ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR MYBERG, OF UPSALA

ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR MYBERG, OF UPSALA.

Professor Myberg also spoke on the same subject, more especially as it refers to Doctrinal Teaching :

The subject on which I propose to say a few words is, according to the fashion in which it is viewed, infinitely grand or infinitely humble and modest. Infinitely modest, I say, for what is more simple than simplicity, than naturalness itself in all the spheres of life ? And yet is there anything more difficult to appropriate and practise than this same simplicity in the good and true sense of the word ? The difficulty arises from the fact that we are living in a world where all the relations of men with each other have assumed a conventional and fictitious character, from which we strive in vain to emancipate ourselves in order to return to nature pure and simple. Our civilization is permeated and impregnated with this spirit of conventionality; but is religion, and especially the religion of Jesus Christ, a matter of conventionality ? God forbid! Nevertheless, religion may be degraded, so to speak, dragged down from its celestial elevation to serve earthly and worldly interests. It seems to me that the Saviour pointed this out when He said: " From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven sufiereth violence, and the violent taketh it by force." The whole history of the Christian Church for more than fifteen centuries bears witness to this violence. An ecclesiastical hierarchy which made use of religion for schemes of earthly ambition, succeeded primitive Christianity at an early period, and ended by establishing a despotism of a spiritual character, such as had never been seen before. The Church imposed upon her members an external unity which threatened to stifle all spiritual freedom, and to take the place of the true worship of God. But the moment came when this proud edifice crumbled away. The great Reformation of the sixteenth century gave back to religion the freedom of the Christian soul, the blessed effects of which soon became manifest. Christian consciousness, long tyrannized over by the decrees and traditions of Rome, regained its Divine rights. The duty of obeying God rather than man was once more asserted as a fundamental law of the Church ; and Holy Scripture, in its primitive integrity, became the only authority in matters of faith. But, as the apostle says, " All did not obey the Gospel." The greater part of the Church turned a deaf ear to the good tidings, electing to remain under the bondage of the papacy, and those who listened to the word of Christ realized again—it was indeed the second time — what Jesus had foretold in the parable, '' And while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares." The confession of Christian truth—one and undivided as truth itself —was superseded by the confessions, and the adherents of these various confessions made it a point of honour not to allow themselves to be convinced by the arguments of their opponents. This is what was called fidelity and constancy in confession, and these were considered as being almost the chief virtues. This division came to be established as a principle in the Church, and this principle, once accepted, has been continued to the present day.

No doubt Providence has overruled these things for good. Man's unity had, if one may so say, taken the place of God's unity, and it needed a second confounding of language in order to prevent it from accomplishing its gigantic undertaking. We are all familiar with the account of the dispersion of the nations. With its great judgments, and striking examples of the Divine mercy, the division of the Churches of the sixteenth century offers an historical parallel io the mysterious event which took place in the infancy of the human race. Division and ecclesiastical discord had done their work, but Divine wisdom took occasion by these human disputes to accomplish a work of unity which is still holding on its way, and bearing fruit for the life which now is as well as for that which is to come. To say what this fruit is, we should have to glance over the last three hundred years, and see what has occurred not only in the Protestant Churches, but also in the Church of Rome; for it, too, has been influenced beneficially by the reformation of which we have spoken. 0 beatam discordiam quae talem conconliam gemtit!—" 0 happy discord which has given birth to such concord ! "—a unity Divine and real, although it may not be visible. We have right on our side when we make this assertion. Religious discord has produced its fruits of a widely different character, and we know what they are. We find them in the quarrels of theologians, in those persecutions and wars for the sake of religion which followed the Reformation; but we meet with them also in the envy, the want of Christian charity and interest among Christians which was then, and is still manifested. There have been times when the relations between Churches were such that voices might have been heard exclaiming, " Better to be a Mahometan than a Calvinist." No one goes so far as that now-a-days ; but not far from here there is a party in the Church which seems to have taken as its motto, " Better to be a Romanist than a Protestant," and which is disposed to impute all the troubles that harass the Lutheran Church to the influence of the Reformed Church.

These are indeed deplorable consequences, as the result of division; but this is not all. The deceptive unity of the Church of Rome produced the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the barrenness of which, as well as its tendency to make the simplest subjects obscure, has passed into a proverb. Protestantism likewise had its scholastic epoch, the effects of which were hardly less mischievous, and which have lasted to the present day. Are we deceiving ourselves in using language like this? Can it be said of us that we have thoroughly returned to the real simplicity which characterizes the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and which we ought never to have left ? We know only too well that we have not. What, then, must we do to return to it ?

Only one course is open, and that is to go back to the source of Christianity. And where shall we find this but in the Word of God as contained in Holy Scripture, and especially in the New Testament; that is to say, the words of Jesus Christ and His apostles ? All there is grace, but also nature and truth. And what is truth but nature itself—the nature of things, and the nature of God, and also of man created in His image ? This is the glory of the Word of God that it is an emanation of the glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father, or of the Word made flesh, " which dwelt among us full of grace and truth " (and we may remark by the way that this is the real reason of its Divine authority). And this glory shines throughout the whole volume ; in the divinity of the doctrine as well as in the educational wisdom witli which it treats men, and gives to each exactly what he needs. Let ns pause for a moment to consider the first point which is of special interest on an occasion like this, when the members of different Churches or confessions are met on the common basis of this Word.

First of all, let us look at the New Testament with regard to doctrine, and in this respect can we not say that it is truthfulness and simplicity itself? We know what claims certain Churches make with regard to the orthodoxy of their adherents. The New Testament knows nothing of these strange and conflicting claims. It lays claim to one pure and sound doctrine, namely, to know Jesus Christ so as to be known of Him. Must we, in order to know Christ, fathom all mysteries connected with His heavenly origin, with His nature as the Son of God, as well as those connected with His kingdom ? To say this, would argue that we donot know ourselves. " We know in part," and we speak out what we know, "and we prophesy in part." Limited capacity is our common lot, and especially in regard to the highest knowledge.

We are not required to know Him beyond that which we are able, but to know Him as He is, and observe, as He is in regard to us: for this is the important point. The old divines of our Evangelical Church expressed this idea when they said, Xosse Christum est noase benejicia ejus—" To know Christ is to know His benefits." These words have been the very life of our Church to the present day. But they do not bring out with adequate power all the truth and consolation which appertain to'them. We must add, None beneficia Christi est nosse Christum—" To know His benefits is to know Christ." This last is not less true than the former, and touches us in an especial manner. For it cannot be denied that by constantly laying stress on these benefits as facts in an abstract and impersonal fashion, a kind of teaching has insensibly sprung up among us which leads us almost to lose sight of the person of Jesus Christ, and to regard Him as in some sort a mere accident, an appendix to His work. And yet we may say that the Person itself, if rightly understood, is the greatest of the works of Jesus Christ, and at the same time the greatest of the benefits we have received from Him. This is not an idea of my own, it is what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews gives us when he says that Jesus "learned obedience by the things which He suffered, and having been made perfect He became, unto all them that obey Him, the author of eternal salvation; named of God a High Priest after the order of Melchisedek." Thus His work consisted not only in His obedience and suffering, nor in the new humanity which He created, and which He is still creating; but also it is Himself, in so far as He is a real and perfect man, ever living and ever interceding for us. This was the fulcrum which was indispensable for the raising humanity from the depth of its degradation. Such was the unchangeable law rooted in the very nature of things; and God, in so loving the world as to give His only begotten Son to save it, has but confirmed this law.

Let us now inquire what are the results of this grand work of Christ, the realization of the perfect man, the man of God in the person of the God-man. First of all, humanly speaking, God is now able to look upon mankind with other eyes than before. He now no longer regards him with feelings of anger and displeasure, but as a being out of whom He can make something to the praise of His glory. Do we wish to know what this means in the language of the New Testament ? It is propitiation through Jesus Christ, as St. John says in his First Epistle, " If we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous : and He is the propitiation for our sins : and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." He, that is, He Himself in His own living and perfect person. Thus the disciple whom Jesus loved— and no one ever sounded the depths of this mystery better than he—expresses himself respecting the nature of the atonement of Christ. This is the doctrine of Holy Scripture in its purity and simplicity. It says all that need be said ; and would to God that men had always been satisfied with this! We should not have been the losers.

In virtue of this ever-living propitiation God, who has given us His only begotten Son, can with Him freely give us all things— " all things that pertain unto life and godliness; " in other words, everything that will contribute to our spiritual renewing and salvation. Listen to what St. Paul says respecting this renewing: "But ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified." "Justified." We see that in this word, so simple that one would think it impossible to explain it in any way but one, the apostle includes all that relates to the renewing of man, or, which amounts to the same thing, to his sanctification and purification. And in proportion as this renewing goes on within us, or that we are justified in this manner, we are being made fit for glorification, the result of justification. This is what St. Paul declares in the words which form so solemn a conclusion to the first part of the Epistle to the Romans. " For whom He did foreknow, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren : and whom He foreordained, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified." This is the plan of salvation (onto salutis) and the summary of Evangelical doctrine in all its simplicity. In what way does it differ from those essential principles held by Christians of all Evangelical denominations ? There is not one of them but confesses that Jesus is our mediator with God, and that by Him, and for His sake, God is willing to make us partakers of His holiness and of eternal life. But in all the Churches we find, besides these simple and plain doctrines, something more, additions more or less false and complicated. They may notably be met with in the Church of Rorne, and also in the scholastic era of Protestantism, of which we are the heirs. Among other things we hear of a justifying faith destitute of all moral worth, an external form of 'godliness, but destitute of power. We are also told of a righteousness of man before God, which simply consists in being considered righteous without being really so; also of an avenging justice of God which is revolting to the sense of justice inherent in every human breast, and which delivers the religion of Jesus Christ into the power of its adversaries bound hand and foot. I know that I am treading on delicate ground when I cite these examples; but I also know that there are men in this assembly who set truth above human tradition, whatever may be the name it bears, and who have the courage to face the dangers that threaten the Christian life of the present day. Now I do not hesitate to say that of all those dangers not one is to be so much dreaded as this separation of morality from religion.

But the influence of Protestant scholasticism, whether Lutheran or Reformed, is not the only cause of deviation from Christian simplicity. There is another which we may designate as the influence of speculation in the domain of Christian theology. We define it by naming it. It consists in a preponderance of the speculative element, transforming Christianity, which is life, into a matter of philosophical or historical inquiry, going so far as to lose sight of its Divine purpose, which is the fashioning of men, of personalities, in conformity with the likeness of Jesus Christ. This is also a serious departure from Christian simplicity, and it is surrounded by a halo of illustrious and authoritative names. We might call it the mistake of the aristocratic minority, while the other, of which we were speaking before, is the mistake of the majority of believers in our time. And these two deviations, scholasticism and speculation, which may be united, and do often form the most singular union, are diametrically opposed to each other in their method of treating Christian doctrine. On the subject of Christ, for instance, it may be said that one depends on false analysis and the other on false synthesis—in other words, one is based on a system which, as it were, dissolves and dismembers Jesus Christ in His Person, His work, and His word, and is entirely opposed to the simplicity of the Gospel; whilst the other, on the contrary, combines, identifies, and confounds Jesus Christ in His Person, His work, and His word with all the resources of a fluctuating science, which adorns itself with the name of Christian, but is nevertheless opposed to the very nature of the Gospel. For both these evils the false synthesis and the false analysis, recalling, in some respects, the two kinds of gnosticism in the primitive Church—one of which divided the Person of Jesus Christ and the other sublimated it— there is but one remedy, and that is to give back to Him all His rights of real and living personality, not only in the general abstract sense of the personal union of the two natures according to the dogmatic definition, but in the sense in which we have spoken of the true man—the Man of God that He realized in His Divine Person all that was needed to make us new creatures, real men in His own image and also in God's. This was to raise up not merely orthodox men or thinkers on Christian subjects, but Christian men—characters which shall worthily represent the cause of truth and righteousness .in a world of sin and iniquity. And it is these imitators, these living images of Jesus Christ, that the world needs. It was to create such by the power of His lifegiving word, the word of His Gospel, full of grace and truth, that Jesus Christ came into the world.

This, then, is the principle, the Alpha and the Omega, of Christian simplicity, which, were I worthy, I should like to extol in terms similar to those which St. Paul used with regard to charity, when he placed it above all other spiritual gifts, above the gift of speaking with the tongues of men and of angels, above prophecy, and above the knowing of all mysteries.

How earnestly it is to be desired that all calling themselves Christians should consent to be genuine disciples in Christ's school ! Then these unprofitable doctrinal and other contentions, which cause such division and are such a stumbling-block to worldly men, will cease of themselves, as well as many others, and we shall wonder how so many of these strifes ever came k> exist. Then we shall behold the birth and expansion of a Christian life, of which we can form no conception. Christianity will appear once more as a power triumphing over the world far beyond our most daring hopes. Then at last infidelity in all its varied phases shall hide its head, dismayed as the blaze of the meridian sun in comparison to which all its knowledge and all its light is but as the gloom of night. For the source of this life and power and light is the Lord Jesus in His complete Person; and the way to this source, let us never forget, is Christian simplicity.

I must conclude. Let us love the simplicity of the Bible—the simplicity of Jesus Christ. Then shall we be, now and ever, the friends of Jesus Christ, who has promised to be with His own even to the end of the world, when He shall come to glorify those whom He has justified, as He has justified those whom He has called.

(Tip riihimtii oi mir iCotb, anb |)i:s Mork of

3ltonemcnt.