14- Conclusion

CHAPTER XIV CONCLUSION A personal word. The task which has occupied the greater part of my winter resting time has now been accomplished, as far as opportunity affords.

What has been said in these pages is no more than an outline statement of the teaching which has been given from the City Temple pulpit ever since I came into it. There is not a single thought in this book with which my own people are not already quite familiar, and chapter and verse for it can be produced from my published sermons which have been appearing week by week for years past in the Christian Commonwealth and other periodicals. If space had permitted, I should like to have said much more, for necessarily many phases of the subject have had to be left untouched; it has only been possible to deal with those of fundamental importance. For example, I should like to have included some examination of the great question of Miracles, the place of Prayer in Christian experience, and the value and significance of Biblical Criticism. But as it has not been possible to do this I must add a word or two to indicate my position in regard to these matters.

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Miracle. It seems probable that before long we shall see a rehabilitation of belief in the credibility of certain kinds of miracle, and that this rehabilitation will proceed from the side of psychical science.

Already there are signs that this rehabilitation is on the way. The power of mind over matter is being recognised for therapeutic purposes, for instance, in a way hitherto undreamed of, and is receiving a large and increasing measure of attention from the medical profession. This appears to me to throw a considerable amount of light upon the healing ministry of Jesus, which, as the late Professor A. B. Bruce has pointed out, rests upon as good historical ground as the best-accredited parts of the teaching. Given a time and a mental atmosphere in which men expected miracles of this sort, and given a personality of such wonderful magnetic force as that of Jesus, such miracles would be sure to happen. That they did not happen apart from such conditions is evident from such hints as the statement that, “ He could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief.” There are other kinds of miracle recorded in scripture which are not so easily credible, but I am not always prepared to brush them aside as mere childish fancies. As a rule it will be found that they belong to the poetry of religious experience, and that some valuable truth is contained in this particular form of statement. To this order belong the accounts about the horses and chariots of fire on the hillside round about Elisha, the whirlwind in which

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Elijah ascended to heaven, and Jesus walking on the sea. These accounts are forms in which the oriental imagination is, even to-day, wont to clothe truths too great for prosaic statement; they are poetry, not history, and the western mind ought to make allowance for the fact. Sometimes we can discern in scripture records of an event, which to the stolid western imagination seems utterly incredible, a genuine historical truth. Such, for instance, are the passage of the Red Sea a stirring and dramatic incident, thoroughly well told and Joshua commanding the sun and moon to stand still. In the latter case we have two lines of poetry from a book which has been lost, and a comparison with similar poetry in almost any literature gives us a clew to its meaning. The poet represents the old warrior as declaring in magnificent style that the sun of Israel shall not go down, and that day and night shall be alike to him until her enemies are discomfited.

Any reader with a shred of sympathetic imagination ought to be able to feel the force of the sentiment which provoked this utterance without either accepting or rejecting it as a literal statement of fact; the best things which have been written in the books of the world are seldom literal and exact statements of fact. It has been well pointed out that myth and legend are truer than history, for they take us to the inside of things, whereas history only shows us the outside.

Prayer. Prayer is a vital necessity to religious ex 256 THE NEW THEOLOGY perience, and without it no religious experience has ever existed or ever can. It is not primarily petition but communion with God. Our intercourse with our friends does not chiefly consist in asking them for things! But when communion does become petition, there is a real place for it as well as for the answer to such prayer. It is not too much to say that no true prayer has ever gone without its answer. This is quite consistent with the assertion that prayer does not change God; it only affords Him opportunity.

It is impossible to improve on what God already desires for us before we pray, but upon our prayer depends the realisation of that desire. Everything that the soul can possibly need is present beforehand in the eternal reality, and the prayer of faith is like going into a treasure-house and bringing forth from what is contained therein all that the soul needs day by day. Prayer, therefore, cannot be too definite, but it should be as unselfish as the worshipper can make it in order that the highest can operate in response. The same law holds good in this as in all other activities of the soul; selfishness draws away from the source of life, whereas love is instantly at one with infinity. I question whether many people realise the enormous value of definite and systematic prayer; it is the secret of all spiritual power. Everything that we can possibly want is waiting for us in the bounty of God, and what we have to do is to go and take it. “Believe that ye have received them and ye shall have them.’ 1

CONCLUSION 257 The Bible and the young. One thing that urgently needs to be done for the young people in our Sunday-schools and various Christian societies all over the world is to issue a series of well-written popular manuals presenting in succinct form the best results of Biblical Criticism. The way the Bible is taught to young people at present is most regrettable, for in after years it leads them to doubt and distrust the very foundations of Christianity. If the teachers only had a little more intelligent acquaintance with the sources of the scriptures, this danger would be avoided and the Bible would become a far more interesting and helpful book both to young and old. At present it is interpreted by many people in a way which is an insult to the intelligence and harmful to the moral sense. Will anyone seriously maintain that the trickeries of Jacob and the butcheries following the Israelitish invasion of Canaan, not to speak of the obscenities which are to be found in so many parts of the Old Testament, are healthy reading for children or a mark of divine inspiration? Is it not time we adopted the more excellent way of facing the truth about the Bible records and presenting what is valuable in such a way as to help and not to hinder the growth of a true knowledge of the relations of God and man? In conclusion, let me say emphatically that no one but myself is responsible for a single word in this book. Among the many wild and unjust criticisms which have been published concerning my views, 258 THE NEW THEOLOGY none is wider of the mark than that I have borrowed from this man or that in my statement of them. I am not conscious of owing a scintilla of my theology to any living man. In so far as it coincides with anyone else’s views I am thankful, for it shows that the same eternal Spirit of Truth is speaking to others than myself. But I hope I may be permitted to say with due humility that in thinking out my position, “ I conferred not with flesh and blood.” Perhaps some people will maintain that this makes my teaching all the worse, but if so I cannot help it. It can hardly be denied that in its main bearing, to say no more, it is seen to be rising spontaneously in every part of the civilised world. Again, no thinker can ever succeed in completely closing the circle of his system of thought, and I cannot claim to be an exception. But I trust it will be seen that what is contained in this book is at least a self-consistent whole: every arc of the circle implies every other.

It only remains to reiterate my conviction that the movement represented by the New Theology is only incidentally theological at all; it is primarily a moral and spiritual movement. It is one symptom of a great religious awakening which in the end will reinspire civilisation with a living faith in God and the spiritual meaning of life. If what I am trying to do can contribute in any way toward this grand result, I shall be humbly thankful to the Giver of all good.