ALONE WITH GOD     

Attempted Solution
Some Old Methods

    The story is told somewhere of a man who was walking along the street conversing with the devil—as doubtless many people do. At length they came to a man standing upon a soap box and talking to a crowd gathered around him. As he talked the devil and his friend could see that he occasionally reached up into the air and grasped a portion of truth.

This excited the devil's friend greatly. "Did you see that?" he asked Satan.
"Yes," was the answer.
"Do you not understand that he has got hold of some truth?"
"Certainly I do," answered the devil nonchalantly.
"Doesn't the truth do you a great deal of injury ?"
"Indeed it does."
"Then why are you not excited ?"
"Because," answered the devil, "he will go to work and organize that truth; and as soon as he does people will cease to pay any attention to it; and it will have lost all its power to hurt me."

The lack of faith in the power of truth is probably shown nowhere more plainly than in the incessant longing which men have to organize it just as soon as it is found.

They do not stop to think that the most important truths in the material world manage to hold their own without being organized in any way. We do not require a "Society for the Propagation of the Faith that the World is Round. " No organization on earth has made the law of gravitation a central point in its creed. Men used to believe that the sun circled around the earth. They now accept the doctrine that the earth moves around the sun, although a great organization condemned Glalileo for that belief and compelled him to renounce it formally, under pain of excommunication. No organization was ever formed to perpetuate that belief, but it has prevailed over the inertia of ignorance and tradition, and the formal opposition of a great organization.

Even doctrines of a controversial nature manage to exist without formal organizations to perpetuate them. Take the capitalistic doctrine of modern society. It is a very highly debatable point whether it be true, or whether Socialism be true. Opinions vary with the fiercest strife; but that only proves that the theory is debatable. Yet we do not see the millionaires of New York organizing a great society whose central creed is the truth of the capitalist theory of civilization. The Socialists have been trying to organize what they call the truth of Socialism in America for over fifty years; but they have had the most indifferent success in organizing their conception of the truth.

Meanwhile the social theory called capitalism holds the ground without an official organization formed to propagate its doctrine or an official creed to be propagated.

It certainly seems to be the case that a false teaching requires a good strong organization, closely knit and enflexible, to make it stand, but unless backed by the sword such an organization is likely to be merely static. What would Mohammedanism have done without the military organization of Mohammed and the first Caliphs?

All competent scholars admit that the New Testament church was quite innocent of organization of the human, mechanical kind. As Christianity progressed further from its pure source and became more and more contaminated with the doctrines and superstitions of heathenism, it developed more and more an iron-clad organization modeled after the pattern of the autocratic Roman Empire. But this was not advancement nor true spiritual development, but deterioration.

An organization that holds a doctrine which is not true must expect one of two things ultimately: If it is sufficiently flexible and adaptable, the old doctrine will finally leak out as the knowledge of truth increases. If it is too inflexible for that, then the organization itself must finally give way and crumble before the advancing power of truth.

To be perfectly fair we must also admit that a perfect organization, and the staunchest creeds, are not enough to maintain the truth in a generation which loves the apostate ways of falsehood. This has been repeatedly proved.

This is the weakness with nearly, it not quite, all methods which are at present being advanced for the promotion of Christian unity. They depend upon the possibility of being able to carpenter up some nondescript kind of organization which will be capable of holding all Christians and all truth in one mechanical, human organization.

Such an organization does not exist: and cannot be made; and if it could be built it would prove to be a Frankenstein monster which would injure if not destroy humanity's highest and finest possessions.

In his book, Lausanne, the Will to Understand, Prof. Edmund Soper quotes Margaret Slattery, as follows: "As I go over in memory the experiences at Lausanne, and reread the words spoken there, I am profoundly convinced that if there shall be in future a united church it will not come through conferences or councils of ecclesiastics and theologians, as such. I am convinced that it will not come through machinery set up by church officialdom. Such a church, I believe, even if it could be organized, would prove anything but a blessing to the cause of religion" (pp. 136, 137).

The whole doctrine of federation and amalgamation of denominations is weak just at this point. The trouble with our organized divisions is not that they are too small, but that they are organized divisions in the body of Christ, and that they substitute a mechanical human corporation for the living and flexible body of Christ.

As sure as we carpenter Up some vast wooden organization intended to hold all Christians there will certainly be some rare, delicate, and sensitive Christian spirits which will flee from such a mechanical thing as though it were haunted. We cannot deny to them the title of Christian; and our dream of mechanical unity will be shattered.

Anyone can see that if the bridge were so weak as to be unsafe for the lone lady it was more dangerous still for three persons to cross at one time. Actually the lady was in greater danger than if she had gone across alone; but, in fact, through her blind confidence in the judgment of the carriers, she really felt safer.

Doubtless this is the reason why so many persons to day wish to commit their souls to the class of persons who represent an ancient and continuous tradition. They feel a certain safety in the judgment of ancient tradition.

This type of thought would have kept us in the Stone Age, if carried out in our natural lives. The ox-cart was a novelty and an innovation at one time. Probably ancient man did not even know the use of horses. So that at one time riding horses was a new fangled invention—and probably denounced as of the devil for that reason.

America broke with the traditions of ages when she set out on a path of political democracy for all men, and not merely for a few, as in ancient, so-called democracies.

We broke with the past in industry, making machines and power tools do the work of millions of men. We broke with the past in science. We no longer believe the older theories. In transportation we have left the horse and buggy for the automobile and the airplane.

Yet thousands of people are advocating a return to Christian unity by the road of the ancient traditions of the church. This attitude of mind is well expressed by the Most Rev. Archbishop Germanos, Orthodox Archbishop of Thyatira, in an address at the Lausanne Conference on Faith and Order, in 1927. Said the Archbishop:

"But what are the elements of Christian teaching which are to be regarded as essential ? The Orthodox Church holds the view that it is not necessary that these should be discussed and determined at the present time, since they have been already determined in [112] the old symbols and decisions of the seven Ecumenical Synods. Consequently, the teaching of the ancient undivided church of the first eightcenturies, free from every question which did not have a direct relation to these things which were to be believed, must today also constitute the basis of the reunion of the churches" (Faith and Order, p. 21).

Now, this theory held by the Archbishop, is one of those things which you must din into the heads of intelligent people long before they have developed the power to think if you ever expect to get them to believe it. For after one has begun to think—and especially after he has learned something of history— it is impossible to expect to compel his assent to such a statement unless it has first been drilled into him as an unreasoning child. The absurd things you can induce an intelligent person to believe are astonishing, if you insert them into his mind adroitly and effectively before the age of discretion is reached.

Anyone who knows how far the church drifted from its fundamental message and practice after the third century, and who knows the political chicanery which was employed at the great councils to which the archbishop refers, and the corrupt influence of the wicked Imperial Court on those same councils, would certainly, if of adult intelligence, find it hard to say that the Christians of the world of today must bow themselves to the will of those worldly scheming church politicians of the ancient councils. They do not date back far enough. They smell of books and philosophy and the pride of courts and palaces. The Christians of today are homesick for the purity and simplicity of the New Testament. They long to breathe again the fresh outdoor air of old Palestine, scented with the grass and flowers and drenched with the holy sunshine of that blessed land.

If the evangelical Christians of today travel backward a thousand years, as the archbishop and his kind ask them to do, be sure they will not stop there, but will journey back to the Apostolic Age. There they will join themselves fast to the precepts and practices of the Apostles of Jesus Christ alone.

It is a well-known fact that tradition is a very uncertain and unreliable guide. Almost every thoughtful person has had occasion to check up his own memory of events in his own life with his own written accounts set down at the time. In doing so he observes how blurred and changed is the memory from the correct account. This is what happens concerning things in one's own life time. How much greater change must come over narratives and doctrines which are the product, not of one memory alone, but of dozens and even hundreds of memories working upon them and changing them over from time to time as they pass down from generation to generation. In ages of ignorance and superstition it is appalling to think of the profound changes which tradition was bound to introduce into the gospel message and into Christian practice.

This is what we would naturally expect. And this is what has actually happened, as anyone can see for himself who compares the ancient ecclesiastical traditions with the simple gospel of Christ.

The ancient traditions are packed full of sacerdotalism and sacramentalism—theories of salvation by the magic of certain rites. These doctrines are nothing less than ancient heathen magic. Surrender to them means surrender to the theory that things can save rather than that Christ alone saves.

It would be bad enough to bring ourselves under the rule of ecclesiastical dignitaries as despotic as foreign political nobility and royalty; but it would be even worse to believe that water and oil and various rites and ceremonies could cleanse us from sin.

With all desire to be charitable, one cannot escape the conclusion that the magical theories of salvation through certain rites and ceremonies administered by a certain privileged class were devised with the view of aggrandizing that class, of increasing their privileges and power.

Be that as it may, it is quite certain that if Christian unity is only to be found by taking the road back into the superstition and magic of a thousand years ago then the evangelical Christians of to day will never take it. They will always prefer a variety of free and intelligent interpretations of Christianity to one official interpretation dictated by the pride and ignorance of an age that had forgotten the simple teachings of Jesus and his apostles.

Then the Christian conscience is tough because it will not yield a point of duty—or even supposed duty —in the face of death itself. It is not a soft and flexible thing, but hard and unbending, even as it ought to be.

A little consideration of these reflections will convince anyone that the way to Christian unity does not, in fact, lie, as some believe, in the path of a compromise of Christian convictions. It cannot be attained by carpentering up a creed which will say everything and nothing at the same time; nor by building an organization which will be big enough for believer and unbeliever alike.

Some advocates of Christian unity desire a synthesis of all religions. They expect the religion of the future to be a combination and mixture of Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, and other great religions. And they want a creed and an organization that will make this possible.

Let us face the issue frankly: The kind of people who are willing to make the necessary sacrifices to bring about an answer to the prayer of our Lord are the very people who will not allow his glory to be dimmed by classing him with Buddha and Mohammed. We must remember that the Christian unity, for which we plead, is an unforced free thing of the spirit. It is not some political corporation where the rights of Buddha and Mohammed are parcelled out by the law of the land. The civil law gives the followers of these equal rights with the followers of Jesus; and to this we make no objection. But no power on earth can actually make Buddha and Mohammed equal with Jesus.

We wish to be broadminded about this. We believe there are gleams of the eternal truth in all the great religions. When Paul said that God had not left himself without witness in the heathen world we believe he certified that the great philosophers and mystics of the non-Christian religions had not failed of some insight into the true knowledge of God.

The heathen religions contain some truth. Only those who know them best realize how little of truth they do hold compared with the vast masses of superstition and magic. But they do not compare with the gospel of Christ; for they are the fruit of man's blind groping after God; and Christianity is the revelation of God to mankind through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Obviously these are things one cannot argue about. They are quite too personal for that. But all true Christians are aware of having been brought into contact with a life. They believe with a conviction based upon knowledge as real to them as their daily experience of life. If, for the sake of the argument, we should say that they are wrong, then it will still be impossible to reason them into a compromise; for if they should lose their conviction of the uniqueness of Christ and his salvation they would lose their confidence in all religion. They would also lose all interest in Christian unity.

It is the belief of the writer that the greatest hindrance to the success of Christianity which exists in the world today is the vestiges of heathenism which still remain in the Christian organizations of our time, in spite of all the labors of the creed makers to give us an orthodox type of Christianity.

Naturally we cannot expect that Christians who have cast off all the ancient heathen traditions will be happy to take them up again, even for the sake of such a great cause as Christian unity. Enlightened Christians will wish to keep their full liberty and not build again the things they have once torn down. The norm of faith for the church in unity must be the highest standard of Christian truth that any Christian soul has ever aspired unto. It cannot be a cheap, low thing, or devout Christians will not accept it and sacrifice for it. And yet it would be impossible to write a creed which should embody this splendid ideal at the present day. If we should write a sort of inventory of present religious beliefs—such as the majority could be expected to accept—we would only set a net which would catch, along with Christian truth, all the unchristian superstitions and practices current in a world which has been forgetting Jesus Christ for two thousand years.

Must we wait then, till we are wiser before we find any common basis for universal Christian unity' I think not. We have the New Testament, written in an age that knew Jesus Christ better than he has ever been known since. Let us take that right where we are. Upon that the most spiritual and best informed Christians can stand with all patience while the rest of us are studying it and growing out of all the superstitions and prejudices of our past wrong teaching.

We shall have a most excellent creed—one upon which learned and ignorant can stand unembarrassed and without compromising conscience. And we shall not have to do any writing at all. We shall merely accept what has been written by the finger of God.

If it be objected that we shall differ in our interpretations o£ this creed, the answer is that we already differ greatly in our interpretations of our manmade creeds; but whereas the human creeds nourish division among us this divine creed will gradually incline us more and more toward that great central temple of holiness where angry controversy is stilled by the [119] spirit of worship; and where debate withers in the clear light of truth.

We ought not to condemn the dreamer out of hand. Some of the greatest advances of the human race have been built upon the visions of men of genius who could imagine and devise what was capable of becoming reality. We modestly think the advocates of Christian unity belong somewhere in this category.

But the men of vision who have advanced the race have been those who could take into view the actual realities of their world and foresee what their possibilities were. Human nature, being what it is, earth and sky and nature being what they are, still this thing is possible, they said. This is not the attitude of the anarchists. They vision a world that is impractical, because their schemes take no account of human nature.

In some quarters there is a tendency to believe and expect that Christianity shall lose its institutional nature and become more of a system of philosophy held loosely by scattered individuals, who will not gather into groups as Christians have done throughout all their history.

I do not anticipate any such a development. Man is a social being. Individualism is the solvent which is tending to destroy the most valuable of all our social treasures today. If allowed to have its way unchecked with Christianity, it would mean the death of historic Christianity.

If anyone wishes to envisage the dissolution of the church as an institution in favor of mere individualistic Christianity let him look around at the average Sunday crowd at a place of amusement on Sunday. I never go; but I can imagine what it is like. There he will find thousands of people who insofar as they have any philosophy of life are for the major part believers in historic Christianity. Practically, they are the theoretical Christians of the future who have outgrown the historic church. Little good does their Christianity do them as they waste their time and money in idle sports, in vice and gambling. If that is a picture of the Christianity of the future, may the Lord have mercy on our descendants of the coming generations.

Such people spend on vice the money that real Christians spend on philanthropy. When they have misfortune they go to the fortune tellers instead of to prayer. In sorrow they have no comfort; in death no hope.

The church in unity will be a worshiping and teaching church, ministering to the bodies and souls of men, functioning effectively and powerfully in society for the ennobling and sanctifying of human life.