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the student body. So far as this change means a diminished moral leadership on the part of the teaching staff, as it often does, it is to be deeply regretted. But so far as it means a more manly and efficient type of religious character on the part of the students, the result of selfcontrol and deliberate choice, it is to be welcomed.

The Young Men's Christian Association continues to do a potent work through its branches in the various colleges. That work, in spite of what some may consider limitations, is constantly growing in wisdom and power, and is to-day a source of gratification to all who understand it.

In general it may be said that the religious forces in college life are, if not stronger better adjusted to the conditions about them than ever before. Undoubtedly the devotional element in the average chapel service does not appeal to the students as it once did. This is especially true in colleges for men only. Religion is interpreted in terms of action and life rather than in terms of formal worship. It is translated into ethics rather than the practice of devotion. Thus, if the student prayer meeting has waned, the interest of the student in missions, and philanthropy, and the service of his generation has steadily increased. There is less interest in subjective states, less "testimony," but far deeper interest in doing good to one's fellow-men, far greater admiration for a genuinely unselfish life, and a decidedly higher standard of student honor. The religion of college men is more healthy, stable, and intelligent, and, if it is less emotional, is more pervasive than twenty years ago. Whatever religion the college student has is more fully co-ordinated with all his intellectual possessions. No longer kept in a separate compartment, it influences all his thinking and doing.

5. The theological seminaries, if not so responsive to educational movements as are the institutions which deal with younger pupils and appeal to a larger constituency, are in some cases making earnest efforts toward co-operation with the great educational forces of our time. Some of them are entering into alliances, more or less formal, with universities.

In the study of missions the best seminaries are seeking not simply to give a swift sketch of events in missionary history, but an intensive study of missions as social facts and powers, their relation to the development of nations and races, and their proved place in the Kingdom of God. A few seminaries are teaching the literary languages of the larger mission fields, and offering courses in comparative religion. In pedagogy, the attempt is made to present not only abstract principles of teaching, but to introduce drill in methods of procedure, and to give training by actual experience in the work.

The question of the supply of men for the ministry has engaged the attention of all the seminaries. There is a general conviction, which can hardly be either supported or refuted by an array of statistics, that the ministerial calling is not securing its fair proportion, in respect of numbers or ability, of the educated manhood of our time.

The student volunteer movement has given our missionary societies more men than they can send forth, men who are glad to face privation and danger and death, because they have been made familiar with this opportunity for service. If a fraction of the same effort were devoted to the education of our young men in knowledge of the opportunities for influencing America through the functions exercised by the Hebrew prophets, by the reformers of the sixteenth century, and by the prophetic founders of New England, thousands of our ablest young men would eagerly respond. We need for the service of the church just such representative young men as Cecil Rhodes sought to gather at Oxford by means of his great bequest-men of intellectual and moral grasp, and power of leadership among their fellows. Our civilization cannot endure without leaders of spiritual vision and prophetic power.

HOW CAN WE BRING THE INDIVIDUAL INTO

CONSCIOUS RELATION WITH GOD?

THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF GOD UPON ONE'S LIFE

REV. WILLIAM FRASER MCDOWELL, D.D., LL.D.

BISHOP OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Our definitions and doctrines should always emerge at the highest levels, not at the lowest, nor even at the lower. Our conception of life must be based upon the best specimens of life available for our study or observation. What God may be in human life is to be determined by His own thought of it, illustrated and exemplified by the most perfect cases on record. The question is neither speculative nor academic; it is vital and immediate. Of this we all have knowledge. "That which we have seen and heard declare we."

The visible center of our association is a literature. The invisible center is a Person. The book is related to Him as to its source, as to its substance, and as to its purpose. Without Him it would neither have been, nor would it have been worth while. "The Bible is the expression of an experience." It would not have been a Bible if it had not been an experience. The literature is shot through with the sense of God's direct relation to human life. Every figure of speech is used to make that clear. But the literature is thus full of the sense of God's direct presence because Hebrew life and early Christian life was thus full of it. They wrote it all down thus because it had thus happened to them. God is so supreme a figure in the book because he was so large a figure in personal life. It is the expression of an experience of God.

And this is the outstanding note of those Scriptures themselves. All that the Bible means by such words as, "and the word of the Lord came,' ," "and God said," "and the Lord appeared"; all that we mean at last by the noble term "revelation," when we are at its heart; and all that we mean by such terms as incarnation and Immanuel are woven inextricably into personal life. There was no doubt of God's direct influence in the Old Testament days. In a thousand ways He was shaping men, nations, and events. Individual lives, as Abraham's, Jacob's, and Moses's, changed character and relations under His direct touch. There was the immediate consciousness of God. He pervaded life. He was immanent everywhere. He spoke immediately

to the soul of man. To the highest souls of the race, as Professor Seth has put it, "God was an experience, not simply an object." Or as another has said: "The Spirit' has always been an expression for some form of the divine immanence. The writer who used it has always represented God as immediately present in human life and the world of common affairs, imparting skill to the workman's fingers, wisdom to the statesman's judgment, or eloquence and cogency to the prophet's plea." One might add that He was chiefly imparting life and character, health and righteousness, goodness and true holiness to men and women.

"I never doubt for a moment the real presence of God "— we find the late Burne-Jones, the artist, quoted as saying. "I never could debate about it, any more than I could argue about beauty and the things I most love," he added.

More than a quarter of a century ago I came to this city to study theology. Almost the very first voice I heard was the voice of Phillips Brooks. And no lesson did he teach either by his preaching or his life more clearly than the great lesson in these words: "He is the effectively present deity. He is God continually in the midst of men and touching their daily lives. He is the God of perennial and daily aspiration, the Comforter to whom we look in the most pressing needs of comfort which fill our common life. He is the God of continual contact with mankind. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost is a continual protest against every recurring tendency to separate God from the current world." So indeed it always seemed while Brooks was here. Another minister in this very city recently stated his dominant conviction to be that of an increasing awareness of the presence of God in the world, in every part of the world, and in the life of man."

We shall hear this note more frequently and more clearly in our time. We shall recall our generation to this majestic truth, "written large across the pages of Scripture and in every land and time, that God dwells in the heart of men." We shall tell our children that as God was with our fathers to make them good and wise, so He is with us.

In certain atmospheres and conditions it is easy both to believe and understand the fact of God's direct influence upon the life of man. It seems to have been easier when the world was younger, and the race nearer its childhood. It is not hard at all to understand it as we see it in the brief years of the incarnation. We see how men went into the school of Christ, with Christ, and were influenced by Him in all those splendid ways that make for the transformation of character.

He loved them; but many teachers have done that. He taught them His truth; but many have done that. They watched and studied and possibly tried to imitate Him; but many pupils have done that with their teachers since the days of Socrates. But somehow He imparted Himself to them, and did it in such fashion as to leave the impression that this was what men might expect! The thing is a living panorama going on there, going on here, going on everywhere, one personality directly influencing other personalities. Its pedagogical and religious significance has not yet been fully worked out by us. And we cannot work it out except in life. If one really wants to know how and how far the life of Jesus is imitable, let him try it. Certainly, modern Christendom is nowhere near the border of fanaticism yet in its imitation of its Master. If any one really wants to know how and how far God can and will exert direct influence upon one's life, let him rationally, resolutely, and obediently submit himself to God. He will find out.

The doctrine is most easily understood and believed in the presence of the best types of life, ancient and modern. Abstractly, one feels that God ought to be in direct touch with human life. In the large view of life which history and biography afford, one easily feels that He is and has been. We are not confined to those fascinating chapters known as the history of mysticism for this conviction. The mystics are not the only ones who have practised the presence of God. They have been conscious of "God's most intimate presence in the soul." They knew what St. Paul meant by the words: "In Him we live, and move, and have our being." They knew also the significance of the other words: God is "not far from every one of us." But this has not been and is not the exclusive possession of one type of Christian. Nothing is more remarkable than the immense variety in the men who in all ages have become subject to Christ. God has touched with power every kind of man. His influence is no pitiable force limited to one type. It is the one royal fact, outstanding in human history, giving sanctity and hope to every type of life.

The consideration of God's direct influence upon one's life leads inevitably to a study of the place of the Holy Spirit in life.

It was not unnatural to desire that the direct influence of Jesus might continue. But it was Jesus who said those strange words, still not quite believed, that it was expedient for the others that he should go away. His own withdrawal from their sight carried the pledge of God's continued, enlarged, wider, and richer presence in life. There was nothing that God was then doing or trying to do for men that He

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