Chapter IV. Theology And The Revival.

THEOLOGY in its ecclesiastical sense does not occupy the place it did thirty or even twenty years ago. This is true not only of Wales in particular, but it is general. In Wales the social and political aspect of Christianity has overshadowed the spiritual and theological. I am alluding here more especially to Nonconformity. By “social” I do not mean socialistic, though socialism in its extreme or militant form, with all its sceptical implications, has made rapid progress in the Principality of late years. There was a time when the theological interest was uppermost in the pulpit, in the Sunday School, and in the societies for religious experiences. Such was the rivalry of creeds that it restricted social intercourse, and actually governed the terms of friendship. A marriage between two people of different denominations was a seven days’ wonder, because prohibited both by custom and conditions of membership. A daughter of Israel (Baptist) was not permitted to stand at the altar by the side of a Philistine (Methodist). In the workshop, during the dinner-hour, and in the market-place, men argued about the merits of their respective faiths. It would have astonished the “immanentists” and “transcendentists” of this hour had they been privileged to hear the discussions that used to take place in some of our Welsh Bible classes years ago—classes composed of miners, copper-workers, tinplate-workers, and others—the cream of our churches. Theology was an entrancing subject for them. During the week they read and prepared notes as if they were students of some theological seminary. The trend of thought was always conservative. Giants were born in those days—men of vigorous intellect and wonderful grasp of the fundamentals of Christianity—men versed in the metaphysics of doctrine, both laymen and ministers. But the theological aspect of Christianity has taken a subordinate place. True, the Rev. R. J. Campbell has stirred the waters; his book was largely bought and read; his name is often mentioned from the pulpit, and his theory discussed. But, broadly speaking, traditional theology has had very little interest for the members of our Welsh Free Churches during recent years. It is due partly to the fact that they are indifferent, and partly to their objection to the imposition upon them, as a rigid law, of what is not an embodiment of their own personal conviction and aspiration. Authority was never at such a discount as it is to-day, and there is a greater aversion in the popular mind to doctrinal authority than to any other: it is so far apart from the basis of their own religious life. To them Christ, as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, is a reality; but they claim perfect freedom to form their own intellectual interpretation as to what it implies. One of the most striking things about the Revival of 1904—5 was the comparative absence of teaching. That there was theology in the Revival there cannot be any doubt; but it was visionary and ecstatic in its character, and unconscious in its origin and trend. It is possible to read into the Revival what was not there, and a trained theologian might be disposed to interpret this aspect of the upheaval according to the orderliness of his own well-balanced intellect; but there was little theology of a definite and systematic kind. The theological hemisphere of the Revivalist was very circumscribed. He was not a trained theologian. He knew nothing of psychology in its application to religious experience. He did not seem to have the capacity of projecting his mind into the beliefs, ideals and hopes of other men and times. True, he gave us fragments of theology in broken and disjointed sentences. It was spasmodic, and not the outcome of any system of thought or of experimental philosophy. It is essential that we should distinguish between the theology of the Revival and the theology of Evan Roberts, for in the main they are separate and distinct. Judging from the most popular hymns sung, it is safe to say that the Revival had the following leading characteristics: — The love of God: “Dyma gariad fel y moroedd.” This is the first line of a Welsh hymn by the late Rev. W. Rees, D.D. (Hiraethog). In a small collection of tunes and hymns entitled “Songs of Victory,” published by Messrs. Hughes & Sons, Wrexham, there is given this English version of Mr. Rees’s hymn :— “Wondrous love, unbounded mercy! Vast as oceans in their flood: Jesus, Prince of Life, is dying— Life for us is in His blood! Oh! what heart can e’er forget Him? Who can cease His praise to sing? Wondrous love for ever cherished While the heavens with music ring. Rent on Calvary asunder Were the fountains of the deep, Nor within their ancient channels Could the streams of mercy keep; See the overflowing torrents Of redeeming love and grace; Peace Divine and perfect Justice Now a guilty world embrace.” (b) Loyalty to Christ and His Cross: “Ymgrymed pawb i lawr,” etc. (c) The need of the Holy Spirit, and a belief in the personality and work of the Spirit: “O anfon Di yr Ysrbyd Glan,” etc. Agonizing self-sacrificing passion for souls: “A welsoch chwi Ef,” etc. It is worthy of notice that while— “Songs of praises I will ever give to Thee” And “Great God of wonders, all Thy ways Are matchless, Godlike, and Divine,” and other hymns bearing upon the Cross, the Spirit and the love of God, were frequently sung over and over again at the same gathering, there was no hymn sung that breathed the sentiment, or contained the idea, of immortality. It affords another evidence of the fact that men and races can progress spiritually without the idea of immortality either permeating their spirit or dominating their mind. The Jews did so for long centuries; and their religious history is a vivid contrast to that of their neighbours, the Egyptians, whose whole being was wrapped up in a future existence. But these hymns held their place in the Revival irrespective of their theological bent or religious thought; neither were they sung for their literary perfection. The explanation is not to be found in the poetry or theology of the hymns. They were pre-eminently spiritual songs. The vast multitudes of repentant and believing men and women used these particular hymns because they were the direct expression of their feelings and experience. What would be sung at any particular moment depended upon the feeling that was uppermost. And it is for the same reason that Welsh congregations, not only in Wales, but all over the world, are never tired of singing “Dyma gariad fel y moroedd,” etc. They have shared the experience out of which this hymn and its type arose. So during the Revival men and women passing through the rebirth of spiritual passion, subdued and awed, grappling with conscience, transfigured by their new vision of Christ and His Cross, and the vision of themselves as they might be and God would have them be, resorted to these particular hymns because, and simply because, they provided an adequate and satisfying expression of their spiritual consciousness. Herein lies the immortality of the hymnist. Those who best understood and who best expressed the great spiritual realities of which their own age were conscious, and which consciousness future ages will share, are, and will be the most immortal. The world of to-day knows but little, and cares less, for Toplady’s writings, though their controversial character stirred the minds of men at the time. Those polemics are dead; but Toplady’s “Rock of Ages” is on the lip and in the heart of every man, woman, and child, that has ever read it or heard it sung. The world is growing in years; the burden it has to carry is daily becoming heavier; but it will never tire of singing this most blessed of hymns. If this age thought of the theology contained in Cowper’s hymn, “There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,” very few indeed would sing it, for its theology is grotesque, and it contains neither reason nor philosophy. It is among the most incongruous and metaphorically defective hymns in the English tongue. The hymn has nothing that is good in it from the point of view of reason or of theology; but it still keeps its place in the kingdom of hymnody, and is likely to keep it for generations to come. There is very little difference between the theology of the Revival and that of to-day. The difference lies in the fact that whereas it was at that time a theology of enjoyment in social worship, it is now a theology of enjoyment in practical preaching and works. As to the sacramental aspect of Christianity, it was entirely overshadowed. As a means of grace, or as a source of strength in the maintenance of spiritual life, it was ignored. The Holy Supper has not the same hold upon modern Nonconformity as it had in the days of our fathers. The old reverence for the emblems of the body and blood of the Lord has greatly diminished. The special note of the Revival was “The Lamb—the bleeding Lamb.” His redeeming love was commemorated in song, but not in sacrament. There is no record that it was observed either in the Revival of 1859 or that of 1882. The fact is worthy of attention. Such unity of sentiment among the sects was never seen. Would it have stood this test? Calvinism was very manifest in the Revival in the form of the utter helplessness of man to save himself or to do anything of and for himself. It was the keynote of the great cry of the period, “Full surrender!” “Yielding” was a word that was constantly on the lips of Evan Roberts; but it was clear that the realm of the will was an unknown as an untrodden realm for him. Of all the moral faculties of man, there is none so difficult to comprehend and so difficult to control. One of the most deplorable features of the Revival was the ignorance manifested concerning the nature, function and possibilities of the human will. Evan Roberts treated the matter as if it were entirely a question of disposition. I met many who were willing to be made willing, who would have given much if they could come into possession of the peace, the joy and the assurance that their friends and neighbours seemed to have obtained. The disposition was present, but the aptitude was not; and aptitude involves propensity, imagination, sensibility and mental make-up. Every man, it is said, who is in a normal state, is capable of moral choice; but the last Revival abundantly proved the fallacy of this supposition—that is, if the question of moral choice rests on a conscious and voluntary basis. But every man is not in a normal state. No student of human nature can dispute the occasional existence of a subtle mental disease by which the freedom of moral choice is limited. It is immensely more difficult for some to be moral than for others, for the reason that they have inherited stormier natures, and have stronger passions to subdue. The will-power with others is so weak that they inevitably succumb to temptation, although they clearly foresee the most frightful suffering and disgrace staring them in the face. As early as 1794 the state of Pennsylvania in America passed an act declaring it unjust to inflict the same degree of punishment upon all who were guilty of another’s blood. And English judges are impressing the necessity for a classification, because there is a difference in the degree of responsibility. Retribution is a fact that no one disputes; but is retribution to be according to knowledge, opportunity, inheritance and light? Or is it indiscriminate retribution—the same for all who are outside the fold? “Yes,” said Evan Roberts—if not directly, by implication. What about the heathen? Are they to be condemned and punished simply because of the infection of their nature, or for rejecting a Saviour of whom they have never heard? What about the idiots and the insane? Then what about those who do not belong to either class—men and women who are as irresponsible as the veriest infant? They have intelligence enough for the purposes of daily life, but no more. The religious nature existing somewhere in every human being seems altogether hidden or defaced in them, though not by non-use or misuse: it is their legacy from an ancestry in whom spiritual deterioration has gone on for generations. So emphatic and complete has been the degeneration that it seems hopeless even for Divinity itself to find or lay hold of the scanty remnant of spirituality that is left. There is hardly enough love to love anything, and hardly enough reverence to distinguish between what is sacred and what is profane. The heritage is practically lost, and can never be recovered. The flame flickers—simply flickers; and ere long it will be out. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Will He have no respect to the preparation of wilful guilt in each individual? Yes, “true yielding” was a phrase that was constantly on the lips of Evan Roberts; but it was patent that he had no understanding or appreciation of the psychological difficulty of individuals in the matter of will. Yielding might involve the very quintessence of weakness and the absence of all will. That the teaching of Evan Roberts in reference to man’s will involved a very great danger is manifested by the fact that he did not at any time emphasize the necessity for the creation of a new will in and by the power of Christ; and he had certainly no appreciation of the varying individual difficulties of men in the upbuilding of character by means of the newly created will-power. There was in his teaching no spiritual system for the moral upbuilding of those individuals who had yielded under the influence of the Revival movement. Hence the complete failure of the Revival to permanently regenerate churches and districts to any considerable degree. That “enjoyment in social worship,” of which so much was made during the Revival, not only did not produce subsequent discipline of morals, but it was subversive of, and antagonistic to, the spirit that produces results in practical life. The religious disappointment of thousands of individuals in Wales to-day is such as to have made their “last state worse than the first.” Moreover, aged Christians, many of them survivors of 1859, were expected and called upon to undergo the initial experiences of the young. They had long since passed beyond the elementary stage: they knew Him in whom they had believed. Some of them, indeed many, had read their Bible from cover to cover more than once: it was their bread and wine; they held in their hearts the one essential faith that God was their Father and that Jesus the Anointed was their Friend and Saviour. The only divinity school available for them—the old orthodox Sunday School—they had attended with commendable regularity, age and weather making no difference. As Mahomet in his last years visited the garden of his youth, and said to his attendant, “Pluck me some fruit from that tree: I know it is very sweet and very good,” so these aged Christian men and women had already tasted of “the fruit of the Tree of Life”; their memories carried them back to the days when they first saw the light. But the experiences of those days could not be repeated; and because they were not, these aged people were charged with lack of sympathy with the Revival and the Revivalist. It is here that Evan Roberts manifested his defective apprehension of the Gospel in its application to the life of the individual Christian. From the pulpit of the Tabernacle Chapel, Cwmavon, Evan Roberts declared that there was one SOUL present lost for ever—gone beyond the reach of God’s mercy, with no room for repentance or prayer or atonement for past conduct. No wonder that such dogmatism should call forth the independent assertiveness of even the men whose credulity had been a mystery to their friends and neighbours. Moody did not preach such a gospel, if it be proper to call it a gospel. Men profound in the history of Christian dogmatics, men cultured and educated, and of unquestioned piety, who have the highest sense of holiness, have felt, and still feel, that they could not and cannot dogmatize upon the fate of the impenitent dead, much less upon the fate of the impenitent living. Even the old Latin school-men, with whom the extreme penal theory originated, did not go as far as that. Our modern jurists and legislators are not at all sure that they understand what human justice ought to be. But these revivalists, many of them young in years and experience, untaught and unlettered, profess to have a perfect knowledge of the justice of God, and of the penalties which that justice exacts. The marvel is that these men think it necessary or profitable to continue to worship a God of whom they have such a thorough understanding, for all of God is in each of His attributes. All of God is in His love, and all of God is in His holiness, and all of God is in His justice. Understand Him, and He ceases to be your God. Thus it is that men have built immense theological superstructures on one single Divine attribute. Such systems are of necessity both incomplete and unsatisfactory. They have produced characters more or less narrow, dogmatic and unsympathetic. Not that they lacked force. Calvinism has entered into the very fibre and substance of many enduring commonwealths. From Geneva it imparted into England a new theology, new politics, and a new type of character. It framed in the cabin of the ‘Mayflower’ a constitution—republic in form—the most wonderful that the brain of man has ever invented. I pick no quarrel with the man who boasts that his mind has been cast in the Calvinistic mould, for even James Russell Lowell, a staunch Unitarian, expressed his pride at the fact that the blood of the Genevan reformers was in his veins. But a reaction was inevitable. A system of theology based upon Sovereignty alone could not withstand the influence of that liberalism which has permeated our literatures, our philosophy, our social politics, and the general method of inductive reasoning that has been so extensively applied during the past century. We are now living under the dominion of a Christo-centric theology, or, to use a simpler phraseology, under the dominion of the theology of love. This is the least presumptuous of the ages, and flippant dogmatism is entirely out of place. This is what a poet-physician says about the mystery of occasional pain in this world:— “One stern democracy of anguish waits By poor men’s cots—within the rich man’s gates. What purpose hath it? Nay, thy quest is vain: Earth hath no answer. If the baffled brain Cries, ‘tis to warn, to punish. Ah, refrain! When writhes a child beneath the surgeon’s hand, What soul shall hope that pain to understand? Lo! Science falters o’er the hopeless task, And love and faith in vain an answer ask, When thrilling nerves demand what good is wrought When torture clogs the very source of thought.” On what do these men base their authority? “Our authority,” they say, “is the Bible; and the Bible is the Word of God; beyond it there is no appeal.” This is where Evan Roberts stood. Most assuredly the Bible is the Word of God. Man could not write it, and he would not even if he could. Here we have forty writers who differ in language, in cast of mind, in nationality, and in association, unconsciously, and in divers manners, contributing in building a book that is without seam, woven from top throughout. Parts were written under the shadow of the Pyramids in the age of the Pharaohs, parts at Jerusalem in the days of Solomon, parts in Babylon in the time of their Captivity, parts amid the marbles of Athens, and parts in the prisons of Rome; and yet, all the parts are subordinated to a single aim. But there is an appeal beyond the Bible. To say there is not, is the weakness of the Protestant position. Christianity is not founded upon the Bible: it is founded upon Christ. The “Rock” is a person, and not a literature. If the last available copy of the Scriptures were thrown into the Indian Ocean, Christianity would remain. In the pre-Reformation period authority in religion was vested in the Church; in the post-Reformation period it was transferred to the Bible. This was a victory for liberty, for it asserted the right to private judgment. But this victory has been abused by attributing to the Bible an infallibility as infallible as the infallibility of the Pope. There is nothing to show that the Bible was intended as the foundation of Christianity. I will go further. There is no evidence that the Bible was destined to be the foundation of the Church. It was not Christ who founded the Church, but the apostles, and that before a word of the New Testament had been written. Christianity had its birth in Christ, and it existed before a single event, word or fact had been recorded. Jesus did not act as a scribe to Himself, neither did He allot the task of writing to others. We are not in possession of all that Christ taught, or of all that was taught by the apostles, for much has been lost. For some twenty years after the Resurrection there was not a line of the New Testament written, and the various writings were not collected or canonized until many years after the apostolic age. John the Baptist was the chief of the prophets; and yet, hardly any of his prophecies have been recorded. What is true of the New Testament is also true of the Old. Between the time of the announcement of the prophecies and the date when they were recorded, there were intervals of many years; and it is this fact of intervals that constitutes the pledge or guarantee of the reality and reliability of what is recorded. It means that the Word was actually tested and exposed to trial before it was entrusted to writing. This is the place of the human memory in the making of the Bible. Memory in those days was held in high esteem. Of the Comforter it is said, “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” Our Saviour desired that His words should be remembered. We are to eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance. What value God has placed upon the human memory may be gathered from the fact that He has associated it with the most sacred and blessed of ordinances. To the memory was assigned the great task of preserving the sayings of our Lord and the incidents of His life during the thirty or forty years that intervened before the date of the composition of the Gospels. Why was the pen avoided for so long a period? One reason was that the apostles were anxious to communicate it orally, that it might be planted in the memory of men, and, through the memory, be embedded in their hearts as a seed—a living seed of untold possibilities. This is the seed that has changed the map of the world, breaking the fetters of the slave, spreading civilization, giving culture and art their noblest development, subverting the central virtues of the old world, bespeaking consideration for the sickliness of infancy, for the widow and the orphan; inculcating the truth of the solidarity of the race, that the happiness of the one cannot exist with the misery of the other. Furthermore, the human memory could not keep pace with the rapid and extensive development of the seed; so it was imperative there should be a record. We should not force the Bible into a position it was never decreed it should occupy. It is not the final authority in Christianity. The final authority is Christ. It was Christianity that produced the literature Christianity antedates the movement, is superior to it, and controls it. Christ is the Master and the Bible is the servant; and it is time to remove the Bible from the unwarranted place that has been assigned to it. By doing this it will not suffer any diminution of the honour that belongs to it; and the Christian position will be vastly strengthened. So long as Christianity rests upon Christ—His life, death, atonement, resurrection, intercession, and inspiration, our hope is secure. No critic can dislodge it. But our evangelists and revivalists persist in making the written word their final authority. They theorize and erect theological superstructures on the most diminutive foundation, and formidable speculations on a minimum of doubtful fact. For proof of their teachings concerning the fate of incorrigibles, and of the unsaved after death, they proudly refer to the strange parable of the sheep and the goats; also to such passages as are to be found in Matthew xviii.9. But there is a large body of holy and learned Bible students who believe that such parables and passages are, on fair exegetics, capable of a widely different construction. We cannot draw lines that run straight across humanity as the lines of latitude cross with undeviating exactness the earth’s surface, and divide the lost from the elect. I have noticed on some maps the isothermal lines, which represent the places that have the same temperature. What crooked lines they are! How they bend, and sway and curve, affected by an ocean current here, or a mountain range there, showing what strange and distant places have the same genial air. So any lines that shall apportion eternal suffering and eternal happiness must wind in and out among this mass of humanity more mysteriously than the isothermal lines, making of the same company lives that to our present measuring are far asunder. Let us glance, only glance, into the dread, unutterable meaning of the doctrine taught by Evan Roberts— “A soul lost for ever” —the soul of a man living at that very moment, and in that very meeting, gone beyond reach of God’s mercy into endless torment. This was the substance of his utterance. Look at it; ponder over it. By virtue and authority of an irreversible law in the man’s nature, his soul is for ever lost, and for ever becomes more depraved; and this is a Divine fiat! It applies not only to him, but to millions besides. For ever and ever they are drifting away, farther and farther from God, from happiness, and from holiness— for ever and ever becoming more satanic in ambitions, more infernal in passion, and more hopeless in their condition—the torment and the remorse not only continuing, but increasing year after year, century after century, on and on, through the dread and countless eternities, without a ray of hope or any prospect of release or mitigation of the penalty—no end to the foaming, gurgling misery; the gloom turning into darkness, and the darkness becoming murkier, as the lost soul strives to look ahead. When the sinner has suffered a hundred million years, he has only just started. This is the doctrine; but I do not believe it, for I do not think that there is any God in the universe who would damn any man for ever, without the chance of working out his reformation. That is what human judges, legislators, prison officials and philanthropists are seeking to do. I do not think that human nature has the capacity to stand such unspeakable torment. Even if it had, the Being that imposed such a penalty would not be a God to me. I could not worship Him. I could not respect Him. But you tell me, “It is the teaching of the Bible.” Well, I do not find it in the Bible, and so much the worse for the man that does. Men generally find what they are looking for. Juvenal saw old Rome full of dissolute men and women. It was all bad, without a ray of sunshine or of goodness. But Virgil saw it full of ‘littérateurs’, and Tacitus declared that he found in Rome many heroes and patriots. If a man wants to mock, he need not go far from home for his material I would rather go to the Bible for a Father than for a Priest, and that is what my Lord and Saviour told me to look for, and that is what I find— not a demon who writes down in a book every word and every act without pity and without the mercy that my earthly father and friend extend to me in my sin and sorrow. Such a doctrine implies dispositions in God that the average Christian would be ashamed to acknowledge in himself. God must be at least as good as the average father. It is not without a touch of humour combined with sarcasm that Jesus argued, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” But what is the doctrine of the Revivalist? It is that of a God, enthroned in the heavens, looking down upon the prolonged torment of an unconceived number of men, shut up for ever simply for the purpose of suffering; and that same God continuing to create men with at least some, if not an unlimited, foresight of their perpetual suffering; and all this suffering and sadness existing for the glory of the Lamb. Could there be anything more infidel than this? What did the Lamb say? “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me” — “unto Me” as the centre of their separate and unified life, as the object of their love, as their moral leader, as the final principle for the interpretation of the character of the Father, as the full explanation of the existence and nature of man, and as the binding-tie of all. This is the inspiration of Christianity, that He who died for every soul has an everlasting interest in every soul. I am tempted in this connection to give here a poetical representation of the attitude of Jesus to the sinner and the outcast, which was handed to me by that saintly Unitarian, Robert Collyer, of New York, a man whose living faith is of the unseen and eternal: — CHRIST AND JUDAS. “The Holy One stood at the open door, And His face was fair to see, When one came up the shining way And moaned in his misery. ‘Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot Stood black and sad and bare, And cried, ‘I have wandered long and far: The darkness is everywhere.’ And there were those who stood within— Within the blessed light— Who cried, ‘Scourge thou the traitor soul Away into the night.’ The Holy One stood at the open door And waved to the man below; The third time that He waved His hand The air was thick with snow, And from every flake of the falling snow, Before it touched the ground, There came a dove, and all the doves Made a sweet and gentle sound. The Holy One stood at the open door And beckoned smiling sweet; ‘Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot Stole in and fell at His feet. And the Holy Supper was spread within, Where many candles shine, But the Holy One beckoned for Judas to come Before He poured the wine.” Is Christ better than God? Can we ascribe any pity, any compassion, any act of mercy or forgiveness, or any attitude of friendliness and encouragement towards the fallen, to Christ that we cannot ascribe to the Father? Is not the measure of the Son’s love the measure of the Father’s? But the Revivalist is afraid to trust this love. It is too weak and invertebrate, and human nature is so infected with the disease of original sin, that we cannot place any reliance upon its aspirations and resolutions. It does not pay to appeal to its better side; so the Revivalist demands sterner remedies. His great hope is in the axe and the fan, in hell and its endless torment. The Revivalist is not of the mind of the angel who bore a torch in one hand and a vase of water in the other—with the one to burn heaven and with the other to quench hell, that men might be influenced neither by the hope of the one nor the fear of the other: — “Mae arnaf eisieu sêl A chariad at dy waith, Ond nid rhag ofn y gosb a ddel Nac am y wobr chwaith.” Yes, what Christ was God is, ever has been, and ever will be. To say that God forgives “for the sake of Christ” is a travesty of the Divine Love. He did not reconcile God to us. It is time that the word “Atonement,” in the sense it has been and is still generally used, be abandoned. The word occurs once, and only once, in the Authorized Version (Rom.v. 3); but it does not mean atonement in the usual theological sense, but “at-one-ment.” In the Revised Version of 1881, “Reconciliation” is properly substituted. This reconciliation was a movement of God to man, and not of man to God. It is the more Christian idea, and it is the New Testament idea. Where are we to look for the rationale of the Incarnation? Not in the sinful condition of man, but in the nature and purpose of God. Man’s sin may have changed the time and condition of the Incarnation, but man’s sin was not the ground of it, neither was the removal of sin the highest or final purpose of the Incarnation. There was another thought in God’s mind— a thought that anteceded the thought of reconciliation: it was the thought of the end for which man was created. Sin is great, sin is deep; but there is something greater and deeper even than sin. What is it? I mean the original and indestructible union of God and man, when sin shall have been blotted out, when it will be but a faded recollection of the past, and perhaps not even a recollection! Well, after sin will have ceased, and every tongue will be confessing the glory and the dominion of the Son of Man, there will be then and for ever in process the deeper realization of the one supreme purpose of Creation and of the Incarnation—the union of man with God, and the perfecting of the image. This is to be accomplished through the eternal Christ. The progress will be in and through Him: “It pleased God the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell, and having made peace through the Blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven.” “God the Father”: this is the central conception of God. By this the eschatology of every religion must be decided. What did Christ teach about God? As Dr. Clark in his ‘Outlines of Christian Theology’ puts it, what was the heart of Christ’s message? It was the truth of God’s Fatherhood. Upon this He was direct and explicit, and He was equally explicit in His implication that the relation set forth in the fact of God’s Fatherhood was not metaphorical, but absolute and essential, and therefore universal. “Fatherhood,” says Dr. Fairbairn, “is the essence of God.” The archetype or original model of Fatherhood is not found in the human, but in the Divine. The human relationship, just in so far as it approaches its idea, shadows forth the Divine. Paul, when he said, “There is one God and Father of all,” was only expressing the necessary implication in Christ’s teaching. God always has been, always is, and always will be our Father. We never read of God becoming our Father: He cannot become what He already and essentially is. In the New Testament there is such a phrase as “To become the sons of God.” But this is easily understood in consistency with the essential and universal Fatherhood of God. Men by their conduct were spiritually and morally denying their Divine Son-ship. “To become the sons of God” means that they become in heart and soul and life what they are in their natural relationship. “Sons of God”: as “sons” they may wander far away into the land of husks and swine; their rebellion may be prolonged, their descent into sin and degradation may be swift, and on a large scale; and brave, generous souls do sin when they sin on an extraordinary scale. Well, God is still their Father, and because He is their Father, He will continue to pursue them with the shame and remorse of sin. He will never leave them. Now, what bearing has this truth of God’s Fatherhood upon the question of the destiny of the impenitent? It is this: —Whatever worlds may succeed this, and however the conditions of life in those worlds may differ from the conditions that prevail in this, God will still remain the Father of the impenitent, and as Father He will never cease to pity and to love. He will never cease to use the resources of His wisdom and omnipotence in order to restore. It matters not what ages may elapse, it matters not how prolonged and severe the discipline necessary for the restoration, the one supreme purpose of the Son of Man, as expressed by the Cross, the empty tomb, the ascension, and the perpetual intercession at the right hand of the Father, must not, and will not, be relinquished. But what about the supposed freedom of the human will? Throughout eternity it will be in the power of the impenitent to continue to say “No” to God, and so continue in rebellion. If such a thing be possible, and God foresaw it, then such rebellious children should never have been created. To say that the God and Father of all, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, should foresee that a child of His would be impenitent here, impenitent hereafter, and consequently lost, and lost for ever and ever, and continue through the untold ages in alienation from Him, and that God should continue to create that child, is a monstrous supposition. It would be monstrous if applied to ideal human fatherhood. It is infinitely more so when applied to Him “from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.” There is need of charity and toleration in dealing with such an important and intricate question, for the revelations of Scripture are not so full and clear as to place the matter beyond controversy. Toleration is a part of religion, and the need for toleration rests on two grounds. First, excessive generalization is perilous in any department of knowledge or life, and is particularly so in the matter of the soul’s destiny. It is a complex and mysterious problem. The man who has a strong, living and loving hope, that the hundredth sheep will yet be found, has much in life, much in Scripture, and more in Christ to inspire such a hope. He believes, therefore, that the world and the universe are God’s world and universe, and that the whole of them will be God’s. The words of Jesus do not determine the nature, the methods and duration of retribution. Two facts He did make clear—reward and retribution. He did not argue about them nor explain: He only removed the curtain, and declared them to be verities as real as man’s immortality. As He urged His own generation to prepare to meet their God, His eyes moistened and His lips quivered. Is there probation after death? Is it right, or is it of any avail, that we should pray for the dead? Has this life any direct influence upon the spirit-life? We did pray for our kith and kin when they struggled and toiled with us in the flesh. God knows it is natural that we should. Our desire says, “Yes.” But would it avail anything? We cannot say, for Jesus left no message to that purpose. Again, is retribution, hereafter, to be eternal? We cannot dogmatize. The heart and the reason protest against such a dispensation, the drift of modern Christian thought is moving in an opposite direction, and the revelations of the sacred Scriptures are not so explicit as to put the matter beyond controversy. In the second place, there is need for toleration, because deductions and conclusions are more or less a matter of mental affinity. These are the words of the greatest preacher of the last century—Henry Ward Beecher: “Men’s minds are magnets. One man going into the Bible or into the realm of experience, his mind seeks that which feeds his strongest faculties—his ideality, his self-esteem, his conscience, and his reason; and he draws these elements out, and leaves all the others. He sees those and feels those; and he is astonished if anybody can resist the evidence which is so irresistible to him. He has a Calvinistic conception of God, which is overwhelming to him, and to every other man who is organized just as he is. But here is another man who stands near him whose magnet draws another kind of filings, and who is just as true to himself. He has an inward want of a conception that is all beaming, and gethal, and sweet, and tender. He does not disbelieve in righteousness, nor in conscience, nor in law, nor in government; but he is relatively insensitive to these as he is sensitive to those other elements. This man’s constitutional endowment draws to him all that goes to make up this partialism, and he is amazed to hear one talk so like a fool as his brother does. He has read the Bible, and he has seen no such evidence as that which his brother professes to have seen. Why, to him it is clear as noonday that God is all summer. A third man, standing and looking upon these disputants, says, ‘They are fools both of them. I do not think God cares much about government, or much about this benevolence. It seems to me that God is a lover of things in order, full of taste, and full of proportion, and full of harmony. He is all music, and all blossom, and all beauty, as I conceive of Him. Give me some mighty architect, some supernal artist, some wonderful genius—that is my God.’ That part of this man’s mind which craves these things being most sensitive, he takes just that class of materials. His magnet draws those things, and no others. The consequence is, that you very seldom find a man so all-sided, and so proportioned on all sides, that he can build out of his consciousness, or reflection, or research, a symmetrical idea of the Divine Nature which has all these elements and has them all in proportion and suitable balance. If I were to ask, ‘What God have you?’ you would hand me out the Catechism, many of you. I would say, ‘That is the God of the Catechism: what is your God?’ You would say, ‘Do you charge me with insincerity? Do you not think that I believe the confession which I have subscribed to? ‘ No; I do believe that one in a thousand does. There are causes more than your volition by which you are governed. Your organic nature, its hunger and its attractions, will fulfil your destiny in spite of you, and over you as well as through you.” I shall probably be told that such teaching is injurious to morals, and cuts the nerve of missions. But what is injurious to morals is to see revivalists, in times of turmoil and excitement, working upon the feelings of the masses and dogmatizing upon the immortality of sin and the immortality of the suffering which sin entails. What cuts the nerve of missions is to expect enlightened and sympathetic missionaries to tell a whole continent of savages that, because of the infection of their nature, they are doomed to everlasting torment. If the dark continents of this earth were thrown bodily into the Indian Ocean, what is there that would suffer? Would art suffer? Would poetry, or music, or architecture, or industry, or philosophy? Those swarming millions know nothing of education, of liberty, of religion, or of civilization; yet, we are told that to send the Gospel to them is a work of great exigency, because within the last forty years the whole generation of 500,000,000 have gone down into eternal misery. It is permissible, we are told, to express a hope that there may be a brighter and a happier issue; but militant orthodoxy does not consent to anything beyond a hope. Many a dear saint of God who had the courage to convert this hope into a faith, saw the blue of heaven blackened with the smoke of the fire which consumed their flesh, and which had been built by orthodox men in the name of the Lord of love. Even in this progressive and enlightened age there are men who deny the right of judgment, and who, if they could, would deny freedom of utterance, and even the appellation of “Christian” to those who cannot subscribe to their shibboleths. The old martyrs were fortunate in having all their martyrdom at once. The modern intellectual martyr has his martyrdom done by degrees. Pin-pricks in the form of social ostracism, and the refusal of denominational engagements and opportunities for service, are daily administered. These deadly thrusts are administered by arrogant ministers and orthodox laymen, in the name of religion, where men claim liberty of utterance for themselves, but refuse it to those who differ from them. Thus they proceed, pronouncing their anathemas, emptying their churches, and alienating, not only the multitudes, but men and women of education and of deep religious instincts. It is claimed that this is the key to the alleged intellectual decay of evangelicalism, and the temporary popularity of the broad and liberal “New Orthodoxy.” Men are recoiling from the intolerance of extremists, not because they fail to realize the fact of sin: they are conscious of it. They recoil because the vision of the extremist is so limited. Sorrowing humanity longs for the voice of the preacher that has lived and loved and wept. Yet, it was Froude who said that there is a good side to bigotry and intolerance. A narrow, deep stream forces its way where a broad, calm river would not. No great reform, he avers, has been pushed forward by broadminded people. Froude is undoubtedly right in so far as the past is concerned; but times have changed. The circulation of thought is so rapid and so widespread. We shall have no more fires in Smithfield, or chopping-off of heads on Tower Hill. Forces have been at work tearing away from the face of truth the mask that hid its purity and simplicity, and casting aside the trammels which have been pinned by bigotry and cant to the great verities of religion. Men cannot always, and on all subjects, think and feel alike. My friend may have a preference for Raphael’s pictures with their floods of glory and host of angels; but I may love Rembrandt’s pictures best, with their strong lights and shadows. He belongs to one school, and I belong to another; but no great national gallery would be complete if either of the two schools were left out. So the Church that can include in its fellowship of love these diversities of thinking must be more Christlike than the Church which insists on uniformity of belief. The latter type of Church reminds one of the fowls in Hawthorne’s story, which were so careful in their breed, that in the end there was only one chick to their name, and he could not crow, but could only croak. Belief in eternal punishment is no longer made a condition of church membership by our Welsh Free Churches. It is not printed, as of old, in the “Association Letter” (or “ Llythyr Cymanfa,” as it is termed in Welsh); but it is still to be found in the “Confession of Faith” (“ Cyfies Ffydd” ) of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist; it is still taught in the “Rhodd Mam,” and still preached from the pulpit. The East Glamorgan Baptist Association is now preparing a new edition of the Baptist Confession of Faith as it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but there is a growing feeling that it should not be made a condition of membership, or a test for ordination to the ministry or appointment to the missionary field. Thoughtful and educated Hindus, who reverence Christ, accept His teachings, and feel the appeal of His spirit and character, are repelled by our orthodox Christian theology. They declare that the teaching of the Church on this mysterious question is not only unnatural, but a travesty of His Gospel. And what adds value to the objection is the fact that, while they reject the theology of our missionaries, they accept their teaching in every other science, even when it is subversive of Hindu traditions, and foreign to Hindu customs and traditions. Everything that is vital in Christianity or in spiritual religion appeals to their moral consciousness. Preach Christ to the Hindu, and he will at once give you a respectful hearing, and in the long-run you will gain his heart and faith; but preach sectarianism, and ask his acceptance of your traditional theology, and he will immediately challenge you, and the educated among them will be, in that case, a match for the best and most enlightened of your missionaries. The more infallible your doctrinal authority, the more fierce his opposition; and what is more, he is right. And what is true of the educated Hindu classes, is true of the Hindu generally. The authority of Jesus stands where it did, and they accept it. It is essential that we should apply the inductive methods to the whole range of the facts of religion. I have lingered long over this aspect of the question; but I have done so advisedly, and have not been unfaithful to my text. It may occur to some minds that I have attached undue importance to the declaration of Evan Roberts at Cwmavon; but it is not because I attribute to him any extensive knowledge of the doctrine of eschatology: that would be a compliment he does not deserve. A careful survey of the pronouncement, the conditions under which it was made, the impression which it produced, and the position that Evan Roberts occupied by the common consent of the people, takes the ground from under the feet of those who may think it illogical to generalize from a solitary sentence. It was only in broken sentences that Evan Roberts addressed his hearers. It was in broken sentences that he gave us what knowledge he had, what experience and theology he had. We cannot truly estimate his character apart from these fragments of thought. From them, and them alone, we can gauge his moral moods, his mental attitudes, and his beliefs. The declaration shows a pretension to infallibility. It is the old appeal to fear, and shows what changes had come over him since he first started out, when he sought to win men into the Kingdom. It was the great characteristic of his first appeal; and his charm at that time no one could resist. But when he began to exhibit the qualities of masterfulness and of prediction, and when he began to dogmatize, there was a visible change, not only in himself, but in the response. Moreover, the declaration involves a tremendous statement of doctrine; to overlook it, or to seek to minimize its importance, would be fatal to any critical interpretation of the mind and life of a man who not only obsessed a whole nation, but who achieved a fame that men of greater distinction might be forgiven if they envied. There is another reason why I should emphasize this matter. In a book entitled ‘With Christ among the Miners’, by a London Congregational minister, we find this: — “In the Welsh Revival we seldom heard a reference to the sinner’s destiny.” Well, let us have all the facts, whether they are palatable or not. It is in the interest of historical truth, and solely in order to fully and accurately present the Revival in its true perspective to the people of England and America, and other nationalities, that I write this book. There are men who believe that if ever there is destined to be a world-wide religion, it must be the representative of the pure light of reason without admixture of the shadows of faith. To this there can be only one reply, namely, that these shadows constitute the stronghold of religion. For the great Western world, at any rate, it is so, and has been so, and, let us hope, will be so. But Christianity is not an irrational faith. Christianity can and does justify itself on the ground of reason—not on the ground of doctrine or inherited theology. During the Revival reason was deposed, and emotion was given the crown and the sceptre. The waste was both enormous and pitiful to behold. To all appearance, Evan Roberts was in sympathy with it. As the Revival progressed, he seemed to encourage and to cultivate this superficial side of the movement; and towards the end he took up the old appeal to fear. For the moment, it created sensation, and even consternation, as evidenced by the Cwmavon incident. But the reaction was swift, general and unmistakable. True, there is nothing unscientific or even unnatural in the appeal to fear: we do it every day. It is, under certain conditions, a legitimate appeal; but to make such an appeal to an emotional people, already stirred to the very depth of their being with physical excitement, did impress one as not only unnecessary, but illegitimate. It produced both discomfort and misunderstanding. The theology that appealed to the very heart of the faith of the people, that humbled the haughty, that pierced the conscience of the sensual coward, that brought a blush of shame to the face of those who knew how to scoff but not how to pray, was the theology contained in that well-known hymn by Williams of Pantycelyn — “Praise Him, ever praise Him: He is ever blessed: Crown Him, ever crown Him, Who can cease to love Him For remembering dust of earth?” It was not the fear of hell, but the sight of that Cross, the thought of that Lamb, the consciousness of the great redeeming love of Heaven, that brought contrition, that created the feeling of remorse, that solved the hardest cases. Here is the great Christian interest of the Revival. It concentrated interest where it ought to be concentrated. It brought to the front the claims of Jesus to the devotion and loyalty of man. The appeal to fear and to everlasting torment, while for the moment, and under excessive emotional conditions, it served to create sensation, did not create sorrow for sin in the unconverted, or an aspiration for a higher type of goodness among those who bore the name of the Master, but not His Spirit. That appeal was answerable; but the appeal to “Dioloh iddo Byth am gofio Ilweh y Ilawr” was unanswerable. It is this, and this alone—not the signing of a creed—that will serve to keep the converted who abide unto this day loyal to their churches, their Saviour and our common faith. This is the one elementary test of Christianity—the attitude of the heart to Christ—not worship, not obedience, not even its supernatural view of God. These attributes belong to other systems. All religions teach uprightness, reverence and submission. But Christianity differs from all other religions in its personal identification of the heart with Christ as the Supreme Head, the germinant idea, the one motive force of life. Destroy a man’s personal allegiance to Christ, and you destroy everything. In comparison with this, creed is nothing, for creed cannot give the human mind a clear and a definite conception of what Christ was, is and ever will be. It is the heart that finds out what Christ is. There are political creeds that are mere intellectual outlines and convenient subterfuges with which to deceive the mind. There was a time when men’s lives depended upon their creeds; then creeds were instruments of oppression. The fire and the axe were in constant request. But we can embrace and comprehend Christ better through the heart than through the intellect without the aid of the heart. This is the central point in the Christian system—the one discriminating test. It is the test of our Christianity, and the only test that will determine our final destiny in the Judgment to come. This was one of the supreme lessons of the Revival—its Deification of Christ, the uplifting of the Cross, the glorification of the Lamb as the highest and most blessed of all.