An Atheist Rebuked: Infidelity in the Churches and Modern Science
By W. H. Littlejohn
AN ATHEIST REBUKED; INFIDELITY IN THE CHURCHES, AND ITS CONNECTION WITH MODERN SO-CALLED SCIENTIFIC VIEWS; THE REVS. SNYDER AND PIERSON ON THE SITUATION.
BY ELD. W. H. LITTLEJOHN. A distinguished scientist and atheist was once asked by a weak-kneed Christian whether he did not think that it was possible to harmonize the account of the creation found in the book of Genesis with the doctrine of evolution and the theory that the world was millions of years in reaching its present condition. The illustrious gentleman replied with a sneer that he did not know just what answer to make to such a question, as he was ignorant of the precise amount of rubber which the Mosaic account contained. In such a reply there was as much of truth as irony. Truth, in that it recognized the utter conflict between the Bible and the so-called scientific teachings of our day; irony, in its suggestion that those who are anxious to harmonize the two could never realize their desires except by resorting to the stretching process; or, in other words, by perverting the record of Moses to that extent that it would seem to teach things which it does not teach in reality. Such a rebuke from one who denies the existence of a God and who still has enough of common honesty left in his make up to induce him to spurn a party advantage which could only be gained by a sacrifice of candor, should bring the blush of shame to the cheek of those Christians who are less willing to rely upon the plain declarations of the word of God than they are upon the contradictory utterances of theorists whose position to-day is liable to be so far changed before to-morrow as hardly to be recognizable as being one and the same.130 It would seem, however, that nothing is able to break the fascinating spell which science falsely so-called has thrown over so many of the leading religionists of our time. Steadily they have persisted in insisting that there is really a conflict between the accepted interpretation of the Scriptures and the reliable teaching of geology, until thousands have actually come to believe that such is the case. Thousands more who are not quite prepared to accept such conclusions fully, have been thrown into serious doubt upon the question. The result is that infidelity is being developed in the churches to an alarming extent. Science,—genuine, reliable science,—is properly regarded by the masses as an infallible expositor of the Divine will. They very naturally decide, therefore, that if it be true—as many doctors of divinity tell them that it is—that the rocks bear incontestable evidence to the truthfulness of the evolution theory, that theory must be correct. While accepting this much from their clerical teachers, they refuse to follow them further by adopting the view that evolutionism and the Mosaic record can by any possibility be made to harmonize. The contradictions are so glaring that to the ingenuous minds of those readers who take it for granted that God says what he means and means what he says, the record in Genesis and that in the rocks—as the latter is expounded by their teachers—could not have emanated from the same source. The result is just what might be expected under the circumstances. Incapable of investigating geology for themselves, and taking it for granted that their spiritual guides would not accept a scientific theory of such utter significance so long as there was any question concerning its perfect reliability, they are betrayed into its endorsement—as intimated before—at the cost of their faith in the Scriptures. The churches are now reaping, as a consequence of this terrible betrayal of trust on the part of their pastors, a sad harvest. Uncertainty respecting, and absolute unbelief in, the very fundamental principles of our religion are expressed on every hand even in what is termed the household of faith. Let me read an extract from the N. Y. Independent of Oct. 18, 1883. The author is Rev. P. M. Snyder, and the contribution is entitled, “Theological Upheavals vs. the Candidate Question.” The writer is endeavoring to assign reasons why young men are so reluctant to enter the ministry in our day. Among other reasons offered in explanation of that reluctance, he says that it must be attributed largely to the want of a “theology.” I will commence to read on the second column. “The simple and undeniable fact is that we do not accept the faith that has come down to us from our fathers as they accepted it. Statements which they believed implicitly we question. Doctrines which they regarded as embodying the very truth of God we modify, pass over in silence, or utter with stammering tongues and uneasy consciences, like that would-be impressive preacher who exclaimed: ‘If you don’t repent you’ll be damned, as it were.’ More important still is the fact that there are a great many subjects connected with our faith concerning which earnest and thoughtful men, both in the ministry and out of it, are in all stages of doubt and perplexity. This company of the uncertain embraces all classes,—from the many who cling desperately to the old statements, and try to hide their secret misgivings even from themselves, through the long list of the troubled and anxious, to those who have virtually surrendered the conceptions so dear to men of other generations, without finding anything satisfactory to put in their place. Nor are these doubts confined to the minutiae of our creed. In fact, the disputes about non-essentials, which have sometimes distracted the Protestant world, are almost forgotten in the presence of the deeper and more momentous questionings of our own times. Inspiration, Atonement, Limit of Probation! What doctrines are more essential, bear more directly upon the practical work of the ministry? How can any man do enthusiastic work as a preacher of ‘Christ crucified’ without at least a definite groundwork of belief concerning these things? And yet it is just these doctrines that are most seriously and anxiously discussed and questioned by earnest men and women, clergy and laity, in our evangelical Protestant churches.” Such a confession as this, made as it was in the columns of one of the most widely circulated relig ious papers in this country, and coming from a clergyman of no mean ability, is a significant sign of the times. Standing alone it would suggest the certainty that its author must have had some good ground for the statements which he makes; since men are not in the habit of rendering themselves unpopular by criticising organizations respecting the reputation of which people are so sensitive as they are about that of the churches to which they belong. When we remember, however, that the Rev. Mr. Snyder is but voicing the same sentiments that scores of other ministers have given publicity to through the press, and have expressed again and again before synods and associations—like the one at Saratoga, for instance, mentioned by our author—which have considered for hours together the question as to how these very difficulties could be overcome, we may be assured that those difficulties are real. The picture is a sad one indeed; but it is not overdrawn. Every man who is familiar with the current religious news of the day, knows that it is true to life. Not only in the confessions of individuals has he found evidence of the unbelief that prevails in the churches, but he has also seen it cropping out in the lives and labors of their members generally. As the Rev. Mr. Snyder well says, the enthusiasm of labor is gone. The church keeps up the form of work; but the life and soul which has been beneath it, the basis of profound conviction, has departed. That burden of labor which is ever characteristic of unqualified belief in the great truths of the gospel is almost entirely unknown among the Christians of our day. Personal effort has almost wholly disappeared, and when church edifices are erected and ministers hired to dispense the word regularly on each recurring Sunday, the church members generally seem to feel that their full duty to the unconverted is performed. I am satisfied that my statements on these points are confirmed by your own observation; but I think I must spend a few moments in reading from one of the few ministers who appear to realize the situation. I hold in my hand a discourse delivered by the Rev. Arthur T. Pierson before a ministerial convention in Philadelphia in September, 1884. I can only read at this time such portions of the address as bear directly upon the question of the present moral condition of the churches. Here, for example, is something in point:— “Our church-life is undermined by worldliness. Between the church and the world no line of separation exists, except in the fact of church-membership. When our Lord bids us ‘keep ourselves unspotted from the world,’ and ‘hate even the garment spotted with the flesh,’ he means that in close contact, not to say conformity, there is contagion; the infection of a worldly spirit, caught by the church, infests her whole life, and is fatal to spiritual power. “It is not enough to be conformed, we must be transformed; these are the Bible conditions of true life and power. In how many disciples do we find them? In the church are thousands who, like Ananias, defraud the Lord of his dues; like Simon the sorcerer, estimate spiritual gifts on a money basis; like Demas, forsake Christ through love of this present world; or like Diotrephes, love to have pre-eminence. Our Lord, even at a marriage festivity, did not lose his character as the Son of God, but there manifested his glory, and won disciples to believe on him. Church-members drop their character, as Christians, at the door of the gaieties of the world, as easily as an oriental guest shuffles off his sandals, and mingle indiscriminately with the devotees of fashion and frivolity! “The god of this world encloses our feet in his most ingenious snare, when he secures from the Lord’s disciples the recognition of his favorite beguilements. Certain institutions have always been used by Satan to ruin souls; for example, the theater, opera, card-table, horse-race, and dance. The theater appeals, in a pure-minded man, to a normal, histrionic appetite; but the theater, as an institution, caters to our lower propensities, and cannot be sustained without ministering to vice. Booth himself sunk $150,000 in New York City, in trying to establish a dramatic school for good morals! And, as a fact, the theater shows itself a putrid carcass by the drinking saloon, gambling saloon, and brothel,—the vultures that gather around it. A game of cards may be innocent, but for centuries has been filthy with the defiling touch of gamblers and pickpockets. The horse-race may attract, as a simple exhibition of the beauty of speed of the noblest of all animals; but as an institution it is an open door to hell. The dance may be conducted by innocent maids and stalwart men, but as it exists in society, it deserves but one name, ‘lascivious.’ And yet Satan, by his wiles, secures from intelligent disciples a sanction, if not an apology, for these gilded gateways to perdition, and even persuades some ministers to lend their sanction to the traps by which he takes the feet of young.” Now let me pass down a little way. I think that there is something more here that I would be glad to read. Yes, here it is:— “The New Testament puts the heaviest stress upon an unworldly life. Yet in the church we find a few decided lovers of God, thousands of decided lovers of the world, and thousands vainly trying to compromise between two principles and courses of life as utterly at war as light and darkness. The bulk of professing Christians are not consecrated men and women; they belong to the ‘worldly holy,’ or ‘wholly worldly.’ In thousands upon thousands, there is a vain dependence upon a dead faith, or dead works, or connection with a State church, instead of the righteousness of God wrought in them by the Holy Spirit. “A worldly church prevents conversion of sinners. More and more the eyes of men are blinded and sealed to the value of divine things, and our own unworldliness presents no contrast. More and more eternal things are practically disregarded; the awful warnings of God’s providence are unheard and unheeded, like the earthquake when Hannibal fought the Romans at Thrasymene. We thunder in the ears of men the terrible truths of God, but they are deaf and dumb, and the very church itself so grieves and quenches the Spirit by fellowship with evil that there is no power in the Lord’s people to convert souls. The witness of a separate and sanctified life is gone, and the witness of the tongue of fire is gone with it. “Four-fifths of the nominal membership of the churches add nothing to their real power; they are either a dead weight or a positive hindrance to the advance of the gospel; they help to fill the gulf between the churches and the world, break down the distinction between the regenerate and the enemies of God and the truth. How can we expect God to permit rapid and wide diffusion of a low grade of religious life? No, he selects the few, the advance guard of Christians, to carry the cross into the enemies’ country. He permits difficulties and dangers to face them that turn back all but heroic, devoted souls. The race for worldly treasure and pleasure, in the worship of mammon, in the loss of a vivid sense of the reality and verity of spiritual things, is the awful lack of power to prevail in prayer, and the absence of that grand concurrent witness of the unworldly life, more weighty than any testimony of the lips; we also lose all true power to go conquering and to conquer. Zion is not black as the moon nor clear as the sun, and cannot be terrible as an army with banners. “One of the most startling facts of our church-life is the absence of personal service in saving souls. Service, with the bulk of nominal disciples, seems lost sight of in salvation, which is sought with but feeble and spasmodic effort. We have been wont to urge upon disciples a systematic seeking of souls, putting the question pointedly: ‘Do you know that you have ever been instrumental in leading one soul to Christ?’ and to be met in hundreds of cases with the sad confession that there has been no effort put forth in that direction. “Where are the marks of consecrated care of property acquired and administered by disciples as stewards of God? Pounds to mammon; pence to God! Money enough in the superfluity of rich Christians to supply the necessities of the world’s poor, and carry the gospel to every unsaved soul. “In the light of the New Testament, the question may be raised whether it is right for a disciple to be rich. Paul and James warn not against dishonest gains and selfish or sensual indulgences, but against the lust of accumulation, the curse of canker and rust which gathers hoarded treasure. Moses turned his back at131 the three lusts—ambition, appetite, and avarice—when in one heroic resolve he forsook the honors of Pharaoh, the pleasures of sin, and the treasures of Egypt. During Old Testament times, when the doors of the gospel had not been thrown open to the whole world, the avenues for the use of money in works of charity and mercy, were comparatively few and narrow, and the flood of wealth accumulated. But now, with a thousand millions crying for the light of God, how can they who love Christ hoard wealth? Whichever way we look, the pleading hand of God confronts us, the thousand demands for temporal and spiritual relief, and that hand can hold and use every dollar or dime of the Christian world. How do disciples grow rich but by shutting their eyes and ears? In 1875, $1,200,000,000 were spent in the liquor traffic—one dollar for every soul of the world’s great host—while Christendom expended less than ten millions to evangelize the world! I knew one Christian man who spent for his own house, grounds, furniture, and articles of ornamentation, five times as much as the American Board in all its missionary operations for a year. In the homes of disciples in this city, the cost of pictures, statues, silver plate, etc., more than exceeds all that the churches jointly give to spread the gospel among the unsaved.” I have been restrained for years from the expression of these deep and growing convictions by the cowardly fear of being misunderstood and called a “croaker.” But let us have done with a temporizing policy. Where would the great Reformation have been if Luther and his associates had been kept from their bold assault on papal corruption by the cry of pessimism? Where had been the mighty host of heroes that swept, as pioneers, to the very frontiers, if John Wesley had not dared, at the risk of life, to set up a standard of piety, demanding of his followers separation from the worldly fashions and follies of the Anglican Church? You see by these last expressions, Mr. Thoughtful, that it cost the Rev. Mr. Pierson something to utter those words before a convention of his brethren in the ministry. Nothing but the most powerful convictions of duty and the absolute certainty that the sentiments themselves were correct could have armed him with the courage necessary to the delivery of such a sermon. Had he not felt assured that those present were convinced from their own observation that his declarations were true, he never would have dared to give expression to such utterances, at such a time. The ability of the speaker, his evident candor, his opportunities to know the facts and the hazard which he ran in presenting such views before such an assembly—unless those views were too manifestly sound to admit of refutation—all conspire to prove the justice of the charges made. Here I must close for to-night.