Newspaper Page Text
THE BAPTIST WORLD ALLIANCE ITS
John Clifford, Apostle of Religious Liberty, Receives Indescribable Ovation at Conwell’s Temple, Philadelphia
(Continued from Last Week.)
VI.
And now standing upon this emi
nence, let us ask what is the outlook
for the Baptist people fall over the
earth? What is the position likely to
be assigned to us in leading and shap
ing the religious life of mankind?
To answer that question we need
ask first, towards what sea are the
deeper currents of thought and action
in modern civilization setting? What
is the "stream of tendency” amongst
the progressive peoples? Is it with
our principles or against them?
The reply is unequivocal and com
plete.
(1) Protestantism is to the fore.
The races leading the life of the world
are either distinctively Protestant, as
in Britain and the United States, or
they are effectively using Protestant
ideas as weapons against Roman Ca
tholicism as in France and Spain.
“The Dissidence of Dissent” holds the
field, if not in form, in fact. Modern
ism is sapping Rome in its strong
holds as in Italy and Austria. Those
who know Romanism most intimately
are ashamed of its morals, rebel
against its tyranny of the intellect,
are indignant with its interdict upon
united social service, and resent its
treatment of leaders in science, philos
ophy and religion. In Germany and
in England and in some of our colo
nies, gigantic efforts are being made
to capture the Teuton and the Saxon,
but the successes they have secured
are, neither in character nor number,
such as to invalidate the conclusion
that Protestantism is one of the chief
factors moulding the coming genera
tions of men.
(2) The leaven of teaching concern
ing the intervention of the magistrate
in religious affairs cast by John Smith
and Roger Williams into the three
measures of human meal in Holland
and England and America has been
doing its work. The United States
has established forever the doctrine
of the neutrality of the State towards
all Christian societies, trance has
cut the concordat in twain, and State
and Church are free of each other.
Portugal is doing the same this year.
Welsh Disestablishment is at the
doors. And though England, as usual,
lags behind, yet both within and with
out the Anglican Church the convic
tion that separation is just, gains
strength, and all that is wanted is the
opportunity to translate the conviction
into legislative deed.
(3) In like manner the reflective
forces of the age make against an
exclusive and aggressive priestism.
Indeed, it has received its sentence of
death, land is only waiting for the ex
ecutioner. It has to go. A professor
trained in the higher ranges of the
Anglican Church says: “A revival of
any form of sacerdotal Christianity
would be an appalling calamity to the
human race. In the nature of things
that revival can not come. Never was
the proportion of thinking men so
large as now. Personality becomes
more and more every day, and official
ism less and less. Material and sen
suous as the age is in many of its as
pects, yet character was never more
highly appreciated or told for more
than it does at the present time.
(4) Nor can prelacy stand against
the divine right of the democracy. Al
though the cry of “Increase the Epis
copate” is heard, yet the Bishops
themselves admit that they must give
the laity some share in the adminis
tration of the affairs of prelatical
churches. The people can not he ex
cluded from churches or from nations.
Thetr day has dawned, and it will go
on to its full noon. Not churches, nor
parties, nor nations merely, but the
people are the legatees of the future;
the inheritance is theirs. Long have
they been kept out of it; but every
year witnesses their growing con
sciousness of power and their increas
ed determination to use it. Washing
ton and Jefferson, Hamilton and
Knox, Franklin and Madison, and the
men who framed your Constitution in
this city uttered with something of
lyric passion this great message and
fixed it forever in the Charter of In
dependence. France thrilled the world
with its deeds in the people’s name
and sealed with the blood of many of
her sons and daughters the people’s
cause. Walt Whitman, rapt into ec
stasy with the vision of the advance
ing people, .sings:
“I will make Divine magnetic land,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades”
And then again he asks:
“What whispers are these, 0 lands,
running ahead of you, passing un
der the seas?
Are all nations communing? Is there
going to be but one heart to the
globe?”
Yonder in Russia, Tolstoy is seized
with the spirit of universal comrade
ship the cause of peace and purity, of
righteousness and charity, and tells
men in many a volume of quickening
thought, expressed in strong and lu
cid speech that the kingdom of God
is come nigh unto them. Nay, can
you believe it; even the British House
of Lords has discovered that it is an
irritating anachronism, a gilded stum
bling stone in the way of progress,
and the sooner it moves out of the
way the better. This is the reign of
the people. The issue is inevitable.
They are one. They know, it, and
they will act as one. Instead of fight
ing one another, they will make com
mon cause with each other, and rule
the world in righteousness and peace.
(5) But the most outstanding char
acteristics of our time is the amazing
dominance of the idea of social serv
ice. The age is permeated with the
obligation of brotherhood, the duty of
self-sacrificing ministry, to the more
needy members of the Common
wealth. We can not escape it. So
cial problems are supreme. “The con
dition of the people” question is ev
erywhere surging to tne front. Housing
and health, temperance and purity,
drill for the body, education for the
mind; these and kindred phases of
life are never out of sight. The
churches have broadened out so as to
embrace them. Institutions, clubs,
spring up in towns and villages to deal
with them. Governments have done
with laissez faire, and are taking them
up. The British Legislature points
the way with its old age pensions land
its charter for the industrial classes.
As a doctor it is fighting disease. As
a nurse it is watching over the inva
lid. As an insurance agent it is ar
ranging help for those who are out of
work; and doing it all, we can not for
get, through a political leader of splen
did genius and captivating simplicity,
who has been trained from childhood
in Baptist ideas, who is. now an ac
tive member of a Baptist church, and
whether he knows it or not, is absorb
ed in applying the doctrines of the
Anabaptist of the sixteenth century to
the needs of the men of our own day.
From him has come this Great Charter
of the Industrial Classes; a charter
conferring untold good at once, and
also foretelling the arrival of a new
era in the commercial, industrial and
social condition and activities of the
whole world.
The Golden Age for July 27,1911.
(6) And all this movement is in
tensely moral. The illuminated and
energized conscience is in it. It is
ennobled by a high lethic. The Spirit
has “convinced the world of sin and
righteousness and judgment”; and in
the strength of that conviction a con
certed and comprehensive attack is
being made by churches and States,
by individuals and societies on the
strongholds of injustice and misery,
and a long stride is taken to that one
far-off divine event towards which the
whole creation moves.
VII.
Need I trace the parallel between
those manifest tendencies of this New
Century and the principles which our
fathers set forth and which we main
tain? Is it not obvious that the idean
and aims are ours, and that whatever
becomes of us as churches, this, at
least, is certain, that tnose ideas of
ours are working migntily as the for
mative factors of the future?
“The sum of all progress,” says He
gel, “is freedom.” On freedom we are
built, for freedom we fight; and to
wards freedom the race is everywhere
moving.
Man is able to enunciate his own
law and to follow it. He is made to
govern himself. In a world of increas
ing complexity and marvelous inter
play of vital and social forces, he is
slowly acquiring self-government. Our
churches are autonomous and have
proved themselves useful schools in
the mastery of the art of self-rule.
The individual enters society, and is
made by it; social responsibility ed
ucates him; social service purines and
expands him. The more complete his
free and equal participation in the so
cial organism, the richer his life, and
the more valuable his gifts to the
world. Our fellowships offer such
aids. Monopolies are excluded. Caste
is forbidden. Work for others is ob
ligatory and inspired.
But though the parallel in those and
other respects is so significant we
can not forget that there are immense
ecclesiastical organizations occupying
vast fields enrolling, multitudes of
members, repudiating us and claiming
an exclusive right to preach the way
of salvation, and to direct the reli
gious life of men.
Islam, for example, has a brilliant
history; controls wide regions, attracts
millions of adherents and is once more
fired with missionary zeal. Its activ
ity is ceaseless, and its hope of con
quest bright; but it must be affected
by the rise of the Young Turks with
their antagonism to clericalism, hatred
of intolerance, sympathy with justice
and equality and bold avowal that
women have souls as well as men.
One of two things must follow: either
the leavening of Mohammedanism
with Christian ideas or its gradual
dissolution under the powerful sol
vent of the current principles of mod
em life.
It is the same with Roman Catholi
cism. It asserts the right to an exclu
sive dominion over the minds and
wills of men, boasts of its universali
ty, and has the allegiance of hundreds
of millions of believers. But Dr. Cobb
says: “It is quite impossible to think
of the Roman Catholic Church possess
ing any determining voice in the reli
gion of the future —unless she herself
is first reconstructed so as to bring
her on to the line of modern prog
ress; and then she would be no long
er the Roman Catholic Church, but
something entirely different.”
The same thing, with even more
reason, may be said concerning the
Holy Orthodox Church of Russia.
Then we are left to the Protestant
churches in their several denomina-
tions. Os the Anglican Church, Dr.
Cobb, who is himself a member of
that Church, affirms: “It is the liv
ing voice we ask to be allowed to
hear. It is the dead hand which we
feel oppressive. . . . The Free churches
have a living voice. . . . The Church of
England alone among the churches of
the West has none.” Without en
dorsing that verdict, we may say it is
perfectly true that all Christian
churches have some truth, and live
and serve by the truth they hold, and
the truth that really holds them; and
by the quality and quantity of the
service they are rendering to humani
ty; but it is clear (1) that it is the
genuine Christianity that is in all the
churches that will give the determin
ing word and influence; (2) that Prot
estantism, specially in the Free
churches admittedly contains and em
bodies more of the primitive gospel
than the Roman and Greek churches,
and (3) that our Baptist cnurches are
by the principles they avow and the
ideas they hold charged with a re
sponsibility second to none for inspir
ing, directing and shaping the reli
gion of the future.
For in addition to our ruling ideas
we have a freedom as to verbal form®
of belief and of organized collective
life, though we are so immovably
fixed as to principles, that leaves us
wholly at liberty to adapt ourselves
to the teaching of experience, and the
changing needs of societies as contin
uously living organisms can and must.
Biblical criticism does not disturb us,
for we do not rest on it, but on per
sonal experience of the grace of
Christ. Modes of political government
do not affect us; we can accept any,
but we fare best under the most dem
ocratic, and as a matter of conviction
we can only be kept out of politics by
the absence of injustice, of interfer
ence with conscience, of favoritism,
and of neglect of the weak and the
poor. Collisions with the people can
not occur, for we are of the people,
and one with them in their popular
ideals and democratic aims. I do not
say that Baptists are necessary for
the full development and final triumph
of these principles. We are not.
“There is no man, nor any body of
men necessary for anything, not even
the Prince of Denmark to Hamlet.”
But I do declare with my whole soul
that these principles are necessary to
the strength land purity, the fulness
and harmony of the religious life of
men; and I am sure that the church
that can give the most living, fresh
and powerful embodiment of them will
find itself summoned of God to guide
the races of men through the jungle
of this life into the blissful Canaan
God has prepared for those that love
Him. It needs the best, men and the
best churches to carry the best cause
to victory; the men and the churches
of the finest manhood, of the tender
est sympathy, and most self-forget
ting love; men and churches who will
have no purpose but such as can be
entirely subordinated to the glory of
God our Redeemer; churches that
come nearer to that divine ideal of
which we have so many brilliant
glimpses in the New Testament;
churches with a full spiritual life, a
large ministry—a brotherly spirit and
a broad sweep of service; churches
meeting the needs of the whole life of
man with a whole gospel; churches
that hold that the soul to be saved
is the self, all the self, and in all its
relations; that we are ourselves “so
cial settlements,” communities of
brothers and sisters of Jesus, willing
to go into an uninteresting obscurity
for the sake of men lost in the dark
(Concluded on Page 16.)
7
