Orphan Christians

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 5, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 42.

Orphan Christians.

THIS truth of a present God is the consummate truth of divine revelation and of human experience. All else in revelation leads up to this; all else in religious experience prepares for and grows out of this. Nature assures us that there is a God; the Christ of eighteen centuries ago tells who he is, only that we may spiritually enter into fellowship and have acquaintance with him. That he has the power of directly and immediately communicating with man, that man has the power of directly and immediately entering into communication with him, these two correlative truths are the ultimate disclosure of revelation and the ultimate fact of experience.

I do not wonder at skepticism without the church in this fact of spiritual experience, since it is hardly believed within the church. “I will not leave you orphans,” said Christ as he was about to depart. The great majority of Christians seem to me to be orphans. They believe in a Father that once was; they believe in a Father that is yet to be; but they do not believe in a Father that now is, in a living God, in a Perpetual Presence. Their religion is a memory or a hope, not a present life. They relegate divine inspiration to past ages, and postpone divine fellowship to future ages. They are like men in a tunnel, who look back and see the light at the end they have entered, and look forward and see the light at the end from which they are to emerge, but are now in the darkness.

To think that God did not guide Moses is infidel; but it seems to them almost as infidel to believe that he did guide Abraham Lincoln. To doubt that he dwelt with his people in Palestine is unbelief; to think that he dwells with his people in the United States is presumption. What Peter means by the promise, “Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost; for the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off;” what Paul means by the prayer, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,” “that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God;” what John means by the declaration, “Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ,” they do not know. He who attempts to interpret these and kindred utterances seems to them mystical, visionary, dangerous. They believe in a voice that once spoke, but not in a voice now speaking; they listen to the echo, and try to be content. Their God exists for them only in the pluperfect and the future-perfect tenses, not in the present tense. They believe in “I was that I was,” and in “I shall be that I shall be,” but not in “I am that I am.”—Sel.