Page 6266 – Christianity Today (2024)

Unashamedly and without apology I am a Southerner. Born in beautiful Alabama, January 4, 1920, I have always lived south of the Mason-Dixon line. My love for the South is inborn. My parents and my grandparents were poor, but God-fearing and hard-working people. They were not Southern aristocrats, but I am honored to be of their lineage—the lineage of farmers and mountaineers. I’m as Southern as grits and hush-puppies, as turnip greens and corn pone.

When God called me to preach as a youth of 18, I was willing to go anywhere. It was with relief, however, that I heard God’s voice: “I want you to be my preacher in the Southern United States.”

Like many of my fellow Southerners, I grew up with a guilty conscience. I do not know when it first dawned on me that something was wrong among my people of the South. Now it seems that I always knew it, but it took years of soul-searching and the chastening of God before I would confess it. Most often I was chastened through my own conscience; sometimes it would be by the word of Scripture, however, or at other times the voice of another with a conscience more troubled than my own.

I was taught a concept of freedom that declared all men were created equal. Yet I was taught that a great race of people were not equal to me. I was better than they because my skin was white and theirs was black. I was to remind them of their inferiority by never referring to them with the titles “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” or “Miss.” Their first names only were sufficient even if they were my elders. I must relegate them to inferior status by maintaining a strict policy of segregation.

I lived in the Bible Belt and was taught to believe God’s inspired Word from cover to cover. That Bible states in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, … for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” But this evidently was not to apply to the Negro. He might be my brother in Heaven, but never on earth. To be sure, I was taught to be good to the Negro. I must never take advantage of him. I must see that he heard the Gospel.

When these inconsistencies first occurred to me, I was able to answer my conscience with the stock answers of white supremacy. After all, the Negro was just a few years out of the jungles. He could not expect first-class citizenship. He was dirty. He smelled. He was immoral. Besides, it was constitutional to provide him “separate but equal” facilities. The Supreme Court had said so in 1896. In addition, the Negro was satisfied with his segregated lot—except for maybe a few radicals. The most quoted Negro in the South was the one who allegedly said, “Boss man, I’d rather be a nigg*r on Saturday night than to be a white man all the rest of the week.”

Then I began to see the system of “separate but equal” in operation. I saw the justice the Negro received in the courts. When a teen-ager I witnessed an accident. Since I was the only witness, my testimony completely absolved the Negro driver. Yet in a conference in my presence the white prosecutor and the white defense attorney agreed on a compromise fine of $100. And the judge accepted their agreement. There was no thought given to the possibility of his innocence. When I protested it was patiently explained to me that “we must be hard on these nigg*rs to keep them under control.” The Negro was controlled all right: he went to jail because he could not pay his fine.

I saw their so-called “equal” schools—modern schools for white children and one-room firetraps for Negro children. It was not unusual for the school board to spend $5 for each white child to $1 spent for each Negro child. I heard white men boast of black mistresses—men who would lynch a Negro man if he touched a white woman. I heard that the thing to be feared most of all if the Negro got out of hand was inter-marriage and the pollution of white blood.

My “growing-up” years through college were spent in Birmingham. After seminary I returned for a 3½ year pastorate. This city has been called the capital of Jim Crowism and the most race-conscious city in the world. I saw there white supremacy in all its strength. Early in my ministry I served a small church in Cuba, Alabama, in Sumter County, where the Negroes formed 79 per cent of the population. Race relations were far from ideal there, but the situation was superior to that in my home town, where police brutality, bombing of Negroes’ homes, floggings, and mob violence were more commonplace than the good citizens liked to admit.

Voting rights were consistently denied many Negroes throughout the South. In a major city with over 100,000 Negroes of voting age, less than 5,000 were qualified to vote. Voter registration tests were set up so that the registrars could see that only a select few were able to pass.

Furthermore, I began to see what this prejudice was doing to the South. Men were poisoned with it so much that they could react only emotionally and not intelligently.

The time came when I could not accept sweeping generalizations about the Negro race. The Bible, sociology, and science would not let me. Many had a troubled conscience, saw the evil in the system, wanted something done about it. Yet few dared speak. The price too often was to be ostracized, to be considered a traitor to your race, to be called a “nigg*r lover.” Some preachers lost their pulpits for speaking out. The South discovered to the further discomfort of its conscience that it really didn’t believe in freedom of speech.

No one has been caught in this dilemma any more tragically than devout Christians of both races. There are sincere Christians who love God and who mean to do his will, yet who differ drastically in their opinions of what is right and wrong in this issue. Some have “blind spots” which may obviously be wrong to another person, but which are real and must be dealt with. Other Christians with a moderate approach have been caught in a “conspiracy of silence.” All too often the only voice heard has been that of the extremists. We have tried to keep it out of the churches, but only the churches have the answer. It is found in the Gospel and we must proclaim it. We must not keep silent any longer. Silence could be fatal.

Let me confess two things. First, I am not free from racial prejudice. It keeps cropping out in unexpected ways and places. Second, I do not have all the answers to all racial problems. The social structure of the South is complex, and it will take praying, planning, patience, and perseverance to work it all out. The important thing is that we be willing to begin taking constructive steps toward the solution.

Some center all their attack on segregation. Segregation has been declared illegal by the Supreme Court. It is no longer legal in public facilities. Segregation has absolutely no defense in the Bible. However, this is not really the main issue before us. Other areas of our nation have removed their segregation barriers and found that the problem remains. It is as if your house were on fire. The fire originated in the basem*nt, but has now extended to the roof. It is not enough to put out the fire on the roof and leave the fire burning in the basem*nt. Segregation is the fire on the roof. Racism is the fire in the basem*nt. The house will be destroyed if all the fire is not put out, but the Christian may well focus his attention first on the source of the fire.

I do not know all the answers, but I am convinced that there is an answer, and that it can be found if Christian men, black and white, will search for it together.

As I first approached the Scriptures I had the feeling that I might find something to support the South’s position. After all, many sincere Bible-believing Christians are staunch segregationalists and believe firmly in white supremacy. Some base their beliefs on the “curse of Ham.” I studied Genesis 9. I found not the slightest reference to the Negro. The curse was pronounced not by God, but by Noah awakening out of a drunken stupor, and not on Ham but on his son, Canaan. Canaan was not turned black, nor did he father the Negro race. Rather he was the progenitor of the Canaanites, who were not black. All this was obvious to the reader of the Scripture, and one could come to only one conclusion. Using this Scripture to justify calling one race of people inferior was totally unwarranted. Identifying the Negro race with the curse of Ham was a cruel hoax conceived in prejudice and perpetuated in ignorance. The Bible, as a matter of fact, does not mention the Negro race. It asks, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin …?” (Jer. 13:23). In Acts 13:1 we have reference to “Simeon that was called Niger.” “Niger” means “black,” so we assume he was a Negro. If so, the church at Antioch was integrated, because he was either a prophet or a teacher there. Such references, however, give us no specific instructions. Such must be deduced from the great principles of the Bible.

The Bible teaches the common origin of man. God, the Creator, the Bible says, “made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and from them all races have sprung. Man was created in God’s image. Therefore, every man possesses infinite worth and should be treated with respect as a person.

When man sinned and was separated from God, a Saviour was promised. Christ was the fulfillment. Those who experience his salvation become the children of God and brothers of each other. This spiritual relationship transcends race and all other considerations. Surely it would not be right for a Christian to show prejudice toward his brother. Rather he must love him. Jesus was most specific about that in 1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.” Again Jesus said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” In view of the parable of the Good Samaritan that followed, surely no one today would seek to justify his white supremist attitude by asking, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:25–37).

The Bible further teaches that God is no respecter of persons.… Furthermore, the Bible teaches explicitly the equality of all men in Christ. Colossians 3:11 says, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.” Beneath the withering heat of Bible truth what faith I had left in white supremacy faded away. I was faced with a choice: accept Southern tradition or the Word of God. What else could a Christian do?…

Nothing reached my heart more than the pleas of our missionaries around the world. I helped to send them out, and I felt a deep sense of responsibility to them. When they came home they told how stories of the Negroes’ treatment in America were spread around the world, especially among other black people. People on the mission fields asked the missionaries if it were really true that there was segregation in America and if stories of racial discrimination were factual. Many lost confidence in the sincerity of the American citizen who had sent a missionary to him. The eyes of the world were focused on our treatment of minority groups. Missionary after missionary warned us that our attitudes were making their work less effective.

It seemed to me that if my prejudice would keep even one soul on our mission field from finding the Saviour or add one ounce to the tremendous burdens already borne by our missionaries, it was a price too big to pay.

All over the world new independent nations are springing up. Many of these nations are predominantly of other races. In the past these people have looked to us with hope, for we were known as the champions of the oppressed. Now they are beginning to wonder if we really believe the ideals of freedom which we profess. The Communists have exploited the racial situation. J. Edgar Hoover says, “The controversy on integration has given the Communists a field day.”

Communism is our most potent enemy. The Red wave moves on. Communists have made vigorous attempts to win the American Negro. The vast majority of American Negroes have rejected them vigorously. Both J. Edgar Hoover and the House Committee on Un-American Activities testify to the failure of Communism to reach any large segment of American Negroes.

In facing the question of what to do, let us acknowledge that much has been done already. The picture is vastly different from that of 25 years ago. In spite of the problems that remain, the lot of the American Negro is better by far than that of his colored brethren elsewhere in the world. His standard of living is rising, he attends free public schools, is voting in larger numbers, has freedom of worship and many other privileges denied to his fellows in some nations.

There is much the Negro must do for himself. I would challenge those organizations working for Negro rights to remember that privilege demands equal responsibility. A demand for rights without acceptance of that responsibility can only result in chaos.

But let us recognize there is much we as white Christians can do. I have tried in this message to describe what has taken place in my own experience. This was no sudden change, nor did it take place recently. Much of what I have said has been said in part in other messages. I preach it now most of all to awaken your conscience, to commit you to the proposition that Christ has the answer to the racial problem, and that we as Christians must find it and proclaim it.

You must decide what you will do about it, but as a Christian I remind you that Jesus Christ has the right to control your attitudes and your conduct. Seek his guidance and do not be afraid to do as he commands. “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:23, 24).—A sermon by the Rev. JAMES L. MONROE, Pastor, Riverside Baptist Church, Miami, Florida.

THE PREACHER:

William R. Mackay is Chaplain to the Inverness Group of Hospitals in Northern Scotland. Graduating in Science at Aberdeen University in 1934, he then studied Divinity at the Free Church of Scotland College in Edinburgh, and was ordained in 1937. In the course of the Second World War he served as chaplain in North Africa, Italy and the Middle East, and then returned to parish work in Scotland as minister in Edinburgh and in Inverness-shire before taking up his present post in 1961.

THE TEXT

2 Chronicles 7:14

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

THE SERIES:

This is the tenth sermon in our 1962 series in which CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents messages from notable preachers of God’s Word in Britain and the continent of Europe. Future issues will include sermons from Vice-Principal J. A. Motyer of Clifton Theological College, Bristol, and the Rev. James Philip of Holyrood Abbey Church, Edinburgh, bringing the series to its termination.

This chapter forms part of an account of a memorable day in the history of the children of Israel, namely, the day on which Solomon’s temple was dedicated. It was a day which would not be forgotten readily by those who were privileged to be present, for God seemed to be very near, and in token of his presence and his approval he gave a manifestation of his glory. The enthusiasm of the people as they offered their sacrifices appeared to know no bounds; but God knew the fickleness of the human heart, and so on this day of national rejoicing when the people with unrestrained fervor proclaimed their allegiance to him, he foresaw a time when there would be spiritual declension which would bring his judgment on the land.

This promise was made in the first instance to those whom God describes as “my people,” that is, Israel as a nation. Israel had been chosen by God to be a nation which would be distinct from all other nations and, as such, was the heir of many promises. The Apostle Paul reminds us at a later date that “they are not all Israel who are of Israel,” and yet I take it that the promise in our text embraced the nation as a whole. In like manner in these days in which we live God has his Church as distinct from the world, but not all those who profess to be members of the Church have been regenerated by his Holy Spirit. Yet here is a promise which embraces the whole of the visible Church; God still calls us, through his inspired Word, to return to him, the King and Head of his own Church.

The Need For Humility

Four steps are outlined for those who would set their faces towards the road which leads back to God and the first of these is humility: “if my people shall humble themselves.” Pride is one of the most common of human failings and yet it is a deadly sin. I heard a psychiatrist say recently that nowadays the seven deadly sins are minimized, and that pride, for example, is often described as “confidence in one’s own ability.” But call it by whatever name we will, pride is still that ugly thing which causes puny man to shake his fist in the face of Almighty God, and say, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” When a soul is humbled in the presence of God, however, this blustering attitude retreats into the background and the soul will be prepared to make acknowledgment of certain things. To begin with, there will be an acknowledgment of sin. Sin will be seen in its true colors as a “want of conformity unto, and transgression of, the law of God.” It will no longer be explained away in such terms as “an error of judgment,” or “a mistake,” but will be recognized as an act of rebellion. Moreover, the wrong which is done through sin will be regarded as a wrong not merely against one’s fellow, but against God. In the spirit of true humility the penitent soul will say, as the Psalmist did, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight …” (Ps. 51:4).

Coupled with this acknowledgment of sin there will be an acknowledgment of failure. It is characteristic of the man whose religion is a mere formality that he is generally well satisfied with his own attainments. The standard which he adopts is man-made, and by this standard he compares very favorably with his fellows. “I’m as good as other men and a good deal better than most of them,” he is heard to say, as he seeks to boost his morale. On the contrary the man who stands humbled in the presence of God is stripped of his self-assurance and readily admits that he has been “weighed in the balances and found wanting.” “Man’s chief end,” he remembers, “is to glorify God,” and as he contemplates his own weak efforts he realizes how little he has achieved towards the fulfillment of this end. A saintly man said to me recently, “I shall not be afraid to meet my Maker for I am resting on the finished work of Christ, but when I think of how little I have done for him I shall be ashamed to look him in the face.” And these are the sentiments of all who have learned the secret of true humility.

Arising out of this sense of sin and failure there will also be an acknowledgment of need. When the eyes of men are opened by the grace of God they are conscious not only of a sense of sin but also of their need of divine help, and they are ready to say with Augustus Toplady:

Not the labors of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears for ever flow,

All for sin could not atone:

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

The Need For Prayer

Humbled in the presence of God by a sense of his own unworthiness, the subject of grace will moreover recognize his need of divine help as he faces the trials and temptations of life. If his own efforts are futile to effect his justification, they are equally futile to promote sanctification; and so, with an enlightened mind, he implores the aid of the Divine Helper. Thus by humility the mind is conditioned for the exercise of prayer, which is the next essential on the road to spiritual recovery.

When Saul of Tarsus was brought to the house of Ananias following his conflict with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus it was recorded of him, “Behold, he prayeth.” This was no new occupation for Saul, for as a Pharisee he was well accustomed to the regular routine of prayer. But now his prayers were no longer a mere formality but a tremendous reality. They were the utterances of a man who had been humbled into saying, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Surely there is a worthwhile lesson for us here. The Church of God needs to be shaken out of her formality and to recapture the spirit of true prayer. That noted preacher of a past century, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, used to describe the weekly prayer meeting as “the heating apparatus of the Church.” Yet in how many churches today the heating apparatus is never turned on! It is little wonder then that we find such a low spiritual temperature in our midst. The embers of the fire of our spiritual life are burning so low that they fail to bring comfort and cheer to people who seek these, and perplexed and disillusioned men and women are turning their back upon the Church because it has nothing to offer to them. Wherein then lies the remedy for the apathy and apostasy of this present age? “If my people,” says God, “… shall … pray … then will I … heal their land.”

The Need For Earnestness

A further essential requirement on the part of those who seek the way back to God is earnestness. They must “seek my face,” says God. It is surprising how many people who are intensely earnest and persevering in their attitude to problems concerning their material welfare are casual almost to an equal degree in regard to spiritual matters. During the last world war when many commodities were in short supply in Britain, the only way to procure certain articles was to take one’s place in the line, and it became a common sight to see long lines in our streets. Consequently many people developed a “line complex,” and some were even known to take their place without knowing what they were waiting for. The obvious reason was that they were afraid they would miss something. What a tremendous difference it would make to the life of the Church if its members showed the same concern in regard to spiritual things! There would always be crowded congregations because men and women would be afraid to remain away from services less they miss a blessing. Thomas was not present on that first occasion when the risen Christ revealed himself to his disciples in the Upper Room, and as a result we can believe that for a time, at least, his witness was impaired because his mind was clouded by doubts and fears. And who can deny that many today find themselves in “Doubting Castle,” and are not contributing as they should to the life and witness of the Church because they are not frequently enough in the company of Jesus.

Another practice to which those who lived in wartime Britain grew accustomed was that of granting priority. Certain projects were regarded as more important than others, and there was little prospect of any work’s being undertaken unless it appeared on a priority list. What we are all too inclined to forget, however, is that the Lord has provided a priority list, and right at the head of that list is the very thing which our text counsels us to do. “Seek ye first,” says Christ, “the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33). Yet many professing Christians are so deeply concerned with things which should be of secondary importance that they have little or no time left in which to “seek the Lord”; as a consequence their spiritual growth becomes stunted. Is it not time then for all of us to check up on our priorities and to ensure that the Lord is given his rightful place in our hearts and lives? And remembering that this is an urgent matter, let us do it now. In days of old the prophet Hosea sent forth a clarion call to backsliding Israel, and surely his words are apposite to the times in which we live: “Sow to yourselves in righteousness,” he says, “reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12).

The Need For Renouncing Evil

The remaining condition which was required of Israel as a harbinger of blessing was a renunciation of evil: they were to “turn from their wicked ways.” It is surprising that a people who had been chosen by God should be so ready to turn their backs upon him. Yet the Israelites were all too prone to follow the heathen nations round about them and to engage in, among other things, the practice of idolatry. From their history we learn that time and time again they forsook the living God and worshiped the gods of the heathen, and we are confronted with such sorry spectacles as that which greeted Moses when he came down from the mount and found the people, for whom God had effected a great deliverance, bowing down and worshiping a golden calf. Unfortunately the practice of idolatry has not ceased with the passing of the years, and while it is true that we may no longer worship golden calves, as Israel did, yet there are many idols to which men do homage and, as a result, Christ is dethroned. How many there are, for example, who, like the rich young ruler, are making wealth their God. In this material age in which everything is measured in terms of pounds or dollars, we may sometimes even be found guilty of assessing spiritual progress by the offerings of the people. It is true of course that where there is real spiritual life there will be sacrificial giving, but it is all too possible for a church to glory in her financial achievements rather than in her Lord. Like the church in Laodicea she may be “rich and increased with goods” and think that she has “need of nothing,” not knowing she is “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

Another idol of which we must ever beware is popularity or the approval of men. We tend to become so afraid lest we may be thought odd or different from our fellows, and, as a consequence, the voice of the Church is not raised as often as it should be against moral evil. When situations arise as they so often do when professing Christians are called upon to take a stand for righteousness and truth, or to denounce that which is wrong, the voice of Christian witness is often silenced because the approval of men counts more than the approval of God. And so by our very silence we become partakers of their wicked ways. One of the dangers of this ecumenical age is that ecumenicity itself may become an idol, and that the Church, in order to win the approval of men and to maintain the spirit of unity among those whose views may be widely divergent, is tempted to compromise those great truths of which she has been made custodian. Is it any wonder then that the man of the world becomes perplexed and bewildered as he seeks to ascertain what the Church believes and what benefits she has to offer him which he does not already possess? And the sad outcome is that all too often with a shrug of his shoulder he dismisses the Christian faith as something which is not relevant to the world of today. Undoubtedly there is need for Christian unity, but it must be a unity which has as its foundation an uncompromising belief in the Incarnation and finished work of the Divine Saviour who said, “I, if I be lifted up …, will draw all men unto me.”

Blessings Assured

Two blessings are promised to those who fulfill God’s requirements. The first of these is a personal blessing and consists of pardon—“I will forgive their sin.” How gracious God is, both to the sinner and to the backsliding Christian. For the sinner who forsakes his ways and turns unto the Lord there is abundant pardon, and for the backslider who confesses his sins there is forgiveness and cleansing.

But notice that there is also a promise of national blessing—“I will heal their land.” God had warned Israel that one of the consequences of sin would be drought. It may be necessary, he said, “to shut up heaven that there be no rain.” Israel’s very existence depended on “the former and latter rains,” for without them there would be famine in the land. During the reign of Ahab the land experienced a sore famine, and only after the prayers of Elijah was the famine brought to an end, and the land healed.

Is there not much to remind us that the same healing power is needed in our land today? We live in times of spiritual drought and barrenness and urgently need those refreshing showers which alone can revive the parched ground. The world is in a state of tension and men’s hearts are failing them for fear. But let us not forget that God has promised blessing when men turn to him in penitence and faith.

Do you wish then to make a contribution to the national effort which can have far-reaching consequences? Do you wish to see that “righteousness which exalteth a nation” established in the land? Do you wish to see the “windows of heaven” opened and the blessing poured out? Here then are the conditions! “If my people, which are called by name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” If we by his grace are willing and able to fulfill the conditions, God will surely honor his promise.

END

It should be determined, once for all, that Sunday laws in our nation are not religious laws.

The decision of the United States Supreme Court of May 29, 1961, upholding the Sunday laws of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as health and welfare measures has been interpreted as a defeat to religion and the religious implication of these laws.

A weekly newsmagazine recently commented on “the unruffled detachment with which today’s church leaders view the disappearance” of a Lord’s Day consecrated to religion and rest. Referring to one denomination which heard a resolution reading, “The church should not seek, nor even appear to seek, the coercive power of the State in order to facilitate a Christian observance of the Lord’s Day,” it traced some of the indifference to arguments for separation of church and state.

These laws, designed to do good for all of the people, are poorly understood and little appreciated.

No one will deny that in the early years of our history they had a religious motivation, but this is not the basic reason we observe them. Mindful of the laws of God, the leaders of the government wrote into secular jurisprudence rules regarding the first day of the week. The first Sunday law in America, known as the Virginia Law, was passed in 1610, just three years after Virginia was colonized by Captain John Smith. The Constitution of the United States recognizes the uniqueness of Sunday in Article 1 (Section 7, paragraph 2) describing it as a day of rest for the President and, by implication, for the people.

As our country grew, many people were blessed by these Sunday laws. Men and women received protection from employers who might otherwise have required day after day of uninterrupted labor.

As early as 1782, the Massachusetts Sunday Law, which had an unmistakably religious origin, experienced a change in its Preamble with the addition of the words, “Whereas the observance of the Lord’s Day is highly promotive of the welfare of the community, by affording necessary season for relaxation from labor and cares of business, for moral reflections and conversations on the duties and the frequent errors of human conduct.…”

In 1885, the United States Supreme Court concluded that Sunday laws were welfare measures:

Laws setting aside Sunday as a day of rest are not upheld from any right of the government to legislate for the promotion of religious observance, but from its right to protect all persons from the physical and moral debasem*nt which comes from uninterrupted labor. Such laws have always been deemed beneficent and merciful laws, especially to the poor and dependent, to the laborers in our factories and workshops, and in the heated rooms in our cities, and their validity has been sustained by the highest courts of the States.

The Supreme Court’s 1961 judicial determination regarding the Maryland law said:

In the light of the evolution of our Sunday Closing Laws through the centuries, and of their more or less recent emphasis upon secular considerations, it is not difficult to discern that as presently written and administered, most of them, at least, are of a secular rather than a religious character, and that presently they bear no relationship to establishment of religion as those words are used in the Constitution.…

Sunday laws do not violate the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. It has never been established in any specific case that Sunday laws have curtailed religious freedom. Economic injury has been established. A law that regulates secular activity on Sunday may make the practice of some religions more expensive. Every Roman Catholic understands this since he pays taxes to support public schools as well as the parochial school. Every Protestant who pays taxes to support his state university and who tithes to support his denominational colleges knows that the practice of his religion can be expensive. The cost of the practice of religion is determined by the dedication and conviction of the adherent. But the law does not make the holding of a religious belief a crime, nor does it force one to embrace a religion.

The Christian church does not need laws to support it, to encourage attendance or to grant financial support. Churches have benefited by Sunday laws, but these are not the only laws which they have found beneficial. Are we to oppose all laws that aid the Church? Is there any satisfaction in awakening in a society which has no law? A law that benefits others may benefit the Church as well.

By opposing Sunday laws shall we rob the millions of workingmen in our land of rights for which they have struggled many years? Thousands of these people labor in churches. They sing in the choirs. They teach in the Sunday schools. Thousands of them do not. By what pious logic can we oppose laws which have been a blessing to many?

Certainly the churches do not want to be used to break down the progress which has been made in so many areas of our fair employment practices. To gain an advantage over their competitors, some businessmen clamor for a day other than Sunday as a day of rest. This would leave them free for Sunday operations. But if such a practice should be legalized, those who observe Sunday might employ only first-day observers; those who observe another day might refrain from employing workers who keep Sunday. In dealing with the Pennsylvania Sunday Law even the Supreme Court commented on the suggestion that those observing another day should gain exemption: “This may be the wiser solution to the problem but the concern of the court is not with the wisdom of the legislation but with its constitutional limitation.” The Court then pointed out that enforcement problems would be multiplied. Businesses that open on Sundays would be given a competitive advantage. There would be cause to question the sincerity of a worker’s beliefs and the opportunity for discrimination in hiring, since an exempt employer would, of necessity, hire only those who qualified for the exemption.

To oppose Sunday laws would be to strike at the American home against the value of one day in seven when the family is together. The “new economic pattern” of business every day could undermine the home life of our nation by scattering the “day off” for different working members of the family. In fact, we might question whether the removal of Sunday laws might not seriously tamper with our freedom of religion.

Christians cannot afford to oppose laws which benefit so many if they propose to be concerned for the rights of their people and the total population of America.

Christians can strengthen these laws, however, by showing a respect for the Lord’s Day themselves. By making purchases on days other than Sunday, they can guarantee that their neighbor’s day of rest will not be broken. Merchants have said that if church people would refrain from making Sunday purchases, their places of business could remain closed.

“Never on Sunday!” A radio announcer made this comment after reading the news story of the 1961 Supreme Court decision on Sunday laws. He said it in humor. When Christians apply it to unnecessary business on Sunday, it can mean Christian concern.

And what about those who sincerely observe another day? We would urge them to continue to support the day which we now enjoy and at the same time to work for a recognition of their day as well. Today’s trend is toward a work-week of five days, not six, and certainly not seven. They will find many supporters coming to their assistance.

END

I BELIEVE that we have been losing round after round in the cold war, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and that, at virtually every point, the initiative still lies with the hordes of international Communism.

At the close of World War II, our forces stood triumphant on land and sea and in the air. We had at our command the mightiest array of military power in history. The flags of freedom were unfurled on every continent.

Had we had the understanding and the will, our diplomacy, backed up by this military and moral power, could have assured the freedom of the peoples of Europe and Asia and laid the basis for a stable peace. Of this I am convinced.

Yet, the past 16 years have witnessed a calamitous retreat from victory. We have suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of international Communism. We have retreated from position after position; we have committed folly after folly.

It is not in the tradition of the American people to accept defeat, or to respond to threats and bullying with mere paper protests. That is why they are restive today. Our people are convinced that the trend of the post-war years must be reversed and can be reversed. The past several years, however, have seen this trend accentuated and accelerated.…

If we have been losing the cold war, if we have thus far found it impossible to seize the initiative at any point, this is because of three basic failures.

First of all, we have failed to face up to the unpleasant fact that we are locked in a life-and-death struggle with an implacable enemy.

Second, we have failed to face up to the fact that this enemy wages war in an infinitely subtle and infinitely complex manner, that the so-called “cold war” is not a simple condition of hostile confrontation, but a mortal conflict waged by a thousand different means—a war in which the enemy offensive is integrated on every plane of human activity, the economic, the political, the diplomatic, the psychological, the social, the cultural—a war conducted by stealth and subversion and subtle psychological techniques.

Our third basic failure in the cold war is that we have been amateurs fighting against the most highly skilled and ruthless and dedicated professionals.

Because of the persistent innocence of our attitude, we have been horrified by each new act of Soviet aggression and perfidy—as though aggression and perfidy were not essential characteristics of international Communism. On the other hand, we have shown ourselves willing, over and over again, to forget the lessons of the past, to respond to each new Soviet blandishment, to negotiate new treaties in good faith when old treaties are terminated by Soviet bad faith.

The Soviets have bewitched us into accepting the division of the world into a “peace zone” and a “war zone.” The “war zone” embraces all those countries and territories that have not yet succumbed to Communist rule; and in this zone, according to the arbitrary, one-sided rules which we have apparently accepted, the Communists are free to seek power by military aggression where this is possible, and by subversion and infiltration where military aggression is not feasible.

The “peace zone” is synonymous with the Communist land empire. From this zone, the cold war is excluded. Against this zone, no matter how newly acquired these territories may be, counterattacks are forbidden.…

But above all, we have been paralyzed in situation after situation by our own sentimentality, by our almost passionate desire to believe that the Communists do not really mean what they say, that they cannot be as evil as they appear to be, that coexistence with them is possible, and that the cold war can be liquidated by making this or that concession.

If we continue to fight the cold war under these arbitrary rules and with these self-imposed limitations, it is historically inevitable that we shall lose it. If the Communists always attack and we always defend, even if we were successful in repulsing most of the Communist attacks, the ultimate victory of Communism would be a mathematical certainty.

That is why Khrushchev and the other Communist leaders are so arrogant today. That is why Khrushchev asked the assembled leaders of world Communism last year to synchronize their watches for the final assault on world capitalism. That is why Khrushchev could tell his comrades that despite his age, he still hopes to see the hammer and sickle of Communism triumphant over all the countries of the world.

Khrushchev and his comrades may well be right, if the free world does not succeed in freeing itself from the illusions and wishful thinking that have heretofore characterized its conduct, if it persists in refusing to face up to the total irreconcilability of Communism and Western civilization.

There is too great a tendency to accept Communist revolutions as irreversible and Communist regimes as permanent. This attitude lies at the root of our failure to take effective measures to deal with the Castro regime in Cuba.

The phenomenon of total dictatorship has, in fact, produced the phenomenon of the “total revolution,” in which entire peoples, including the military forces under supposedly Communist direction, have revolted against their Communist masters.

That the phenomenon of “total revolution” is not a freak or historical accident is demonstrated by the fact that we have had four such uprisings over the past nine years—in East Germany, in Poland, in Hungary, and in Tibet.

If such a total revolution against Communism were to take place in Cuba, its immediate success would be assured for the simple reason that the Soviet Union and Communist China would be in no position to intervene in Cuba as they did in Hungary and East Germany and Tibet.

I believe that Cuba is not only a place where we can seize the initiative and strike an effective blow for freedom; I believe that the security of our nation and of the hemisphere make it essential that we embark upon this initiative without delay and without equivocation. I believe that freedom can be restored to the Cuban people if we are prepared to give our unstinting support to the Cuban forces for liberation, in Cuba and abroad, and if we are prepared to invoke the Monroe Doctrine to proclaim a partial blockade directed against the shipment of Soviet military equipment and personnel to Cuba.

And if we act successfully in Cuba, it will have an impact that goes far beyond the confines of our hemisphere. I think it no exaggeration to say that the restoration of freedom to the Cuban people might very well mark the beginning of the end of the slave empire that the Kremlin has built up in Europe and in Asia.

The first step toward the building of an effective foreign policy, the indispensable step, is to accept the basic facts of our existence as they are, and to clear away the illusions.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Communism and Western civilization can get along, we will give up vain hopes of an easy way out and begin to make the stupendous effort in the field of free world armament and mobilization that must be made.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that the temporary easing of this or that individual crisis will bring about an era of good feeling or another “spirit of Camp David,” we will scrap the patchwork foreign policy of the past which has been essentially a policy of short-term reactions to Communist initiatives, and adopt instead a consistent, long-range program aimed at expansion of freedom and defeat of Communism.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Communism is accepted by its subject peoples, we will institute policies aimed at encouraging resistance behind the Iron Curtain with the consequent demoralization of the Red empire.

If we can free ourselves from the illusion that Polish Communists or Yugoslav or Cuban Communists are any less the enemies of freedom than Kremlin Communists, we will stop pouring out our substance in aid to Red dictatorships, which have received more than $4 billion from the American people in recent years, and instead divert that aid to those allies who are manning the front lines of freedom.

Freed from the illusion that the hard-core Communists who rigidly dominate the Communist world can be influenced by friendly demonstrations on our part, we will bring to an end all practices which blur and obscure the nature of the life-or-death struggle that has been forced upon us.

Freed from the illusion that we improve the world climate by soft-pedaling our criticism of Communist infamy, we can for the first time institute an effective program of bringing to the world the truth about the Communists, by each day dragging them before the bar of world opinion, indicting them again and again for the atrocities and crimes they have committed in enslaving one billion human beings, and convicting them in the minds of men for what they have in fact made of themselves, the moral outcasts of humanity.

Freed from the illusion that the way out of each enemy aggressive act is a coalition government which includes Communists, we will at last recognize that the government which includes Reds today will be controlled by them tomorrow, and that there is no substitute for standing firm against aggression from the beginning.

Freed from the illusion that the Communists are seriously interested in negotiating a just peace or indeed in seeking any honorable common objective with us, we will never again fall for such a ruse as the nuclear test ban negotiations which paralyzed our own technological development for three years while our enemies secretly moved ahead.

Freed from the illusion that the Communists can take part in any international organization or court without either poisoning it or subverting it to their ends, we will begin to think less and less in terms of divisive worldwide international organizations and more and more in terms of free world cooperation and unity.

Freed from the illusion that there is some easy way out of the present crisis of civilization, we will adopt a policy of strength, of risk, of sacrifice, of effort for every American.—U. S. Senator THOMAS J. DODD of Connecticut, in remarks to American Society for Industrial Security in Washington.

Ever since the brave street-fighters of Hungary placed the world in their debt by forcing the Russian bear to expose its fangs and claws for all to see, Communist stock has been declining on the international market. Today Secretary Rusk offers persuasive evidence for his contention that, among uncommitted peoples, Communism in the Sino-Russian style does not sell.

It must be obvious even to the unsophisticated Marxist that significant phases of the Russian “experiment” are a real liability, not relieved in the least by its Chinese copy, and by no means redeemed by Titov nor even by Sputnik. He—the Marxist—sees that if Marxism is to regain ideological initiative among the colonial nations rapidly assuming self-conscious statehood, it will have to shunt aside certain aspects of Sino-Russian Communism as at best aberrations, or at worst necessary historical stages now passed on the road to Utopia, neither normative nor essential elsewhere. This may be at least part of the meaning of Khrushchev’s desperate gamble in denouncing so explicitly in 1956 the crimes of Stalin—precisely to explain them away as a deviationist “cult of the individual,” and not essential Marxism at all. What he forgot, apparently, was that he who cries “stinking fish” may not find all fingers pointing accusingly in the same direction. Perhaps the strategy worked well enough at home to prevent, as Khrushchev told the Twenty-Second Party Congress last October, “the forces which clung to the old and resisted all that was new and creative” from gaining “the upper hand in the Party” (Report to CPSU, I, p. 142), but the world at large smelled a rat, not necessarily the same deceased one Mr. Khrushchev was exhuming. Nonetheless the Chairman told the Party in 1961 that “had the cult of the individual not been condemned … in the sphere of international relations, the result would have been a weakening of Soviet relations on the world scene and a worsening of relations with other countries, which would have had dire consequences” (ibid., p. 143). Did he mean by this language that Marxism can still hope to appeal to the world with fanciful sketches of a classless paradise dazzling by its dark light the horizons of tomorrow only by a repudiation of Stalinism?

Shadows Of The New Marxism

The dubious success of the Khrushchev maneuver cannot but stimulate other Marxists to attempt other approaches to the problem of stepping up the sale of Marxist ideology. It is not only an interesting theoretical question, therefore, but one of some moment to the Western world to speculate: What form will the “new Marxism” assume?

One thinks first of Trotskyism. After his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1928, Leon Trotsky became one of the first Marxists who sought with all his might, in book, pamphlet, and before the Dewey Commission, to distinguish genuine Marxism from Russian autocracy. “The bureaucracy,” he wrote in Stalinism and Bolshevism in 1937, “won the upper hand. It cowed the revolutionary vanguard, trampled upon Marxism, prostituted the Bolshevik party. Stalinism conquered” (p. 15). And Trotsky quite literally gave his life to proclaiming Stalin’s usurpation of “the old label of Bolshevism, the better to fool the masses” (ibid.).

But though Trotskyism found and retains adherents around the globe, it remains an abortive attempt to free Marxism from the incubus of Russian Communism. One reason is that Trotsky was too closely identified with the Russian Revolution really to disengage successfully his own views from its workings; nor, for another reason, did he wish to distance himself too decisively from it. Thus, even while bitterly attacking Stalin’s usurpation, Trotsky frankly admits to having himself predicted that bureaucracy would triumph in Russia if the revolution did not soon spread around the world. In short, Marxism is not likely to achieve revival as Trotskyism in our time.

Nor is it likely to win many friends by diatribes against Stalinists and Trotskyites alike such as is mounted, for example, in H. M. Wicks’s Eclipse of October, published in the United States in 1957. It is his intention, Mr. Wicks says, to document “the wide breach between the founders of the Marxist system and most of those who, today, profess to be its spokesmen” (p. vii). Before he has done, Mr. Wicks stands virtually alone: “The Trotskyists talk much of Marx and, like the reconstructed Stalinists (whom he has named ‘Mikoyan, Bulganin, Khrushchev, and Malenkov’) claim to be the sole competent interpreters of Marxism. But none with even the slightest understanding of Marx would take seriously, to put it mildly, the pretensions of either” (p. 454). Nor, one suspects, will many take very seriously the pretensions of Mr. Wicks to rehabilitate Marxism after his own image.

In what form, then, might Marxism hope to appeal to a world grown dubious of pronouncements out of Moscow or Peiping?

Perhaps in the form, I suggest, illustrated by Mr. John Lewis’ volume, also published in 1957, Marxism and the Open Mind. “Certainly the time has come,” Mr. Lewis says, “to develop and enrich our Marxism,” particularly, he continues, on the questions of “democratic rights … and (the) moral ideals which are independent of class interests …” (pp. xvi–xvii).

That Marxism can offer the world true democracy and socially sensitive ethical theory rests upon the fact, Mr. Lewis argues, that “Marxism is humanism in its contemporary form.… And the Marxist has thus to convince the disinherited, whether in the great industrial cities of the West or the fields and mines of colonial countries, that their very oppression could be the instrument of their emancipation, their entrance into an earthly paradise of material plenty and human justice” (p. 161). The carrot is the same, but it hangs from another string: “contemporary humanism.”

That this is the form in which Marxism-Leninism is also being offered to the world by Mr. Khrushchev and cohorts may be evidenced from the Program adopted by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its Twenty-Second Congress. “What is Communism?” the Program asks, and answers: “Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and full social equality of all members of society; under it, the all-around development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces through continuous progress in science and technology; all the springs of cooperative wealth will flow more abundantly, and the great principle ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ will be implemented. Communism is a highly organized society of free, socially conscious working people in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labor for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a necessity recognized by one and all, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people” (p. 67).

Except that Mr. Lewis says Marxism “is” what the Program says it “will be,” they are saying the same thing. And so the voice of the siren is heard once more in the land, not in the grim monotony of Stalin’s heavy accents but in the dulcet tones of the “humanist” Marx.

Marx’S Appeal To Humanism

Some such “return to Marx” may well be, apart from the course of world power politics, the next major ideological threat confronting the improving relations between what Professor Toynbee calls “the world and the West.” To expect to defeat this new challenge by a wave of the hand in the direction of Moscow murder trials or Peiping prison camps is not only naïve, it is dangerous. Look carefully and behold Khrushchev waving with us—and preaching Marxism as he does so. Sino-Russian brand Communism may—God grant—one day collapse, but even so the Marxist will still profess the most sophisticated form of secularism yet devised.

We will meet the new challenge only by soberly evaluating the claim of Marxism to be a vehicle for true humanism.

And first, what is meant here by humanism? Mr. Lewis says: “Behind the whole philosophy of Marxism there is passionate opposition to all relations, all conditions in which man is a humiliated, enslaved, despised creature. That is why Marxism is a humanism” (p. 146). While observing that so broad a description qualifies much more than Marxism to the claim of being true humanism, we may largely agree with Mr. Lewis’ assertion. Engels’ first major work, for example, The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in German in 1845, was written to document the contention that the condition of English workers under industrialism was “the highest and most unconcealed pinnacle of social misery existing in our day” (Moscow, Eng. ed., p. 3). But Engels finally includes all mankind in Communist concern: “Communism is a question of humanity, and not of workers alone” (p. 332).

So, too, the so-called youthful works of Marx, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, first published in Moscow in 1932, have occasioned a number of volumes, in a number of countries, proclaiming Marx’s early humanism. German pastor Erich Thier, for instance, in his Das Menschenbild des Jungen Marx, published in 1957, equates the “young Marx” with Kierkegaard in his “existentialist” critique of the philosophy of Hegel, and his concern for the individual.

It is true, moreover, that in their joint critique of the left-wing Hegelianism of “Bruno Bauer & Company” published in 1845 under the title of The Holy Family, Marx and Engels together mount their vicious attack in the name of “real humanism” (p. 3). In her Reminiscences of Marx, his daughter Eleanor recalls that the phrase “Work for humanity” was ever on her father’s lips; and no doubt the great sacrifice of place, pleasure, pride, and prestige which Marx inflexibly imposed upon himself and his beloved family was laid, as Marx saw it, upon the altar of human progress. Mr. Lewis says, then, accurately enough and with pardonable exuberance: “It is not sufficiently understood that Marx’s own thinking was basically humanist. He recognized the worth of the individual personality, he blazed with indignation at social injustice, there was prophetic fire in his passion for righteousness” (p. 144).

Futhermore, it may be argued with some degree of plausibility that Marxist humanism remained substantially true to its origins in its twentieth-century exponents, Lenin and Trotsky.

And no doubt Mr. Lewis is quite correct when he says that there are Marxists today who are so “because they are dreamers as well as economists, and idealists as well as politicians, because they are stirred by pity and indignation, because they believe in justice and equality, because they are humanists” (p. 144).

What Is True Humanism?

The question is: Can Marxism be palmed off on mankind as idealistic humanism now that the appeal of Sino-Russian Communism has worn thin? For this—I am suggesting—is the face which Marxists will wish increasingly to display to a world grown suspicious of Khrushchev’s and Mao’s faces. This “return to Marx” will be proffered not only to cleanse the bitter taste left by the fruits of Sino-Russian tyranny, but more significantly to wrest from the democracies worldwide ideological initiative with its political consequences.

But is Marxism the vehicle of true humanism, and are then the Russian and Chinese autocracies but aberrations or way-stations to be bypassed and ignored? The uncommitted world is asking this question in making up its mind between Marxism and democracy. To answering it for ourselves the West may well devote more of its energies than it now does.

For the answer to this significant question is not recondite, though its demonstration and its propagation are not simple: Marxism is not and never has been a true humanism. Why not? Not only because it is irreligious, but essentially because it mutes the significance of the individual. Hegel, it is true, set out to “actualize the universal,” and, like Marx and Engels after him, presumably wished to preserve the infinite worth of the particular. But Hegel was to lose in theory, as Marxism has lost both in theory and in practice, all ability to preserve effectually the worth of the individual against the claims of the abstract collective.

When Marx surrendered to Hegelianism—if he ever escaped it—he cut off at the root the capability of his system to cope with real particularity, to protect real individuality, to promote real personality, to be a genuine humanism. And the course of Marxism-in-practice, writ large in the history of Russian Communism, amply demonstrates that anti-humanitarianism is not an aberration but an inherent consequence of Marxist rationalism. Communist brutality affords instructive commentary upon the awesome consequences implicit in a false ideology, seen as it were by laboratory experiment—from its seemingly innocent birth in the passionate humanity of the youthful Marx to its corrupted maturity in the cold, calculated inhumanities of Joseph Stalin. The rationalist abstractions enter history as the lethal enemies of the concrete particulars they were presumed to save. By all means the Marxist may wish to brush aside as a passing and incidental “cult of the individual” the era of Stalinism, and substitute in its stead a sentimental “return to Marxist humanism.” But history teaches us nothing if we ignore the laboratory test of this humanism provided by the Sino-Russian experience. Only the blind can fail to grasp the lesson of the “experiments,” and only the willful can thrust it aside.

It is more than ironic that Mr. Lewis delivered his lecture on “Marxist Humanism,” which is published in his book from which quotation has been made, in 1956, the very year in which Khrushchev was revealing the Stalinist consequences of Marxist humanism in the “secret speech” which told, and left half untold, the crimes of the most powerful exponent of Marxism the world has yet beheld. And while some Marxist “idealists” came at last to an agonized break with a Marxism which turned into Stalinism, Mr. Lewis set himself to achieving the redemption of a system patently at enmity, in its practical consequences, with the noble aspirations it counterfeits.

Loss Of The Real Individual

But Mr. Lewis and those whom he represents must be stayed long enough from their romp with “development” to be obligated—as Trotsky grimly obliged himself—to answer seriously the question: Why is Marxist humanism not humanitarian?

This is, as has been said, a crucial question, not of “enrichment” but of simple intellectual integrity, the more so when Marxism is posed as “the highest development of humanism.”

Let us for the moment willingly accept Marx’s passionate sentiments for justice as genuine; he suffered and surrendered much for them. Let us acquiese in the “early” Marx’s recognition of the “worth of individual personality”; and let us not deny that Engels, Trotsky, and Lenin subscribed more or less consistently to the same estimation of humanity. And then we may ask in all sincerity: Why does Marxism, professionally loyal to the master’s voice in every nuance, run amuck in unhuman, inhuman, subhuman brutalities of all kinds, practiced advisedly, deliberately, systematically against human beings by those very Marxists most “in the know” of what Marxism is all about?

This man, say, who so loved children and never was severe with them—while he coolly murdered their parents, if need be: Why?

This dictator who wrote on the “essence” of Marxism, and, as he did so, slew his ten thousands: Why?

The answer—or at least one significant phase of the answer—to such questions is, as I have already suggested, implicit in Marx’s Hegelian rationalism, implicit therefore in the very fabric of Marxism. This answer may, in fact, be found spelled out in the same book—The Holy Family—from which quotation has already been made. It is to be found in the same paragraph in which Marx and Engels proclaim their “real humanism.” They say: “Real humanism has no more dangerous enemy in Germany than Spiritualism or speculative idealism which substitutes ‘self-consciousness’ or the ‘spirit’ for the real individual man.…”

Quite so. Hegelianism, like all other rationalisms, has no role for the “real individual”—be it man or any other entity. And precisely so, the substitution of an abstract category like universal “self-consciousness” for the “real individual man” is indeed the most “dangerous enemy” which “real humanism” can confront. It could not be put more accurately.

But when Marx and Engels, for the purposes of advertising their “socialism” as “scientific,” chose to pour into the mold of Hegelian categories the notions of “matter” and “relations of production” in substitution for the notions of “spirit” and of “self-consciousness,” did they think thus to escape the thrall of the rationalism they had derided in the Bauers? Did they propose thus to safeguard the “real individual man” from his most dangerous enemy, not the content but the form of the abstraction? Did they think that by an abstract humanism they could protect the real human being from any number of crimes that may be perpetrated on man quite compatibly with the most passionate concern for humanity?

Whatever they thought, or hoped, they in fact tumbled headlong into the same trap into which they had so elaborately sought to push “Bruno Bauer & Company” in The Holy Family. That “real individual man” whom the Bauers had lost to view in the categories of spirit and self-consciousness, Marx and Engels equally lost sight of in what became the dominant category of their system, the Class. And the more they adhered to the schematic of Hegel’s Logic—thesis, antithesis, synthesis—to support their claims to “scientific” validation, and the more they thought, wrote, talked, and acted in terms of the class relations prescribed by these categories, the more Marxism came to leave that “real individual man” naked and defenseless, prey to the tactics, strategies, or whims of the dictatorial powers exercised nominally on his behalf—and prescribed by Marx as guardians of his salvation.

The Harvest Of Casualties

Not since the Inquisition has the sowing of abstractions brought forth greater increase in the harvest of concrete casualties. In the name of the Class, for the deliverance of the Class, to the continuance (or destruction) of the Class, the individual is sacrificed, submerged, victimized, destroyed. For, while the Class is rationally manageable in the recesses of the British Museum, where Marx developed his notions, it can achieve its “self-consciousness” in historical reality only by allowing this or that member, or clique of members (in theory the Communist Party, the “vanguard” of the proletariat; and in practice the schemer, like Stalin), to become its director and guide, with absolute authority and uncontrolled power. Moreover, because the abstract concept has no hold on the concrete event, even the system itself does not control the will of the dictator. Thus the “cult of the individual,” which Khrushchev and his clique exemplify even as they denounce it, is inherent in Marxist rationalization whenever a revolution is brought about, that is, whenever its abstractions must cope with concrete historical events.

By the iron fist of the dictator the massive power of the Class is given direction. By the dictator are “real individual” decisions made; and history cruelly revenges rationalism’s abstract and pretentious neglect of the singular by confronting the Marxist who comes out last in the melee with one ineluctable moment of reality: he dies alone, and in the act discovers his particularity even as it is taken from him. The hoax of the superiority of the universal is revealed in the flash of the particular assassin’s rifle or the snap of the particular gallows trap.

Professional Sentimentality

So in fact the most sincere and genuine Marxist concern for the plight of the proletariat protects no particular proletarian from prison or the gallows, or the threat of both—in the name of the proletariat! Such concern, however well meant, is therefore only sentimentality, confined to the emotions, neither effectual nor normative in history, as evanescent as the rest of Marxist “realism.” It is easy, therefore, for an abstract humanism to make common cause with the most brutal and finished practice of inhumanity. What Professor Bultmann called in his Gifford Lectures, “the historicity of man, the true historical life of the human being, the history which everyone experiences for himself and by which he gains his real essence” (History and Eschatology, p. 43) gains no validation from Marxist humanism because Marxist humanism, when genuine, is only sentimental by virtue of abstraction from the real man—and sentimentality is by definition and in fact incompetent to coerce the course of real events.

In Marx himself, I think, one may discern the same process exhibited by Marxism in history—the movement from “humanism” to “Stalinism.” Assuming, as we have, the initial genuineness of his passion for human rights, it is evident that this passion becomes ever more professional and doctrinaire as Marx’s theories develop, until at last there is no conflict in his mind between a dictatorship bent on destroying a whole class of men and his passionate concern for the rights of man. Progressively Marx estranges himself from real contact with the British proletariat, and more and more he retires to his study and the British Museum for abstract thought about the proletariat. His concern reckons with the individual the less as his theories comprehend the Class the more. And most of the last two decades of his life were spent in isolation, from which he scorned all practical efforts to meliorate in any way the real hardships of the real poor as inimical to the Class Struggle.

Marx demonstrates by his own conduct what Marxism repeatedly illustrates in practice, that the Marxist concern for the sufferings of the proletariat is dictated (and made futile) by the dialectic of history to which Marxism is committed. According to the Hegelian framework of the Marxist “theology,” the proletariat becomes the “suffering saviour” of mankind—not through or by virtue of its suffering, but by its revolutionary negation of the capitalist order through the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat became of supreme concern to Marx, not because it suffered, nor because he was touched by its suffering, but because it first of all embodied the motive force of history—for Marx accepted Hegel’s dictum that the womb of the future was the negation. Marx was concerned with, rather than for, the proletariat, therefore, not because proletarians as such died, were exploited, or came to beg at his door, but because in the dialectic of history all hopes of the future destruction of the bourgeois order hung on the proletariat. In this abstract sense Marx came to dote upon “the workers,” as did Lenin after him for the same reason. And all the while the plight of this or that worker elicited no response from Marx, nor from Lenin or Trotsky, at all. They gauged, in fact, the worth of the proletarian by the extent of his Class-consciousness, that is, his capacity for the subordination of his own entity to the abstract entity of the Class. Thus the finest expressions of Marxist humanism comport easily with the most brutal treatment of any particular human being; and to a man like Mr. Lewis, who is enamored of the dialectic, this fact provokes no sense of contradiction at all; or if it does, Mr. Lewis may comfort himself with the reflection that contradiction is, after all, the motive force in progress—let’s see where this one leads.

Mr. Lewis says that Marxism is “a scientific, a philosophical humanism” (p. 147). Again, he could not be more accurate. For if Aristotle was right in denying the possibility of a “philosophy of the particular”; and if Professor Maritain is equally right in arguing that the “contingency of the singular escapes the grasp of science” (Degrees of Knowledge, p. 35), then the very fact that Marxism is indeed a “scientific, a philosophical humanism” reveals precisely why it is a sentimental, a professional, an abstract humanism, capable of singular inhumanity in its historical and concrete manifestations.

Is Marxism, then, the vehicle for a true humanism?

Not at all. Nor can it become so until it surrenders its abstract categories and reckons effectually with particularity. But for Marxism to do this would be to surrender not only all claim to “scientific” validation, but its idealogical framework as well, leaving it merely “utopian” in Engels’ and Lenin’s most derisive sense.

This, then, can be at least one phase of the West’s answer to the “new Marxism.” An even more significant phase is a positive humanism of our own. For such a humanism, the category of the particular—if I may put it so—is neither scientific nor speculative, but religious. It is in Christianity that the “historicity of man” is secured and validated. The relations which encompass without destroying real individuality (and form it, as Professor Maritain argues in his True Humanism, into personality) are not those of the dialectic, but those subsumed under the concept of love—incorrigibly, ineluctably personal and particular. And the person remains ever, in love, the singular. Lenin may argue that “the genius of Hegel recognized (that) the individual is the universal” (Works, Vol. 38, p. 361), but for Hegel this “both … and” is equally “neither … nor” for, as Lenin adds, “the individual is opposed to the universal” (ibid.). And the resolution of this apparent contradiction is frustrated, not achieved, by the dialectic.

The never-present “moment” in Hegel saps the life of the particular of all significance, which the ever-present “moment” in Christianity alone can restore; for Hegel’s “moment” is ever a passage, ever the transition from Being to Nothing, while Christ’s “moment” is ever the presence, the inescapable “now” held in the hand of God, the IS as opposed to the BECOMING.

When, for example, the Marxist learns what it means to love the enemy instead of destroying him, he will no longer be Marxist. It is the duty of the Christian to show, also toward Marxists, that this goal can be achieved, in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.

The question of whether the Christian message, properly understood, teaches that all human souls will ultimately be saved is being raised with new force in our generation. During the first 1,500 years of Christian history, the answer given to this question was almost without exception in the negative. While Origen (185–254) tried to defend a form of universalism, he never attracted any significant following in Christian theology. Following the Reformation, Protestantism adhered to the historic position in this respect, and the major lines of Reformation theology did, until two generations ago, agree. (There was founded, about 1750, a small universalist sect, but it has never been significant in American church life.)

By the turn of the present century, however, there had been set in motion theological currents which called the doctrine of eternal punishment of the finally impenitent into question. Several factors contributed to this movement. The liberal-modernist tradition emphasized “the infinite worth of the individual personality” to a point which made the assertion of universal salvation a logical step. Added to this was the tendency of this tradition to regard the Scriptures dealing with the end of the world and the final judgment as conceptions belonging to an earlier (and outworn) world-view. Thus such events as the coming of Christ and the final judgment came, to the theological liberal, to have purely symbolic significance.

Another factor which has led some to call into question the doctrine of the final and eternal punishment of the impenitent has been the growing sensitivity to human suffering. The advent of such horrors as are symbolized by the names of such places as Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz prompted some to suggest that a God who would consign men to outer darkness would be no better than the Nazis. (Liberals usually pass with a discreet silence the equally massive and heinous genocidal crime of the murder of six million Kulaks in the Soviet Union between 1926 and 1935.) But such manifestations of “man’s inhumanity to man” have led some Christian thinkers to set what they felt to be the requirements and limits of the divine love.

Yet another theological current which has affected this question has been the Dialectical Theology, of which Karl Barth has been the major voice on the Continent, and to which Reinhold Niebuhr has given unofficial leadership in the United States. The question of the necessary implications of the teachings of these men with respect to the final destiny of the impenitent has yet to be explored in an adequate manner. The system of Karl Barth has been charged with possesing universalistic tendencies, as has been the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, particularly as expressed in the second volume of his Gifford Lectures, The Nature and Destiny of Man. It is to be hoped that something definitive may be presented to the Christian world at this point in the months ahead.

The crux of the problem is, of course, whether God wills the salvation of all men in such a manner that all must necessarily be saved. The answer given by contemporary universalists is as follows: Some passages of Scripture, notably 1 Timothy 2:4, indicate that God wills that all men shall be saved. This being the case, so the argument runs, it would detract from both the extent of his sovereignty and the quality of his love if this purpose were in any way frustrated.

Another Scripture quoted in this connection is 1 Corinthians 15:22, in which Paul asserts that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. This is held to teach that all must be raised to eternal life in the general resurrection, and seems to neglect other passages which sound a warning that some may be raised to something other than a destiny of blessedness.

The real issue in these and related passages is, whether they demand as a corollary that men will be saved apart from the concurrence of their own wills—whether grace is brought to bear with irresistible force upon the individual, so that no other final outcome to his moral career than his ultimate redemption is possible.

One of the major thinkers who maintain the universalist position is Dr. Nels F. S. Ferré, who states his views in forthright fashion in his volume The Christian Understanding of God. Dr. Ferré asserts that there are no incorrigible sinners, no “permanent problem children” to God. He feels that the doctrine of eternal punishment of the unrepentant is, as he puts it, “sub-love” and hence unworthy of God. Rather dramatically he suggests that the individual who in the state beyond death is finally brought face-to-face with his alienation, will suddenly realize that this is not that for which he was made. In consequence, he beats a retreat back to the house of his Father, and thus utilizes constructively his second chance.

This view has several defects: First, it has no foundation in Scripture. Second, it may be questioned whether in any future state moral performance would be significantly different or decisively better than in this life. Third, it neglects a number of clear scriptural statements, such as the solemn reminders concerning the place “where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:44) and our Lord’s own account of the rich man and Lazarus.

Finally, the rise of contemporary universalism may have resulted, to some degree, from the infelicitous manner in which some well-meaning persons have spoken or preached concerning hell and eternal punishment. There are those whose handling of the question leads thoughtful persons to wonder whether they might be speaking, not under the Spirit’s guidance, but in a manner which gives expression to their own aggression and their own frustrations. Let it be said that no man is prepared to preach upon this subject until his soul has been seized with horror at the thought that one of his congregation might finally go into outer darkness!

No man is a better guide to straight thinking than St. Augustine. Fourteen centuries ago he lived in a world more like our own than any intervening century has been like our times. Heathenism was not wholly gone, by any means. The Vandals were on the ramparts of the old empire and fast crumbling its shaky defenses. The Christian church was newly out of hiding, and proliferating amid the cross-currents of thought which have always marked the greatest enterprises. Paul the Apostle found “fears within and fightings without.” Augustine pointed out the uneven stones in the holy edifice of the Church as described in Bible times: David’s family history; a traitor in our Lord’s own select band; and revolution in heaven itself when the angels fell.

Augustine wrote a letter in A.D. 397 in which he gave a wise caution: “Though the doctrine which men hold be false and perverse, if they do not maintain it with passionate obstinacy, especially when they have not devised it by the rashness of their own presumption, but have accepted it from parents who have been misguided and had fallen into error, and if they are with anxiety seeking the truth, and are prepared to be set right when they have found it, such men are not to be counted heretics.” For his part also hear John Calvin in the opening pages of his fourth book of The Institutes (The Church) where he wrote: “Let us learn from her single title of Mother (i.e., the Church) how useful, nay how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceive us in the womb and give us birth, unless she nourish us at her breasts, and, in short, keep us under her charge and government, until, devested of mortal flesh, we become like the angels.”

All areas of the Church have experienced reformations. When our national government was organized the Jesuit Order was under the ban of Rome. Many reform movements occurred before the Reformation. Many reformations have taken place since the Reformation. Probably neither Luther nor Calvin ever conceived that a great body of Christians would claim his name as a title of honor and not simply the name of Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church today has features which would have been like direct answers to the prayers of reformers; notably, the publication of the Bible in English, introduced, with the foreword by the Holy Name Society which quotes a papal invitation to read it daily.

“Protestantism” is too inexact a term, and to “save it” would not secure the Church. The Church is of God’s building, and, with our Lord the Corner Stone, abides. Protestantism has too many fellow-travelers to be a safe defense. The name has a long and honorable history, to be sure. Most reformed Church adherents cheerfully claim it. Its historic and present interest is reformation, and Reformed is, therefore, a better term. For reformation has been the interest of the Church from the beginning. The Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15) was for reform, and the Council of Trent was designed to accomplish reformation. The Reformation was envisaged by its first and greatest leaders as a call to return to the purity of the Church as displayed in Scripture. Reformation is the better word because it pictures the Church abiding more vividly than does the term Protestant, which suggests separation, or even defiance, if not carefully explained. So one turns to Augustine, with a feeling of great confidence. His voluminous writings breathe affection. He talks to opponents as though they were the closest of friends, though differences call for conference and are frankly dealt with.

Five great works by St. Augustine deserve the attention of all men today, especially Catholics and Protestants: The Confessions, Christian Doctrine, Enchiridion (Hand-book) on Faith, Hope and Charity, The Trinity, and The City of God. The world is living like the world of the fourth Christian century. All around is the corruption of decayed secularism. The dying Roman Empire was tremendously modern. Over the horizon is something like the Vandal world, militant, but like that world sheltering the seeds of Christian greatness, as the barbarians of the fourth century brought saints and missionaries for a time then yet to come. Augustine, who lived through one half of the fourth century and one third of the fifth, saw more clearly than any of his contemporaries the arena on which the victorious conquest would march. The future will again become our instructor.

Augustine is an ideal leader for the whole Church today.

1. He has preeminence in Catholic and non-Catholic circles.

2. He made the Scripture his rule, steadfastly exalted its authority and refused to deviate from its voice. “For it seems to me,” he wrote, “that most disastrous consequences must follow upon our believing that anything false is found in the sacred books: that is to say, that the men by whom the Scripture has been given to us, and committed to writing, did put down in their books anything false” (letter to Jerome).

3. He personally found God in Christ his Saviour. Like Paul he reached the happy goal after an agonizing search. In short, Augustine was an evangelical man.

4. He was a man of irenic temper. The long conflict with Manichaean, Donatist, and Pelagian controversialists so fully illustrated his love for the Church, his love for his opponents, his desire and effort for unity in the Saviour and fellowship in the Holy Ghost. “… With reference to the minds of those (Pelagians) for whose sake you wished me to write … it is not so much in opposition to my opinion, but, to speak mildly, and not to mention the doctrine of Him who spoke in His apostles, certainly against not only the opinion of the great Apostle Paul, but also his strong, earnest and vigilant conflict, that they prefer maintaining their own opinions with tenacity to listening to him, when he ‘beseeches them by the mercies of God,’ and tells them ‘through the grace of God which was given him’ …” (to Marcellinus).

5. For Augustine the Church was the “congregation of believers.” No name was before that of Christ the Lord. No lobby was tolerated in the courts of the Lord.

All men could turn to Augustine today for good. History, philosophy, theology, and social science are deeply in his debt. Best of all, human hearts will find him a great guide as they ponder his works. Happily at least four of his five principal works can now be had in the paperback edition, an incidental but significant commentary on his readability (The Confessions, The City of God, Christian Doctrine, and the Hand-book, or Enchiridion, on Faith, Hope and Love).—DR. STEWART M. ROBINSON of Delhi, New York, for many years the distinguished editor of The Presbyterian.

Preaching The Gospel Of The Kingdom

The plan before us may start with the First Gospel, the one nearest to the Old Testament. When Gandhi came to England he began reading Genesis, bogged down in Leviticus, and stopped. Many a layman now does much the same, with no guidance.

Starting preferably with the Greek, read the Gospel as a whole, then study it by paragraphs. On points of difficulty consult a standard commentary, as by Plummer or Broadus. Put in a permanent file what each unit shows about Christ and the Kingdom. Read devotionally.

In December, two messages from Isaiah 1–12, with assigned readings beforehand: “The Gospel in the Snow” (1:18); “The Gospel in Handel’s Messiah” (9:6, 7). Ten days before Christmas introduce the Gospel (Matt. 6:33). Deal with it as living now, not as a corpse, with a skeleton outline.

Stress what the layman ought to look for, with the main idea first. The Gospel—about Christ—as Teacher—concerning the Kingdom—through the Cross. In such a survey dare to select and omit. Make the Gospel seem more interesting than any 1962 work. Present a living book! On the Sunday before Christmas, “How Jesus Got His Name” (1:21). He got it from God, to show the meaning of the Gospel. A week later, “How Wise Men Worship” (2:11), in terms of 1962. From now on, every topic points to a sermon on a passage the layman has read at home, with other paragraphs.

“The Bible Meaning of Repentance” (3:2). “The Way to Meet Temptation” (4:1). To be a Christian means to be like Jesus. I. He met temptation: at unexpected times—places—in strange ways. II. He conquered: by appealing to the Bible—in the Bible to God. A believer now can do what Christ could not—appeal to Himself. Better still, preach two sermons here.

“The Bible Standard of Perfection” (5:48). “The Kingdom of God Here Today” (6:10). For clarity, limit the view. I. Divine: the Kingdom of God—heaven—Christ. II. Human: Comes to one person—largely through home—then to wider circles, locally. III. Practical: This is what it means to be a Christian—to have a home—and a church. Pray!

“The Difficulty of the Golden Rule” (7:12). “The Faith that Conquers Fear” (8:26a). I. The Meaning of Fear: Lack of faith—in the presence of Christ—his compassion—his power. II. The Meaning of Faith: Conquest of fear about self—loved ones—the unknown future. Conclusion: Bring the hearer face to face with the living Christ. Lead to accept him now.

When you keep to the basic idea of each chosen paragraph, note the variety, with divine power and human interest. “The Healing of His Seamless Dress” (9:21). “The Way Christ Gives Restfulness” (11:28–30, part). Where feasible, present tenses! “The Members of Christ’s Family Now” (12:50). Save the parables (13 and 25) for an evening series, or two.

“The Way Christ Feeds the Hungry” (14:20). “The Way Men Talk about Jesus” (16:14–16, part). Men do so talk! I. The Best of Human Beings: Popular Evangelist—Flaming Reformer—Saintly Seer—Tireless Teacher. All true! II. The One We Worship as God: The Higher Truth—Held by the Church—Approved by Christ—The Heart of Christianity. If too much, two sermons! At least once a year, a message about his deity. Do not argue!

“The Forgiveness of Deadly Wrongs” (18:21). This duty, once a year. “The Lord Blessing Little Children” (19:14). “The Meaning of a Man’s Religion” (22:37–39). I. Love Your God Supremely. II. Your Neighbor Largely. III. Yourself Last. Your neighbor is the man who needs you.

“The Fact of the Final Return” (24:24). “The Supper in Light from the Cross” (26:28). In the New Testament the stress falls on the Communion with reference to Calvary. Because of blindness here, many suffer spiritual anemia (1 Cor. 11:23). “The Person Christ Did Not Spare” (27:42a). Palm Sunday: “The Coming of Christ to Our City,” or Community (21:9). Week-night messages from the Gospel: “Companions of the Cross.” Make much of Calvary!

“The Easter Remedy for Our Fears” (28:5–7, part). As often elsewhere, repeat the whole text; then stress a part that shines. After the resurrection of Christ, in the New Testament not a pessimistic note from the lips of a believer! Let it be so in these sermons, and in all public worship. Since the layman at home has been reading the Gospel background in prayer, waste no time getting started. The layman will find that if he wishes to make the most of the sermons he should read the Book in private and pray.

The effectiveness of such preaching, under God, depends largely on the pastor’s joint living with the Gospel three months or more, to receive the radiance of the Living Christ so as to reflect it through the sermon on those who hear.

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

… When Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes (Matt. 7:28, 29).

Here the foremost expository preacher of our time closes the second volume of his Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Looking at the extended passage as a whole he stresses the Authority of Christ’s Person, as this high truth concerns the hearer or reader.

I. The Authority of Christ’s Person. The authority of the Sermon derives from the Speaker. The Teacher is more important than what he taught. The Man who spoke these words was the only-begotten Son of God. Throughout the Sermon our Lord continually calls attention to himself. All the instructions become focused together in him.

Our Lord’s contemporaries were amazed at his teaching, not after the manner of the scribes. The scribes quoted authorities, and never uttered any original thoughts. They were experts, quoting other experts, thus giving an impression of learning and culture. There was a freshness about Christ’s teaching, as well as a sense of confidence and certainty. And so he speaks today. About himself he makes a tremendous pronouncement. He claims unique authority.

II. The Authority over Christians. Believers are to be a very special and unique people. Because of their relationship to him they are to become the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Here is the whole doctrine of the rebirth. Thus he is asserting his unique deity and his saviourhood. He is the long-expected Messiah. As such he is ever saying, “I am come.” This is no mere human teacher. This is the Son of God, sinless, absolutely perfect, who is to be the Judge of the world.

Ere we leave the Sermon on the Mount I ask a question both simple and profound. What is your response to it all? The response must go beyond astonishment. In the Sermon our Lord condemns all trust in human endeavor. He is saying that in the sight of God we are all condemned sinners, and that we cannot save ourselves. We all need a new birth, a new nature, a new life.

He is God’s Man. All who belong to him are going to become like him. That is astounding doctrine, but true in him. We know that he died for us, and that our sins are forgiven. His Spirit is working in us, revealing our shortcomings and imperfections, creating in us new longings and aspirations.

Above all, in the midst of life, with its trials and problems, against all its uncertainties in this atomic age, with the certain fact of death and the final judgment, one can say with Paul: “… I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”

Dedicated to assisting the clergy in the preparation of sermons, the feature titled The Minister’s Workshop appears in the first issue of each month. The section’s introductory essay is contributed alternately by Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood and Dr. Paul S. Rees. The feature includes, also, Dr. Blackwood’s abridgments of expository-topical sermons, outlines of significant messages by great preachers of the past, and outlines of abridgments of messages presented by expository preachers of our own time.—ED.

… What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matt. 16:26).

Here “the Shakespeare of divines” deals with a human soul in terms of profit and loss. Unlike many a sermon today, this long discourse has a positive approach to a positive Gospel, and thus leads up to a climactic negative. Can anyone now improve on the order?

I. The Untold Capacity of the Soul. Among all the handiwork of God nothing human begins to compare with the soul of a man. This He made in his own likeness, with untold capacities for bliss here below, and vastly more in heaven. Meanwhile he wishes the spirit to grow more and more into his likeness, in mastery of the life that he has given, and making ready for the life to come.

II. The Lord’s Appraisal of a Soul. To see how much God values a soul, consider the price he has paid to set it free from sin, and also free to grow into the likeness of God. The Father valued your soul at the price of the Redeemer’s blood, with shame and torture for the Son of God. So much does the Father now value a single soul that he would not have anyone venture its loss, if thereby he could gain control of the entire world.

How much more does the Father grieve when a person hazards his soul for the sake of trifles that vanish with the using!

III. The Sinner’s Folly in Such Loss. Consider what it means to lose your soul. About such a loss our Lord and his disciples use tragic words: “forever”—“eternal”—“everlasting”—“the never-dying worm”—“the fire unquenchable.” Fire can never express the torment of an accursed soul, but we can guess at the meaning through the terror of an outraged conscience. For the purchase of a little, trifling portion of the world you may come into the place of torment. Remember the sentence that God has passed on all mankind: “… It is appointed men once to die, but after this the judgment.…”

He therefore is a huge fool who heaps up riches, who greedily pursues the world, and at the same time “heaps up for himself wrath against the day of wrath.” When sickness and death arrest him, then all these things seem unprofitable, and he becomes extremely miserable. If you would know how miserable, take account of the killing rhetoric in Scripture: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” “Who can dwell with the everlasting burning?” (From the History and Depository of Pulpit Eloquence, ed. by Henry C. Fish, 1856, I: 566–81.)

Andrew W. Blackwood:

Christ’S Gift Of Restfulness

Come unto me … and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28).

“My Lord taught me a long while ago to live without worry, work without hurry, and look forward without fear.” So said a leading churchman, during World War I when countless other leaders were busy and troubled about many things. How can each of you as a believer enter into restfulness like that of our Lord on his way up to Jerusalem, there to die?

I. Christ Gives Restfulness through Worship. In every time of worship, public or private, first get right with God. Then begin at once to enjoy what others seem only to endure. Through song and prayer, the readings and the sermon, mount up as with eagle wings and capture the secrets of the stars. Among those secrets be sure to find peace and hope, with many blessed foretastes of heavenly joy. What an ideal for worship as a transforming experience with Christ Jesus on the mountain of privilege!

II. Christ Gives Restfulness through Work. “Take my yoke.” A yoke enables a beast of burden to do more work, better work, doing it gladly and well. What a word picture of “effortless mastery,” with powers more than sufficient because they come from God! Hence Paul could say without boasting; “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” No wonder he appears to have been the master workman of our race, and therefore much like his Lord. For recent object lessons in working without worry or hurry or godless fear, read Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, written by the two that knew him best, and loved him most, not least because of his total life work, devoid of inner friction.

III. Christ Gives Restfulness through Waiting. He wishes each one here to do the waiting. In his own good time he will do the giving, and that in Gospel measure. He would not have any of us wait until heaven before entering into the serenity of our God. “Learn of me.” Enroll in his school. Take the assigned course, really an elective that many a would-be believer tries to dodge, because difficult.

To learn of him means in part to live with his Book in the spirit of prayer. To know him so well and love him so much that everyday living will become an opportunity to go about doing good in ways of his own choosing. As for restfulness do not trouble your heart about that. It comes as a gift from above, and it tarries as long as one abides in the Lord Jesus: “Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed? To do the will of Jesus, this is rest.” Ah, but only for one who has been born again, and now lives by faith in Christ. On these terms, my friend, begin now to enjoy Christ’s restfulness.

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives (Matt. 26:30).

A first-class hymn consists of Bible truth set to music. For the sake of variety preach an occasional sermon about such a Gospel message. Let the stress fall, not on the author of the words and the composer of the music, but on Gospel truth.

So turn to the successive stanzas of the hymn that we have just sung: “There is a green hill far away.” Here a gifted young Irish woman guides boys and girls in what to believe and sing about the death of our Redeemer. Simplicity!

I. The First Part Sings about the Place of the Cross. In the Bible a place may mean much. A. The garden, a place of beauty, shows what God does for us mortals, in the most beautiful season of the year, springtime in the Holy Land!

B. The Cross shows the tragedy of what we sinners do to God. The place outside the city wall tells of stigma. The Cross shows the worst that earth and hell can devise to thwart the plans of the Heavenly Father. “Forgive them!”

II. The Puzzle of the Cross. To childlike souls the Cross means mystery and wonder. A. Little can we mortals know about what the Redeemer endured. So let us not dare to take away the mystery. B. But we ought to know why he suffered on the Cross. This we should lead our boys and girls to sing.

III. The Purpose. The heart of all we believe. A. He died to insure the pardon of our sins. B. To make us good, as redeemed children of God. C. To prepare us for living with him forever in glory. What amazing truth for boys and girls, and for all of God’s redeemed children!

IV. The Person. The most important stanza; also the one we often omit! A. The Sinlessness of our Saviour! The absence of moral evil. The presence of all good, as only God is good. B. The Power of the Redeemer. Power to open the gates of heaven itself. Power to lead us, one by one, into the unseen City of God.

V. The People. The simplest practical tests of our being Christians. A. Love for Christ as our Redeemer. B. Trust in him as our Divine Helper. C. Obedience to him as our Lord and Master.

Commit this hymn to memory. Teach it to boys and girls, and to others. Use it in bringing them, one by one, to the Christ of the Cross, there to find pardon, cleansing, and peace, with the joy that the world can not give, or take away.

For variety, on weekday nights before Easter, except on Saturday, have a series of messages from favorite hymns about Calvary. Through the bulletin early in Lent ask the layman to check on the bulletin four such hymns that he loves best. In order to keep from anything second-rate, print only the titles of such songs in the Church Hymnal. Then add one more, both difficult and glorious, for the layman to learn.

At the beginning of the pastorate in Columbus, Ohio, we were trying to build up a “never was” evening congregation. At the first service with a sermon from a hymn, we had more people than ever before at night. From evening to evening the attendance increased, and never again did it slide back to what it had been before.

As a whole such a series lends itself to publicity. On a printed postal card, in a newspaper advertisem*nt, as in the bulletin, the series appears intact. The titles of the hymns do not appear. Let the layman search the book so as to identify each song. Here they run as follows: “Beneath the Cross”; “There Is a Green Hill”; “When I Survey”; “O Sacred Head”; “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken.” The Gospel in Hymns about the Cross

The Shelter of the Cross

The Simplicity of the Cross

The Survey of the Cross

The Sublimity of the Cross

The Service of the Cross

Thank God for hymns about the Cross!

Rome And The Bible

The Bible, Word of God in Words of Men (La Bible, Parole Humaine et Message de Dieu), by Jean Levie, S. J. (Kenedy, 1962, 323 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Leslie R. Keylock, Special Instructor in French, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Evangelicals and Roman Catholics alike have been accused of paying little attention to the phenomena of Scripture, i.e., the effect of the human element on divine inspiration. This book, hailed by the Roman Catholic press as the most important work on the doctrine of biblical inspiration to have been published in the last decade, should do much to remedy the lacuna from the Roman perspective. Already the book has caused a stir in scholarly Catholic journals in America, and it has been suggested as the best book for background study on the problem of inspiration in preparation for the Second Vatican Council. The Jesuit Theological College in Louvain, Belgium, has long been one of the centers of that most fascinating of French religious movements, the “Biblical Revival,” and its professor of Holy Scripture has here given us a probing historical and doctrinal study of Catholic thought on this most important of biblical themes. Especially valuable are the excellent bibliographies which occur throughout the book.

The first two hundred pages of the work are devoted to a historical survey of one century of Catholic exegetical research, including a study of the influence of archaeological discoveries on the dogma of the Church, the influence of liberal Protestant biblical criticism on Roman Catholic thought, the vigorous controversies which raged within the Church as a result of modernism, the growth and development of a strong biblical movement under the dominating influence of Father M. J. Lagrange, the relationship of religious authority to this latter movement, and more recent developments in biblical exegesis since the end of World War I and the rise of neo-orthodoxy. This section is brought to a conclusion by a thorough discussion of the papal encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) and the tremendous impetus it has given to biblical scholarship within the Roman Church.

The more important section, however, from the point of view of both the Roman Catholic scholar and the evangelical interested in the best of Catholic theology, is the one which considers the question of inspiration. The author analyzes the Holy Scriptures first as the words of men and then as the Word of God. Although Father Levie is a Roman Catholic and hence believes in the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible, he nevertheless accepts more of biblical criticism than Protestants have, until recently, expected from Roman sources; e.g., he accepts dual authorship of Isaiah; the inaccuracy of many biblical etymologies, genealogies, and source documents; the documentary hypothesis with its stress on doublets; and the fictional nature of much of such books as Job, Jonah, and Esther. Father Levie concludes that final interpretation can come only from an infallible Church. There are, he feels, definite limits to the proof from Scripture in the formulation of a theology.

It is in the chapter on the Bible as the words of men that I feel this book makes its most significant contribution, for the author makes a deliberate attempt to combine a high view of inspiration with an acceptance of many of the conclusions of German higher criticism. No evangelical work that I know treats the subject of the phenomena of Scripture as thoroughly. It should therefore act as a needed goad to evangelicals to fill this most serious gap in their thought, for it is in this area that theological scholars of all types will probably be fighting crucial battles in the years that lie immediately ahead.

LESLIE R. KEYLOCK

A Welcome Voice

Pentecost and Missions, by Harry R. Boer (Eerdmans, 1961, 270 pp., $5), is reviewed by Herman J. Ridder, Minister of Evangelism, Reformed Church in America.

It will come as a surprise to many Christians to learn that the Great Commission was not the motivating factor in the evangelistic activity of the New Testament Church as it has been for the Church in the last century and a half. The contention of the author, Dr. Harry R. Boer of the Theological College at Bukuru, Northern Nigeria, is that Pentecost was the central, conscious motivation of the New Testament Church.

In setting forth his thesis (the work appeared literally as the author’s doctoral thesis dissertation in 1955), Dr. Boer carefully discusses the place of Pentecost in the history of missions as well as in the history of redemption. The Spirit in the Old Testament was “a retroactive work of the Spirit of Pentecost in the time when He was not yet poured out …” (p. 83). All of the Old Testament activity has a note of incompletion about it, awaiting the Spirit who is the vital principle and who ushers the Church into the endless life of Heaven.

The preponderance of sensitivity to the Great Commission during the flourishing activity in missions during the last century or more was due to historical circ*mstances arising out of the Reformation’s lack of perception of the Church’s mission and responsibility to geographically distant peoples. This is not to suggest that it is therefore scriptural. On the contrary, “the Great Commission derives its meaning and power wholly and exclusively from the Pentecost event” (p. 47). It is with Pentecost that the real missionary (evangelistic) activity of the Church begins. All of this is not to suggest that the Great Commission has no relevancy to the Church’s mission. It is in fact the law that governs the discharge of the Church’s task in the world. At Pentecost this law went into effect.

The appearance of this book at this time is a real service to the Church. First, there can be little doubt that this is indeed “the age of the Spirit.” On every hand discussion in the Church turns to the nature and significance of the Holy Spirit, not simply as the Third Person of the Trinity, but as a Person experienced. Boer’s careful study will be a strong help as the Church increasingly turns its attention to this “reticent Spirit.”

Also, in the current discussion regarding the “how” of the Pentecost speaking in “other tongues,” the author makes an emphasis that needs to be heard today. So much discussion centers on the manner in which these tongues were present that the real truth of Pentecost is missed. After more than a century of debate, we are scarcely beyond where the debate began. To Dr. Boer, the “what,” which is the dramatic declaration of the importance of witness, stands in danger of being overlooked. “The speaking with other tongues dramatically demonstrated the witnessing character of the church” (p. 103). Thus, in fruitless debate we miss the central and controlling truth of Pentecost, which is that we are witnesses, made so by God’s Holy Spirit.

In a day when the work of evangelism becomes increasingly difficult (the post-war “religious boom” is all but over), we welcome a voice like that of Dr. Boer. The power for mission is not to be found in the clever manipulation of people either within or without the Church. Nor will our success be enhanced by more carefully schooled witnesses whose salesman-like approaches are geared to good results. Although the reviewer would be the last to scorn the finest methods of training, he has been concerned with the mission of the Church long enough to realize that the power for evangelism comes through a deep dependence on the Spirit of God, who is first and foremost a witnessing Spirit.

HERMAN J. RIDDER

Of Interest To Both

What the Church Teaches, by Monsignor J. D. Conway (Harper, 1962, 336 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Walter M. Montano, President, Western Hemisphere Evangelical Union, Glendale, California.

This book is a compilation of various articles published in the Catholic Digest. Each is an answer to a question submitted by a reader of the magazine.

The title gives the impression that the book deals with all the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, while in reality it presents only a few. The author writes for the American mentality and tries to make his various topics attractive and palatable. We may even say that these articles were written with the purpose of making proselytes of indifferent Protestants to Roman Catholicism.

The chapter related to Protestantism contains statements about the Reformation so favorable that they could not be repeated in countries outside of the United States. We read: “Protestants have generally a sound morality, rigorous on some points, with special stress on the practical social virtues; their concepts and convictions have largely formed our national code of morality and our accepted customs of behavior. They have traditional love of freedom, a sound sense of man’s rights, and a sentimental searching for tolerance.… Protestantism is a culmination of truth and sanctity” (p. 51).

In contrast, Roman Catholic priests in countries where their church is united with the state condemn Protestants as the “sons of the devil.” The St. Paul Dispatch of July 11 reports that a Portuguese Roman Catholic priest, Alfredo Mendes, writing in the newspaper Diario de Manha, said: “The American Protestants are worse than Communist enemies.”

In spite of his favorable comments about Protestantism, Monsignor Conway believes that God’s blessing upon America came, not through Protestantism, but through elements of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice that Protestantism retained.

The author assumes that Christ himself established the Roman Catholic Church. History contradicts this assertion. The papacy started with Emperor Constantine, almost four centuries after the death of Christ.

Monsignor Conway defends the dogma of his church that “outside the Roman Catholic Church there is no salvation.”

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

★ Basic Christian Doctrines, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, $6). The substance of orthodox Protestant scholarship at the mid-point of the twentieth century. American, English, and Continental theologians expound 43 doctrines of the Christian faith.

★ The Word in Worship, by Thomas H. Keir (Oxford, $3.50). A solid exposition of the Reformed liturgical tradition which boldly defines preaching as: Hear the Word of the Lord! and worship as actual response to God.

★ The Impact of American Religious Liberalism, by Kenneth Cauthen (Harper & Row, $6). Excellent presentation of American theological liberalism in which the author measures its impact on post-liberal theology.

It is noticeable that the author avoids the discussion of some of the most important teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, teachings which even the average American Roman Catholic believer would refuse to follow if he knew all that is involved.

In general the book is of interest to both Roman Catholics and Protestants.

WALTER M. MONTANO

With Or Without?

As Christians Face Rival Religions, by Gerald Cooke (Association, 1962, 192 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is a pleasant and informative treatment of those crucially important questions which emerge when Christianity comes into contact with non-Christian religions. These questions are currently becoming more urgent as Buddhists, Hindus, and others turn missionary to make converts in the West, and a shrinking world brings Christianity and the West into wider contact and sharper conflict with the revived religious nationalism of the East.

Cooke stresses the need of getting to know the non-Christian and his religion, the peril of both exaggeration and oversimplification of religious similarities and differences, and the need to avoid those broad, glittering generalities we are all so prone to make.

Cooke’s conclusions, however, are profoundly disappointing. He raises the question, “How are we to speak about a ‘unique’ and ‘once-for-all’ revelation in Christ?” and then asserts, “If this means that God’s active self-disclosing relationship to man came to an end in Jesus Christ, it is difficult to accept.” He further declares that “belief in a full and final (in the sense of utterly discontinuous) revelation at one point in history is open to serious question” (p. 168). The “once-for-all character of God’s self-disclosure in Christ,” he says, “is best preserved in terms of depth rather than finality” (p. 169). Thus Cooke seeks to allow for a large degree of authentic divine revelation in Christ, and for a smaller but equally authentic self-disclosure of God outside of Christ within the non-Christian religions. “Who,” he asks, “will presume to limit the divine intent and power by saying that this (sic!) revelation cannot be partially reflected elsewhere …?… All that a Christian can say is what is involved in his own Christian commitment and that he has as yet found no equal of Jesus Christ in non-Christian faiths; he can not know whether this corresponds to a fact in the objective order of things, or whether it reflects his too preliminary acquaintance with other religions” (p. 169).

In this manner, Cooke attempts to provide a resolution for the conflicting claims of Christianity and the non-Christian religions, and thereby prepare for one worldwide community “out of all religions.” The desire for this world community is his prime interest in facing the “rival religions”; he believes it is either one world or none.

His claim that the uniqueness of Christianity is a matter of “depth” and not of “quality” is sheer verbalistic confusion, a facade which scarce conceals something less than intellectual honesty. Since when is uniqueness a quality that can be defined quantitatively in terms of number of degrees?

Further, Cooke claims it is presumptuous for a Christian to maintain that the non-Christian religions cannot produce an equal to Jesus Christ. Would he be less guilty of presumption if he claimed that these religions cannot produce someone superior to Jesus Christ? Or is Cooke perfectly willing to allow for this possibility—a possibility which his position does not exclude? But since his position does not exclude the emergence of one superior to Jesus Christ, how can he retain any kind (or degree) of uniqueness for Christianity?

Cooke promises “an interreligious strategy for community without compromise.” He not only fails to keep his promise but so decisively compromises Christianity as to surrender it completely before conceiving his first strategem.

One may surrender Christianity if one wills, but then let it be done bravely and honestly, not under a white flag announcing “without compromise.”

JAMES DAANE

Attractive And Useful

The Holman Study Bible (A. J. Holman Company, 1962, introduction 12 pp., text 1,224 pp., concordance 191 pp., maps 8 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Faris D. Whitesell, Professor of Preaching, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.

Using the text of the Revised Standard Version, this study Bible is an able effort to help people use the Scriptures. An outline, a survey, and a brief paragraph about the author introduce each book of the Bible. Thirty-four writers produced the Old Testament introductory articles, and twenty-one those for the New Testament. These contributors represent the best in sound, conservative scholarship in England and America and come from a wide range of denominations and schools.

At the end of this Bible are five major scholarly articles filling 53 pages. F. F. Bruce wrote on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Carl F. H. Henry on the Bible and modern science, James L. Kelso on the archaeology of the Bible, David H. Wallace on the period between the Testaments, and Donald J. Wiseman on the chronology of the Bible.

The text of the RSV runs two columns per page and is quite clear and readable. The cross references, however, appear in small indentations in the text rather than in a middle column and are so small as to be difficult to read. The pages are approximately 5½ × 8 inches.

This is an attractive, handy, and useful edition of the Holy Scriptures which will undoubtedly have a wide circulation.

FARIS D. WHITESELL

Mid-Century Orthodoxy

Basic Christian Doctrines, edited by Carl F. H. Henry (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962, 320 pp., $6), is reviewed by Frank Farrell, Assistant Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

From general revelation to final judgment, the work manifests reverent handling of the great doctrines of the Bible. Readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will recognize the essays as having appeared in a series of the same name over the past two years. Now as a compact introduction to theology in one volume, they may stand as a milestone of mid-century Protestant orthodoxy. Seldom has the work of so many distinguished evangelical theologians and biblical scholars the world over been assembled between the covers of a single book of theology.

Ranging across denominational lines, 44 contributors represent the evangelical scholarship of the major Protestant traditions and of several nations. Apart from American scholars, chapters are signed by such names as G. C. Berkouwer, F. F. Bruce, Philip E. Hughes, Otto Michel, and Leon Morris. One of the essays appears in print for the first time: Roger Nicole has contributed a survey of the various theological disciplines, geared to stimulate the lay reader to further study.

The essayists deal in concise yet scholarly and literate fashion with the various doctrines, defining, expounding, and applying them while noting contemporary relevance. Sensitivity is shown at points of evangelical disagreements, particularly where denominational traditions diverge. Not all will be pleased with every position taken, but this applies also to theology books by single authors, though at times to a lesser extent. Common to all the contributors, even while they interact with contemporary theological trends, is a united loyalty to the Living Word and the Word Written. Current tendencies to set the two in mutual opposition are shunned.

Perhaps the biggest handicap confronting the essayists was the limitation of space in developing their tremendous themes. But their efforts surmount this to an admirable degree. And select bibliographies are included for those who would further explore the riches of the doctrines of the Bible.

FRANK FARRELL

Lucid Translation

Chytraeus On Sacrifice, edited and translated by John Warwick Montgomery (Concordia, 1962, 151 pp., $2.75, paper), is reviewed by R. K. Harrison, Professor of Old Testament, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.

Although not one of the better-known personalities of the Reformation, David Chytraeus (1531–1600), a student of Luther and Melanchthon, played an important part in drawing up the classic Lutheran confessional statement known as the Formula of Concord. Chytraeus was essentially a biblical theologian, and against a background of the plenary inspiration of Scripture he examined the Old Testament concept of sacrifice in relationship to the atoning work of Calvary in his treatise De Sacrificiis.

This is the first time that the work has been translated from the original Latin into a modern language, and although it harks back to the pre-critical era and reflects the scholastic categories of medieval analysis, its clarity and obvious mastery of Scripture could well serve as a model for contemporary scholars. While the pattern of atonement which Chytraeus presents has strong Anselmian overtones, he makes abundantly clear his belief that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.

Dr. Montgomery has furnished the reader with a lucid translation, supplemented by careful grammatical and exegetical notes. This excursus is a timely and important contribution to the increasing amount of literature on the theology of the Reformation period.

R. K. HARRISON

Book Briefs

The Ministers Manual for 1963, compiled and edited by M. K. W. Heicher (Harper, 1962, 321 pp., $3.95). A treasury of prayers, sermon starters, sermonic outlines, aids for Junior sermons, illustrations, funeral meditations, bulletin board slogans, Sunday school lessons, and much more material useful to the pastor and preacher. For every Sunday of the year and for midweek services.

All Our Days, by Purd E. Deitz, Boynton Merrill, and others (Christian Education Press, 1962, 383 pp., $2.50). Very well-written devotions for youth which sometimes on crucial matters dip to sub-biblical level.

A Woman’s Choice, by Eugenia Price (Zondervan, 1962, 182 pp., $2.50). Written by a woman for women; author seeks to teach women to “think,” and with God’s help to “live through” their problems.

The Holy See at Work, by Bishop Peter Canisius Van Lierde, translated by James Tucek (Hawthorn, 1962, 256 pp., $5). A description of the structure and function of the ecclesiastical machinery that governs the Roman Catholic Church. For study and for reference.

Twelve Virtues of a Good Teacher, by Brother Luke M. Grande, F.S.C. (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 160 pp., $3.50). Meditative and practical discussions of the marks of a good teacher.

The March of the Cross, by Leonard W. Cowie (McGraw-Hill, 1962, 214 pp., $10). Sketchy and uneven history of the Church; with beautiful illustrations of the Church’s buildings, persecutions, leaders, and critical moments.

The World Under God’s Law, by T. Robert Ingram (St. Thomas Press 1962, 123 pp., $3.50). Author appeals to the Ten Commandments to defend our “Christian Society in the United States,” grounded in the Decalogue’s idea of justice and order, against what is asserted to be its only alternative, namely, socialism. While the author scores points, his analysis often lacks precision and his criticisms definable aim.

Handbook of Church Correspondence, by G. Curtis Jones (Macmillan, 1962, 216 pp., $5). Aid and information on how to produce acceptable letters in the church office. The form and appearance of many letters from ministerial pens prove the need of the book.

Bible Giants Tested, by John R. Rice (Sword of the Lord Publishers, 1962, 288 pp., $3). Sermons which trace how grace works in the character of such men as Jacob, Paul, Elijah, and Saul among others.

Symbolism and the Christian Imagination, by Herbert Musurillo, S. J. (Helicon, 1962, 186 pp., $4.95). Author traces the products of imagination as it expressed Christian truth and experience in symbolic forms.

Paperbacks

Motives and Methods in Evangelism, by John R. W. Stott (Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1962, 19 pp., 1 s.). A brief study in biblical principles by a well-known evangelist.

Christians Face the Total Menace of Communism, by Prentiss L. Pemberton (Judson, 1962,108 pp., $1.50). A brief analysis of Communism, Constitutional Democracy, the Christian Faith, and sugtions as to how the latter two can counterattack the former.

Meet the Lutherans, by G. Everett Arden (Augustana, 1962, 74 pp., $1.45). Brief story of Lutherans in North America: worshiping, confessing, dividing, reuniting, serving.

Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, by Roland Allen (Eerdmans, 1962, 179 pp., $1.65). The widely influential book of one of the most significant missionary minds of our time.

Church Dogmatics: A Selection, by Karl Barth, selected and with an Introduction by Helmut Gollwitzer, translated and edited by G. W. Bromiley (Harper, 1962, 262 pp., $1.50). A gentle introduction for those who lack the six months needed to read Barth’s Dogmatics.

Nine Modern Moralists, by Paul Ramsey (Prentice-Hall, 1962, 271 pp., $2.95). A concise summary and critical evaluation of Marx, Sartre, Dostoevski, Maritain, Tillich, R. Niebuhr, H. R. Niebuhr, Cahn, and Brunner.

Pattern and Meaning in History, by Wilhelm Dilthey, edited and with an Introduction by H. P. Rickman (Harper, 1962, 170 pp., $.95). A consideration of the nature of history and of “man in passage” by a man whose influence was and still is considerable. First published in 1961.

Form Criticism, by Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Kundsin, translated by Frederick C. Grant (Harper, 1962, 161 pp., $1.25). Two exemplary essays on Form Criticism as applied to the oral traditions behind the Gospels. First published in 1934.

Judson of Burma, by B. R. Pearn (Edinburgh House Press, 1962, 96 pp., 7s. 6d.; by post 8s.). A worthy story of Judson, minister from Massachusetts, who 150 years ago sailed up the Rangoon to establish Protestant missionary work in Burma.

The Christians of Korea, by Samuel Hugh Moffett (Friendship, 1962, 176 pp., $1.95; cloth $2.95). Delightfully told, highly informative story of Korea and her Christians. American author describes land of his birth and labors.

A History of Immersion, by William L. Lumpkin (Broadman, 1962, 40 pp., $.75). An appeal to history to show that immersion has been the usual mode of baptism.

Free Will, edited by Sidney Morgenbesser and James Walsh (Prentice-Hall, 1962, 171 pp., $1.95). Study of “free will” in Dun Scotus, Hobbes, Augustine, Aquinas, Aristotle, Sartre, and others.

Mark, translation by John W. Beardslee, Jr. (New Brunswick Theological Seminary, 1962, 90 pp., $1.25). With footnotes which are always interesting and sometimes more reflective of personal position than exegesis.

Concern and Response, edited by Margaret Williamson (Friendship, 1962, 222 pp., $3.50). Report of the Second National Conference on the Churches and Social Welfare held in Cleveland in October of 1961.

Nave’s Topical Bible (Condensed Edition), edited by Orville J. Nave (Moody, 1962, 255 pp., $.89). Contains nearly 1000 topics and sub-topics with selected verses of the Scriptures under each to aid Bible study and sermon preparation.

The Christian task force around the world is agreed that in order to survive the twentieth century in portly strength the Christian church needs to accelerate its thrust on every frontier. What imposing obstacles hinder the Christian offensive? What are the main obstructions to Christian initiative?

Each year the News Department ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYsolicits the opinions of 25 leading religious scholars on a timely question of spiritual importance. These replies have become a traditional feature of our anniversary issue. Specifically, this year’s question is:

What, in your opinion, is the chief obstacle to Christian advance in our time?

Here are the replies:

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD, professor emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary: “Apart from sin itself, lack of loyalty to God on the part of professing Christians. As faith’s response to divine grace, supremely at the Cross, increase of loyalty would bring advance in all that we churchmen do to seek first God’s Kingdom and the crown rights of our Redeemer.”

F. F. BRUCE, professor, University of Manchester: “The chief obstacle is Christian reluctance to advance, to leave the comfortable security of the familiar and traditional for the insecurity of the revolutionary and unknown. If Christians showed half the resolution and dedication in the interests of the Kingdom of God that Communists exhibit in the promotion of their cause, the scale of Christian advance would be transformed out of recognition.”

EMIL BRUNNER, professor emeritus, University of Zürich: “The main obstacle is obviously the guilt of the past centuries, namely the Christian mission having been a part of Western imperialism, or to put it more mildly, the Christian mission letting itself be protected by the Western powers. It will take a long time until the memory of this fact is extinguished. The missionary is still ‘the man of the West.’ This is also true in a deeper sense: he is the man with the higher culture. So he believes and for that naive arrogance the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of the servant of God and man, is not understood and not believed. The gospel was and will be believed only where it is lived by men and women who share the life of the most humble ones.”

EMILE CAILLIET, professor emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary: “In our time as in all times, the chief obstacle to Christian advance is a loss of first love grounded in proud self-assertion.”

EDWARD JOHN CARNELL, professor, Fuller Theological Seminary: “A Christian seldom knows how to harmonize his Sunday faith with the scientific naturalism of which he is a part Monday through Saturday. This inability suggests that society can get on quite well without the Gospel. For example, contemporary science tends to obscure the distinction between man as agent and man as sinner. Psychologists arise in court and contend that the accused is really sick, and that he should be viewed with the same want of judgment as one would view a cripple. Hence, the gospel of forgiveness is not really attacked as false; it simply is dismissed as irrelevant.”

GORDON H. CLARK, professor, Butler University: “The chief obstacle to Christian advance in our time, in my opinion, is the apostacy of the large denominations as shown in their unwillingness to insist on the complete truth and inerrancy of the Word of God written, the Bible. When the truth of Scripture is tested by foreign criteria and is reduced to symbolism, myth, or saga, there is no Christian message left.”

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

THE MOST CRITICAL SCIENTIFIC ISSUE

What is the most critical issue that modern science poses to the Christian church today?

President Henry Weaver, Jr., of the American Scientific Affiliation asked a number of leading Christian scholars and scientists for “an offhand, one-sentence answer.” He reported the findings in his presidential newsletter and granted permission toCHRISTIANITY TODAYto publish them in connection with its own annual scholars’ symposium.

“I think that among students and the more ‘intellectual’ portion of the country, the biggest challenge to religion today comes not from any questions of the content of either science or religion, but rather from questions about their methods—in particular, the assumption that the methods of science are the only road to knowledge.”—Dr. Ian Barbour, associate professor of religion and physics and chairman of the department of religion, Carleton College.

“It seems to me that the main problem has to do with the ultimate end or purpose of science. What are the scientists doing? We are living, as you know, in a scientific world, that is, the world which is dominated in almost all areas by scientific achievement. The question is really a religious question insofar as it raises the question of final purpose.”—Dr. J. Lawrence Burkholder, associate professor of pastoral theology, Harvard Divinity School.

“Inasmuch as Christianity is centered in the atonement of Christ, the most critical issue is the relation of the sin of Adam to the atonement of Christ, as set forth in Romans 5:12–21, as this relationship may be affirmed, doubted, or denied by the theories of the origin of the human race.”—Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., dean of graduate faculty, Covenant College and Theological Seminary.

“While scientists solely ruled by their intellect submit to the factualness of events which seem to defy common sense, theologians too readily reduce the factualness of New Testament Christianity to the mythical—ultimately because their apprehensions of God’s mysteries do not square with the anthropomorphic ways of imagination.”—Dr. Emile Cailliet, professor emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary.

“In my judgment, the most critical issue is this: the origin of the human race. How does the scientific reconstruction harmonize with the account of man’s special creation in the early chapters of Genesis? How much evolution has taken place?”—Dr. Edward John Carnell, professor of ethics and philosophy of religion, Fuller Theological Seminary.

“I might say that the one overwhelming issue is the truth of the Bible. However, I might give a more technical reply by quoting a bit of Ernest Nagel’s presidential address to the American Philosophical Association: ‘The occurrence of events, qualities, and processes, and the characteristic behaviors of various individuals, are contingent on the organization of spatio-temporal located bodies, whose internal structures and external relations determine and limit the appearance and disappearance of everything that happens.… There is no place for the operation of disembodied forces, no place for an immaterial spirit directing the course of events, no place for the survival of personality after the corruption of the body which exhibits it.’”—Dr. Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy, Butler University.

“The most important issue is an understanding of the purpose for which human beings exist, without which they cannot possibly make use of the new power which science provides.”—Dr. C. A. Coulson, professor of mathematics, Oxford University.

“The most critical issue, as I see it, is this: Does the limited methodology on which modern science insists exclude knowledge of the ultimate Real?”—Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

“Modern science, having put into the hands of man unprecedented power for good or evil, while it is itself incapable of providing ethical direction or spiritual power for the use of its discoveries, has placed a new challenge to Christian ethics and Christian living.”—Dr. William Hordern, professor of systematic theology, Garrett Biblical Institute.

“In one sentence I would say that to my mind the most critical issue is whether belief in divine creation can be reconciled to the idea of the origin of life from amino acids or other primitive protein substances.”—Dr. David W. Kerr, associate dean, Gordon Divinity School.

“I would say that the most critical issue posed by modern science is the denial of the supernatural, placing upon the Christian church the burden of proof.”—Dr. Robert M. Page, director of research, U. S. Naval Research Laboratory.

“I feel that the most critical issue is the strong bias against the apprehension of any transcendent or supernatural reality beyond the limits of space, time, and matter which the study and pursuit of science engenders.”—Dr. William G. Pollard, executive director, Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies.

“If science shows us how sentences assert and how they are verified or falsified, how is it that theological sentences assert and how are they verified?”—Dr. Bernard L. Ramm, professor of systematic theology and Christian apologetics, California Baptist Theological Seminary.

“The most critical issue is that of the validation of religious assertions. (The age-old question: How do you know?)”—Dr. George K. Schweitzer, associate professor of chemistry, University of Tennessee.

“I would say that perhaps the most critical question is the age of man and its relationship to the biblical doctrine of creation.”—Dr. Merrill C. Tenney, dean of the Graduate School, Wheaton College.

“While the discoveries of the natural sciences, by widening the horizons of the human mind, must be reckoned among the blessings of Almighty God, it seems to me that the most critical issue is that of taking the new knowledge into its own thinking in such a manner as to do full justice to the supernatural character of its historical faith.”—Dr. G. D. Yarnold, warden, St. Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden, England.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN, headmaster, The Stony Brook School: “It would seem to me to lie in the half-hearted commitment of so many church members. In our land of abundance we have had our Christian impact blunted by softness and selfishness. Only more disciplined Christian living and only surrender to Christ to the extent of personal sacrifice can bring us to the effective service indispensable to Christian advance. Doctrinal soundness is essential, but it must be matched by devoted living. ‘Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ’ is a text we urgently need to put into practice.”

JOHN H. GERSTNER, professor, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary: “Lack of honest preaching. Where there is no vision the people perish. Where there is little honest preaching the people have no vision. Honest preaching is declaring what God has said, all that he has said and nothing but what he has said—in his Word. Such preaching unfortunately would stir up vast controversy. However, this would not stop Christian advance, which has always been ‘through storm.”

CARL F. H. HENRY, Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “The big obstacle to Christian advance today is man’s distrust of the biblical requirements of spiritual regeneration and social justice. Those who try to cushion the current trend of history with only material and secular counterforces unwittingly retard and dishonor Christian enterprise.”

W. BOYD HUNT, professor, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary: “The chief obstacle to Christian advance in our time is our inability to take the offensive creatively in out-thinking and out-living the non-Christian world. This inability is reflected in the ease with which we bind the Word of God by eisegesis, betray Christ’s present lordship of history, convert the koinonia of the Spirit into institutionalism, elevate self-love and the desire for a cheap security above self-forgetful service and mission, see the work of the Holy Spirit in the familiar only, and assume that our perfection in Christ makes us more virtuous than we are.”

W. HARRY JELLEMA, professor, Calvin College: “The chief obstacle, inside as well as outside the Church, is the tendency to identify Christianity with the values of Occidental culture.”

HAROLD B. KUHN, professor, Asbury Theological Seminary: “A major obstacle to Christian advance in our time is the loss of the sense of identity-as-Christian upon the part of much of the Church’s membership. This loss issues in the absence of direction and purpose, and leaves the nominal Christian a poor second to the self-conscious Communist, with his conviction, however vicious and distorted, of the rightness and final triumph of his cause.”

ADDISON H. LEITCH, professor, Tarkio College: “The chief obstacle to Christian advance in our time is ignorance. ‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.’ This ignorance has to do primarily with the Scriptures and, in a secondary way, with creeds, church history, and the meaning of worship. This means that when we attempt to reach people we must repeatedly lay the foundations all over again before we can begin to build.”

C. S. LEWIS, professor, Cambridge University: “Next to the prevalent materialism, for which we are not to blame, I think the great obstacle lies in the dissentiences not only between Christians but between splinter groups within denominations. While the name Christianity covers a hundred mutually contradictory beliefs, who can be converted to it?”

CHARLES MALIK, professor, American University of Beirut: “The chief obstacle to Christian advance in our time is preoccupation with the world on its own terms; therefore the answering by Christians of the economic, social, political, intellectual, technological, and international challenges of our time purely economically, socially, politically, intellectually, technologically, and internationally; the worldly self-sufficiency of Christian leadership; the inadequate return to the original, creative sources of the spirit and mind; the trust in things rather than in the Living God; forgetting that Jesus Christ is really and absolutely Lord and that the world has been radically transformed since and through his Resurrection.”

LEON MORRIS, principal, Tyndale House: “The enemy within. The Church triumphs always and only when it is a singing faith, when its members are enthusiastically committed to Christ with a reckless devotion which counts all well lost if only Christ be served. The prevalence within our churches of a type of Christianity which is respectable, socially-minded, conventional, and thoroughly insipid, is our major obstacle.”

J. THEODORE MUELLER, professor, Concordia Seminary: “The chief obstacle to Christian advance in our time is no doubt unbelief, which manifests itself in the extreme atheism of communistic and other countries; in the stupid liberalism of large areas of Christendom where neither ministers nor hearers take God’s Law and Gospel seriously; and in the tragic political and social corruption of all lands where people, not fearing God, do everything in their selfish interest with which they think they can get by.”

KENNETH L. PIKE, professor, University of Michigan: “As always, pride and rebellion in man—all else peripheral. Continued struggle with secularism (wisdom of the ‘Greeks’) in new forms of mechanism, behaviorism, communism, nationalism. Academic-devotional synthesis needed in personal Christian living, scholarly production, and international impact. Specific problem: 2,000 small languages needing the Scriptures.”

BERNARD L. RAMM, professor, California Baptist Theological Seminary: “The chief obstacle to Christian advance is the American pulpit which represents a hopeless mixture of messages of liberalism, existentialism, sophisticated neo-orthodoxy, and effete orthodoxy. From such a mixture there cannot be New Testament congregations alive with the power of the Gospel.”

W. STANFORD REID, professor, McGill University: “My view is that just as Christ could do no mighty work in Nazareth because of lack of faith, so God today for the same reason leaves us in the doldrums. The churches have become so preoccupied with ‘programs’ of Christian education, social action, money-raising, and so on, that they have come to trust in the programs rather than in God himself. After all, the Church’s hope rests solely in the action of the Spirit of God, but to look at even many evangelical churches one would think that it was the size of the prayer meeting or the length of the prayers that would accomplish things. It may be that we have forgotten that the triune God is personal, not just a hypothesis or an axiom, and we need to look to him as truly our Father in Jesus Christ. We need to have revived within us that faith which enables us in the face of an opposing world still to look to the sovereign God for victory.”

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON, professor, Columbia Theological Seminary: “One of my colleagues answered this question with the one sin. There is the sin of pride in us Christian teachers and preachers that keeps us from being humble enough to listen to the Word of God, to receive and then to proclaim its Gospel. We fail to realize the depth of sin that provokes alienation and estrangement in those about us. We assume that we can reason them into the Kingdom by discoursing on popular subjects. There will be Christian advance when we more humbly testify to Jesus Christ in the way God has ordained, that is, by the faithful exposition of Holy Scripture.”

ANDREW K. RULE, professor emeritus, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary: “It is the lack of an understanding on the part of the majority of church members as to their need for full commitment to Christ and his program.”

HERMANN SASSE, professor, Immanuel Theological Seminary of Adelaide, Australia: “When speaking of ‘Christian advance we should never forget two truths without which the history of the Church cannot be understood. First: There are times when God triumphs by taking away his Word from whole nations (Amos 8:11f.) and by removing the ‘candlestick’ of unfaithful churches. Second: Christ triumphs always first of all in his martyrs who follow him through death into glory (John 12:24ff.). Having said this we can add that the chief obstacle of true Christian advance is the weakness of our faith, our neglect of biblical, Christian doctrine, and the shallowness of our theology and our preaching.”

MERRILL C. TENNEY, dean, Graduate School, Wheaton College: “In my estimation it is the materialism of the ‘Christian’ world. People at large are preoccupied with what the advertisem*nts call ‘gracious living.’ The spirit of sacrifice has been dulled by our common luxuries that we regard as necessities.”

CORNELIUS VAN TIL, professor, Westminster Theological Seminary: “The greatest single obstacle to true progress in the Christian church and in society, except sin in all of us, is the World Council of Churches. It claims to bring the Gospel of God’s sovereign grace in Christ to man. And yet the Christ it worships as Lord is but a projection of the ideals of man. The result is intellectual, moral, and spiritual confusion.”

Church Restoration

The National Council of Churches and the Georgia Council of Churches are collecting gifts to help build new churches for Negro congregations in Georgia whose churches have recently been damaged or destroyed.

Obituaries

Traffic accidents abroad took the lives of two American missionaries last month. Mrs. Louise Bohlert Gaertner, 26, who with her husband and three-year-old daughter had just arrived in Peru to begin work under the Christian and Missionary Alliance, was killed when the family car rammed a stalled truck on a highway between Lima and Chimbote. Miss Dorothy Eileen Edwards, 53, Assemblies of God missionary to India, died after being struck by a car in Bombay.

Mrs. Gaertner was a member of Calvary Presbyterian Church of Queens, New York. Her husband, John, also 26, was critically injured but was expected to recover. The couple were expecting their second child this fall.

Other reported deaths:

The Most Rev. Arthur William Barton, retired Anglican Archbishop of Dublin; in Dublin.

Dr. Charles E. Maddry, former executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board; in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Dr. S. A. Witmer, executive director of the Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges; in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Dr. Walter Penner, executive director of the Southwest Region office of the National Association of Evangelicals; in Whittier, California.

The Prayer Issue

On the eve of a new U. S. Supreme Court session, the chief legal counsel for the New York Education Department virtually ruled out recitation of any prayers or the reading of the Bible for worship purposes in the state’s public schools.

Dr. Charles A. Brind said that if a teacher permitted pupils to recite a prayer aloud the prayer would then become an official one and would be in substantially the same category as the Regents’ Prayer which the Supreme Court outlawed on June 25.

Brind made the remarks only a few days before the Supreme Court reconvened for its 1962–63 session on October 1. The remarks were in a speech before the annual meeting of the State Council of City and Village School Superintendents in Kiamesha Lake, New York. Brind said he merely intended to clarify and not to go beyond a ruling by Dr. James E. Allen Jr., state education commissioner, in which he said that the Hicksville, Long Island, school board could not designate the fourth stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a prayer. The board subsequently decided to have school children merely recite a verse of the national anthem daily and set aside a period for prayer or meditation.

Meanwhile, an initial sampling of public schools in 15 states showed that they were continuing their former practices of prayer and Bible reading without change. The general trend of statements from state and local school officials revealed that they regard the Supreme Court decision as applying only to officially composed prayers.

The court is being asked to consider several related cases this fall from Pennsylvania and Maryland, and possibly from Florida. An appeal from Oregon may determine whether public funds can be employed for the purchase of certain text books for use in parochial schools.

A Gallup poll taken during the summer indicated that the large majority of parents approve of religious observances in public schools.

Asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of religious observances in public schools?” 80 per cent of the parents said they approved, 14 per cent said they disapproved, and six per cent said they had no opinion.

Rejecting Church Aid

By a margin of 28 votes, the House of Representatives rejected last month a $2,345,000,000 college aid measure which included assistance to church-related institutions.

Although the vote (214 to 186) was based on a recommendation to send the bill back to a joint conference committee, key observers on Capitol Hill said its effect was to kill the program. Some sources, however, sought to revive it.

STRANGERS IN SIN TAN ALLEY

As the ladies of the WCTU bid farewell to Miami Beach, housekeepers at the swanky Deauville Hotel took from hiding 450 room wine lists.

“A wonderful convention. A lovely time was had by all,” declared Mrs. Florence Riggle, mentioning not at all the barroom murder at the nearby Place Pigalle burlesque house during the 88th annual meeting of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

“Miami Beach spoiled and wooed us completely,” said the battle-tested organization’s Florida president of the swinging town with its sin tan alley and 203 duly licensed liquor merchants.

So how did the WCTU fare in the camp of the enemy?

“Well, Mac,” said national president Mrs. Fred J. Tooze in the bright vernacular of the day, “we gave them a taste of the other side.”

Vince McGaran couldn’t agree more. He is a Deauville barkeep who used up his vacation in June. For three days the ladies gave him their scowling attention from behind a plate glass window.

“It started to rain once, and I thought we’d get company. Any port in a storm, you know. But uhn, uhn.”

Mrs. Tooze, who drinks her iced tea with lemon (no sugar), was unawed by the Beach’s worldliness. “The tide is changing,” she said. She also recited the motto: “Tremble King Alcohol, we shall grow up.”

Delegates adopted a series of resolutions urging restraints on drinking and smoking and pleading for an end of exploitation of sex and violence in movies, television, and radio. One resolution called on Telstar programmers to keep the communications satellite free of alcoholic beverage advertising.

African Challenge: 100,000,000 Illiterates

October is Protestant Press Month, an occasion to emphasize the Christian role of the printed page. In 1962 this emphasis can easily be thought of in terms of the African continent, where a rising rate of literacy offers unparalleled evangelistic potential. The following report was prepared by missionary-journalist Marjorie Shelley:

Last week a white-headed African chief dug into the pocket of his flowing robe for the subscription price of a newspaper. He immediately turned over the first issue to his young son. The old man cannot read. His child can. Soon that youngster will join others who already rule over the elders who once traditionally swayed Africa. If evangelicals fail to face up to the challenge afforded by this transition, it could well be recorded as one of the most tragic oversights in all of church history.

UNESCO estimates that there are in the African states 100,000,000 people, more than half the population, who cannot read and write in any language. But a great surge toward literacy is now in full swing, and consequently a great craving for literature prevails. The average African is exhibiting an intense desire to learn.

What will the newly-literate read? Is not the intense craving for reading matter a unique vehicle to communicate the Christian message? Will enough Christian literature be forthcoming to satisfy the demand?

At this juncture, there are indications that many evangelical Christians—even some in leadership capacities—have not yet awakened to the broadening horizons of literature work.

Since a UNESCO conference in Addis Ababa last year, hundreds of new classrooms have sprouted up all over the African continent. Some are being built by voluntary labor. By 1970, primary schools will add 17,000,000 readers to the already-literate population. The goal of the African states is universal primary education by 1980.

Governments have already replaced the talking drum with the written word. As numbers of literates increase their agencies for the dissemination of news also mushroom. Groups of African states are establishing inter-African news agencies, information centers, and cooperative journalism training. Typical is the advance made in Conakry, Guinea, where the “Patrice Lumumba Press” has produced 30,000 pieces of literature an hour, much of it for the Communist cause.

Sixty Afro-Asian delegates took part in the second Congress of Afro-Asian Writers held in Cairo last February. In Dakar, UNESCO sponsored journalism classes to train writers for the French-speaking countries. A year ago Ghana sent 50 journalists to Moscow for grooming.

At the end of 1961 Africa was served by 231 dailies, 839 non-dailies, and 1,395 periodicals. By 1975 it is estimated that the demand will have tripled. Some governments are even considering the possibility of enrolling and training young people into a National Literacy Service, this being perhaps an alternative, in some cases, to military service.

Africa suffers more acutely from a dearth of trained personnel than any other major region of the world. Some countries cannot claim a single qualified journalist.

If you see a cluster of Africans around a large news bulletin, you may be sure the latest edition of the weekly Actualités Ivoiriennes has just been posted. These wall newspapers are issued by the government as a means of dispersing local, national, and international news. They recall the Acta Diurna of imperial Rome, where the forerunner of modern news media made its debut. Many who gather cannot read, but will wait until a literate reads aloud.

While government leaders unite to set up news agencies and training centers, while secular newspapers and magazines increase, while hundreds of literates complete their schooling this year, many evangelicals continue to work in isolated ineffectiveness, offering mimeographed materials to scattered tribal groups.

Some missionaries are asking, “Have we nothing to learn from this secular surge? Why can we not keep pace?”

Signs of awareness appear here and there, offering a measure of encouragement.

An evangelical, Mr. Earl Roe, is currently head of the journalism department at the University of Nigeria. He has unique opportunity to prove the validity of the evangelical position to African leaders.

This fall the Evangelical Literature Overseas organization is sponsoring a series of writing workshops in several African states. A worker will travel between these centers where groups of missions are cooperating in these training sessions. Classes will be geared to teaching missionaries how to write clearly and simply, guiding literature workers in how to teach writing to nationals who will write in the vernacular, and teaching nationals to write for their own people in their own languages.

Most promising are the Africans themselves who want to learn badly enough to go to America. Several African evangelicals are already studying journalism in United States universities.

Also needed are reading clubs and how-to-do-it booklets geared especially for the newly-literate. Experiences in India have established that people who learn to read by mass literacy campaigns will lapse into illiteracy again if they are not fed a constant stream of special materials.

The Untold Story

Africa looms large in today’s news and nowhere is this fact reflected more dramatically than in the spectacular growth of African studies. Many American universities have such programs, but until recently they were available in only two British universities. In all this spate of academic activity, study of the Christian church plays as yet but a small part quite out of proportion to the importance of Christian influences in African life over the last 150 years.

Moreover, although Christian influence is necessarily studied by anthropologists, secular historians and sociologists, there is a sad dearth of worthy study from within by theologians and church historians. By far the greater part of African church history, for instance, is still to be written.

In view of the vast mission literature extant, such a statement may occasion surprise, but much of that literature has been written primarily to inspire and provoke emulation: worthy objects, and often worthily achieved.

However, out of a yet unfilled need there has grown the Society for African Church History, which is not yet a year old. At a recent sectional meeting in London, a very representative group considered papers which explored source materials for African church history and problems of missionary land purchase.

The society’s president is the veteran scholar, Professor C. P. Graves, whose monumental Planting of Christianity in Africa has earned him the title of “the Eusebius of Africa.” Its chairman is the well-known Ghanaian Christian, Mr. F. L. Bartels. Membership is open to all who wish to further the study of past and present Christian trends on the African continent.

J. D.

Converted Ballrooms

The British are given to identifying events by the locale in which they occur. The annual convention held in the Lake Country town of Keswick is called simply “Keswick”; the Billy Graham London Crusade in 1954 at Harringay Arena has long since failed to be called anything but “Harringay.”

Since 1954, Filey—the name of a small village on the Yorkshire Coast—has come to signify the summer’s outstanding Christian assembly. Filey is the site of one of Britain’s holiday king Billy Butlin’s resort centers. There is a gigantic outdoor swimming pool, a heated indoor pool, a huge amusem*nt park with rides of every description, roller skating rinks, dance halls, a complete shopping center, a post office, snack bars by the score, endless lines of chalets, and miles of golden sand beach reached by an aerial cable car.

Every September since 1954, when the Movement for World Evangelization chose Butlin’s Filey for their first annual Christian Holiday Crusade, the Christians have returned.

This year the enrollment topped 4,300, with several hundred additional visitors coming in for a day at a time. Speakers included Larry Love of the Billy Graham team; British evangelical leaders George Duncan, Victor McManus, David Shepherd, A. Skevington Wood; and the perennial Lindsay Glegg, founder and patron saint of the camp.

With more than 4,000 campers, who cannot leave the grounds except for most unusual circ*mstances, the Filey week is now the largest evangelical conference of its kind in the world.

The theme of this year’s speakers was “Assurance,” and the campers, young and old, quickly got down to business in the sessions, which had to be divided and run simultaneously in two “converted” ballrooms. There were occasional invitations for salvation decisions, as well as calls for commitment. An air of sincerity pervaded every activity—with occasional periods of unrestrained hilarity in the swimming pool, tennis court, or cricket field—and the speakers in their after-hour discussions agreed that there had been some remarkable achievements for the Lord.

J. B.

Theories On Peace

Churchmen from North America’s most ecumenical denomination came up with some dubious strategy for peace last month. Their boldest plea: gradual transfer of national sovereignty by all countries to internationally-recognized bodies like the United Nations and the World Court.

The proposal came in a resolution adopted by delegates to the 20th biennial General Council of the United Church of Canada, which was formed in 1925 as a union of Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists and which is the largest Protestant denomination in the dominion. Also recommended as steps toward peace were (1) continued opposition to nuclear weapons, (2) self-determination for all peoples, and (3) extension of the freedom of religion, press, speech and assembly.

The world government proposal, however, did not stir nearly as much controversy as a speech by the retiring moderator, Dr. Hugh A. McLeod.

“Our church will doubtless concern itself,” said McLeod, “to determine whether immigration must continue to operate overwhelmingly as in the past 10 years to make Canada predominantly Roman Catholic.”

“Perhaps Roman Catholics have been the only eligible immigrants available in large numbers, and, as people, they are doubtless estimable and capable of greatly enriching our nation. But as members of a church which everywhere favors the establishment of a monolithic infallible authority under Rome, they may herald and achieve the end of liberty as we have known it.”

The day after McLeod made the statements, the mayor of London, Ontario, where the United Church met, raised an objection in his welcoming address to the 390 delegates.

“I deplore statements from one religion against another,” said Mayor H. Gordon Stronach, “And I deplore such statements originating in our city. We shouldn’t have one Christian church trying to destroy another.”

Census figures released recently show that in the last 10 years Roman Catholics in Canada have increased by more than 40 per cent. For the first time in history they outnumber Protestants—8,532,479 to 8,531,574. United Church membership stands at 3,664,008, about 20 per cent of the population.

Elected to succeed McLeod was Dr. James R. Mutchmor, 70, who for 25 years has served as secretary of the church’s board of evangelism and social service.

The General Council of the United Church was told by its Committee on Union that talks with Canada’s Anglicans are still bogged down over the problem of ordinations. The talks have been in progress off and on for 20 years. The Presbyterians who stayed out of the 1925 merger also have been talking with Anglicans, but there have been no three-way negotiations.

In other action, delegates asked the Canadian government to legalize the dissemination of birth control information and devices, but stressed that they were not in favor of indiscriminate or irresponsible distribution of anti-conception materials or methods.

Also adopted was a 60,000-word report urging liberalization of Canadian divorce laws to include grounds other than adultery. At the present time, adultery is, for all practical purposes, the only legally-recognized grounds for divorce in Canada. The report said this situation actually encouraged adultery or falsification of adultery evidence. The report called on the government to appoint a commission to consider three other grounds—desertion for three years, gross cruelty (physical and mental), and insanity that cannot be cured after five years of treatment.

One resolution warned young people against the “great dangers” often caused by “extravagant cigarette advertising.” Another statement condemned commercial interests or sports which destroy family unity on Sunday.

The General Council raised the minimum salary for the denomination’s ministers to $3,950 annually, an increase of $150, plus travel allowances and a furnished manse.

Ecumenical Series

Aware that the Second Vatican Council and baseball’s World Series are prime attention-getters, a clever promoter in Sarnia, Ontario, blended the two themes for optimum impact. Result was a ball game billed as Canada’s “Ecumenical World Series” which saw Roman Catholic clergy outlast Protestants, 21 to 20, despite a home run by a stray rabbi who cast his lot with the losers. Proceeds went to a Roman Catholic youth camp.

Pentecostal Gains

Membership in the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada soared from 95,131 to 143,877 in the last 10 years, according to a report presented at the PAC’s 23rd biennial General Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, last month. Despite the increase in membership, a decrease in missionary staff has been so extensive that a number of fields are said to be short of competent staff. The report showed 115 active missionaries in 1961 and only 95 this year.

A Rousing Start

Billy Graham’s latest South American crusade got off to a rousing start on September 25 when the evangelist addressed a throng estimated at 25,000 at Pacaembu Stadium in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Some 500 persons recorded decisions for Christ at the first service.

The preceding day Graham spoke to some 1,400 pastors, missionaries, and religious educators. Some 350 churches in the Sao Paulo area cooperated in the crusade. The Rev. Walter Kaschel, a Sao Paulo Baptist minister, served as interpreter for Graham.

Prior to his leaving the United States, Graham paid a visit to the White House at the invitation of President Kennedy. Graham’s visit coincided with that of former President Eisenhower and the three spent 10 minutes together discussing world affairs.

A Stubborn Faith

American church leaders returning from a three-week visit to Russia declared that the “continued existence of vital churches in the Soviet Union, despite all party pressures and campaigns against them, is one of the forces that may in the long run modify Soviet ideology and policy.”

In a prepared statement the 13 churchmen paid special tribute to the “stubborn faith and faithfulness of millions of ordinary Soviet citizens.”

This was the second such delegation to visit Russia under auspices of the National Council of Churches. The first visit was in 1956 and was later returned by a group of Soviet church leaders. Another visit by Russian churchmen is scheduled for 1963. Archbishop Nicodim, head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department of External Church Relations, is expected to head the group.

Prayer For A City

Christian leaders in Denver faced up to the city’s current crime wave with a “Week of Prayer” proclaimed by Mayor Dick Batterton.

Two main events of the week were a town prayer meeting held in front of the City and County Building and a mayor’s prayer breakfast at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. More than 2,500 gathered for the town prayer meeting. The mayor spoke and police leaders presented a plaque with police force signatures indicating their rededication to civic responsibility.

“I am certain,” said Police Chief James Slavin, “that the Lord knows how much we in the police department need his help as we attempt to make Denver a safer and better city.… The degree of ultimate success all of us can produce by our efforts are minute as compared to what can be accomplished if he put his arm about us.”

Pioneering Protestants

The Protestant Council of the City of New York unveiled plans this month for a multi-million dollar Protestant Center at the New York World’s Fair to be held in 1964 and 1965.

Architectural highlight of the structure will be the “Court of Protestant Pioneers” surrounded by 34 memorial columns, each dedicated to a pioneer in the Protestant movement. An 80-foot cross-shaped tower will rise from the court.

The Protestant Council is now leasing space to church groups and soliciting financial support from Protestants throughout the country. The center will occupy a 76,416-foot site which has been donated by the World’s Fair Corporation.

Program director for the center is Professor J. Marshall Miller of Columbia University, a partner in Miller Associates—Planning Consultants.

Theme of the center will be, “Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.”

U. N. Church Center

A public cornerstone laying ceremony was held last month for the 12-story Church Center at the United Nations.

The $2,000,000 center is being financed by The Methodist Church, which has offered it for the use of denominational and interdenominational agencies. Dr. Ernest L. Inwood, director of U. N. programming of the National Council of Churches, said the center “will be a Christian symbol, a constant Christian witness, a home of Christian hospitality, a place of Christian service, and a center of Christian education in international relations radiating across the United States and overseas.”

Main speaker for the ceremony was Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, newly-elected president of the U. N. General Assembly. He is a Moslem.