The Things Which Remain | Page 4

made them the possession of the Christian world. The shock to traditional confidence through this was very great. The Congress of Religions at Chicago had a similar effect. The mistaken liberality which permitted Christianity to appear on the same platform with the ethnic and imperfect religions contributed largely to doctrinal indifference. The taking and uncandid misrepresentations of these religions convinced many that there was at least no better foundation for Christianity and no better content therein than for and in the false and imperfect faiths. Many of these were defended by men who had had an English education and had come into contact with Christian vocabulary and civilization. They did not hesitate to read into these religions ideas wholly Christian and wholly foreign to the original teachings.
[Sidenote: What Remains?]
These and other considerations lead me to ask what remains that we may and do believe? While far from admitting as finally proved the radical conclusions reached by some as to authorship and inspiration of the Bible and Divine authority for doctrines deduced therefrom, it must be profitable for us to ask, "What remains if some of these conclusions stand?"
Recall that I do not admit all these for a moment, or any of them as final. Some are probably true. But taking the worst and most iconoclastic as true, are we compelled even then to surrender our Christian faith?
[Sidenote: The Apostles' Creed.]
Let us take the separate articles of the Apostles' Creed and see how they stand affected:
[Sidenote: The Fatherhood of God.]
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
[Sidenote: A Christian God.]
Surely this remains untouched and in full force. Huxley, to requote what has before been quoted, says: "I can not see one tittle of evidence that the great unknown stands to us in the light of a Father." What a contradiction is here! He knows that the great unknown can not be proved to be our Father. Then he must know of the great unknown the negative aspects so minutely as to be sure that no Fatherhood is in the great unknown. Then he knows the great unknown much better than he is willing to admit, better than an agnostic ought.
[Sidenote: An All Pervasive Spirit.]
[Sidenote: His Commandments.]
[Sidenote: The Divine Ideal.]
Yet that the idea of God may remain in power and not as a "passionless impersonality," it must be less interpreted by the teachings of Moses and more by the teachings of Christ. Human tempers and passions must be eliminated from our Divine Ideal. He must not be made an angry and jealous God as men count these. He must not be thought of as a vindictive personality, never so well pleased as when scaring His children into panic. In the thought of the Church He will be an all-pervasive Spirit whose nature is unfolded by the universe He has made. In that universe He will be felt to be immanent as the power of development, order, and destiny. All ages show Him to be "the power which makes for righteousness." The commandments are not only His because they are found in the Bible, but because they are perceived to be necessary laws of conduct proceeding from such a Being as we know God to be for such beings as we know men to be. Thus we perceive them to be the Divinely authorized bond of society and the guarantee and obligation of the Divine Ideal of humanity. All nature and all history are scrutinized for traces of the Supreme. These being found to coincide with the Christian Revelation of Him, men will read with new reverence those wonderful books which make up the Book, and which beyond all others anticipate the latest results of scientific inquiry and natural ethical canon.
[Sidenote: Advantage of Newer View.]
Out of this will come such a sense of the Divine Presence as the Church and the individual Christian have not hitherto known. Moral distance from God will be the only distance. "In Him we live and move and have our being" comes to full interpretation through this thought of God. Humanity is immersed in Him.
[Sidenote: Transcendent.]
[Sidenote: Huxley Against Hume.]
But this immanent God is also seen to be transcendent. He is in nature and far beyond it. Vast as nature is, it is limited. God is the unlimited. Within this region of transcendence is room for all His gracious activities as distinguished from His natural activities; room for marvel and miracle if He will and we need. When Huxley abandons Hume's a priori argument against miracles it is not worth while for others to use it. Fewer doubt the existence of a God, I believe, than at any time since men sought to prove that He does not exist. The Fatherly in God is proved both by His work in nature and by those works