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A SERMON BY THE LATE PETER MARSHALL

In his column “Day Book” in the Washington Times-Herald Tris Coffin described Peter Marshall’s “The American Dream” as “one of the great documents of recent times.” Dr. Marshall got the idea for his sermon from Norman Corwin’s war-time radio program, We Hold These Truths. It is reprinted here by permission of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., publishers of Catherine Marshall’s A Man Called Peter.

During the Second World War, I met on the train a lieutenant who had just returned from fighting in Italy.

He had been in the North African campaign.

He had fought in Sicily.

He wore the Purple Heart ribbon with his campaign ribbons.

I asked him what he thought of America.

It was a hard question to ask a man who had been gone so long,

who had been fighting for his country …

who had been wounded in action …

It was almost an impertinence.

He said that after what he had seen in North Africa and in Italy, he appreciated America more than ever.

He described the filth and the squalor of the cities he had seen …

He spoke of Tunis and Bizerte …

He told me of his impression of the Arabs and the natives of North Africa.

He had been deeply impressed with their misery and their slums.

I asked him some rhetorical questions, not expecting answers but rather to make him think, and to divert his attention from the bottle of rum in his raincoat pocket which, he had told me, he intended to finish between Roanoke and Washington.

“What is America?” I asked.

“What were you fighting for?

Did anyone in North Africa ever ask you that question? If they had, what would you have said?”

I venture to say that deep down in the hearts of the men who fought the bitterest battles—of them who died—there was a glimmering of an understanding that the things for which they fought were somehow all tied up in one bundle of ideals

of concepts

of principles

that we call the American Dream.

It is a Dream that has shone brightly at times and that has faded at other times.

World events today are forcing us, whether we realize it or not, to rediscover the meanings and the significances of the things that make America different from other nations …

the hope of a world weary of war, heartsick and hungry.

What is the American Dream?

What is it that makes our country different?

Do you know … you who fought for it overseas …

who braved the sniper in the jungle,

who flew through flak-filled skies,

who waded through the mud of Italy,

who knew the heat of the desert sun and the cold of the North Atlantic?

Do you know … you who made your speeches in Congress and waxed eloquent on the stump?

Do you know … you who boast of your ancestry and your membership in patriotic societies?

What is America?

Where is our country going?

Let no answer be lightly made.…

We cannot speak with any truth or realism about the future unless we understand the past.

What has America to give the rest of the world?

If only grain

or money

or clothing

or armaments …

then we have already lost the war and the peace … and our own souls.

Ours is a Covenant Nation …

The only surviving nation on earth that had its origins in the determination of the Founding Fathers to establish a settlement

“to the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.”

That was what William Bradford and George Carver had in mind when, beneath the swinging lantern in the cabin of the Mayflower, they affixed their signatures to the solemn declaration which established the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

They had come from the Old World and were seeking refuge in the New.

They had come from tyranny and oppression …

They had come from fear and coercion …

They had come from famine and from difficulty …

from wars and threats of wars.…

And they sought a new life in a new land.

Religious liberty to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience

and equal opportunity for all men …

These are the twin pillars of the American Dream.

Now a Covenant Nation is one that recognizes its dependence upon God and its responsibility toward God.

This nation was so born.

God was recognized as the source of human rights.

The Declaration of Independence says so.

A Covenant Nation is one which recognizes that God and His purposes stand over and above the nation … that the highest role a nation can play is to reflect God’s righteousness in national policy.

That is what Bradford and Carver certainly intended.

That is what Roger Williams sought, when he set up his settlement in Providence, Rhode Island.

That is what William Penn was striving after in Pennsylvania.

That is what they wanted in Maryland, when, in 1649, the Maryland Act of Toleration set it down in writing. That is what Thomas Jefferson was striving after when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

That is what they fought for too.

You can trace it from Bunker Hill

from Lexington and Concord

down through Valley Forge.…

They were concerned about rights.

These free men who had burlap wrapped around their feet, as they marched through the snow,

who carefully hoarded their gunpowder and clutched their muskets under their tattered uniforms to keep them dry.…

They were concerned about the rights of free men.

They made the first down-payments there—down-payments that have been kept up to this good day …

through Château-Thierry and the Argonne …

to Anzio and Cassino …

at Saint-Lo and Bastogne …

at Tarawa and Iwo Jima …

at Saipan and Guadalcanal.…

There have been periods in our history when the American Dream has faded and grown dim.

Today there is real danger that the American Dream will become the Forgotten Dream.

For freedom is not the right to do as one pleases but the opportunity to please to do what is right.

The Founding Fathers sought freedom …

not from law but freedom in law;

not freedom from government—but freedom in government;

not freedom from speech—but freedom in speech;

not freedom from the press—but freedom in the press;

not freedom from religion—but freedom in religion.

We need to ponder these things today.

Our standard of values is out of focus.

We boast that many of our national leaders came out of country schoolhouses.

Yet the average country school teacher makes $1,500 a year, while we pay Big League baseball players $60,000 to $80,000 a year.

I, for one, enjoy baseball, but is hitting home runs more important than giving boys and girls an education?

It is a strange commentary on our standard of values that lobbyists who try to influence legislation get more money than the men who write it.

There is something wrong with a standard of values that gives a radio comedian a million dollars and a high school teacher two thousand.

The reward is greater for making people laugh than it is for making people think.

Again, no nation on earth has more laws, and yet more lawlessness than this nation.

There exists a current philosophy which you and I have accepted, more or less, that

if we don’t like a law, we need feel no obligation to keep it.

Any philosophy which thus makes the will of the people its norm for morality and righteousness is a false philosophy.

The test, after all, is not whether a certain law is popular but whether the law is based upon fundamental justice

fundamental decency and righteousness

fundamental morality and goodness.

What we need is not law enforcement—but law observance.

In a modern society there is no real freedom from law. There is only freedom in law.

Our government is in danger of control by corrupt party machines and even by gangsters—

cynical

ruthless

self-seeking lovers of power …

a fact which should challenge every true patriot and summon all who love America to roll up their sleeves and make this once again a “government of the people

by the people

for the people.” …

For what is freedom?

Is it immunity for the unreliable and the despotic?

Is it freedom to take what you want regardless of the rights of others?

Is it a matter of getting yours while the getting is good? The story of the waste of this nation’s riches, for example, is a sad story of the misuse of “freedom.”

Consider the philosophy which for far too long pervaded the thinking of those who settled and developed our southland.

Their philosophy was “plow and plant

plow and plant

plow and plant, until the land is exhausted,

and then we’ll move farther west and repeat the process.”

Consider the philosophy of those who went into our forests to cut timber, feeling no responsibility to replace what they took by reforestation, so that we cut into vast tracts of good timberland and left it open,

with no windbreak …

with no barrier against erosion …

with nothing to prevent dust-bowl storms … and the removal of hundreds of thousands of acres of irreplaceable topsoil, which year after year was washed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Only now is the Department of Agriculture meeting with any success in persuading our farmers to adopt contour plowing

to put in windbreaks

to sow crops, grass, shrubs, and trees

that will tend to hold the soil together, and keep on the face of America that irreplaceable fertility which, in the past, has been her wealth.

I needn’t say anything about the extravagant misuse or abuse of our wild life.

There are many of you who, as hunters, know perfectly well that only the stupidity and greed of so-called sportsmen are responsible for the elimination of so many duck and wildfowl, once so plentiful, now nonexistent.…

All because somebody said: “This is a free country. I have a right to hunt and shoot and kill.”

Surely freedom does not mean that people can do as they like with the country’s resources!

There are so many things that are wonderful about America—

things that are gloriously right and well worth defending.

But there are also things that are deeply and dangerously wrong with America, and the true patriot is he who sees them

regrets them

and tries to remove them.

The Bill of Rights applies to all men equally …

Yet where is the man who considers others equal to himself …

who feels that other men are his brothers …

who is ready to agree that liberty, except for himself, is a good thing?

The modern man will hardly admit,

though in his heart he knows it to be true …

that it is only by the grace of God that he was not born of a different race or creed.

“All men are created equal,” says the Declaration of Independence.

“All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” …

And this applies to red men

and yellow men

and black men

as well as white men.

There is nothing in the Bill of Rights that says:

“This applies only to men with white skins

or to people from Virginia.”

But we must confess with troubled heart that not yet are the black men in our land wholly free.

They are even yet half-slave in this “land of the free and home of the brave.”

THE JOY OF SALVATION

The joy of salvation cannot be separated from a sense of guilt. Only as we realize what we have been saved from can we begin to appreciate that to which we have been called.

One of the strange phenomena in the church today (and there are many) is the linking of a consciousness of guilt with an unhealthy Christian experience.

There are of course sick persons, a part of whose illness consists of a morbid feeling of guilt, which is one symptom of an afflicted mind. But this is not the subject here.

Rather I am writing of those who live with a radiant joy in their lives and on their faces—men and women who know their sins have been forgiven and who bask in Christ’s forgiving love.

David, guilty of adultery and murder, said, “My sin is ever before me,” but he did not stop them. He pled for forgiveness and had restored to him the joy of God’s salvation. It was this attitude of repentance and confession which made him a man after God’s own heart.

Contemporary preaching rarely goes further than to condemn men for sins against society; rare indeed is the sermon that condemns sin against a holy God.

A few years ago an outstanding evangelist held a meeting in a large southern city. The response was gratifying and the writer knows personally a number of individuals who made decisions for Christ at that time.

But all was not sweetness and light. The evangelist stated in the clearest biblical terms the fact of man’s sinfulness before God, the potentialities of the human heart for wickedness, and man’s only hope through faith in Christ’s atoning and redeeming work.

When these meetings were concluded a prominent minister publicly remarked that it would take ten years to eliminate the guilt complex that such preaching had brought to his community.

The fact that some of his parishioners had come face to face with their separation from God because of sin unrepented and unforgiven had apparently triggered his own animosity to the evangelist.

David, the psalmist and sweet singer of Israel, rejoiced in the Lord and extolled His mercies and loving kindness because he could look back on his sins and know they had been forgiven.

In Psalm 32 he speaks of the happiness of those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sin is covered, and he goes on to speak of the deadening effect of unconfessed sin: “When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away.… I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’; then thou forgave the guilt of my sin.”

We live in a time when culture and social graces are confused with Christianity; when a “decent life” precludes the necessity of facing up to our own sinfulness; in a time when the average church member seems to feel that in some measure he is doing God a favor by engaging in church activities.

The devotion of Peter and his fearless preaching of a gospel which he well knew could lead him to a martyr’s death stemmed in some degree from his memory of denying his Lord three times.

Church history is replete with the stories of saints who frequently referred to the pit from which they had been rescued by a loving God.

Why is there so little joy of salvation today? Christian joy should not stem from the hope of heaven one whit more than from a sense of sins forgiven.

That many Christians have no sense of joy is, in some instances, due to the temperament of the individual. But in the case of many, the problem is really that the enormity of sin and its eternal consequences have never been apprehended, nor has there ever dawned upon the heart a realization of the implications, both temporal and eternal, of the Son of God dying for those sins.

Inherent in the joy of salvation is a deep apprehension of the grace of God. It is grace all the way with no merit on our part. Yet for most of us there is the lurking feeling that we have done or are doing something to earn our own salvation and justify God’s loving us.

In past generations there may have been a tendency to preach sin and its dire consequences in too lurid detail. We say “may” because we are not sure sin can be depicted in a manner worse than it actually is.

But of this we are sure: there is much that is lacking in preaching today when it comes to the sins of the human heart. Our Lord says: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man.”

There is little joy of salvation because too few admit the evil in their own hearts and therefore have no sense of cleansing and release.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, and some others may inveigh against anything which produces a “guilt complex,” but an honest minister of the Gospel can only preach the love and mercy of God against the background of human sinfulness. To pat men on the back and tell them they are “not too bad” is contrary to the Scriptures and engender in the sinner a false sense of goodness and security.

A victim of cancer may be lulled into an unjustified state of optimism because some charlatan tells him his ailment is a minor one, amenable to palliative treatment; but another victim of malignancy can rejoice after his disease is accurately diagnosed and adequately treated.

When the psalmist said, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,” he was affirming the privilege and obligation of the saved sinner to give glory to God.

When Christ told the healed demoniac “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee,” he was affirming the obligation of Christian witness. This individual knew of his wretched state and how Christ had changed it all. Little wonder that the story concludes, “And be departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him; and all men did marvel.”

The joy of one’s salvation is in itself a wonderful witness to others. This is a far cry from a “satanic sweetness” which tries to impress on others one’s own goodness. Rather it is a sense of sins forgiven and glory and praise rendered to the One who has forgiven.

Furthermore, out of such joy of one’s salvation comes a compassionate love for others who have never experienced forgiveness and release.

The “prison house of sin” is more than a poetic expression—it is a reality, and only those who have in some measure sensed its awfulness and found deliverance through Christ can either sense or express the joy of salvation.

The greatest joy to be had in this world is in the realm of the spiritual. It is joy centered in the Saviour and a sense of the sin from which he has saved us. Only then do we magnify the Lord with our lips and honor him with our lives.

L. NELSON BELL

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The problems of II Timothy cannot be separated from those of the other Pastoral Epistles, I Timothy and Titus. Critics of all schools of thought agree that the three are closely related. II Timothy is sometimes set a little apart from the others, as being a little more Pauline and a little less “pastoral” (being more personal) than the other two. But such differences as exist are minor and the three must be studied together.

Each of the three claims to have been written by St. Paul. They all read naturally as letters of the aged apostle to his younger assistants as he gives them advice in the discharge of the functions that he has committed to them. Second Timothy in particular contains undoubted Pauline turns of phrase, so that most of those who deny the authenticity of these Epistles as a whole are constrained to admit that some genuine Pauline fragments have been preserved in this Epistle. While the great doctrines of the earlier controversies are not expounded in the same way as in the Epistles of that time, there is nothing inconsistent with them. These letters were undoubtedly written by someone who accepted the Pauline teaching. For such reasons as these the letters have been accepted as genuine from the earliest times until the last century. But in modern times, and especially since the publication of P. N. Harrison’s The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles in 1921, many critics have strongly contested the Pauline authorship, and that from a number of points of view.

1. The Historical Allusions. E. F. Scott regards the historical allusions in these Epistles (especially in II Timothy) as being such that they virtually exclude Pauline authorship. The Pastorals, he says, “cannot be inserted at any point in the known life of Paul without throwing everything into confusion” (Moffatt Commentary, The Pastoral Epistles, p. 17). It is admitted by most that the historical allusions cannot be fitted into the story of Acts. Conservatives have usually held that Paul was released after the imprisonment noted at the end of Acts and that the Pastorals belong to this period of his activity. This possibility is denied by many critics, but the plain fact is that we do not know what happened after the end of Acts. We are not in a position to deny further activity of the apostles, and when the early Church at least from the time of Eusebius affirmed it, and when the Pastorals seem to presuppose it, our best course is to accept it. Certainly it is much more reasonable to hold this than to hold (with P. N. Harrison) that a late writer has juggled certain authentic fragments taken from Paul’s earlier activities into an impossible mosaic.

2. Doctrinal Differences. This objection is put succinctly by James Denney: “St. Paul was inspired, but the writer of these epistles is sometimes only orthodox” (The Death of Christ, p. 147). Paul propounds great doctrines and contends for them, whereas this writer urges his readers to hold to “the faith.” This is true, up to a point, but it can be exaggerated. Even its proponents admit that some passages have the authentic Pauline flavor (as Titus 3:5 f.), and they suggest that these are to be explained as due to the writer’s knowledge of, perhaps even study of, Paul’s letters. Thus their position appears to be that when the Pastorals differ from Paul this shows difference of authorship, and when they resemble him it shows conscious imitation! It is simpler to think of Paul as the author of both, and of the differences as due to different correspondents (there are no other letters to individuals in the situation of Timothy and Titus) and to different subject matter, perhaps also to the different way things struck the aged apostle.

3. Vocabulary and Style. P. N. Harrison has made a detailed examination of the vocabulary and style of these Epistles. To cite an example of his method, he finds that, whereas the other Pauline Epistles have from 3.3 hapax legomena (i. e., words found in no other New Testament writing) per page (II Thess.) to 6.2 per page (Phil.), II Timothy has 12.9 per page, I Timothy 15.2 and Titus 16.1. Montgomery Hitchcock has subjected this to scrutiny and shows that there are great variations within one Epistle. Thus Romans has 5, 11, and 2 on successive pages, while the difference between 2 Corinthians 1–8 and 10–13 is as great as that between the latter section and the Pastorals. Tests on other authors show the method to be unreliable. Thus Cicero has 4 hapax legomena to the page in his oratorical works, and 25 in his philosophical works (see J.T.S., 1929, pp. 272–79). The plain fact is that any writer’s vocabulary alters to some extent with his subject, and the subjects treated in the Pastorals are not the same as those Paul treats elsewhere. Harrison has other linguistic evidence, all carefully marshalled, in which he tries to show that the language of the Pastorals is impossible for Paul but fits naturally into a later age. However, despite these confident claims, such an examination as that of Guthrie in the appendix to his Tyndale Commentary shows that little can be proved from any of it.

4. Ecclesiastical Organization. It is objected that the instructions about bishops, elders, and deacons presuppose a much more developed system of church government that we find in the time of Paul. To which it is fairly replied that Paul is not indifferent to proper organization, and that if Acts is to be trusted he ordained elders in the churches of his foundation from the earliest times. Moreover the extent of organization in the Pastorals may easily be exaggerated. There the monarchial bishop has not yet emerged, and the ministry is not essentially different from that which we see elsewhere in the New Testament. If there is an increased concern for the due discharge of office, this may well be due to Paul’s realization as he neared the end of his course of the importance of church officers as guardians of the true faith and leaders of the Christian community.

5. The Heresies. A further objection is that the false teaching being opposed is that which we see in the second century, not in Paul’s lifetime. This must be unhesitatingly dismissed. The tenets of the false teachers are not enunciated with any distinctness or fullness (both Paul and his correspondents knew all about it, so why go into details?). And in what is said there is nothing that we know to be incompatible with the false teaching current in apostolic times.

It would seem then that the arguments commonly brought forward to disprove the authenticity of these Epistles are far from conclusive. They are sufficiently attractive to make it certain that many critical scholars will continue to hold them in one form or another. But there is nothing about them that need cause conservatives much concern. Neither singly nor collectively do they prove what their proponents would wish.

Second Timothy is essentially a personal note from Paul to his young friend. Exhortations to personal worthy conduct alternate with directions to deal firmly with false teachers. It is difficult to divide the Epistle into hard and fast divisions. It is a true letter; the writer does not attempt to give a systematic treatment of his topics but drifts naturally from one to another and back again. After the opening salutation and thanksgiving (1:1–5) there is an exhortation to courageous testimony (1:6–14). Next comes some news from Paul (1:15–18), and then more exhortations, first to endurance (2:1–13) and then to right personal conduct (2:14–26). After this Paul turns his attention to the last days and speaks of the evil men who will arise at that time, and of the effects of their teaching (3:1–9). He turns then to the work of the ministry and reminds Timothy of the persecutions which are inevitable (3:10–13), and of the important place occupied by the Scriptures (3:14–17). Then he urges him to steadfastness in preaching and to the fulfillment of all that his ministry implies (4:1–5). As the letter comes to its close, Paul calmly contemplates his approaching end (4:6–8) and gives Timothy some instructions, especially urging him to come to him quickly (4:9–15). He speaks of the divine aid that has been afforded him (4:16–18), and the letter concludes with greetings and the grace (4:19–22).

This is a very moving document as we see the aged apostle facing death, looking back at his service for God, and taking tender concern for his son in the faith that he be strong in the task to which God has called him.

COMMENTARIES

Probably the most useful commentary for evangelicals is the Tyndale Commentary by Donald Guthrie (Tyndale Press, 1957). It has a helpful introduction and a useful examination of the Epistle. W. Hendriksen’s Commentary (Baker, 1957) is also very valuable. E. K. Simpson’s The Pastoral Epistles (Tyndale Press, 1954) is a good commentary on the Greek text and is enhanced by many references to classical authors. This book has a valuable bibliography compiled by F. F. Bruce for those who want further reading in this Epistle. The volume in the International Critical Commentary series is by W. Lock (T. & T. Clark, 1924), and is on the whole conservative. A good commentary from the point of view of a more advanced criticism is the Moffatt Commentary volume by E. F. Scott (Hodder & Stoughton, 1936). Another is B. S. Easton’s The Pastoral Epistles (Scribner’s, 1947). The most highly regarded discussion of the problems from the point of view of the modern critic is The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles, by P. N. Harrison (O. U. P., 1921). See also Harrison’s articles in The Expository Times, lxvii (1955, pp. 77–81), and New Testament Studies, ii (1956, pp. 250–61). Support is given to Harrison by K. Grayston and G. Herdan, New Testament Studies, vi (1959, pp. 1–15). But he is strongly opposed by others. In addition to the article by Montgomery Hitchcock mentioned above, B. M. Metzger’s article in The Expository Times, lxx (1958, pp. 91–94), should be consulted. Metzger shows that Harrison has not validated his method, and that many competent critical scholars disagree with him. E. Earle Ellis discusses the problem in Paul’s Use of the Old Testament (Oliver and Boyd, 1957, pp. 5–9), and again in an excellent article in The Evangelical Quarterly, xxxii (1960, pp. 151–61). This is perhaps the most convenient summary of the position.

LEON MORRIS

Vice-Principal

Ridley College

Melbourne, Australia

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When Karl Marx at 17 was facing graduation finals he wrote, as one of the required essays, a brief study of “the union of the faithful with Christ according to John 15:1–14, demonstrated in its origin and nature, its absolute necessity and its effect.” The essay will be carried in a forthcoming issue of Decision, publication of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It is remarkable because of Marx’s subsequent place in history as a molder of dialectical materialism more than for its theological acuteness, although the manuscript was approved by his teacher as “a thoughtful, copious and powerful presentation of the theme” (Edward H. Carr, Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism, London, Dent & Sons, 1934, p. 5).

In the recent book Marx Meets Christ (Westminster Press, 1957), Frank W. Price reminds us that Marx’s parents “came from long lines of Jewish rabbis.… When Marx was only six years old, his father … with all his seven children, was baptized into the German Lutheran Evangelical Church. This ‘crossing the line’ was a move for political emancipation and social convenience, and was not the result of any new religious experience” (p. 18). Marx’s father, Hirschel, changed his name to Heinrich upon baptism. Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen tell us that Heinrich Marx, a lawyer, was a “Protestant a la Lessing” who knew Voltaire and Rousseau inside out, a Kantian, confessing “a pure belief in God, like Newton, Locke, and Leibnitz.” The study “Who Are They?: Karl Marx” prepared at the request of the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities notes that “Religion played no part in the Marx family.… For purely economic and social reasons Hirschel converted his entire family to Christianity. Religious indifference predominated in the Marx household, and accordingly young Karl held no profound religious convictions” (Aug. 28, 1959, p. 3).

Marx’s religious essay on John 15, therefore, was simply a step in fulfilling final graduation requirements. H. P. Adams, lecturer in history in the University of Birmingham, England, considers the essay “in all probability, less a rendering of what Karl had been taught in school than a glimpse into the philosophical Christianity in which the baptized Jew brought up his children.… With the pietist influences that overshadowed the youth of Engels, Marx did not come in contact” (Karl Marx in His Earlier Writings, London, Allen and Unwin, 1940, pp. 15 f.).

An interesting sidelight on Marx’s graduation is given by Leopold Schwarzschild in The Red Russian: The Life and Legend of Karl Marx (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1948, trans. from the German by M. Wing): “It was an unbreakable rule of etiquette in Trier that a student who had passed his final examination should pay a formal call on his old teacher before leaving for the University. To refuse amounted to an insult. Karl Marx refused” (p. 25).

The examiner found Marx’s essay right in thought and in good style. As defects he noted the “essence” of the union with Christ was not stated, its “ground” only one-sidedly conceived, its “necessity” shown only imperfectly. Nor had Marx mentioned immortality.

Excerpts from Marx’s comments are translated from the German (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe):

“The history of nations teaches us the necessity of union with Christ.… The examination of the individual proves the necessity of union with Christ.” But as “the last proof” he cites “the word of Christ himself.” “Our heart, reason, history, the Word of Christ, all cry out to us loudly and convincingly that union with Him is absolutely necessary; that without Him we are unable to fulfil our purpose; that without Him we would be rejected by God; that He alone is capable of redeeming us.

“As soon as we have grasped the necessity of union, the reason for it is clear to behold—our need for salvation, our sinful nature, our faltering reason, our corrupt heart, our unworthiness before God.… Then, when a more beautiful sun has arisen through our union with Christ, when we feel all our wickedness, but at the same time can rejoice over our salvation, only then can we love the God who formerly appeared to us as an offended ruler, but now as a forgiving Father, a kind teacher.

“… Inasmuch as we have Him before our eyes and in our hearts … we turn our hearts at the same time towards the brethren whom he has joined more intimately with us, and for whom, also, He has sacrificed Himself.

“This love of Christ is not fruitless. It not only fills us with the purest worship and reverence for Him, but also makes us keep His commandments … by being virtuous—but virtuous for love of Him.… This is the great abyss which divides Christian virtue from any other, and lifts it above all other; this is one of the greatest effects which the union with Christ produces in man.… Once a man has acquired this virtue, this union with Christ, he will await with composure the bufferings of fate, will counter bravely the storms of passion, and bear fearlessly the rage of the wicked. For who … can rob him of his Saviour?…

“Who would not gladly suffer since he knows that through his adherence to Christ, through his deeds, God himself is being glorified.…

“The union with Christ provides moral edification, consolation in sorrow, quiet confidence, and a heart open to the love of mankind, all things noble, all greatness—not for ambition, or desire for fame, but only for love of Christ.”

J. Edgar Hoover

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In a final address to the people whom he had served for 45 years, the man most responsible for founding the United States offered wise counsel to the fledgling nation for its future. With regard to those things which he felt vital to continuance in freedom, George Washington set forth his views plainly and then commented:

I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting expression I could wish—that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.

Yet President Washington nonetheless hoped that his counsel would be “productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good.…”

Scores of nations have appeared on the horizon of history, run their course, and disappeared. Some lived only briefly, glimmering like pale stars against the darkness of the past. Others, comet-like, have shot across recorded time, lighting the known world while they lived and leaving a glow to light the way for some which followed. The many ran their course. A few remained. And down that stream of recorded time, the scattered light was gathered and summed up in one great idealistic burst:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

A NEW AND VITAL CONCEPT

Here was a startling and revolutionary new concept—a concept that has echoed and reverberated for the 185 years just past. Since it was proclaimed across the world on that hot July day, it has rocked empires, dethroned kings, and shattered tyrannies. For those few words encompass the essentials of human liberty. Here man stands equal before the law. Here he is given equality in rights and privileges. Here is denied the right of any man to govern another by reason of birth or by virtue of inherited rank. And here it is proclaimed that those rights which are basic to an ordered, free society cannot be taken from the individual by that society unless it be as punishment for crime.

This is the great credo which forms the basis of American political freedom. And this credo is wholly of the spirit. At this Nation’s beginning, in the very first words of the Declaration, a Power greater than man’s is acknowledged—a Supernatural Power which is the source of our existing moral codes. “Men,” says the Declaration of Independence, “are created.…” This presupposes a Creator—indeed, One who is acknowledged in the same breath. Here, then, is the key contradiction in the two major ideologies now clashing throughout the whole world.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES

Man, says the Declaration of Independence, was created by God. No, says communism, man is merely a fortuitous product of the ceaseless interaction of chemical and physical elements—he has no soul. And, communism continues, nature is all—there is no God. Proletarian utility constitutes the only acceptable moral code—the end justifies the means. The Ten Commandments, says communism, are wholly false as they are derived from supernatural concepts which have no basis in fact.

Today’s great struggle, in simple terms, relates to the nature of God and the nature of man. Man, says one ideology, is a spiritual creature with an immortal soul. On the contrary, says the other ideology, he is a material creature in a material world.

OUR MOMENT OF HISTORY

Which ideology will triumph? No man can know. Nor can any one of us stand far out on some periphery of time and place and judge the point which our Nation has reached in “running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations.”

On this 185th birthday of our independence the question arises, is the brief period of our past more than a magnificent beginning? Or does it perhaps encompass the major portion of our history as a free Nation? Have we started arching out along the downward curve of destiny which has marked the beginning of the end for so many civilizations? Or are we now moving forward to an infinitely prolonged and even greater future?

SIGNALS OF IMPENDING DANGER

I repeat, no man can know the course that destiny has decreed, but there are signs that free men will ignore only at peril to their freedom. But before we consider those signals of impending danger to our future, let us look again at our beginnings and the future which the Father of his Country envisioned for us. He spoke of his unceasing wishes:

.… that Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence—that your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual—that the free constitution which is the work of your hands may be sacredly maintained—that its administration in every deparment may be stamped with wisdom and virtue—that, in fine, the happiness of the people of these States, under the auspices of liberty, may be made complete, by so careful a preservation, and so prudent a use of this blessing, as will acquire to them the glory of recommending it to the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it.

George Washington offered for solemn contemplation and recommended for frequent review certain sentiments which he indicated were the result of much thought and observation, and “which appear to me all-important to the permanency of your felicity as a people.”

What was the counsel he offered? Washington warned against permanent alliance with foreign powers, partiality toward a favorite nation, big public debt, a large military establishment, and the activities of a “small but artful and enterprising minority” designed to change or control government. He warned against any change in the Constitution by usurpation. He stressed the great need for enlightened public opinion. And, with a certainty that was unequivocal, he said:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tributes of PATRIOTISM, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.…

THE INDISPENSABLE SUPPORTS

Good men of varying political persuasions may question with utmost sincerity the soundness of some portions of Washington’s counsel in terms of our contemporary world. Others may hold adherence to each word of that counsel to be as vital to our freedom now as it was on that mid-September day of 1796 when the address was first delivered. But can any thoughtful man ignore those two “indispensable supports” of which our first President spoke?

He cannot do so without discounting the two most vital stones in the foundation of American freedom, for our freedom rests on a basis that is spiritual and idealistic—and is so acknowledged in the first words of the Declaration of Independence.

The greatness of America is spiritual in origin. The broad material achievements which we enjoy today stem largely from vision born of faith, sustained by unshakable resolution, and supported by unceasing effort. We drink today from a vast reservoir of spiritual strength which we inherited. But that reservoir is not fathomless. It must be constantly replenished if the spiritual soul of America is to survive as a legacy to future generations.

ONSLAUGHT OF SECULARISM

Today, the forces of materialism are directing their most concentrated power against the very wellsprings of our strength. The forward march of secularism is visible in many areas. It is apparent in much of what we read and much of what we view. The promotion of the sensual seems to be the purpose of whole shelves of books and magazines. On every hand, deliberate pandering to the lower instincts is apparent. Innuendo permeates once wholesome publications. Movie ads and paperbacks flaunt violence and sexuality. Sex, brutality, and sadism are too often emphasized unduly on both television and movie screens. Moral degenerates spew forth a surreptitious torrent of outright obscenity in the form of films, playing cards, comic books, paperbacks, and pictures.

There are many other less direct and visible evidences of rampant materialism. Indifference and apathy to violations of the law are commonplace. News columns reflect instance after instance in which respected community leaders have betrayed their trust and of union members who have been betrayed by their leaders. Again and again one reads of advertising which is termed false and misleading and we are forced to conclude that increasing numbers of men and women are losing their sense of values.

The Church itself is not immune from the onslaught of the secular. Certainly, the nominal Christian sect has every opportunity to follow the cross of Christ, and the individual never before has encountered equal opportunity for exposure to Christianity. Scores of church spires rise against the skies. The New Testament is readily available. Yet, with every opportunity for absorbing His superb lessons, how many Americans have been exposed—adequately and meaningfully—to the actual teachings of Christ?

We are today threatened by twin menaces. Materialism has fathered both crime and communism. The criminal statistics for the year just past attest to the steady growth of the one evil. The progress of the other—and the intensity of the struggle in which we are engaged with it—does not yield to such forthright measure.

A preliminary annual crime report for the year just past is most disquieting. It should be noted that the year 1959 set an all-time new high in recorded crime volume. This, however, was exceeded in 1960 with a 12 per cent increase in reporting cities of more than 25,000 population. Even more frightening is the increase in the volume of youth crime. Youthful criminality in rural areas during the year just past showed a five per cent increase over 1959. Juvenile crime volume in small cities increased by five per cent and in large cities by seven per cent during 1960 over the prior year.

Behind these tragic figures hovers the materialism of moral decadence as it is reflected in the disintegration of homes and in rising rates of illegitimate births.

All these are danger signals to which free men interested in the preservation of their freedom must pay heed. Nor can Americans ignore the increasing pressures of atheistic communism and impunity. Until the individual citizen develops a clear understanding of the true nature of the Communist conspiracy—as well as the means used to advance that evil conspiracy—he is helpless to combat it effectively.

The dangers to America are great, yet they are by no means overwhelming. There are, on every hand, stirrings among youth which indicate an awakening to danger. Youthful Americans, on a growing scale, appear to be rallying to the magnificent standards which, in the past, guided this Nation to greatness. Collectivist doctrines cease to advance as knowledge strips away their false appeal. A new generation seems determined to seek a real understanding of the dynamic principles on which our Constitution is based, and which have thrust our Republic thus far so splendidly along its course.

The unique mold which created us as Americans has not been broken. We still have that “lively faith in the perfectibility of man” which de Tocqueville found to be so striking an aspect of American character. We have made many errors but I believe we can summon the knowledge, the power, and the will to correct those errors. We need to look in the mirror of our past rather than in one deliberately warped by the propaganda of a purposeful enemy to see—and create—the image of ourselves as true offspring of our spiritual fathers. We need to keep in mind the thought expressed by an author, no longer living, to the effect that a man, a nation, or an age grows, develops, and becomes strong or declines and dies in proportion to the spiritual content of each.

There are unquestionable weaknesses in America’s spiritual armor on this 185th birthday of our Nation, but they are not irreparable ones. This is an age of uncertainty, but it is possible to recapture the faith which motivated our forefathers. We need to renew our allegiance to the ideals for which the Founding Fathers so willingly placed life and fortune in jeopardy. We need to rededicate ourselves to the preservation of their great dream. In doing these things, we can insure that the years of America’s past are but the beginning on the long course she has yet to run.

Marriage … in Honor

To each other and to Thee we cling,

Through fiery sword and under Eden’s tree,

Where sight at last may full possession bring—

Where sound and taste and smell and touch are free.

Longing, yearning, reaching, we abide,

Rapt inside th’ eternal, transfix’d moment:

To hasten, hold, and gently set aside.

O God, from Thee our life and love is sent.

In beauty’s overwhelming act we view

Thy greater passion and forgiveness,

Self-giving Christ; beyond all legal due

Is joy triumphant, and eternal rest.

A. O. R.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

- More fromJ. Edgar Hoover

Emile Cailliet

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In dealing with American history for the benefit of a well-informed American reading public, this French-born and French-educated writer is admittedly bringing coals to Newcastle. His justification for so doing is a growing awareness that the time in which we live impresses upon us all the urgency of emerging from our ivory tower. The hour is so very late.

It is generally taken for granted nowadays that the dream of a purely objective, so-called scientific history, cherished by a previous generation, has faded away into the limbo of dead ideologies. To say that we study the past for its own sake, and without the slightest intention of fitting events into our presuppositions, cannot possibly imply that we are in a position to rid our mind of all such presuppositions. The plain fact is that it is impossible to write history without presuppositions. No one may be said to think in a vacuum, especially when crucial issues are at stake. Some kind of faith-principle is necessarily involved. The better this is realized, the less danger for a personal equation to deflect the course of an honest quest after truth.

HERITAGE AND DESTINY

Let me therefore, at the outset, state the basic assumption upon which I am going to proceed. It may be summed up in the simple statement that our destiny as a nation is forever conditioned by our heritage. However bold our forward look, our progress can only be safe if we keep a steady eye on the landmarks of the receding past. Khrushchev has it that these United States are suffering from the incurable malady of old age. His persuasion once more bears witness to the Russian Communists’ propensity to take credit for every invention. In this particular case, Edward Gibbon happens to have preceded Khrushchev. Gibbon was credited with the view. Yet wrongly so already, for the nation of mundus senescens had long before him provided Graeco-Roman rhetoricians with some of their choicest arguments. This fact puts that notion into its right place, that of empty speculation. Whatever the many reasons currently adduced for the fall of any great civilization in ages past, a constant element in the actual process of decadence will inevitably be found in the failure of that civilization to understand itself. This all-important truth should draw and retain the attention of a responsible American leadership today. It clears our basic assumption of any suspicion of having been born of wishful thinking. Rather it singles it out as having immediately proceeded from the most undeniable feature history has ever brought out.

Standing on the firm ground provided by this conviction then, the American historian owes it to his sacred call to be a prophet in his own country, a country now in dire need of the guidance it is his duty to provide. At the core of this need lies the detection of the ultimate reference of American history. According to our basic assumption, then, the task requires a fresh look at our American heritage.

POLITICS AND ORGANIZED RELIGION

The notion is in the air about us that if ever the biblical interpretation of history were to be tied up with even the loftiest of all current interpretations of national purpose, a link between the two should be forcibly wrought out by some artificial device. The very thought of it suggests a questionable fabrication. In the public mind, the only thing that matters is the motivation at work in the everyday happenings of our national life. Accordingly, if the Hebrew-Christian view of history is to be taken into consideration in the process, it has to be brought in through the back door as it were, the implication being that it had better be left alone as controversial matter. It would be an understatement to say that a missing link is thereby postulated. Even the elements to be linked together are at the outset assumed to have little, if anything, to do with each other.

It would be preposterous to challenge this view. The historian’s task is not to argue about realities but to allow the same to quicken his quest for understanding. Any well-ascertained situation constitutes a precious pointer. In the present instance, the view currently prevailing in the public mind of our day and age points to feelings of long standing on the part of the American Founders. It should never be forgotten that our forefathers lived, moved, and had their being in a highly secularized, rationalistic climate that had given rise to the deism of the Age of Enlightenment. Let us further keep in mind that many Philosophes and Idéologues of the Auteuil group were personal friends of men like Franklin and Jefferson, and that quite a number of them were inducted into the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia; and further, that the same society had been established by Franklin “for the promotion of useful knowledge,” not for the promotion of particular theological or metaphysical tenets. However religious its American members may have been in their own heart and mind, it is a fact that they never mixed their politics with organized religion. They followed in this the precedent set by the Royal Society of London, and declined to deal with subjects inviting theological or ecclesiastical controversy. One of their strongest feelings was hate of bigotry. That such a feeling was widespread in the early day of American history finds further confirmation in such instances as the Massachusetts Experiment, when the Presbyterians, obsessed by a Calvinist notion of theocracy vainly tried out by them in England, attempted to fasten it on their land of adoption. It is true that they succeeded for a few decades, but the Royal Charter of Massachusetts put an end to their quest, which incidentally provided a splendid education in democracy. There is indeed ample precedent to account for the feeling still prevailing in our day that politics should be kept apart from any form of organized religion or set of theological doctrines. The principle of separation of church and state is here to stay. Far from generating controversy, it should be taken for granted in a mood of serenity.

With the overall situation thus clarified, we feel all the more at ease as we prepare to take a closer look at our charter-documents and at the intentions that brought them into existence. If we mean to understand the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, we must realize that, while they do reveal strong rationalistic trends, they are essentially Hebrew-Christian documents. Even men like Franklin and Jefferson, who particularly liked to assume a rationalistic attitude, would fight oppression in the name of the Lord. To them, rebellion against tyrants was obedience to God. To them, the Creator of heaven and earth was the Giver and remained the Guarantor of the rights of man. To them, admittedly, the framework of government and the maintenance of social order were the things of Caesar; yet the rights of man per se were not Caesar’s, but the things of God.

Truly, there can be no question of forging a missing link at this point. In considering our national purpose under God, we are dealing with a matter of symbiosis in the original Greek etymological sense of the word, which simply asserts the fact of living together. A still closer scrutiny of this fact may prove valuable toward further constructive understanding.

THE RELIGIOUS PREMISE

Clearly, the religious view and its moral implications were at the root of the Founding Fathers’ innermost convictions. Whatever political principles they laid down were directly derived from the religious view and its moral implications—in that order. But what do I say? The religious view and its moral implications were more than convictions. They were stated as matters of elementary evidence. The very first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence held “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Strong language indeed, this!

The point which invites scrutiny is the assumed self-evident character of the religious presupposition of “these truths” here apprehended as undergirding the charter of our rights, and as owing to God the Creator and Preserver, their inalienable nature. This assumed self-evident character, then, is but one aspect of the self-evidence of God as stated in the opening words of the Westminster Confession which in those colonial days constituted the sum of Christian doctrine—and I quote: “The light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable.” This evidence had been drawn directly from the Bible by the Westminster divines in very much the same way as the substance of the New England Primer to which our forefathers owed their first initiation to the truth that makes men free.

There was however in the evidence under consideration an extra-biblical element which made it eminently accessible to the Founding Fathers, and this element has not, to my knowledge, drawn the attention it deserves. The conception according to which some knowledge about God is available to all men through “the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence,” is designated by theologians as natural or general revelation, the further designation of special revelation being restricted to the disclosure of truths said to be necessary for salvation. The plain fact is that the notion of a so-called natural or general revelation was not originated by the Bible but by the philosophers of ancient Greece. What actually happened was that the early Christians welcomed it because it provided a useful and much needed point of contact between classical views of religion and the Hebrew-Christian view. To wit, Paul’s speech to the Athenians from Mars Hill on the theme, “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” In that speech the point of contact to which reference has just been made may be detected in the sentence: “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28). On the classical side, we have such statements as that of Plato to the effect that the inspiration of the poet, no less than that of diviners and holy prophets, is the word of God. And for this reason, Plato adds in Ion, 533, “God takes away the mind of poets and uses them as his ministers.” To make a long story short, as indeed must be the case here, what the deists of the Age of Enlightenment did more or less consciously, was to revert to a kind of evidence that proved most congenial to their highly secularized rationalism. Such was their way of keeping whole an intellectual heritage traced back to both Athens and Jerusalem—Tertullian notwithstanding.

This once granted, however, it would be historical nonsense to ignore the Hebrew-Christian overtone of our Declaration of Independence. Even the most rabid rationalist of our day who happens to speak of God cannot forget what he once heard in Sunday school. How much more so in the case of our Founding Fathers when we recall the intellectual and spiritual climate in which they lived! The God they knew was the Creator and Upholder of his creation, sitting at the roaring loom of history, directing its course to its appointed end.

This end throughout the ages had increasingly been brought into focus in terms of the kingdom of God. In the fullness of time, the man Christ Jesus had become the living sign of that kingdom as detected through his person, his proclamation, his movement. The very fact that we designate time as B.C. and A.D. leaves no doubt as to the unique significance of Jesus Christ in the divine plot, and to a considerable extent confirms the reality of that plot. History, then, is oriented as the universe is oriented; better still, in our contemporary language, as the space-time continuum is oriented. The faith-principle of this prophetic view is henceforth summed up in the Kingdom concept. Lending reality to this concept are the already present powers radiating from the One who mediates them. Impinging upon us from a dimension hardly accessible to our human makeup, the kingdom of God is able to penetrate and transform our total situation. Thus the heavenly realm is already present to eyes of faith, even as its full manifestation is expected by Christian hope. The kingdom of God may accordingly be characterized as both a present experience and a future consummation. Augustine, the original formulator of the Christian philosophy of history, summed up these implications in his symbol of two cities—the earthly city given to greed and the lust of possession, essentially motivated by a self-assertive egotism, and the City of God where all power comes from the realm of things invisible to displace self-will through divine love. As he saw it in the light of Scripture, these two cities were both alike in that they were enjoying temporal good and suffering temporal evil. Otherwise they stood in sharp contrast. They had a faith that was different, a hope that was different, a love that was different (De Civitate Dei, XVIII, 54).

The reader will not ascribe to me, I am sure, the intention of implying that our Founding Fathers were aware of the whole background just sketched out. The reason I have recalled it to attention is that our own awareness of it is a prerequisite to the understanding of our charter documents with special attention to the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Adequate detection is always conditioned by a high degree of familiarity with the elements under consideration.

What impresses one as he reads the text at hand against the background henceforth acknowledged as its true setting is an unmistakable outline resemblance between the biblical view of the kingdom of God and our forefathers’ burning vision—that of a delectable country upheld by the benevolent Creator who had endowed its inhabitants with such inalienable rights as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The haziness of this profile-resemblance may be accounted for by the fading away, in an age of enlightened deism, of the scriptural vision of an earthly city impinged upon by the heavenly City. It is in the direction of that fading vision that we should look to realize the original import of our Hebrew-Christian heritage in terms of our national purpose.

A SECULAR KINGDOM?

In conclusion, then, let me suggest that the ultimate reference of American history may well be a secularized intimation of the Scripture’s teaching concerning the kingdom of God. And further, that this same intimation may yet find its justification in actual fact. In this case, the tension between Augustine’s earthly city and City of God would account for many of our unrelieved tensions. To illustrate, it would explain how, once the Christian view has been lost sight of, all that is left of our original heritage is a kind of Americanism so poorly aware of the true nature of its loss that recourse is taken to commercial advertising to urge prospective customers to go to church the following Sunday. Surely a more pertinent reminder would be that it should not take more nerve to be an avowed Communist than a professing Christian in this land of ours.

Were our heritage only apprehended by the kind of leading minority which has always determined the national will-to-live through the crises of the past, a renewed awareness of our ultimate reference under God would help restore the perspective of our destiny. Only in the measure as we apprehend the true nature of our heritage may we escape the general fragmentation of our national purpose as witnessed by our deficiencies, partialities, and unhappy divisions. What is involved in all such declensions is nothing short of a deflection of both our heritage and destiny, a barter of vision in our understanding of history. A shrunken outlook can only result in varieties of split-loyalties finally amounting to disloyalty. Once the ultimate reference of our history is lost, the landscape of our reality is bound to turn into a wasteland where genuine historians yield to highly-paid popularizing newscasters. In the measure our nation gets out of touch with its own history, it is likely to witness a transvaluation of values according to which the idols of the day, whether pros, crooners or other entertainers, are called upon to fill the void brought about by the loss of our true vision.

- More fromEmile Cailliet

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It is not unusual these days in America to find a Christian waxing sentimental about his country and his flag. Events of the past five decades have convinced us that the American dream is made of very precious stuff indeed. What is really unusual is to find an American waxing eloquent about his Christian roots.

In 1799 Jedidiah Morse of New England wrote, “Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.” Today as tourists stroll the avenues of Washington, D. C., “sightseeing capital of the world,” and study its magnificent edifices and marble monuments, the words of Morse seem to be an anachronism. The structure of our expanding Big Government appears in sooth to be eternal. Can one seriously support today the thesis that democracy’s survival is contingent upon some sectarian religious belief? Is not this bigotry carried to the ultimate?

When modern statisticians claim that the percentage of church membership is higher in America today than it was in Colonial times, they are clouding the scene by throwing squid’s ink. The fact is that our forefathers held an idea completely lost to a vast segment of our society today. It may be found simply stated by the Psalmist: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”

“I don’t know how long America will be here,” observed Dr. Louis H. Evans recently. “As long as it is a servant of Jehovah, surely. After that it simply moves on the chessboard of history. We may have stronger guns than Russia, but we no longer have stronger goals than Russia. Not what we have in our hearts but only what we have in our hands is now our strength; and if we are overpowered there, we have nothing.”

In an effort to explicate the nature of the American dream, as well as its drift and its destiny, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has asked some well-known historians to present their views on these pages. Is a pagan concept of man and government now finding general acceptance even in the United States? Is it true that no one much cares whether God has this land or any other in his protection or not?

We are convinced that a scarlet thread runs through the story of democracy, beginning with the Decalogue on Mount Sinai and the teachings of the New Testament, and moving through the German and Swiss Reformations to England. Wycliffe, John Locke, Black-stone, the Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights all are knots on that thread. So are Jamestown and Plymouth and Philadelphia. Notice, however, that these are not the names of warriors or of battlefields. The real victories have always been God’s through his conquest of the rebellious human heart. “If we will not be governed by God,” said William Penn, “then we will be governed by tyrants.” The man set free by Jesus Christ is the real hero of this Fourth of July.

Dr. Robert Boyd Munger, on his recent return from a preaching mission in Latin America, declared that “the intoxicating ideas of liberty, equality, and freedom, so long proclaimed by Americans as inalienable rights, are burning like fire in the hearts of the underprivileged.” Adds Dr. Munger, “The unrest does not have its rise primarily in propaganda from Moscow, but rather in explosive pressure on the part of the common man and the little nations, demanding that they be permitted to stand among their brethren without shame, politically and economically free. Certainly the long-delayed revolt of the disinherited masses is underway.

“Yet even more revolutionary in its effects is the gospel of Jesus Christ, declaring the worth of the individual to God and the length he has gone to reach and redeem him. No man who has been set free spiritually from sin and death is content to remain socially in bondage, nor can he tolerate the oppression of those for whom Christ died.”

God can create in us a new heart and set for us a new goal. God can give America the will and the heart to serve mankind in the twentieth century.

There is no three-mile limit to the American dream.

May this be our earnest prayer on Independence Day, 1961: “Lord, send us a vision worthy of Thyself. Let it be that vision bequeathed to our forefathers, but let it be for all men—not to enslave, not to exploit, but to set free!” For without the vision of God and his will, and a dedication to righteousness, the people perish.

THE SIDE OF LIBERTY-LOVING MEN

For a century and a half the spirit of 1776 was the picture of America held by most thinking people the world over. It was represented by the three Revolutionary soldiers with fife and drum: men of courage and conviction, wholly committed to the cause of human freedom. Americans believed in the dignity of man, endowed by the Creator with natural rights. Therefore they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the downfall and destruction of tyranny of any kind—political, economic, social, ecclesiastical.

But that image of America has become badly defaced. Communists have caricatured the American image by clever and diabolical deceit. Now Uncle Sam is pictured as Uncle Shylock, a Mr. Moneybags, wealthy, greedy, disinterested in the welfare of struggling masses of humanity in other lands. America is made out to be callous, careless, even cruel and cunning. Despite every program such as the Marshall Plan, Point Four, and others, American aid is suspiciously viewed as a potential instrument of “Yankee imperialism.”

Does not America now often appear to support the status quo? American foreign policy favors aristocratic classes and the static Roman church in Latin America. Until recently, America seemed on the side of decadent European imperialism in Africa and Asia. Have Americans forgotten their heritage of freedom? Are they no longer champions of human liberty?

The Communists express concern for illiterate and inchoate masses. All the while their program is one of ultimate dictatorship, an imperialism far more destructive of human rights than anything the peoples of Africa and Asia have ever known.

America’s true image must be restored.

And it can be.

It will take courageous statesmanship and solid support from the American people to be on the side of liberty-loving men the world over.

Our part is to be genuine, sincere, and forthright in our quest for domestic freedom both for ourselves and for the masses abroad, and accordingly to unmask the cruelty and covetousness of the conspirators in the Kremlin.

—DR. V. RAYMOND EDMAN,

President,

Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

STRONG PROSPECT OF DOOM

The United States of America in the past 50 years has been dominated to a large extent by persons who do not understand the spiritual heritage bequeathed by their own ancestors. When our great nation was founded during the period from 1775 to 1787, the following statement by Benjamin Franklin was still widely accepted: “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of man.”

But in recent years our leading statesmen seldom have recognized in official speeches and documents the nature of divine Providence.

In our public schools in many parts of the land it has become fashionable to undermine respect for orthodox Christianity. The evolutionary concept of human history has crept into nearly all the textbooks being used in the big survey courses, including those given in our Christian universities and colleges.

The existence of Adam and Eve is usually overlooked, and as a result practically all the boys and girls coming from fine Christian homes are informed in their textbooks dealing with the history of civilization that the best monkeys called apes in their own power turned themselves into human beings. In this subtle manner the chief basis of the Christian religion is discarded: the atonement of Jesus Christ is no longer needed by a single human being.

Is it any wonder that in such a time and situation our leading newspapers cater to the whims of pagans and infidels? The most highly touted historian in the world (Arnold J. Toynbee) has recently stated in The New York Times that Christianity and Mohammedanism are both children “of a spiritual marriage between Greece and Asia.” Unless a marked change takes place in the United States of America, it is doomed, just as surely as was ancient Babylonia—DR. ALBERT HYMA, Professor of History, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

GODLY POWER OF A MINORITY

The American dream is best expressed succinctly in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, in the Latin inscription on the Great Seal of the United States which we find on every dollar bill, and in America and America the Beautiful. It goes back to minorities—and they were always minorities—in the early settlements in this country. It is clearly of Christian—and of Protestant—origin, and is based on the conviction that God who revealed himself in Christ is central in history and has his purposes for this country. America was written by a Baptist theological student and America the Beautiful by the daughter and granddaughter of Congregational ministers.

The dream has never fully shaped American life, but it has helped to mold the democracy of the country and, among many other fruits, has contributed to the anti-slavery movement, the temperance and prohibition campaigns, the achievement of a more equitable position for women, improved care for the insane, and efforts for international peace, including the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations.

The dream is still with us. As has always been true, it is cherished in its frankly Christian form only by minorities, but those minorities still make their influence felt in the nation, both in its international outreach and in its domestic affairs. Even though its Christian rootage is not always recognized or acknowledged, it is probably as potent as it has ever been. We who are indebted to it and cherish it must endeavor to see that it helps to shape every aspect of our local and national policies and programs.—DR. KENNETH S. LATOURETTE, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Missions and Oriental History, Yale University Graduate School, New Haven, Connecticut.

COMPROMISE AND DECADENCE

The American dream is vanishing in the midst of the terrifying realities and visible signs of decadence in our contemporary society. But it would be false to infer that the crisis of the present is the cause of its disappearance as a vital factor in American life.

The dream itself was built on an unstable foundation, for it did not emanate fully from that biblical outlook which guided colonial life. There was a colonial dream for the New World which the colonists brought with them as a part of their heritage from the Reformation, and which motivated them as they forged a new civilization out of the wilderness. It was their desire to found a society which would be based on biblical principles.

But this colonial dream of the early settlers with its biblical orientation gave way before the onslaughts of the Enlightenment and the rise of the democratic philosophy of the American Revolution. Out of the War of Independence there arose a new American dream whose chief architects were Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. This American dream was not derived from biblical principles, but reflected the naturalism and humanism of deism and the emerging democratic philosophy. Thus it contained the elements making for its own dissolution. For it was based on an optimistic view concerning the nature of man and a belief in the perfectibility of the race. Not only was it unbiblical, but at the same time it encouraged a type of political, social, and economic action which could only hasten the destruction of any society which accepted these false views.

At first glance the democratic insistence on the equality of all men may seem to be little more than a political and social expression of the biblical doctrine of the priesthood of the believer. But such is far from the case. Underlying the democratic philosophy is the humanistic insistence on man’s sovereignty and inherent goodness.

The crisis which has overtaken not only the United States but Western Europe is but the unfolding of the catastrophic nature of the Enlightenment of which the American dream soon became the offspring. The awesome conflicts of our era are not the cause of the dilemma, but rather are they the outward manifestation of the deadly cancer which is in fact eating away the very soul of the West.

—DR. C. GREGG SINGER,

Professor of History,

Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

THE RIGHT TO HOPE

The American dream has perhaps never been better expressed than it was almost a century ago by Abraham Lincoln in his Message to Congress on December 1, 1862. He concluded with these words: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.”

In a very real sense it is within the power of every generation—not the least our own—either to preserve or squander this rich heritage of freedom which is so much a part of the American dream.

Americans have given much thought in recent months to the question of their National Purpose. What has not as yet been demonstrated is whether we as a people are prepared to approach our problems and explore our purposes in a spirit of humility and self-criticism which is certainly essential to greatness and may be equally necessary to survival. Those of us in the Christian tradition ought never to lose sight of the fact that good and desirable as are many aspects of our official policy, both stated and implied, “there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.” Vox populi is not always vox dei, but “where there is no vision the people perish.”

Only if we see the American dream clearly in the light of God’s love, his power and his judgment, do we have a right to hope, with Lincoln, that this nation under God may yet experience a new birth of freedom, with the result that government of the people, by the people, and for the people may not perish from the earth.

—DR. ROBERT M. SUTTON,

Associate Dean and Associate Professor of History,

the Graduate College, University of Illinois.

SIGNS OF A RENEWAL

The American dream and the destiny implied in it have received official and secular expression in such documents as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address. Though expressed in secular terms, they were of Christian origin and nurture.

Our national destiny has been and is threatened by secularism, but there are signs of a return to biblical evangelical Christianity which is the fountainhead of democracy and without which democracy is distorted. The return to such Christianity, however, must not be on the theological level alone but must be brought to bear on the racial, social, and international issues which confront us.

The people of the nation, instructed and inspired by Christian leadership rooted in Scripture and Church, must overcome racial discrimination in spite of welfare state tags and charges of socialism, must understand and assist foreign peoples on the Christian ground that we are our brothers’ keeper, and must not allow theories of national sovereignty to block constructive efforts at building the kind of world in which order and justice can prevail.

If the American dream is for Americans only, it will remain our dream and never be our destiny. Will we have the courage to see this and act accordingly, in spite of foreign and domestic enemies? There is a chance that we will and be counted among those who really hunger and thirst after righteousness even when we are persecuted for it.

—Dr. RENE DE VISME WILLIAMSON,

Chairman, Department of Government,

Louisiana State University.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE stress the indispensable role of public information and education if republican forms of government are to thrive.

Yet, strange as it may seem, few Americans today really grasp either the distinctive political premises that have nourished the nation, or the religious and moral ideals inherent in the American vision.

Writing on April 25, 1799, Jedidiah Morse spoke pointedly of the spiritual foundations: “In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions, in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom, and approximate the miseries of complete despotism. I hold this to be a truth confirmed by experience.… Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.”

Paul S. Rees

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Professor F. F. Bruce has put us all in his debt by giving us a book, fresh from the Oxford University Press, titled The English Bible, subtitled A History of Translations. The Christian public—I speak chiefly of the United States—is ill-informed as to how the Holy Scriptures have fared at the hands of their translators and revisers as they have passed within the medium we call the English language, from one reproduction to another. Moreover, we are equally ill-informed as to how these succeeding versions have fared at the hands of those first to receive them. On both of these counts, Dr. Bruce’s work makes highly-informative and exciting reading.

At the same time it provokes questions. Dr. Bruce himself raises some of them. After a particular version has been in use for some time there is mounting pressure for revision. Why? The desire for greater intelligibility. English, being a living language, is a changing language. The New York Times English is a far cry from Elizabethan English. Give us the Bible in the contemporary vernacular. This is the cry.

Agreed, says Professor Bruce, in effect. But let us not be trapped by a fallacy. Because the Bible is the book that it is, intelligibility is not altogether a matter of verbiage and idiom. Hence the professor’s query, “Is the proper inference (from the inability of normally intelligent persons to understand this or that version of Scripture) that a more idiomatic translation would be more intelligible and remove the difficulties? Or may the trouble not lie in a certain inability to understand some of the things the Bible deals with, no matter how up-to-date the idiom may be in which they are expressed?” (The English Bible, p. 200). These are questions, Dr. Bruce suggests, “which should be made the subject of further investigation.”

Thus provoked, one ventures to indicate several questions that invite more searching and precise treatment than most current books on the Bible as authority and revelation have produced:

1. What are the relationship and interaction between divine revelation through the medium of inspired writings and such reproductions thereof as may be made in languages other than the original? However dear a doctrine of verbal inspiration may be—and I am one to whom it is dear—if we could prove it to everyone’s satisfaction, even in the fold of faith, we might then be found to have proved too much. For if the validity and sufficiency of the revelation are made to depend on the precise words as originally inspired, then we are deprived of the revelation God wanted us to have. The reason is obvious: not any of the original documents is available to us. All the autographs are lost.

Yet massive evidence shows us that the manuscripts we do have are so substantially identical with the original as to leave us with a revelation that dependably serves the purpose for which God gave it. Is it otherwise with the translations that are produced within the medium of the English language? Name any of them—from Wycliffe and Tyndale through the King James to the Revised Standard and the New English—and, regardless of the praise or dispraise with which they have been hailed, can you demonstrate that any of them fails of the criterion offered in the “Thirty-nine Articles,” namely, that “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation?”

2. Consider a second query: What in fact is the vital connection between Scripture as originally inspired and responsible renderings thereof in other languages, with particular regard to the authority associated with both? The answer, says Professor Bernard Ramm, is the Holy Spirit or, more exactly, what the Reformers called the testimonium spiritus sancti, the witness of the Holy Spirit. The testimonium is a theme that Dr. Ramm has fruitfully explored in his The Witness of The Holy Spirit. The source of the believer’s certainty that the Scriptures are the Word of God is always and ultimately the Spirit of God. He is not the ground of such persuasion (that indeed is the truth of God as inscripturated) but He is the cause of it. This testimonium is no substitute for critical and historical investigation into matters canonical, textual, or linguistic. On the other hand, competence in investigation is no prerequisite for the certainty that comes through the testimonium.

3. Another question: What is the limitation that surrounds, and will continue to surround, the finest efforts to make Bible linguistically intelligible? It is the blindedness, the twistedness, the pridefulness, of what St. Paul calls the “natural man.” As Professor Packer puts it, “Sinners are no more ready to acknowledge God in their thinking, by allowing His utterances authority over their judgment, than they are to acknowledge God in their actions, by allowing His utterances authority over their behavior” (Fundamentalism and the Word of God, p. 139). The clearest idiom may be clouded—and balked—by a tainted conscience.

4. Or this problem: What confusions are perhaps inherent in the dialogue over the formulation that may be given to theMODEof biblical inspiration? They are semantic confusions, and no one is likely to put a full stop to them. Theological controversy over the Bible produces in the disputants a polemical posture. A polemical posture is almost invariably strained. We want to explain more than is explainable. We wish to insist on formulations that are more rigorous than all of the facts will warrant.

When, for example, a Professor Warfield (in his half-century-old The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible) or a Professor Packer (in his current volume just mentioned) tries to differentiate between a divine inspiration that dictates words and a divine inspiration that controls words, he is grappling with a problem in semantics so subtle that his own words are under strain.

The effort is laudable. To regard it as definitive is unwarranted.

The Church has never classically defined the modus operandi of inspiration. It has simply confessed the majestic fact of divinely-inspired and trustworthy Scriptures.

- More fromPaul S. Rees

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Karl Barth: Teacher And Preacher

Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, by Karl Barth (John Knox Press, 1960, 173 pp., $3), and Deliverance to the Captives, by Karl Barth (SCM Press Ltd., 1961, 160 pp., $3), are reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University.

Finally—although Carrère’s French translation also came as late as 1958—Barth’s Anselm, first published in 1931, has been translated into English by a man so modest that his name does not appear on the title page—Ian Robertson.

Barth’s detailed analysis of Anselm’s argument, including the reply to Gaunilo, aims to show “That Anselm’s Proof of the Existence of God has been repeatedly called the ‘Ontological’ Proof of God, that commentators have refused to see that it is in a different book altogether from the well-known teaching of Descartes and Leibniz, that anyone could seriously think that it is even remotely affected by what Kant put forward against these doctrines—all that is so much nonsense on which no more words ought to be wasted” (p. 171).

According to Barth, Anselm did not try to prove the existence of God a priori, from the definition of God—as Descartes did, nor is Anselm’s proof based on some neutral proposition acceptable to an unbeliever. A thesis, such as the existence of God or why God became man, is taken as an unknown x, and its proof consists in deducing it from propositions a, b, c, which are taken as known parts of the Creed. Thus, proof of x depends on showing its necessary connection with the remainder of the Christian faith. Obviously Kant’s remarks are irrelevant to such a procedure.

Even within this framework Barth denies that the existence of God is deduced from his nature. He holds that it is deduced from the revealed name of God—than which nothing greater can he conceived. But can a name that is not a mere name like Charles, but is rather a descriptive phrase, be so sharply separated from the nature of God? Does not such a phrase tell us something of what God is? The answer to this question depends on one’s view as to the locus of Gaunilo’s foolishness.

One may also doubt that Barth’s view of the creedal framework of the proof, even though it describes Anselm’s actual procedure in Cur Deus Homo, does justice either to his procedure in the Proslogion or to his avowed intention in Cur Deus Homo: “Leaving Christ out of view, as if nothing had ever been known of him, it proves by absolute reasons the impossibility that any man should be saved without him,” and that Christ’s death must be proved “reasonable and necessary” so as to convince one “unwilling to believe anything not previously proved by reason.” At the end of his work Anselm makes his pupil say, “By this solution … I see the truth of all that is contained in the Old and New Testaments, for in proving that God became man by necessity, leaving out what was taken from the Bible … you convince both Jew and pagan by the mere force of reason.”

But in any case Barth’s book is a major contribution to medieval studies.

After one has read Barth’s scholarly Anselm and perchance some of his profound Church Dogmatics, it becomes a matter of lively interest as to what kind of sermons such a great man preaches, particularly to the prisoners in the Basel jail.

But how does one review a book of sermons? Naturally these are quite a come-down from his great writings. Some will strike a reader as good, others as poor. The first sermon of the collection seems strained at the beginning, rescued only by a peculiar shift to a pertinent application at the end. The second is a thoroughly delightful Christmas message that could hardly be improved upon. And so on.

The message of the sermons seems to be that all men are totally depraved sinners who can be saved only by the grace of God exhibited in Christ’s vicarious atonement. Therefore no one should be anxious about anything, least of all hell, for God has mercy on all, and even the unrepentant thief was saved: “Peter and the remaining disciples could only ‘get in line behind’ the two criminals who were first and up front. This is true for men of all times” (p 82).

GORDON H. CLARK

Unity In Communion

The Bread Which We Break, by G. D. Yarnold (Oxford, 1960, 112 pp., 10s. 6d.), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, Professor of Bible, Calvin College.

The moment at which all Christians are most really united and most obviously divided is the moment when the one loaf is broken. The bread which we break is the one loaf, but we break it in isolation from one another. How long shall we go on acting as though there were many loaves?

Dr. Yarnold’s book is a small contribution to a better understanding of the meaning of the one loaf broken in commemoration of the death of our one Lord. He has, as an Anglican, given a charitable and lucid account of the sacrament in Scripture, in history, and in implications for the future. Though I have put several question marks in the margins of Dr. Yarnold’s exposition, I have also put several Amens. Take, for instance, the matter of the real presence of Christ. “Sacramental grace is essentially and really a personal influence mediated through covenanted means Christ is personally present to faith in the sacrament, and so imparts Himself personally to those who apprehend His presence” (p. 92). It is this real personal influence of our Lord on the faithful which creates the basis for the unity of faithful Christians across denominational borders. God grant that it may be more widely realized in visible fact.

LEWIS B. SMEDES

Conversion Analyzed

The Battle for the Soul, by Owen Brandon (Hodder & Stoughton, 1959, 94 pp., 4s. 6d.), is reviewed by John Gwyn-Thomas, Rector, Illogan, Cornwall, England.

Interest in the topic of conversion has recently been further stimulated by Dr. Sargent’s The Battle for the Mind, and Mr. Brandon, who lectures in pastoral psychology at the London College of Divinity, has felt it the right moment to set forth the fruits of his own studies and wide reading on the subject. His aim is to give “a psychological and pastoral study of conversion in order to raise the most important questions for pastoral practice.” Although written from an evangelical standpoint, not everyone will be satisfied with the author’s interpretation of the experiences of some of his cases nor indeed of the angle of approach to what he calls “the special type of religious propaganda which we generally call evangelism.” Forthright comments are given, specially on pages 69–77, on the serious consequences of some types of modern evangelism, and these are reinforced by Mr. Brandon’s own pastoral experience. All engaged in the task of soul winning will profit from the discussions on Premature Decision, The Lapsed Convert, and Ethical Standards in Evangelism. The conclusion is that “the best evangelistic work can be done by the resident minister who is trained for the work and who has behind him all the spiritual reserves inherent in the life of the Church, in its fellowship, its worship, its sacraments and its services.”

This is a timely book which will be valuable for Christian workers. But though it was far from the author’s intention, an uneasy suspicion lurks that with an emphasis on psychological analysis and methods, the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit is relegated to the background.

JOHN GWYN-THOMAS

Campbell Morgan Lectures

The Word of God for Abraham and Today, by Donald J. Wiseman (Westminster Chapel, 1959, 20 pp., 1s. 6d.) and The Dead Sea Scrolls and St. John’s Gospel, by Leon Morris (Westminster Chapel, 1960, 21 pp., 1s. 6d.), are reviewed by Gervase E. Duffield, Manager, London Office, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

These two lectures seek to shed light on the Bible by means of recent discoveries. Mr. Wiseman of the British Museum explodes the scholars’ legend of Abraham as a mythical tribal hero. He describes Abraham’s background and the customs of the ancient Near East, but his precise date is still uncertain. Genesis 23 reflects an accurate and early knowledge of Hittite law, and Genesis 15 tallies with ancient Babylonian ideas of inheritance. A detailed picture of life at Ur is given, and throughout specialist knowledge enlivens the background of God’s dealings with the patriarch.

Dr. Morris weighs the difference and similarities between Qumran and John, and concludes that Christianity’s uniqueness remains unchallenged because Christ makes the difference, but that the Fourth Gospel is Palestinian, now that the ideas and vocabulary—previously thought by some to be Hellenistic—have appeared on the shores of the Dead Sea. Ample quotations are given to enable the readers to judge the degree of harmony for themselves.

GERVASE E. DUFFIELD

Medical Analogies

The Heart of Things, by Nathaniel Beattie (Victory Press, 1960, 119 pp., 8s.6d.), is reviewed by Stanley H. Gould, Medical Practitioner, Cambridge, England.

Dr. Beattie is both doctor and minister, and therefore well qualified to write on spiritual analogies from medical science. The book is informative, interesting and without any rivals. The author takes a series of vital human organs, discusses their structure and function, and then deduces spiritual applications. Thus he writes on the human blood, explains its main functions, and then takes the word in Scripture and shows its vital importance in the Christian faith. In this way, the heart, the nerves, the eye, the ear, sleep, and dietetics are handled. Dr. Beattie includes a very useful chapter on fear and the Gospel answer to it. Faith in Christ, he insists, has a healing influence on the whole man, body and spirit. Lack of a vital link with God and neglect of the spiritual life are the most serious causes of nervous disorders. The book is not a scientific treatise: the facts are essentially basic. Nevertheless, it is full of robust common sense, evangelical fervor, and biblical teaching. It should prove particularly valuable to young people.

STANLEY H. GOULD

Mission To Children

The Good Seed: The Story of the Children’s Special Service Mission and the Scripture Union, by J. C. Pollock (Hodder and Stoughton, 1959, 254 pp., Illustrated, 12s. 6d.), is reviewed by F. K. Drayson, The Wirral, Cheshire, England.

Founded on a Welsh beach in 1867 by Josiah Spiers, an eccentric with a real gift for Christian work amongst the young, the Children’s Special Service Mission is now one of the most influential evangelical organizations in the British Commonwealth. One of its offshoots is the Scripture Union, a worldwide Bible reading system with literature in more than a hundred different languages, and with over a million members. It is easy to criticize the work of the CSSM and the views of the characters who appear in the pages of this book. Particularly with the earlier men, one wishes that they had worked in closer co-operation with the local churches, and that they had pondered more carefully the biblical teaching on the work of the Spirit in conversion. Nevertheless, it was a work which God honored, and the quality and devotion of the men who guided it are self-evident. Throughout, it has remained faithful in its evangelicalism, and there must be few Christians, at any rate in Great Britain, who have not learned to their profit from its workers or from its literature. Many owe their conversion as children to its work on beaches, at camps, in schools, and elsewhere.

Those who look for a critical history will be disappointed, for Mr. Pollock does not set out to write this. Instead, he gives us a series of sketches of men and events which have shaped the story of the CSSM, though sometimes he tends to describe what is interesting rather than what is important. With the overseas work, one almost feels that some topics are brought in largely for the sake of mentioning another country. In a book of this sort, opinions will vary on the choice of subjects; the reviewer would like to have read more of the work in the English Public Schools and of the Caravan Mission to Village Children. Perhaps some day a fuller history will be published, and it is to be hoped that it will include an apology for the existence of a mission to children. Some of our forefathers would have preferred to seek to influence families through the parents rather than through their children, and who shall say if their method was not wiser?

F. K. DRAYSON

Disorder, A Sign Of Life

The Spirit of Protestantism, by Robert McAfee Brown (Oxford, 1961, 264 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Edward John Carnell, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Fuller Theological Seminary.

To appreciate the scope of this work, one need imagine what would be involved, were he to undertake a defense of Protestantism. The author of this sparkling book has done a good job. He sees Protestantism as an ongoing dialogue between those who have received Christ as Saviour, and who thereby accept God’s judgment against their lives, that they may live by grace alone.

Since the author is so consistently charitable in his judgments, I can only assume that he enjoys a remarkable freedom from personal hostility. Many writers (myself not excluded) would be tempted to vent their spleen when they face elements in Protestantism which have little respect for classical traditions, and which place the Protestant position in a bad light by their contempt for an educated ministry, their disparagement of liturgies, their separation from the communion of the saints and general culture, and their endless proliferation into splinter denominations and demagogically-controlled sects.

The author deftly reverses the field by insisting that the disorder in Protestantism is really a sign of life—like a house which is being occupied by an active family. He contends that Protestants should find ways to manifest the unity they already have (unity in Christ), rather than rushing about looking for ways to create unity.

The major weakness in the book, as I see it, is in biblical authority. We are left with the vague criterion that “the Bible witnesses to Christ.” How this criterion can illuminate difficulties in exegesis and hermeneutics is not clearly explained.

The extensive notes in the back of the book are a gold mine of bibliographic references and parenthetic comments. And when the author deals with the dialogue between Protestants and Catholics—well, he is simply superb. May this book enjoy the wide reading that it justly deserves.

EDWARD JOHN CARNELL

Sober Lesson From Kagawa

Kagawa of Japan, by Cyril J. Davey (Abingdon Press, 1960, 150 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Calvin D. Linton, Professor of English Literature and Dean of Columbian College, The George Washington University.

This is one of those rather rare products in the world of religious publication: a book of genuine literary merit, professionally competent in all departments of the writer’s craft. And to those who believe that Christianity is primarily an ethical system, not a plan of redemption, it will be doubly gratifying, for, as all know, Toyohiko Kagawa consistently emphasized service over doctrine. “To Kagawa,” writes Dr. Davey, “Jesus Christ has never been a subject for theological argument. He would have found it possible to worship God, in love, even without the revelation of Jesus.” Jesus’ own words to the contrary will echo in the minds of many readers, but even for them there is in Kagawa’s life a sober lesson. This man’s hope for the restoration of the world may ultimately have rested upon the insecure foundation of man’s innate goodness working through constantly improved social instruments, but his works far outshone those of many who, while more scripturally rooted, have forgotten the warning that faith without works is dead.

Dr. Davey, who has published some forty books and plays in England, is minister at Epsom, in the Sutton (Surrey) Circuit of the Methodist Church of England. He has here written what is at once an exciting narrative, a sensitive and illuminating book about Japan and its people, and a stirring account of what power is generated when only one human being truly tries to put the ethical teachings of Christ into practice.

CALVIN D. LINTON

In A Manly Way

Man to Man, by Richard C. Halverson (Cowman, 1961, 259 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Charles Ferguson Ball, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, River Forest, Illinois.

It is not given to many men to be able to speak in a manly way to the hearts of men. It seems quite evident from reading this book that Dr. Halverson is gifted beyond many in saying the vital things to meet the need of the hour. His messages are pungent and they reach home. His vast experience in personal work has fitted him to reach the hearts of people who think and seek the answers to life’s great questions.

Here are 92 pithy two-page articles arranged in eight chapters, covering questions that are uppermost in a man’s thinking today. They all call for a verdict. They are refreshing and they get quickly to the point and also straight to the heart.

CHARLES FERGUSON BALL

Bibliography Limited

Introducing Christian Ethics, by Henlee H. Barnette (Broadman, 1961, 176 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Bert Hall, Interim Dean and Professor of Philosophy, Houghton College.

The problem of any systematic treatment of ethics is to state principles and suggest applications so that the reader may clarify his own views of the good life. The author has nobly accomplished this in a straightforward style and has produced a readable work for the beginner in ethics.

The two parts of the book are by no means equal in value. Part I discusses the “Principles” of Christian ethics. The author paraphrases through the Old Testament books and briefly introduces us to ethics of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. In scattered references he reveals an objective bias by adherence to the theory of evolution (pp. 16, 88), the views of higher critics (p. 35), and the heavy Stoic influence on Paul (p. 74). The author never clearly builds the New Testament ethic upon the new man in Christ, but sees the example and teaching of Jesus as His chief value.

The chapter on the Holy Spirit well covers the action of the Spirit in personal life and conduct, but sadly neglects His work in Christian witnessing and evangelistic power.

The second part of the book, discussing the “Problems” of practical Christian ethics, is intensely valuable for the systematic collection of principles in concrete areas of action. The chapter on “Marriage and the Family” is especially helpful.

Each chapter is documented with footnotes from current books and periodicals, but the evangelical reader will note with apprehension the complete lack of evangelical authors in the references or recommended readings. Was Mr. Barnette left in ignorance of outstanding evangelical works such as Carl F. H. Henry’s Christian Personal Ethics and John Murray’s Principles of Conduct while he did his research at Harvard?

BERT HALL

Work Remains To Be Done

A Christian Approach to Education: A Bibliocentric View, by H. W. Byrne (Zondervan, 1961, 362 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by C. Adrian Heaton, President, California Baptist Theological Seminary.

There is a deep hunger among evangelical Christians to find a comprehensive, consistent philosophy of education growing out of the authoritative Bible. H. W. Byrne, Dean of the Fort Wayne Bible College, presents in this volume his attempt to be comprehensive, definitive, and thoroughly biblical. The publishers state on the book’s jacket that “He deals specifically with every phase of the educational picture in this comprehensive work—vast in scope, practical in application, concise in presentation, and almost limitless in its broad understanding of the educational process.” With such a lead, the reviewer read this book in happy expectation.

There are three major sections. The first attempts to state the Christian theistic world view and its implications for the construction of a Christian philosophy of education. The second part of the book deals with the educational process and the school system. Aims, teacher-pupil relationships, the curriculum, and methods are given special attention. The final section of the book is an attempt to delineate the special contributions of five fields of study: biblical studies, social sciences, natural sciences, humanities, and communicative skills. The volume also has an extensive bibliography, a glossary of philosophical terminology, and an index.

In spite of the soundness of the assumption that the Bible is authoritative and is the basis of educational philosophy, the book was a great disappointment to the reviewer. Many sentences were simply incomprehensible. Some were not true to fact. Here are just a few illustrations of the inadequate statements that appear in the book.

“Protestantism resulted from a revolt against the Roman church. It advocated a return to Christian theism as advanced by Jesus and the early church” (p. 26). Surely the author must know that the Roman church has perhaps done as much as any other to formulate Christian theism.

“Non-rational creation is that part of creation without the power of exercising the qualities of personality, primary of which are intelligence, reason, including all levels of creation below that of man” (p. 47).

“Having the conviction that God has revealed Himself of mankind, the Christian educator begins both his concepts and practices in education with God, believing as he does that Christian education is actually a re-interpretation of God’s interpretation” (p. 67).

“The principle of self-activity demands that the teacher control the activity of the pupil in the right direction and often in that direction” (pp. 142, 143).

It is our hope that others will attempt to spell out a comprehensive Christian philosophy of education based on a sound biblical faith.

C. ADRIAN HEATON

Tempted To Envy

A Psychology for Preaching, by Edgar N. Jackson, (Channel Press, 1961, 181 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Andrew W. Blackwood, Sr., Professor Emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary.

This is an able book by a “liberal evangelical” who excels in clever negations. The first two chapters, in content and form, show all sorts of welcome insights. The other seven chief parts move on a more familiar level. As a whole the volume should awake many a conservative minister and send him to his knees before the open Bible to ask God why he cannot make his Bible-centered pulpit work as practical and, in the right sense, as “hearer-minded” as that of this master in applied psychology. Many of us learn far more of value by careful perusal of such a book than by enjoying one that tells us only what we already know and believe. In time this man should take a worthy place among liberal authors whose books tempt the rest of us to envy mastery of the writer’s art.

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

Sermons By A Master

Can I Know God?, by W. E. Sangster (Abingdon, 1960, 176 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by C. Philip Hinerman, Minister, Park Avenue Methodist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The recent death of W. E. Sangster, beloved evangelical pastor of Westminster Central Hall, London, caused the entire Christian world to feel its sense of loss. No other British preacher in this generation preached to such large congregations with a heart more warm and more truly evangelistic than this great soul.

In the lingering months of his life, in the midst of great suffering and pain, his faith did not fail him, but through a ministry of prayer and intercession he did keep the faith.

All of this is relevant to this review, for the book glows with the warm faith of the author. This is evangelical preaching and also evangelistic preaching. When these sermons were preached they doubtless moved the auditors deeply.

In The Path to Perfection (his Ph.D. thesis, revised for publication), Sangster proved his scholarly ability. Although he wrote rather voluminously in a popular vein thereafter, he resisted almost to the end the temptation to publish a book of sermons. In the preface to this volume, he makes an apologetic defense for the publication of the book. These sermons in printed form are transparently simple, full of tempting illustrations—and easy to purloin!

C. PHILIP HINERMAN

Joy In Reminiscence

Out of My Life, by V. Raymond Edman (Zondervan, 1961, 224 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by C. Ralston Smith, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

A college student who cancels a summer steamship job to keep his contract with the Lord—a doughboy who successfully seeks assurance from God concerning his assignments—a professor who avoids the meeting which might open up a new job for him—an educator who waxes enthusiastic about religious experiences—a president who joins the student body in seasons of prayer—all these are included in the sketches which trace the interesting life of Dr. Edman. The book of reminiscences is not exhaustive nor entirely autobiographical. It is rather a series of interesting experiences, mostly subjective and personal, showing the guidance of God which is given to those who walk close with him.

Anything coming from the pens and hearts of the official family at Wheaton College would be conservative in its theological tenor. So is this book, but without the rigidity which is sometimes ascribed to those who believe in the fundamentals of our faith. The predominant note struck in recounting these episodes is that of joy. While there is the over-all feeling that “the good guys always win in the end,” yet the testimony of the faithfulness of God prevails when the desire is unrealized, too. One or two instances of intimate experiences with God are told without maudlin sentimentality or vulgar boldness. Scriptural references and phrases are sprinkled throughout. Jeremiah 29:11 is quoted repeatedly, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” This epitomizes the main thrust of the book.

The poems of Amy Carmichael and a few others are used wisely and with effect. The book should have a warm reception among evangelicals generally and within the Wheaton family especially.

C. RALSTON SMITH

Book Briefs

In Christ, by E. Stanley Jones (Abingdon, 1961, 380 pp., $2.50). Short devotional meditations on the New Testament for each day of the year.

The Treasury for Special Days and Occasions, compiled by E. Paul Hovey (Revell, 1961, 317 pp., $3.95). More than 1,200 inspirational anecdotes, quotations, and illustrations.

Lift Up Your Life, by Morris Goldstein (Philosophical Library, 1961, 194 pp., $4.75). Practical rules for daily living by a rabbi who has taught for more than a decade at Pacific School of Religion; how to capitalize on “chance and luck.”

Bible Light on Daily Life, by Philip E. Howard, Jr. (Baker, 1960, 213 pp., $2.50). Pithy counsel of wisdom and grace for daily devotions.

Effective Readings for Special Days and Occasions, by Laura S. Emerson (Zondervan, 1961, 118 pp., $1.95). For various church-related occasions, from bridal shower to missionary convention.

How Can These Things Be?, by Bill H. Lewis (Zondervan, 1961, 87 pp., $1.95). Sermons on Christian maturity by a Southern Baptist evangelist.

Time Out, by Al Bryant (Zondervan, 1961,182 pp., $1.95). A year’s daily devotions for the young.

Monser’s Topical Index and Digest of the Bible, by Harold E. Monser (Baker, 1960, 681 pp., $5.95). A volume which makes more widely available the valuable topical analyses in Monser’s Cross-Reference Bible.

Children and Religion, by Dora P. Chaplin (Scribner’s, 1961, 238 pp., $3.95). A realistic and practical educational guide for parents and teachers.

Reprints

Handbook of Denominations in the United States, by Frank S. Mead (Abingdon, 1961, 272 pp., $2.95). Second revised edition of a fair and concise record of U. S. denominations’ history, doctrines, organization, and present status—a most helpful volume by the editor-in-chief of Fleming H. Revell Co.

Near to God, by Abraham Kuyper (Eerdmans, 1961, 108 pp., $2). Selected meditations from the devotional classic To be Near unto God (trans. by John Hendrik de Vries) by the great Dutch theologian and statesman.

Life of John Knox, by Thomas M’Crie (The Publications Committee of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 1960, 294 pp., 8s). Reappearance of a premier nineteenth-century biography of Knox as part of Scottish Reformation fourth centenary observance.

History of Interpretation, by Frederic W. Farrar (Baker, 1961, 553 pp., $6.95). The 1885 Bampton Lectures, comprising what Bernard Ramm has called “the only great history of hermeneutics in English.”

Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, edited by Leslie F. Church (Zondervan, 1960, 784 pp., $9.95). Monumental commentary abridged to one volume.

Paperbacks

The World’s Great Scriptures, by Lewis Browne (Macmillan, 1961, 559 pp., $2.95). Anthology of sacred books of ten principal religions (first published in 1946).

Reinhold Niebuhr, edited by Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretall (Macmillan, 1961, 486 pp., $1.95). Essays of interpretation and criticism of Niebuhr’s work by 20 scholars (first published in 1956).

The Quest of the Historical Jesus, by Albert Schweitzer (Macmillan, 1961, 413 pp., $1.95). The famed Alsatian’s first important work, published in German in 1906, interpreting the life of Christ on the basis of “thoroughgoing eschatology,” which attributed to Jesus a crude, mistaken apocalypticism.

The Sacred and the Profane, by Mircea Eliade (Harper, 1961, 256 pp., $1.45). Treats the significance of religious myth, symbolism, and ritual within life and culture (trans. into English from French in 1959).

The Great Religions by which Men Live, by Floyd H. Ross and Tynette Hills (Fawcett, 1961, 192 pp., $.50). A study of world religions which unfortunately purports to “point the way to a larger faith”; primary allegiance given to “that pattern of divinity as it emerges in all things human” (first published in 1954).

The Protestant Reformation, by Robert G. Torbet (Judson, 1961, 96 pp., $1). Rather brief survey published for the Cooperative Publication Association, an interdenominational agency to provide study materials for older youth and young adult groups.

Love and Conflict, by Gibson Winter (Doubleday, 1961, 200 pp., $.95). An attempt to understand modern strains upon family life. The deepest ill: anxiety which keeps us from talking out our conflicts (first published in 1958).

The Next Day, by James A. Pike (Doubleday, 1961, 197 pp., $.95). A “how to” book for personal crises, including how to: know yourself, sleep, stay married, die (first published in 1957).

Directory of Christian Colleges in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean, compiled by Clara E. Orr (Missionary Research Library, 1961, 38 pp., $1.50). Expanded revision of a monograph first published in 1955.