1. St. Paul disdained systems of philosophy or the teaching of morality merely. The Gospel has been presented as a philosophy. The development of the Church, the innumerable attacks of scepticism, the rise of problems within Christianity itself have rendered imperative the presentation of the Christian system as a well-ordered scheme of philosophical thought. Profound thinkers have arisen from time to time in the Christian Church who have demonstrated the reasonableness of Christianity as a philosophical system, and the work of these thinkers is of great value. But where one man is converted by reading books of apologetics or theology, a thousand are drawn and held captive
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 31
by the pathos of Calvary — the moving, subduing story of the Cross. Men of all orders and degrees, of all climes and tongues, have owned the wondrous contagion of the Cross, and have yielded to its strange compulsion.
Tf We are philosophers who have found the truth, chemists who have discovered (or rather been told of) the elixir of life ; as we read again our Plato and Aristotle, and even the modern searchers after truth, we are the children
On whom those truths do rest That they are toiling all their lives to find.
To be at the centre of all things ; to have disclosed in our unde- serving ears the secret of the ages ; to know for certain how the world came into being; to have in the Cross the long sought after key to the suffering of the world ; to be told what all this curious world is tending towards — that is our real position in the realm of thought.1
2. Theology cannot take the place of the Cross. Nothing has been more fatal in the history of Christianity than that marvel- lous intellectual curiosity which has been earnest to invent doctrine after doctrine, experience upon experience, till there appears a complete scheme of dogmatic ideas which is called systematic theology. But theological ideas, however systematic, lead only to barrenness and dryness if theologians ignore the fundamental principle which the Apostle has laid down — that the key is not to be found in a theology apart from a person, nor in a person apart from a theology. Whatever the Apostles teach, they always teach Christ. They never turn their teaching into dry intellectual formulae ; they abhor the exagger- ated rationalism — for it is nothing more — of the extreme dog- matist, just as they have no sympathy with the incoherent gush which satisfies indolent devotion.
\ A man may be a great theologian and at the same time a great sinner. If theology could save anybody the devil himself would have been converted long ago. He is one of the most expert theologians alive ; he can quote Scripture for his purpose with marvellous propriety ; but he is the devil yet for all that. On the other hand, there are many whose theological knowledge
1 A. F. Winningtcm Ingram, Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards, 16.
32 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE
is hardly worth the name, but whose devout and godly lives are a pattern and an inspiration to all who see them.1
3. Science cannot take the place of the Cross. Some are constantly asserting the claim of science to supersede Christianity. Many well-meaning Christians are spending the time which might be devoted to evangelistic work in endeavouring to recon- cile the book of Genesis with the latest scientific theory, or in attempting, from a very superficial knowledge of the subject, to reply to men who not only possess an enormously larger stock of facts on scientific matters, but who also — and this is far more important — have had the advantage of a scientific training. Let us leave to experts investigation into the condition of the early inhabitants of the world. The most serious question in the world is not, What think ye of Darwin ? or even, What think ye of Moses ? It is, What think ye of Christ ?
0 world invisible, we view thee, 0 world intangible, we touch thee, 0 world unknowable, we know thee, Inapprehensible, we clutch thee.
Does the fish soar to find the ocean, The eagle plunge to find the air — That we ask of the stars in motion If they have rumour of thee there !
Not where the wheeling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars ! — The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places; — Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry; — and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacop's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
1 H. W. Horwill.
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Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry, — clinging Heaven by the hems, And lo, Christ walking on the water Not of Genesareth, but Thames ! x
4. St. Paul disdained human eloquence. It is certain that St. Paul was not unversed in the wisdom, or unskilled in the rhetoric, which was all the vogue in his day. The Apostle could have presented his message in a beautiful dress, and might have recommended himself to his hearers by polished periods; but he knew very well that the power of the Gospel did not consist in these things.