CHAPTER VII

THE HEART OF GOD-THE THEME OF THE PULPIT

IN the spectral shadows that hover around the horizon of the new century, may be seen many portents of evil. On the one hand are a few hundred men who, with hearts alienated by the glitter of a new theology, are hoping, in revisions of old standards, to be able to appear with the fashionable crowd, in a new full dress of modern thought. On the other hand is the secular press seeking in loose creeds, a justification for godless gain. Such are some of the spectres of the Brocken, that loom up out of the grey dawn of the opening century. But out of the present darkness of rationalism in the pulpit and skepticism in the pew, we shall soon emerge into the light. Light and darkness are soon to blend together in the dawn. Even now, kneeling upon the hearthstone of time, Devout Love blows the coals of morning into the golden glow of a new dawn of Faith. The dawn may arise with thunderings out of the night, but a stormy day is better than the night.

During the century now speaking its last farewell, there have been repeated attacks upon the supernatural, both in experience and revelation. As early as 1853, Bishop Colenso made what was perhaps the most bitter rationalistic attack upon Scripture that has ever been made. So seductive did the dash and glamour of this attack prove, that it was not long before many of the brightest minds in the pulpit began to address themselves to the task of Biblical criticism.

Among the first to yield to this rationalistic tendency, was Charles Kingsley, theologian, philosopher, romancer, poet, preacher. So great was his influence that his writings have made a profound impression upon the present thought and life of England.' Later, under the same spell, the utterances of one of the leading American pulpits began to reveal a rationalistic leaning. The great Henry Ward Beecher, big souled, happy hearted, genial, democratic, genius crowned, soon became the champion of the new theology. As brave as the Cæsars, Napoleonic in strategy, brilliant and many sided as a diamond, he proved no small power in the forging of religious thought. His ability to charm his enemies with a smile, or rout them with as cold and keen a rapier as was ever swung, rendered him wellnigh invincible. But the grey dawn of the

1 See Hurst History of Rationalism, page 468.

twentieth century breaks with no great champion of rationalism on the field of battle; unless we might except Dr. Cheney who, with the legacy of Robertson Smith's old cloak, and a few dillitante phrase makers, is trying to ride the popular wave of free thought.

Dr. Hurst aptly says, "The philosopher has always exerted a great influence over those who do not philosophize. He is regarded by many as the inhabitant of a sphere which few can enter; hence his dictates are regarded as fiats of a rightful ruler. Those who cannot understand him fully, often congratulate themselves that the few unmistakable grains which they have gathered from his opinions, are nuggets of pure gold, and entitled to the merits of becoming the world's currency." It is time we were learning that high sounding words are often the tombs of small ideas. The quasi-philosophy of higher criticism, like ragtime music and operetta songs, is very catchy. Because so easy, it is very acceptable to the smart set in the pulpit and the loose set in the pew. Thus Shakespeare starves while Boucicault fattens.

Higher criticism is so easy. It can prove Bacon to be the author of Shakespeare as easily as it proves Baruk to be the author of Isaiah, or some one else the author of the Pentateuch. It has little foundation in facts, and so "lays its stones

in fair colors" and revels in imagination, with its "perhapses" and "possibles" and "probablys." Then, as though it had the finest major and minor premises ever known, it boldly "therefores." This is an age of bold speculation in Wall Street, and no less so in the intellectual exchanges, and watered stocks in both are very active.

The whole substratum of this modern rationalistic fad is a simple stone; the glorification of man as man. There is no place in it for the royal, but humble Psalmist's words, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" The whole trend of thought appears to be, "A spirit of self-assertion, which lies so deep in what may be called the religion of literature, that it regards all reform of the individual man as being an evolution of some hidden nobleness, or an appeal to a perfect internal light or law; together with what may be called the worship of genius, the habit of nourishing all hope on the manifestation of the Divine by gifted individuals." We see in it the same as the author of these words, "a connection with Pantheism" and "an influence definably antagonistic to the spirit of Christianity."

The preacher for the twentieth century there

1 Ps. 8: 4.

'Bayne's Christian Life, page 14, American Edition.

fore, needs some consideration. It is impossible to predict what he will be, but it is a very easy task to define what he ought to be, and what he ought not to be. He certainly ought not to be what the brilliant lecturer of the Hartford Theological Seminary, on the Carew foundation for 1900, defines him, "The blending of an art and an incarnation."1 Certainly not what the author defines as an incarnation-that it "relates itself to every special age or fresh social environment, in a certain style and form derived from that age, and suited to that environment." To find the colossus of the pulpit for the coming century, or for any century, it does not seem to us that the most promising place to look for him is in a composite "theology." This is precisely what the lecturer did, when he cast his lectures in the mould made by a hundred answers from the students of several theological seminaries. It is no wonder that we find such a definition when, as the author of it tells us, it was framed upon the questions addressed to some bright young men upon whom "professional fetters have had no time to bind their spirit; unfortunate experience to chill them; their own special peculiarities no opportunity to precipitate themselves into

1 Report published in advance in Homiletic Review, May, 1900.