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CONSCIENCE AND REASON

ingrained sense of guilt and consciousness of weakness demand a pardoning and redeeming God. Hence Tertullian speaks of the soul's testimony as naturally Christian, and S. Augustine describes the heart of man as restless until it finds its rest in God."

2. Don't Argue.

P. 82: "There is generally most of reason when there is least of argument, when the speech compels every man to listen to the authority within."

3. Conscience and Reason.

P. 83: "You cannot deal with the reason and neglect the conscience. The soul is a living unity in whose conscious life the intellectual and the ethical elements blend.

"You can have no psychology which does not assume the veracity of consciousness, you can have no true thought which does not reverence each separate fact, and all the facts in their natural order, and in their completeness. The ethical is the primary and inclusive category of the understanding; and all true thinking is at heart an ethical process. Nor, on the other hand, can the moral nature act in severance from the intellectual. Every moral deliverance is an act of judgment, a consciously rational verdict.

"Thus the science of the soul is an organic indissoluble unity, where the intellectual and the ethical elements constantly balance and interpenetrate each other: so that we may say that nothing is rational which is not right, and nothing is right which is not rational: while the relation between God and the soul is such that nothing can be rational and right for man which is not also rational and right for God: and nothing can be divinely rational and right for God which does not command the soul's prompt and cordial response." [This seems to ignore man's fallen nature, his defective reason and perverted conscience.-P. B. B.]

"Men need only to be true to themselves to have the truth of God master them. This does not make the human reason the seat of primary authority and infallible; but it does affirm the superiority of the reason in man to discern and verify the truth of divine revelation. Otherwise inspiration itself would be impossible and inconceivable: for in inspired men the high

est thoughts of God burn and glow in words and phrases that are full of the fire of personal rational conviction. And so the Bible continues to be the greatest of all books, because it lies nearest to the level of true human thought."

4. What is the Conscience?

P. 101: "The best definition of the word, closely following its etymological derivation, which I have ever seen, makes it the soul's power of passing judgment upon the thoughts, motives, and actions, a universal pervasive, judicial quality of its conscious life.

"The appeal to the conscience therefore is simply a summons to the soul to exercise its highest ethical prerogative. It is only indirectly and mediately that you can convince any man. He must convict and convince himself. Hence illumination is represented as the primary function of the ministry of the Holy Spirit: while spiritual perception and the moral judgment following it are the acts of the soul under the revelation of the truth.

"Leave the truth to do its own work. Throw the man upon himself. If you have brought him face to face with God you may retire. But to secure that should be your overmastering passion, so that the Divine presence may produce selfconviction, confession, penitence, and faith. Never permit yourself to forget that to provoke men to self-judgment in the sight of God, is your vocation and should be the aim of all your discourse: and if your preaching be directed to the ethical end, its eternal undertone, majestic and mighty, will be, 'Now is the day of salvation,' summoning to instant decision and prompt obedience."

5. Spiritual Preaching.

P. 130: "A sermon gets to be a sermon and saves itself from being a lecture by being made and delivered in the Holy Ghost."

6. Intelligibility.

P. 170: "It may seem to you a hard and narrow rule, but it is an eminently practical and salutary one-that what is true is always intelligible, that revelation is unveiling not mys

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EXPOSITORY TEACHING

tification, and that the time of a sermon is worse than wasted unless the message is so phrased that every man can understand it.

"There is nothing shadowy or mystical in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and in the resultant spirituality of life. The reason and the will are the sphere of the Divine impact and indwelling: these are not mystical but dynamic; and they are dynamic by illumination of the understanding and by securing voluntary obedience to the revelation. To be filled with the Spirit is the same thing as being guided by the Spirit into all truth: it is to see things as they really are, and to act in accordance with that vision. Spirituality, therefore, is a rational and voluntary state. It begins with mental sanity piercing through shams and deceptive appearances to God as the Holy Father, and to man as His lost and wandering child."

(C) EXPOSITORY TEACHING

Considerations: Diligent Study

We shall dwell on this in the chapter on "the Remote Preparation." Here it is only necessary to say that it is the preacher's duty to keep in constant touch with the work of the scholar in Biblical criticism. This duty is admirably expressed in Mrs. Herman's "Christianity and the New Age." "The preacher to whom the scholar's work is a pure piece of technical exposition, in whom the vast contribution of critical research to our understanding of the background of the Gospels, the setting of S. Paul's Epistles, and the genius of New Testament Greek does not breed a surer grasp, a larger vision, a more potent skill of interpretation, has failed to realize the greatness of his calling. Nothing would be of more evil omen for the future of the Church than the existence of a large body of critical work that has not passed from the scholar's workshop into the very fiber of the exegesis, the exposition, and the preaching."

But while it is a duty to study the work of critics with care, it is necessary to do so also with caution. For the habit of destructive criticism passes very easily from a sincere desire to manifest the truth into an hysterical impulse to be original at all costs, to startle and to shock. Destructive

BIAS OF PRESUPPOSITIONS

33

criticism, if it is not balanced by constructive work, may soon become a mental disease of mere disintegration. Perhaps the following considerations may help to suggest the right attitude of the preacher toward Biblical criticism.

1. SCIENTIFIC.-In so far as God reveals Himself in the world of the phenomenal this is a legitimate subject for scientific investigation. Historical science may speak with some authority when it tries to examine the various documents, records, narrative of events which are believed to embody the way in which God has communicated with man. For that which enters the world of the phenomenal is a proper subject for the scientific method.

2. UNSCIENTIFIC.-But in so far as prediction and experiment in verification is impossible, such opinions as critics may form can scarcely claim to be scientific. They seldom amount to more than an extremely probable opinion. We must try to sift the assured results of criticism from the rash speculations of the critics.

3. THE BIAS OF PRESUPPOSITIONS.-Criticism must be received with caution, because few critics are able to overcome the presuppositions which affect their judgment. For example, if a person approaches the subject of the Resurrection of our Lord with the presupposition or prejudice that he knows what the body is, or what matter is, he starts his investigation with false presuppositions. Scientific men would tell him that we know absolutely nothing of the ultimate nature of matter, and absolutely nothing of the vital force which constitutes a body. And yet many critics ignore their limitations and approach the subject blinded by these two entirely false presuppositions. Again, if a critic brings to the study of miracle a strong belief in the mechanical interpretation of the universe, the whole of his judgment of evidence will be dyed by his prejudice. It may be said that the same defect of presupposition or prejudice affects every scientific work, and that no one has a blank mind free from bias. Quite true. But there is a difference. In the exact sciences a man is saved from becoming obsessed by his theory or his method, because point by point they are verified or corrected or destroyed by experiment and tested by prediction. While in Biblical criticism there is no test of experiment to save a man from becoming the slave of his theory, or to correct him when he exaggerates or overstrains

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THE NEED OF TRADITION

it. Thus some destructive critics carry their speculations to the point of gross silliness.

4. THE NEED OF TRADITION.-Much confident criticism is invalidated by the adoption of a defective method of using the material. It is a common mistake to treat the New Testament apart from the tradition of the Church, whose book it is. It is absolutely unhistorical and unscientific to take the letters which S. Paul wrote to his brethren in the Fellowship of the Holy Catholic Church and to interpret them as though they were written to men in general. S. Paul wrote to a circle of readers who had been carefully instructed in the Christian Faith, baptized and confirmed, and accustomed to the discipline of the Fellowship, to the prayer and worship at the Holy Eucharist. These letters were read out to the Fellowship at the Holy Eucharist. No one was admitted to that service who was unbaptized, and who therefore had not been admitted to the Fellowship and had received no instruction. So that S. Paul must have known that his letters would be read out to persons who had already been instructed in the Apostles' doctrine and disciplined in the Apostles' Fellowship and taught to worship in "the breaking of bread" and the prayers. This represents a great volume of common tradition, a whole atmosphere of family feeling, which will profoundly affect the valuation of every argument he uses, of those which he omits, in fact of almost every phrase in his letter. Yet many persons use his letters and try to interpret them entirely apart from the tradition of the Fellowship, and from this whole atmosphere of the family life, as though S. Paul had been writing his letters to the world in general. Persons who are unbaptized, who neglect or despise the sacraments, who are unconfirmed, who have definitely rejected the discipline of the Church and communion with their Bishop-in other words, who are entirely without the atmosphere of the Apostles' teaching and fellowship-will take S. Paul's letters and apply them to any person who may be drawn to Christ by the longing of their hearts. It is from such a misuse of the documents that a truly scientific and historical criticism should save us. It is profoundly unscientific and unhistorical to use them in this way. In fact, the writings of the New Testament cannot be rightly interpreted apart from the tradition of the Church. We may illustrate this point by a modern example. "The