sentences that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034052 | amaze himself more than any other----he enters into the supreme height of joy, that of being a spiritual messenger to the hearts of longing men and women. He and they together talk of God. This sympathetic atmosphere makes great preachers and great men. In return, there flows from a pastor toward his people a love that few can know or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034053 | understand. . His rule is also over spiritual enthusiasm. What is a revival? We confound it with a local excitement, a community-sensation of an hysterical and passing type--with sensational disturbances, falling exercises, shouts, weeping, and the like. A revival is something far different. A revival is an awakening of the community heart and mind. It is a quickening of dead, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034054 | backsliding, or inattentive souls. Man as an individual is quite a different person from the same man in a crowd. One is himself alone; the other is himself, plus the influence of the Social Mind. A revival is a social state, in which the social religious enthusiasm is stirred up. It is a lofty form of religion, just as the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034055 | patriotism which breaks forth in tears and cheers as troops go out to war is a finer type than the mere excitement and fervor of one patriotic man. What would the Queen's Jubilee have been, if but one soldier had marched up and down? A great commemoration! If we grant the reality of national rejoicing in the royal jubilees, commercial | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034056 | rejoicing in business men's processions, university enthusiasm on Commencement Day--shall we not grant the reality of the religious interest and enthusiasm of a great revival, in which whole communities shall be led to a clearer knowledge of spiritual things? The Crusades were a magnificent revival. The Reformation was a revival. The Salvation Army movement is a revival. But the greatest | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034057 | revival of all times is even now upon us: it is a revival in the scientific circles of the race. Time was when science and religion were supposed to be at odds; to-day the intellectual phalanxes are sweeping Christward with an impetus that is sublime! Thinkers are finding in the large life of religion a motive power for their thought, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034058 | their growth--a reason for their existence--a forecast of their destiny. We are beginning to realize the dynamic value of Belief. This revival is coming, not with shouts and noise, but with the quiet insistence of new ideas, of new facts--with the still voice of scientific announcement. The atheist is being overcome, not by emotion, but by evidence; the scoffer is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034059 | being put down by cool logic. Hence the evangelist of to-day is more than a man who can popularly address a public audience, and by tales and tears arouse a weeping commotion. The evangelist is a man of intellect and prayer, who can preach the gospel to a scientific age, and to a thinking coterie--a coterie of college men and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034060 | mechanics, of society women and servant-girls, of poets and of mine-diggers, of convicts and of reformers. To-day calls for the utmost intellectual resources of the teacher of the truth, for a great imagination, great style, great sympathy with men, large learning, and unceasing prayer! . His rule is over social ideals. He must be a man of social insight. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034061 | social spirit is abroad in the world, but it is woefully erratic and misguided. Any one thinks he can be an altruist. Why not? Take a class in a college settlement, make some bibs for a day nursery, give tramps a C.O.S. card, with one's compliments, and attend about six lectures a year on Philanthropy--the lectures very good indeed. One | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034062 | is then a full-fledged altruist, _n'est-ce pas_? The philanthropy of to-day has a bewildering iridescence of aspect. Each present impulse is reformatory. Correction, like a centipede, shows a hundred legs and wants to run upon them all. Much of the so-called philanthropy is not well balanced and is run by cranks. Cranks attach themselves to any social movement, as a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034063 | shaggy gown will gather burrs. It is not all of philanthropy to classify degenerates, titter at ignorance, and to go a-peeping through the slums! We have not yet realized the fulness of redemption. Of what avail is it to save one street-Arab, or one Chinaman, if a million Arabs and Chinamen remain unsaved? Redemption is a race-savior: it seizes not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034064 | only the individual, but his environment, his friends, and his future state. The true minister is a reformer. A reformer is one who re-crystallizes the social ideals of man, who breaks up idols and bad customs, and sweeps away abuses. But we must first ask: What is an idol? What is a bad custom? What is an abuse? They are | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034065 | social standards which are out of harmony with true concepts of God, life, and duty. Behind the work of the reformer is the dream of the reformer, the meditation of the mystic, the seer. He must first have in mind a plain, clear conception of what the relation is of man to God, of what man's environment should be, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034066 | of what the society of the Kingdom should be. The reformer is one who changes an existing social environment for approximately this ideal environment of his own thought. When he breaks an idol, it is not the idol itself that he everlastingly hates, it is the materialistic concept of the community. What he wishes in place of the idol is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034067 | a right conception. No man could break up every idol in the Sandwich Islands. But a man went about implanting a spiritual idea of God, and the idols disappeared. Hence the work of the reformer is deep and heart-searching work. It means constant study of the spiritual needs of the age, continual insight into the material forces which are moulding | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034068 | the age-images, money, conquest, or whatever they may be. He wishes to maintain a spiritual hold on civilization itself, so to transform the ideal within a man, a community, a nation, in regard to custom, observance, belief, that the outer rite shall follow. To reform is not to rush through the slums, and then preach a sensational sermon about bad | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034069 | places in the slums, of which most people never knew before! To reform is to know something of the conditions which produce the slums--it is not to scatter the slum-people broadcast elsewhere in the town; it is not alone to give them baths, playgrounds, circulating libraries of books and pictures, dancing-parties, and social clubs. To reform the slums is to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034070 | set up a new ideal of God, and of righteous conduct in the heart of the slum-dwellers. One must know something of the slow processes of social change, of social assimilation, growth, and stability, to have an intellectual perception of the problem, as well as a spiritual one. One does not make an ill-fed child strong by stuffing five pounds | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034071 | of oatmeal down its throat! The reformer must not only be a man of energy, he must be a man of patience. Great reforms come slowly. As man has advanced, idleness, indolence, brutality, tyranny, drunkenness, cant, and social scorn are gradually being cast out. But behind these simple words lie hid centuries of strife and endeavor, and limitless darkenings of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034072 | human hope. To fly against vice is merely to invite enmity and opposition. To present a pure and noble ideal, to breathe forth a holy atmosphere for the soul, are constructive works. The trouble is not, that the ministers preach on social themes--all themes that concern the life of man are social themes. It is that they do piece-work and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034073 | patch-work of reform, instead of plain, direct upbuilding work in the souls and consciences of men. To preach upon horse-stealing is one thing. The horse-stealer may be impressed, convicted, made penitent, and return the stolen horse. But not until his heart is imbued with a spiritual conception of honesty, as the law of God, will he steal a stray horse | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034074 | no more. Hence the first questions in reform are not: How many groggeries are there in my parish? How many corrupt polls? How many hypocrites on my church-roll? The question is: How is my parish society in enmity to the highest spiritual ideal I know? Many men preach about saloons, when they ought to be preaching about Christ. The force | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034075 | of this reform-energy is uncomputed. We hear of occasional great reformers, but forget that there has been a prevailing influence extending over the ages, of holy men of God, who have preached and taught and prayed; who have preserved our social institutions of spiritual import, and have been a mighty and continuous force working for righteousness and peace. Missions are | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034076 | a higher form of politics. To further missions is to further government, international comity, world-peace. . His rule is over creed. He is inevitably a teacher of doctrine. What is doctrine? Doctrine is spiritual truth, formulated in a systematic way. It is also, in church matters, a system of truth which has been believed in, and clung to, by a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034077 | body of believers constituting some branch of the catholic Church. It is a noble and serious office to hand down from generation to generation the faith and traditions of the Church of God. But this handing-down must be upright. "You must bind nothing upon your charges," says Jeremy Taylor, "but what God hath bound upon you." Conviction is at the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034078 | root of the lasting traditions of the Church. Only this--his conviction--can one man really teach another. If he try to speak otherwise, he shall have a lolling and unsteady tongue. No soul is finally held by the indefinite, or the namby-pamby. It begins to question, Upon what foundation does this phrase, this fine sentiment, rest? It must stand upon a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034079 | proposition. This proposition rests either upon a scientific fact, or upon that which, for want of a more definite term, we call the religious instinct of man. But a proposition cannot standalone. It is connected with other propositions, arguments, conclusions. Hence a system of logic, of philosophy, of expressed belief, of doctrine, inevitably grows up in a thinking community, a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034080 | thinking Church. The statement of an ecclesiastical system of doctrine may not be the absolutely true one, nor the final one. Doctrine changes, even as scientific theories change with fuller information. Doctrine also expands, with the growth of the human spirit and understanding. To-day, in one's library, one has a thousand books. They are shelved and catalogued, for reference, in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034081 | a special order. But years hence, one's grandson, who inherits these books, may have ten thousand books. The aspect of the library is changed. It is filled with new volumes, and new thought. Shall we give a liberty to a man's library which we refuse to his belief? Must he--and his church--have only his grandfather's ideas, standards, and decrees? The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034082 | tenets of a sect are the theological arrangement of belief which for the present seems best; it is the systematic arrangement of facts so far examined, determined, and classified. But no system of theology can be final. Thought is moving on. Experience is progressive. Providence is continually revealing. The race is a creed-builder, as well as a builder of pyramids, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034083 | cathedrals, and triumphal arches. The building-up of doctrine is superb. Into doctrine are woven the intellectual beliefs, the emotional experiences, and the spiritual struggles of mankind. Doctrine is an attempt to classify the spiritual problems of the race and to present a theory of redemption which shall be adequate, spiritually progressive, and the exact expression, so far as yet revealed, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034084 | of the will of God for man. All Christian doctrine is centred about one point: the redemption of the race from sin. Dealing with such great and fundamental themes, each system of doctrine is an intellectual triumph. Doctrine is an intellectual necessity. Christ is not sporadic, either in history or philosophy. To teach Christ, as the unlettered savage may who | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034085 | has just learned of Christ the Saviour and turns to teach his fellow-savages, might do good or save a soul from death. But in order to command the intellectual respect of the race, there must be another form of teaching yet than this, a teaching which presents Christ in the historic and philosophic setting: the central Figure in a great | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034086 | body of associated spiritual truth; Christ as the fulfilment of prophecy, the means of social adjustment and regeneration; the Finisher of our Faith, and the Source of eternal joy. We must be, not less spiritual Christians, but increasingly intellectual ones, as time rolls on. Who are the men who have built up doctrine? Men speak as if doctrine were an | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034087 | ecclesiastical toy--to be shaken by priest or prelate, as one shakes a rattle, for noise, for play! A doctrine is not a toy; it is the crystallized belief of earnest, thoughtful, and godly men--belief which has passed into a church tradition, and is now received as an act of faith. Shall doctrine be taught a child? Yes! To have a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034088 | specific doctrine clearly in mind does not fetter the young soul, any more than to be taught the apparent facts of geography and history, which may change either in reality or in his own interpretation as his mind matures. A doctrine is a practical and definite thing to work with; in later life to believe, and to approve of, or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034089 | disbelieve, and disapprove of. If a man wishes to build a house, does it fetter him to know square measure, cubic contents, geometry, mensuration, and mechanical laws? Yet when he builds his house, he builds it in his own individual way; he stamps it with his own personality and ideas. While building it, perchance, he discovers some new relation or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034090 | geometric law. Doctrine does not save from hell, but it does save from many a snare that besets the feet of man. It is a steadier of life, a strengthener of hope, a stalwart aid to a practical, devout, and duty-doing life. A catechism is a system of doctrine expressed in its simplest form. Therefore, for the intellectual and moral | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034091 | training of the Church, let us have sound doctrine in the pulpit, and the catechism in the home and Sabbath-school. It is objected that doctrinal terminology is too hard for a child to understand. Is this not absurd, when the same child can come home from school and talk glibly of a parallelepipedon, a rhombus, rhomboid, polyhedral angle, archipelago, law | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034092 | of primogeniture, the binomial theorem, and of a dicotyledon! He also learns French, German, Latin, Greek, and the _argot_ of the public school! The theological leader of to-day cannot be a creed-monger: he must be a creed-maker. Side by side with the executive officers who will reorganize the Christian forces, there will stand great creed-makers, giant theologians, firm, logical, scientific, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034093 | and convincing, who, out of the vast array of new facts brought forth by modern science, will produce new creeds, a new catechism, a new dogmatic series. It is worth while to live in these days--to know the possibility of such monumental constructive work in one's own lifetime. The creed-makers must have a thorough literary training; no mere vocabulary of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034094 | philosophy will answer. Like the Elizabethan divines, they must rule the living word, which shall echo for a century yet to come. As the great Ecumenical Council was convened for missionary progress, so the times are now ripe for the assembling of a historic Theological Council, to revise and restate, not one denominational catechism, but the creed of Christendom; to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034095 | provide a new literary expression of the Christian faith. Together we are working in God's world, and for His kingdom. If doctrine be the crystallized thought and belief of godly men, what is heresy? What is schism? Who is dictator of doctrine? How far are the limits of authority to be pressed? What are the bounds of ecclesiastical control? of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034096 | intellectual mandate in the Christian Church? In the academic world, we do not cast a man out of his mathematical chair because he can also work in astro-physics or in psycho-physics. If he can pursue advanced research in an allied or applied field, it will help him in his regular and prescribed work. We do not cast an English professor | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034097 | out of his chair, because he announces that there are two manuscripts of Layamon's _Brut_, and that the text of Bewulf has been many times worked over, before we have received it in its present form. Yet there are accredited professors of English who do not know these facts, and who, if called upon, could neither prove them nor disprove | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034098 | them. They have not worked in the Bodleian, in the British Museum, or in other foreign libraries, on Old English texts and authorities. They think themselves well up in Old English if they can translate the text of Bewulf fairly well, remember its most difficult vocabulary, and can tell a tale or two from the _Brut_. Not every man has | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000034099 | Europe or Asia in his backyard, nor a lifetime of leisure for research, for special learning, on the moot questions of church-scholarship. Progress consists in each man's doing his best to advance the interests of the kingdom of God in his own special sphere. From others he must take something for granted. The ear of the Church ought always to | 60 | gutenberg |
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