FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By George W. Rine
APOSTASY IN THE NOMINAL CHRISTIAN WORLD.
POWER, wisdom, love, and righteousness, are the essential constituents of genuine Christianity. Christianity is the Gospel, and the Gospel "is the power of God;" Christianity is the science of the cross, and the cross is "the wisdom of God;" Christianity is of God, and "God is love;" Christianity is the religion of Jesus Christ, and He is "the Lord our Righteousness." Obviously, then, a church that is Christian in fact, as well as in name, is a church mighty in power, guided in wisdom, serving in love, and innocent by virtue of imputed righteousness. Such was the apostolic church, such the Reformation church, such the early Wesleyan church, and such must be "the remnant of her seed," the advent church. This is the glorious heritage of even the church militant; yet how often—O, how often!—has she despised her heavenly birthright by bartering it for the "beggarly elements of the world"! However painful to contemplate, it is nevertheless true that the history of the Christian church has been a history of spiritual vicissitudes—of risings and fallings. Our Lord foretold this dreadful fact in His message to the seven churches. Revelation 2 and 3. Latter-day Apostasy Repeatedly Foretold.
If the prophets of God have emphasized and repeated one fact more than any other, it is, that "in the last days," in the days when "the coming of the Lord draweth nigh," religious apostasy, spiritual decadence, would be terribly acute and widespread. Perhaps the most startlingly graphic and complete inspired prediction relative to this painful fact, is that given through Paul, and recorded in the first eight verses, and in verse thirteen, of the third chapter of 2 Timothy. Mark the fact, it is "in the last days" that "grievous times shall come." The apostle proceeds to adduce the particular, concrete sins that would prevail, not in the world as such, but in the professed church of Christ. For does he not expressly tell us, in verse 5, that this awful catalog of sins obtains among those who hold to "a form of godliness, but deny [in practise] the power thereof"? Will not the reader take the pains to read the formidable list of evils which the divine Spirit here declares would infest the nominal church in the closing days of time? Prominent among the sins enumerated are the love of self, the love of money, the love of pleasure, lacking in self-control, "ever learning, and NEVER ABLE TO COME TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUTH," and that evil men and impostors would "wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." Every one who has read the preceding articles of this series will recall the fact that they afforded conclusive evidence—conclusive in quantity and quality—that the mass of professing Christians, as well as the people who subscribe to no faith, are lovers of money, of self, of pleasure, and are lacking in self-control. In this discussion, I have set for myself the task of producing the evidence—indubitable evidence—that the formal Christian churches do practically deny the power of godliness, the holding a form thereof; and that many religious teachers are ever learning, and yet never able to come to a knowledge of the TRUTH. Did not our Lord Himself most vividly anticipate the almost universal spiritual declension that would characterize the churches in the days when He was about to be revealed in the glory of His kingdom? O, the anguish of heart with which He repeatedly foretold that as it was in the days of Noah and of Lot so would it be in the days when the Son of Man should appear. In the time of the Deluge and the destruction of Sodom, the professing children of Jehovah were utterly absorbed in the pleasures of the table, in marrying and giving in marriage, in planting, sowing, building, and at the same time they neglected to "strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." Again, in the closing part of the parable of the unjust judge, He asks the touchingly pathetic question: "Nevertheless when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" Is this not a most impressive declaration that when the Son of Man cometh He will find wofully little faith on the earth? Hence with infinite solicitude He admonishes His few servants who would remain true to their profession, to watch and pray, so that their love, like that of the multitudes of formal professors, might not "wax cold," and that they might not be overtaken "as a thief in the night." Now, dear reader, let us at once proceed to note the marvelous accuracy and minuteness with which these inspired last-day prognostications are realized and fulfilled in these days in which you and I live; and then judge whether these days are, or are not, the days which Inspiration characterizes repeatedly as "the last days." The Bible Largely Discounted.
Mr. W. H. Mallock, the famous English writer, says in a recent number of The Nineteenth Century and After, that the most thoughtful and highly educated of the Episcopal clergy have in a large measure repudiated doctrines which all orthodox Christians have ever regarded as essential and fundamental. Referring to two of the most eminent of the Anglican bishops, he declares: "They both start with admitting that the Gospels are full of errors, and demand in various parts very unequal credence. The accounts . . . of the circumstances in which Christ's discourses were spoken were often nothing more than vague conjectures of the Gospel writers. . . . The errors of the evangelists as historians are far from ending here." Similarly, the Rev. Dr. Sandy alleges that the incidents of Christ's temptation are on the face of them not historical. He even declares that the casting out of devils, of which many of Christ's miracles consisted, "was not really a casting out of devils9at all." He has the temerity to aver: "Christ Himself certainly imagined that it was so." As to the miracles of the loaves and Christ's walking on the water, whatever actual incidents may be at the bottom of these, "a nineteenth century observer would have given, had he been present, a different account from that which has come down to us." Observe, please, that here is a bishop of a professedly Christian church, who has the effrontery to declare that the ever-blessed Redeemer was the victim of mental illusion, and, in effect, was deluded, in thinking that He was casting out evil spirits when, in truth, He was doing no such thing. It should be remembered that a bishop has authority over the vast body of ordinary clergymen, and that all these are supposed to follow and enforce the teachings of their ecclesiastical superiors—the bishops. Is it strange that, as a great thinker recently declared, the English church is honeycombed with what practically amounts to infidelity? The Bishop of Exeter has made equally short work with the gift of tongues at Pentecost, of Judas's thirty pieces of silver, of the mingling of gall with vinegar, and so on indefinitely. The Bishop of Worcester maintains that Christ spoke with superhuman knowledge only about such spiritual matters as the moral character of God, and of man's proper relation to Him. But as to all questions connected with science and human history, Christ did not and could not speak otherwise "than in accordance with the ignorance of His time." The bishop goes even so far as to say that Christ accepted certain prophecies of the Old Testament "in a sense different from that which it is possible for a scholar to attribute to them." Is not this the very climax of impious presumption? Mr. Mallock declares that this kind of reasoning so far dominates Episcopal doctrine that practically all the miracles described in the Bible have now been brushed aside as legends or misconceptions of fact. He, however, believes that the leaders of the Anglican church still avow their belief in the genuineness of the four major miracles; namely, the virgin birth of Jesus, His divinity, resurrection, and ascension. And they profess faith in these four only because they have sense enough to see that, if these were surrendered, Christianity would logically be overthrown. The aged scholar and theologian, Dr. Fischer, of the Protestant church of Germany, urged with fervid eloquence that the "most advanced theological thought ought to be proclaimed from the pulpit and taught in the schools." The reader hardly needs to be told that "advanced theological thought" in Germany practically means the placing of the Bible on a par with the so-called sacred books of heathen religions. The doctor says further respecting the origin of the Bible: "The whole conception of revelation has now disappeared from religious thought; it was a product of religious reasoning under the form of an antique philosophy. . . . There can no longer be any claim to a revelation in the old sense of the word, and the idea is not in harmony with the certain results of modern scientific research. . . . The deification of Christ has not stood the test of real historical investigation." He does not hesitate to teach that the whole Bible wears a radically different aspect from what it formerly wore, as the result of the "light of modern science" to which it has been subjected. Yet this famous Bible infidel persists in posing before the world as a Christian teacher and preacher—to champion a religion in which he practically no longer believes. But this is precisely the contradictory and utterly stultifying position in which thousands of so-called radical theologians throughout Christendom are to-day standing. If they deny the truth of the very fundamentals of Christianity, why have they not sense and common honesty enough to step down and out? Ah, how true the words of Jesus to the effect that when the light that is in one becomes darkness, "how great is that darkness"! As late as May 13, of the present year, the despatches from New York told us that the Rev. Dr. John Peters of St. Michael’s Church (Episcopal) of that city, had startled the conservative Christian world, by his contention that the Bible must be subjected to the same canons of criticism as any ordinary narrative compilation. He unblushingly affirmed that the book of Genesis is full of myths; that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were not real persons in the commonly accepted sense, but were merely composite photographs, so to speak, of all Israel, and that much of what is recorded of the patriarchs is purely romantic. Most of the scriptural narratives, he insists, are legends somewhat higher than other folklore in that they serve to point to a higher spiritual life. Dr. Lyman Abbott, in his latest confession of faith, made in the course of a sermon before the students of Harvard University, December 1904, said in part: "Science, literature, and history tell us that there is one eternal energy; that the Bible no longer can be accepted as ultimate; that many of its laws were copied from other religions; that the Ten Commandments were, like all laws, a gradual growth; and that man is a creature of evolution, not creation." The first sentence of the doctor’s remarkable address is fairly stunning in its atheistic chord: "I wonder if you students in Harvard will understand me when I say that I no longer believe in a great First Cause." In short, the essential tone of Dr. Abbott’s address is distinctively pantheistic. Yet he declares that "God has a personality;" thus treating his hearers to gross logical absurdity. The Rev. C. E. Cheney, of Chicago, says truly that these utterances "place Dr. Abbott utterly beyond the pale of Christianity." But unfortunately the doctor, with all his reputed intellectual acumen, seems incapable of grasping this obvious fact. The Rev. C. N. Field, of Boston, adds: "Dr. Abbott is repeating things which many heretics have said before him." The Rev. Robert Collyer hails Dr. Abbott’s unintelligible screed as being "new light upon religion;" when, in truth, it is nothing more than a nebulous effusion of effete pantheism. With what timely force the divine exhortation comes to us in these days of religious babel: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, . . . and not after Christ." An eminent educator, of Canada, not long since alleged: "Of the Gospels, criticism has spared only the character and teachings of Jesus." How utterly fatuous—even childish—is such a statement from one who poses as a great thinker! He talks just as if Jesus had nothing to do with any part of the Bible except such scraps of the four Gospels as "higher criticism" has mercifully spared to the world. If these self-deputed critics of the sacred Scriptures really knew what that holy Book actually teaches, they would inevitably know that Christ is the Author and Lord of "all Scripture." How vividly the Holy Spirit enabled Paul to anticipate the melancholy fact that "in the last days," the nominal teachers of the Word, should be "ever learning, yet never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." Professor Goldwin Smith is, in his attitude toward the origin and nature of the Scriptures, typical of a vast majority of the educators that compose the faculties of the great colleges and universities of the Christian world. The following excerpt from one of his recent essays contains the gist of the theology of the tremendously influential class to which he belongs: "In the authenticity, contemporaneity, harmony of the documents [of the Bible], we can confide no longer. . . . Moreover, the Fall being a myth, as it is now everywhere allowed to be, there is no ground for the Incarnation and the Atonement, a disclosure which in itself is fatal to the traditional creed of Christianity." Many of these educators, too, are professors of Christian (?) doctrine and literature in theological seminaries, and are therefore the moulders of the multitudes of young men preparing for the Gospel ministry. The late Rev. Dr. George C. Lorimer stated an obvious truth a few years ago, when he said that, in the judgment of the great majority of religious teachers and leaders, "the Bible is no longer what it was, an unimpeached and trustworthy teacher; and that supernatural conversion is slowly giving way to the rationalistic theory of evolution." Another sweeping statement showing the incredible extent of infidelity within the very precincts of the professedly Christian church, is the following from the Rev. Frederic Henry Hedge, of Boston: "Faith in Christianity as divine dispensation does not imply, and must not be held to the belief, as veritable history, of all that is recorded in the Gospel. . . . Christianity, like every other religion, has its mythology,—a mythology so intertwined with the veritable facts of its early history, so braided and welded with its beginnings, that history and myth are not always distinguishable the one from the other. . . . To measure the claims of the Christian religion by the historic verity of all the narratives of the New Testament, is to prejudice the Christian cause in the judgment of competent critics." Nothing could be easier than to cite thousands of additional statements of precisely the same tenor, from the public utterances of those who are honored as teachers and leaders in the Christian churches. But those given are ample for the purpose of attesting the awful completeness with which the nominal Christian church has renounced her faith in the inspired credentials which constitute the sole warrant for the Christian religion. Destitute of faith, the churches have been shorn of spiritual power, and have, accordingly, sunk to the plane of mere social and fraternal organisms. How painfully complete is the fulfilment of that sorrowful prophecy of Jesus relative to these last days: "Nevertheless when the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" Ah, He will find only a beggared moiety of faith. An English journal, The Spectator, sent thousands of letters to prominent men and women, in England and America, asking them (1) "Do we believe? (2) Are we religious?" After examining the multitudes of replies which he received, the editor reports: "The dominant note in the answers to the first question is emphatically ‘NO’; that in the answers to the second question is an equally emphatic ‘YES.’” O, yes, we have, exactly as Paul said we would have, a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. Is it not fair, is it not safe, aye, is it not duty, to conclude that we are living in the testing, crucial "last days"? (In a second instalment, under the same caption, I shall treat more especially of the dearth of spirituality in the churches. G. W. R.)