058. UNFETTERED BY PRECEDENTS

UNFETTERED BY PRECEDENTS The Christian denominations may be likened to the runners in a torch race, in which each contestant tries to replace his light when it threatens to go out, and so by successive kindlings bring his torch first to the goal. The runner who is fettered by precedents, or who has to go in beaten tracks, may be easily outstripped. But he who can bestow all his labor and pains on the preservation and dissemination of his light will get most illumination on his way. To us Baptists belongs, as we believe, the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and it is our duty to hand it down through the ages, and to increase its volume and influence as it goes. The absence of ecclesiastical and confessional hindrances gives us an advantage in this torch race of the ages. If we are but faithful, we can meet emergencies and expand with the times, as can no other denomination of the Christian world.

Seventhly, and lastly, it is our Baptist advantage that we hold to a principle that limits and safeguards this individual freedom,—a principle of stability,—the principle of direct and entire obedience to Christ. While we are an absolute democracy so far as respects the interpretation of his will, we are an absolute monarchy so far as respects direct obedience to that will itself. Freedom is not enough. Every institution that is to last must also have law. In our American Revolution we won our liberty; in our great Civil War we made that liberty permanent by making it a liberty regulated by law. Here is the greatest advantage of Baptists,— they hold first, last, and always, to the supreme and absolute dominion of Christ. His word is our only standard of truth; his love is our only motive of action; his will is our only rule of duty. We recognize that all our hopes will be empty and vain except as Christ himself by his personal and omnipotent Spirit dwells and reigns within us. External advantages will be as valueless to us as to the Jewish nation was the possession of the oracles of God, unless with the external advantages there be given to us grace to be obedient. My observations among our German Baptists in Europe have convinced me that they have made such astonishing headway, not simply because of the truth they have preached, but because of the spiritual lives they have lived. And so in America,—we shall continue to make headway, if we are but faithful.