A Plea for Christian Experience.
By Editor
It certainly is a matter of sadness that a Christian professor feels it necessary to use nineteen pages of the Hibbert Journal in a plea for Christian experience; yet such is the case. Still we are glad that the Rev. P. T. Forsyth, M.A., D.D., principal of Hackney College, Hampstead, England, has written the article. While we may not agree with all of his admonitions, especially regarding the method of Higher Criticism, while we still feel that he might have gone farther in the evidence that he gives of experience in Christ Jesus, we are thankful that the article is given to the world. He says that the two streams which are mingling in so-called Protestantism at the present time are: "The one, the Reformation stream, which carries down with it much of the debris of medieval doctrine; and the other, the Illumination, which carries with it much of the pagan debris of the older Renaissance and classic ambiguity." He clearly states the difference between these two divisions (Italics and bold face ours): "For the one, man was the lost thing in the universe, and the greatness of his ruin was the index of the dignity of his nature; for the other, man was the one saving thing in the universe, and the greatness of his success in subduing the world to his thought and will was the badge of his heroic divinity, soiled, perhaps, but indelible. The one lived by redemption and regeneration; the other, by evolution and education. For the one forgiveness was essential, and for the other forgiveness was incidental. For the one Christ was absolute, for the other He was but relative to the history from which He arose. In the one case we believe in Christ, in the other we believe like Christ. In the one we trust our whole selves to Christ forever, in the other we imitate Him." He holds to Christianity as first preached, the Christianity of the Bible and the apostles, and declares that "In proportion as it ceases to be a kerugma [a proclamation], Christianity ceases to be Christianity." He also flatly declares what is indubitably true that "Illuminationism or Rationalism is not Protestantism. We find our charter in history, and not in human nature; in the word, and not in the world. The seat of revelation is in the Cross, and not in the heart. The precious thing is something given, and not evoked. The Gospel stands with the predominance of intervention, and it falls with the predominance of evolution. Grace is essentially miraculous. Christ is more precious to us by what distinguishes Him from us than by what identifies Him with us. The Gospel turns entirely upon redemptive forgiveness; and if evolution explain all, there is no sin, and therefore no forgiveness." Dr. Forsyth also takes up the matter of Christian experience, how real and true Christ is to us, how He comes into our own lives with distinctive clearness and a positive revolution which completely changes—recreates—the soul; and not as a mere matter of sentiment, but as an abiding power. He also answers the objection that is offered by the Higher Critics, or Illuminationists he would properly call them, that we never can be quite sure that the Saviour we meet is a personal reality. How can we be more certain than the Roman Catholic girl in the real presence and speech of the Virgin at Lourdes. "If it is Christ who visits you, it were the Virgin who visited her." Dr. Forsyth replies to this sufficiently to meet the objection. The one might be a hallucination, but it does not abide, nor does it recreate as does the personal presence of Christ. "I know Him as the author as well as object of my faith. The great change was not a somersault I succeeded in turning, with some divine help; it was a revolution effected in me and by Him. The very fact that in its nature it was forgiveness and regeneration, makes it a moral certainty, the kind of certainty that rises from contact with my Judge, with the last moral and personal reality, who has power even to break me, and with my Redeemer who has power to remake me as His own." And yet it seems to us that there is stronger evidence than this, and that is in the inspired word of God in conjunction with our own experience. God writes the experience of reborn souls twice. He tells it in His word, in His Gospel, which is the "power of God unto salvation," in which is revealed His righteousness in response to faith; He presents before us His holy law in precept. That word, that law, exists unchangeable; it comes down to us from the great, vital, throbbing, historic past. It is met again in perfect harmony with that word, in souls that have yielded to Christ, who have cast their all upon Him, who have laid themselves and their sins down at His feet, and have borne away in their lives the forgiveness of all iniquity, and in their hearts and on their lips the blessed song of redemption. This becomes to the redeemed soul an unshakeable evidence of the reality of the Christian religion. No such thing is promised in the word of God, or in one of the theoretical religions of past ages, concerning the Virgin, the Saints, or any other characters who have deluded the world, but it is promised in Jesus Christ, our Lord; and it is fulfilled according to the promise in those who receive Him. This is the unshaken evidence which God gives to every child by which he may know that his Christian experience is an abiding rock, revealing the great twofold truth: first, that God's word and Gospel are true and living; and secondly, that he is possessor of that life.