M MR. R. F. HORTON ON MODERN CHRISTIANITY. R. R. F.
HORTON is a thinker as well as a scholar, and we always find what he has to say on the funda- mental truths of religion well worth attending to. But towards the close of his sermon last Sunday morning at Hampstead, on Christian Missions, he touched with perhaps less than his usual subtlety on what he regarded as "the difference between the Gospel in the nineteenth century and the Gospel in the first ":— " Does it not strike yon," he said, "that the whole mode of reducing the Christian Gospel to a number of logical proposi- tions, even though so excellent a formula as a creed, is quite =- Christian ? Does it not strike you that you cannot present the Gospel to the heathen in the formula of Geneva, Westminster, or Canterbury? If that had been the way, these formulas would have been made at the beginning. The Gospel moved to its victory Without them, and they hinder rather than help its victory now. The faith of the Gospel is like a beautiful and simple strain of music which floated down from the heavens cen- turies ago, entered the world, and took captive the spirit of man. At first the strain was echoed in the hearts of those who heard, and all wanted to hear it for themselves. But little by little men began to think it necessary to write down the score of the music, and as they wrote it down. there. were certain variations in its notation, in its harmonising, in its orches- tration, and when the differences were observed they began to dispute about them, and each declared his notation was the notation, and, as the conflict grew louder, men ceased to play the music at all, or to listen for it; they were entirely engaged with the scores. When it occurred to them that they must take the message to the heathen, they took their score books, and each assured the heathen that his was the rendering of the music which came clown from heaven, and then your Uganda is torn with the conflicts of the in who have two scores of the music and who try to persuade the heathen that they are each right, and the heathen do not care, nor do I, nor you, but they Say: Why do out thethe not play the music P ' Give them the symphony ; let it ring same glad sound that came into the world centuries ago ; and all men will hear and be glad ; they will listen and be ravished by the music that fell from heaven. The 'peace on tafrth, goodwill to men,' and the coming of the Lord of light, and foort:and peace ; this music of the risen Christ as one who lives evermore : this Gospel from His lips and from His heart ; G pel unstereotyped' unfrozen all-alive ; this is the preparation for the highway of our God." B. ut 25 it true either that creed is related to religious hfe Just as a score of music is related to the effect of m:usic. on the ear, or that the mode in which a faith Nvms its way best at first is necessarily the mode in which it wins its way best through all time I' We should deny both assumptions. The score is only the memoria technzea by which those who have not the music in their ears fin. d it easiest to recall it to their memories ; while the creed is certainly not a mere reminder of that which makes life relagious, but, to a considerable extent at least, the source and Spring of the religions attitude of mind and heart. And again, as to the assumption that the flower of the Gospel, While it appeared to be creedlese, was so much more beautiful than the dry seed of dogma which it subsequently produced. Even granting this, it would not in the least follow that the seed was not quite as necessary to the reproduction of the flower as the flower was to the production of the seed. It is far from true that the method in which religions are pro- pagated is always the same ; as some plants are reared from roots, some from seeds, and some from cuttings, so it is, we believe, equally true that the method in which the Christian life is best propagated is not always the same. There is a vital and organic connection, no doubt, between all the different stages of the Christian life ; but it does not in the least follow, nor is it indeed true, that it must always begin at the same point with every one who embraces it.
But let us take the first objection to Mr. Horton's position first. It seems to us almost as untrue to identify the Christian creed with the mere score which enables the musician who has lost his grasp of the music to reproduce it at will, as it is to identify the manuscript of a great poem with the poem itself. The music would be the same if there were no way of jotting it down so that he who had never heard it could reproduce it for himself. But the Christian life would not be the same, supposing there were no definite Christian creed. A very essential element of that life is the creed, and what the creed implies, Is it possible to be cheerful, calm, and confident in the presence of persecution and death, without profound trust, and is trust possible without a creed ? Indeed, if Mr. Horton insists on the comparison of Christianity to music, is not a deep belief at the very core of that music ? "Who do men say that I am?" asks Christ of his apostles ; and when Peter makes his reply, he is told that on this rock Christ will build his Church. Would the music of that Church have been music at all without the belief thus professed, of which we are told at once that flesh and blood had not revealed it to Peter, but his Father, who was in heaven? "Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." Is not a creed, and a creed of the very deepest kind, of the very essence of that music,— music which has probably fascinated more human souls than any other strain in the Gospels P If the divine magnet which magnetised for us the needle that guides the human con- science, and gives us the means of steering on unknown seas, be carefully examined, we shall find that its magic consists in a passionate belief `as to the central figure of that revela- tion without which there would be no fixity in the mind's purposes, no Polar star by which to steer. The last thing we could spare in the " music) " of the Gospel, is its creed.
And then consider this second assumption of Mr. Horton's, namely, that because the creed was not promulgated in its bare and abstract form before `the Christian community was first formed, therefore the creed should always be kept in the back- ground, and the Gospel presented just as it was presented to the first disciples. Even if that were granted, we might still ask, was it always presented to the first disciples in the same form? Was the great draught of fishes and the exhortation which accompanied it, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men," identical in drift with the greeting, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," or" Go in peace, thy faith hath made thee whole," which were our Lord's first addresses to many of his disciples P A deed of power and a promise founded on the impression that it made, is a very different kind of appeal from such an address as "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." It would be quite a mistake to suppose that what Mr. Horton calls the " music " of the Gospel was always of the same kind. Sometimes it aimed at exciting the con- science, sometimes at relieving it, sometimes at inspiring awe and hope, sometimes at filling the soul with a certain bewilder- ment and perplexity, as in the saying, "A little while and ye shall not see me, and again a little while and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father." Nothing can be less true than that the music of the Gospel, if it is even always to be called music, was always in the same strain. Was the address to the woman of Samaria, "Thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hest is not thy husband," a strain of music at all ? Sometimes the first note struck was one of fear, sometimes one of power, sometimes one of hope and love. There was no dead uniformity in our Lord's method. It was adapted to the nature which he was endeavouring to touch. And the amount of creed involved or required was very different in different oases. Now the same difference of method is still more appropriate when applied to different ages of the world. Why should it be assumed that because one method is appropriate to the initiation of a faith, no other may be equally appropriate at a later date? At one time the most urgent question of the soul is : "By what authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this authority P "—a question which Christ himself admitted to be justified. At another, it is : "Lord, to whom shall we go P Thou hast the words of eternal life." It is nearly as true of a faith as it is of a plant, that it may in one case be best propagated by one method, and in another by another.
Nor is there any paradox in saying that questions which do not come up at all in the first wonder and awe produced by the influence of a, nature at once human and divine, are yet bound to come up sooner or later as the manifold influences of that nature develop themselves. How are you to prevent reflection from dwelling on the apparent incompatibility of human and divine knowledge, of humility and transcendent virtue, of boundless power and a death like that of the Cross These apparent contradictions force themselves upon the generations which have not had any personal experience of the human character of Jesus Christ; and without some sort of solution of them, the perfect trust of the true Christian life is impossible. So it is that the necessity arises for a fuller and more developed creed than that which satisfied the Apostolic age. And though it is of the first importance to avoid anything like oblivion of the central facts which fur- nished the data for all these questionings, it is quite impossible for any candid and sincere mind to evade these questionings, and to ignore their bearing on the Christian life.
It appears to us that many of the most religious minds of the present day are a great deal too eager to insist that our Christian teaching shall be one which recommends itself exclusively to the most superficial and sensational sentiments of the modern spirit. Whatever else is true, that is not true of Christ's own teaching. He saw all the formalism and unreality of the Scribes and Pharisees, but he said nevertheless, "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat ; " and therefore, while recognising the vast deficiencies of their teaching, his own disciples were told to respect their authority as inter- preters of the law. He attended habitually the synagogues of his day, though he made his disciples feel that to attend the ser- vices of the synagogues was not enough. He did not ignore the Sabbath, though he insisted that the highest keeping of the Sabbath was perfectly consistent with a certain indifference to its purely ceremonial obligations. Christ's own practice is quite as incompatible with what is now said of the great mis- chief of formal ritual, as it is with the great mischief of dog- matic teaching. The truth we take to be that, when once a living germ of great power has been sown in the heart of man, it is as right and natural to recognise that there will be a certain law governing its historical development, which mere human beings cannot predict a priori, as it is to recognise that there will be such a law of development for any other great organic growth of which we can recognise the power and the beauty without being able to forecast exactly what its development will be. No doubt Christianity has developed both a dogmatic aspect and an ecclesiastical aspect, of which the greatest of the Apostles in their day were only half- conscious, and to which the Christian community of that day was only feeling its way. But that is no justification for saying that in our day we ought to ignore everything which has come of the law of development, or that the dogmatic background of Christian thought and worship is, as it were, a blot on the Gospel which we should sedulously endeavour to remove.
Previous page
