AN EXPANSIVE GOSPEL by J. C. Hiden

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 10, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 36.

AN EXPANSIVE GOSPEL.

By J. C. Hiden

BY J. C. HIDEN, D.D.

When the Master said, “Beginning at Jerusalem,” he evidently meant to establish what strategists call “a base.” The beginning must be somewhere, and there were many reasons for selecting Jerusalem as the point. But the same text, which is so often quoted in behalf of home missions, is just as good authority for foreign missions. Luke 24:47 is decisive on this point. “Repentance and remission of sins” were to “be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

In none of our Lord’s final directions is there the slightest hint that Christianity was to wait upon civilization; nor does anything in that “missionary magazine,” the Acts of the Apostles, give the least color to such a view. The wise according to this world often tell us that it is useless to attempt to evangelize barbarians; that we must first instruct them in at least the rudiments of civilization, and thus prepare them for the reception of the Gospel. This view savors of the baldest rationalism. Does God care only for civilized people?—No. Christianity does not come to help man after he has helped himself, but in his helplessness; and it is quite easy to lay too much stress upon what is called “the connection between Christianity and civilization.” We know that not a few of the most cultivated men in ancient, as well as in modern, times, have been very wicked. Julius Caesar was one of the most accomplished men that ever lived. From a moral point of view, the boasted Greek civilization was rotten to the core. Even Plato’s “Republic” advocates the twin villainies of “communism” and “free love.”

Between Christianity and civilization there is, indeed, an antithesis which is too frequently overlooked, even by thoughtful men. Civilization is mainly a social force, operating upon a community. Christianity is a spiritual force, operating upon the individual. It is about as difficult to civilize an individual as it is to convert a state. Rough people can be converted.

Among the Greeks one and the same word meant “morals” and “manners.” The same linguistic phenomenon appears in Latin; and the reason is that morals were manners, and nothing more. However highly “cultivated” a heathen people may be, they will still be barbarians morally. Christianity makes an immense difference between morals and manners. Samuel Johnson was not so “elegant” as was Lord Chesterfield; but he was a much better man than the polished, licentious nobleman; Chesterfield was the nobleman, but Johnson was the noble man.

Some critics would have us believe that the sermon on the mount is all right, and that the New Testament morality is of a high order; but that the Old Testament is so full of barbarisms that our cultivated age can not accept it as authority. But again I ask, Does God care only for people of cultivation? Did not Paul preach at Lystra, as well as at Athens? The Pentateuch presents marked internal evidence that much of it was immediately addressed to people who had recently emerged from slavery, and were still in a semibarbarous condition.

John Foster wrote the most splendid of his essays to show why men of taste were so generally opposed to evangelical religion; and it now seems to be in order for some smart critic of the Wellhausen school to write an essay to show why God cares nothing for barbarians.

Paul evidently did not think that uncultivated people were outside of the pale of God’s sympathy, or of Gospel work. He was debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians; to the wise and the unwise. “The regions beyond,” whether inhabited by scholars or ignoramuses, were the regions which especially fired his ambition and kindled his zeal. He was always anxious to go to some new place where Christ had never been preached; and he seems never to have asked whether the place was “cultivated,” or whether the people were civilized.

Let any pastor ask himself the question, “Are my most cultivated people my best people?” One of the very best members of any church that I have ever served could barely spell his way, with many blunders, through a chapter of the Bible; and some of the most troublesome church members that I have ever known were very highly educated.

The Gospel is indeed expansive. It is addressed to people of all grades of culture, and to those of no culture. Greeks and barbarians are to be all won by Christ, and one in Christ.—N. Y. Independent.