Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1910-04-26
he Reaction Has Begun
Which Promises Great Revival

| For some time past there have been
currents of thought and courses of con-
duct prevalent in the most enlightened
of the Christian nations that have alarm
ed the faithful and led many others to
] become unfaithful A corrosive ration
alism has been applied to the fundament-
al doctrines of Christianity, and it has
been common for men to be accounted
great as religious teachers just in pro-
portion as they denied much and believed
| little. 1t has been an era in which the
| theological retailer of small stocks OF
| fancy notions has outranked the dealer
| In staple and indispensable truth. or
| course. this movement in thought has
| had it's effect upon public morals; for
! thought, whether good or bad, always
! affects conduct. When men say, 1T
makes no difference what you believe,
| provided you are sincere" they invaria-
bly, begin to declare also, at makes no
| difference what you do, provided you are
conscientious" And when such shallow
| dogmas are current truth" is made To
(, stand for every sort of false teaching and
| conscience is made to cover every sort
1 of conscienceless behaviour. The final
outcome of such currents is the submerg-
| ence of society In errors of faith and inn
i moralities of conduct, unless reaction
| is brought to pass through which men
are carried back to first principles.
| 1t has seemed for some time that such
| a reaction was scarcely to be hoped for
In our day. Heresy and misconduct have
( held the highest places; novelties in doc
trine have been accounted more desirable
j than old-fashioned truth, and modish
] vice has attempted to laugh plain virtue
/ out of countenance.
| But now there are many signs of re-
| action visible In both Europe and Amer
| lea. Even in Germany, where a rampant
| rationalism has long held sway in many
/ of the universities, men have grown tired
| of such nonsense and are beginning TO
| turn away from it, Very recently many
professors of science in the German uni
versities have turned guns on Haeckei
and his atheistic teachings. Still more
| recently, when one of the destructive
| critics undertook to revive 1.-THE mythical
| theory about Christ, the most learned
| men in Berlin, followed by the unlearn-
| ed people, held great meetings of pro-
| test in the city to declare that the
| German people had not and would not
give up the Saviour of the New Tesla
| ment, whom Luther and the Reformers
| taught them to adore.
In Great Britain the reaction is even
more pronounced than on the Conti-
| nent. 1t was powerfully voiced a few
leweeks ago at the Free Church Council
at Hull, England, by that most scholarly
] and princely preacher, Principal p. T.
| Forsyth. Among other things which he
| is reported as saying is this fine passage:
There should be no countenance, but
| only contempt, for adventures who set
| up violently to discredit and revolution
| ize belief. not only without mastering
! the subject, but without having mastered
| single theological classic or studied
| thoroughly and critically a single book
of the Greek Testament. We ought to
| repel with warmth the claims to teach
of men who inhale their theology out
of their age, as orchids grow with their
| roots in the air instead of planting it
in historic revelation, like the tree of life.
This is not the scorn of orthodoxy for
heresy, but of the competent for the
smatterer who sets up as an authority. 1t
is scorn for amateur guides who offer
short cuts to certainty which all the
labor and science of the saints have
missed"
When has a preacher put more for
chilly the case of those men who are per-
petually prating about what the times
call for and being "up-to-date" than
has DR.. Forsyth is these strong words?
They "inhale their theology out of their
age as orchids grow with their roots in
the air.! That is very good But men
can not live on orchids; those air plants
are interesting as curios mostly. No man
can do any thing to lift up the moral
life of his generation who ''inhales his
theology from the atmosphere of his
times He breathes out simply what he
has breathed in; only, the exhalation is
slightly more foul than the inhalation.
II any man would bless his age he must
descend upon IL with a message from
above II and outside of it.
During all this period of the eclipse
of faith, a strange phenomenon has APP
peared. Men who denied all the central
truths of Christianity have chung most
pertinaciously to the name christian;
they have resented any intimation that
they we're not entitled to the name after
they had renounced the thing. They
have taught in our day precisely the
same things that men taught in the first
century for the purpose of overthrowing
Christianity, and If they had lived In
the first century ii is absolutely certain
they would have attacked the christian
name as well as the christian system;
for so did their predecessors in the apos-
tolic age But now that the once de-
spised name of christian" has become
honorable they seek to wear it as their
badge while denying all that 1t really
implies Against all such insincere eff
forts to get credit under false pretences
Principal Forsyth utters these clear.
ringing, honest words:
LET us be quite clear, both to inquirers
and doubters, that an evangelical Church
rests on the New Testament fact of final
redemption from guilt in Christ's Cross.
however IT may construe theories of the
atonement; that the matter of sin and
its forgiveness. guilt and it's removal, is
the marrow of Christianity; that such
experiences as these, which pervade the
whole evangelical succession from Paul
to Wesley, are not pathological to relig-
ion. but are the true life of the Christian
Church. Let 1t. further, be part of our
attitude to certain phases Of the modern
movement to say this-that If any public
teachers treat evangelical faith, with
ali it's stress on sin. as disease OF
healty-minded religion, and call Christ
lust a man, but what a man.; If they
treat Christ. even when he is believed to
be historical, merely as a great quotation
from the past instead of the very life
of the present; If they say each man Is
Christ. and that Christ made no atone
ment in any other sense than that in
which each man has to make his own;
~ they allure historic and apostolic
Christianity as a rudimentary' phase, and
especially il they dismiss historic Je-
sus-if they do this while All the time