Chapter XIX - Nineteenth Century.

Chapter XIX

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Well does Mr. C. H. Spurgeon, of London, in his “Clew of the Maze,” say with reference to “Advanced Thought:” “It is certain that from the apostolic period to the dark ages, if the church advanced at all, it was in a backward direction. Religious thought made progress in a wretched fashion away from truth for several centuries. It is more than possible that modern thought is starting on another such progressive period.” “Doubt dims and chills the day. A fog is over all things, and men move about like Egypt’s ancients when they felt the darkness.” “Men have made gods of themselves; they rely on themselves, and have no patience with talk about faith in God, and they have become their own Providence and Rewarder.” And in his sermon on Psalm 55:6, 7, he remarks: “To-day the most approved preaching makes much of man. Philanthropy, which is good enough in its place, has supplanted loyalty to Jehovah; the second table of the law is put before the first, and in that position it genders idolatry—the worship of man, which is only a form of self-adoration. All divinity is now to be shaped according to man, and from man’s point of view; and men are to think out their theology, and not take it from God’s mouth, or from the book inspired of the Spirit of God. Men are such wonderful beings in this nineteenth century that we are called upon to tone down the gospel to ‘the spirit of the age’—that is, to the fashions and follies of human thought, as they vary from day to day. This, by God’s help, we will never do—no, not by one diluting drop, not by the splitting of a hair. What have I to do with suiting the nineteenth century any more than the ninth century? We have to do with the immutable God, and with the fixed verities which He has revealed to us. Having taken our foothold upon the rock, we shall not stir from it, by God’s help, while there is breath in our body. Yet so it is; man has made man his God, and Jehovah is dethroned in his thoughts. I believe in God, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob; if there be another god newly come up, let those worship him who will; but the stern God of the Old Testament, the loving God of the New Testament, it is evermore my resolve to magnify. Of course, he who is faithful to his God, and declares His greatness in this evil time, will to-day be stigmatized as ‘behind the times,’ and be little esteemed by those who deem themselves cultured and advanced; but of this he may make small account. I see how it is. God’s word is nothing; these new notions are everything. The modern men blot out what they like, and tear out what they please from the book; or they lay the book aside altogether; for they themselves make their own Bible, and every man is his own inspiration, and will ere long proclaim himself to be his own god. But when the soul is brought to know God, it does not question His word or His doings any longer. It sits down before a great mystery, and cries, ‘I do not understand this; I cannot measure it. O the depths! But what God says, I believe. What God does, I accept.’ Let me not deceive you by pandering to the idle prattle of the times. Men dream, and then assert that their visions are truth. It is an atrocious disloyalty to the majesty of revelation to add to it the maunderings of our poor, fallible judgments. The better thing is always to feel as a little child at his father’s knee, when we are reading the Scriptures, and to ask to be taught of the Spirit. Whatever the truth may be, I shall never quarrel with God. However terrible His acts, if I am unable to rejoice in the light of His face, yet in the shadow of His wings will I rejoice. When He seems to spread that great wing, and hide the sun, I will go and nestle beneath Him, and cry, ‘It is the Lord, and it must be right.’ O, eternal God, I do not understand Thee! If I could comprehend Thee, Thou wert not God, or I not man. The parts of Thy ways which Thou hast revealed stagger and almost slay me, but, as I fall at Thy feet as dead, my heart cries, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’ For the Lord is good, and righteous are all His ways. Hallelujah, though the world should perish! Hallelujah, though my soul should die with fear! The Lord forever shall be extolled. Alas! many are only reconciled to the half of God, or to the tenth part of God! Indeed, I fear that many have shaped a god for themselves, and so are not reconciled to the true God at all. We want a conversion which shall make us run in parallel lines with the God who has revealed Himself by His prophets and Apostles, and by His ever-to-be-adored Son.”

The nineteenth is the century of the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, in a long series of bloody and demoralizing European wars; the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire by the Greek Revolution, and of the Spanish Empire by that of Mexico and South America; the repeated revolutions in France; the War of 1812 between England and the United States; the War between the United States and Mexico; the War between the Northern and Southern States of the American Union; the unification of Germany, and that of Italy; the numerous wars of England (the most warlike, self-aggrandizing, wealthy and powerful nation of modern times), for the maintenance and increase of her empire and claims, among which contests should be particularized her wars in 1839-1842, to force the impious opium trade, and missions incidentally, upon China—in 1840, with her allies, to reconquer Syria for the Turks from a rebellious vassal, just as England has repeatedly upheld the Turks in their frightful and wholesale massacres of “Christians” in the Turkish Empire and Asiatic provinces-in 1854-6, in connection with France and Sardinia, to defend Turkey from Russia—in 1857, to preserve her dominion in India from the Sepoy rebellion—in 1857-1860, to open China better to trade and missions—and in 1882, to take possession of Egypt, and foreclose, at the mouth of cannon and rifle, her mortgage on that abject and impoverished people, and to defend her shares in the Suez Canal and her shortest route to India; the course of England, during recent years, in forcing, by her fleets and treaties, the wretched liquor traffic upon India, Siam, Madagascar, Griqualand, etc., degrading the heathens far below their former condition, in order to increase her revenue; the apparent and temporary recognition, by the European nations, of a special and merciful and almighty Providence in staying the victorious career of Napoleon Bonaparte, followed by their speedy relapse into infidelity; the almost universal emancipation of slaves, and the very extensive liberation of civilized peoples from political oppression; the improvement of the manners of general society—less open indecency, intemperance, profanity and dueling; the milder character of legislation; the increase of charities and asylums for the afflicted and unfortunate; the great extension of popular education; the unprecedented progress of scientific discoveries and practical inventions, lightening physical labor, and multiplying the conveniences, comforts and luxuries of life; the discovery and mining of gold in California and Australia; the establishment of manufactures, and great increase of commerce, and excessive devotion to business and money-getting; the rapid increase of wealth, and pauperism, and demoralization, and, in most civilized countries, of recent crime; morbid sympathy for and condoning of wrong-doing; the general prevalence of quackery, puffery and dishonesty; unparalleled adulterations of foods and drinks and medicines; the increased licentiousness of theatrical performances; the great increase of gambling in old and new forms, including speculation in grain and cotton futures; the gradual but steady decay of the appreciation of the life-long sacredness of the marriage relation, the relaxation of the laws of divorce, and the alarming multiplication of divorces and of “consecutive polygamy” (the New England States of the Union occupying a miserable pre-eminence, and Protestant countries far surpassing Roman Catholic countries, in this corrupting disregard of the Divine law of marriage); the increasing frequency of obfœtation and fœticide, in place of infanticide practiced by the Pagans; the recent increasing corruption of the daily press, in the large cities, and of the use of the telegraph, expatiating upon all the details of crime, and thus helping to make crime epidemic; the infidel tendency of a large body of periodical literature and of science falsely so called; the impurity and corrupting influence of much of modern art; the fact that the nations of Europe spend, on an average, four and a half times more for war than for education—that England spends about twenty dollars per year for every man, woman and child, for spirituous liquors, and that the United States spends about seventeen dollars annually per capita for the same purpose, while spending for each inhabitant only about one dollar annually for religion and about two dollars for education;[1] the great increase of insanity and idiocy; the disruption of the Roman Catholic communion (the Old Catholics, in Europe, seceding in 1870)—the Episcopalian (the Reformed branch, in the United States, going off in 1873)—the Presbyterian (the Cumberland or Arminian Presbyterians, in the western and southwestern States of the Union, withdrawing from their Calvinistic brethren in 1810; the Free Church, in Scotland, from the Established Church, in 1843; the New School, in the United States, separating from the Old School in 1837, but re-uniting in 1869; and the Southern separating from the Northern in 1861)—the Baptist (the Old School, in the United States, separating from the New School in 1828-42;and the New School separating into Northern and Southern in 1845; the Strict Baptists, in England, separating from the Particular Baptists in 1835)—the Methodist (dividing into about a dozen sects; and, in the United States, separating into Northern and Southern in 1844)—and the Society of Friends (some Quakers, in Ireland, becoming heterodox in 1813; and the Hicksite, in the United States, withdrawing from the old Orthodox Quakers in 1827); a very extensive decay of their ancient faith among Jews, Brahmins, Buddhists, Mohammedans and Protestants (the latter almost universally abandoning their original Calvinism for Catholic Arminianism, and many going off even into Pelagianism and Universalism); the decayed and deadened condition of Greek Catholicism; the vigorous revival and blasphemous culmination of Roman Catholicism (Ultramontanism), regaining a significance and influence such as it had not had for centuries (the deadly wound being healed), in the re-establishment of Jesuitism and the Inquisition (1814)—the murder of two hundred female and nearly two thousand male Protestants in Southern France (1815)—the re-invigoration of the Propaganda Society (1817)—the founding of the Lyons Propagation Society (1822) and of numerous Colleges and Theological Seminaries-the renewed ardor of a large number of old Catholic Societies—the purchase, by the “Society for the Holy Childhood of Jesus,” of about 400,000 Chinese orphan children, at about three cents apiece, in order to bring up and “baptize” them in the Catholic communion, and the purchase of numerous pretended conversions from the lower classes of Protestants in Europe—the gathering in of thousands from the Episcopalians in England, and the very rapid increase of their numbers, in the United States, from immigration—the sending out of three thousand priests on foreign mission work, disseminating, among the heathens, the most corrupting Jesuitical casuistry and idolatry in the name of Christianity, and, at times, especially in remote islands, the most shameless French licentiousness, worse than that previously practiced by the heathens themselves—the affirmation, by Pope Pius IX., in 1854, of the sinlessness (Immaculate conception) of the Virgin Mary, “the Mother of God, and the Queen of Heaven” (thus still more than ever justifying and encouraging the increasing Roman Catholic Mariolatry, or idolatrous worship of Mary, to whom are addressed numerous prayers, beseeching her to persuade or command her son Jesus to grant the petitions of the suppliants)—the issuance by the same pope, in 1864, of the “Syllabus of Errors,” claiming still the “Church’s” power to use temporal force, and denouncing non-Catholic schools and the separation of Church and State—the declaration of the Vatican Council, July 18th, 1870, in the midst of a terrific tempest of black clouds and incessant lightning flash and thunder peal, of the INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE (thus making him God on earth, the last Supreme Judge of the human race in all questions of faith and morals, from whose decision no one can deviate without loss of salvation—see 2 Thess. 2:3, 4), followed, in speedy Divine retribution, the very next day, July 19th, 1870, by the declaration of war against Germany by Napoleon III., the political supporter of the papacy, which contest in two months destroyed the Empire of France and the temporal power of the pope—and the Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII., Nov. 1st, 1885, “De Civitatum Gubernatione Christiana” (Concerning the Christian Government of States), enjoining upon all Catholics to devote all their energies to influence and control the politics of the world, and to remodel all States and Constitutions upon Catholic principles (and thus carry the world back to the midnight of the Dark Ages, and to the essentially political, as well as to the essentially formal, legal, ceremonial and conditional, religion of Pagan Rome, and to unspiritualize and corrupt Christ’s professing kingdom by making it a kingdom of this world); the appearance of fresh proof that God has a people even in Roman Catholicism, or Mystical Babylon (out of whose fellowship He calls them to come, Rev. 18:4), in the existence of true spiritual religion among a few Catholics of South Germany, leading them to feel the worthlessness of empty pomp and ceremony, the sinfulness and helplessness of man, his absolute dependence on the mercy of God, and need of an inward union with Christ through repentance and faith, provoking far more bitter hatred and persecution than even infidelity provokes from the bigoted followers of the pope—and in the existence of similar humble spirituality, looking beyond all creatures to God, and lovingly serving and spontaneously and cheerfully praising Him in the midst of life-long privations and sufferings, among some of the aged, poor and ignorant Catholics of Ireland, grievously oppressed by their English lords;[2] the remarkable outpouring of the Divine Spirit, in the first years of the century, upon England and the United States, and large ingatherings into the Protestant communions; the vast increase of the profession, in recent years, without the evident possession, of Christianity (more members having been added to the “churches” in this century, chiefly since 1850, than their entire number of members at its beginning), especially the deceiving and gathering in of large numbers of the young, particularly young females, by Sunday Schools, and by preaching loose doctrine or no doctrine, and by other myriad human means and machinery (often conducted by so-called “evangelists” at a stipulated price of from $25 to $200 per week), protracted and distracted meetings, perversions of Scripture, fabulous stories, anxious seats, mourners’ benches, affecting tunes, sobs, sighs, groans, convulsions, human resolutions, hand-shaking, etc., etc., etc.; the secularization or worldly assimilation of the professing “church;” the substitution of money-based societies for the church of God, and of human learning and human boards for the Spirit of God; the old characteristically and essentially Jesuitical principle of systematically indoctrinating the minds of the young with false[3] religion, sifting nearly the whole juvenile population through the “Sabbath School,” substituting the feeble and humanly-devised influence of the “Sabbath School” teacher for the potent and scripturally-enjoined influence of the home and the church, and resulting, in a large proportion of instances, according to the most recent and extensive and reliable investigations, in filling the youthful mind with irreverent religionism and hatred of the Bible and the church;[4] the establishing or getting control of seminaries, colleges and universities for the same proselyting purposes, (Protestants, in this as in numerous other matters, merely copying the old Catholic methods); the vile character of much of the fiction found in “Sabbath School” libraries; theatrical preaching, greeted with laughter and applause; the great increase of hireling “shepherds,” who, instead of feeding the flock, feed themselves upon the flock, caring not for the sheep (whom they hasten to leave at any time for a larger price elsewhere), and lording it over the flock for filthy lucre’s sake (Eze. 24; John 10; Acts 20:33-35; 1 Peter 5:2, 3); the multiplication of almost all species of worldly amusements in connection with the so-called “churches,” for the entertainment and retention of the young members who, having no spiritual life, cannot partake of spiritual food, and for the raising of money for pretended religious purposes—such as strawberry and ice-cream festivals, oyster suppers, concerts, burlesque hymns, comic songs, amateur theatricals, Sunday School excursions, and picnics, and banners, and emblems, Christmas trees, Easter cards, charity balls, and “church fairs” (with their rafflings or gamblings), rightly termed “abysses of horrors,” mingling sham trade with sham charity, obtaining money under false pretenses, teaching the selfish and thoughtless patrons how to be “benevolent without benevolence, charitable without charity, devout without devotion, how to give without giving and to he paid for ‘doing good,’”—thus attempting to serve God and mammon, and turning what is claimed to be God’s house of prayer into a house of merchandise and a den of thieves, and loudly calling for the Master’s scourge to cleanse the temple of its defilements (Jews, Catholics and Protestants, all practicing these abominations); the increasing tendency, as in the latter part of the Dark Ages under the teachings of the Pope of Rome, to reduce all the commandments to one, GIVE GOLD, as though this were the one thing needful, and everything else were of no value, for the salvation of the soul;[5] the almost universal tendency of people to try to pull the mote out of other people’s eyes, and not to think of the beam in their own eyes-to busy themselves chiefly with the means and ways of morally improving others, without beginning with their own moral improvement, resulting in extravagances and abortions; the exhuming and deciphering of the ancient monumental records of Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia, all tending to illustrate and confirm, in the most wonderful manner, the exact truthfulness of the Old Testament Scriptures, at a time when such a confirmation seems most needed by an unbelieving world; many new translations of the Scriptures into the languages of both civilized and uncivilized peoples; the union of the Lutheran and the Reformed “Churches,” in Prussia, at the command of the king, into the “Evangelical Church,” and the revival of “Old Luther anism” there; the Tractarian or Anglo-Catholic movement in the “Church of England,” resulting in Ritualism, Romanism and Skepticism; the formation of the Broad-Church (in addition to the High-Church and the Low-Church) party, in the “Church of England”-“so broad that you cannot see across it,” says Mr. John Gadsby, of London-“the Church of England,” says Mr. A. V. G. Allen, of Cambridge, Mass., “thus remaining open to all the tides of thought and spiritual life which have swept over the nation, and thus able to retain in its folds those whom no other form of organized Christianity could tolerate;” the appearance, in 1860, of the rationalistic “Essays and Reviews,” written by seven Oxford Episcopalian teachers, and, in 1862, of “Bishop” Colenso’s “Investigations of the Pentateuch and Joshua,” assailing the authenticity and credibility of those Scriptures with the antiquated or surrendered arguments long current in Germany, and the acquittal of the charge of heresy, both of the Essayists and of Colenso, by the Privy Council, the highest ecclesiastical court in England; the disestablishment of the Episcopal “Church” in Ireland in 1869, with its prospective disestablishment in England also, before the lapse of many years; the reunion, in 1846, of Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, New School Baptists, Methodists, Moravians, and other Trinitarian Protestants, of all countries, in an “Evangelical Alliance” (significantly apostrophized by Krummacher, in his address of welcome, “O heart-stirring mirage!”), on a doctrinal basis of Nine Articles, the chief object avowed being to oppose the progress of the papacy and of more than half-papish Puseyism;the union of nearly all Protestants in other Societies, Associations, Diets, Councils, Committees and Conferences; the organization and operation of large numbers of Bible, Tract, Missionary, Abstinence and Relief Societies, and of the so-called “Salvation Army,” with its eccentricities, profanities and delusions;the gathering of about two million communicants into the Protestant “churches” from heathen lands; the continued home and foreign missionary zeal of the Moravians, which began in 1732,—“accomplishing,” it is said, “the most extraordinary results with the fewest means,” trusting in the providence of God, choosing the poor and humble fields (not of India and China, but) of Greenland, Labrador, the West Indies, South Africa and Australia, and heroically doing rough work which others would not touch; the obliteration of almost all distinctions between the various Protestant “churches;” the cloaking of the shallowest unbelief under the popular assertions that there should be no doctrine, no creed, no church, but perfect liberty in all these matters; the notion that self-styled sincerity, no matter what one believes, any religion or no religion, is all that is necessary for salvation; the doubt, suppression or denial, by the most of Protestants, of many of the vital truths of Christianity; a diminished sense of sin, and a fainter conviction of the indispensability of the atoning blood of the Son of God and of the regenerating power of the Spirit of God; the Pharisaic principle of transforming religion from a saving inward reality into a vain-glorious outward show; the general contempt and abuse of revealed religion; a disbelief in the special providence of God extending to all the events of human life; a disbelief in the literal, verbal, plenary inspiration of the Scriptures—this spides of infidelity permeating, more or less, nearly all the Protestant “churches,” unblushingly avowed by their most recent and authoritative writers, and in reality degrading the Scriptures to the level of all other books, containing a mixture of truths and errors, which it is left for the reader to discriminate, accepting what he pleases, and rejecting what he pleases; the stigmatizing of those who adhere to the old unpopular doctrinal truths proclaimed by the prophets and by Christ and His Apostles, as being “a hundred years behind the times,” and as applying the principles of the cold understanding to the language of emotion and imagination, and too literally deducing doctrines from bold types and metaphors, while at the same time the objectors admit that the old system of doctrine is made out fairly and logically enough, but too rigidly, from the language of the Scriptures; the steadfast and immovable adherence of “a very small remnant according to the election of grace” to original apostolic principles and practices (Isa. 1:9; Rom. 11:5), in the face of continual blasts of unpopularity, ridicule, slander, contempt and persecution (Matt. 5:10-12; Rom. 3:8; Acts 28:22)—only those who have eyes to see being able to discern the unworldly and spiritual motives of these despised and calumniated servants of the Most High God; the rise (or revival) of Universalism, Unitarianism, Naturalism, Anti-Supernaturalism, Unspiritualism, Undoctrinalism, Superficialism, lism, Philosophism, Transcendentalism, Paganism, Pantheism, Humanitarianism, Liberalism, Neologism, Campbellism, Irvingism, Darbyism, Puseyism, Mormonism, Millerism, Wine-brennerianism, Two-Scedism, Psychopannychism, Non-Resurrectionism, Annihilationism, Universal Restorationism, Pseudo-Spiritualism, Utilitarianism, Rationalism, Pelagiamsm, Scientism, Agnosticism, Omniscienceism, Presumptuousism, Stoicism, Materialism, Evolutionism, Fatalism, Atheism, Optimism, Pessimism, Socialism, Communism, Libertinism, Red Republicanism, Internationalism, Nihilism, Destructionism, Dynamitism, Atrocicism and Anarchism.[6]

Universalism, like Arminianism, originated in the first Theological Seminary, the Catechetical School established at Alexandria, Egypt, about 180 A. D., and designed to harmonize Greek Philosophy and Chris- tianity. Clement of Alexandria was its father, and Origen was its most distinguished advocate. Clement was also the father, and Pagan Philosophy the mother, and the First Theological Seminary the birthplace, of Pelagianism and Rationalism, and of the professedly Christian denial of the sacrificial atonement of Christ, His second personal coming to the world, a general judgment, and the resurrection of the body.[7] An abundant demonstration of this statement is found in Prof. Alexander V. G. Allen’s recently published “Continuity of Christian Thought,” pages 33-68. Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, of Germany (1768-1834), the modern reviver of Clement’s or the Greek Theology, and “the typical theologian of the nineteenth century,” as he is called, also rejected the fall of the angels, the personality of the Devil, the personality of God, and the doctrine of the Trinity; he was a Pantheist,[8] holding that God dwells in every man forever—like Spinoza, identifying God and the universe—and, while professing to revive and refine the Protestant orthodoxy of the sixteenth century, he held that God chose only a few to be saved in time in order that all, through their means, might be saved in eternity, thus maintaining the doctrines of universal election, universal redemption, universal regeneration, and universal salvation. “He had drunk deeply at the springs of ancient Greek philosophy,” and declared that Christianity had as close affinity with Paganism as with Judaism; that “God is the constitutional ruler of the world, responsible to the infinite righteousness which is the charter of the Divine activity; that humanity is endowed with native rights which every human government must respect; that God must rule the world for the good of all, and not in the interest of a few; that grace, no less than law, is the dispensation under which all men everywhere are living; that the Bible, being the record of a progressive revelation, must contain in its earlier portions much which is superseded, or even contradicted, by the later and higher truth; and that although evangelists and Apostles spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, it does not follow that the attribute of infallibility pertains to all their utterances.” Here comes out very plainly the cloven foot of Pantheism and Universalism—human reason set up in critical and absolute judgment of Divine Revelation. Ever since the second century, universalism has more or less affected the Catholic and nearly all the non-Catholic or Protestant communions; but it was not organized into a separate denomination until in 1751 by James Relly in London, and in 1779 by John Murray in Gloucester, Mass. Modern Universalists are Anti-trinitarians, Pelagians and Rationalists; they believe that sin will be punished after death, but not forever. They claim about sixty thousand members in the United States, and have their Sunday Schools, Theological Seminaries and Missions. The most of the denominations of the nineteenth century are extensively permeated by Universalism. Alfred Tennyson, the Poet Laureate of England, in his “In Memoriam,” gives expression to this very prevalent feeling, which is also his own:

A speculative Pantheism, with its system of Universal Salvation, was the leading tendency of the infidelity of the first half of the nineteenth century; and the leading tendency of the infidelity of the last half of the nineteenth century has been an evolutionist, materialistic, fatalistic, Stoic, atheistic Agnosticism. “These types,” says Prof. John Cairns, “appear successively in the most prominent unbeliever of the nineteenth century, David Friedrich Strauss,” of Germany. Change is one of the most characteristic features of infidelity. Strauss passed through three marked changes of belief. In his first edition of his “Life of Jesus,” in 1835, he was a pantheist; in his second edition, in 1864, he was a naturalistic theist, or a deist; while, in his “Old and New Faiths,” published in 1873, he has become a materialistic atheist. “His criticism thus refutes itself, and ends by pulling down the whole temple of religion on its head,” declaring that there can be no God and no religion, and that this planet, with all its works and all its inhabitants, must one day utterly vanish, and leave no trace behind. Ernest Renan, of France, is a more conservative follower of Strauss; but his “Life of Jesus” (1863) substitutes romance for history, makes the miracles of Christ spurious, and blends good and evil, in an impossible manner, in His character. John Stuart Mill (1806-73), the clearest-minded of English infidels during this century, in his “System of Logic,” strikes at the root of all spiritual, revealed religion; teaches the doctrine of universal causation, absolute fatalism, the necessity of all human character and conduct as well as of all material phenomena; but he held this system with less clearness and firmness the longer he lived. In his posthumous “Three Essays on Religion,” he leaves a little room for the supernatural; admits the validity of the argument from design; but thinks that God, though perfectly good, is not almighty (an idea common to both Pagan Philosophy and false religion); he confounds morality with religion (another idea common to false philosophy and false religion); he hopes that Jesus was a Divine messenger, and he admired His character the more he studied Him, and confesses that the Prophet of Nazareth was a man of sublime and pre-eminent genius, and the greatest moral reformer, martyr and exemplar that ever appeared on earth. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), with his chronic dyspepsia, and extreme pessimism, and worship of force and thrift, and rejection of Christianity as a Divine revelation, and still greater contempt of materialistic evolution which he called “mud philosophy,” with his “silences,” “eternities,” “infinitudes,” “realities,” “veracities,” “moralities” and “idealities,” which he substituted for God, denying the personality and fatherhood of the Supreme Being, was a sort of Pantheist, but also a Stoic, a stern and earnest teacher of morality. He professed to have wrestled with the problems of the universe, and, by the aid of Goethe, the German poet, to have fought himself free from the dragons and quagmires of Tophet into the eternal blue of Heaven, and thus to have been “converted from fear and sorrow to peace and joy;” and so John Stuart Mill professed to have been “converted from darkness to light” by reading Marmontel’s Memoirs. Herbert Spencer (born 1820), a retired civil engineer, and the most pretentious of speculators, with his materialistic and fatalistic evolution of all things, and with his “omnipresent, infinite, eternal, unknown and unknowable Power, from which all things proceed”—the Only and the Ultimate Reality, of whom or which we do not know and never can know whether he, she or it has personality, consciousness, volition, intelligence or emotion—is a simultaneous concentration of Straussism, a unique compound of Pantheism, Deism and Atheism. He traces the origin of all religions to dreams and ghosts, the latter being gradually ranked, de-materialized, de-anthropomorphized and unified,[9] as civilization advanced; and, in the concluding (sixteenth) chapter of the Sixth Part or Volume of his “Principles of Sociology,” he, if possible, out-Satans Satan himself in pouring the most horrible and blasphemous contempt upon all the fundamental, though caricatured, truths of the Bible, and upon the God of the Bible, whom he degrades below the god of the Fiji Islanders! Behold the black and bottomless depths to which modern Scientism, Philosophism and Religionism descend! For Spencer maintains that his system is a religion, although Frederic Harrison, the Positivist Philosopher, insists that there is no more religion in Spencer’s system than in the binomial theorem, the equator, a gooseberry, or a parallelopiped; and we are told that there are, in both England and America, Unitarian congregations that avow that their whole theology consists in Spencer’s religious conception—a theory which “defecates the idea of deity to a pure transparency,” and which is, therefore, virtual ATHEISM. Of course, if there is a God who has created finite intelligent beings, He can make Himself intelligible to them. The common sense of mankind declares that there is a Divine Creator and Sustainer of the universe, who has, in His works, revealed to His intelligent creatures not only His power, but His wisdom, benevolence and righteousness, as well as our responsibility to Him and our dependence upon Him. Atheism, in the garb of Agnosticism, as in every other garb, is “a hollow mockery to both head and heart.”

The unionistic spirit seems for some time to have been very prevalent in the religious world. Some of the High-Church party in the Anglican communion desire fraternization with Roman Catholicism, and others with Greek Catholicism; while the Protestants seem to wish universal affiliation with each other. “A change wide and deep,” says Mr. John Stoughton, “came over the domain of religious thought during the middle of this century, different from any before, breaking down old hedges, and defacing old landmarks, so that in now walking the theological round we hardly know where we are. Even on High-Church standards, and on the top of rationalistic stocks. Evangelical growths have appeared. A new spirit has come over the Baptist denomination within the last thirty years. Up to 1850 a broad doctrinal line could be drawn between the Particular or Calvinistic and the General or Arminian Baptists; but that old distinction between the two classes of Baptists seems now nearly obliterated. For several years these two classes have been united in the same Associations and operations, and the doctrinal distinction between Calvinism and Arminianism is effaced, to a very great measure at least, in the Baptist home operations, while the distinction remains asserted in the titles of their Foreign Missions. “The same statement is true of the New School (who call themselves Regular or Calvinistic) and the Free-Will Baptists in the United States; the doctrinal distinction between them has practically disappeared, for they are all Arminians together.” These are the piping tunes of peace,” says Mr. James Strong, the leading Methodist theologian of America, in his book called “Irenics.” “Let us hope that Christians, at least, have beaten their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, and that they will learn war no more.” And he labors, in a truly surprising manner, to show the “Substantial Reconcilement of Calvinism and Arminianism!” He declares that a remarkable assimilation between Calvinists and Arminians has taken place within the present century, and that they have almost ceased the wordy warfare; that a by-path has been recently discovered across the chasm heretofore thought to separate the opposing cliffs of Divine predestination and human free-agency—this by-path consisting in the resolution of the Divine decrees into the certainty arising from the uniform operation of general laws established by the great Sovereign for governing the transactions of the universe, including man’s will itself; the Divine foreordination of human actions being simply a determination on God’s part to create men with powers such as He foresaw would result in these acts, and then leave them to the free exercise of those powers. This is a position, he says, which all consistent theists, including Arminians, must admit. “God certainly did foresee such results, He did create man capable of them, and He does allow them to take place. If that is all, there is nothing to dispute about. We may wonder why God should do so, but the ultimate reason is as inscrutable to the Arminian as it is to the Calvinist. Both suppose, both believe, that it was best for man in the end, and most for the glory of God on the whole, that it should thus be; and these both are forced at last to leave it. No mortal can fully understand it or authoritatively explain it. At least this has never yet been satisfactorily done. The true reconciling position is that the Divine economy is such as to give free scope (within certain limits, of course) to bad as well as to good influences, and even to extend enabling power to the agents who bring these about. In the conversion of the sinner, there are the Divine drawing and the human yielding, the yielding being the result of grace. The Spirit, of God takes the lead, and the subject follows. It makes little or no difference, except as a matter of technical terminology, whether, with the Calvinist, we say that the man was already converted, and, therefore, yielded; or, with the Arminian, that he yielded, and was, therefore, converted. The facts remain the same, and they take place in the same order; or, rather, they are more or less simultaneous. And so, in reference to the sanctiflcation and the final perseverance of the saints; the difference is almost wholly in name, and not in the thing. The most judicious Christians of all denominations prefer to leave to Jesus Christ the superlative pre-eminence of entire sanctification in this life. When a Christian falls from grace, Arminians admit or suspect that there was some important, if not radical, defect in the Christian character or conduct which led to so fatal a result, and they argue that Divine power alone can restrain any one from thus destroying himself. So noted a writer as Prof. Philip Schaff says: ‘Good Calvinists preach like Methodists, as if everything depended on man; good Methodists pray like Calvinists, as if everything depended on God. The five knotty points of Calvinism have lost their point, and have been smoothed off by God’s own working in the history of the church.’ The paths pursued by both are substantially parallel, and in these days of closer Christian fellowship between the two great communions represented, they have grown more and more near together. Let us cherish the ardent expectation that, when the two processions meet at the common gateway into Paradise, each will look back with glad surprise to see how really contiguous they always were. “To show at how very great a distance from the Calvinistic” path to Paradise “Mr. Strong himself is still journeying, I need but quote two of his recent utterances. 1. The last essay in his “Irenics” is on “The Divine Compassion in the Endless Punishment of the Wicked.” After declaring that most of the Scripture language in regard to the future punishment of the wicked is undoubtedly figurative, that torment will be not so much physical as mental, a separation from all wordly business and pleasure and an abandonment to evil thoughts and companions-not so much any special or vindictive affliction of Divine power as the consequence of the legitimate and necessary operation of the laws of their own being, a reaping of the harvest which they themselves have sown, the suffering, therefore, being exactly proportioned to their demerits; that a holy Heaven would be the worst hell to the wicked, and a compulsory preparation for Heaven the greatest absurdity, he concludes with these words: “We have seen that the good of all grades must applaud it that is, the endless punishment of the wicked as the only means of security and satisfaction for an injured Majesty, an outraged law, and an imperiled government. The bad themselves must confess it to be but the inevitable issue of violated conscience, debased powers and misused privileges. Above all” (and here comes the thoroughly anti-Calvinistic sentiment), “the great Sovereign and Savior, Father and Friend, who has exhausted every resource of the Godhead in order to avert the catastrophe, may reverently be said to sign with tears the death-warrant of the reprobate, as he wailed with unavailing grief over the fall of Tyre, Babylon and Jerusalem: ‘If thou hadst known in thy day the things which belong unto thy peace! but even now are they hid from thine eyes.’ Divine compassion has reached its climax in the final doom.” Thus it seems, according to Mr. Strong’s doctrine, that God cannot save the sinner; and all sinners, who are finally saved, really save themselves! 2. In his article on Arminianism in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia, he says: “In a last analysis the precise element or force which turns the scale in favor of a new life, or otherwise, is believed by Wesleyans to be the will of the subject himself, acting freely under its own impulses, in view of, but not constrained by, motives, and yet stimulated and guided by Divine light and grace. Repentance and faith are indeed potentially the gift of God; but their actual use and exercise are the conscious, voluntary, and personal act of the man himself.” Even if there were not manifold other texts, two passages in Paul’s letter to the Philippians Philippians 1:6; 2:12,13 would annihilate this citadel of Arminianism. These passages demonstrate that God does the whole work of the sinner’s salvation—both the beginning and the consummation of it, both the willing and the doing (or working or exercising); and we know that only on this ground will He justly receive all the glory. The central substance of Mr. James Strong’s theology is precisely the same as that of Roman Catholicism, as will be seen by reference to the “Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent,” Session vi., chapter v., and the book on “Symbolism,” p. 105, by John Adam Mohler (1796-1838), the most esteemed Catholic theologian in this century; these accepted Roman Catholic authorities declare that the sinner’s salvation is determined by his “freely assenting to and co-operating with the grace of God”—his “freely yielding to and following the influence of the Spirit of God.”

As in the fourth century, the union of the professing church and the State corrupted the former by the introduction of heathen superstitions and practices, so, in the present century, the large unregenerate additions made to the membership of the Protestant communions (those memberships increasing, during recent years, in England twice as fast, and in the United States three times as fast, as the population) by Sunday Schools and galvanic revivals, have brought in numerous corruptions of doctrine and practice, so that there is scarcely the slightest difference between the professing church and the world, skepticism and secularism being almost as characteristic of the one as of the other. Mr. Alfred E. Myers, a Presbyterian minister of Owasco, New York, says in his pamphlet on “The Sociable, the Entertainment, and the Bazar:” “A church which has recently received a number of young people into active membership is the scene of a humorous entertainment. A stage is laid over the pulpit platform and over the place lately occupied by the communion-table, and there the young converts, with others, are encouraged to perform for the benefit of the church. At another entertainment a group of young gentlemen go through the form of selling at auction a young lady to the highest bidder. At another of these diversions, before people of education and refined taste, a professional musician renders a roystering bacchanalian song with startling energy. Clergymen and their wives figure in costume as George Washington and Martha Washington. One minister reads humorous selections; another sings comic songs; others make droll speeches. The pulpit is sometimes removed, and Santa Claus and his chimney occupy the platform. Again, in just such a position, along with other attractions, we have an organ-grinder, with a wealthy middle-aged citizen sustaining the dignified role of the monkey passing the hat for pennies. The superintendent of a Sunday School, chalked and painted, poses as an ancient king, and teachers amuse an audience with a semblance of stage embraces. Under the auspices of a Sunday School a college glee-club provokes great merriment by its bold allusions to the truths which, in the school, are taught as tremendous verities. In the ‘Old Folks’ Concert solemn hymns and revered tunes are sung in a drawling style to raise a laugh. At an exhibition in the lecture-room of a prominent church, a worthy gentleman of remarkable sobriety of deportment and visage, and excellent in the prayer-meeting, played ‘the sneezer,’ and another Christian gentleman feigned intoxication, with his fair and temperate face smeared with red blotches to assist the illusion. The programme of a Church Entertainment, for admission to which twenty-five cents were charged, lies before us, and is as follows: ‘Part First.—Two operatic selections on the piano; three ballads; one tragic reading; one comic reading; and a Xylophon Solo. Part Second.—An exhibition of a singing-machine; a slave camp-meeting song; an old-fashioned negro melody; and a semi-classical duet. Part Third.—1. Chorus, ‘Whosoever Will.’ 2. Quartette, ‘Jesus, Lover of my Soul.’ 3. Solo and Chorus, ‘Old Log Cabin in the Dell.’ When a church enters upon a round of Entertainments, the occasions which suggest them are many and various. There is a festival for each season of the year, and for specific products of the confectioner’s art. They are for winter and summer, for old and young, for benevolence and for fun. Hardly is one of these past, and the remains of food or litter or stage-appointments removed from sight, before another is under consideration.” Says the author of “The Church Walking with the World,”

In the last chapter of Mr. G. F. Pentecost’s work, “Out of Egypt,” he makes some excellent remarks on “The Mixed Multitude” of Egyptians that went up with the Israelites into the wilderness, and loathed the heavenly manna, and lusted and occasioned Israel to lust after the fish and cucumbers and melons and leeks and onions and garlic of Egypt (Ex. 12:38; Num. 11:4-7). “Their lusting was evidence of their distaste for new and spiritual things, and their longing for old and carnal things, for fleshly pleasures, practices and fellowships. The mixed multitude were not in fellowship with God, nor with His purposes of grace toward Israel. The wilderness was lonely to them. There were none in it, but God and His people. The food was heavenly; and they had no real taste for it. The occupations and conversations of the real Israelites were of a nature that did not interest them; and their old nature was starving for the delights and employments of the old life. It did not take these Egyptians long to communicate their discontent to the Israelites themselves, and the whole camp fell a lusting. Now it is not difficult to see in the church of to-day the presence and working of this mixed multitude of worldlings, and the effect of their lustings and worldly outcries upon the unsanctified natures of God’s own people, with whom they associate. It is not surprising that unregenerated people in the church do not enjoy the life that is marked out for the child of God in this world. These people complain of a too strict religious life. Their hearts are in Egypt, and they object to being led too far away from the world. Separation from the world and consecration to Christ and His service are intolerable to them. The Bible is dry and meaningless to them. Spiritual conversation does not interest them. They loathe preaching that is spiritual. All preaching that holds forth the blood of Christ as the only ground of justification with God; that insists on the necessity of being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of the incorruptible Word of God, and by the Spirit; that refuses to confound regeneration and baptism; that insists on a new creature in Christ Jesus; that exposes the difference between the religious doing of the flesh, and the real fruit of the Spirit manifested in a life that has come from God; that will not accept reformation for regeneration; that dwells much on the necessity of maintaining a real spiritual walk with God; that insists on real separation from the world—is distasteful to them. They seek out a minister who preaches ‘in harmony with the age;’ one who will give them neat essays and sermons on interesting religious topics, rather than expositions of God’s word, with a practical enforcement of it upon the heart and conscience. In numerous churches in the United States the mixed multitude have carried the carnal lustings so far that they have turned the church buildings into concert halls and places of general entertainment. There is a bazar, or a supper, or a tea, or a concert, or a company of jubilee singers, or some sixpenny show or another, going on all through the season. These things are done for two ostensible reasons: first, to get money to carry on the church; and second, ‘to afford amusement for our young people, who, you know, must have amusement, or they will not stay with us.’ The real reason is that the mixed multitude in the church have not consecrated their wealth, great or small, to the Lord; and so must resort to all sorts of miserable make-shifts to get money, by hook or by crook, to carry on ‘the church.’ Oh, the shame and disgrace of trailing the cause of God in the mire before a scoffing and unbelieving world, and of sending Christ begging among the unbelievers for a few dimes or dollars to carry on ‘religion’ with. And in order to get their money, any kind of carnal and Egyptian entertainments will be arranged, and all sorts of miserable expedients resorted to. The people will be bribed to give some money by a supper, or a cheap concert, or a show of some kind or other. It must make angels weep, and the demons in hell dance with delight, to behold the cause of Christ so degraded. The Master would not worship him on the mount, though the Devil promised to give Him all the kingdoms of the earth if He would do so. But now, with the aid of the mixed multitude, the church, the fair ‘bride of Christ,’ is draggling her robes in the dirt of the Egyptian world, bowing down to Satan, for a very small pittance of his ‘filthy lucre.’ A score of things are accomplished by the god of this world by this proceeding; among which these are some: All spirituality must disappear under such circumstances; the covetousness of the mammon-people in the church is encouraged and justified; the world is set sneering at the weakness and worldliness of the church; the carnal nature of the people of God is stirred up; young Christians (if there be any in such a church) are led away from their simplicity in Christ; and all spiritual power disappears from that body. But apart from the plea of necessity to get the money for the cause of Christ, the real reason is that the mixed multitude are lusting after the leeks and onions and garlic of Egypt. You will see all the worldly Christians eagerly aroused to the importance of a bazar, a supper, or an entertainment. And having tasted again the old Egyptian delights, and eaten flesh once more, they soon tire of the thin quality and meagre supply had under restrictions in the church, and go trooping back to Egypt for the flesh-pots. You may find them by scores and hundreds in the theatres, in the ball-rooms, at the fashionable parties and the ‘society’ routs of the day. God is not in all their thoughts; Christ is not in their hearts; spiritual things are far above, out of their sight. It is too sadly true that Egypt has found its way into the church, and more or less corrupted it in all its parts. Its doctrine is pared down or diluted to suit a carnal conscience. Its life is voted too straight. The narrow way is broadened into a highway of pleasure. The line of demarcation that divided between her borders and the world is largely obliterated; and her true children have to make the best of the way through the wilderness, as Caleb and Joshua did with that generation which lusted after Egypt and provoked God there for forty years.”

“Quality tells far more than quantity in spiritual things,” says Mr. C. Williams, of England. “The church and the world are on better terms with each other than they were. There are among us those who think that Christians are no longer strangers and sojourners, as their fathers were, but are as much at home in Vanity Fair as in the Palace Beautiful. I fear there is increasing laxity in the churches, growing conformity to the world. The strength of the church is in its spirituality. If this be lost, we shall be ‘weak as other men.’ Only the unworldly can conquer the world. The godless suspect the sincerity of professors who are as gay, or as mercenary, or as selfish as themselves; while they respect those who refuse to walk in ‘the way of sinners,’ and are never found near ‘the seat of the scornful.’ A chief condition of church success is holiness of life. The historian, Gibbon, in accounting for the progress of the Christian religion (on natural causes), laid considerable stress upon the character of the early Christians. He described them as ‘averse to the gay luxury of the age,’ as remarkable for ‘chastity, temperance, economy, and all the sober and domestic virtues,’ as winning the good opinion of the profane by ‘the strictest integrity and the fairest dealing,’ and as practicing ‘humility, meekness and patience.’ By this character they ‘put to silence the ignorance of foolish men,’ and compelled the world to do homage to the religion they professed.” Mr. Richard Glover, President of the Baptist Union of England, says: “The church, with an unbelief almost equal to and less excusable than that of the infidel world which it dreads, is moved to fear some collapse of both the gospel and the church which rests upon it. The strangest of all unbeliefs is that of those Christians who copy the poorest of all Scripture saints, and ‘tremble for the ark of God.’ We ought to have faith in Truth, and in its power to hold its own. There is no throne so secure as that of Truth. There are no useful falsehoods nor wholesome errors. Anything that alloys our creed only impairs its gracious influence.” The author of “Modern Christianity a Civilised Heathenism,” who is supposed to be a clergyman of the English Established Church, says: “Until the world is wholly converted, which nobody yet pretends, Christ’s people must ever wage with it a deadly war. There can be no peace between two such armies as the soldiers of Christ and the servants of the Devil. His disciples must fight as their Captain fought, making themselves (if need be) an offense, a nuisance, an abhorrence to every man who is not, like them, an open confessor of His name.”

The Roman Catholics claim to have at the present time about 3,000 foreign missionaries, at an annual cost of $1,500,000; while the Protestants claim to have now about 3,000 foreign missionaries, at an annual cost of about $7,500,000. Thus the Catholic must be far more self-denying or less extravagant than the Protestant missionaries, since each of the former receives on an average only one-fifth as much as each of the latter—one cause of which may be that Catholic priests are not allowed to marry. John E. Gossner, of Germany (1773-1858), driven by his evangelical views from Catholicism to Protestantism in 1826, and esteemed above all the other preachers in Berlin by the church historian Neander, held that missionaries ought to follow the example of Paul in working with their own hands; and in 1836 he established missions in Australia, India, North America and Western Africa, and during his lifetime educated and sent out one hundred and forty missionaries on his self-supporting plan to these fields. The “Gossner Society” still continues his system. It is said that industrial missions, which combine preaching with practical instruction in the arts of civilized life, and medical missions, which pay special attention to the sick, have been recently organized and operated with success. In 1865 the “China Inland Mission” was established by Mr. J. Hudson Taylor and his wife, of England, “on the principle of faith and prayer, independently of all the ordinary machinery of Missionary Societies, a large proportion of the missionaries sent out being laymen who were willing to consecrate themselves to the work with no remuneration but the supply of their actual wants, and some of whom are self-supporting.” It is said that “these missionaries have met of course with hardships and privations, and have frequently been reduced to great straits, and their faith has been severely tried, but on these occasions they have left the burden with the Lord and been helped;” and while former Protestant Missions have been confined to a narrow strip on the coast, these more scriptural missionaries have found friends everywhere, and gone into all the provinces, and penetrated to the utmost boundaries of the Chinese Empire. John G. Kerr, M. D., writing in the Cincinnati “Herald and Presbyter,” of June 17th, 1885, concerning “The China Inland Mission,” says: “In our missionary societies, as organised in modern times, there is too much of the form and semblance of a business corporation, in which the agents of the church agree, with a stipulated amount of money and the required number of men, to do a given amount of work in certain mission fields. There is a feeling in all Christian lands that a minister who enters the service of the church with his eye mainly fixed on the salary, is not the man who will be most successful in winning souls to Christ; it is even more necessary in a heathen land that the missionary should be able to convince the people, whose minds never rise above the sordid things of earth, that preaching the gospel is not with him a money-making business. The records of the China Inland Mission, as well as of other missions, show that access to the masses, in populous countries like China, is secured by works of benevolence and kindness. The managers of our missionary societies have much to learn of the power of the gospel of mercy and brotherly kindness as it was practiced on earth by our blessed Savior, and they have much to learn of the willingness of Christian people to give for these objects, and of the willingness of the heathen to aid in supporting them. The expense of hospitals, asylums and homes in heathen lands is much less than in Christian lands, and these institutions, under the management, for the most part, of laymen, will do an amount of physical good more than the equivalent of their cost; while there are also the direct and immediate spiritual results of dispelling prejudice, winning confidence, and giving living examples of the benevolent character of our holy religion. Christian people in this land are responsible for the use of a large proportion of the vast wealth which God has given to this country and this generation. While such vast multitudes of our fellow-men are in need of bodily and spiritual healings, it does not become the redeemed of the Lord to waste God’s money in self-indulgence and aggrandizement.” George Augustus Selwyn (1809-78), “the first Anglican Bishop of New Zealand,” and said to have been a laborious, self-denying and successful minister, declared at a Lord Mayor’s banquet in London, in 1854, that “the superfluities of social life in England would supply a fund sufficient to evangelize the world;” and he said a few days afterwards, when it was proposed by the government to withdraw his salary, that he was entirely willing to be one of the first Bishops to try the experiment of showing how many things there are in the world, salary included, which he could do without. And yet with how infinitesimal a fraction of even their “superfluities”—three cents apiece per year—are the combined Catholic and Protestant world willing to part for the purpose of effecting this universal evangelization! How small their faith in their own schemes, or how cold their love for the poor heathen who are perishing, at the rate of 80,000 souls a day, because Christians will not contribute for their conversion the pecuniary value of their own unnecessary luxuries! Why if contrary to the scriptures (1 Peter 1:18, 19), gold could purchase the eternal salvation of a single soul that would otherwise perish, all the Christians in the world ought to be cheerfully willing to dwell in log houses and subsist upon the simplest and cheapest vegetable diet the whole period of their temporal lives in order to accomplish so glorious a result. But, for those professing Christians who believe so unscriptural and Christ-dishonoring a doctrine, and who, nevertheless, refuse to deny themselves of even scarcely the smallest part of their superfluities for the salvation of a thousand million perishing heathen souls, a monument of eternal shame should rise from the earth and pierce the skies forever! Let them contribute even one-tenth of their incomes for so great a purpose as ancient national Israel were required to give to the Lord, and we will begin to believe in the sincerity, at least, of their professions.

It is said that a chain of Missionary Stations has been established through Central Africa from the Eastern to the Western coast; and that, instead of ninety Protestant missionaries among the Chinese some twenty years ago, there are now about four hundred. And Mr. Kichard Glover, President of the Baptist Union of England, eloquently declares: “The desolation of Africa is lifting up its gates that the King of glory may come in. India is smitten with the sacred curiosity which is saying, ‘Sirs, we would see Jesus.’ China—last to be touched by the gospel—is becoming first, and heading the nations in their return to God. If but our consecration matched our opportunity, we would at once begin to find ourselves within measurable distance of a regenerated world; and probably within a century heathenism in its worship and darkness would be dead, as it is dead here in this happy land. Shall we take our part in furthering this consummation? It seems as if God meant it to be wrought chiefly by the English people, and had set us as a nation of kings and priests unto God to rule and raise our fellow-men.” “The Anglo-Saxons,” says M. Taine, “are the most earnest, serious, Hebraic race in Europe, possessing the idea of the grand God of the Bible, omnipotent and unique.” Says the distinguished scientist, Elisee Reclus, of Paris: “England, of all civilized countries, is the one where the number of truly conscientious men, who guide their conduct by rules which they consider to be just and honorable, is the largest.” I myself believe that the Anglo-Saxons, the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United States, are now the most spiritually-blessed of all the peoples of the earth; and, more than by all possible temporal blessings would I and my brethren be rejoiced if it should please the Most High soon to pour out upon the two English nations the fullness of His quickening and sanctifying Spirit, making them indeed kings and priests unto Himself, and chosen vessels to bear His name into all the benighted regions of the globe, and to pour out of the same saving Spirit upon all the nations, making “the kingdoms of this world the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ” (Rev. 11:15). I believe that He, and no one else, has the power to do this blessed work, and that in His own best time and way He will make “a new Heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:18; Rev. 21:1).

Thomas Campbell (1763-1854), an ordained minister in the “Seceder Church of Scotland,” left Ireland in 1807, and came to Western Pennsylvania; his son, Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), a licentiate minister in the same “church,” followed his father in 1809. The theological views of the Campbells became “altered and liberalized, and were regarded by many as both novel and objectionable; hence they and the few who at first sided with them formed an isolated congregation, called ‘The Christian Association,’ at Brush Run, Washington County, Pa., in 1811.” Their special plea was the restoration of original apostolic Christianity, and the union of all Christians, with the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice. Becoming satisfied that immersion was the only scriptural baptism, both father and son and the majority of their members were immersed, in 1812, by Elder Loos, a Baptist minister. Alexander was thenceforth the leader of the movement. In 1813 the Brush Run “Church” joined the Redstone Baptist Association, and in 1823 the Mahoning Baptist Association. In 1827 the Baptist Churches withdrew fellowship from the followers of Alexander Campbell, and the latter were then constituted into a separate body that have called themselves “Disciples of Christ,” but have been generally known as “Campbellites,” an appellation which they indignantly repudiate at the same time that they implicitly reverence Mr. Campbell’s authority. They are extreme Arminians, and almost Pelagians,[11] and many of them avowed Universalists; they minimize the work of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of the sinner to the very lowest degree, and maximize the printed or preached word and immersion to the very highest degree, making immersion the last and an essential part of regeneration or the new birth, without which ordinance there is no pardon or salvation, though admitting that baptism has no abstract efficacy without previous faith in Christ and repentance toward God, and yet declaring that a person may believe the gospel, be changed in heart, and quickened by the Spirit, and still not be regenerate and saved without immersion (see A. Campbell’s Christian System, pp. 58, 60, 191-202, 212, 218 and 239). I have been carefully reading the most approved writings of the “Disciples” for many years; and, while glad to discover some very rare indications of spiritual-mindedness, I have been heartily pained to see, in general, their thorough and pugnacious anti-spirituality, naturalism and rationalism. Many of their views are inconsistent with each other, with Christian experience, which they ridicule, and with the Bible, which they profess to revere. Says Mr. Campbell, in the Preface to his Christian System, p. 6: “Judging others as we once judged ourselves, there are not a few who are advocating the Bible alone, and preaching their own opinions.” This seems to me to be an exact account of himself and his followers. They claim 600,000 communicants in the United States, mostly in the West and Southwest, and a few in other countries.

“Methodism,” says the Episcopalian historian, A. C. Jennings “gave rise to Evangelicanism in the Established Church of England; and Evangelicanism caused the church to recover vitality; there was a reaction against profligacy and skepticism.” Says Mr. John Stoughton: “The defects of early (Calvinistic) Evangelicals are manifest. They were destitute generally of any great taste for literature and art, and used a somewhat peculiar religious dialect; also they were intolerant of other men’s opinions, questioning the religion of those pronounced unevangelical, and they were one-sided in their theological systems. They did not clearly distinguish between scientific theology and spiritual religion. The inferences of eminent divines amongst reformers, amongst Puritans, and even amongst themselves, were too often confounded with the teachings of Scripture. They repudiated all authority but that of the Bible, yet they were powerfully influenced by their own favorite authors. Yet when all this is said—and I have put the matter in strong terms—it remains true, that what they lost in breadth they gained in depth. There was a living power in their convictions, which moved their whole being, and gave incisiveness to words, boldness to work. They were an immense power for good at the commencement of this century, and a long while afterwards; they were the very salt of the Church of England, during a period when influences existed threatening decay and corruption. If not for any number of dignitaries within its circle, if not for a multitude of adherents in its ranks, yet for spiritual force, for religious efficiency, the Evangelical movement can scarcely be over-estimated.” John Newton (born 1725) died in 1807. He would preach as long as he could talk. When remonstrated with for traveling and preaching when very old and feeble and almost helpless, he would exclaim, “I cannot stop. What, shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?” When near his end he said, “My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things—that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.” “Preaching Christ,” says Mr. Stoughton, “was the chief joy of those old ministers, and they lived on the sides of eternity. Richard Cecil (born 1748) died in 1810. During his last days his whole soul seemed absorbed in heavenly contemplations; and when in dying circumstances he exclaimed with great fervor, ‘None but Christ! none but Christ!’ Thomas Scott (born 1747) lived on till 1821, being all that while a pillar in the Evangelical aisle of the English Church. His ‘Family Bible’ was wonderfully popular, and was one main instrument in keeping alive evangelical sentiments and methods of interpretation. The capital excellency of the work perhaps consisted in following more closely than any other commentary the fair and adequate meaning of every part of Scripture, without regard to the niceties of human systems. Sir James Stephens, referring to Scott, says: ‘He would have seen the labors of his life perish, and would have perished with them, rather than distort the sense of revelation by a hair’s-breadth from what he believed to be its genuine meaning.’ The second coming of Christ was a favorite subject with the Evangelical clergy. Perhaps the zenith of prosperity in the Evangelical section of the English Church may be dated from 1810 to 1830; and then evangelical truth ceased to be identified with a particular school, and became,” Mr. Stoughton thinks, “much more widely diffused.” “The Independents,” Mr. S. says, “have been more conservative than the Presbyterians; and the Baptists more conservative than the Independents, and also more united than either of the other two denominations, because their denominational zeal rallied round one distinct institute (baptism), the name of which ever shone on their banners.”

During the present century about two hundred and thirty translations of the Bible have been made, about seventy of them in languages previously without a literature. The one of most interest to the readers of the present volume is the Canterbury, or Westminster, or Victorian Revision of the King James or Authorized Version—begun in 1870; the New Testament finished in 1880, and published in 1881; and the Old Testament finished in 1884, and published in 1885. This Anglo-American Revision, by sixty-seven English and thirty-four American scholars of nine different denominations, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, Methodist, Reformed, Lutheran, Unitarian and Quaker, is declared to be “the noblest monument of Christian union and co-operation in this nineteenth century.” The undertaking was inaugurated by the (Southern) Convocation of Canterbury, in the “Church of England,” but opposed by the (Northern) Convocation of York. In the Massoretic Text of the Old Testament (the Text almost universally received by both Jews and Christians) there are said to be 1,353 various readings, very many of which are merely in spelling, and do not affect the meaning; while there are said to be about 150,000 variations in the manuscripts of the New Testament, of which, however, only about 400 materially affect the sense, and of these only about fifty are of real importance, while even of these “not one affects an article of faith or a precept of duty which is not abundantly sustained by other and undoubted passages, or by the whole tenor of Scripture teaching.” The Old Testament Committees were far more conservative than the New Testament Committees, and have made much fewer changes, especially in the original text, and their work is, therefore, far less objectionable. The Committees on the New Testament made about 36,000 changes, including 5,788 changes in the Greek text, based mainly on the new Greek text of Westcott and Hort, which is chiefly founded on two Uncial Manuscripts believed to have been written about the middle of the fourth century—the Codex Sinaiticus (discovered by Tischendorf in 1844 in the Convent of St. Catharine at the foot of Mount Sinai, but not used till 1859), and the Codex Vaticanus (in the Vatican library at Rome, but not critically published till by Tischendorf in 1867); the Vatican manuscript, especially, being almost superstitiously venerated by Westcott and Hort and by the Revisers, on the ground that it contains the shortest, oldest and purest text, though it contains thousands of additions by second and third hands, and though there are known to be at least 1,763 manuscripts of the New Testament, in whole or in part, including 158 Uncials and 1,605 Cursives, very few of which have been thoroughly examined. The Textus Receptus, or Received Text, of the King James Version and of the other Protestant versions (German, French and Dutch) of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, usually followed Beza’s Greek text of 1589, which was based on Stephens’s text of 1550, that being derived from Erasmus’s text of 1527, and the latter derived from a few Cursive manuscripts of the Middle Ages, but traceable through the Byzantine family of manuscripts to the middle of the fourth century, and in general accord with the Alexandrine Codex (believed to have been of the fifth century) now in the British Museum, and with the Peshito, or Syriac Version, of the second century, “justly called the queen of the ancient versions;” and this text, says Prof. Philip Schaff, the President of the American Committee of Revision, “teaches precisely the same Christianity as the uncial text of the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts, the oldest versions, and the Anglo-American Revision.” The new version does not ex