Orthodox Rationalism [pp. 294-312]

OR THODOX RAi TOVA LISM.
the place in preaching of the Christian religion. Not long
since, for instance, in an ecclesiastical assembly, I heard religion
defined and commended as belief in revealed truth! And not
one word of dissent was uttered at this thoroughly rationalistic
definition of religion. The speaker immediately afterwards escaped from the shallowness of his own definition, as he proceeded to speak, evidently out of his own deeper experience, of
the power of the Holy Ghost. But one of the causes of scepticism among religiously trained men at the present day has been
the unfortunate habit, not sufficiently guarded against in the
controversial divinity of the last generation, of putting systems
of truth before the soul in the place of God-the light in which
God is revealed for the revealed God. Christ was a divine fact
before ever he was a doctrine of the church-a fact of divine
power among men, a Person full of the Spirit of God; and
Christianity, intellectually complete as we find it to be, and
transcendently glorious to the reason, is first of all and above
all a revelation, a message of personal friendship, a word of welcome and restored communion between God and man.
A similar rationalistic imperfection hampers often our theology in its discussion of what are called the doctrines of grace.
God and the human soul seem to be conceived of as two distinct spheres, each complete in itself, the one finite, the other
infinite-the soul a world having its life in itself; and then the
problem of theology is, how can these separate existences be
conceived of as co-working in the new life of the Spirit? how
can the-human will and divine grace be reconciled? The initial
conception is mechanical and unworthy, and the chief difficulty
in many and many a theological discussion of the new birth and
higher life of man is occasioned by the false rationalistic assumption, quietly suffered to slip into the premises, that a created
soul is in itself and by virtue of its own rational powers a complete and independent individuality, as tho there could be a
living, growing human personality without God. It is a poor
escape from pantheism to fall into spiritual independency in religion. But our theology, in its anxiety to avoid all appearance
of pantheism, has often rushed into an untenable individualism,
and imperilled Jesus' teaching of the new birth and the apostolic doctrine of the Holy Ghost by its neglect of the truth of
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