Page 6274 – Christianity Today (2025)

Eutychus

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Good Morning

You have one experience in common with everyone you will meet today. He had to get up this morning, too. For sheer trauma, waking up is a close second to being born, and it occurs more often. It is not unusual for me to wake up a dozen times in one day: at my desk, in a bus, driving my car, or in a pew. But usually I wake up at home, in the midst of the dawn crisis.

Fear of reprisals keeps me from reporting on our awakening household in detail. I could describe A, groaning, kicking the wall, and pulling the blanket over his head, or B, who rises quickly, dresses with expressionless face in whatever garments happen to be lying about, then collapses insensible across the bed. One member uses a two-alarm system, another a clock radio and a cheery news announcer. The best all-family rouser was the rooster that grew from an Easter chick, but the neighbors deplored his efficiency; he was deported. By all these means we move from bed to bedlam in the space of half an hour.

This morning I missed the weather report, and was about to dial WE 7–1212 for a recorded briefing, when the thought struck me that I might go outside and see the morning myself.

It was unforgettable. The quiet. Only the whine of trucks in the distance and an occasional subdued crash or shout from the house. The color. An autumn morning watches color being born. The rising sun touches the trees and the misty charcoal tones burst into flames. The dew. My shoes were soaked from the wet grass. Frost was on the fallen leaves. A spider web on the garage window had become a sparkling necklace.

It became clear to me why a poet sees the morning differently from a commuter. He stands out-of-doors. Here I was in that morning freshness that poets now describe for cigarette ads.

The Bible pictures dew as a blessing, and blessing as a dew (Psalm 133). The Messiah’s people will be like the dew: an army of young men rising up in the beauty of holiness out of the womb of the morning (Psalm 110:3). Indeed, God himself will be as the dew to his people (Hosea 14:5).

The rising Sun of Righteousness gives a new day, a new birth of the Spirit. In the light of the Gospel it is morning. The hope of the Church’s reformation is the renewal of the Holy Ghost with the dew of the morning.

Man: Evolution, Antiquity

In your September 14 issue on Christianity and Science you have done us all and the kingdom of God a real service.…

First Baptist Church

Ashton, Md.

Reading the two articles by Walter E. Lammerts and Albert Hyma was like reading an eighteenth-century report on evolution, or perhaps even a throwback to the sixteenth. However, they were wonderful and timely examples of a traditional religious prejudice against natural science.…

Examples of this war between religion and science could go on ad infinitum; suffice to say that the Church is not infallible. We dare not take a supercilious attitude, assuming that Christianity has a monopoly on correct answers. When the Church ceases to be objective, it ceases to have the truth.

Evolution is yet a sensitive subject … and indeed the scientists have many problems which require prolonged research. However, this is not to be taken as some kind of aerial signal flare by the Church to commence a blind unintelligible attack upon evolution by calling it “pure fiction” (Hyma, p. 8).

I do not mean to infer that natural science is infallible, or that it dictate to the Church how Scripture should be interpreted. However, surely we must examine natural science objectively—before we storm off “halfcocked”—and then re-examine our own exegesis of the passage in question. There has been more than one inaccurate exegesis. Perhaps it is the task of natural science to keep theology alert.…

Rochester, Pa.

We are grateful to you for this timely discussion of the important question of evolution and its implications.

There seems to be a resurgence of the teaching of creation by evolution clear down to the first grades in our schools. We need truth, not hypothesis. Most scientists admit that evolution is not a proved fact.… However, they present it to the children as if it were fact.

Evidence of design in the world is marvelous indeed. I regret that the doctors’ textbooks in medical school are so inclined to the evolutionary view.

Brookfield, Mo.

One of the unfortunate, but probably necessary characteristics of our present state of learning is specialization. In Christian thinking we see this often graphically illustrated in articles dealing with the general subject of science and Scripture. All too frequently we see this in the case of the theologian unversed in science, or the well-meaning scientist ignorant of biblical theology who tries to “prove the Bible by science” or otherwise relate the two areas of knowledge. Occasionally specialization becomes evident when the scientist who is expert in one field attempts to relate some other field of his mild acquaintance with the Word of God. Such, I believe, is true in the instance of the article “Is Evolutionary Theory Valid?” by Walter E. Lammerts. One could not doubt that Dr. Lammerts is a leading authority in certain aspects of botany. It is to my thinking doubtful whether “careful field study during many vacations since 1936” qualifies a botanist to upset the basic foundations of modern geology any more than many summers growing roses qualifies a geologist to upset the foundations of modern genetics, should he feel disposed to do so. The Christian lay public does well to heed the scientist who is a Christian in the interpretation of the field in which he is expert, and proceed from that point to relate the particular area of science to the Word of God.

Science Dept.

Delaware County Christian School

Newtown Square, Pa.

I share the protest of Professor Hyma about the way evolutionary doctrines are taught in much textbook literature, especially in the social science fields. I am not sure that he has grasped the basic problem because he seems to imply that contemporary thought can be put on the basis of a pure Genesis literalism.

The basic difficulty, as it appears to me after many years of dealing directly with this problem in classes which embraced all current religious cultures, is a confusion of “scientific fact” with metaphysical implications. Evolution is not a fact, but a working hypothesis, and furthermore it is not even a hypothesis about causes or values. But to say, “It actually is still pure fiction,” is a semantic error also.

I am in doubt that Professor Hyma sees this distinction and its implications. Once this analysis is established the ground is cleared for theology, for theology is not based on a time claim, but on the revelation of a divine act. I am not saying that the evolutionary hypothesis furnishes no problems, but they are not insuperable, even from the point of view of a Calvinist doctrine of original sin, which, incidentally, is not literally stated in Genesis.

I deplore, with Dr. Hyma, the contemporary relativism in ethical values, but the problem is much too complicated to be assessed against the doctrine of evolution.

Dept. of Philosophy

Cornell College

Mount Vernon, Iowa

If a local inundation, what need for animals, and especially birds, in the ark?… [Also] does evolution from the animal make man an animal any more than growth from a baby makes one a baby?

Los Angeles, Calif.

The articles … on Christianity and science are very timely. I teach world history, and will present parts of Dr. Lammerts’ article to my students in connection with our study of the beginnings of history. No doubt I will take some parts of Hyma’s article also.…

Canton, Ohio

It is my strong conviction that thirty years of progressive education, and thirty years of teaching youngsters that they are descended from apes, has brought America to the point where self-respect and respect for one’s fellow man and reverence for God have almost entirely disappeared from our social order.…

Vidor, Tex.

May I place an order for a dozen copies of [the] issue. In my tattered book it is the best you’ve produced.…

Menlo Park, Calif.

The very excellent articles entitled “How Early is Man?” and “A Great Unfinished Task” … represent truly first-rate thinking about setting up a dialogue between science and religion, whereas the articles by Drs. Lammerts and Hyma … are obscurantist and completely irrelevant to anyone who is interested in relating scientific to religious truth.

First Presbyterian Church and Westminister Foundation

Annapolis, Md.

Thank you for printing Professor Wilson’s very provocative article, “How Early is Man?” Orthodoxy hinders the cause of the Gospel whenever it gives the impression that the infallibility of Scripture implies a specific answer to the question of human antiquity.

Prof. of Ethics and

Philosophy of Religion

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

I am somewhat disturbed by the article.… He contends that the Bible is not chronologically correct and that the age of man is probably older than we have always thought. I am only a layman, but I looked up the references and I certainly cannot see it his way.…

Westphalia, Kan.

Whether Adam was created instantly, or whether his development took millions of years, is not really important. The blueprint of his creation is not given in the book of Genesis. It may be written in the rocks and fossils of the earth. Time is nothing to Jehovah. The image of God is spirit, for God is spirit. We are spiritual beings. Our duty is to serve Him, not to engage in endless disputes over personal opinions.…

Harlingen, Tex.

Why are we so anxious to include the Zinjanthropus animal and his friends into our human family?…

Clearly a definition of man must be related to the image of God, particularly in the area of man’s spiritual relationship to God. The evidence of this fact appears most dramatically in three ways.

1. Man has an awareness of life after death in his heart.…

2. Man has a subconscious or conscious uneasiness about his sins.…

3. Man must worship God. He may argue unconvincingly with himself, as the atheist today and the fool of the Scriptures (“there is no God”), but this only proves his created relationship to God.…

If the above is true, an early fossil may definitely be called man only [with] evidence of one of these three conditions.… All other fossils must be placed in the animal kingdom because of lack of positive evidence of God’s image within them.…

Alameda, Calif.

Genes of apes cannot ever yield man. Zinjanthropus is … ape.

Canterbury, Conn.

Marilyn Monroe

L. Nelson Bell’s “Sinning—and Sinned Against” re Marilyn Monroe (Aug. 31 issue) contained much truth, but some of it was of the trite variety such as the secular press has been gurgling and slobbering out. No Christian would question that it was a pity this woman lived the kind of life that she did, nor that she had many handicaps, nor that she was exploited. But to imply that she never had a chance is going too far. Sorrowful as we must be in Christian love to so state, the fact remains that she was an evil woman who did have a million chances.… If she was exploited, she did some exploiting too—I understand she left half a million dollars out of her exploitation of carnality. I don’t think there was ever a moment when she could not have broken a legal contract for sin and turned to decency and, if necessary, obscurity.…

This is not to minimize Christian love, nor is it to imply that society is not sinful and evil or that commercial exploiters are not hideously rotten. But sin and all evil goes back to the individual.

Memphis, Tenn.

A national magazine carried an article about her, in which she stated that she was not free to talk with anyone she wished.

After reading [L. Nelson Bell’s] article, I was reminded of the Apostle Paul, in Acts 16:16–19: “And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers”.…

I feel we fail as Christians to pray for those who are being held in bondage today.… May God help us as Christians to move over into the book of Acts.

Alexandria, Minn.

Revelation

Re “Karl Barth” (Eutychus, Aug. 3 issue): the orthodox view of revelation does not eliminate personal encounter with God as a vital factor in revelation. It simply affirms that this is only half the truth. In the Bible we encounter the person, and also learn facts about Him. John says, “And hereby we know that we know him” (1 John 2:3). Again, the same writer addresses believers as “all those who know the truth” (2 John 1). Divine truth is revelation. To John revealed truth and personal encounter are inseparably wed. Paul … could say, “which (thing) in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5; 1 Cor. 2:10). Revelation is both personal encounter with the living God and the means to that end, the body of truth found in the Scriptures.

Does not the author of Hebrews ignore the human instrument and attribute to Scripture the quality of being directly spoken by the Holy Spirit—“even as says the Holy Spirit” (Heb. 3:7; 10:15)? Certainly, whatever the Spirit speaks is truth and revelation. What better way, I should like to ask, is there for persons to reveal themselves than through words. Could words spoken by the Holy Spirit not be revelatory words? Could they be fallible words?

The record of revelatory events alone is insufficient to guide depraved minds into the truth. Event must have interpretation. Did not our Lord reveal himself to man by both his word and his person? Why did Christ spend forty days teaching (inspired teaching) after his resurrection if event was sufficient alone? We must have the means of revelation (the event) but also the meaning. With this concept in hand, our attention is directed to the exegesis of the text, wherein alone is there deliverance from hopeless subjectivity.

Dallas, Tex.

Lord, Teach Us

Needed, bold and clear is Prof. Roark’s article (“Lord, Teach Us To Pray!”, July 6 issue). Addressed to laymen it is, but needed by many an evangelical minister. Lecturing our students on real substance in suitable form for public prayer I find most difficult, but rewarding.

Central Baptist Seminary

Dean Toronto, Canada

Versions And Aversions

For some time I have sensed a conviction that there are being imposed upon present-day readers of the Bible too many versions.

There seems to be no end of these new offerings with their much paraded benefits and values. As a result, listeners of sermons from many pulpits are compelled to hear quotations read from an increasing number of recommended versions of the Scriptures.

One sometimes finds himself wondering about the motives which are prompting this quite unusual list of Bible versions, with their “Helps” of various kinds. Are the motives those of genuine helpfulness, or of varied doctrinal promotion, assertion of leadership, etc.? Or are the motives purely mercenary? In some instances, it is not a “new version,” but a well-known and generally-accepted version with notes and interpretations with very definite bias and slants.

There is a very subtle psychology about notes printed in Bible editions. The uneducated and less thoughtful person fails to distinguish between what is printed in the Bible itself, and what is printed in the notes on the same page. Thus the average reader is unconsciously influenced by notes printed on the pages of the Bible which he reads. It has been my practice to advise against the use of Bibles with notes. This advice has been based upon general principles, even though many good things have been printed as “Helps” in Bible versions. References are, of course, useful.

One of the most recent, and even most subtle of offerings in Bible versions is under the caption of “Amplified New Testament,” “Amplified Old Testament,” or some such catchy title. It is surprising how gullible people are, and how many otherwise capable advisers and popular leaders fall for almost any new thing, and allow their names to be attached to enthusiastic commendations of new offerings.

What is done in the “Amplified” publications which I have examined is this: In the instance of the New Testament, the authors have sought to explain or “amplify” the passages by lining up the various possible synonyms of the particular Greek word employed from which the reader may take his choice. Here is an illustration:

As recorded in John 17:17 in our Lord’s upper-room prayer for his immediate apostles and all future believers, he prays, according to the King James Version, the American Standard Version and even the Revised Standard Version, “sanctify them.” The authors here also translate “sanctify them,” and then follow with the words and phrases: “purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself, make them holy.”

This leaves the reader to choose for himself the word or the phrase he prefers, or thinks the best translation. Instead of helping the reader who does not know the Greek, and cannot go for himself to the Greek text for information, it confuses him or drives him to a guess or a prejudiced choice.

This is exactly what a helpful Bible version should not do—drive a reader to a choice for which he is not prepared. A Bible version should do for the reader what he cannot do—provide for him a trusted, accurate translation of what the original really says.

The instance just cited could be repeated hundreds of times. It is readily seen that so-called helps become hindrances—instead of help there is left confusion.

Dr. A. W. Tozer has recently illustrated such Bible amplification by taking the little poem “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and practicing amplification on the poem by doing the same thing which has been done in the so-called New Testament “amplification.” The results on the poem are ridiculous, but no more so than when such amplification is practiced on the Bible, and with much less serious results.

What a Bible reader should do is to adopt a dependable, accurate version of the Bible, in which the best of reverent scholarship has placed at his fingertips a trustworthy text which he need have no fear of following.

This writer has employed the King James Version from his childhood and from which he has committed to memory a number of whole chapters and Psalms, and still loves it. Despite its imperfections, which all translations have, and its archaism of expression, it is still a great version. The most accurate English version of the Bible ever made, in the judgment of this writer who has taught Greek New Testament and English Bible for almost fifty years, is the American Standard Version (ASV).

Winona Lake, Ind.

- More fromEutychus

John Steinbeck

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SOMEONE MUST LOSE—Gambling has now become the largest illegitimate business in the United States. A recent poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion has shown that 45 per cent of our nation’s adult population will confess to participating in some form of gambling, while the records of the California Commission on Organized Crime suggest that the annual profit in gambling is well over two billion dollars. Senator Estes Kefauver estimated that the gross amount bet yearly would exceed the combined profits of the United States Steel Corporation, General Motors, General Electric, and the top 100 manufacturing enterprises of the nation.

The Need For Humility

Four steps are outlined for those who would set their faces towards the road which leads back to God and the first of these is humility: “if my people shall humble themselves.” Pride is one of the most common of human failings and yet it is a deadly sin. I heard a psychiatrist say recently that nowadays the seven deadly sins are minimized, and that pride, for example, is often described as “confidence in one’s own ability.” But call it by whatever name we will, pride is still that ugly thing which causes puny man to shake his fist in the face of Almighty God, and say, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” When a soul is humbled in the presence of God, however, this blustering attitude retreats into the background and the soul will be prepared to make acknowledgment of certain things. To begin with, there will be an acknowledgment of sin. Sin will be seen in its true colors as a “want of conformity unto, and transgression of, the law of God.” It will no longer be explained away in such terms as “an error of judgment,” or “a mistake,” but will be recognized as an act of rebellion. Moreover, the wrong which is done through sin will be regarded as a wrong not merely against one’s fellow, but against God. In the spirit of true humility the penitent soul will say, as the Psalmist did, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight …” (Ps. 51:4).

Coupled with this acknowledgment of sin there will be an acknowledgment of failure. It is characteristic of the man whose religion is a mere formality that he is generally well satisfied with his own attainments. The standard which he adopts is man-made, and by this standard he compares very favorably with his fellows. “I’m as good as other men and a good deal better than most of them,” he is heard to say, as he seeks to boost his morale. On the contrary the man who stands humbled in the presence of God is stripped of his self-assurance and readily admits that he has been “weighed in the balances and found wanting.” “Man’s chief end,” he remembers, “is to glorify God,” and as he contemplates his own weak efforts he realizes how little he has achieved towards the fulfillment of this end. A saintly man said to me recently, “I shall not be afraid to meet my Maker for I am resting on the finished work of Christ, but when I think of how little I have done for him I shall be ashamed to look him in the face.” And these are the sentiments of all who have learned the secret of true humility.

Arising out of this sense of sin and failure there will also be an acknowledgment of need. When the eyes of men are opened by the grace of God they are conscious not only of a sense of sin but also of their need of divine help, and they are ready to say with Augustus Toplady:

Not the labors of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears for ever flow,

All for sin could not atone:

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

The Need For Prayer

Humbled in the presence of God by a sense of his own unworthiness, the subject of grace will moreover recognize his need of divine help as he faces the trials and temptations of life. If his own efforts are futile to effect his justification, they are equally futile to promote sanctification; and so, with an enlightened mind, he implores the aid of the Divine Helper. Thus by humility the mind is conditioned for the exercise of prayer, which is the next essential on the road to spiritual recovery.

When Saul of Tarsus was brought to the house of Ananias following his conflict with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus it was recorded of him, “Behold, he prayeth.” This was no new occupation for Saul, for as a Pharisee he was well accustomed to the regular routine of prayer. But now his prayers were no longer a mere formality but a tremendous reality. They were the utterances of a man who had been humbled into saying, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Surely there is a worthwhile lesson for us here. The Church of God needs to be shaken out of her formality and to recapture the spirit of true prayer. That noted preacher of a past century, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, used to describe the weekly prayer meeting as “the heating apparatus of the Church.” Yet in how many churches today the heating apparatus is never turned on! It is little wonder then that we find such a low spiritual temperature in our midst. The embers of the fire of our spiritual life are burning so low that they fail to bring comfort and cheer to people who seek these, and perplexed and disillusioned men and women are turning their back upon the Church because it has nothing to offer to them. Wherein then lies the remedy for the apathy and apostasy of this present age? “If my people,” says God, “… shall … pray … then will I … heal their land.”

The Need For Earnestness

A further essential requirement on the part of those who seek the way back to God is earnestness. They must “seek my face,” says God. It is surprising how many people who are intensely earnest and persevering in their attitude to problems concerning their material welfare are casual almost to an equal degree in regard to spiritual matters. During the last world war when many commodities were in short supply in Britain, the only way to procure certain articles was to take one’s place in the line, and it became a common sight to see long lines in our streets. Consequently many people developed a “line complex,” and some were even known to take their place without knowing what they were waiting for. The obvious reason was that they were afraid they would miss something. What a tremendous difference it would make to the life of the Church if its members showed the same concern in regard to spiritual things! There would always be crowded congregations because men and women would be afraid to remain away from services less they miss a blessing. Thomas was not present on that first occasion when the risen Christ revealed himself to his disciples in the Upper Room, and as a result we can believe that for a time, at least, his witness was impaired because his mind was clouded by doubts and fears. And who can deny that many today find themselves in “Doubting Castle,” and are not contributing as they should to the life and witness of the Church because they are not frequently enough in the company of Jesus.

Another practice to which those who lived in wartime Britain grew accustomed was that of granting priority. Certain projects were regarded as more important than others, and there was little prospect of any work’s being undertaken unless it appeared on a priority list. What we are all too inclined to forget, however, is that the Lord has provided a priority list, and right at the head of that list is the very thing which our text counsels us to do. “Seek ye first,” says Christ, “the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). Yet many professing Christians are so deeply concerned with things which should be of secondary importance that they have little or no time left in which to “seek the Lord”; as a consequence their spiritual growth becomes stunted. Is it not time then for all of us to check up on our priorities and to ensure that the Lord is given his rightful place in our hearts and lives? And remembering that this is an urgent matter, let us do it now. In days of old the prophet Hosea sent forth a clarion call to backsliding Israel, and surely his words are apposite to the times in which we live: “Sow to yourselves in righteousness,” he says, “reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12).

The Need For Renouncing Evil

The remaining condition which was required of Israel as a harbinger of blessing was a renunciation of evil: they were to “turn from their wicked ways.” It is surprising that a people who had been chosen by God should be so ready to turn their backs upon him. Yet the Israelites were all too prone to follow the heathen nations round about them and to engage in, among other things, the practice of idolatry. From their history we learn that time and time again they forsook the living God and worshiped the gods of the heathen, and we are confronted with such sorry spectacles as that which greeted Moses when he came down from the mount and found the people, for whom God had effected a great deliverance, bowing down and worshiping a golden calf. Unfortunately the practice of idolatry has not ceased with the passing of the years, and while it is true that we may no longer worship golden calves, as Israel did, yet there are many idols to which men do homage and, as a result, Christ is dethroned. How many there are, for example, who, like the rich young ruler, are making wealth their God. In this material age in which everything is measured in terms of pounds or dollars, we may sometimes even be found guilty of assessing spiritual progress by the offerings of the people. It is true of course that where there is real spiritual life there will be sacrificial giving, but it is all too possible for a church to glory in her financial achievements rather than in her Lord. Like the church in Laodicea she may be “rich and increased with goods” and think that she has “need of nothing,” not knowing she is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

Another idol of which we must ever beware is popularity or the approval of men. We tend to become so afraid lest we may be thought odd or different from our fellows, and, as a consequence, the voice of the Church is not raised as often as it should be against moral evil. When situations arise as they so often do when professing Christians are called upon to take a stand for righteousness and truth, or to denounce that which is wrong, the voice of Christian witness is often silenced because the approval of men counts more than the approval of God. And so by our very silence we become partakers of their wicked ways. One of the dangers of this ecumenical age is that ecumenicity itself may become an idol, and that the Church, in order to win the approval of men and to maintain the spirit of unity among those whose views may be widely divergent, is tempted to compromise those great truths of which she has been made custodian. Is it any wonder then that the man of the world becomes perplexed and bewildered as he seeks to ascertain what the Church believes and what benefits she has to offer him which he does not already possess? And the sad outcome is that all too often with a shrug of his shoulder he dismisses the Christian faith as something which is not relevant to the world of today. Undoubtedly there is need for Christian unity, but it must be a unity which has as its foundation an uncompromising belief in the Incarnation and finished work of the Divine Saviour who said, “I, if I be lifted up …, will draw all men unto me.”

Blessings Assured

Two blessings are promised to those who fulfill God’s requirements. The first of these is a personal blessing and consists of pardon—“I will forgive their sin.” How gracious God is, both to the sinner and to the backsliding Christian. For the sinner who forsakes his ways and turns unto the Lord there is abundant pardon, and for the backslider who confesses his sins there is forgiveness and cleansing.

But notice that there is also a promise of national blessing—“I will heal their land.” God had warned Israel that one of the consequences of sin would be drought. It may be necessary, he said, “to shut up heaven that there be no rain.” Israel’s very existence depended on “the former and latter rains,” for without them there would be famine in the land. During the reign of Ahab the land experienced a sore famine, and only after the prayers of Elijah was the famine brought to an end, and the land healed.

Is there not much to remind us that the same healing power is needed in our land today? We live in times of spiritual drought and barrenness and urgently need those refreshing showers which alone can revive the parched ground. The world is in a state of tension and men’s hearts are failing them for fear. But let us not forget that God has promised blessing when men turn to him in penitence and faith.

Do you wish then to make a contribution to the national effort which can have far-reaching consequences? Do you wish to see that “righteousness which exalteth a nation” established in the land? Do you wish to see the “windows of heaven” opened and the blessing poured out? Here then are the conditions! “If my people, which are called by name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” If we by his grace are willing and able to fulfill the conditions, God will surely honor his promise.

END

- More fromWilliam R. Mackay

Samuel A. Jeanes

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It should be determined, once for all, that Sunday laws in our nation are not religious laws.

The decision of the United States Supreme Court of May 29, 1961, upholding the Sunday laws of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as health and welfare measures has been interpreted as a defeat to religion and the religious implication of these laws.

A weekly newsmagazine recently commented on “the unruffled detachment with which today’s church leaders view the disappearance” of a Lord’s Day consecrated to religion and rest. Referring to one denomination which heard a resolution reading, “The church should not seek, nor even appear to seek, the coercive power of the State in order to facilitate a Christian observance of the Lord’s Day,” it traced some of the indifference to arguments for separation of church and state.

These laws, designed to do good for all of the people, are poorly understood and little appreciated.

No one will deny that in the early years of our history they had a religious motivation, but this is not the basic reason we observe them. Mindful of the laws of God, the leaders of the government wrote into secular jurisprudence rules regarding the first day of the week. The first Sunday law in America, known as the Virginia Law, was passed in 1610, just three years after Virginia was colonized by Captain John Smith. The Constitution of the United States recognizes the uniqueness of Sunday in Article 1 (Section 7, paragraph 2) describing it as a day of rest for the President and, by implication, for the people.

As our country grew, many people were blessed by these Sunday laws. Men and women received protection from employers who might otherwise have required day after day of uninterrupted labor.

As early as 1782, the Massachusetts Sunday Law, which had an unmistakably religious origin, experienced a change in its Preamble with the addition of the words, “Whereas the observance of the Lord’s Day is highly promotive of the welfare of the community, by affording necessary season for relaxation from labor and cares of business, for moral reflections and conversations on the duties and the frequent errors of human conduct.…”

In 1885, the United States Supreme Court concluded that Sunday laws were welfare measures:

Laws setting aside Sunday as a day of rest are not upheld from any right of the government to legislate for the promotion of religious observance, but from its right to protect all persons from the physical and moral debasement which comes from uninterrupted labor. Such laws have always been deemed beneficent and merciful laws, especially to the poor and dependent, to the laborers in our factories and workshops, and in the heated rooms in our cities, and their validity has been sustained by the highest courts of the States.

The Supreme Court’s 1961 judicial determination regarding the Maryland law said:

In the light of the evolution of our Sunday Closing Laws through the centuries, and of their more or less recent emphasis upon secular considerations, it is not difficult to discern that as presently written and administered, most of them, at least, are of a secular rather than a religious character, and that presently they bear no relationship to establishment of religion as those words are used in the Constitution.…

Sunday laws do not violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. It has never been established in any specific case that Sunday laws have curtailed religious freedom. Economic injury has been established. A law that regulates secular activity on Sunday may make the practice of some religions more expensive. Every Roman Catholic understands this since he pays taxes to support public schools as well as the parochial school. Every Protestant who pays taxes to support his state university and who tithes to support his denominational colleges knows that the practice of his religion can be expensive. The cost of the practice of religion is determined by the dedication and conviction of the adherent. But the law does not make the holding of a religious belief a crime, nor does it force one to embrace a religion.

The Christian church does not need laws to support it, to encourage attendance or to grant financial support. Churches have benefited by Sunday laws, but these are not the only laws which they have found beneficial. Are we to oppose all laws that aid the Church? Is there any satisfaction in awakening in a society which has no law? A law that benefits others may benefit the Church as well.

By opposing Sunday laws shall we rob the millions of workingmen in our land of rights for which they have struggled many years? Thousands of these people labor in churches. They sing in the choirs. They teach in the Sunday schools. Thousands of them do not. By what pious logic can we oppose laws which have been a blessing to many?

Certainly the churches do not want to be used to break down the progress which has been made in so many areas of our fair employment practices. To gain an advantage over their competitors, some businessmen clamor for a day other than Sunday as a day of rest. This would leave them free for Sunday operations. But if such a practice should be legalized, those who observe Sunday might employ only first-day observers; those who observe another day might refrain from employing workers who keep Sunday. In dealing with the Pennsylvania Sunday Law even the Supreme Court commented on the suggestion that those observing another day should gain exemption: “This may be the wiser solution to the problem but the concern of the court is not with the wisdom of the legislation but with its constitutional limitation.” The Court then pointed out that enforcement problems would be multiplied. Businesses that open on Sundays would be given a competitive advantage. There would be cause to question the sincerity of a worker’s beliefs and the opportunity for discrimination in hiring, since an exempt employer would, of necessity, hire only those who qualified for the exemption.

To oppose Sunday laws would be to strike at the American home against the value of one day in seven when the family is together. The “new economic pattern” of business every day could undermine the home life of our nation by scattering the “day off” for different working members of the family. In fact, we might question whether the removal of Sunday laws might not seriously tamper with our freedom of religion.

Christians cannot afford to oppose laws which benefit so many if they propose to be concerned for the rights of their people and the total population of America.

Christians can strengthen these laws, however, by showing a respect for the Lord’s Day themselves. By making purchases on days other than Sunday, they can guarantee that their neighbor’s day of rest will not be broken. Merchants have said that if church people would refrain from making Sunday purchases, their places of business could remain closed.

“Never on Sunday!” A radio announcer made this comment after reading the news story of the 1961 Supreme Court decision on Sunday laws. He said it in humor. When Christians apply it to unnecessary business on Sunday, it can mean Christian concern.

And what about those who sincerely observe another day? We would urge them to continue to support the day which we now enjoy and at the same time to work for a recognition of their day as well. Today’s trend is toward a work-week of five days, not six, and certainly not seven. They will find many supporters coming to their assistance.

END

- More fromSamuel A. Jeanes

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I BELIEVE that we have been losing round after round in the cold war, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and that, at virtually every point, the initiative still lies with the hordes of international Communism.

At the close of World War II, our forces stood triumphant on land and sea and in the air. We had at our command the mightiest array of military power in history. The flags of freedom were unfurled on every continent.

Had we had the understanding and the will, our diplomacy, backed up by this military and moral power, could have assured the freedom of the peoples of Europe and Asia and laid the basis for a stable peace. Of this I am convinced.

Yet, the past 16 years have witnessed a calamitous retreat from victory. We have suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of international Communism. We have retreated from position after position; we have committed folly after folly.

It is not in the tradition of the American people to accept defeat, or to respond to threats and bullying with mere paper protests. That is why they are restive today. Our people are convinced that the trend of the post-war years must be reversed and can be reversed. The past several years, however, have seen this trend accentuated and accelerated.…

If we have been losing the cold war, if we have thus far found it impossible to seize the initiative at any point, this is because of three basic failures.

First of all, we have failed to face up to the unpleasant fact that we are locked in a life-and-death struggle with an implacable enemy.

Second, we have failed to face up to the fact that this enemy wages war in an infinitely subtle and infinitely complex manner, that the so-called “cold war” is not a simple condition of hostile confrontation, but a mortal conflict waged by a thousand different means—a war in which the enemy offensive is integrated on every plane of human activity, the economic, the political, the diplomatic, the psychological, the social, the cultural—a war conducted by stealth and subversion and subtle psychological techniques.

Our third basic failure in the cold war is that we have been amateurs fighting against the most highly skilled and ruthless and dedicated professionals.

Because of the persistent innocence of our attitude, we have been horrified by each new act of Soviet aggression and perfidy—as though aggression and perfidy were not essential characteristics of international Communism. On the other hand, we have shown ourselves willing, over and over again, to forget the lessons of the past, to respond to each new Soviet blandishment, to negotiate new treaties in good faith when old treaties are terminated by Soviet bad faith.

The Soviets have bewitched us into accepting the division of the world into a “peace zone” and a “war zone.” The “war zone” embraces all those countries and territories that have not yet succumbed to Communist rule; and in this zone, according to the arbitrary, one-sided rules which we have apparently accepted, the Communists are free to seek power by military aggression where this is possible, and by subversion and infiltration where military aggression is not feasible.

The “peace zone” is synonymous with the Communist land empire. From this zone, the cold war is excluded. Against this zone, no matter how newly acquired these territories may be, counterattacks are forbidden.…

But above all, we have been paralyzed in situation after situation by our own sentimentality, by our almost passionate desire to believe that the Communists do not really mean what they say, that they cannot be as evil as they appear to be, that coexistence with them is possible, and that the cold war can be liquidated by making this or that concession.

If we continue to fight the cold war under these arbitrary rules and with these self-imposed limitations, it is historically inevitable that we shall lose it. If the Communists always attack and we always defend, even if we were successful in repulsing most of the Communist attacks, the ultimate victory of Communism would be a mathematical certainty.

That is why Khrushchev and the other Communist leaders are so arrogant today. That is why Khrushchev asked the assembled leaders of world Communism last year to synchronize their watches for the final assault on world capitalism. That is why Khrushchev could tell his comrades that despite his age, he still hopes to see the hammer and sickle of Communism triumphant over all the countries of the world.

Khrushchev and his comrades may well be right, if the free world does not succeed in freeing itself from the illusions and wishful thinking that have heretofore characterized its conduct, if it persists in refusing to face up to the total irreconcilability of Communism and Western civilization.

There is too great a tendency to accept Communist revolutions as irreversible and Communist regimes as permanent. This attitude lies at the root of our failure to take effective measures to deal with the Castro regime in Cuba.

The phenomenon of total dictatorship has, in fact, produced the phenomenon of the “total revolution,” in which entire peoples, including the military forces under supposedly Communist direction, have revolted against their Communist masters.

That the phenomenon of “total revolution” is not a freak or historical accident is demonstrated by the fact that we have had four such uprisings over the past nine years—in East Germany, in Poland, in Hungary, and in Tibet.

If such a total revolution against Communism were to take place in Cuba, its immediate success would be assured for the simple reason that the Soviet Union and Communist China would be in no position to intervene in Cuba as they did in Hungary and East Germany and Tibet.

I believe that Cuba is not only a place where we can seize the initiative and strike an effective blow for freedom; I believe that the security of our nation and of the hemisphere make it essential that we embark upon this initiative without delay and without equivocation. I believe that freedom can be restored to the Cuban people if we are prepared to give our unstinting support to the Cuban forces for liberation, in Cuba and abroad, and if we are prepared to invoke the Monroe Doctrine to proclaim a partial blockade directed against the shipment of Soviet military equipment and personnel to Cuba.

And if we act successfully in Cuba, it will have an impact that goes far beyond the confines of our hemisphere. I think it no exaggeration to say that the restoration of freedom to the Cuban people might very well mark the beginning of the end of the slave empire that the Kremlin has built up in Europe and in Asia.

The first step toward the building of an effective foreign policy, the indispensable step, is to accept the basic facts of our existence as they are, and to clear away the illusions.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Communism and Western civilization can get along, we will give up vain hopes of an easy way out and begin to make the stupendous effort in the field of free world armament and mobilization that must be made.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that the temporary easing of this or that individual crisis will bring about an era of good feeling or another “spirit of Camp David,” we will scrap the patchwork foreign policy of the past which has been essentially a policy of short-term reactions to Communist initiatives, and adopt instead a consistent, long-range program aimed at expansion of freedom and defeat of Communism.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Communism is accepted by its subject peoples, we will institute policies aimed at encouraging resistance behind the Iron Curtain with the consequent demoralization of the Red empire.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Polish Communists or Yugoslav or Cuban Communists are any less the enemies of freedom than Kremlin Communists, we will stop pouring out our substance in aid to Red dictatorships, which have received more than $4 billion from the American people in recent years, and instead divert that aid to those allies who are manning the front lines of freedom.

Freed from the illusion that the hard-core Communists who rigidly dominate the Communist world can be influenced by friendly demonstrations on our part, we will bring to an end all practices which blur and obscure the nature of the life-or-death struggle that has been forced upon us.

Freed from the illusion that we improve the world climate by soft-pedaling our criticism of Communist infamy, we can for the first time institute an effective program of bringing to the world the truth about the Communists, by each day dragging them before the bar of world opinion, indicting them again and again for the atrocities and crimes they have committed in enslaving one billion human beings, and convicting them in the minds of men for what they have in fact made of themselves, the moral outcasts of humanity.

Freed from the illusion that the way out of each enemy aggressive act is a coalition government which includes Communists, we will at last recognize that the government which includes Reds today will be controlled by them tomorrow, and that there is no substitute for standing firm against aggression from the beginning.

Freed from the illusion that the Communists are seriously interested in negotiating a just peace or indeed in seeking any honorable common objective with us, we will never again fall for such a ruse as the nuclear test ban negotiations which paralyzed our own technological development for three years while our enemies secretly moved ahead.

Freed from the illusion that the Communists can take part in any international organization or court without either poisoning it or subverting it to their ends, we will begin to think less and less in terms of divisive worldwide international organizations and more and more in terms of free world cooperation and unity.

Freed from the illusion that there is some easy way out of the present crisis of civilization, we will adopt a policy of strength, of risk, of sacrifice, of effort for every American.—U. S. Senator THOMAS J. DODD of Connecticut, in remarks to American Society for Industrial Security in Washington.

Lester DeKoster

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Ever since the brave street-fighters of Hungary placed the world in their debt by forcing the Russian bear to expose its fangs and claws for all to see, Communist stock has been declining on the international market. Today Secretary Rusk offers persuasive evidence for his contention that, among uncommitted peoples, Communism in the Sino-Russian style does not sell.

It must be obvious even to the unsophisticated Marxist that significant phases of the Russian “experiment” are a real liability, not relieved in the least by its Chinese copy, and by no means redeemed by Titov nor even by Sputnik. He—the Marxist—sees that if Marxism is to regain ideological initiative among the colonial nations rapidly assuming self-conscious statehood, it will have to shunt aside certain aspects of Sino-Russian Communism as at best aberrations, or at worst necessary historical stages now passed on the road to Utopia, neither normative nor essential elsewhere. This may be at least part of the meaning of Khrushchev’s desperate gamble in denouncing so explicitly in 1956 the crimes of Stalin—precisely to explain them away as a deviationist “cult of the individual,” and not essential Marxism at all. What he forgot, apparently, was that he who cries “stinking fish” may not find all fingers pointing accusingly in the same direction. Perhaps the strategy worked well enough at home to prevent, as Khrushchev told the Twenty-Second Party Congress last October, “the forces which clung to the old and resisted all that was new and creative” from gaining “the upper hand in the Party” (Report to CPSU, I, p. 142), but the world at large smelled a rat, not necessarily the same deceased one Mr. Khrushchev was exhuming. Nonetheless the Chairman told the Party in 1961 that “had the cult of the individual not been condemned … in the sphere of international relations, the result would have been a weakening of Soviet relations on the world scene and a worsening of relations with other countries, which would have had dire consequences” (ibid., p. 143). Did he mean by this language that Marxism can still hope to appeal to the world with fanciful sketches of a classless paradise dazzling by its dark light the horizons of tomorrow only by a repudiation of Stalinism?

Shadows Of The New Marxism

The dubious success of the Khrushchev maneuver cannot but stimulate other Marxists to attempt other approaches to the problem of stepping up the sale of Marxist ideology. It is not only an interesting theoretical question, therefore, but one of some moment to the Western world to speculate: What form will the “new Marxism” assume?

One thinks first of Trotskyism. After his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1928, Leon Trotsky became one of the first Marxists who sought with all his might, in book, pamphlet, and before the Dewey Commission, to distinguish genuine Marxism from Russian autocracy. “The bureaucracy,” he wrote in Stalinism and Bolshevism in 1937, “won the upper hand. It cowed the revolutionary vanguard, trampled upon Marxism, prostituted the Bolshevik party. Stalinism conquered” (p. 15). And Trotsky quite literally gave his life to proclaiming Stalin’s usurpation of “the old label of Bolshevism, the better to fool the masses” (ibid.).

But though Trotskyism found and retains adherents around the globe, it remains an abortive attempt to free Marxism from the incubus of Russian Communism. One reason is that Trotsky was too closely identified with the Russian Revolution really to disengage successfully his own views from its workings; nor, for another reason, did he wish to distance himself too decisively from it. Thus, even while bitterly attacking Stalin’s usurpation, Trotsky frankly admits to having himself predicted that bureaucracy would triumph in Russia if the revolution did not soon spread around the world. In short, Marxism is not likely to achieve revival as Trotskyism in our time.

Nor is it likely to win many friends by diatribes against Stalinists and Trotskyites alike such as is mounted, for example, in H. M. Wicks’s Eclipse of October, published in the United States in 1957. It is his intention, Mr. Wicks says, to document “the wide breach between the founders of the Marxist system and most of those who, today, profess to be its spokesmen” (p. vii). Before he has done, Mr. Wicks stands virtually alone: “The Trotskyists talk much of Marx and, like the reconstructed Stalinists (whom he has named ‘Mikoyan, Bulganin, Khrushchev, and Malenkov’) claim to be the sole competent interpreters of Marxism. But none with even the slightest understanding of Marx would take seriously, to put it mildly, the pretensions of either” (p. 454). Nor, one suspects, will many take very seriously the pretensions of Mr. Wicks to rehabilitate Marxism after his own image.

In what form, then, might Marxism hope to appeal to a world grown dubious of pronouncements out of Moscow or Peiping?

Perhaps in the form, I suggest, illustrated by Mr. John Lewis’ volume, also published in 1957, Marxism and the Open Mind. “Certainly the time has come,” Mr. Lewis says, “to develop and enrich our Marxism,” particularly, he continues, on the questions of “democratic rights … and (the) moral ideals which are independent of class interests …” (pp. xvi–xvii).

That Marxism can offer the world true democracy and socially sensitive ethical theory rests upon the fact, Mr. Lewis argues, that “Marxism is humanism in its contemporary form.… And the Marxist has thus to convince the disinherited, whether in the great industrial cities of the West or the fields and mines of colonial countries, that their very oppression could be the instrument of their emancipation, their entrance into an earthly paradise of material plenty and human justice” (p. 161). The carrot is the same, but it hangs from another string: “contemporary humanism.”

That this is the form in which Marxism-Leninism is also being offered to the world by Mr. Khrushchev and cohorts may be evidenced from the Program adopted by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its Twenty-Second Congress. “What is Communism?” the Program asks, and answers: “Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and full social equality of all members of society; under it, the all-around development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces through continuous progress in science and technology; all the springs of cooperative wealth will flow more abundantly, and the great principle ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ will be implemented. Communism is a highly organized society of free, socially conscious working people in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labor for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a necessity recognized by one and all, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people” (p. 67).

Except that Mr. Lewis says Marxism “is” what the Program says it “will be,” they are saying the same thing. And so the voice of the siren is heard once more in the land, not in the grim monotony of Stalin’s heavy accents but in the dulcet tones of the “humanist” Marx.

Marx’S Appeal To Humanism

Some such “return to Marx” may well be, apart from the course of world power politics, the next major ideological threat confronting the improving relations between what Professor Toynbee calls “the world and the West.” To expect to defeat this new challenge by a wave of the hand in the direction of Moscow murder trials or Peiping prison camps is not only naïve, it is dangerous. Look carefully and behold Khrushchev waving with us—and preaching Marxism as he does so. Sino-Russian brand Communism may—God grant—one day collapse, but even so the Marxist will still profess the most sophisticated form of secularism yet devised.

We will meet the new challenge only by soberly evaluating the claim of Marxism to be a vehicle for true humanism.

And first, what is meant here by humanism? Mr. Lewis says: “Behind the whole philosophy of Marxism there is passionate opposition to all relations, all conditions in which man is a humiliated, enslaved, despised creature. That is why Marxism is a humanism” (p. 146). While observing that so broad a description qualifies much more than Marxism to the claim of being true humanism, we may largely agree with Mr. Lewis’ assertion. Engels’ first major work, for example, The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in German in 1845, was written to document the contention that the condition of English workers under industrialism was “the highest and most unconcealed pinnacle of social misery existing in our day” (Moscow, Eng. ed., p. 3). But Engels finally includes all mankind in Communist concern: “Communism is a question of humanity, and not of workers alone” (p. 332).

So, too, the so-called youthful works of Marx, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, first published in Moscow in 1932, have occasioned a number of volumes, in a number of countries, proclaiming Marx’s early humanism. German pastor Erich Thier, for instance, in his Das Menschenbild des Jungen Marx, published in 1957, equates the “young Marx” with Kierkegaard in his “existentialist” critique of the philosophy of Hegel, and his concern for the individual.

It is true, moreover, that in their joint critique of the left-wing Hegelianism of “Bruno Bauer & Company” published in 1845 under the title of The Holy Family, Marx and Engels together mount their vicious attack in the name of “real humanism” (p. 3). In her Reminiscences of Marx, his daughter Eleanor recalls that the phrase “Work for humanity” was ever on her father’s lips; and no doubt the great sacrifice of place, pleasure, pride, and prestige which Marx inflexibly imposed upon himself and his beloved family was laid, as Marx saw it, upon the altar of human progress. Mr. Lewis says, then, accurately enough and with pardonable exuberance: “It is not sufficiently understood that Marx’s own thinking was basically humanist. He recognized the worth of the individual personality, he blazed with indignation at social injustice, there was prophetic fire in his passion for righteousness” (p. 144).

Futhermore, it may be argued with some degree of plausibility that Marxist humanism remained substantially true to its origins in its twentieth-century exponents, Lenin and Trotsky.

And no doubt Mr. Lewis is quite correct when he says that there are Marxists today who are so “because they are dreamers as well as economists, and idealists as well as politicians, because they are stirred by pity and indignation, because they believe in justice and equality, because they are humanists” (p. 144).

What Is True Humanism?

The question is: Can Marxism be palmed off on mankind as idealistic humanism now that the appeal of Sino-Russian Communism has worn thin? For this—I am suggesting—is the face which Marxists will wish increasingly to display to a world grown suspicious of Khrushchev’s and Mao’s faces. This “return to Marx” will be proffered not only to cleanse the bitter taste left by the fruits of Sino-Russian tyranny, but more significantly to wrest from the democracies worldwide ideological initiative with its political consequences.

But is Marxism the vehicle of true humanism, and are then the Russian and Chinese autocracies but aberrations or way-stations to be bypassed and ignored? The uncommitted world is asking this question in making up its mind between Marxism and democracy. To answering it for ourselves the West may well devote more of its energies than it now does.

For the answer to this significant question is not recondite, though its demonstration and its propagation are not simple: Marxism is not and never has been a true humanism. Why not? Not only because it is irreligious, but essentially because it mutes the significance of the individual. Hegel, it is true, set out to “actualize the universal,” and, like Marx and Engels after him, presumably wished to preserve the infinite worth of the particular. But Hegel was to lose in theory, as Marxism has lost both in theory and in practice, all ability to preserve effectually the worth of the individual against the claims of the abstract collective.

When Marx surrendered to Hegelianism—if he ever escaped it—he cut off at the root the capability of his system to cope with real particularity, to protect real individuality, to promote real personality, to be a genuine humanism. And the course of Marxism-in-practice, writ large in the history of Russian Communism, amply demonstrates that anti-humanitarianism is not an aberration but an inherent consequence of Marxist rationalism. Communist brutality affords instructive commentary upon the awesome consequences implicit in a false ideology, seen as it were by laboratory experiment—from its seemingly innocent birth in the passionate humanity of the youthful Marx to its corrupted maturity in the cold, calculated inhumanities of Joseph Stalin. The rationalist abstractions enter history as the lethal enemies of the concrete particulars they were presumed to save. By all means the Marxist may wish to brush aside as a passing and incidental “cult of the individual” the era of Stalinism, and substitute in its stead a sentimental “return to Marxist humanism.” But history teaches us nothing if we ignore the laboratory test of this humanism provided by the Sino-Russian experience. Only the blind can fail to grasp the lesson of the “experiments,” and only the willful can thrust it aside.

It is more than ironic that Mr. Lewis delivered his lecture on “Marxist Humanism,” which is published in his book from which quotation has been made, in 1956, the very year in which Khrushchev was revealing the Stalinist consequences of Marxist humanism in the “secret speech” which told, and left half untold, the crimes of the most powerful exponent of Marxism the world has yet beheld. And while some Marxist “idealists” came at last to an agonized break with a Marxism which turned into Stalinism, Mr. Lewis set himself to achieving the redemption of a system patently at enmity, in its practical consequences, with the noble aspirations it counterfeits.

Loss Of The Real Individual

But Mr. Lewis and those whom he represents must be stayed long enough from their romp with “development” to be obligated—as Trotsky grimly obliged himself—to answer seriously the question: Why is Marxist humanism not humanitarian?

This is, as has been said, a crucial question, not of “enrichment” but of simple intellectual integrity, the more so when Marxism is posed as “the highest development of humanism.”

Let us for the moment willingly accept Marx’s passionate sentiments for justice as genuine; he suffered and surrendered much for them. Let us acquiese in the “early” Marx’s recognition of the “worth of individual personality”; and let us not deny that Engels, Trotsky, and Lenin subscribed more or less consistently to the same estimation of humanity. And then we may ask in all sincerity: Why does Marxism, professionally loyal to the master’s voice in every nuance, run amuck in unhuman, inhuman, subhuman brutalities of all kinds, practiced advisedly, deliberately, systematically against human beings by those very Marxists most “in the know” of what Marxism is all about?

This man, say, who so loved children and never was severe with them—while he coolly murdered their parents, if need be: Why?

This dictator who wrote on the “essence” of Marxism, and, as he did so, slew his ten thousands: Why?

The answer—or at least one significant phase of the answer—to such questions is, as I have already suggested, implicit in Marx’s Hegelian rationalism, implicit therefore in the very fabric of Marxism. This answer may, in fact, be found spelled out in the same book—The Holy Family—from which quotation has already been made. It is to be found in the same paragraph in which Marx and Engels proclaim their “real humanism.” They say: “Real humanism has no more dangerous enemy in Germany than Spiritualism or speculative idealism which substitutes ‘self-consciousness’ or the ‘spirit’ for the real individual man.…”

Quite so. Hegelianism, like all other rationalisms, has no role for the “real individual”—be it man or any other entity. And precisely so, the substitution of an abstract category like universal “self-consciousness” for the “real individual man” is indeed the most “dangerous enemy” which “real humanism” can confront. It could not be put more accurately.

But when Marx and Engels, for the purposes of advertising their “socialism” as “scientific,” chose to pour into the mold of Hegelian categories the notions of “matter” and “relations of production” in substitution for the notions of “spirit” and of “self-consciousness,” did they think thus to escape the thrall of the rationalism they had derided in the Bauers? Did they propose thus to safeguard the “real individual man” from his most dangerous enemy, not the content but the form of the abstraction? Did they think that by an abstract humanism they could protect the real human being from any number of crimes that may be perpetrated on man quite compatibly with the most passionate concern for humanity?

Whatever they thought, or hoped, they in fact tumbled headlong into the same trap into which they had so elaborately sought to push “Bruno Bauer & Company” in The Holy Family. That “real individual man” whom the Bauers had lost to view in the categories of spirit and self-consciousness, Marx and Engels equally lost sight of in what became the dominant category of their system, the Class. And the more they adhered to the schematic of Hegel’s Logic—thesis, antithesis, synthesis—to support their claims to “scientific” validation, and the more they thought, wrote, talked, and acted in terms of the class relations prescribed by these categories, the more Marxism came to leave that “real individual man” naked and defenseless, prey to the tactics, strategies, or whims of the dictatorial powers exercised nominally on his behalf—and prescribed by Marx as guardians of his salvation.

The Harvest Of Casualties

Not since the Inquisition has the sowing of abstractions brought forth greater increase in the harvest of concrete casualties. In the name of the Class, for the deliverance of the Class, to the continuance (or destruction) of the Class, the individual is sacrificed, submerged, victimized, destroyed. For, while the Class is rationally manageable in the recesses of the British Museum, where Marx developed his notions, it can achieve its “self-consciousness” in historical reality only by allowing this or that member, or clique of members (in theory the Communist Party, the “vanguard” of the proletariat; and in practice the schemer, like Stalin), to become its director and guide, with absolute authority and uncontrolled power. Moreover, because the abstract concept has no hold on the concrete event, even the system itself does not control the will of the dictator. Thus the “cult of the individual,” which Khrushchev and his clique exemplify even as they denounce it, is inherent in Marxist rationalization whenever a revolution is brought about, that is, whenever its abstractions must cope with concrete historical events.

By the iron fist of the dictator the massive power of the Class is given direction. By the dictator are “real individual” decisions made; and history cruelly revenges rationalism’s abstract and pretentious neglect of the singular by confronting the Marxist who comes out last in the melee with one ineluctable moment of reality: he dies alone, and in the act discovers his particularity even as it is taken from him. The hoax of the superiority of the universal is revealed in the flash of the particular assassin’s rifle or the snap of the particular gallows trap.

Professional Sentimentality

So in fact the most sincere and genuine Marxist concern for the plight of the proletariat protects no particular proletarian from prison or the gallows, or the threat of both—in the name of the proletariat! Such concern, however well meant, is therefore only sentimentality, confined to the emotions, neither effectual nor normative in history, as evanescent as the rest of Marxist “realism.” It is easy, therefore, for an abstract humanism to make common cause with the most brutal and finished practice of inhumanity. What Professor Bultmann called in his Gifford Lectures, “the historicity of man, the true historical life of the human being, the history which everyone experiences for himself and by which he gains his real essence” (History and Eschatology, p. 43) gains no validation from Marxist humanism because Marxist humanism, when genuine, is only sentimental by virtue of abstraction from the real man—and sentimentality is by definition and in fact incompetent to coerce the course of real events.

In Marx himself, I think, one may discern the same process exhibited by Marxism in history—the movement from “humanism” to “Stalinism.” Assuming, as we have, the initial genuineness of his passion for human rights, it is evident that this passion becomes ever more professional and doctrinaire as Marx’s theories develop, until at last there is no conflict in his mind between a dictatorship bent on destroying a whole class of men and his passionate concern for the rights of man. Progressively Marx estranges himself from real contact with the British proletariat, and more and more he retires to his study and the British Museum for abstract thought about the proletariat. His concern reckons with the individual the less as his theories comprehend the Class the more. And most of the last two decades of his life were spent in isolation, from which he scorned all practical efforts to meliorate in any way the real hardships of the real poor as inimical to the Class Struggle.

Marx demonstrates by his own conduct what Marxism repeatedly illustrates in practice, that the Marxist concern for the sufferings of the proletariat is dictated (and made futile) by the dialectic of history to which Marxism is committed. According to the Hegelian framework of the Marxist “theology,” the proletariat becomes the “suffering saviour” of mankind—not through or by virtue of its suffering, but by its revolutionary negation of the capitalist order through the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat became of supreme concern to Marx, not because it suffered, nor because he was touched by its suffering, but because it first of all embodied the motive force of history—for Marx accepted Hegel’s dictum that the womb of the future was the negation. Marx was concerned with, rather than for, the proletariat, therefore, not because proletarians as such died, were exploited, or came to beg at his door, but because in the dialectic of history all hopes of the future destruction of the bourgeois order hung on the proletariat. In this abstract sense Marx came to dote upon “the workers,” as did Lenin after him for the same reason. And all the while the plight of this or that worker elicited no response from Marx, nor from Lenin or Trotsky, at all. They gauged, in fact, the worth of the proletarian by the extent of his Class-consciousness, that is, his capacity for the subordination of his own entity to the abstract entity of the Class. Thus the finest expressions of Marxist humanism comport easily with the most brutal treatment of any particular human being; and to a man like Mr. Lewis, who is enamored of the dialectic, this fact provokes no sense of contradiction at all; or if it does, Mr. Lewis may comfort himself with the reflection that contradiction is, after all, the motive force in progress—let’s see where this one leads.

Mr. Lewis says that Marxism is “a scientific, a philosophical humanism” (p. 147). Again, he could not be more accurate. For if Aristotle was right in denying the possibility of a “philosophy of the particular”; and if Professor Maritain is equally right in arguing that the “contingency of the singular escapes the grasp of science” (Degrees of Knowledge, p. 35), then the very fact that Marxism is indeed a “scientific, a philosophical humanism” reveals precisely why it is a sentimental, a professional, an abstract humanism, capable of singular inhumanity in its historical and concrete manifestations.

Is Marxism, then, the vehicle for a true humanism?

Not at all. Nor can it become so until it surrenders its abstract categories and reckons effectually with particularity. But for Marxism to do this would be to surrender not only all claim to “scientific” validation, but its idealogical framework as well, leaving it merely “utopian” in Engels’ and Lenin’s most derisive sense.

This, then, can be at least one phase of the West’s answer to the “new Marxism.” An even more significant phase is a positive humanism of our own. For such a humanism, the category of the particular—if I may put it so—is neither scientific nor speculative, but religious. It is in Christianity that the “historicity of man” is secured and validated. The relations which encompass without destroying real individuality (and form it, as Professor Maritain argues in his True Humanism, into personality) are not those of the dialectic, but those subsumed under the concept of love—incorrigibly, ineluctably personal and particular. And the person remains ever, in love, the singular. Lenin may argue that “the genius of Hegel recognized (that) the individual is the universal” (Works, Vol. 38, p. 361), but for Hegel this “both … and” is equally “neither … nor” for, as Lenin adds, “the individual is opposed to the universal” (ibid.). And the resolution of this apparent contradiction is frustrated, not achieved, by the dialectic.

The never-present “moment” in Hegel saps the life of the particular of all significance, which the ever-present “moment” in Christianity alone can restore; for Hegel’s “moment” is ever a passage, ever the transition from Being to Nothing, while Christ’s “moment” is ever the presence, the inescapable “now” held in the hand of God, the IS as opposed to the BECOMING.

When, for example, the Marxist learns what it means to love the enemy instead of destroying him, he will no longer be Marxist. It is the duty of the Christian to show, also toward Marxists, that this goal can be achieved, in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Harold B. Kuhn

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The question of whether the Christian message, properly understood, teaches that all human souls will ultimately be saved is being raised with new force in our generation. During the first 1,500 years of Christian history, the answer given to this question was almost without exception in the negative. While Origen (185–254) tried to defend a form of universalism, he never attracted any significant following in Christian theology. Following the Reformation, Protestantism adhered to the historic position in this respect, and the major lines of Reformation theology did, until two generations ago, agree. (There was founded, about 1750, a small universalist sect, but it has never been significant in American church life.)

By the turn of the present century, however, there had been set in motion theological currents which called the doctrine of eternal punishment of the finally impenitent into question. Several factors contributed to this movement. The liberal-modernist tradition emphasized “the infinite worth of the individual personality” to a point which made the assertion of universal salvation a logical step. Added to this was the tendency of this tradition to regard the Scriptures dealing with the end of the world and the final judgment as conceptions belonging to an earlier (and outworn) world-view. Thus such events as the coming of Christ and the final judgment came, to the theological liberal, to have purely symbolic significance.

Another factor which has led some to call into question the doctrine of the final and eternal punishment of the impenitent has been the growing sensitivity to human suffering. The advent of such horrors as are symbolized by the names of such places as Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz prompted some to suggest that a God who would consign men to outer darkness would be no better than the Nazis. (Liberals usually pass with a discreet silence the equally massive and heinous genocidal crime of the murder of six million Kulaks in the Soviet Union between 1926 and 1935.) But such manifestations of “man’s inhumanity to man” have led some Christian thinkers to set what they felt to be the requirements and limits of the divine love.

Yet another theological current which has affected this question has been the Dialectical Theology, of which Karl Barth has been the major voice on the Continent, and to which Reinhold Niebuhr has given unofficial leadership in the United States. The question of the necessary implications of the teachings of these men with respect to the final destiny of the impenitent has yet to be explored in an adequate manner. The system of Karl Barth has been charged with possesing universalistic tendencies, as has been the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, particularly as expressed in the second volume of his Gifford Lectures, The Nature and Destiny of Man. It is to be hoped that something definitive may be presented to the Christian world at this point in the months ahead.

The crux of the problem is, of course, whether God wills the salvation of all men in such a manner that all must necessarily be saved. The answer given by contemporary universalists is as follows: Some passages of Scripture, notably 1 Timothy 2:4, indicate that God wills that all men shall be saved. This being the case, so the argument runs, it would detract from both the extent of his sovereignty and the quality of his love if this purpose were in any way frustrated.

Another Scripture quoted in this connection is 1 Corinthians 15:22, in which Paul asserts that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. This is held to teach that all must be raised to eternal life in the general resurrection, and seems to neglect other passages which sound a warning that some may be raised to something other than a destiny of blessedness.

The real issue in these and related passages is, whether they demand as a corollary that men will be saved apart from the concurrence of their own wills—whether grace is brought to bear with irresistible force upon the individual, so that no other final outcome to his moral career than his ultimate redemption is possible.

One of the major thinkers who maintain the universalist position is Dr. Nels F. S. Ferré, who states his views in forthright fashion in his volume The Christian Understanding of God. Dr. Ferré asserts that there are no incorrigible sinners, no “permanent problem children” to God. He feels that the doctrine of eternal punishment of the unrepentant is, as he puts it, “sub-love” and hence unworthy of God. Rather dramatically he suggests that the individual who in the state beyond death is finally brought face-to-face with his alienation, will suddenly realize that this is not that for which he was made. In consequence, he beats a retreat back to the house of his Father, and thus utilizes constructively his second chance.

This view has several defects: First, it has no foundation in Scripture. Second, it may be questioned whether in any future state moral performance would be significantly different or decisively better than in this life. Third, it neglects a number of clear scriptural statements, such as the solemn reminders concerning the place “where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:44) and our Lord’s own account of the rich man and Lazarus.

Finally, the rise of contemporary universalism may have resulted, to some degree, from the infelicitous manner in which some well-meaning persons have spoken or preached concerning hell and eternal punishment. There are those whose handling of the question leads thoughtful persons to wonder whether they might be speaking, not under the Spirit’s guidance, but in a manner which gives expression to their own aggression and their own frustrations. Let it be said that no man is prepared to preach upon this subject until his soul has been seized with horror at the thought that one of his congregation might finally go into outer darkness!

- More fromHarold B. Kuhn

Universalism

Dr. Stewart M. Robinson

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No man is a better guide to straight thinking than St. Augustine. Fourteen centuries ago he lived in a world more like our own than any intervening century has been like our times. Heathenism was not wholly gone, by any means. The Vandals were on the ramparts of the old empire and fast crumbling its shaky defenses. The Christian church was newly out of hiding, and proliferating amid the cross-currents of thought which have always marked the greatest enterprises. Paul the Apostle found “fears within and fightings without.” Augustine pointed out the uneven stones in the holy edifice of the Church as described in Bible times: David’s family history; a traitor in our Lord’s own select band; and revolution in heaven itself when the angels fell.

Augustine wrote a letter in A.D. 397 in which he gave a wise caution: “Though the doctrine which men hold be false and perverse, if they do not maintain it with passionate obstinacy, especially when they have not devised it by the rashness of their own presumption, but have accepted it from parents who have been misguided and had fallen into error, and if they are with anxiety seeking the truth, and are prepared to be set right when they have found it, such men are not to be counted heretics.” For his part also hear John Calvin in the opening pages of his fourth book of The Institutes (The Church) where he wrote: “Let us learn from her single title of Mother (i.e., the Church) how useful, nay how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, devested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels.”

All areas of the Church have experienced reformations. When our national government was organized the Jesuit Order was under the ban of Rome. Many reform movements occurred before the Reformation. Many reformations have taken place since the Reformation. Probably neither Luther nor Calvin ever conceived that a great body of Christians would claim his name as a title of honor and not simply the name of Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church today has features which would have been like direct answers to the prayers of reformers; notably, the publication of the Bible in English, introduced, with the foreword by the Holy Name Society which quotes a papal invitation to read it daily.

“Protestantism” is too inexact a term, and to “save it” would not secure the Church. The Church is of God’s building, and, with our Lord the Corner Stone, abides. Protestantism has too many fellow-travelers to be a safe defense. The name has a long and honorable history, to be sure. Most reformed Church adherents cheerfully claim it. Its historic and present interest is reformation, and Reformed is, therefore, a better term. For reformation has been the interest of the Church from the beginning. The Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15) was for reform, and the Council of Trent was designed to accomplish reformation. The Reformation was envisaged by its first and greatest leaders as a call to return to the purity of the Church as displayed in Scripture. Reformation is the better word because it pictures the Church abiding more vividly than does the term Protestant, which suggests separation, or even defiance, if not carefully explained. So one turns to Augustine, with a feeling of great confidence. His voluminous writings breathe affection. He talks to opponents as though they were the closest of friends, though differences call for conference and are frankly dealt with.

Five great works by St. Augustine deserve the attention of all men today, especially Catholics and Protestants: The Confessions, Christian Doctrine, Enchiridion (Hand-book) on Faith, Hope and Charity, The Trinity, and The City of God. The world is living like the world of the fourth Christian century. All around is the corruption of decayed secularism. The dying Roman Empire was tremendously modern. Over the horizon is something like the Vandal world, militant, but like that world sheltering the seeds of Christian greatness, as the barbarians of the fourth century brought saints and missionaries for a time then yet to come. Augustine, who lived through one half of the fourth century and one third of the fifth, saw more clearly than any of his contemporaries the arena on which the victorious conquest would march. The future will again become our instructor.

Augustine is an ideal leader for the whole Church today.

1. He has preeminence in Catholic and non-Catholic circles.

2. He made the Scripture his rule, steadfastly exalted its authority and refused to deviate from its voice. “For it seems to me,” he wrote, “that most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books: that is to say, that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us, and committed to writing, did put down in their books anything false” (letter to Jerome).

3. He personally found God in Christ his Saviour. Like Paul he reached the happy goal after an agonizing search. In short, Augustine was an evangelical man.

4. He was a man of irenic temper. The long conflict with Manichaean, Donatist, and Pelagian controversialists so fully illustrated his love for the Church, his love for his opponents, his desire and effort for unity in the Saviour and fellowship in the Holy Ghost. “… With reference to the minds of those (Pelagians) for whose sake you wished me to write … it is not so much in opposition to my opinion, but, to speak mildly, and not to mention the doctrine of Him who spoke in His apostles, certainly against not only the opinion of the great Apostle Paul, but also his strong, earnest and vigilant conflict, that they prefer maintaining their own opinions with tenacity to listening to him, when he ‘beseeches them by the mercies of God,’ and tells them ‘through the grace of God which was given him’ …” (to Marcellinus).

5. For Augustine the Church was the “congregation of believers.” No name was before that of Christ the Lord. No lobby was tolerated in the courts of the Lord.

All men could turn to Augustine today for good. History, philosophy, theology, and social science are deeply in his debt. Best of all, human hearts will find him a great guide as they ponder his works. Happily at least four of his five principal works can now be had in the paperback edition, an incidental but significant commentary on his readability (The Confessions, The City of God, Christian Doctrine, and the Hand-book, or Enchiridion, on Faith, Hope and Love).—DR. STEWART M. ROBINSON of Delhi, New York, for many years the distinguished editor of The Presbyterian.

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Andrew W. Blackwood

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Preaching The Gospel Of The Kingdom

The plan before us may start with the First Gospel, the one nearest to the Old Testament. When Gandhi came to England he began reading Genesis, bogged down in Leviticus, and stopped. Many a layman now does much the same, with no guidance.

Starting preferably with the Greek, read the Gospel as a whole, then study it by paragraphs. On points of difficulty consult a standard commentary, as by Plummer or Broadus. Put in a permanent file what each unit shows about Christ and the Kingdom. Read devotionally.

In December, two messages from Isaiah 1–12, with assigned readings beforehand: “The Gospel in the Snow” (1:18); “The Gospel in Handel’s Messiah” (9:6, 7). Ten days before Christmas introduce the Gospel (Matt. 6:33). Deal with it as living now, not as a corpse, with a skeleton outline.

Stress what the layman ought to look for, with the main idea first. The Gospel—about Christ—as Teacher—concerning the Kingdom—through the Cross. In such a survey dare to select and omit. Make the Gospel seem more interesting than any 1962 work. Present a living book! On the Sunday before Christmas, “How Jesus Got His Name” (1:21). He got it from God, to show the meaning of the Gospel. A week later, “How Wise Men Worship” (2:11), in terms of 1962. From now on, every topic points to a sermon on a passage the layman has read at home, with other paragraphs.

“The Bible Meaning of Repentance” (3:2). “The Way to Meet Temptation” (4:1). To be a Christian means to be like Jesus. I. He met temptation: at unexpected times—places—in strange ways. II. He conquered: by appealing to the Bible—in the Bible to God. A believer now can do what Christ could not—appeal to Himself. Better still, preach two sermons here.

“The Bible Standard of Perfection” (5:48). “The Kingdom of God Here Today” (6:10). For clarity, limit the view. I. Divine: the Kingdom of God—heaven—Christ. II. Human: Comes to one person—largely through home—then to wider circles, locally. III. Practical: This is what it means to be a Christian—to have a home—and a church. Pray!

“The Difficulty of the Golden Rule” (7:12). “The Faith that Conquers Fear” (8:26a). I. The Meaning of Fear: Lack of faith—in the presence of Christ—his compassion—his power. II. The Meaning of Faith: Conquest of fear about self—loved ones—the unknown future. Conclusion: Bring the hearer face to face with the living Christ. Lead to accept him now.

When you keep to the basic idea of each chosen paragraph, note the variety, with divine power and human interest. “The Healing of His Seamless Dress” (9:21). “The Way Christ Gives Restfulness” (11:28–30, part). Where feasible, present tenses! “The Members of Christ’s Family Now” (12:50). Save the parables (13 and 25) for an evening series, or two.

“The Way Christ Feeds the Hungry” (14:20). “The Way Men Talk about Jesus” (16:14–16, part). Men do so talk! I. The Best of Human Beings: Popular Evangelist—Flaming Reformer—Saintly Seer—Tireless Teacher. All true! II. The One We Worship as God: The Higher Truth—Held by the Church—Approved by Christ—The Heart of Christianity. If too much, two sermons! At least once a year, a message about his deity. Do not argue!

“The Forgiveness of Deadly Wrongs” (18:21). This duty, once a year. “The Lord Blessing Little Children” (19:14). “The Meaning of a Man’s Religion” (22:37–39). I. Love Your God Supremely. II. Your Neighbor Largely. III. Yourself Last. Your neighbor is the man who needs you.

“The Fact of the Final Return” (24:24). “The Supper in Light from the Cross” (26:28). In the New Testament the stress falls on the Communion with reference to Calvary. Because of blindness here, many suffer spiritual anemia (1 Cor. 11:23). “The Person Christ Did Not Spare” (27:42a). Palm Sunday: “The Coming of Christ to Our City,” or Community (21:9). Week-night messages from the Gospel: “Companions of the Cross.” Make much of Calvary!

“The Easter Remedy for Our Fears” (28:5–7, part). As often elsewhere, repeat the whole text; then stress a part that shines. After the resurrection of Christ, in the New Testament not a pessimistic note from the lips of a believer! Let it be so in these sermons, and in all public worship. Since the layman at home has been reading the Gospel background in prayer, waste no time getting started. The layman will find that if he wishes to make the most of the sermons he should read the Book in private and pray.

The effectiveness of such preaching, under God, depends largely on the pastor’s joint living with the Gospel three months or more, to receive the radiance of the Living Christ so as to reflect it through the sermon on those who hear.

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

… When Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes (Matt. 7:28, 29).

Here the foremost expository preacher of our time closes the second volume of his Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Looking at the extended passage as a whole he stresses the Authority of Christ’s Person, as this high truth concerns the hearer or reader.

I. The Authority of Christ’s Person. The authority of the Sermon derives from the Speaker. The Teacher is more important than what he taught. The Man who spoke these words was the only-begotten Son of God. Throughout the Sermon our Lord continually calls attention to himself. All the instructions become focused together in him.

Our Lord’s contemporaries were amazed at his teaching, not after the manner of the scribes. The scribes quoted authorities, and never uttered any original thoughts. They were experts, quoting other experts, thus giving an impression of learning and culture. There was a freshness about Christ’s teaching, as well as a sense of confidence and certainty. And so he speaks today. About himself he makes a tremendous pronouncement. He claims unique authority.

II. The Authority over Christians. Believers are to be a very special and unique people. Because of their relationship to him they are to become the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Here is the whole doctrine of the rebirth. Thus he is asserting his unique deity and his saviourhood. He is the long-expected Messiah. As such he is ever saying, “I am come.” This is no mere human teacher. This is the Son of God, sinless, absolutely perfect, who is to be the Judge of the world.

Ere we leave the Sermon on the Mount I ask a question both simple and profound. What is your response to it all? The response must go beyond astonishment. In the Sermon our Lord condemns all trust in human endeavor. He is saying that in the sight of God we are all condemned sinners, and that we cannot save ourselves. We all need a new birth, a new nature, a new life.

He is God’s Man. All who belong to him are going to become like him. That is astounding doctrine, but true in him. We know that he died for us, and that our sins are forgiven. His Spirit is working in us, revealing our shortcomings and imperfections, creating in us new longings and aspirations.

Above all, in the midst of life, with its trials and problems, against all its uncertainties in this atomic age, with the certain fact of death and the final judgment, one can say with Paul: “… I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”

Dedicated to assisting the clergy in the preparation of sermons, the feature titled The Minister’s Workshop appears in the first issue of each month. The section’s introductory essay is contributed alternately by Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood and Dr. Paul S. Rees. The feature includes, also, Dr. Blackwood’s abridgments of expository-topical sermons, outlines of significant messages by great preachers of the past, and outlines of abridgments of messages presented by expository preachers of our own time.—ED.

… What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matt. 16:26).

Here “the Shakespeare of divines” deals with a human soul in terms of profit and loss. Unlike many a sermon today, this long discourse has a positive approach to a positive Gospel, and thus leads up to a climactic negative. Can anyone now improve on the order?

I. The Untold Capacity of the Soul. Among all the handiwork of God nothing human begins to compare with the soul of a man. This He made in his own likeness, with untold capacities for bliss here below, and vastly more in heaven. Meanwhile he wishes the spirit to grow more and more into his likeness, in mastery of the life that he has given, and making ready for the life to come.

II. The Lord’s Appraisal of a Soul. To see how much God values a soul, consider the price he has paid to set it free from sin, and also free to grow into the likeness of God. The Father valued your soul at the price of the Redeemer’s blood, with shame and torture for the Son of God. So much does the Father now value a single soul that he would not have anyone venture its loss, if thereby he could gain control of the entire world.

How much more does the Father grieve when a person hazards his soul for the sake of trifles that vanish with the using!

III. The Sinner’s Folly in Such Loss. Consider what it means to lose your soul. About such a loss our Lord and his disciples use tragic words: “forever”—“eternal”—“everlasting”—“the never-dying worm”—“the fire unquenchable.” Fire can never express the torment of an accursed soul, but we can guess at the meaning through the terror of an outraged conscience. For the purchase of a little, trifling portion of the world you may come into the place of torment. Remember the sentence that God has passed on all mankind: “… It is appointed men once to die, but after this the judgment.…”

He therefore is a huge fool who heaps up riches, who greedily pursues the world, and at the same time “heaps up for himself wrath against the day of wrath.” When sickness and death arrest him, then all these things seem unprofitable, and he becomes extremely miserable. If you would know how miserable, take account of the killing rhetoric in Scripture: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” “Who can dwell with the everlasting burning?” (From the History and Depository of Pulpit Eloquence, ed. by Henry C. Fish, 1856, I: 566–81.)

Andrew W. Blackwood:

Christ’S Gift Of Restfulness

Come unto me … and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28).

“My Lord taught me a long while ago to live without worry, work without hurry, and look forward without fear.” So said a leading churchman, during World War I when countless other leaders were busy and troubled about many things. How can each of you as a believer enter into restfulness like that of our Lord on his way up to Jerusalem, there to die?

I. Christ Gives Restfulness through Worship. In every time of worship, public or private, first get right with God. Then begin at once to enjoy what others seem only to endure. Through song and prayer, the readings and the sermon, mount up as with eagle wings and capture the secrets of the stars. Among those secrets be sure to find peace and hope, with many blessed foretastes of heavenly joy. What an ideal for worship as a transforming experience with Christ Jesus on the mountain of privilege!

II. Christ Gives Restfulness through Work. “Take my yoke.” A yoke enables a beast of burden to do more work, better work, doing it gladly and well. What a word picture of “effortless mastery,” with powers more than sufficient because they come from God! Hence Paul could say without boasting; “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” No wonder he appears to have been the master workman of our race, and therefore much like his Lord. For recent object lessons in working without worry or hurry or godless fear, read Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, written by the two that knew him best, and loved him most, not least because of his total life work, devoid of inner friction.

III. Christ Gives Restfulness through Waiting. He wishes each one here to do the waiting. In his own good time he will do the giving, and that in Gospel measure. He would not have any of us wait until heaven before entering into the serenity of our God. “Learn of me.” Enroll in his school. Take the assigned course, really an elective that many a would-be believer tries to dodge, because difficult.

To learn of him means in part to live with his Book in the spirit of prayer. To know him so well and love him so much that everyday living will become an opportunity to go about doing good in ways of his own choosing. As for restfulness do not trouble your heart about that. It comes as a gift from above, and it tarries as long as one abides in the Lord Jesus: “Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed? To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.” Ah, but only for one who has been born again, and now lives by faith in Christ. On these terms, my friend, begin now to enjoy Christ’s restfulness.

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives (Matt. 26:30).

A first-class hymn consists of Bible truth set to music. For the sake of variety preach an occasional sermon about such a Gospel message. Let the stress fall, not on the author of the words and the composer of the music, but on Gospel truth.

So turn to the successive stanzas of the hymn that we have just sung: “There is a green hill far away.” Here a gifted young Irish woman guides boys and girls in what to believe and sing about the death of our Redeemer. Simplicity!

I. The First Part Sings about the Place of the Cross. In the Bible a place may mean much. A. The garden, a place of beauty, shows what God does for us mortals, in the most beautiful season of the year, springtime in the Holy Land!

B. The Cross shows the tragedy of what we sinners do to God. The place outside the city wall tells of stigma. The Cross shows the worst that earth and hell can devise to thwart the plans of the Heavenly Father. “Forgive them!”

II. The Puzzle of the Cross. To childlike souls the Cross means mystery and wonder. A. Little can we mortals know about what the Redeemer endured. So let us not dare to take away the mystery. B. But we ought to know why he suffered on the Cross. This we should lead our boys and girls to sing.

III. The Purpose. The heart of all we believe. A. He died to insure the pardon of our sins. B. To make us good, as redeemed children of God. C. To prepare us for living with him forever in glory. What amazing truth for boys and girls, and for all of God’s redeemed children!

IV. The Person. The most important stanza; also the one we often omit! A. The Sinlessness of our Saviour! The absence of moral evil. The presence of all good, as only God is good. B. The Power of the Redeemer. Power to open the gates of heaven itself. Power to lead us, one by one, into the unseen City of God.

V. The People. The simplest practical tests of our being Christians. A. Love for Christ as our Redeemer. B. Trust in him as our Divine Helper. C. Obedience to him as our Lord and Master.

Commit this hymn to memory. Teach it to boys and girls, and to others. Use it in bringing them, one by one, to the Christ of the Cross, there to find pardon, cleansing, and peace, with the joy that the world can not give, or take away.

For variety, on weekday nights before Easter, except on Saturday, have a series of messages from favorite hymns about Calvary. Through the bulletin early in Lent ask the layman to check on the bulletin four such hymns that he loves best. In order to keep from anything second-rate, print only the titles of such songs in the Church Hymnal. Then add one more, both difficult and glorious, for the layman to learn.

At the beginning of the pastorate in Columbus, Ohio, we were trying to build up a “never was” evening congregation. At the first service with a sermon from a hymn, we had more people than ever before at night. From evening to evening the attendance increased, and never again did it slide back to what it had been before.

As a whole such a series lends itself to publicity. On a printed postal card, in a newspaper advertisement, as in the bulletin, the series appears intact. The titles of the hymns do not appear. Let the layman search the book so as to identify each song. Here they run as follows: “Beneath the Cross”; “There Is a Green Hill”; “When I Survey”; “O Sacred Head”; “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken.” The Gospel in Hymns about the Cross

The Shelter of the Cross

The Simplicity of the Cross

The Survey of the Cross

The Sublimity of the Cross

The Service of the Cross

Thank God for hymns about the Cross!

- More fromAndrew W. Blackwood