To answer this question in detail would carry us too far, but, in general, it may be said that these new elements represent the reaction of contemporary thought upon Christianity. They are the consequences for religion which followed from the view of the world which was built up little by little by the labor of the great thinkers whom we call the schoolmen. Many of the materials of their majestic structure are found centuries earlier. Greek philosophy contributed a part, Jewish legalism contributed a part, Eastern mysticism contributed a part, logical minds untrained in the methods of experimental science, working over generation after generation the problems that have always presented themselves to the mind, contributed their part. The result, I repeat, was a great system of thought which constituted the world-view of the Middle Ages. Catholicism took over this view of the world, used it in the formulation of its theology, and passed it on to Protestantism in its turn. To us today there is so much in this old world-view that seems artificial and unreal that it is hard to realize what an advance it was upon the thinking that preceded it. In a world full of mystery and unreason, where the supremacy of law was only imperfectly recognized, where man felt himself surrounded on every hand by spirits, good and evil, who might at any moment break in upon his security by some malicious, or, at all events, some unpredictable act, it was a great gain to build a wall of division between nature and the supernatural which should at least set bounds to their activities. It was a great thing to know that there was a sphere in which law reigned and in which effect inevitably followed cause, even if there remained outside of it a territory impenetrable by reason, from which occasional messengers, celestial or infernal, might invade the common world. Here, at least, was a foundation for science, a territory in which the great achievements of human reason might find a home. We must remember, then, when we estimate what we have called the Catholic elements in the old theology, that not religion but philosophy is responsible for them. They are, I repeat, the reaction of mediaeval thought upon the Christian religion, and our quarrel with them is not the quarrel of philosophy with religion, but of philosophy with philosophy. Finally, there are the Protestant elements, the elements, that is to say, which represent the reaction of Protestantism against Catholicism, and its own distinctive contribution to the religious life of man. Among these may be noted the recognition of the direct responsibility of the individual to God, with its corollary in the right of private judgment, the insistence upon the Bible as the sole authority for faith and practice, over against the Catholic insistence upon tradition; the practical character given to doctrine as truth bearing directly upon personal experience, and therefore of the highest importance for every individual to understand, the wider extension of the sphere of religion through the doctrine of the universal priesthood of all believers, and, finally, the insistence upon the same strictness of ethical standard for the layman as was required of the minister. I have called these elements Protestant because they have found their fullest and clearest expression in historic Protestantism. Yet it is only just to Catholicism to remind ourselves that they have their parallels in the Catholic church. Catholicism too has always had its protestants, its men of immediate religious insight and of high ethical standard, who have dared to criticise the abuses of existing religion, and have pointed the way to a freer and more spiritual faith. The mystics who from age to age have made their appearance in the Catholic church have been such protestants. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century was such a protestant, Jansen in the seventeenth was another, Pascal and his friends of Port Royal were others. Had it not been for the work of such men in the past, not only would the position of the Modernists today be untenable, but their very existence would be inexplicable. Modernism is the fruitage within Catholicism of the same principles of freedom and individuality which in our own day have given birth in Protestantism to the new theology. Such, in general, are the elements that have gone into the making of the old theology in its Protestant form, and which in their action and reaction explain the changes through which it has passed in the course of its history of four hundred years. These changes are due to the fact that the old theology is not wholly old, but at its core, in its doctrine of private judgment and individual responsibility, bears a germ of the new, which, when furnished with the proper environment, is certain to spring up and bear fruit in surprising and far-reaching modifications. If it were not for the presence of this living germ at the heart of the old theology, enabling it again and again to push out fresh roots through the restraining folds of its inheritance of tradition and to renew its vigor at the pure springs from which Christianity first drew its life, our problem would be far simpler than it is today. Our second question has to do with the causes which give the old theology its hold upon its adherents. Here too the answer is simple. The explanation of its power is found, where all theology worthy of the name finds its power, in the living experience from which it springs and of which it is in large part an expression. We misunderstand Calvinism when we think of it primarily as a system of doctrine. It was indeed a system, and faced the great questions with which philosophy has to do, but its interest in these was secondary. Primarily it seemed to the men who held it a transcript of experience which they could daily verify in their own souls. Doctrines such as election, preterition, regeneration, justification, effectual calling, perseverance, assurance, which to many in our day have lost their meaning and become empty words, were to them names for realities which had their verification every day in their own lives and in the lives of their friends. In the fifth chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith we find this paragraph under the general head of the doctrine of Providence: As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God as a righteous judge for former sins doth blind and harden, from them he not only withholdeth his grace whereby they might have been enlightened in their understanding and wrought upon in their hearts, but sometimes also withdraweth the gifts which they had, and exposeth them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin, and withal gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the power of Satan, whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves even under those means which God useth for the softening of others. These sentences express one of the most rigid and repellent of the doctrines of Calvinism, the doctrine of reprobation. But when we look at them not as theoretical statements, but as a leaf taken out of the book of human life, how true they are! How often we see just such experiences in the lives of the people we know, things that ought to be means of growth proving as a matter of fact causes of corruption and of weakness, the money that one man makes his servant becoming the master of another, knowledge resulting in pride rather than in efficiency, love leading to self-indulgence rather than to unselfishness, even the unfaltering trust, which is the best gift that one human being can give to another, made the occasion for carelessness and indifference. Or take an illustration from the tenth chapter, another of the hard chapters of the Confession. It is the definition of effectual calling. All those whom God has predestinated unto life, and those only, he is pleased in his appointed and accepted time effectually to call by his word and spirit out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ, enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone and giving unto them a heart of flesh, renewing their wills and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ, yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace. Reading this paragraph as a statement of theological doctrine we are repelled by its arbitrariness, but when we look at it as a description of Christian experience we find that it brings before us in living language the essential elements of the process which actually takes place in the soul of a man when he enters upon the religious life, the enlightenment of the mind, the loosing of the pent emotions, the new purpose impressed upon the will, the sense of an external constraint laid upon one, yet in such form that the consent, when it comes, is most free. All this can be verified in countless lives. But theology deals not with present experience only, but also with unseen realities. It formulates those great convictions which give support to faith when the shocks of life come and human strength alone seems too weak to withstand their strain. Here, again, the old theology reveals its strength. It brings man face to face with the eternal God and plants his feet upon a rock that cannot be shaken. This sense of immutable security meets us again and again in lives that have been fed upon the old theology. Its artificiality, its legalism, its separation of things that seem to us to belong together, its pedantic weighing of merit against guilt, -all this disappears when the plan of salvation is contemplated as the purpose of the unchanging God for the redemption of man, his child. Among Cromwell's letters, contained in Carlyle's classic edition, there is one directed to his son-in-law, General Fleetwood, then Lord Deputy of Ireland. It is dated at Whitehall, June 22, 1655, two years after the dismissal of the famous Rump Parliament. After treating of various matters of business, the writer, then ruler of one of the most powerful nations in the world, and bearing upon his shoulders burdens of responsibility that would have crushed any but the strongest man, concludes as follows: Dear Charles, my dear love to thee; and to my dear Biddy [his daughter] who is a joy to my heart, for what I hear of the Lord in her. Bid her be cheerful, and rejoice in the Lord once and again: if she knows the Covenant, she cannot but do so. For that transaction is without her; sure and stedfast, between the Father and the Mediator in His blood: therefore, leaning upon the Son, or looking to Him, thirsting after Him, and embracing Him, we are His seed; and the Covenant is sure to all the Seed. The Compact is for the Seed; God is bound in faithfulness to Christ, and in Him to us: the Covenant is without us; a Transaction between God and Christ. Look up to it. God engageth in it to pardon us; to write His Law in our heart; to plant His fear so that we shall never depart from Him. We, under all our sins and infirmities, can daily offer a perfect Christ; and thus we have peace and safety, and apprehension of love, from a Father in Covenant,-who cannot deny Himself. And truly in this is all my salvation; and this helps me to bear my great burdens. The literature of Puritanism is full of such examples. Our hymn-books witness on every page to the strength and peace which faith in the God of the old theology brought into the lives of those who put their trust in him. When I survey the wondrous cross |