Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

necessarily large books nor many-volumed but works that have endured the tests and criticisms of readers and experts and are proved to have been weighty and permanent contributions to the literature of the subject. They cannot be ignored by the historical student, whether he accepts the conclusions reached or not. As a notable instance we may refer to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The writer was avowedly an antagonist of the claims of Christianity, but he is an historian of the highest rank and his admissions as to the widespread influence and wonderful growth of the Christian Church together with the straits to which he is put to explain the phenomena without conceding the divine origin of Christianity stand as unparalleled in significance as an apologetic for the Church.

In the class of historical writings entitled to be called great will be included among modern historians the works of William Bright, Bishop Creighton, Bishop Stubbs, Mr. Freeman, R. W. Dixon, James Gairdner, S. R. Gardiner, Hefelé, Doellinger, Duchesne, the Cambridge Histories and the Histoire Generale edited by Lavisse and Rambaud, all these being named as ordinarily accessible in first-class public and theological libraries. The constructive study of Church History cannot neglect them.

In the very brief space we may give to these suggestions we can do no more than emphasize a few points. First-class historical works should be read again and again, if not as a whole at least in certain sections. And while the temptation is continually to keep to the history proper, the value of reading with care all appendices and foot-notes is inestimably great. In certain cases the historical text is in the main a nucleus around which is gathered an immense amount of historical and illustrative material which is quite missed by the reader who ignores such running commentary.

Special subjects should be studied in the writings of specialists. That seems and is a truism, but one often ignored. Specialists have generally become such because of particular gifts and aptitudes in a certain subject. Lightfoot had peculiar

powers for historical criticism of documents. Not half a dozen scholars in several centuries have had anything like his ability as exhibited in the problem of the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch. The late Mr. Denny specialized in certain aspects of the claims of the papacy, Bishop Creighton and Dr. Bright and Father Puller in other aspects. Dixon and Gairdner worked only on the Tudor period in English Church History. Their writings are not likely to be superseded. Of course the treatises of great historians and historical specialists are hard reading. All getting beneath the surface of subjects entails strenuous study, but there is no easy path to the solution of the problems of history.

Two methods of presenting history, from other than the method of scientifically constructed narrative, which throw strong sidelights on events and men are biography and the philosophy of history. The former makes the life of the Church unfold itself like a vivid drama with all the vigorous vitality and freshness that we associate with the dramatic art where personality counts for so much. The latter shows how the underlying principles of the kingdom of Christ on earth have been worked out and illustrated and combined with other factors so as to produce certain results. Here we discover the truth of Tennyson's observation, that

"Through the ages one eternal purpose runs

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the

suns.

If you want to get a very full insight into the Oxford Movement hardly anything will be better than Liddon's four-volume Life of Dr. Pusey. There are many such biographical works which are indispensable in the constructive study of the history of the Church. For the philosophy of Church History, Creighton's Historical Essays and other occasional writings, Mozley's Essays Historical and Theological, Waterman's "God's Balance of Faith and Freedom," Hobhouse's Bampton Lectures, "The Church and the World," are examples.

There must be many who from time to time formulate aloud

or in their own thoughts the question, Are there any principles or historical conclusions which may be treated as established? The immense mass of controversial theology, ancient and modern, would seem to give some color to the cavil that nothing is positively settled. The constructive study of ecclesiastical history is mainly concerned with the effort to secure the recognition of some historical truths as practically closed questions. The evidence may be repeatedly examined and freshly stated, but without any alteration of the result. People are sometimes frankly puzzled by the refusal of the Church to allow such fresh arrangement and statement of the grounds on which truths rest. A knowledge of the various phases of such re-examinations would show them that the case in each instance almost invariably gains in solidity and strength by the process rather than the contrary.

We shall conclude this phase of our subject by noting: II. Some Historical Points which may be considered permanently established.

We shall state the several points with conservatism, in such wise that few if any will be bold enough to challenge them in the light of the evidence.

(1) The Continuity of the Christian Church of the present day unbroken from the Day of Pentecost.

There has been no break. Even with a considerable latitude of definition as to what is meant by the Christian Church continuity is exhibited. Whether we take the statement of the Thirty-Nine Articles,-"The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly administered according to Christ's ordinance," or the extreme in another direction, that "The Christian Church is an association of people for the maintenance of public worship for those who care for it,' history shows continuity. There is no sufficient evidence to indicate that the original group ever died out, and another sprang up which revived certain opinions of its predecessor but differed radically, and that this process has been going on recurrently. This fact of continuity is an all-important

[ocr errors]

premise in a number of related syllogisms having to do with the Church today.

[ocr errors]

(2) From whatever point we approach the history of this continuous Christian body it cannot be denied that the religious world at the present period presents three subdivisions and no more. We find Christian bodies which officially denominate themselves as catholic, three especially Eastern, Latin and Anglican; and another series consists of bodies calling themselves Christian, but repudiating the term-catholic. They are officially on their own representation non-catholic. If we compare the first group with the second, history will afford strong evidence for the contention that the members of the first group have underlying characteristics which all three consider essential and a few which all three do not consider essential. On the other hand the members of the second or noncatholic group hold, each of them, something to be essential which the others and the catholic group do not estimate in this way; deny each something which one or more consider vital; and all differ from the members of the catholic group on one or several points which the latter hold to be of the essential constitution of the Christian Church.

A third group constitutes a non-Christian series. The members of the group may be unitarian, theistic, or otherwise, but their negative and common characteristic, the denial that Jesus is God, even though they in some sense and in some degree find a place for Christ in their system, separates them effectively from both the other groups officially.

The full study of the three groups, the first critically, the second sympathetically, the third honestly, will emphasize the radical divergences between the groups and the history of them all will witness to the fact that the groups do not really shade off insensibly into one another but have between them gulfs that cannot be bridged over. To give an illustration which cannot be expanded here, the highest Unitarian is nowhere near the same as the lowest Trinitarian, and the Irvingite body which calls itself catholic is unable by any terms or language to secure what the most evangelical of Catholics has, whether

he appreciates it or not, the episcopate of historic and apostolic succession.

(3) However the historians of the three Catholic Communions may disagree on certain subjects in their mutual history all alike can show with little difficulty that they trace back to a time when intercommunion had not been interrupted and so back to the Apostolic Age and the Day of Pentecost, while certain positive features and fruits to be observed in their later history afford a presumption that the present suspension of official intercommunion is due not to loss of primitive and essential characteristics but to causes, not trivial nor unimportant, but yet not of such a nature as to destroy the identity of each member of the group with the Church which is neither Eastern nor Western, Latin or Anglican, but Catholic, One, Apostolic and Holy.

(4) In some sense the possession of the episcopate of apostolic succession is witnessed to as the safeguard of orthodoxy and vitality. This is a most fascinating subject for research and evidence. A part of the evidence lies where it is voluntary blindness not to see it. The Apostles' Creed, for instance, is officially set forth and required, unmutilated, undenied in every article, positively taught in formularies by the Christian bodies that have kept and claim to have kept the episcopate and nowhere else. Some apparent exceptions to this sweeping statement disappear on careful examination, we add for the sake of noting that the challenge of the assertion is not unanticipated. The same is true in regard to vitality, little as the different members of the catholic group have on which to congratulate themselves for their correspondence to all their opportunities. Phariseeism is an ugly thing and we could not defend such an assertion did not that very assertion stand as the direct outcome of the catholic doctrine that the Church is a divine organism and all that is vital and energizing comes directly from its Divine Founder and the Divine Spirit in-dwelling. Change, breaches with their own history, reorganization, denials are obvious in the history of non-episcopal bodies. Witness the lapse of Trinitarian Congregationalism into bald Sabellian Unitarianism.

« AnteriorContinuar »