11 - Manufacturing a New Gospel

XI- MANUFACTURING A NEW GOSPEL

WE read that "all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing." Acts 17:21. As we have seen, this is the attitude of the higher critics. Any theory, any gospel, so long as it is new! Having discarded the ancient gospel of Christ, which "is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth" (Romans 1:1-32), and having taught doubt as essential to their gospel, they proceed to patch up a new gospel - an up-to-date gospel.

Those critics who place the authority of Jesus very high, immediately place their own higher. The teachings of Christ are not often directly controverted, but they are often ignored, or treated as counsel of perfection which we are to admire rather than to obey. Listen to Harnack and Herrmann

"It is obvious that in this workaday world, such principles are impracticable; no business can be conducted on these lines. Yet that is just what Jesus seems to want."

"Had He meant these words to be universal rules, He would have been worse than the rabbis whose teaching He opposed."

"The character of Jesus is made up of compassion and modesty, love and asceticism; and consequently He is no leader for men who with the means given them in this world wish to attain some definite object."

"With regard to the utterances of Jesus, we confess that we cannot simply comply with them, since we do not share His conception of the universe, and so are living in a different world. On the other hand, the mind which they reveal should be present also in us; that is, the will to act in accordance with our own convictions."- "The Social Gospel," pages 1,59, 204, 212, 207.

This, then, is the new gospel. Do not follow Jesus. No matter how clearly stated is the will of Christ, "our own convictions" are to be followed in preference, especially when from them has been eliminated compassion, modesty, love, and asceticism. Yes, dear reader, such are the teachings of the new theology. Their words are before you. I would fain believe that they are the sad words read in a bitter dream; but unfortunately they are only too real.

I believe that these men are better than their teachings; but the better the personal life, the more vicious and extensive is the devastating influence of such teaching. If some drunken roué advocated the impossibility of following Jesus, of being modest, loving, compassionate, and self-controlled, those only would heed him who were more debauched than he. But when backed by the irreproachable private life, and stated with all the profound learning and charming genius, of Harnack and Herrmann, these restated teachings of the debauchee are enthusiastically applauded and blindly accepted. That such teachings are neither isolated nor overstated, is evident from the bold avowals of Dr. Campbell, England’s premier exponent of the new theology, who tells us roundly that "sin is the expansion of the individuality."-R. J. Campbell, "New Theology," page 157. For fear that we may charitably mistake him, Mr. Campbell carries his principle to its hideous conclusion, with the blind disregard for results so often observed in higher critics: "However startling it may seem," he says, "sin itself is a quest for God. That drunken debauch was a quest for life, a quest for God. Men in their sinful follies to-day, and their blank atheism, and their foul blasphemies, their trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, blundering quest for God. . . . The roué you saw in Piccadilly last night, who went out to corrupt innocence and to wallow in filthiness of the flesh, was engaged in his blundering quest for God."-Id., pages 150, 151.

It needs no argument to prove that if these new teachings were believed by foreign missionaries, their work would become paralyzed, and foreign missionary work would not only languish, but would go rapidly from apathy to stupor, and from stupor to profound coma, from which only the impending second advent of Christ could arouse it. Is it any wonder that Christ, in looking down the stream of time to the present, said sadly, "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8. In taking stock of how much of the gospel of Jesus higher criticism has left us, and seeing how scant it is, and how warped and corrupted even that little is, many unsettled souls are crying out, with Mary, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." John 20:13. The terrible harvest of this higher criticism is already seen in the unsettled beliefs, the destroyed faith, the multiplied infidels, even in the churches, the weakened and empty churches, and the consequent increase of crime and vice. Aliens from God, outcasts from society, broken-hearted millions curse their miserable existence, and long for death as a desired release. From Africa’s burning sands, from Russia’s frigid steppes, from India’s arid plains, from China’s crowded lands, from the rocky cliffs of countless islands - from every land, in every clime - the cry of human woe is ascending in increasing volume, from the destitute, the afflicted, the diseased, and the dying. To these misery-laden souls, higher criticism can give only a gospel of scientific doubt, a Bible of shreds and patches, a book of myths and legends - a Christless Bible. Nothing but husks have the new theologians to offer the sin-burdened, empty-souled, world-weary child of the world.

Since the story of the curse is held to be only a voice from the realm of fable, redemption must necessarily be the decadent fruitage of a hydra-headed myth; and a fabulous redemption from a fabulous curse is effected only by a nebulous, mystical, and mythical Christ, the fabulous product of unscrupulous deceivers, imposed upon an ignorant and superstitious people in an age of darkness. This theory is so prevalent among higher critics, and is taught so assiduously, that among the laymen, theories of Christ are rife, conclusions diverse, and faith wavering. The open or secret cry is, "We will not have this Man to reign over us." In this crude and mongrel system of Christianity, this incoherent conglomerate of antiscriptural religion, false philosophy, and infidel science, all the lifeblood of Christianity has been drawn from Christ’s gospel, all the spirituality has been evaporated from His life, all the meaning from His words, and nothing is left us but muddy waters from the broken cisterns of ancient infidelity and modern "Christian" skepticism.