founders of the Christian movement were wrong, and that we in the twentieth century can better their program. It is conceivable that they had no right to legislate for all subsequent generations. That is a matter for us to determine in the light of the evidence, but at any rate the founders of the Christian movement did have an inalienable right to legislate for all generations that should choose to bear this name of Christian.
Therefore, if you would honestly determine what can bear the name Christian, you have to go back to the beginnings of the Christian movement. Now the beginnings of the movement constitute a fairly definite historical phenomenon; there is a certain agreement as to what Christianity at its inception was, possible even between Christians and non-Christians, because we have certain sources of information which are admitted to come from the first Christian generation, like the passage we read today—sources which give us definite information about the beginnings of Christianity.
The Christian movement began a few days after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. I can see no good historical justification for calling anything that existed before the death of Jesus of Nazareth, Christianity. At any rate, to be cautious, I will say that if Christianity existed before that time it existed only in a preliminary stage. Evidently after the death of Jesus of Nazareth there was a strange new beginning among His disciples, and that new beginning began the movement which caused the spread of the Christian religion out into the world.
Now, what was the character of the movement at its beginning? For one thing, it was not merely a life as distinguished from a doctrine. Do not misunderstand me. It certainly was a strange new kind of life; anybody who came into contact with those early Christians recognized that they were living an entirely different sort of life from the people around them. It is perfectly clear that the first Christians were living a new type of life, a life of strange purity and strange unselfishness.
Something Happened
But how was that type of life produced? I will tell you the way modern leaders of the church would have expected it to be produced. They would have expected the first Christian missionaries to go forward and say: "We have been in contact with a wonderful person, namely, Jesus of Nazareth, and our lives have been changed by that contact. We call upon you, our hearers, to submit yourselves to the contagion through us with the life of Jesus of Nazareth."
That is just what people are saying today. That is what modern men would have expected the first Christian missionaries to say, but as a matter of historical fact they said nothing of the kind. They produced a new type of life not by exhortation, not by the contagion of personal influence, but by the proclamation of a piece of news; they produced it by the account of something that had recently happened.
That seemed a strange thing to the people of those days—to change men's lives not by telling them to be good, but by giving them an account of things that had happened. It seems strange today, it is what Paul called the foolishness of the message. It seemed to be an absolutely foolish way of trying to change the lives of men, but to the historian it is perfectly plain that that is the way they went at it.
Do you want me to tell you what the first Christian movement was in Jerusalem? They did not say, "Submit yourselves to the spell of Jesus Christ and be children of God the way Jesus was a Son of God," but they said, "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; he was buried; he has been raised on the third day according to the scriptures." It was an account of things that had happened and an account of the meaning of the happenings, and when you get those historical facts with the meaning of the facts you have Christian doctrine. Christ died—that is history. Christ died for our sins—that is doctrine. We have that at the very basis of all Christian work; it was there in Christianity in the first century, and today Christianity, as then, is founded upon the account of something that happened.
What I mean can be summed up in the first chapter of Acts—the eighth verse—"Ye shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
Now it is a complete misinterpretation of these words if you say that the witness is merely to what Christ has done for you in your own souls. That is not the way the words are meant. Paramount is the witness to the plain historical fact of the resurrection of Christ. If there is some skeptic here, I do not need to argue with him about the historical value of the book of Acts, or whether Jesus really spoke these words, because all historians, whether Christians or not, ought to admit that it is a good summary of what the Christian movement at its very beginning was; it was a campaign of witnessing, an account of historical facts; Christ died; He was buried; He has been raised.
The Christian Worker a Christian Witness
Well then, if the Christian worker is fundamentally a witness, it is important, despite modern impressions about it, that the Christian worker should tell the truth. When a witness gets up on the witness stand it makes little difference what the cut of his coat is, or whether his sentences are nicely turned; the important thing is that he should tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is the important thing for the Christian preacher and Christian worker today. Do not misunderstand me. It is a sad thing if you tell the truth with your lips and if your life belies your message, because then the more true the message the greater your sin, for you are bringing despite upon the truth. On the other hand, it is a sad thing when a man uses the gifts God has given him in order to proclaim things which are false. Therefore, the first thing is that we should tell the story which is at the basis of Christianity and tell it straight, and full, and plain.
It does make a vast deal of difference what our teachings are, and it is the fundamental business of the Christian church today to set forth the teaching of Christianity truly and plainly in opposition to the teachings of the modern rivals of Christianity. And the chief modern rival of Christianity is not Mohammedanism or Buddhism, but naturalistic Liberalism, which is almost dominant in our large ecclesiastical bodies today.
What then, briefly, are the teachings of Christianity over against the teachings of Liberalism? We have just said that Christianity is an account of something that happened, not something that always was true, but something that happened about 1900 years ago, when God saved man through the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But before you can understand that gospel, that account of something that happened, you must know first something of God, and second something about man. These are the two great presuppositions of the gospel message, and it is these presuppositions, as well as the gospel message, to which modern Liberalism is diametrically opposed.
It is opposed to Christianity in its view of God, and in its attitude toward God. Now in the Christian view of God there are many elements, but one element is absolutely fundamental, and gives consistency to all the rest. It is the awful transcendence of God, the awful separateness of God; and it is that element in the Christian presentation of God upon which despite is being cast everywhere in the modern liberal church, because it regards God as fundamentally just another name for the great process of nature as it is. We find ourselves in the midst of a vast process, and to that vast process is applied the name of God. That is what people mean by the immanence of God.
Now do not misunderstand me. God according to the Christian view is immanent in the world. God is everywhere—"closer to us than breathing," but immanent in the world not because He is identified with the world but because He is the Creator of it and upholds the things which He has made. The fundamental thing in the Christian notion of God is the sharp distinction between all created things and the Creator who is the explanation of all mysteries.
It is strange that men can call that a new vision of God which obscures the distinction between God and man, and involves God even in the sin of the world! How men can call such a view of God a new revelation is strange, because pantheism as it is called, is just as old as the hills, and has always been with us to blight the religious life of man. Modern Liberalism even when not consistently pantheistic, is at any rate pantheizing since it seeks to obliterate the sharp distinction between God and man, and involves God in the sin of mankind. Very different is the holy and living
