THE BLANTYRE CHURCH OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND MISSION, BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA. This noble edifice was built by native workmen under the direction of Rev. Dr. Clement Scott, of the Church of Scotland Mission at Blantyre, fresh opportunity for variety of method within certain limitations, and for the wise adjustment of new devices for reaching and influencing humanity, which are not out of harmony with the sacred character of the Gospel and its spiritual aim. The noble principles of the New Testament religion are capable of a dignified and tactful adaptation to the special conditions of a modern environment without such revolutionary changes in the historic institutions and methods of Christianity as have been advocated by social extremists. Outside the realm of organized Church life there is scope also for educational and philanthropic agencies independent of the distinctive functions of the Church, yet at the same time revealing the essence and power of the Christian teaching for which the Church stands. Christianity in this sense is larger than its visible environment of Church organization. Its ministry is not confined to the administration of Church ordinances. There is an outer world of need where it may reveal itself in the organized service of humanity, exemplifying therein the principles which Christ has commissioned His Church to uphold and practise. In early history, let us remember, it was through the instrumentality of the Church that the great social changes in the Roman Empire were achieved, and it is the clear, indisputable dictum of honest history that the spiritual Church of Christ has been in the forefront of social progress in all ages. There is a tendency just at present to criticize too severely the supposed attitude of the Church towards the economic and social problems of the day. Let the temper of such criticism be modified by a recognition of the complex and perplexing difficulties of the situation. It is a grave question, in which there is room for wide diversity of opinion, as to how far, if at all, the Christian Church is responsible for the acute status of modern economic problems, and also as to what are the wisest and most useful methods for the Church to adopt in undertaking to deal practically with these problems. We hear much of Christian Socialism, but let us be careful that the Church is not beguiled into socialism such as Christianity could not sanction nor undertake to establish. There are wise and noble minds represented in organizations like the Christian Social Union in England, presided over by the distinguished Bishop of Durham, who are studying these themes with intellectual discernment and sympathetic insight, and light will break ere long. The alleged failure of the Church to adjust itself to the social conditions of our age, in an economic environment so full of painful and grave embarrassments, must not be allowed to obscure or discredit her splendid record as the foremost force of history in the wide field of social reform and moral progress. promise with the ethnic faiths? The spirit of compromise to which we have referred is too much inclined to ignore the exclusive character of Christianity and its Old Testament forerunner, which was itself in the direct Must Christianity com- line of descent from primitive revelation, and to tone down the Christian religion to a spiritual affinity with ethnic systems. Christianity is thus made to divide its honors with other religions, as differing from them, not in genesis and kind, but merely in degree. A mistaken conception of the origin of Christianity and the dignity of its lineage is usually at the root of this inclination to rank it as on the same level with other religious systems. All religions, Christianity included, being regarded as the product of evolutionary processes, the entire religious development of the race is read and interpreted in terms of evolution. Christianity, therefore, becomes simply one branch of an original trunk, one phase of the religious growth of mankind. In this aspect of it there is nothing exclusive or supreme in its origin or history. Other religions are, according to this view, as likely to be true in their teaching, to reveal with equal precision the will of God, and to contain genetic elements traceable to an origin not less worthy and authoritative. Shall Christianity be regarded as the outgrowth of other religious systems? A slightly different and even more subtle form of discrediting the claims of Christianity in this spirit of compromise is to consider it as the outcome and consummation of the religious searchings and struggles of the race. According to this notion, it is a sort of summum bonum of the religious history of mankind. It is conceded to be an advance and improvement on other religions, but is made up of what is good therein. Christ, according to this view, was a compiler rather than an author of religion. While Christianity is acknowledged to be divine in its dignity, it is not regarded as the only religion which God has founded, or as the one religious system which can be directly traced to a divine source, and which has come to man as a distinct gift through chosen channels of inspiration based upon unique historic verities, and identified with the one incarnate Christ, the one divine Book, and the one dispensation of the Spirit which human history has known. Christianity stands rather as a supplement and consummation. It is a sort of latter-day harvest and ingathering of all the excellencies of other religious systems, and simply a fuller revelation of what had been imperfectly presented therein. The result of this generalization is that several ethnic religions must be regarded as occupying about the same relation to Christianity that Judaism does. They are partial and preparatory, or in some instances parallel, and find in Christianity their per fect consummation. This idea so multiplies the channels of divine communication with man that we must find God as a direct teacher and a gracious, saving factor in all religions, which must be regarded as authoritative expressions, albeit imperfect and partial, of His thought, to be eventually supplemented by the Christian system. The logical result of this conception is that Christianity, in its turn, may undergo a process of evolution in its contact with and assimilation of existing ethnic systems, and result in a compromise suited to the tastes of contemporary heathenism. The moving current of religious evolution may thus go on and on until the comprehensive, all-inclusive conglomerate appears. The attitude of God, therefore, as a religious teacher in human. history has been tentative, with no marked discrimination in favor of any one religious system, until by a process of combining shadowy half-lights He has produced the fuller and more perfect light. The unique and exclu ity as a religious This whole theory, in both of its aspects, is unhistoric, unscriptural, and even irrational. The religion of Christ is not an amalgam; it is not of mixed blood, a sort of Eurasian among religions. It is of royal blood; its lineage is direct sive glory of Christianand its birth divine. The honor and dignity of its inheritance it can share with no other religion. Although it is manifest that in other religious systems there may be more or less original truth derived from primitive divine teaching, yet as a whole they are so dominated by error and corrupted in practice that the modicum of truth which they contain has been neutralized and practically reversed by the predominance of the false over the true.1 ances. 1 "Take that Sacred Book of ours; handle reverently the whole volume; search it through and through, from the first chapter to the last, and mark well the spirit that pervades the whole. You will find no limpness, no flabbiness about its utterEven skeptics who dispute its divinity are ready to admit that it is a thoroughly manly book. Vigor and manhood breathe in every page. It is downward and straightforward, bold and fearless, rigid and uncompromising. It tells you and me to be either hot or cold. If God be God, serve him. If Baal be God, serve him. We cannot serve both. We cannot love both. Only one name is given among men whereby we may be saved. No other name, no other Saviour, more suited to India, to Persia, to China, to Arabia, is ever mentioned-is ever hinted at. 'What!' says the enthusiastic student of the science of religion, do you seriously mean to sweep away as so much worthless waste-paper all these thirty stately volumes of Sacred Books of the East just published by the University of Oxford?' No, not at all; nothing of the kind. On the contrary, we welcome these books. We ask every missionary to study their contents and thankfully lay hold of whatsoever things are true and of good report in them. But we warn him that there can be no greater mistake than to force these non-Christian bibles into conformity with some scientific theory of development, and then point to the Christian's Holy Bible as the crown |