Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-04-21
HONESTY OF DISSENT.
Gail Hamilton DiscOurses on the New
Theology and Its
RIGHT TO RESTORE THE TRUTH.
Christ Destroyed the Law as the Day
Destroys the Dawn.
WAS SAINT Paul A DOUBLE-DEALER? !?
RIGHT TO RESTORE THE TRUTH.
WAS SAINT PRUL A DOUBLE-DEALER'
WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPArcH.1

|
new orthodoxy must be honest Robert
Elsmere's idea of honesty compels him to
| give up church and home and run. 1t is
naturally difficult for him to understand
how Prot. Egbert Smyth's honesty can COM
pei him to stay in Andover and fight. The
old orthodoxy walls that the new orthodoxy
even "affects" the use OF the old-tashioned
tunes, and Mr.. Charles Voysey, transferring
to the extreme left that mental quality
which on the extreme right is called
bigotry, says:
THE OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY.
They scandalously, and with Intellectual
fraud, tried to foist a new meaning into the
old horrible Christian phrases, meaning
the exact opposite of the hitherto accepted
sense I reject these miserable subter-
fuges y because the process OF in
depreciation is fraudulent"
But the new theology is right in refusing
to sacrifice to the old one single word. To
the truth it is willing to sacrifice all words,
to falsehood none If human fallibility for
thousand years has given false meaning
to phrase, the new theology has still
divine right to throw out the false meaning
and restore the true. The truth has no
statute of limitations. The truth does not
lose proprietorship in a formula because
falsehood has been an unhindered tenant for
centuries
The right to retain old words is inalien-
able. What as to the wisdom?
There can be no greater difference be-
tween the old theology and the new than
there was between the Mosaic theology and
the Christian theology. The Christian
system involved the complete overthrow of
priesthood, temple, altar, sacrifice; the
whole system not only, but the very strue-
ture of Jewish worship. The clever and
learned Pharisees, scribes, doctors of the
law saw this clearly. The conservatives of
that day and city were not to polite, so self
restrained, so moderate as our conservatives
at Des Moines and Springfield and Andover
and they protested against the new theology
to the point of mobs and scourge and cruel
| fixion for the new Theologian; and all the
while to their charges He constantly pro-
tested: "Thinkest thou am come to de-
stroy the law and the prophetsl I am not
come to destroy but to fulfil"
How could He honestly say that? He
preached religion which not only has sub
verted, but which was intended to subvert
the whole Jewish ritual, the priests who ad-
/
performed. Must there not rest upon all
minds a painful mIsgiving that Christ, for
love of a quiet lite and fear of opposition,
may have forgotten those high principles of
| uprightness which DIR. Dana of old times
\ inculcated upon Prof. Park, and which
i Prof. Park in his turn enjoins upon Prof
Smyth? Does he not incur the suspicion of
intellectual fraud in putting new meaning
| into the old words?
But Christ saw further, deeper, keener,
wider than the Pharisees, and He spoke as
He had a right to speak, from His own broad
vision and not from their narrow one. They
saw the destruction in His teachings, but
not the construction. He had not come to
destroy the law. He had come to fulfil the
very object for which the law had been Or
iginally established.
BUILDING UP NOT TEARING DOWN.
1t is true that this fulfilment involved the
destruction of the law, but this destruction
was not the object of his coming, ard, still
more and vitality to the purpose, it was not
hended by force from without, but gentle
dissolution by inward necessity natural,
healthy and painless absorption. The OBJ
iect of the law was to establish communica-
ton between man and his Maker for his own
upbuilding in righteousness. Christ came
to bring more perfect communication, and
the more perfect must in time disestablish
the less perfect. Man had built q hard and
even hateful and cumbrous way to God, a
way of burnt offerings and brutal slaughter
and costly temple and ceremonial priest.
Christ came to say: "I am the way'-the
way of love-that potent alembic in which
rite and violence and selfshness should be
forever dissolved. Christ destroyed the law
as day destroys the dawn.
The great apostles wrought in the same
spirit. They did not tear down the old as a
necessary preparation for building the new
on q mechanical theory of ecclesiasticism.
They proceeded on the spiritual theory and
developed the new, out of everything that
was eternal in the old and not
only on the old of the Mosaic law,
but on the old of the pagan nations as we'll.
Indeed it was Paul's boast that he became
all things to all men. Whoever wrote the
Ep;stle to the Hebrews employed the tactics
of infusing the gospel Of Christ into the
Hebrew law. He did not preach "Abolish
your priesthood, throw down your altars,
burn your temples, they are outgrown. u
He said: "Christ is your High Priest for.
ever. We also have an altar and to dc
good is its sacrifice" He did not scorn-
fully repudiate the centuries-old covenant
of Abraham, so dear to the Jews, calling il
a clumsy ana imperfect make-shift. He
directed attention 10 the better convenani
in Christ; that the divine law should be
written, not on tables of stone, but in theil
minds and in their hearts.
PAUL WENT TO THE MARK.
B7 the same tactics, when Paul was Civ.
ing his charge to Timothy there was an
utter change of policy. No beating about
the bush, no careful Difference to long asso-
Citations, no cautious verbal manipulation.
He went straight and swift to the mark
s'There is one mediator between God and
men-the man, Christ Jesus, blessed and
only Potentate, King. of kings, and Lord Of
lords, who only hath immortality." We
have not word about altar or sacrifice, but
short, sharp and decisive: "Let everyone
who nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniouity." Paul was careful of his beloved
sons stomach and he was careful of his own
cloak; but he did not take the smallest
pains to walk softly oveE Timothy's ecclesi-
astical prejudices. He had himself edu-
Gated that young man, and knew that he had
no right to have any.
But when he left his well beloved Timo-
thy and addressed the stranger Athenians
he was again all suavity and tact and con-
sideration; addressing them not indeed
with Hebrew metaphor any more than with
the Timothean brusquerie, but with the
Greek technique. Just as he had poured
his gospel into Hebrew forms for the He
brews, so now he poured it into Greek forms
at Athens, knowing that the forms were
temporal and frangible, but the gospel is
eternal. As he had talked Of high priest
and sacrifice to the Jews, he now talked OF
Zeus and poetry TO the Greeks, declaring
unto them not the God of Abraham. Isaac
and Jacob, whom they would probably