Columbia Theological Seminary Bulletin, 41, number 2, September 1948

BULLETIN of

COLUMBIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

DECATUR, GEORGIA

Inaugural Addresses

PROFESSOR FELIX B. GEAR

AND

PROFESSOR CECIL A. THOMPSON

VOL. XLI SEPTEMBER, 1948 NO. 2

Published quarterly by the Directors and Fac-
ulty of Columbia Theological Seminary of the
Presbyterian Church, U. S.

Entered as second class matter, May 9, 1928, at

the post office at Decatur, Ga., under the Act

of Congress of August 24, 1912.

THEOLOGY AND THE MUDDLE OF MODERN MAN

Inaugural Address of
Proffessor Felix B. Gear, Ph. D.

Department of Systematic Theology

Any man who undertakes to teach Theology today must have his mo-
ments of an "uneasy conscience" with himself for undertaking such a tre-
mendous and far-reaching responsibility. There are times when he is almost
overwhelmed with both a sense of his own unworthiness and his almost
tragic inability for the task. I believe, however, that it would be unprofitable
and unwise to attempt to describe my personal attitudes in these respects. I
may find myself somewhat in the predicament of the Calvinist who firmly
believed in the doctrine of human depravity: He and a Quaker put up at the
same public house for the purpose of lodging all night. After supper, they were
both shown into the same room in which to rest, and as was his custom, the
Calvinist knelt beside his bed and commenced saying his prayers, in which he
repeatedly confessed himself a sinner, deserving God's punishment, etc. After
he finished, the Quaker took his hat for the purpose of retiring from the room.
Are you not to rest with me tonight said the Calvinist to the Quaker. No, sir,
answered he, I can not sleep with such a scoundrel as thou confessest thyself
to be.

In choosing as the subject of this address THEOLOGY AND THE
MUDDLE OF MODERN MAN, I have no intention of subjecting you to an
extended diagnosis of the manifold ills that have befallen modern civilization
and to which many prophets of doom believe it will inevitably succumb. My
plan is much simpler and less pretentious than that: to try to show that a
single idea has brought modern man to his current muddle and that another
single great idea points the way out for the future. I shall, however, find it
necessary to mention some of the diseases of our age by way of illustration.
That ideas do have consequences we have been assured by the recent dis-
cussion of a book that has perhaps stirred up as much controversy as any
publication in the last decade. One critic has intimated that if the author
had stopped with the title of the book, IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES,
it would have been an excellent work.

To the majority of people today, especially those interested in intellectual
pursuits in such fields as philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, science,
and politics, theology is a superfluous luxury, it is excess baggage to which
our society has clung out of ignorance and superstition, it is an historical

encumbrance from the Medieval period. It really serves no useful purpose,
it has no claim to truth, no functional value. Some have thought that the
sooner our democratic society got rid of it the better, holding theistic religion
to be the most active and pervasive menace to civilization which confronts
us today. The past history of mankind, and especially the history that is now
in the making, shows this attitude to be entirely false. We should now regard
that view of theology as definitely pre- atomic . For as a recent writer puts it,
"Theology is the linchpin of civilization. In the final analysis, the entire char-
acter of society is determined by it." (Dr. R. Davies, The Sin of Our Age,
p. 64.) In fact, the present human predicament has come about because of
the prevalence for the last few centuries of a false theological idea. What a
man thinks and believes are basically the most important thing about him.
This is just as true of a society. G. K. Chesterton was not speaking in mere
jest when he said that when a man seeks room and board at an inn the most
significant thing the keeper of the inn needs to know about him is: What is
his philosophy? What happens in the life of an individual and what takes
place in every aspect of society flows from basic convictions. Someone has
said that the greatest illusion in the whole history of the human race is the
one so common today, that Theology does not count in shaping the issues
of human life, history and destiny. Every man has a theology it may be a
high or low theology, an enlightened or uninformed theology, a true or a
false theology, but whatever he thinks about himself, his neighbor and the
unseen forces behind the mystery of existence, thrusts a theology upon him.
His utter rejection of all known, accepted systems of theology becomes the
foundation stone of his own.

What, then, is this idea with which modern man has become obsessed,
that lies at the bottom of our modern civilization with all of its chaos, perils,
frustrations, and fears? The muddle of modern man is caused by his inability
to rise higher in his thoughts than MAN himself. His mind is obsessed with
MAN. He has placed man at the center of life, being and thought; he has
made MAN the measure of all things. At long last man has become the absolute,
supreme existence. Humanity is the central thing in the universe, it is the
final reality; beyond humanity there is nothing. The final criteria in every
sphere of life is the mass man : in truth, law, morality, philosophy, and religion.
Comte's dream of religion as the worship of humanity has been realized;
humanity has become GOD. Some of the names by which we recognize this
idea in its various forms today are secularism, humanism, naturalism, Nazism,
and Communism; the last type being the final and most logical development of
the idea that man is the supreme reality of the universe.

J. C. Bennet has defined secularism as "that characteristic of our world
according to which life is organized apart from God, as though God did not
exist." In a word, it is "man's attempt to get along in life without God." Here
we shall loosely designate every modern expression of the Fatal Idea by
the term secularism with no intention of minimizing or confusing their dif-
ferences.

Perhaps the modern-state presents the best illustration of secularism. In
Russia, the state is sovereign, it is the only absolute. It transcends every loyalty,
value, interest, authority, or reality. When the state is made an ultimate, it
becomes a god, a temporal earth-bound deity, an absolute found entirely
within history. Being limited, fragmentary and relative, it actually claims to
be everything. It is what philosophers call 'a particular claiming to be a uni-
versal.'

Most of us do not realize how far the process of secularizing our society
has gone in our time. We are living too close to it fully to appraise the measure
of its influence and strength. Hugh S. Tigner, in OUR PRODICAL SON
CULTURE, in 1940 says: " 'Christendom' has long been a figure of speech."
That is to say, there is no longer any such a thing as a world community
which we can call Christian. Our age has abandoned the idea of a common
humanity subject to the will of God; the notion that there is a single thread
such as the moral law, or the Christian principle of love, running through,
and cutting across, the diversities of race, cultures, or languages, which bind
mankind together in our time. Another student of history describes the change
which came in western civilization, after the first World War, as "the passing
of Christendom." This change consists "in the abandonment, either tacit or
explicit, over a large part of the western world, of the presuppositions, both
philosophical and religious, which have hitherto been shared by educated men
of different countries."

No writer has given a more accurate or vivid description of the nature
of this change and the fundamental moral issues involved than Sir Richard
Livingstone's statement in his THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION:

"Our present situation reveals the great need of the world. If the con-
ventional stranger from Mars arrived in Europe at this moment ... he
would not so much be surprised by the fact that a war is in progress,
for war unfortunately is nothing new, but he would be struck by some-
thing far more serious, by the appearance of a new philosophy of life.
Perhaps I should say new philosophies. But Nazism, Russian Commun-
ism, and a less degree Facism, though differing in methods, in their
ultimate character have far more similarities than differences. They do
not know the meaning of certain words, which has been assumed to be-
long to the permanent vocabulary of mankind, certain ideals which, if
ignored in practice under pressure, were accepted in theory. The least
important of these words is Freedom. The most important are Justice,
Mercy, and Truth. In Germany and Russia, Liberty, Justice, Mercy, and
Truth, if they can be said to exist at all, have lost the meaning which
civilized men have hitherto given them. In the past we have slurred
this revolution over as a difference in 'idealogy'. In fact, it is the greatest
transformation that the world has undergone, since, in Palestine or
Greece, these ideas came into being, or at least were recognized as prin-
ciples of conduct. Suddenly and somehow the whole bottom has fallen
out of our civilization, and a change come over the world, which, if
unchecked, will transform it for generations. It is the death, or deathlike

swoon, of Christianity . . . and also of the moral and religious ideas with
which Greek and Christian thinkers tamed barbarism."

It is to be expected that a pattern of thought that threatens so com-
pletely to change, or reverse, the principles of morality and justice would as
radically influence other areas of human endeavor. Perhaps at no phase of
the common life of society is this more clearly seen than in that of architec-
ture. What I shall say here is not intended as a criticism of the arts in our
time as being inferior to art in other periods but simply to point out how
man's modern preoccupation with MAN gives a thoroughly secular art of a
different motiff, and shape as compared with a general view of life which
spontaneously turns men's thought to God. The silent and towering massive -
ness of the Egyptian pyramids tell of a civilization which was concerned with
security. The great cathedrals of the Medieval Age remind us of the endless
quest and aspiration of the human heart for the Eternal God, a quest which
the Theology of Thomas Aquinas taught could never be fully attained in this
life. With the frightening atomic age upon us we may anticipate that there
will be architectural embodiments of our current 'frantic search for survival'
in the future. But what is it to which our minds turn as we gaze upon our
modern sky-scrapers and other dizzy structures of steel and stone? Of what
could the mind think before such a building but of Man, of his power, in-
ventive genius, material triumph and technical skill? To be more specific, let
us look at a delightful picture of a Roman "banketting house" as it was called
in Old English, in sixteenth century Rome, and then at a public building of
the twentieth century.

Thomas Nashe, one of the forerunners of the present day novel, in his
fascinating story of THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER, written within
the century of the Protestant Reformation, gives us this description. His
language will be modernized so as not to weary you too much. He says:

"I saw a summer banketting house belonging to a merchant, that was the
marvel of the world, and could not be matched except God should make
another paradise. It was built round of green marble, like a Theater
without : within there was a heaven and earth comprehended both under
one roof, the heaven was a clear overhanging vault of crystal, wherein
the Sun and Moon, and each visible Star had his true similitude, shine,
situation, and motion, and by what enwrapped art I cannot conceive,
these spheres in their proper orbes observed their circular wheelings and
turnings, making a certain kind of soft angelical murmuring music in
their often windings and goings about, which music the philosophers
say in the true heaven by reason of the grossness of our senses we are
not capable of. For the earth it was counterfeited in that likeness that
Adam lorded out it before his fall." (He goes on to tell of the spacious
size of the room, the many trees, birds, and flowers there, and describes
a musical instrument with silver pipes which lead to each bird and gave
off, by a bellows, the music or sound of each bird).

. . . Under the tuition of the shade of every tree that I have signified to
be in this round hedge . . . lay a wild tyrannous beast asleep all pros-

trate: under some two together, as the dog musling his nose under the
neck of the deer, the wolf glad to let the lamb lie upon him to keep him
warm, the lion suffering the ass to cast his leg(s) over him: preferring
one honest unmannerly friend, before a number of crouching pick-
thankes. There were no sweet-breathing panthers, that would hide their
terrifying heads to betray: no man imitating hyenas, that changed their
sex to seek after blood. . . . Wolves as now when they are hungry
eat earth, so then did they feed on earth only, and abstained from
innocent flesh. The unicorn did not put his home into the stream
to chase away venom before he drunk, for then there was no such
thing extant in the water or on the earth. Serpents were as harm-
less to mankind, as they are still to one another, the rose had no cankers,
the leaves no caterpillars, the sea no sirens, the earth no usurers. (No
poisonous beast there reposed poison was not before our first parent
Adam transgressed.) . . . The ant did not hoard up against winter, for
there was no winter but a perpetual spring, as Ovid says. No frost to
make the green almond tree counted rash and improvident, in budding
soonest of all other . . . the evening dewed not water on flowers but
honey. Such a golden age, such a good age, such an honest age was set
forth in this banketting house." He then exclaims, "O Rome, if thou
hast in thee such soul exciting objects, what a thing is heaven in com-
parison with thee?"

I need not ask you of what you were thinking while I was reading this
quaint description. The imagery, the setting, the whole scene as he gives it
here are genuinely religious in flavor and color. The religious motive, which
turns one's thoughts to God can be even more readily discerned when we set
along side this idealization of man's lost paradise, a more recent type of
architecture as described by a British writer the new Bank of England
building. In speaking of it, D. R. Davies, in THE SIN OF OUR AGE, says:

"Without being cynical, I think it can be justly said that standing there,
a man would have to be a medieval saint, or at least, one in whom
a medieval soul had incredibly survived, to think first and instinc-
tively of God . . . But it is wildly improbable that his first reaction on
entering would be any sense of divine indwelling, as Jacob felt when he
said, 'Surely the Lord is in this place.' "What is there," he asks, "in
these sumptuous bank buildings to remind oneself of God? Not the mural
texts or decorations, as for instance 'The Wigan Building Society offers
you a safe 4%' which does not suggest 'God is my adventure' . . . The
most awesome thing in the building is the glass door leading to the inner
sanctum, on which is the inscription 'Manager Private'. It may have
a faint suggestion of judgment or hell, but is still a long way from the
thought of God. Everything points to Man, Man. 'Glory to Man in the
highest; for he is the Master of things.'"

The inexorable working out of the idea that man is the center of things
has given us a type of art marked by subjectivity, and fully expressive of the
philosophy of art for art's sake. Rose Macaulay's I WOULD BE PRIVATE

develops the logic of modern art: A young man sits before his canvass on a
clear, sunlit day in the shadow of the wood's edge. He does not paint objects,
but simply lets them soak into his soul. His glances at the scene before him are
merely to charge his mind with the burning, bright strangeness of his en-
vironment so he can a moment later close his eyes, and look within to find
the images evoked by what is before him. In this way he will get the essence
of the truth naturally it is only his own truth, for that is all the truth there
is yours and mine. Then he opens his eyes and draws what he saw 'in that
dark brief flash of the soul.' This is what he draws some round triangular
shapes lying in a row on a beach; some of them looked like skulls, some re-
sembled discarded limbs of human bodies, others were like bottles. Wild
pawpaws and cactus grew out of some of the skulls but that seemed to smack
too much of conscious tampering, so he cut out the 'skullish vegetation' and
placed it on a woman's hat with a bird of paradise on it. Having thus ade-
quately expressed this deep artistic insight, he gave it the title: "Woman and
Putrefying Owl."

It is impossible to indicate here how secularism, which is essentially the
view that man does not need God, has affected every phase of modern life.
It has resulted in the philosophy of business for business' sake often arbi-
trarily rejecting or subtilely evading social responsibility. It has unleashed
hitherto unknown power on the part of the undisciplined and untutored
working classes who have become more conscious of their physical needs and
desires than of moral and religious principles, ending in the totalitarian
threat to western civilization. It has enabled the individual to emerge as the
sole reality, made him a law unto himself, led him to derive life's significance
from attainment of sheer individuality, from the expression of his own desire
for gain and power rather than from his relationship to a community or from
subordination to some universal end or ideal. He has come to regard other
persons as means of his own aggrandizement and tools to manipulate at will.
The most popular text for this unphilosophical view of conduct is Dale
Carnegie's HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. It has
given birth to a humanistic science which claims to have rendered religion
obsolete and unnecessary, offers itself as the Messiah that will deliver man
from all the ills of existence, and sets forth a complete way of life from the
cradle to the grave. In the field of philosophy and psychology evolution came
to be regarded as an ultimate metaphysical principle. Man adopted a theory
of indefinite progress in practically every phase of human endeavor. He
saw everything in terms of relativity there is no absolute truth, values,
or morality which Brunner has called the 'worst blight of all.' There was an
outright denial of the existence of the soul and thought. Consciousness was
said to be merely the shadow of the physical activities of man; everything
about man was reduced to behaviour, thinking as well as playing baseball.
Human nature does not come into existence with any fixed pattern or ten-
dencies; it is like a shapeless mass of jelly to be completely molded by its
environment and man's exercise of freedom. Atheistic Existentialism, as it
is called in Europe, shows us the finished product of MAN in whose con-
sciousness there is no place whatever for God. Education has so come under

the influence of this deadly paralysis of the soul of modern man that Dr.
Meiklejohn in EDUCATION BETWEEN TWO WORLDS can assert that
at last in American higher education we can begin to teach honor, justice,
and brotherhood without the burden of the theological myth about God. It
was this that Dostoievsky saw with uncanny prophetic insight as early as
1880 when he wrote:

"Oh blind race of men who have no understanding. As soon as men
have all of them denied God and I believe that period, analogous with
geological periods, will come to pass the old conception of the uni-
verse will fall of itself . . . and everything will begin anew. Men will
unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness
in the present world. Man will be lifted up with a spirit of divine titanic
pride and the man-god will appear. From hour to hour extending his
conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, man will feel
such lofty joy in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams
of the joys of heaven."
These words, significantly enough, were uttered by the Devil to Ivan
Karamazov, who had a delirious dream, after being told by his servant that
he had killed Ivan's own father because he had come to believe from Ivan's
philosophy of life that it made no difference anyway. Such are the ultimate
consequences of the idea that man can be his own god. The dreams of con-
quest by those who hold this view have almost been realized in our world
today. It is here that the battle line must be drawn for Christians for the
rest of our time and perhaps for generations to come if Freedom, Justice,
Mercy, and Truth, are again to reign among men. It is precisely at this
point that Theology must take up and carry on in our day as in the time
of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin.

Broadly speaking, we may say that the task of Theology in this present
world is to supplant the idea of the centrality of MAN with the idea of the
centrality of GOD. God must be re-enthroned at the center of things
as the center of the existence of the individual and of society. The time must
come again when the thoughts of men turn as naturally and adoringly to God
as they now tend to turn to MAN. It is not news to us to be told that this was
the deep and lasting insight of John Calvin, with all of his mistakes and
shortcomings. His theology was a God-centered system of thought, and way
of life. Everything in the whole wide experience of man was brought together
and held together in unity by the thread of the eternal. No aspect of ex-
perience, no phase of life, no activity of man was for him to be carried on in
isolation from the one supreme, absolute Reality God. Having said this,
we should go on to say that the God to whom we give central place must
not be the God of a rationalistic deism or naturalistic theism but God as he
has revealed Himself to us in and through Jesus Christ. As Berdyaev puts it:

"The starting-point of theology is not either God or Man, but the God-
man, whose theandric nature is above and beyond this anthithesis."

Perhaps two remarks should be made at this juncture. First, while I have
been speaking of the consequences of an idea in history, I have not meant

that the problem confronting theology today is merely intellectual. It is a
moral and spiritual question of the most fundamental kind. Man suffers and
sins today not just because he has been victim of an intellectual mistake.
To leave God out of his life is more than an omission, an error of judgment
it involves him in the predicament known to us in theology as SIN. If this
were not true, theology would have no concern in his situation at all. But
his sin what has been called 'the root sin of our western civilization' leaves
him in the depths of an abyss in which he struggles along and ultimately sinks
to destruction until he is willing to admit the Divine presence in both
judgment and mercy. This is what T. S. Eliot means when he says: "We must
recover the sense of religious fear so that it may be overcome with religious
hope."

The other thing I want to say is that I am not arguing for a return
to the way of life of the Middle Ages, from which period, I have tried to
illustrate the way in which the minds of men may be turned to God. The
worst calamity that could befall modern civilization would be to have a
return of the control of the ecclesiastical tyranny of that era whether it be
Protestant or Catholic. Further, Calvin and Luther revolted from the Mother
Church simply because she was not willing to make God central, but as
Doestoievsky shows in THE GRAND INQUISITOR, was assuming the
place of God amidst a gullible humanity and trying to improve upon, or
find a substitute for, the work Christ had done for man's deliverance from
the thralldom of sin and wretchedness. As a matter of fact, the Reformers
saw the same tendency in the Roman Catholic Church that marks Russian
Communism now the effort to give the Church and its hierarchy the status
of an absolute. This error Rienold Niebuhr has called the great heresy of
Catholicism. What essential difference is there between the declaration of a
Nazi that Hitler is the Holy Ghost and the following quotation by Father
Clement Raab, in his TWENTY ECUMENICAL COUNCILS OF THE
CATHOLIC CHURCH, published at just about the time the above state-
ment was being made about Hitler in Germany:

"In proclaiming the INFALLIBILITY OF THE POPE, this august
assembly gave to the world a principle which regenerates authority;
one, which in the course of time, will re-establish in society order, peace
and unity. Jesus Christ has three existences: His personal existence,
which Arius denied; His sacramental existence, which Calvin denied,
and that other existence which completes the two, and by means of
which he continually lives, through His authority, in the person of His
Vicar. The Council of the Vatican, in proclaiming this third existence,
has completed the task of assuring the world of the possession of Jesus
Christ." p. 214.

I am confident Rosenburg, or Goebbels could not have claimed a greater
degree of deity for Hitler than is being done in this statement for the Head
of the Roman Catholic Church. Or we may ask how can free men choose
between the rule of a totalitarian state over the lives of men and women as
seen in Russian Communism and the rule of an institution that claims to be

both Church and State in one? American Protestants who acclaim the pro-
tests of Catholicism to Communism today ought to answer this question can-
didly and they should look into history to learn what happened to the free-
dom of men where the Roman Church has ruled supremely. How much
religious freedom is there in Spain, or Italy? How much Democracy will pre-
vail in Italy under the rule of the clergy and under the control of the
Vatican? I also wonder if those business men and industrialists who look to
the Catholic Church as an ally against Communism realize how much or
how little of their freedom in enterprise will remain once Catholicism dom-
inates western society? What, in fact, are the conditions of the laboring
classes in Catholic dominated countries today? Is it not true that the threat
of Communism has been greatest precisely in those states? Why?

Now I want briefly to list some of the things Theology can and must do
as it calls men and women of our time back to the centrality of God for
humanity and all of life.

First, it will give men some great over-all purpose which will bring
meaning back into living at a time when it seems empty and futile. Listen to
this cry of the boredom and ennui of the empty heart of our century, as
expressed by one of the great present day writers, W. H. Auden: The husband
comes home from work and asks, of his wife, "Has anything happened?"
She replies:

"What should happen?

The cat has died at Ivy Dene,

The Crowther's pimply son has passed Matric,

St. Neots has put up light blue curtains

Frankie is walking out with Winnie,

And George loves himself. What should happen?

Nothing that matters will ever happen.

(Dialogue)
. . . nothing to bring a smile to the face.
Nothing to make us proud of our race.
Nothing we should have been glad to have done
In a dream, or would wish for an only son.
Nothing to take us out of ourselves . . .

(She says)
Give us something to be thankful for.

(Husband exclaims)
Give it quickly.

(Wife again)

Give us something to live for. We have waited too long."

As Josiah Royce said, man in order to be at his best must think that he is
working for the Eternal God. Anything less than that fails to satisfy.

Second, God as a limiting concept in man's life will curb his infinite
lust for power and almost unquenchable thirst for exploitation of nature, and

his fellow-creatures. Contrast, if you will, the attitude of two men towards
the physical world. Here is a prayer with which Calvin closed one of his
lectures on Jeremiah:

"Grant, Almighty God, that since thou hast made heaven and earth for
our sake, and hast testified by thy servant Moses, that the sun, as
well as the moon . . . are to be serviceable to us, and that we are to
use them as though they were our servants, O grant that we may, by
thy so many blessings, have our minds raised upwards and contemplate
thy true glory, so that we may faithfully worship thee only, and sur-
render ourselves so entirely to thee, that while we enjoy the benefits
derived from all the stars, and also from the earth, we may know that
we are bound to thee by so many favours, in order that we may be more
and more roused to attend to what is just and right, and thus endeavor
to glorify on earth thy name, that we may at length enjoy that blessed
glory which has been provided for us by Christ our Lord."

The following statement is from Descartes, who was born about thirty years
after Calvin's death. Speaking of science and scientific principles of knowl-
edge he said:

"For by them I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly
useful in life; and in room of the Speculative Philosophy usually taught
in the schools, (Meaning Catholic teaching) to discover a Practical,
by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air,
the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, as dis-
tinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans, we might also
apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are adapted,
and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors of nature." (Italics
mine)

Here both men regard the earth, and the things in it, as servants of
man; both see the tremendous possibilities before man in the physical world,
but to Calvin they are not an end in themselves, man is not merely a Lord
and possessor, but all must be used for the glory of God and according to
just and right principles; to the other their use ends with man, and his lord-
ship in the physical world is apparently supreme. That is the difference be-
tween a Christian and a pagan way of life, between a sense of responsibility
to God for all, and a feeling of lordship and possession over all, in the physical
world. Ultimately it is the difference between life and death for the human
race.

Third, to restore God to a central place in the life of man will cure man
of his temporal myopia, or nearsightedness. Modern man is not cosmopolitan
but a narrow provincial in the universe. He knows but one world, the
temporal, but one life, that of the body. As his progress has pertained to the
realm of things, his philosophy has applied only to time. A being made for
eternity is not even half alive if he lives only in and for time. The Christian
position has always been that man can live wisely in this world only if he
sees and moves beyond it. The Church can speak to the temporal condition
of man only if it has first occupied itself with that which is eternal. The

Church that loses itself in things and values that perish with all else that
is mortal has no message about man's place in and use of the world. It is
only as the Church surveys human conditions under the aspect of eternity
that it has any right to offer judgment, counsel, or service midst the
wretchedness and folly of man. In short, man can no more live in time alone
than he can live on bread alone.

Fourth, put God in the center of the individual soul and life and the
terrible breach which now exists there will be healed. There is schism in
man's soul today; it is a cleft soul. Our century has not only cracked the atom,
it has split the soul of him who cracked the atom. Man is a self-conscious
being which means that he is capable of going beyond himself in thought, and
aspiration, and that he must reach out beyond himself and this world in
order to fully satisfy his nature. To say man is made in the image of God means
among other things that in the deepest recesses of his heart he needs God
for the fulfillment of his being. No greater nor simpler statement in this
respect has been uttered than the answer in the Child's catechism to the
question, "How do you know that you have a soul?" The answer, "Because I
can think of God and the world to come," plumbs the depths of human wisdom
about the nature of man. How can a being who can think about God and
the world to come have unity, harmony, within his soul if he ignores that
part of himself that depends upon fellowship with God and lives as if there
is no God, nor world to come?

Fifth, let man again put God at the center of his life and he will know
that freedom which is the basis and guarantee of all other freedoms. The
Reformers were battling for freedom in the religious realm, without seeing
its full implications for other realms of life. To expect them to have seen
this would be to look for them to see farther than ordinarily a single genera-
tion sees. But they did realize that the central issue of their time lay just
here. That is why Calvin was so obsessed with the 'intolerable quest for
certainty' in religion. He stood with his back to the wall fighting a tyrannical
ecclesiastical institution that held in its clutches the destiny of every man,
so it claimed, not merely from the cradle to the grave, but for eternity.
How, then, can a man be free either here or hereafter? was the burning
question for Calvin. In the light of the scripture he saw that religious
freedom derives from a God who holds the destiny of every individual being
in his hands, and not from any human power howsoever much it may throw
around itself the cloak of religious authority. We are too far removed from
those days to sense the joyous note in Luther's great saying 'that the
Christian is the most free man of all, and Lord of all.' No truer insight into
the nature of this freedom has ever been given us than the remark about
John Knox: 'Fearing God he feared no man.' Our freedoms of today began
with religious freedom, let that end and the struggle for liberty will have to
be fought all over again. That freedom dies when men discard God who
alone can make them free. That is the basis of Europe's troubles now. Dr.
John A. Mackay pointed out recently that we cannot understand what happens
in Europe until we realize that there no one can be sure of freedom it is

dead. A person can look for security of a sort and that is why he turns hope-
fully to those who promise it. None promise freedom.

Finally, to make God central in life is to bring man the only real security
to which he can look, for if God cannot give him security it cannot be found
anywhere else. This is the meaning of our doctrine of redemption. Dr.
Paul Tillich says our ear is different from the one following the first
World War by the fact that men are for the first time fearful that our
civilization will come to an end. In 1918 we set ourselves to secure peace;
today we frantically seek to survive. Another writer says there are three
dominant problems of our post war world: How can man ward off the peril
of extinction? How can mankind be sure of the means of economic survival
within our threatened order? And, Can society guarantee its own adequate
reproduction? The mind of man today is deeply concerned with security, but
it is security on the physical level only. But there can be no real security
even on that level until man has a sense of inner security. This is what
Calvin had in mind when he said, concerning man's relation to God: "Then
we show the only haven of safety is in the mercy of God, as manifested in
Christ, in whom every part of our salvation is complete."

We face this sort of world in our time in Christian Theology. Perhaps it
offers the greatest opportunity for those who regard Theology as the most
significant study of man, since the Protestant Reformation. But it is no time
to complain nor give way to despair. We can not substitute shallow thinking
for the theological thought demanded in these days. What is more we must
live on deeper levels than we have ever before known. Dr. Joseph L.
Hromadka speaks to our Protestant world out of the heart of a Communist
land, and we are certain that he knows what kind of thinking and living
Christians are called upon to show our generation. "The future of the
Church depends," he says, "humanly speaking on the courage and spiritual
dynamic power of professing Christians. The Communists have a cause, they
ardently believe in their cause, they are disciplined, resourceful, and indus-
trious. The time of Religion as a mere decoration, a lemonade or Coca-Cola
is gone. Only a relevant uncompromising message, proclaimed where the
dangers are greatest can prevail." As Calvin told the fearful, scattered and
despairing Protestants of his day, it is not for us to know what God has in
store for His Church, but it is ours to go out, to go out even midst despair,
and preach the truth of an eternal God who is the same yesterday, today,
and forever.

THE MISSIONARY STRATEGY
OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

Inaugural Address of

Professor Cecil A. Thompson, S. T. M.

Department of Evangelism and Country Church Work

The first words of our Lord to the Church at Nazareth as recorded in
Luke 4:18 and His last words to the Church just prior to His ascension in
Acts 1:8 reveal His program for world redemption and the primary task of
His Church through the centuries.

These were His words:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to
preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to
set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the
Lord." This is not a very comfortable text for many Presbyterians to read
when we realize how far short our ministry as a Church has fallen below
this. Jesus was here giving not only His program of ministry but a brief
spiritual autobiography of Himself as the Saviour and Servant of men. In
the Great Commission and in the words of Acts 1:8, "Ye shall be witnesses
unto me both in Jerusalem and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the
uttermost parts of the earth" He is prescribing the stategy, the extent, and
the duration of the program of the Church until His return. Here He
revealed both the field and the force. It is worth noting also that on here and
in Luke 4:18 two other subjects mentioned in both contexts are The Holy
Spirit and prayer, both highly significant in the missionary strategy of the
early Christian Church.

Likewise in the Book of Acts we find this same strategy as lived and
proclaimed by Jesus actually in operation through the lives of the early
Christians. The greatest text book on missions and evangelism yet written
is the Acts of the Apostles as recorded by the Holy Spirit. The term, "mis-
sionary", alludes more to the person bearing a message while "evangelism"
alludes more to the message of "glad tidings" which the missionary bears.

In dealing with this subject we have in mind a general survey and exami-
nation of the Christian Church in its world-wide sweep. In particular, how-
ever, we shall have in mind the Protestant Church and especially our own
Church the Presbyterian Church in the South. Our concern will also be
with our missionary and evangelistic strategy here at home rather than

abroad. It is our desire to measure our Church and its work in an honest
manner against the program of our Lord and the Church of the first cen-
tury. Our criticisms we hope will be of a constructive and positive nature.
Our viewpoint must ever be and is optimistic but at the same time there is
and should be much to humble us and search our hearts realizing our fail-
ures and shortsightedness at the same time being confident that His Church
will be victorious and "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

I. THE NATURE AND MISSION OF THE CHURCH

The very genius of Christianity is its missionary nature. It is a sharing
and an outgoing and an outgiving. It is an enlargement of life and knowl-
edge and fellowship. The words and the life of our Lord all reveal the
nature of this way of life. He came to "seek and to save." He came that
"our joy might be full." He came that He "might fulfill" and to give "life
abundantly."

Jesus expresses this missionary outgoing and outreaching nature of His
Church in such terms as "leaven", "salt", "light", "bearing fruit", "seed and
sowing", or in such commands as "go ye". Again we find the program and
technique of world conquest not only in the pattern of His own daily life
but in His training of the disciples. All His ministry as set forth in Luke
4:18 was but a personal and daily enlargement of that program of action.
The Book of Acts was but the continued enlargement of His way and
work in hundreds of individuals as they went forth "everywhere" and "in
every place" to all men "in His name" moved, empowered, and controlled
by the passion of their Lord and the power of the Holy Ghost. They were
seeking those who were lost the poor, the lonely, the blind, the sinful, and
they went everywhere from house to house doing it. Jesus did not count
the cost nor did they. But wherever they went they witnessed to what He
had done for them to them and through them. They had a story to
tell and nothing could keep them from telling it. They had little organ-
ization but great power. They had a deep sense of man's eternal need
and a deep consciousness of their own mission. They preached, taught, and
healed and as they went and the Word was used and prayer was made
the power of the Spirit was evident and the Church grew. It grew in many
and strange places among all classes and creeds and it became an idigen-
ous Church. Men marvelled. It reached all classes and all kinds of people
rich and poor, good and bad, learned and unlearned. They were expend-
able disciples.

The resources of the Church were simple and few but sufficient and
efficient. They were not the things so often the Church strives for today
not money, nor great buildings, nor position, and great power of influence
among men, nor great organizations and large membership, nor machinery
and great educational programs and institutions. What did they have? The
Word of God the power and habit of prayer great faith the Presence and
Power of the Holy Spirit a personal, vital, first-hand experience of Jesus
Christ, having been born again and a willingness to make any sacrifice and

endure any hardship and witness anywhere and everywhere in large or
small places in His name and for His sake. This was their meagre but
mighty equipment and method.

These people like Jesus were "moved with compassion." They had a
sense of urgency. They were conscious of the sin, the need, and the lostness
of people all about them. Their religion was a "must" and not a convenience.
They were impelled and nothing else mattered. They were "sent" and they
"went."

Their vision and goal was of a world-wide extent but they began right
where they were and they began to witness to the individual nearest them,
and then the next and the next. It was a worldwide goal with a one by one
strategy. They deployed their forces here and there in efficient military fashion
instead of remaining in Jerusalem to establish a great congregation there. The
whole Church was at work every member everywhere. The Church looked
outward not inward. They were not trying to build up a great congregation
but were seeking to reach every individual. Persecution and conflict only
spread the fire into thousands of places.

II. THE PRESENT DAY SITUATION

Something vastly different is true of the Church today. The Church is
huge in members, money, buildings, leaders, equipment, publications, etc.,
but somehow men are questioning its power. The Church is not persecuted
it is ignored. The world does not marvel it is simply indifferent. Even the
leadership of the Church questions its power and admits its failures in the
light of its opportunities and resources! We know we do not measure up to
Pentecost. We do not "turn the world upside down" in our day. Nor do we
have the giants of yesterday such as Edwards, Whitfield, Asbury, Cartwright,
Spurgeon, or Moody. Is it because the Church is decadent and worldly? Is
it the ministry? Is it a compromised and diluted Gospel? Is it a gross indiffer-
ence on the part of the unconverted all about us? Is it our method? Is it our
strategy?

We know what the world needs too well. Men even speak of their
longings and needs and dissatisfactions, and somehow we feel that we are
neither sufficient nor satisfying for these needs.

General MacArthur has reminded us that "from here on out it is a
theological problem." President Angell of Yale has said, "We are in desperate
need of a vigorous revival of religion." Other leaders, editors, and even
scientists are saying the same thing. Dr. Van Dusen recently said, "The only
cure is a spiritual revival ... I mean the kind of spiritual revival that will
place religion once again at the center of life, where it belongs." This sense
of need is universal. Why did the millions in India follow slavishly Gandhi
and mourn his passing? He represented a religion of conviction and had a
willingness to sacrifice, and he came to be regarded as a saviour and as a god.

So multitudes of men are leaving the Church alone. They are unchal-
lenged. We have to admit its loss of influence as so often held in decades

past, and the questing stream that flowed to it in worship has dwindled. What
has caused the dwindling? What has caused the lethargy? What has changed
Protestantism from a fervent enthusiastic and powerful force to the formal
institution of our day? W r e must remind ourselves that it is not a great distance
from apathy to apostasy.

Dr. Homrighausen says, "We have seen Christianity reduced to a non-
aggressive religion of an ethical and rational nature. It is made an elective . . .
it becomes a debatable subject for observers, but not a revelation laying
absolute claims upon men. Jesus Christ becomes a Teacher of Wisdom, and
not a Saviour; salvation is a matter of self-improvement and not redemp-
tion . . . cultural Christianity ... is concerned more with intellectual in-
terpretations, than it is with personal transformations through repentance
and faith . . . Christianity has been changed from something of vital concern
to man's total being into a system of ideas. Ideas by themselves seldom create
martyrs."

We could cite legions of others who speak of the ineffectiveness of the
Church and her ministry today, but further consultation of Church critics
would but weary us and add little to the solution of the problem.

Some of the ailments or rather symptoms that plague us today are big-
churchitis, formalism, ceremony without concern, pulpit eloquence instead of
personal spiritual conviction, education instead of evangelism, a professional
instead of a personal ministry, lack of vital personal Christian experience,
a self-complacent and unconcerned and unwitnessing membership, and many
other things. The results are empty churches, unconverted church members,
unreached and unchurched communities, and hundreds of small dying and
impoverished small town and rural churches most of which are without
pastors and a constantly diminishing and disinterested membership. Protestant-
ism is thus retreating from vast city regions where it once was dominant and is
giving up rural communities to the more enthusiastic and sometimes fanatical
sects and Roman Catholicism. More and more downtown churches retreat
to the better sections of the city and leave the slums for small sects and Satan.
In addition vast areas of thickly congested suburban communities are mush-
rooming overnight to encircle almost every city in our Southland and are
quickly producing a vast crop of untouched peoples who will in a short while
become pagan and serve as festering sores of irreligion, indifference, and
paganism. We are losing these suburban people and neglecting the rural
masses.

In addition to the vast spiritual lethargy within the Church and failure
of evaluation and concern for the possible resources of strength, there are
other things that should challenge us to a renewed missionary interest and
an evangelistic concern. Three dominant "isms" are bidding for America and
the world Communism, Romanism, and pagan materialism.

Moral decay demonstrated in domestic breakdown and juvenile de-
linquency is everywhere apparent. Great shifts and increases of population
in the South have come but the Church has grown on the average in many
places about one-third to the population increase.

There must be something vitally wrong in our method of proclaiming,
preaching, and promoting the Kingdom of our Lord. What has been wrong
in our strategy?

1. The Church has not kept up with the people. The early Church went
everywhere where the people were. We open our churches and wait for the
people to come. They do not come, they go elsewhere. We have lost contact
and have thus lost the people.

2. Not only so, we have lost ground not only on basis of the percentage
of population increase but have been slow in the birth of churches. From
1937 to 1946 the total aggregate increase in number of churches in our own
General Assembly increased in those ten years by the grand total of nine.
In one year recently 365 Holiness Churches were organized one a day. We
were letting them die as fast as they were being born. We have done much
better in the last two or three years but if we are not diligently careful we will
become careless and slip. In one large Southern city, where in only four years
the population increased 11%, it was 38 years before we gave birth to a new
Church.

3. We have not deployed our forces and thus we have narrowed our
field of action. The large churches with hundreds of members cannot keep
in touch with, develop, nor use the vast resources of these multitudes. Much
leadership and talent, vast resources of money go untouched because of the
impossibility of personal pastoral ministry killed with the bigness of the huge
load of administrative and ecclesiastical business and the burdensome and
killing load of the city pastor. Evangelism and personal missionary interest
must recede and often times are lost sight of completely. We have found from
study that the actual spiritual birth rate in home mission, rural, and small
town churches even when often vacant and with greatly impoverished equip-
ment and irregular services, is higher than our larger churches with all their
money, ministers, members, and material. We can almost say the larger
the church in membership, the smaller the spiritual birth rate.

4. Again, we have been allowing our small town and rural churches
to die almost as fast as others are born. A recent study of one of our presby-
teries reveals that 42% of the white Presbyterian Churches in that presbytery
have died since being born. Likewise 3 out of 5 of the Negro churches there
have died. Many of those rural churches lived a short while and died many
lived for years or decades and then died. There are still rural peoples there.
There are twice as many rural people now as in 1870 even though the per-
centage of rural population as compared with city population is smaller.
Not only so, but other denominations remained there and new sects have
spread like wild-fire. Could not our own denominations have stayed and
grown and spread? Why do some small towns and industrial communities
have two or more churches of the same denomination and we have either one
small struggling church or none at all?

A recent Baptist minister stated that in 10 recent years the Holiness
Church grew 400%, the Southern Baptist 40%, and the Presbyterians 25%.
Why this divergence?

5. We have allowed our richest resource of ministers and members to
fall into neglect. Another alarming condition now existing in our own
Church is the tragic and impoverished prevailing condition of most of our
rural churches. By rural, we mean churches in communities of less than 2500
population. From such communities our leaders of city, state, and national
life have come in a constant life-giving stream. From them have come the
majority of our city church leaders, officers, and teachers. From them have
come approximately 60% of our ministers. Three-fourths of our own seminary
faculty came from the country. From these rural churches we have been
receiving a constant stream of rich life, blood, food, and leadership for our
great city churches. But the rich soil that produced this food for decades is
fast washing away and is being neglected. We have about borrowed all the
money in the bank.

Between 60% and 75% of our Sunday Schools and Churches in our
General Assembly are less than 100 in membership. 13 out of 15 of our
churches are under 500. But most of our money and leadership is spent on
the strong and self-sustaining large churches while the spiritual and minis-
terial incubators dry up and die. This is poor logic and still poorer religion.
Many of the strongest of our preaching and pastoral ministry feel led to go to
the cities and thus the places of greatest need and of highest production stand
neglected and forsaken. We marvel that these little churches live as long as
they do. It is not because of our planning and support but because the few
stalwart souls who will not give up and the keeping power of the Head of
the Church sustains them. But how long can we drain off the cream and
expect these little churches to survive on the whey? And what will be the
eventual effect on the large city churches, the number of ministers and
missionaries? The national government is viewing with concern and alarm the
matter of soil neglect and large amounts of men and money and time are
going into this program of conservation. When will the church sense the
situation? And when will it begin a real intensive program of rural church
conservation?

6. The failure and neglect of our work among Negroes presents perhaps
the darkest picture of all. We have less than one-third as many Negro members
now than when our Assembly was organized. Dr. John R. Cunningham,
Moderator of our Assembly, recently stated that there were more Negro
members of the Presbyterian Church USA in Mecklenburg County, North
Carolina alone than we have in our entire General Assembly.

It is interesting to compare figures today with ten years ago. Ten years
ago we had 40 Negro ministers, today only 37. Then we had 7 Negro candi-
dates, and now only 3. We have gained one Negro Church during that ten
years, though we still have only 48 Negro Churches in our entire Assembly.
Ten years ago we reported 219 professions of faith among Negroes, but last
year the greatest year for additions on profession of faith in the history of
our Church we reported only 98 on profession of faith in our entire Assem-
bly, stretching from Baltomore to El Paso. What an indictment on us who
say we love our colored brethren. We are happy in that new plans are being

made and new leadership is being provided for this great work. It is inter-
esting that the three men whom God has provided to lead this great work
in the Assembly are all graduates of this seminary. We must undergird this
great work not only with our prayers, but with our gifts and with personal
encouragement and witnessing to our brother in black.

7. Another point of vital concern affecting the life, missionary strategy,
and evangelistic life of the Church is our great failure as a recruiting agency
for both men and material. Recently the Methodist Church in America
needed 5000 more ministers. The Southern Baptists needed 4000. Our own
Church needs more pastors and full time leaders today than we did a year
ago. We frequently have more ministers and missionaries retire and die per
year than we have graduating from all our seminaries. With new churches
being born, new foreign mission doors standing urgently and tragically ajar,
the need becomes alarmingly acute. Two-fifths of our churches are without
regular pastors; one-sixth of our churches are vacant. This was true ten
years ago and it is the same today. Of 620 vacant churches only fifteen have
over 250 members and three have over 500 members.

If America could call forth, challenge, produce, and train millions of
our finest youth to go out to dare and die with great hardship and sacrifice
for our country cannot the Church and ministry so challenge and call forth
the finest and best of our Church's youth to do sacrificial and valiant service
for our Lord and His Church? We must lift the trumpet of God to our lips
and sound forth, for only then men and the means will come forth. Such
a call must come as Jesus said accompanied by a sense of desperate need
and persistent prayer. The fields are white unto the harvest the laborers
are few pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth
laborers into His harvest." Once again we must place before God's people
the question, "Who then is willing to consecrate his service this day unto
the Lord?"

8. Again our Church and most of the Protestant Churches have failed
to produce and train an evangelistic, missionary-minded, and prospect-
conscious ministry and laity. Only in recent years have most Protestant
Seminaries had courses of instruction in evangelism and vital practical training
in how to win the lost to Christ. Evangelism just grew of itself if at all
now and then and often of an obnoxious variety. Now 60% of American
Protestant theological seminaries are instituting courses and methods of
training in the various phases of evangelism. There is still a great dearth of
well-trained and effective evangelists.

Few average church members ever bear a personal witness for Christ.
One-third of our churches last year reported no professions of faith, and yet
this was in our greatest year of evangelism. In the first place, too many
pastors neither know how to preach as evangelists nor how to win soul's
personally for Christ. In the second place we have not trained our lay
members to do so, nor have we felt ourselves nor laid upon them the necessity
of yearning for the lost, and the vision and consciousness of seeking for them,
nor a method of actually winning them to Him. We are on the way, but we

are just beginning. New convictions are creeping into our preaching and
pulpits. We are beginning to preach to and for the lost and for decisions.
And we are rinding that the people out there outside the Church and
Christ are waiting and willing to come. We are now rediscovering the mes-
sage, the motive, and the method of those first century Christians which is
but the elongated desire and method of our Lord.

What then shall be our strategy as we face these present day problems
and conditions? Of this we may be sure it will require much prayer, wisdom,
power, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit; it will mean breaking loose from
some of our old attitudes and ways of doing things; it will demand a greater
spiritual dynamic and concern on the part of ministry and membership than
heretofore displayed, and a spirit of unlimited sacrifice. But we are confident
and hopeful if our own Church is willing this day to dedicate herself fully
and thus become a great evangelistic and missionary force, it can be done.

III. A FIVE-FOLD STRATEGY SUGGESTED

May I suggest five elements in this strategy for our Church?

1. First, we must rethink and re-evaluate the mission of the Church.
We are here to seek and to save. Our task is to love the lost. We must woo
and win. We must go to all men of all classes, creeds, and character. We must
preach a rich Gospel to poor people as well as rich. We must get rid of a
Presbyterian complex and have a Pentecostal concern and compassion. We
must have an outward look. We must realize anew that our mission is not
great buildings, huge budgets, efficient organizations, educational prerequisites,
though all these things may come and can be used but not as ends or goals.
They are as mere chattels to be used for the reaching of lost men. Presby-
terians must become a Church lost in sacrificial service as Jesus was as was
Paul and Peter. There should be much searching of heart on the part of
every pastor, Church officer, and member as we ask the great heart-searching
question of Saul of Tarsus "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" It would
be well worth our while to ponder long and deeply the message to the Church
at Laodicea, and we need to see ourselves as God would have us be. Until
we are willing to have Him strip off our prestige, our self-appointed honor
and aristocracy, selfcomplacency and luke-warmness, we cannot and will
not realize our poverty and need for the riches which He has for us. Then
we will see our nakedness of spiritual results and our lack of true humility
and repentance before Him and a lost world. We must become a repentant
Church and an humbled Church. We must have a new mind and a new
heart. It is not easy to say this of someone we love very dearly, but until we
face the truth concerning ourselves, we shall not desire greatly to be different
and dynamic.

2. Our second step of strategy is that there must be a rededication of the
ministry of the Church. The prophet is still the vital link between God and
man. It was true in the days of Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. It is still true.
The pew will not catch fire until the pulpit is in flames. Dr. Goodell in his
book, Heralds of a Passion, has these things to say about our ministry:

"If the angel of the churches was to bring once more a greeting and
challenge to the Church of the Living God, it would be a repetition of the
message to the Church at Laodicea.

"Our big problem in the Church today is not religious unrest. We are
not disturbed at all; we are asleep. The weapon being used against the Church
is not the stiletto or sword but the sandbag.

"The big problem is indifference and lack of conviction. This attitude
of stolidity and indifference was the one thing which Jesus could not stand.
Next to hypocrisy he fulminated most against this.

"The First Church of Laodicea probably wanted to be the most orthodox
and have the largest building in town, the tallest steeple, and the finest choir,
and the biggest budget, and the most eloquent preacher, and the largest
congregation. But this is not the mission of the Church but Jesus said 'Lovest
Thou Me?' And our love for Him is manifested by compassion for the lost
outside the church.

"Some how we must find once more the passion of the ages that sent the
Church with a Pentecostal flame to carry the good tidings everywhere.

"The path to sound thinking is not always through a big brain, some-
times it is through a warm heart."

Dr. Goodell says, "What breaks the heart of the enthusiast is to fire red
hot shells into a mud bank.

"Jesus was moved" . . .

"The fire has gone out on the altars of the temple," as Dr. Jowett said:
"if the Church would be pure, the Church must be passionate.

"We cannot be heralds of our Lord's passion unless we enter into the
fellowship of His sufferings.

"If we are going to win a country as John Knox won Scotland, we must
have a passion that says, 'Give me Scotland or I die.' Cultured people thank
us for our sermons but do not surrender their souls to the will of God."

(a) Our ministry must be more personal and spiritual. We dare not
become professional or mere administrative experts or pulpit orators. We must
know and love our people and those who are not yet our people. Luke 4:18
must become our daily program and Jesus our daily pattern as He dealt with
individuals. We must not become too busy for a heart-to-heart ministry to
people who live in the shadows and suffer with broken hearts.

(b) We must be a sacrificial ministry. Jesus warned His early disciples
in Luke 10 not to be concerned about "scrip or purse." The world must not
even begin to feel that success in the ministry is determined by the size and
salary of a Church or that we are motivated by money and position. False
values are often being used today to measure men. Too seldom do we find
men moving from places of privilege into neglected communities, from city to
country, from the midst of throngs into the comparatively lonely areas.

This statement is not intended as a suggestion that all of our ministers
ought to be serving in Home Mission fields or as pastors of country churches.

Most assuredly it is not intended as a criticism of our faithful city pastors.
Our Church has no more consecrated servants than are many of the men
who are bearing the burden and heat of the day as leaders of great congre-
gations in our large population centers. These men are compelled to live
under constant strain and literally to wear themselves out physically, emo-
tionally, and nervously in meeting the constant demands which are made
upon them. They have no time which they can call their own. They con-
stantly carry heavy burdens upon their hearts because of the fact that they
are not able to meet more of the needs which they see continually about
them. Without their service, and the gifts of their congregations, the educa-
tional institutions and the missionary agencies of our Church would be unable
to carry forward their work.

At the same time that the country church must depend on the city for
much of its financial support, however, it must be remembered that the city
churches of our generation have drawn their membership largely from the
country. Unless there are strong, able men willing to devote their lives to the
work of the rural church today, it is not likely that the city church of to-
morrow will be strong. This is not a situation in which we can say
"either . . . or"; it is a case of "both . . . and." We must have earnest,
gifted, consecrated men who are willing to serve in the open country and
the small towns, just as we must have them for service in our cities. God
calls men to both types of work. The point cannot be emphasized too strongly,
however, that in either case a man's decision as to his field of service must be
based not upon personal desires or inclination but purely upon loyalty to the
will of God as made known through the work of His Spirit. Surely God must
sometimes call men from the large places to the small, as well as from the
small places to the large. Certainly He did so in Bible days.

The ministry must rededicate itself and remodel itself after that of
Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, and Phillip, and Paul, and above all of our
Lord, who humbled Himself and made Himself of no reputation. Perhaps the
words of God at the conversion and call of Saul would be good for us all
to ponder. God did not promise Paul ease, high honor, great fame, large con-
gregations, money, comfort, or the favor of men; He only said, "I will show
him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." When we can re-
capture for the ministry the sacrificial spirit of the early Christians, we may
expect a great spiritual renaissance in the Church, but not until then.

(c) The third thing necessary in the rededication of our ministry is
that something must happen to our preaching. Our sermons must be more than
beautiful and eloquent displays of literary genius. We must speak not things
that please men but things that please God and stir and save men. We are
His messengers on a divine mission with good news for a lost world in des-
perate need of a Saviour. We must speak with authority an eternal, living
message. Our preaching must have conviction and produce decisions. A critic
of some of the preachers of Scotland once said that the average preacher did
not have "enough passion and conviction to convert a tit-mouse." There is
too much moonlight preaching. No fruit or flowers ever grew from moonlight.

We must speak heart-to-heart to people in desperate need. We must quit
speaking over their heads and speak to their hearts. We must recapture the in-
carnate compassion and simplicity of our Lord. This is what the early Chris-
tians had and this is the way they spoke. Something marvelous had happened
to them, and they stood up to tell all men, and each and every man what
marvelous things God had done for them. As someone recently said, we must
quit talking about miracles and become a miracle. These early witnesses had
a story to tell first-hand from personal experience. They were their own
illustrations which came from no book but were from the work of the
Holy Spirit.

These hoped-for elements in the ministry, therefore, lay upon the sem-
inary a great burden. In our theological training there must be developed
not only factual knowledge of history, theology, and language, but practical
skill in divine and human relations. There must be the creating and moulding
of spiritual desires and disciplines. We must produce and develop Men of
God who are Prophets and Shepherds with voices of conviction who speak
with authority but with hearts of love and who draw all men unto Him. To
know God in all His power and holiness and mercy and forgiveness, to know
man in all his desperate need and sin and loneliness and desire, and to bring
these two together is our eternal and divine calling.

We shall not go far in developing a missionary strategy in the Church
until we begin to develop men in the ministry who desire and possess such a
strategy themselves. Before Isaiah was worthy to speak to, instruct, and lead
Israel, he had to be touched with a coal of fire from the altar of heaven
so must we.

3. The third step in our suggested strategy is that the membership of
our beloved Church in particular and the Protestant Church in general must
experience a rebirth. The early Church knew Jesus and all the Scriptures of
the Old Testament and had seen the crucifixion. They even knew the facts
of His resurrection. But only when Pentecost came and through prayer God's
Holy Ghost fell upon each and every one did they truly become what they
were meant to be.

Then they were empowered. They were moved and they went out
everywhere. Then the Church grew and the Lord added to the Church. Then
the life and heart and compassion of Jesus entered into each of them. This
must come again before our Church will "turn the world upside down"
and before men will be "amazed" and "marvel" at us. Then men will lay
their material possessions at the disciples' feet and go out to dare and die for
Him. When the Church is born again through the travail of repentance,
prayer, and the cleansing and empowering of the Holy Ghost the spiritual
apathy, cold formalism, and fruitlessness will go and with it the apparent
indifference and unconcern of the world. Then conflict will come but with
it conquest and the enlargement of the Kingdom in quantity and in quality.

4. We must revamp our methods and ways of doing things. One part
of this revamping has to do with our attitudes and the other with the actual
doing of the work.

A. (a) We must continue the principles of colonization instead of cen-
tralization as Christ's method of Church extension. No large city church ever
suffers from the loss of a few officers and members who form the nucleus
of a new suburban church. From our large churches there must be contin-
uous groups or cells forming new and growing groups of churches. There is
an increasing number of our large city churches reaching out for the masses
in both the poorer areas of our cities and these fast growing suburban dis-
tricts. Much leadership and money is still untouched and unused in our large
churches. This can be set to work where it will become a great investment.
The sowing of such seed will bring a rich harvest.

It is not easy to get old families or officers in the city to leave their
Church home for the smaller and new Church. However, we must as pastors
encourage and develop this pioneering and missionary attitude of mind, of
giving rather than getting. Our denomination has begun a great work in
this respect and the results are highly gratifying. We must continue to enlarge
our bounds and deploy our forces. There are vast areas in nearly all our
cities where there are no Presbyterian churches. We are not concerned enough
about the slums a few blocks away. We must at the same time develop a
vision on the part of our people for such opportunities and locations that we
may take the church where the people are. As Dr. Hanna says, "The salt must
not be lumpy." Vast areas of suburban Atlanta, Decatur, and outlying areas
of most cities are white unto the harvest. We must create in the minds of
our people a prospect consciousness so that every person they meet is a pros-
pect for the Kingdom and the Presbyterian Church until we find they already
have a Church home. This attitude some denominations already have
particularly among such groups as the Baptists, the Church of God, and the
Nazarenes. From such a program of colonization will come new prospective
ministers, missionaries, and church officers, and there will come a quickening
of life, power, and material into the church as a whole. Only as there is a
constant outgiving of itself can the Church itself survive.

If we are to conquer the fifty per cent of America that is not Christian,
we must use the tactics employed by our military forces in the recent war in
North Africa and the Southwest Pacific. We must establish spiritual "beach-
heads" wherever possible and go on from one area to another until we have
implanted the banner of our Lord's Kingdom in every area of America and
the world.

(b) We must develop a different method and evaluation concerning the
recruiting of ministerial and missionary leadership in our Church. Somehow
without lowering our educational level and requirements for our theological
training we must both by prayer, preaching, and sympathetic guidance call
forth more of the finest of our youth into the field of full-time Christian
service.

At the same time with our great shortage of ministerial and missionary
leadership, we must find some way to train and use many well-qualified and
spiritually mature and consecrated laymen who are interested in this field
of service. Other denominations have used these men of mature experience

but lacking in college preparation with telling results. Our seminaries could
well consider the development of some simple courses of instruction so that
these men may be used in a vital way in many places of service. Our presby-
teries could sift and screen these men by a process of practical training,
probation, licensure, and supervised development and thus produce many
valuable pastors for rural, administrative, evangelistic, and missionary activities
and after their being thoroughly proven, allow ordination. This is a radical
departure from traditional Presbyterian procedure, but it could also produce a
radical difference in the usual Presbyterian results. Very few of the disciples
in the first-century Church were college graduates, attended seminary, or
held academic and honorary degrees but they were used of God to win
souls and extend the Kingdom of God, and they outlived and outdied any
other generation of Christian witnesses.

(c) We must continue not only to intensify our new emphasis on training
the ministry to have a desire for the evangelization and winning of those all
about us but we ministers must be trained ourselves in how actually to do it.
On the other hand our ministry must know how to inspire and to motivate
our lay people to do it, and know how to train them in every phase of mis-
sions and evangelism. We have as much wealth of resources within the
Presbyterian Church as any denomination, but we have not sent them forth
nor set their faces outward and their hearts aflame. It has not been Presby-
terianism that has not appealed to the masses, but Presbyterians themselves and
our Presbyterian attitudes.

B. The second phase of revamping is in the field of application. We
must revamp some of our methods in such fields as that of home missions
and the rural church. Here is one of the great needs of the hour. Our national
government is pouring untold millions into soil conservation, realizing that
the nation depends upon the resources of the land for its very life. We must
realize the tragic situation existing in our rural and small churches.

With few manses, many vacant churches, impoverished and irregular
services, the corroding effects are wearing away the spiritual foundations of
the great flow of life to city churches. What is the solution?

(a) We must challenge some of our very best men in seminary and in
the ministry to go to these needy, destitute, difficult but highly important
places and spend their lives there as truly as other valiant missionaries do in
foreign fields. Many of these fields will never and can never become self-
sustaining both because of lack of population and economic resources. We
must honor these men and give to them a position and support as truly as
we do those who labor in Africa and China. We must cease to send our young
seminary graduates to these fields as temporary internes before going to some-
thing better or bigger. We must look upon these men as ministers plus. We
send many of our best physicians to the sickest, most anemic, and afflicted
patients. We must use better logic in dealing with this difficult problem of
the rural and small church.

(b) Again we must make it possible for these men to stay with these great
missionary undertakings. Why cannot a similar or related method be used

here as in our foreign mission work? We must undergird and finance these
men so that they can operate, travel, educate their families, secure adequate
medical and dental care, purchase adequate modern equipment, books, and
further personal training in their field in order to stay with their life-time
work and develop themselves and their fields and programs in such a manner
that will keep them there. Too often the only way to do these things is to go
to another and larger field and salary. There is today a too rapid turnover
in pastoral relationships in these small churches to allow for much real growth
and development of any kind of worthwhile program in these churches.

(c) We must also provide the means, manses, and men that these churches
will have resident pastors. Commuting clergymen have caused far too many
church funerals. A short term, non-resident pastor can no more build up a
church than an African missionary could fly from South Africa each week-
end to the Belgian Congo and build up our missionary work there. Nor can
a man grow a crop of corn by driving out from the city and riding over the
field once a week.

(d) Then too, we must develop a ministry willing to serve at great sacri-
fice and to stay persistently with a difficult and thankless task over a longer
period of time. The church must at the same time make it possible for the
laborer to improve himself in usefulness and develop his field. We must begin
to wrestle creatively and continuously with this problem. The entire life and
soul of our church is intimately and desperately tied up with this problem.
There could be no richer return in investment of life and business-like plan-
ning than at this point. Protestantism is failing perhaps more in rural America
than at any other point and Roman Catholicism is attacking at this particular
point with a great militant program of rural evangelism. The rural and less
educated masses can be won by our church as well as by any other. Witness
the tremendous growth of the Holiness groups and other sects. The fields are
white unto harvest. Non-resident, temporary student supplies, and services
once a month will never solve the problem, but will only increase the slow
death of more and more small churches. Here is where we need our strongest
men and our clearest thinking and planning and our most sacrificial stew-
ardship.

(e) We might further suggest that the larger city churches begin a more
personal and sympathetic method of encouraging and undergirding the work
of the home mission churches by personal group contact with them. To these
city churches from the rural churches goes a constant stream of life and
leadership. Therefore, in exchange, let pastors and members send back a rich
resource of money and materials in order that the fountain head may be
enriched and not dry up.

Why could not salaries and honors and equipment and resources be
equalized and shared in a brotherly and Christian manner? Should not the
strong help in bearing the burden of the weak? Why could not city churches
adopt rural church and by sympathetic interest, encouragement, and personal
visitation assist in better and more adequate buildings, manses, and equip-
ment? If we can do it for the man in Africa, why not for the man in the

mountains of North Georgia? This kind of home missions makes sense and
would bear fruit. The little churches perhaps feel like David in his discourage-
ment and loneliness who said: "No man careth for my soul."

Having rethought the mission, having rededicated ourselves as ministers,
having sought a rebirth in the church membership, having revamped our
technique in certain fields,

5. NOW we must rediscover the great spiritual resources which were
used by the first-century church. They had little of what we have, but they
had much of what we do not have.

Their resources were simple but sufficient. What were these resources?
They can also be ours. They prayed believing until even the prison doors
were opened. They preached the Word and men and women believed who
before had persecuted and set their minds and hearts as stone. They witnessed
to every one, everywhere, on every occasion telling them the Good News
of what Christ had done for them and in and through them. They were
witnesses with warm hearts, ready tongues, and flaming spirits. They spoke
of, were directed by, and were filled with the Holy Ghost. They loved God
enough to suffer all things for His name sake, and they loved lost men as
Jesus did. These things made them irresistible to the world about them. These
are the resources we must use in our day.

Robert E. Speer said: "The evangelization of the world in this generation
depends first of all upon a revival of prayer. Deeper than the need for men;
deeper far than the need for money; deep down atthe bottom of our spirit-
less life is the need for the forgotten secret of prevailing, world-wide prayer . . .
the condition and consequences of such prayers as this is a new outpouring
of the Holy Ghost. Nothing short of His own suggestion will prompt the
necessary prayer to bring Him back in power. Nothing short of a new out-
pouring of the Holy Spirit will ever solve the missionary problems of our day."

When will this revival of spiritual power and missionary zeal come upon
us? When will our church be baptized afresh with Pentecostal power and the
fires of evangelism? When we begin to cry out for it, long for it ,and pray
for it. A party of tourists were taken one day to see the church where John
Wesley was converted. The guide pointed out the very pew where Wesley
had sat. One of the party was found a few minutes later seated in Wesley's
pew, praying most earnestly: "Lord, do it again. Lord, do it again." This is
my prayer. Will you make it yours?