The Warriors - Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
The force of this reform-energy is uncomputed. We hear of occasional
great reformers, but forget that there has been a prevailing influence
extending over the ages, of holy men of God, who have preached and
taught and prayed; who have preserved our social institutions of
spiritual import, and have been a mighty and continuous force working
for righteousness and peace.
Missions are a higher form of politics. To further missions is to
further government, international comity, world-peace.
4. His rule is over creed. He is inevitably a teacher of doctrine.
What is doctrine? Doctrine is spiritual truth, formulated in a
systematic way. It is also, in church matters, a system of truth which
has been believed in, and clung to, by a body of believers constituting
some branch of the catholic Church.
It is a noble and serious office to hand down from generation to
generation the faith and traditions of the Church of God. But this
handing-down must be upright. "You must bind nothing upon your charges,"
says Jeremy Taylor, "but what God hath bound upon you." Conviction is at
the root of the lasting traditions of the Church. Only this--his
conviction--can one man really teach another. If he try to speak
otherwise, he shall have a lolling and unsteady tongue.
No soul is finally held by the indefinite, or the namby-pamby. It begins
to question, Upon what foundation does this phrase, this fine sentiment,
rest? It must stand upon a proposition. This proposition rests either
upon a scientific fact, or upon that which, for want of a more definite
term, we call the religious instinct of man. But a proposition cannot
standalone. It is connected with other propositions, arguments,
conclusions. Hence a system of logic, of philosophy, of expressed
belief, of doctrine, inevitably grows up in a thinking community, a
thinking Church.
The statement of an ecclesiastical system of doctrine may not be the
absolutely true one, nor the final one. Doctrine changes, even as
scientific theories change with fuller information. Doctrine also
expands, with the growth of the human spirit and understanding. To-day,
in one's library, one has a thousand books. They are shelved and
catalogued, for reference, in a special order. But years hence, one's
grandson, who inherits these books, may have ten thousand books. The
aspect of the library is changed. It is filled with new volumes, and new
thought. Shall we give a liberty to a man's library which we refuse to
his belief? Must he--and his church--have only his grandfather's ideas,
standards, and decrees?
The tenets of a sect are the theological arrangement of belief which for
the present seems best; it is the systematic arrangement of facts so far
examined, determined, and classified. But no system of theology can be
final. Thought is moving on. Experience is progressive. Providence is
continually revealing. The race is a creed-builder, as well as a builder
of pyramids, cathedrals, and triumphal arches.
The building-up of doctrine is superb. Into doctrine are woven the
intellectual beliefs, the emotional experiences, and the spiritual
struggles of mankind. Doctrine is an attempt to classify the spiritual
problems of the race and to present a theory of redemption which shall
be adequate, spiritually progressive, and the exact expression, so far
as yet revealed, of the will of God for man. All Christian doctrine is
centred about one point: the redemption of the race from sin. Dealing
with such great and fundamental themes, each system of doctrine is an
intellectual triumph.
Doctrine is an intellectual necessity. Christ is not sporadic, either in
history or philosophy. To teach Christ, as the unlettered savage may
who has just learned of Christ the Saviour and turns to teach his
fellow-savages, might do good or save a soul from death. But in order to
command the intellectual respect of the race, there must be another form
of teaching yet than this, a teaching which presents Christ in the
historic and philosophic setting: the central Figure in a great body of
associated spiritual truth; Christ as the fulfilment of prophecy, the
means of social adjustment and regeneration; the Finisher of our Faith,
and the Source of eternal joy. We must be, not less spiritual
Christians, but increasingly intellectual ones, as time rolls on.
Who are the men who have built up doctrine? Men speak as if doctrine
were an ecclesiastical toy--to be shaken by priest or prelate, as one
shakes a rattle, for noise, for play! A doctrine is not a toy; it is the
crystallized belief of earnest, thoughtful, and godly men--belief which
has passed into a church tradition, and is now received as an act
of faith.
Shall doctrine be taught a child? Yes! To have a specific doctrine
clearly in mind does not fetter the young soul, any more than to be
taught the apparent facts of geography and history, which may change
either in reality or in his own interpretation as his mind matures. A
doctrine is a practical and definite thing to work with; in later life
to believe, and to approve of, or disbelieve, and disapprove of. If a
man wishes to build a house, does it fetter him to know square measure,
cubic contents, geometry, mensuration, and mechanical laws? Yet when he
builds his house, he builds it in his own individual way; he stamps it
with his own personality and ideas. While building it, perchance, he
discovers some new relation or geometric law.
Doctrine does not save from hell, but it does save from many a snare
that besets the feet of man. It is a steadier of life, a strengthener of
hope, a stalwart aid to a practical, devout, and duty-doing life. A
catechism is a system of doctrine expressed in its simplest form.
Therefore, for the intellectual and moral training of the Church, let us
have sound doctrine in the pulpit, and the catechism in the home and
Sabbath-school.
It is objected that doctrinal terminology is too hard for a child to
understand. Is this not absurd, when the same child can come home from
school and talk glibly of a parallelepipedon, a rhombus, rhomboid,
polyhedral angle, archipelago, law of primogeniture, the binomial
theorem, and of a dicotyledon! He also learns French, German, Latin,
Greek, and the _argot_ of the public school!
The theological leader of to-day cannot be a creed-monger: he must be a
creed-maker. Side by side with the executive officers who will
reorganize the Christian forces, there will stand great creed-makers,
giant theologians, firm, logical, scientific, and convincing, who, out
of the vast array of new facts brought forth by modern science, will
produce new creeds, a new catechism, a new dogmatic series. It is worth
while to live in these days--to know the possibility of such monumental
constructive work in one's own lifetime. The creed-makers must have a
thorough literary training; no mere vocabulary of philosophy will
answer. Like the Elizabethan divines, they must rule the living word,
which shall echo for a century yet to come.
As the great Ecumenical Council was convened for missionary progress, so
the times are now ripe for the assembling of a historic Theological
Council, to revise and restate, not one denominational catechism, but
the creed of Christendom; to provide a new literary expression of the
Christian faith. Together we are working in God's world, and for
His kingdom.
If doctrine be the crystallized thought and belief of godly men, what is
heresy? What is schism? Who is dictator of doctrine? How far are the
limits of authority to be pressed? What are the bounds of ecclesiastical
control? of intellectual mandate in the Christian Church?
In the academic world, we do not cast a man out of his mathematical
chair because he can also work in astro-physics or in psycho-physics. If
he can pursue advanced research in an allied or applied field, it will
help him in his regular and prescribed work. We do not cast an English
professor out of his chair, because he announces that there are two
manuscripts of Layamon's _Brut_, and that the text of Beowulf has been
many times worked over, before we have received it in its present form.
Yet there are accredited professors of English who do not know these
facts, and who, if called upon, could neither prove them nor disprove
them. They have not worked in the Bodleian, in the British Museum, or in
other foreign libraries, on Old English texts and authorities. They
think themselves well up in Old English if they can translate the text
of Beowulf fairly well, remember its most difficult vocabulary, and can
tell a tale or two from the _Brut_.
Not every man has Europe or Asia in his backyard, nor a lifetime of
leisure for research, for special learning, on the moot questions of
church-scholarship. Progress consists in each man's doing his best to
advance the interests of the kingdom of God in his own special sphere.
From others he must take something for granted. The ear of the Church
ought always to be open to the sayings of the specialist. A Church
should grant liberty of research, of thought, of speech--to a degree.
But whatever may come out of twentieth-century or thirtieth-century
combats, one thing remains clear: A Church is an organization, a social
body, with a certain doctrine to proclaim, a certain faith to hand down
to men. The doctrine is not in all details final--each phase of faith
may change. But the organization, to protect its own purity and
integrity--however generous in allowing individual research, and the
expression of individual ideas--must exert authority over the teachers
in her midst, those who are called by her name, who have her children in
their charge, and for whose teaching the Church, as a whole, is
responsible. There is doubtless a time when the man who is really in
advance of his times intellectually must be misunderstood, must be
disagreed with, must be cast out. But all truth may await the verdict of
time. If he has discovered something new, something true, the centuries
will make it plain. There remains a chance--and the Church dare not risk
too great a chance--that he is mistaken, impious, presumptuous, or
self-deceived. We dare not rush to a new doctrine or spiritual
conception, merely because one man, who knows more of a certain kind of
learning than we do, has said so. One must be bolstered up by a
generation of convinced and believing men, before he can draw a Church
after him. No other process is intellectually legitimate. In any other
event ecclesiastical anarchy would reign. To maintain the historic
position of the Church is a necessity, until that position is proven
untrue. So to maintain it is not bigotry, it is not lack of charity; it
is merely common-sense.
The question, Where is the line between ecclesiastical integrity and
individual freedom? is therefore one which the common-sense of
Christendom is left to solve--not to-day, not to-morrow, but gradually,
generously, and conscientiously, as the centuries go on.
THIRD: OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITY
It is said that a minister is greatly handicapped to-day in all his
efforts for two reasons: First, that the times are spiritually
lethargic, that men are so engrossed by material aims, indifference, or
sin that a pastor can get no hold upon their hearts. Second, that he is
bound hand and foot by conditions existing in the organization and
personnel of his church, and hence is not free to act.
What would we think of an electrician who would complain that a storm
had cast down his network of wires? Of a civil engineer who would lament
that the mountain over which he was asked to project a road was steep?
Of a doctor who would grieve that hosts of people about him were very
ill? Of a statesman who would cry out that horrid folks opposed him? It
is the work of the specialist to meet emergencies, and it is his
professional pride to triumph over difficult conditions. The harder his
task, the more he exults in his power of success.
It is a glorious task that lies before the minister of to-day--to
maintain, develop, and uplift the spiritual life of the most wonderful
epoch of the world's history; to place upon human souls that vital
touch that shall hold their powers subject to eternal influences and
aims. The times are not wholly unfavorable: our era, which spurns many
ecclesiastical forms, is at heart essentially religious. _The World for
Christ!_ How this war-cry of the spirit thrills anew as one realizes how
much more there is to win to-day than ever before. The Warrior girds
himself and longs eagerly to marshal great, shining, active hosts
for God!
It is true that the conditions of work are more trying than they have
usually been. A man goes out from the seminary. He has had a good
education, followed by perhaps a year or two abroad, and some practical
experience in sociological work. He has plans, ideas, ideals, a vigorous
and whole-souled personality, a frank and generous heart.
What does he find? He soon discovers that the battle is not always to
the strong, the educated, or the well-bred. Too often he is at the mercy
of rich men who can scarcely put together a grammatical sentence; of
poorer men who are, in church affairs, unscrupulous politicians; of
women who carp and gossip; and of all sorts of men and women who desire
to rule, criticise, hinder, and distrain. They, too, are the very people
who, in the ears of God and of the community, have vowed to love him and
to uphold his work! The more intellectual and spiritual he is, the more
he is troubled and distressed.
Many churches, too, are in a chronic state of internal war. As for
these rising church difficulties--try to put out a burning bunch of
fire-crackers with one finger, and you have the sort of task he has in
hand. While one point of explosion is being firmly suppressed, other
crackers are spitting and going off. Whichever way he turns, and
whatever he does, something pops angrily, and a new blaze begins! And
this business, incredibly petty as it is, blocks the progress of the
Christian faith. Men and women of education and refinement, of a wide
outlook and noble thoughts and deeds, are more and more unwilling to
place themselves on the church-roll; a minister sometimes finds himself
in the anomalous position of having the more cultured, congenial, and
philanthropic people of the community quite outside any church
organization.
All these things mean, not that a minister must grow discouraged, but
that he must set his teeth, and with pluck and endurance rise strong and
masterful and say, This shall not be! Let him not listen to the barking
and baying: let him hearken to the great primal voices of man and
nature. Love lies deeper than discord. The constructive forces of
humanity are stronger than the disintegrative. The right
attraction binds.
There are some men who by the sheer force of their personality subdue
their church difficulties. They hold the captious in awe. By a sort of
magnetic persuasion and lively sense of humor they soothe this one and
that, win the regard of the outlying community, attach many new members
to the organization, and build up, out of discordant and erstwhile
discontented elements, a harmonious and active church. This is the man
for these martial times! If there are born leaders in every other
department of the world's work, men who quietly but firmly assert their
authority and supremacy in the tasks in which they hold, by free
election or legitimate appointment, a place at the head--it ought to be
so in the Church of God! I long to see arise in the ministry _a race
of iron!_
There are other difficulties, seldom spoken of, of which one must write
frankly, though with the keenest sympathy, if one is to look deeply into
the modern church problem. First: Is a minister's environment favorable
to his best personal development? Does he not miss much from the lack of
the world's hearty give-and-take? He gets criticism, but not of a just
or all-round kind. Small things may be pecked at, trifles may be made
mountains of by the disgruntled, but where does he get a clear-sighted,
whole-hearted estimate of himself and his work? Who tells him of his
real virtues, his real faults? Among all his friends, who is there, man
or woman, who is brave enough to be true?
Other men are soon shaken into place. Their personal traits continually
undergo a process of chiselling and adjustment. They are told
uncomfortable things how quickly! At the club, in the university, in
the market, the ploughing-field, the counting-room, they rub up against
each other, and no mercy is shown by man to man until primary signs of
crudeness are worn off. Let a conceited professor get in a college
chair! Watch a hundred students begin their delightful and salutary
process of "taking him down" by the sort of mirth in which college boys
excel! Their unkindness is not right, but the result is, they never
molest a man who is merely eccentric.
Watch a scientific association jump with all fours upon a man who has
just read a paper before their body! How unsparingly they analyze and
criticise! He has to meet questions, opposition, comments, shafts of wit
and envy, jovial teasing and correction. He goes out from the meeting
with a keener love of truth and exactness, and a less exalted idea of
his own powers. Watch the rivalry and sparring that go on in any
business. Men meet men who attack them; they fight and overcome them, or
are themselves overcome.
Human friction is not always harmful. A minister should not be hurt or
angered by disagreement and discussion. No one's ideas are final. Let
him expect to stand in the very midst of a high-strung, spirited, and
hard-working generation. Let him be turned out of doors. Let him travel,
look, learn, meet men and women, and conquer in the arena of manhood.
Then, by means of this undaunted manhood, he may the better guide the
fiery enthusiasms of men, inspire their higher ambitions, and comfort
them in their bitter human sorrows!
Again, too often a minister is spoiled in his first charge by flattery,
polite lies, and gushing women. He is sadly overpraised. A bright young
fellow comes from the seminary. He can preach; that is, he can prepare
interesting essays, chiefly of a literary sort, which are pleasant to
listen to, though, in the nature of things, they can have scarcely a
word in them of that deep, life-giving experience and counsel which come
from the hearts of men and women who have lived, and know the truth of
life. He is told that these sermons are "lovely," "beautiful," "_so_
inspiring," and he believes every word of praise. No one says to him,
"When you know more, you will preach better," and his standard of
excellence does not advance. This man, who might have become a great
preacher, remains, as years go on, alas! an intellectual potterer.
He is also socially made too much of, being one of the very few men
available for golf and afternoon teas, suppers, picnics, tennis,
charity-bazaars. Other men are frankly too busy for much of these
things, except for healthful recreation; and not infrequently one finds
stray ministers absolutely the only men at some function to which men
have been invited.
A minister is not a parlor-pet. How many a time an energetic man,
society-bound, must long to kick over a few afternoon tea-tables, and
smash his way out through bric-a-brac and chit-chat to freedom
and power!
I should think that a real Man in the ministry would get so very tired
of women! They tell him all their complaints and difficulties, from
headaches, servants, and unruly children, to their sentimental
experiences and their spiritual problems. Men tell him almost nothing.
Watch any group of men talking, as the minister comes in. A moment
before they were eager, alert, argumentative. Now they are polite or
mildly bored. He is not of their world. Some assert that he is not even
of their sex! Hence the lips of men are too often sealed to the
minister. He must find some way not only to meet them as brother to
brother, but he must capture their inmost hearts. The shy confidence of
an honorable man once won, his friendship never fails.
The question of a minister's relation to the women of his congregation
and the community is not only curious and complex--it is a perpetual
comedy. How do other men in public life deal with this problem? They
have a genial but indifferent dignity, quite compatible with courtesy
and friendly ways. They shoulder responsibility; they do not flirt; they
sort out cranks; they flee from simpers; they put down presumption. If
married, they laugh heartily with their wives over any letter or
episode that is comical or sentimental. If not married, they get out of
things the best way they know how, with a sort of plain, manly
directness. If a minister would arrogate to himself his free-born
privilege of being a thorough-going man, many of his troubles would
disappear.
Let him hold himself firmly aloof both from nonsense and from enervating
praise. Let him dream of great themes, and work for great things! Let
him rely on more quiet friends who watch loyally, hope, encourage,
inspire. By and by the scales drop from his eyes; he sees himself, not
as one who has already achieved, but as one to whom the radiant gates of
life are opening, so that he, too, can one day speak to human souls as
the masters have done! He discovers that out of the heart's depths is
great work born! This is a memorable day, both for this man and for his
church. From that hour he has vision and power.
Another error in ministerial education and outlook is that too often
ministers forget that they compete with other men: they are not an
isolated class of humanity. Competition underlies the energy and
efficiency of the world's work. When men do not consciously compete with
others, they inevitably drop behind. What a minister was intended for,
was to stand head and shoulders above other men. God seems to have
planned the universe in such a way that everywhere the spiritual shall
be supreme. He was meant to be a towering leader. Who, in other realms,
has excelled Moses, Joshua, Elijah, David, Paul?
But if we consider the responsibilities which are now being laid upon
different classes of people, and carried by them, I think that we must
acknowledge that the statesman is looming up as the most influential and
upbuilding man to-day. He is the one who is adjusting the new
world-powers and the new world-relations, over-seeing the development of
our country, and planning for its laws and commerce. Close to him comes
the physician, who is laying his hand on world-plagues, and is studying
the conditions and the forms of disease, with a view to striking disease
at its root. The hand of the doctor is laid upon consumption, malaria,
yellow fever, diphtheria, typhoid fever, and bubonic plague, and the
advance in medical research is marvellous.
The lawyer and the capitalist are together adjusting the industrial
relations of the country. We have trusts, syndicates, and
corporation-problems handled with a firm intellectual grasp and a wide
outlook over human affairs.
The reading of the world is in the hands of editors of enterprise and
sagacity. They daily bring wars, statecraft, business plans, political
situations, trade openings, scientific discoveries, forms of church-work
and philanthropy, accidents, murders, and marriages, to our
breakfast-table. The press of to-day has a tremendous scope. When some
of the magazines come to hand, one feels that he is in touch with the
affairs of the universe and has reading of a cosmic order.
The day-laborer is discovering that to ingenuity, talent, and manliness,
the whole world swings open. Carnegie's Thirty Partners, most of whom
have come from the working-ranks, demonstrate that a man can rise from
the pick, the spade, the foreman's duties, to the control of great
industrial interests.
Bankers are thinking out the financial problems--currency, legal tender,
the best forms of money and authority; the whole monetary system of the
world is under consideration and analysis. The farmer is learning,
through chemistry and other forms of science, new ways of making his
farm productive, and the educated agriculturist is rising to be an
intellectual factor in the development of our country. Everywhere we see
Life awakening--a great renaissance!
Has the minister, as a thinker and active force of regeneration, kept
pace with this advance? Do many sermons thrill us in this large way?
Where does he rank among the world-masters of energy and power?
The ministry is supposed to be a work of saving souls. But if we could
know the direct effect of preaching, and the conversions which are
really due to preaching, I think we should find them comparatively few.
What touched the boy or girl, man or woman, and led him or her to Christ
was not the sermon, or pastoral talk, though this one or another may
have united with the Church after a special sermon, revival, or personal
appeal. It was the memory and influence of a mother's prayers; of early
associations; of a teacher, a lover, a friend. The conversion came
direct from God--the soul was acted upon by some special moving of the
Holy Spirit. Or it was the death of a friend, an illness, an accident, a
disappointment, which turned the thoughts to heavenly things. Or it was
a book that searched the soul's depths, or some quickening human
experience. Is this quite as it should be? Is not professional
pride aroused?