18. THE KINDRED OF NEW THEOLOGY

are making their influence felt. Of these perhaps the most outspoken is Archdeacon Wilberforce, but he is by no means alone.

"A movement has begun in the Lutheran Church. It has existed for a long time in French Protestantism.

"In the Congregational and other Evangelical Churches of England and America the same attitude is being taken by many who are not even aware that the name 'New Theology' is being applied to it" (p. 13).

Here is the plain declaration that, in various companies, under different standards, and along different but converging roads, the religious crowds are pressing towards a common goal. That goal has but recently burst upon their rapturous vision, but it was foreseen and foretold long ago by the seer of Patmos. Commercialism in a religious garb, an ecclesiastical Trust, a world-wide Confederacy embracing all human interests, is now the ideal which arouses the enthusiasm of mankind and inspires the movements which are stirring in all the religious bodies of Christendom.

Some little mental effort is required in order to realize the significance of all this; and the reader will do well to ponder these things, and try to grasp the meaning of the strange and ominous fact that, in systems so widely different and so long bitterly antagonistic, there has suddenly sprung up a common ideal, which is of such potency as to start them all in motion along converging lines towards a common destination. There has been nothing like it in the history of mankind; and it follows necessarily that the outcome must be something transcending all previous human experience.

As already stated, Mr. Campbell's New Theology is not a stable system, but a rapidly shifting movement. Many of its doctrines are too extravagant and foolish even for this unthinking and credulous generation. We are therefore not concerned with its details (which will quickly disappear), but with its tendencies. Despite all its vagaries, crudities, and blasphemies, it is doing the work of spreading the ideals of religious and industrial Federation on the basis of the Divinity of Man in quarters where those ideals might not otherwise find ready acceptance.

New Theology also furnishes one of many indications that the history of corrupt religion has now entered upon its final stage. From it we may learn that Commercialism has now supplied to Religion the fundamental principle by which the former is regulated, namely, that the purveyors of doctrine must be controlled, like the purveyors of all other commodities, by the universal "law of supply and demand." On every side we see evidences of the recognition of this "law" in the conduct of ecclesiastical institutions. What the

CHRISTIAN MINISTER & INFIDEL EDITOR 85 public demands, these “advanced theologians,” who cater to it, give all diligence to supply. Their study is, not to show themselves “approved unto God, rightly dividing the Word of truth,” but to show themselves approved unto men, “handling the Word of God deceitfully,” or setting it aside altogether.

But, what is perhaps the most striking thing about the New Theology is its claim of kinship with Socialism of the sort represented by Mr. Robert Blatchford of the London *Clarion*, who publicly, and even exultingly, avows himself an infidel. We are confronted, then, in the New Theology, with a religion which, while retaining the name “Christian,” yet is in full accord in every essential matter with infidel Socialism. Surely it is but a short step from this to a system in which all shades of religious opinion shall be blended harmoniously in subordination to the great principle of the Solidarity of Mankind, or the Brotherhood and Divinity of Man.

Mr. Blatchford, in reviewing Mr. Campbell’s book, declares that its main doctrines are but paraphrases of those advocated in his own book, *God and My Neighbour*.$^{1}$ He says:—

“Mr. Campbell is a Christian minister, and I am an infidel editor; and *the difference* between his religion and mine is *too small to argue about*. But I sail under the Jolly Roger.”

$^{1}$ See *Literary Digest* for June 8, 1907.

The "New Theology," says Mr. Blatchford, is "God and My Neighbour with the soft pedal on. It is Thomas Paine in a white tie . . . the Ingersoll fist in a boxing glove."

Mr. Blatchford is at pains to point out the full agreement in matters of substance between his own teachings and those of the New Theology, saying:—

"Mr. Campbell calls nature God. I call nature nature.

"Mr. Campbell thinks we ought to have some form of supernatural religion, and that we ought to associate with Christ. I prefer a religion of humanity without idolatry.

"Mr. Campbell thinks Jesus the most perfect man that ever lived. I think there have been many men as good, and some better. But beyond these differences I think I may venture to say there is nothing Mr. Campbell believes that I deny, and nothing I believe that he denies. Beyond these differences I am as much a Christian as is the Rev. R. J. Campbell; and the Rev. R. J. Campbell is as much an infidel as is the editor of the Clarion.

"Mr. Campbell rejects the doctrines of the fall and the atonement. He denies the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth, and the resurrection. He denies the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible, and he rejects the idea of divine punishment and an everlasting hell. So do I.

A STRANGE COMBINATION

"Mr. Campbell abandons the orthodox theory of sin, and says that selfishness is sin, and that unselfishness is morality and salvation. So do I.

"These are bold assertions, and perhaps Mr. Campbell may think them too sweeping; but the proof is easy. The best proof is a comparison of the 'New Theology' with my 'infidel' books."

Here, then, in the course of the progress of "this present evil age" (Gal. i. 4) we have arrived at a brand of "Christianity" which differs so little from the most radical variety of infidel Socialism that the points of difference are "too small to argue about"; indeed they are far less important than many existing differences between members of the same religious denomination. It may be fairly inferred from this that we are not far from a religio-commercial basis upon which all men who reject the Word of God and the Christ of God can solidly unite, and unite in such strength as to assume the complete control and direction of the religious and secular affairs of a consolidated human society.

THE NEW THEOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND

We now cast our eyes upon the American continent in order to take note of the progress which, in this newer civilization, has been made by the ideals of the unification of mankind, and the consolidation of all human interests.

New England was once the home of sound doctrine. Its rocky soil was originally populated by men who feared God, implicitly believed and submitted to the authority of His Word, and rested their hope of salvation wholly upon the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary. Such were the religious convictions of the men who laid the foundations of the New England commonwealths, and such have been the convictions likewise of their descendants for many generations.

One of the oldest and best known churches in this important section of the American Republic is the "Old South Church" of Boston; and its name has long been associated with sturdy orthodoxy.

The present pastor of that Church, Dr. George A. Gordon, has lately contributed to the *Harvard Theological Review*$^{1}$ (an Unitarian quarterly) a notable article, significantly entitled "The Collapse of the New England Theology." A few extracts from this article will afford a good indication of the present drift of

$^{1}$ April 1908.

COLLAPSE OF NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY 89 religious thought in New England, and of the stage of departure from the old beliefs at which this movement has now arrived. And what is more pertinent to the present subject, these extracts will show what headway has been made (in what was once the centre of orthodoxy, and still is perhaps the centre of intelligence and learning of the American continent) by the movement which aims at the exaltation of Man and the formation of the great system of the end-times. The very title of the article is deeply significant; for whether one regards what has occurred as a calamity or as a benefit, in either view of the matter the word "collapse" indicates that the change which has taken place is one of the most radical sort.

Dr. Gordon might, more aptly and more honestly, have entitled his article the "Collapse of the Doctrine of Christ," for that is what he assumes to be a fact, and what he undertakes to explain. He does not undertake to prove the collapse, but assumes it as a fact too palpable to require proof. Apparently Dr. Gordon deemed it expedient to make some concession to the few who still cling to the old beliefs, and so he has partly veiled the purport of his article under the title quoted above.

Mr. Huxley adopted a similar expedient when he gave in America a course of lectures attacking the Genesis account of Creation. In doing this, he discreetly directed his attack against what he called the "Miltonic Cosmogony." But though he diplomatically gave it this name, the teaching he was opposing was not that of Milton, but that of the Sacred Scriptures. In like manner it doubtless seemed to Dr. Gordon that a "Christian" minister, in attacking the doctrine of Christ, would do well to call that doctrine by another name. Hence the title "Collapse of the New England Theology."

Dr. Gordon explains that what he means by the "New England Theology" is the teaching of Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Nathaniel W. Taylor, and other godly preachers, mighty in the Scriptures, men who received and preached the Bible "not as the word of man, but as it is in truth the Word of God" (1 Thess. ii. 13), and who proclaimed forgiveness of sins and eternal life through faith in the crucified and risen Son of God. This theology, which is virtually "the faith once for all delivered unto the saints," has, according to Dr. Gordon, undergone a total collapse; and taking the collapse for granted as an obvious and indisputable fact, he undertakes to show what brought it about.

In pursuing this subject, we will consider—first, the fact of the change which Dr. Gordon calls a "collapse"; second, the explanation he gives for the collapse; and third, the new system of theology which is supplanting that which has collapsed.

I. THE "COLLAPSE"

That Dr. Gordon has good reason for assuming his premises will not, probably, be very seriously disputed,

A GREAT DEPARTURE it being a conspicuous fact that the churches of New England have, in large and increasing numbers, departed from the preaching of the truths proclaimed so powerfully and fruitfully by those great preachers of a bygone day. The people who "support" the ministers have a perfect right, according to the accepted standards of the day, to the kind of preaching which suits them. It would be manifestly unreasonable to expect them to "pay for" the kind of preaching they dislike; and it is quite certain that the cultured and prosperous classes of to-day will not endure the doctrines of the old New England theology.

Still, making full allowance for all this, it may be questioned whether Dr. Gordon is justified in describing the great change which has undoubtedly taken place as a "collapse." Students of Scripture will readily identify it as "the apostasy" (2 Thess. ii. 3) which is to take place before the Man of Sin should be revealed. This condition of Christendom upon which Dr. Gordon comments, and which the Bible foretells, was to be characterized, according to Scripture, by intolerance of sound doctrine on the part of church-goers, and by their heaping to themselves teachers, instead of receiving the teachers sent to them from God. "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own desires shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables" (2 Tim. iv. 3, 4).

While many would warmly deny that the old New England preachers proclaimed "the truth," and that the successors to their pulpits have substituted "fables," no one can fairly dispute that the church attendants of to-day have "turned away their ears" from the doctrines to which their fathers listened, that they have "given heed" to doctrines which involve the contradiction of everything formerly held to be essential; and further, that they uniformly exercise the right of "heaping to themselves teachers" who are strictly held to the duty of teaching the things which their ears itch to hear.

Dr. Gordon himself fully recognizes, and is in entire accord with, the principles of Democracy. The "rights of man" is the great ruling principle of the day (i.e. of "Man's Day"); and unquestionably among the rights upon which men most stubbornly insist is the right to have the kind of teaching which is acceptable to the majority, namely, the teaching which exalts man, extols his achievements, lauds his progress and his sciences, and prophesies the glorious outcome of his heroic endeavours. This popular demand might be accurately voiced in the words of the prophet Isaiah, who speaks of "children that will not hear the law of the Lord; which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak