Weakness of Certain 'Positions adopted by Protestant Theologians.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2978, 31 August 1878, Page 4

Weakness of Certain 'Positions adopted by Protestant Theologians.

The reformers of the sixteenth century were contending against definite false-, hoods, which had been taken up into the system of the Church of Rome, and were offerertby it to the world as sacred realities. Purgatory, penance, pilgrimages, masses, the worship of the saints—supported by and in turn supporting the monastic orders, which had become themselves men unendurably corrupt —these and their kindred superstitions the reformers denounced as frauds and impostures. They declared the established service of the Church to be the practice and worship of a lie. They appealed to the Bible as an authority, which Catholics themselves acknowledged. With the Bible in their hands they pointed from the idolatrous ceremonial to the spiritual truths contained in the Gospels and Epistles, and the service which man owed to his Master they affirmed to be integrity of heart and purity of life and conduct, They insisted on faith as the ground of acceptance, because faith was the spirit out of which acceptable obedience rose, as theplarit rises from the seed, because mechanical obedience rising from selfish hope or selfish fear was not obedience at all. But it is dangerous . to take passionate language ,and in cool blood construct out of it a positive-article of a new theology. Even in the lifetime of St-Paul justification by faith was construed into a sanction of antinomianism. It has been the excuse and apology of modern preachers, who have allowed religion to decline from a rule of conduct into a thing of emotion and opinions. Again, intense piety, when it reflects on the divine nature,, perceives and feels that it is all-pervading, all-controlling, absolute and incapable of change, existing in its immutable essence from eternity to eternity. To that .which is all-powerful there, can be no rival or enemy; hence the conviction that all things are and must be predetermined by the divine will. The will which appears to us free in man is but apparent only. A will which is really free can exist only in the beiDg which is «3lf-originated.

IN everfrheless, it is no less plain that there is in the constitution of things something good, that is to be infinitely loved ; something also that is evil to be infinitely hated —a spirit opposed to God, however it comes into being—eternally cut off from Him, and subject therefore of eternal reprobation. God, it may be said, has made- all things for himself, even .the wicked for the day of wrath—but how or why, it is impossible to say.

All these positions are severally truejustification by faith, predestination, and reprobation; yet they are fitting objects of meditation only- to the profound intensity of devotion in which they alone can be harmonised. It is dangerous, it is x worse than dangerous, to take these high mysteries which require us to be lifted out of overselves before they can be even faintly comprehended, to formulise them deliberately into propositions, and in catechisms and theological articles thrust them on the conscience as something which ifc is necessary to believe. To represent man as automaton, sinning by the necessity of his nature, and .yet as guilty of his sins;' to represent God as having ordained all things, yet as angry with the actions of the puppets whom He has. Himself created as they are, is to insist on the acceptance of contradictory assertions from which the reason recoils; to make Christianity itself incredible by a travesty of Christian truth.

An error yet more mischievous has been the Protestant treatment of the Bible. The canon of scripture was at the Reformation received by the ' Church as universally true. No serious question had been raised about it since the Canon was fixed. No internal difficulties had been discovered in any of its parts. Historical criticism had not yet come into existence. But, again, the superstitious and magical theory of the Bible had not come into existence either. The sacred books contained the records of the faith; they were the lively oracles of God, and as such were regarded with a special, if undefined, reverence.

The Reformers,' appealing from the Church to the Bible, finding in the Bible, the true nature of religion which the (Jhurch had obscured, finding there'utterances so profound and awful as to pierce their very hearts, spoke naturally of it as the one source of truth. The Bible was to be the religion of Protestants. From an infallible Church they appealed to the Infallible Book. Yet, as before, it proved dangerous to erect words, which were more the expressions of emotion than of intellectual conviction, into dogmatic statements of fact. Just as with, the sacraments —symbolic rites were turned iuto idols, so the inspiration of the Bible was interpreted into the mechanical dictation by the- Holy Spirit of every word and letter. Pretensions were advanced for it, which only once, if ever, ii appears to advance for itself, and that fa a single ambiguous text. The Bible contains the literature of a nation who, more clearly than any other nation, were allowed to perceive their dependence on their maker and master in Heaven. But like Him of whom it is said that he increased in wisdom and stature, it is evident the Jews were'not exempt from the conditions under which all people have grown from childhood to maturity. They were'earried through the usual stages of infancy, youth, manhood, and decline. Childhood, with its innocent piety; youth with its impetuosity ; manhood with its regal vigour ; and afterwards, worldliness and luxury. Accompanying all these stages is a literature, corresponding precisely to what we have experienced in nations growing under the common conditions, not excluding even the. scepticism to be found in Ecclesiastes and certain of the Psalms, where it would seem, even to a sovereign of the chosen people, that there was one .event alike to all, to the good and the bad, the wise and the foolish ; and sp far as was visible in the common current of human things, the hand of God was not apparent in them at all. In the whole series of the books which form the Old Testament —historical, legislative, lyrical, or prophetic—there is manifest throughout the peculiarly human element which so fits them to be the instructors of liumanity. "Every age, every mood, of mind, is represented there with its distinguishing features; God, as the apostle says, making Himself known to his people at divers times and in divers manners. It is to rob the Bible of its instructiveness, it is to leave us bewildered before a "phenomenon too intricate either for our reason or our imagination, to assume that in these " divers manners" the Ho:ly Spirit was using historians and evan-

gelists, prophets and apostles, as were machines. Ifc is to leave us confronted with, contradictions of which, on this hypothesis, we can find no tolerable explanation, with opposing statements which no skill can reconcile; with the repudiation in one book of the temper and spirit of another. Yet this is what Protestants have done and are still doing. They insist on the. verbal correctness of every word and sentence. They have committed the truths of Christianity to a theory of their own creation, and when they find themselres in difficulties they fall back on sophistry. The §ix days of the creation are defined precisely by the writer of the | Book of Genesis. The period between evening and morning could have been meant for a day in the ordinary sense of the word. Science proves unquestionably that the globe has grown to its present condition through an infinite series of ages; and Protestant theologians enjtangled with thsr own fancies,, have imagined that day may signify a million, billion, or quinfillion of v years. Construing literally the vehement expression of St. Paul, they have insisted that death originated in Adam's sin. They are confronted with the evidence that death had reigned through all creation from the earliest period, of which the stratified rock's preserve the record. '1 bey hesitate, they equivocate, they struggle against the light, they do anything save make a frank confession of their own error.

Critics again demonstrate that more than one of the books of the Old Testament is of later date than tradition has assigned to it; that glosses have crept into the <ext; that no miracle has been wrought to preserve the sacred literature from the same accidents to which other ancient records have been exposed. There was a time when faith was stronger than ifc is now, and good Protestants were not afraid of truth. Why can they not recognise that this name of Protestant implies that they are soldiers -of truth, set to fight against falsehood wherever and whenever falsehood is detected ? Why can' they not see that they have themselves caused the unbelief-which is disturbing them, by having repeated the sin which they denounced in the Catholics three hundred years ago, and having overlaid the reality of the Gospel by gratuitous assumptions of their own. We have erected dogmas and made idols of them. The idol falls down broken. The man of the world concludes that God Himself has been ejected from his throne, that religion is folly, and that atheism is the only reality. The conscientious and devout, perplexed by doubts and thirsting for certainty, take refuge in the communion which claims, to speak with authority from which there is no appeal. Weary of the hesitating utterances of Evangelical theologians, they fail to see that the Church of Borne is unchanging, not because it is in possession of the truth, but because it is impervious to it. The overbearing attitude of that Church, the insolent assumptions of it, overcome their imagination. "They take it at its own, estimate of itself, and make themselves over, body, soul, and intellect, to be its slaves for evermore. These are the two directions in which the minds of men are; now drifting; and in these directions they will continue to drift more and, more till Protestant theologians assume a nobler attitude, till they prove by their fearlessness of truth that they have a real belief, that they detest equivocation with as much heartiness as Latimer or Calvin detested it: and are not afraid, because a passing cloud intercepts the rays, that the sun has therefore .'dropped out ; of the sky.rFfiOtTDB, on the Revival of Romanism.