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The stress always needs to be laid on the constructive history and periods of the Christian Church. The edifice has been in process of erection according to a Divine plan for a good many centuries. It is easy enough to discover places where the workmanship is poor because the workmen have not followed the Architect's plan. That indicates incompetency on the part of those who have been given responsibility for performing or overseeing the work. It is not difficult to expose poor and unworthy material which tends to weaken the structure. Relative advantages in parts of the economic structure may be fair subjects for discussion possibly. But what of the building as a whole? Does it stand firmly? Has it endured the shocks and attacks of time and enemies? Is it still a shelter, a refuge, a stronghold? Has there ever been anything better? Has there ever been anything half so good?

Some interesting attempts have been made from time to time to deal with the history of the Church by beginning with the present and working back stage by stage to the Day of Pentecost. It is a fascinating experiment to make but really involves. practical difficulties and a series of assumptions which are liable to obviate the very ends desired. In the first place the Church is a present fact and an institution that in essence and life is exactly the same as on the first day of its history. The analogy with a human body holds good here. The Church was complete on the Day of Pentecost, with all organs, powers, possessions and ideals that it now claims. Growth, extension, increased development of powers, fuller realization of adaptability to the needs of men are to be traced, as in the case of the human body. Certain abnormal conditions of the Christian. world at the moment do not necessarily constitute valid premises for reasoning backward to the age before. In order to do that it is imperative to assume certain points which are not easy to establish without bringing in earlier history. For example, if one begins with the divided condition of Christendom at the present time, it is difficult to show that this condition must be wrong because the Church was intended to be One, without falling back upon earlier periods and the

documents of the New Testament that witness to the principle of unity and the evil of schism.

The Church, again, is a building and that building was complete eighteen centuries ago. The history of the Church is meant to show its capacity for being the Ark of salvation throughout the ages. Its history is not a narrative of continual human tinkering, of changing plans and architect and of tearing down the old from time to time in order to make way for the new. All men do not enter the building, all may not avail themselves of every privilege that the building provides, some individuals may leave the shelter of the edifice and set out to erect something better in their estimation. Some rooms in the structure may apparently be closed and disused. But the New Jerusalem came down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband, perfect, beautiful, complete. The witness of history is the witness to that truth but it is exceedingly doubtful if the proof can be given by reading the narrative in the reverse direction, without some assumption of that which it is desired to establish.

What really can be done with considerable value by those who have traced the history of the Church in the world is to present something like a cross-section of the building where at a glance the various stages may be seen and the use or abuse of this or that portion of the structure at different periods of its existence, or to show how the building has been able to withstand attack. This is exceedingly valuable and not open to the same criticism as the proposal to write history backward.

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Constructive history of the Church will begin properly with the place and time where and when " they were all with one accord in one place and suddenly there came a sound from heaven and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." It might be better to say the constructive history of the course of the Church in human history. There are preludes to this narrative, there was a period of preparation, there was a merging of certain elements of the old dispensation in the new. These are all important, but to the same extent as all transition periods are important. We are

now and have been since the descent of the Holy Spirit in the last period of God's dealing with the human race for redemption. "Last of all, He sent unto them His Son, saying, They will reverence My Son." The work of the Holy Ghost in the Church is to secure for men that abiding Presence. There never can be another Incarnation nor another Pentecost.

The frank admission is now made by some apologists for one or another of the older religious bodies in separation from the historic Church, that the early history of the separation has nothing to do with the particular body at the present time. A Methodist who is confronted with John Wesley's teaching on the Sacraments is very likely to reply that Methodists have cut loose from Wesleyanism, and this is generally true. The eighteenth century leader is now a revered name but not an authority. Presbyterianism has largely disowned John Calvin so far as constructive theology is concerned and as to polity the theory of a historical succession on one ministerial order— the presbyterate - from apostolic times has been abandoned. Congregationalism has ceased to connote any one of several bodies in particular and certain Unitarian bodies call themselves officially Congregationalist. Even the papal theory gains its strength largely from its present wide practical acceptance as a successful religious organization. Backing up papal claims from history has almost invariably been carried on by a method which is equally justifiable, so far as historical method is concerned, in case of other ecclesiastical theories. The Encyclical of Leo XIII is about as transparently unhistorical a document as any in the course of eighteen centuries.

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The Constructive Method of dealing with the history of the Church is not popular. The "Efficiency Method" is plausible and attractive. It assumes that visible and tangible results are the true "fruits" of Christianity. The Controversial Method develops egotism and individualism on the less admirable side. These are all superficial and require little time and seldom result in a permanent peace." The Constructive Method demands a good deal of effort and rigid restraint at many points from leaping to conclusions. Very few people will give

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more than an hour to hearing about the Early Church or the Reformation period. One of my students approached me one day asking what one book he should read in preparation for a series of addresses on the history of the Early Church that he proposed to give to the people of the Mission where he acted as lay-reader. The advice that, for every hour of instruction he proposed to give, not less than twenty hours of reading in anticipation would be necessary (which was the lowest reasonable estimate), astonished him. I have heard of a parish priest who, wishing to give a talk on Church History to his congregation Sunday evening, sat down that afternoon with three elementary books to "get up'' the material for a half hour's instruction. And on the other side the laity are equally at fault. It is next to impossible to secure the consecutive attendance of lay people at a series of even four or five instructions upon any subject or period in Church History or to read thoroughly and studiously a reliable and scholarly book on a historical subject which employs the scientific, historical method and quotes authorities and sources. It is discouraging in the extreme to find, as an experience common to all who would teach, that the more superficial acquaintance an individual has with a theological subject the more difficult it is to persuade him to acquire knowledge and to refrain from prejudiced and untenable statements. The constructive teacher is at a disadvantage in this respect. Nevertheless nothing secures the desired results except patient, thorough, thoughtful instruction.

Some suggestions will be given in this chapter to those who wish to pursue their studies in the history of the Christian Church on sound lines.

I. Choice of Books and Historical Writers.

No historical work should be selected to be read merely because of its conclusions. The point is to see how those conclusions have been reached and whether they are tenable on sound historical evidence. I have before me a copy of Abbot Gasquet's popular lectures delivered at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, in 1913, and published under the title Breaking

with the Past. The writer, who can write history but was not imported for that purpose in the delivery of these lectures, has for his thesis to show that the Church in England abandoned in the sixteenth century the catholic doctrines of the Priesthood, the Sacraments and Church Authority. Having established, largely by unsupported statements, to the satisfaction of those who hold the thesis the points in question, Gasquet appends a list of "Books Suggested for Reading." The trustful reader who might reasonably expect a wide range of books of reference finds himself confronted with twenty-two titles, out of which fourteen are by Roman Catholic controversial writers, seven of them by Gasquet himself, while the few works by other writers are selected solely because they are held to contain some admissions which would be in favor of Gasquet's conclusions if entirely dissociated from other considerations. Not a hand-book of first-hand sources is mentioned and the list concludes with the pamphlet by the Bishop of Zanzibar written at the time of the Kikuyu Controversy, which must have come into the hands of Gasquet with the ink hardly dry, to be included in the list. Very likely this amazingly naive and transparently unhistorical set of lectures is circulated and recommended because the conclusions reached are the sole object. This is not constructive history. It is historical juggling. Yet how many readers, in selecting books on Church History, follow the habit so frequently ascribed to the feminine novel reader, of looking to see how the book ends up! A reasonable comment upon Gasquet's lectures and many another series from quite different sources would be: What a poor and slender case it must be which has to adopt such a childish method!

If the following suggestion comes under the eye of men thorough and eminent in their profession or branch of learning, it should appeal strongly to them. Give preference always to really great books of history. Condensations, primers, firstbooks and other elementary designations, may be useful for outlines if based upon true history and reliable authorities, but they can never make history live. Great books are not

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