This is Part 2 of a blog based upon an article written by R. A. Finlayson in the September 1976 issue of The Banner of Truth Journal. The article was titled: HOW LIBERAL THEOLOGY INFECTED SCOTLAND.
Finlayson completes his article here following and I will make a closing comment:
THE INFECTION SPREADS
The disease spread rapidly through the ministry of the Free Church, as could be expected with A. B. Bruce in the Glasgow College, A. B. Davidson in the Hebrew Chair and Marcus Dods in the New Testament Chair in the New College, Edinburgh, and Robertson Smith's successors in Aberdeen. The present Century opened with the blare of trumpets sounding the victory of Liberalism, and the complete rout of 'Traditionalism'. Prof George Adam Smith, in Glasgow, himself in the front rank of destructive critics, declared confidently that the battle was over and there remained but the fixing of the indemnity. The Rationalism that had entered so stealthily into the Colleges had by 1900 captured most of the pulpits of the Disruption Free Church, and not a few in the State Church and the United Presbyterian Church, and when the Union of the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church was consummated in 1900 on a basis of theological indifferentism, a remnant of the Free Church - 27 in number - decided to abide by the evangelical traditions of the Free Church at its inception, and on that foundation it exists to this day.
HESITANT SUPPORTERS
True, there were lone voices in the unbroken Free Church that, for some years, pled for sanity and for the retention of the foundation truths of Christianity. But even they were heavily committed to the new order, and for the most part they had a foot in both camps. Their case is sad indeed to relate, and it can be done only to sound a note of warning to the present day. Dr James Denney, who was at heart an evangelical, came, as B. B. Warfield observes, 'under the narrowing and clogging influence of the Apologetic School which Dr Bruce unfortunately founded in Glasgow', so much so that when his valuable work on The Death of Christ came to be reissued by The Tyndale Press, it had to be edited in considerable part and some of its statements excised. Of some others in the forefront of the movement, it can only be said that there was a breakdown in character as well as in faith, over which the veil of charity must be drawn. As sad a case as any was, perhaps, that of A. B. Bruce, because of the early promise of his work on the teaching of Christ; and yet at the end of the day one of his closest friends commented sorrowfully: 'Sandy Bruce died without a single Christian conviction.' It is true that some of the Higher Critics adopted a plan of spiritual survival by developing a dual standard, of piety for their private lives, and of destructive criticism for their professional work. Wellhausen, for example, had a Pietist background and upbringing, and it is said that he retained this pietism in his private life, while he was at the same time making havoc of the Faith in his teaching. How often have we been told of some prominent critic: 'You should hear Prof. . . . conducting a Communion Service, then you could see the real man.' Of Prof William Barclay, lately retired from the Glasgow College, it can be said that he paid exquisite attention, and employed great teaching skill, embellishing the superstructure of Christianity after he had removed the foundations. It is surely a schizophrenic character who can reconcile such contradictions, and indulge in such self-deception!
But it sounds a note of caution to us who profess, and seek to defend the evangelical Faith. There are ominous signs that history, even ecclesiastical history, teaches nothing, except that it teaches nothing! And yet there is a monotonous sameness about the enemy strategy: 'Yea, has God said ?' There is the wisdom of much sore experience, doubtless, in the Apostolic injunction: 'Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, AND HAVING DONE ALL TO STAND.'
Well, R.A. Finlayson provides a helpful analysis of the cancer that entered the Free Church of Scotland more than a century ago. But what does all that mean for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney and its theological seminary - Moore College?
The answer is "It's on!"
The slithering approach of Scottish academics to conceal their abandonment of trust in the Word of God was effective. Just as a snake moves slowly and concealed toward its prey so the Scottish academics, except for one or two overanxious, introduced their new approach to the Word of God with stealth. Students and congregations, save a few alert, were inwittingly seduced into abandoning their evangelical heritage.
It all starts in the Old Testament and spreads to the New Testament.
This is happening in Moore College where the approach of Luther, Calvin, Puritans and the majority of Church Fathers (who commented on the subject) to Genesis 1 is no longer applied. Instead, a student is carefully led to consider the employment of literary devices and other creation narratives.
The fruit of this is ordained ministers rejecting the traditional evangelical acceptance of Genesis 1 as historical narrative or prose and consequent avoidance of the convictive of the passage. This then is passed on to congregations and the cancer is well and truly established.
There are many examples but I will cite just two. The author of one blogspot was recently asked by an inquirer whether he thought the mention of Noah in the genealogy contained in Genesis 5 meant that Noah was a real person, the author replied something to the effect of "We can't be certain." Hullo! What is a genealogy for?
Another, when asked to explain why he held to Exodus 20:11 being only figurative language, his reply was something to the effect of "Whatever God was saying there I will not accept that the world is 6,000 years old." Sad, God cannot tell him only the world can!
These two incidents are sufficient to grasp that the rot is on and that there will be many more within the Diocese who are or will be like minded. And, just as with the calamity within the Scottish Free Church, the cancer can be dressed in a cloak of piety so that it will be difficult to assess just who the Christians are, even for the one committing the offence.
I ask all to trust God. Come out of error. Consider seriously John 17:17.
Sam Drucker
Showing posts with label Rationalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rationalism. Show all posts
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
A Clarion Call From Scotland to the Episcopalian Church of Sydney (Part 1)
This is the first of a two part blog based on an article written by R. A. Finlayson in the September 1976 issue of The Banner of Truth Journal. The article was titled: HOW LIBERAL THEOLOGY INFECTED SCOTLAND.
I repeat the article because it provides parallels with a slide taking place in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney through its theological seminary - Moore Theological College. The article commences herewith:
To many it will seem strange indeed that some 20 years after 'the glorious Disruption', in which the majority of the ministers of the Church of Scotland severed the ties with the State on the ground of spiritual liberty and fidelity to the Evangel, the Free Church, thus formed, should be the body first infected by the Liberal virus that was playing such havoc with the Protestant churches in Germany. That, however, is the historical position, and it requires some explanation. The fervour that accompanied the Disruption of 1843 was strong and widespread. The mere spectacle of 474 ministers in serried ranks marching from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - leaving less than a hundred behind - was something that touched many hearts, especially when it was known that they were leaving, not only their legal stipends, but the manses that were home to themselves and their families. It was left to Lord Jeffrey of the Court of Session to give expression to the feeling of the moment when, on hearing the news, he sprang to his feet, and explained: 'I am proud of my country. There is not another country on earth where such a deed could have been done.'
THE SEEDS OF DECLINE
The popularity of the movement was very apparent throughout the whole of Scotland. And there lay the seeds of spiritual pride and rapid spiritual deterioration. The newly formed Free Church was ambitious to justify its stand for spiritual liberty by all means within its power, eminence in scholarship being one of these. She was not content with opening three Colleges, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, but her theological students would not deem their course complete, or their standing in the Church assured, without a post-graduate course of one or more years in one of the more famous Colleges in Germany. From that folly, the product of spiritual pride, the Free Church was to reap a bitter harvest. Germany, then, was the nursery of Liberal Theology, which was spreading like prairie fire through the Protestant churches of Europe. Its popularity was, perhaps, at its height in the second half of the 19th Century, with which we are now dealing.
THE GERMAN RATIONALISM TAKES OVER
What the Critical Rationalism of Colenso, Kuenen, and Wellhausen had originated, the more plausible teaching of Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Troelsch propagated, till it took firm hold of the Reformed seminaries of Europe. Its main premise was that Christianity could no longer be held as rooted in divine revelation, but as the product of human reason and cultural evolution. The Bible had authority only as the repository of religious sentiments borrowed from many ethnic religions. Christianity would, therefore, have to be regarded as merely a variety of religion in general. There was no room for the supernatural, and so divine revelation, miracle, and personal redemption were but expressions of the universal religious consciousness. The fact so difficult to understand is that this barren nationalism captured so many of the Reformed Colleges within a few decades, and that Church leaders, professing to be evangelical, could not see that it could produce only bankruptcy in the realm of faith, and complete sterility in the life of the church. Our concern, at the moment, is with its rapid progress through the Scottish Divinity Halls, as they were then called.
ITS FOOTHOLD IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGES
It is indeed a strange fact that the new unbelief in the Free Church of Scotland should have raised its head first of all in the classroom of Dr John Duncan, the saintly Rabbi whose piety was as deep as his scholarship was extensive. But the good man - no mean judge in such prognostications - was quick to see the course it was likely to follow. He is on record as expressing to his students, as early as 1867, his opinion that 'the attempts are mainly on the Old Testament. It needs more charity than I possess to believe that some of the critics do not know where all this will lead us. The Person of Christ, his Work, his Salvation, are the things against which these attacks are really levelled.' And so it proved to be. What he could not foresee was that the rot would start his own classroom.
In 1863 the Rev A. B. Davidson was appointed Colleague and Successor to Dr Duncan in the Chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Literature in the New College, Edinburgh. Dr Duncan was by then elderly and in feeble health, and his appearances in the College were few. Thus Prof Davidson had the field to himself, and he made the fullest use of it in a subtle way. Deeply versed in the German theology, he gave it to his students with the caution: 'Be careful to give this to your congregation in small doses'. [This given to the writer on the witness of one of them]. But the leaven was working, and the first public evidence of it was the notable Church case of Professor William Robertson Smith, who, while still a student-probationer, was appointed in 1870 to the Hebrew Chair in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. He had been a student in the New College, Edinburgh, under Prof A. B. Davidson, and afterwards in Germany under Prof Wellhausen in the University of Greifswald, and what he had imbibed of the destructive Criticism from his first master, he had it strengthened under the second. Wellhausen's opinion of Robertson Smith, expressed when he had gained prominence, is memorable: 'Smith was not a scholar, but clever at presenting other men's views the very man to do the job in Scotland! But clever or not. Prof Smith's lack of caution came out in a particularly offensive insolence. Articles of his in a new issue of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1875 on 'Angels' and 'The Bible' brought it all, in its most offensive form, into the open, and the reaction of the older section of the Free Church was quick and decisive in the presence of what they termed 'the cold and poisonous air of negation, irreverence, and pride' seen in his articles. Robertson Smith was not without his friends, and, in the first instance, the Principal of New College, Dr Robert Rainy, gave him considerable support, and, stranger still, Prof James Candlish of the Glasgow College, made it known that that, in his opinion. Prof Smith's views could be reconciled with the Confession's Doctrine of Scripture, on the ground that our belief in the authority of Scripture is said to be derived from the inner witness of the Spirit and is, therefore, 'independent of criticism.' But after an admonition for his first article Robertson Smith, with all the brashness of youth, was more offensive still in his second article, and the General Assembly had to take action. It was for the deposition and dismissal of Prof Smith, the motion to that effect being supported by Principal Rainy, a shrewd but very inconsistent ecclesiastic, who was well able to assess which way the wind was blowing. Where did Prof A. B. Davidson stand in the crisis that his student was passing through? Silent as usual. It is reported that Robertson Smith approached him on his lack of support, and used the argument: 'I learned all this from you, and you are sitting safe in your Chair', and that Prof Davidson replied, in somewhat undignified terms: 'And why did you not keep your blethering tongue to yourself?' These were the high ethics of the new Modernism of the day!
Part 2 of the blog will be posted in a few days and I will comment then.
Sam Drucker
I repeat the article because it provides parallels with a slide taking place in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney through its theological seminary - Moore Theological College. The article commences herewith:
To many it will seem strange indeed that some 20 years after 'the glorious Disruption', in which the majority of the ministers of the Church of Scotland severed the ties with the State on the ground of spiritual liberty and fidelity to the Evangel, the Free Church, thus formed, should be the body first infected by the Liberal virus that was playing such havoc with the Protestant churches in Germany. That, however, is the historical position, and it requires some explanation. The fervour that accompanied the Disruption of 1843 was strong and widespread. The mere spectacle of 474 ministers in serried ranks marching from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland - leaving less than a hundred behind - was something that touched many hearts, especially when it was known that they were leaving, not only their legal stipends, but the manses that were home to themselves and their families. It was left to Lord Jeffrey of the Court of Session to give expression to the feeling of the moment when, on hearing the news, he sprang to his feet, and explained: 'I am proud of my country. There is not another country on earth where such a deed could have been done.'
THE SEEDS OF DECLINE
The popularity of the movement was very apparent throughout the whole of Scotland. And there lay the seeds of spiritual pride and rapid spiritual deterioration. The newly formed Free Church was ambitious to justify its stand for spiritual liberty by all means within its power, eminence in scholarship being one of these. She was not content with opening three Colleges, in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, but her theological students would not deem their course complete, or their standing in the Church assured, without a post-graduate course of one or more years in one of the more famous Colleges in Germany. From that folly, the product of spiritual pride, the Free Church was to reap a bitter harvest. Germany, then, was the nursery of Liberal Theology, which was spreading like prairie fire through the Protestant churches of Europe. Its popularity was, perhaps, at its height in the second half of the 19th Century, with which we are now dealing.
THE GERMAN RATIONALISM TAKES OVER
What the Critical Rationalism of Colenso, Kuenen, and Wellhausen had originated, the more plausible teaching of Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Troelsch propagated, till it took firm hold of the Reformed seminaries of Europe. Its main premise was that Christianity could no longer be held as rooted in divine revelation, but as the product of human reason and cultural evolution. The Bible had authority only as the repository of religious sentiments borrowed from many ethnic religions. Christianity would, therefore, have to be regarded as merely a variety of religion in general. There was no room for the supernatural, and so divine revelation, miracle, and personal redemption were but expressions of the universal religious consciousness. The fact so difficult to understand is that this barren nationalism captured so many of the Reformed Colleges within a few decades, and that Church leaders, professing to be evangelical, could not see that it could produce only bankruptcy in the realm of faith, and complete sterility in the life of the church. Our concern, at the moment, is with its rapid progress through the Scottish Divinity Halls, as they were then called.
ITS FOOTHOLD IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGES
It is indeed a strange fact that the new unbelief in the Free Church of Scotland should have raised its head first of all in the classroom of Dr John Duncan, the saintly Rabbi whose piety was as deep as his scholarship was extensive. But the good man - no mean judge in such prognostications - was quick to see the course it was likely to follow. He is on record as expressing to his students, as early as 1867, his opinion that 'the attempts are mainly on the Old Testament. It needs more charity than I possess to believe that some of the critics do not know where all this will lead us. The Person of Christ, his Work, his Salvation, are the things against which these attacks are really levelled.' And so it proved to be. What he could not foresee was that the rot would start his own classroom.
In 1863 the Rev A. B. Davidson was appointed Colleague and Successor to Dr Duncan in the Chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Literature in the New College, Edinburgh. Dr Duncan was by then elderly and in feeble health, and his appearances in the College were few. Thus Prof Davidson had the field to himself, and he made the fullest use of it in a subtle way. Deeply versed in the German theology, he gave it to his students with the caution: 'Be careful to give this to your congregation in small doses'. [This given to the writer on the witness of one of them]. But the leaven was working, and the first public evidence of it was the notable Church case of Professor William Robertson Smith, who, while still a student-probationer, was appointed in 1870 to the Hebrew Chair in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. He had been a student in the New College, Edinburgh, under Prof A. B. Davidson, and afterwards in Germany under Prof Wellhausen in the University of Greifswald, and what he had imbibed of the destructive Criticism from his first master, he had it strengthened under the second. Wellhausen's opinion of Robertson Smith, expressed when he had gained prominence, is memorable: 'Smith was not a scholar, but clever at presenting other men's views the very man to do the job in Scotland! But clever or not. Prof Smith's lack of caution came out in a particularly offensive insolence. Articles of his in a new issue of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1875 on 'Angels' and 'The Bible' brought it all, in its most offensive form, into the open, and the reaction of the older section of the Free Church was quick and decisive in the presence of what they termed 'the cold and poisonous air of negation, irreverence, and pride' seen in his articles. Robertson Smith was not without his friends, and, in the first instance, the Principal of New College, Dr Robert Rainy, gave him considerable support, and, stranger still, Prof James Candlish of the Glasgow College, made it known that that, in his opinion. Prof Smith's views could be reconciled with the Confession's Doctrine of Scripture, on the ground that our belief in the authority of Scripture is said to be derived from the inner witness of the Spirit and is, therefore, 'independent of criticism.' But after an admonition for his first article Robertson Smith, with all the brashness of youth, was more offensive still in his second article, and the General Assembly had to take action. It was for the deposition and dismissal of Prof Smith, the motion to that effect being supported by Principal Rainy, a shrewd but very inconsistent ecclesiastic, who was well able to assess which way the wind was blowing. Where did Prof A. B. Davidson stand in the crisis that his student was passing through? Silent as usual. It is reported that Robertson Smith approached him on his lack of support, and used the argument: 'I learned all this from you, and you are sitting safe in your Chair', and that Prof Davidson replied, in somewhat undignified terms: 'And why did you not keep your blethering tongue to yourself?' These were the high ethics of the new Modernism of the day!
Part 2 of the blog will be posted in a few days and I will comment then.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Lost in a Lost World
One good thing to come out of recent dialogue with the manager of the These Infinite Spaces blogspot was his frank admission that no matter what the Word of God says (via myself and another quoting the Word of God) he would not believe that the world is about 6,000 years old. Although he has since deleted all comments on the topic there are a few witnesses who can testify that he made the statement. What was helpful was that he was actually blurting out what a lot of Sydney Episcopalians hold close to their chest - their lack of faith in the Word of God.
Aside from other problems already addressed in comments and blogs here there is another potential problem in embryo. It was picked up in a review published in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review in January 1868. It is was unsigned but suspected as having been authored by George Smeaton. The review was headed Some Lessons From The History of Rationalism and an extract is provided herewith:
The simple assertion of the Bible alone as the religion of Protestants, might seem to afford a foundation for such a via media [between Rationalism and Roman Catholicism] as we are in quest of; but when brought to the test, it will prove as treacherous as that of the Tractarians. Its danger,however, comes from the opposite side. It is safe enough as against Rome, and far enough removed from that extreme, but it lacks any sufficiently strong barrier to secure us from gradually and insensibly sliding into scepticism. The Bible is accepted as authoritative; but as we have seen it must be both authenticated and interpreted, and for these ends, unless I am simply to acquiesce in some Protestant council or confession instead of that of Rome, I have only my own faculties to use; I set out indeed with the full purpose of using them always in subordination to Scripture, and not as the Rationalist does as its judges. But how do I fare as I proceed ? In examining the evidence for the books of the Bible, I may not be able to acquiesce in the received canon; I may like many learned critics have doubts about the Second Epistle of Peter, or like Luther reject that of James; and if the evidence in their favour does not convince me, I have no alternative but to use my own judgment and reject them. Then I come to the contents of Scripture. I have been led to recognise it as divine partly, perhaps mainly, by the heavenliness of its teaching. But I find some things which seem to be unworthy of God, and inconsistent with his character; I cannot receive them. I endeavour to evade the difficulty by modifying my view of inspiration, and supposing there may be errors or inaccuracies in some parts of the Bible, I have recourse to forced and unnatural interpretations, to avoid what I cannot receive; but presently I find that neither of these expedients will suffice, and I must admit, that the Scriptures do teach these obnoxious doctrines.
What am I to do now ? is the question. You ought to submit to the Bible, and accept these doctrines in spite of your difficulties, would be the answer given by the orthodox Protestant. Yes, I reply, I would do that willingly, if I was sure that the Bible is the word of God. But it was only my reason that assured me of that at first, and now my reason tells me equally plainly that what the Bible says is not true. I accepted it at first among other reasons because of the doctrine it contained, and now it is this very doctrine that stumbles me. I must go back upon my former admission, and at the very least exercise the right of judging of the character of the Bible and of all its parts, and rejecting any portion or statement of it, not merely on external but internal grounds; and if I hesitated about some books at first, because of a lack of evidence, I may now reject many others because of their contents. I began with a real reverence for the Bible; but having no other witness for it save my own reason, this is what I have come to, and wherein does my position differ from that of the extremest Rationalist?
The only real and lasting security for the continuance of sound doctrine in the Church, is the continual presence and working of the Spirit of truth. The Holy Ghost is the river of living water, the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Popery hardens and crystallizes the living stream into an icy mass, making it more definite and tangible indeed, and more bright and brilliant as it glitters in the sun, but withal hard, dead and motionless, incapable of really imparting life; the Spirit is supposed to testify through the outward organism of the Church, and to work only through its ordinances. On the other hand Rationalism, ignoring or denying the work of the Spirit altogether, dries up the stream entirely, and leaves only empty channels that mock the thirst of the beholders. The living water may be something less definite and tangible, not so easy to limit down or portray exactly, but it supplies the real want of the city, as neither her the frozen glacier nor the empty channel can do. So it is not so easy, in some respects, always to realise the testimony of the Spirit, as rely either on ecclesiastical authority or enlightened reason; it requires an eye directed to the unseen, and a heart attuned to the melodies of heaven; it is always an easier thing to acquiesce in the idea that the Spirit speaks through the good and godly whom we can see and hear, and who form the Church, or that the dictates of our own reason are all the voice of the Spirit we are to expect; hence the facility with which either Rationalistic or Romanising principles have insinuated themselves into the Church; but in either of these ways we would be substituting something dead and formal for the Living Spirit, whom the Saviour has sent as the guide and teacher of his Church. This, as we read it, is the great lesson taught us by the history of Rationalism.
Sadly, for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, a generation has come through which is on a course toward the barren wasteland of Rationalism through their handling of the Word of God. Even sadder is that they are likely to take unwitting followers with them.
Sam Drucker
Aside from other problems already addressed in comments and blogs here there is another potential problem in embryo. It was picked up in a review published in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review in January 1868. It is was unsigned but suspected as having been authored by George Smeaton. The review was headed Some Lessons From The History of Rationalism and an extract is provided herewith:
The simple assertion of the Bible alone as the religion of Protestants, might seem to afford a foundation for such a via media [between Rationalism and Roman Catholicism] as we are in quest of; but when brought to the test, it will prove as treacherous as that of the Tractarians. Its danger,however, comes from the opposite side. It is safe enough as against Rome, and far enough removed from that extreme, but it lacks any sufficiently strong barrier to secure us from gradually and insensibly sliding into scepticism. The Bible is accepted as authoritative; but as we have seen it must be both authenticated and interpreted, and for these ends, unless I am simply to acquiesce in some Protestant council or confession instead of that of Rome, I have only my own faculties to use; I set out indeed with the full purpose of using them always in subordination to Scripture, and not as the Rationalist does as its judges. But how do I fare as I proceed ? In examining the evidence for the books of the Bible, I may not be able to acquiesce in the received canon; I may like many learned critics have doubts about the Second Epistle of Peter, or like Luther reject that of James; and if the evidence in their favour does not convince me, I have no alternative but to use my own judgment and reject them. Then I come to the contents of Scripture. I have been led to recognise it as divine partly, perhaps mainly, by the heavenliness of its teaching. But I find some things which seem to be unworthy of God, and inconsistent with his character; I cannot receive them. I endeavour to evade the difficulty by modifying my view of inspiration, and supposing there may be errors or inaccuracies in some parts of the Bible, I have recourse to forced and unnatural interpretations, to avoid what I cannot receive; but presently I find that neither of these expedients will suffice, and I must admit, that the Scriptures do teach these obnoxious doctrines.
What am I to do now ? is the question. You ought to submit to the Bible, and accept these doctrines in spite of your difficulties, would be the answer given by the orthodox Protestant. Yes, I reply, I would do that willingly, if I was sure that the Bible is the word of God. But it was only my reason that assured me of that at first, and now my reason tells me equally plainly that what the Bible says is not true. I accepted it at first among other reasons because of the doctrine it contained, and now it is this very doctrine that stumbles me. I must go back upon my former admission, and at the very least exercise the right of judging of the character of the Bible and of all its parts, and rejecting any portion or statement of it, not merely on external but internal grounds; and if I hesitated about some books at first, because of a lack of evidence, I may now reject many others because of their contents. I began with a real reverence for the Bible; but having no other witness for it save my own reason, this is what I have come to, and wherein does my position differ from that of the extremest Rationalist?
The only real and lasting security for the continuance of sound doctrine in the Church, is the continual presence and working of the Spirit of truth. The Holy Ghost is the river of living water, the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Popery hardens and crystallizes the living stream into an icy mass, making it more definite and tangible indeed, and more bright and brilliant as it glitters in the sun, but withal hard, dead and motionless, incapable of really imparting life; the Spirit is supposed to testify through the outward organism of the Church, and to work only through its ordinances. On the other hand Rationalism, ignoring or denying the work of the Spirit altogether, dries up the stream entirely, and leaves only empty channels that mock the thirst of the beholders. The living water may be something less definite and tangible, not so easy to limit down or portray exactly, but it supplies the real want of the city, as neither her the frozen glacier nor the empty channel can do. So it is not so easy, in some respects, always to realise the testimony of the Spirit, as rely either on ecclesiastical authority or enlightened reason; it requires an eye directed to the unseen, and a heart attuned to the melodies of heaven; it is always an easier thing to acquiesce in the idea that the Spirit speaks through the good and godly whom we can see and hear, and who form the Church, or that the dictates of our own reason are all the voice of the Spirit we are to expect; hence the facility with which either Rationalistic or Romanising principles have insinuated themselves into the Church; but in either of these ways we would be substituting something dead and formal for the Living Spirit, whom the Saviour has sent as the guide and teacher of his Church. This, as we read it, is the great lesson taught us by the history of Rationalism.
Sadly, for the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, a generation has come through which is on a course toward the barren wasteland of Rationalism through their handling of the Word of God. Even sadder is that they are likely to take unwitting followers with them.
Sam Drucker
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