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their relations. Theology cannot, as has sometimes been objected, deaden the religious affections, since it only draws out from their sources and puts into rational connection with each other the truths which are best adapted to nourish the religious affections. On the other hand, the strongest Christians are those who have firmest grasp upon the great doctrines of Christianity; the heroic ages of the church have been those which have witnessed most consistently to them; the piety that can be injured by the systematic exhibition of them must be weak, or mystical, or mistaken.

Some theology is necessary to conversion-at least, knowledge of sin and knowledge of a Savior. For texts which represent truth as nourishment, see Jer. 3: 15-"feed you with knowledge and understanding"; Mat. 4: 4-"man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"; 1 Cor. 3: 1, 2" babes in Christ.... I fed you with milk, not with meat"; Heb. 5: 14 -"but solid food is for full-grown men." Christian morality is a fruit which grows only from the tree of doctrine. Christian character rests upon Christian truth as its foundation; see 1 Cor. 3: 12-15-"I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon." See Dorus Clarke, Saying the Catechism; Simon, on Christ. Doctrine and Life, in Bib. Sac., July, 1884: 433-449.

(c) In the importance to the preacher of definite and just views of doctrine. His chief intellectual qualification must be the power clearly and comprehensively to conceive, and accurately and powerfully to express, the truth. He can be the agent of the Holy Spirit in converting and sanctifying men, only as he can wield "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Eph. 6: 17), or, in other language, only as he can impress truth upon the minds and consciences of his hearers. Nothing more certainly nullifies his efforts than confusion and inconsistency in his statements of doctrine. His object is to replace obscure and erroneous conceptions among his hearers by those which are correct and vivid. He cannot do this without knowing the facts with regard to God in their relations-knowing them, in short, as parts of a system. With this truth he is put in trust. To mutilate it or misrepresent it, is not only sin against the Revealer of it -it may also prove the ruin of men's souls. The best safeguard against such mutilation or misrepresentation, is the diligent study of the several doctrines of the faith in their relations to each other, and especially to the central theme of theology, the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The more refined and reflective the age, the more it requires reasons for feeling. Imagination (poetry, eloquence, political and military enthusiasm) is not less strong, but more rational. Progress from "Buncombe," in forensic oratory, to sensible and logical address. In pulpit oratory, mere Scripture quotation and fervid appeal are no longer sufficient. The preacher must furnish a basis for feeling by producing intelligent conviction. He must instruct before he can move. Spurgeon: "We shall never have great preachers until we have great divines. You cannot build a man-of-war out of a currant-bush, nor can great soul-moving preachers be formed out of superficial students." Illustrate by mistake in physician's prescription, and by sowing crop of acorns.

(d) In the intimate connection between correct doctrine and the safety and aggressive power of the church. The safety and progress of the church is dependent upon her "holding the pattern of sound words" (2 Tim. 1:13), and serving as "pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. 3: 15). Defective understanding of the truth results sooner or later in defects of organization, of operation, and of life. Thorough comprehension of Christian truth as an organized system furnishes, on the other hand, not only an invaluable defense against heresy and immorality, but also an indispensable stimulus and instrument in aggressive labor for the world's conversion.

The creeds of the church have not originated in mere speculative curiosity and logical hair-splitting. They are statements of doctrine in which the attacked and imperiled church has sought to express the truth which constitutes her very life. Those who deride the early creeds have small conception of the intellectual acumen and the moral earnestness which went to the making of them. The creeds of the third and fourth centuries embody the results of controversies which exhausted the possibilities of heresy with regard to the Trinity and the Person of Christ, and which set up bars against false doctrine to the end of time.

(e) In the direct and indirect injunctions of Scripture. The Scriptures urge upon us the thorough and comprehensive study of the truth (John 5:39, marg., "Search the Scriptures"), the comparing and harmonizing of its different parts (1 Cor. 2: 13, "comparing spiritual things with spiritual"), the gathering of all about the great central fact of revelation (Col. 1: 27, "which is Christ in you, the hope of glory "), the preaching of it in its wholeness as well as in its due proportions (2 Tim. 4: 2, "Preach the word"). The minister of the gospel is called “a scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven" (Mat. 13: 52); the "pastors" of the churches are at the same time to be “teachers” (Eph. 4:11); the bishop must be "apt to teach" (1 Tim. 3 : 2), “handling aright the word of truth" (2 Tim. 2: 15), "holding to the faithful word which is according to the teaching, that he may be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine and to convict the gainsayers" (Tit. 1:9).

As a means of instructing the church and of securing progress in his own understanding of Christian truth, it is well for the pastor to preach regularly each month a doctrinal sermon, and to expound in course the principal articles of the faith. The treatment of doctrine in these sermons should be simple enough to be comprehensible by intelligent youth; it should be made vivid and interesting by the help of brief illustrations; and at least one-third of each sermon should be devoted to the practical applications of the doctrine propounded.

V. RELATION TO RELIGION.-Theology and religion are related to each other as effects, in different spheres, of the same cause. As theology is an effect produced in the sphere of systematic thought by the facts respecting God and the relations between God and the universe, so religion is an effect which these facts produce in the sphere of individual or collective life. With regard to the term 'religion', notice:

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(a) The derivation from religare, 'to bind' or 'to bind back' (man to God), is negatived by the authority of Cicero and of the best modern etymologists; by the difficulty, on this hypothesis, of explaining such forms as religio, religens; and by the necessity, in that case, of presupposing a fuller knowledge of sin and redemption than was common to the ancient heathen world.

For advocacy of the derivation of religio, as meaning 'binding duty,' from religare, see Lange, Dogmatik, 1: 185-196. Lange cites rebellio, from rebellare, and optio, from optare. But we reply that many verbs of the first conjugation are derived from obsolete verbs of the third conjugation.

(b) The more correct derivation is from relegere, 'to go over again,' 'carefully to ponder.' Its original meaning is therefore reverent observance' (of duties due to the gods).

For the derivation favored in the text, see Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, 5te Aufl.,

364; Fick, Vergl. Wörterb. der Indoger. Spr., 2: 227; Vanicek, Gr.-Lat. Etym. Wörterb., 2:829; Andrews, Latin Lexicon, in voce; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 7; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 75–77; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:6; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3: 18.

2. False conceptions.

(a) Religion is not merely, as Hegel declared, a kind of knowing; for it would then be only an incomplete form of philosophy, and the measure of knowledge in each case would be the measure of piety.

In a system of idealistic pantheism, God is the subject of religion as well as its object. Religion = God's knowing himself through the human consciousness. The Gnostics, Stapfer, Henry VIII, show that there may be much theological knowledge without true religion. Inaccuracy of Chillingworth's maxim: "The Bible only, the religion of Protestants." See Hamerton, Intel. Life, 214; Bib. Sac., 9: 374. On Hegel, see Porter, Human Intellect, 59, 60, 412, 525, 529, 532, 536, 589, 650.

(b) Religion is not, as Schleiermacher held, the mere feeling of dependence; for such feeling is not religious, unless exercised toward God and accompanied by moral effort.

Position of Schleiermacher in German theology, as transition from the old rationalism to evangelical faith. “Like Lazarus, with the grave-clothes of a pantheistic philosophy entangling his steps," yet with a Moravian experience of the life of God in the soul, he based religion upon the inner certainties of Christian feeling. But though faith begins in feeling, it does not end there. Valuelessness of mere feeling shown in emotions of theatre-goers, and in occasional phenomena of revivals. Cf. James 1: 27-" Pure religion... is this, To visit the fatherless"; 2: 17-"faith without works is dead." On Schleiermacher, see Bib. Sac., Apr., 1852:375; July, 1883: 534; Liddon, Elements of Religion, lect. i; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:14; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:175; Hagenbach, Encyclop., 2te Aufl., 13: 525–571; Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Orig. of Christianity, 563-570; Caird, Philos. of Religion, 160-186. On emotional excitement in preaching, see Kerfoot, in Bap. Rev., April, 1884: 167-184.

(c) Religion is not, as Kant maintained, morality or moral action; for morality is conformity to an abstract law of right, while religion is essentially a relation to a person, from whom the soul receives blessing and to whom it surrenders itself in love and obedience.

Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Beschluss: "I know of but two beautiful things, the starry heavens above my head and the sense of duty within my heart." But the mere sense of duty only distresses. Objections to the word "obey" as the imperative of religion: (1) It makes religion a matter of will only. (2) Will presupposes affection. (3) Love is not subject to will. (4) It makes God all law and no grace. (5) It makes the Christian a servant only, not a friend. See Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 244-246; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 19. Versus Matthew Arnold: Religion is "Ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling." This leaves out of view the receptive element in religion, as well as its relation to a personal God.

3. Essential idea.

Religion in its essential idea is a life in God, or, in other words, a life lived in recognition of God, in communion with God, and under control of the indwelling Spirit of God. Since it is a life, it cannot be described as consisting solely in the exercise of any one of the powers of intellect, affection, or will. As physical life involves the unity and coöperation of all the organs of the body, so religion, or spiritual life, involves the united working of all the powers of the soul. To feeling, however, we must assign the logical priority, since holy affection toward God, imparted in regeneration, is the condition of truly knowing God and of truly serving him.

See Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man-" God in man and man in God"-in Princeton Rev., Nov., 1880; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 5–79, and Religionsphilosophie, 255:

Religion is "Sache des ganzen Geisteslebens." Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 81-85; Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2: 227; Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doctrine, 10-28; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 147; Twesten, Dogmatik, 1: 12. Query: Can a man, in strict propriety of speech, be said to “get religion"?

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(a) That in strictness there is but one religion. indeed, as having the capacity for this divine life. however, only when he enters into this living relation to God. False religions are the caricatures which men given to sin, or the imaginations which men groping after light, form of this life of the soul in God.

Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 88-93; Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature, 18"If Christianity be true, it is not a religion, but the religion. If Judaism be also true, it is so not as distinct from but as coincident with Christianity, the one religion to which it can bear only the relation of the part to the whole. If there be portions of truth in other religious systems, they are not portions of other religions, but portions of the one religion which somehow or other became incorporated with fables and falsities."

(b) That the content of religion is greater than that of theology. The facts of religion come within the range of theology only so far as they can be definitely conceived, accurately expressed in language, and brought into rational relation to each other.

(c) That religion is to be distinguished from formal worship, which is simply the outward expression of religion. As such expression, worship is “formal communion between God and his people." In it God speaks to man and man to God. It, therefore, properly includes the reading of Scripture and preaching on the side of God, and prayer and song on the side of the people.

On the relation between religion and worship, see art. by Prof. Day, in New Englander, Jan., 1882.

CHAPTER II.

MATERIAL OF THEOLOGY.

I. SOURCES OF THEOLOGY.-God himself, in the last analysis, must be the only source of knowledge with regard to his own being and relations. Theology is therefore a summary and explanation of the content of God's self-revelations. These are, first, the revelation of God in nature; secondly and supremely, the revelation of God in the Scriptures.

Ambrose: "To whom shall I give greater credit concerning God than to God himself?" Von Baader: "To know God without God is impossible; there is no knowledge without him who is the prime source of knowledge."

1. Scripture and Nature. By nature we here mean not only physical facts, or facts with regard to the substances, properties, forces, and laws of the material world, but also spiritual facts, or facts with regard to the intellectual and moral constitution of man, and the orderly arrangement of human society and history.

We here use the word 'nature' in the ordinary sense, as including man. There is another and more proper sense of the word ‘nature,' which makes it simply a complex of forces and beings under the law of cause and effect. To nature in this sense man belongs only as respects his body, while as immaterial and personal he is a supernatural being. Free will is not under the law of physical and mechanical causation. As Bushnell has said: "Nature and the supernatural together constitute the one system of God." Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 232-"Things are natural or supernatural according to where we stand. Man is supernatural to the mineral; God is supernatural to the man." We shall in subsequent chapters use the term 'nature' in the narrow sense. The universal use of the phrase "Natural Theology," however, compels us in this chapter to employ the word 'nature'in its broader sense as including man, although we do this under protest, and with this explanation of the more proper meaning of the term. See Hopkins, in Princeton Rev., Sept., 1882: 183 sq.

(a) Natural theology.-The Scriptures assert that God has revealed himself in nature. There is not only an outward witness to his existence and character in the constitution and government of the universe (Ps. 19; Acts 14: 17; Rom. 1: 20), but an inward witness to his existence and character in the heart of every man (Rom. 1 : 17, 18, 19, 20, 32; 2: 15). The systematic exhibition of these facts, whether derived from observation, history, or science, constitutes natural theology.

Outward witness: Ps. 19: 1-6-"The heavens declare the glory of God"; Acts 14: 17-"he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons"; Rom. 1: 20-"for the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity." Inward witness: Rom. 1: 19–TÒ YVWσTÒV TOù Deoù "that which is known of God is manifest among them." Compare the άпокаλÚптетαι of the gospel, in verse 17, with the arокаλúñтетаι of wrath, in v. 18-two revelations, one of opy, the other of Xápis; see Shedd, Homiletics, 11. Rom. 1: 32-"knowing the ordinance of God"; 12: 5-" they show the work of the law written in their hearts." Therefore even the heathen are "without excuse" (Rom. 1: 20). There are two books: Nature and Scripture-one written, the other unwritten: and there is need of studying both. On the passages in Romans, see the Commentary of Hodge.

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