Page 6177 – Christianity Today (2024)

In the strife which followed the granting of independence to the old Belgian Congo in 1960, the Congo Protestant Relief Agency was born. One who answered the agency’s urgent plea for skilled professional help was Dr. Paul Carlson, then a practicing surgeon in suburban Los Angeles. Carlson spent four months in the Congo in 1961. Returning home, he applied for appointment to the Congo as a medical missionary under Covenant World Missions, an arm of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America. This time he was sent with his family to operate a one-doctor hospital. He was also destined to rally much of the Christian world to prayer for his safety.

As Chinese-Communist-inspired rebels began to initiate serious trouble this past summer, American Embassy officials told all missionaries and their families to leave the embattled Congo area, but said that doctors, because of the critical need, could stay if they so chose.

Carlson, his wife, Lois, and their two children, Wayne, 9, and Lynette, 7, left September 4. He settled his family in the neighboring Central African Republic, then returned to the mission station at Wasolo.

Mrs. Dwight Carlson, a sister-in-law, says that at the time the area was considered safe. She also says that the local Congolese had asked him to come back, and that his wife had indicated in a letter that Carlson would not have knowingly walked into a trap.

One of the first radio messages to his wife indicated he was back at work in the hospital and that the situation was “very peaceful.” But the rebel forces soon cut off the escape route the local Congolese had worked out for him.

The last communication Carlson got through to his wife before being captured by the rebels reportedly came on September 17, when he intimated that a trap had been set. He thought, however, that he could still get out.

The rebels took Carlson a few days later. He was apparently placed under house arrest in Wasolo, then taken to Yakoma to treat rebel prisoners.

About a month afterward, the rebel leader, Christophe Gbenye, said Carlson was in prison and would be tried. Another four weeks later came word over the rebel radio that he was thought to be a U. S. military agent. He was charged with spying and sentenced to death.

About sixty other Americans were caught behind rebel lines last month, including a five-man U. S. consul staff in Stanleyville. A diplomatic tug-of-war then began for the release of Carlson and the others, but the rebels repeatedly refused to allow the consul staff to contact U. S. State Department officials in Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk then asked Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta to intervene. Execution times for Carlson were announced over the rebel radio, then canceled. On November 19, the State Department reportedly relayed to Carlson’s relatives a rebel promise that he would be released within six to ten days.

Carlson’s mother, who lives in California, suffered a heart attack on November 14 and was not immediately told of the threat of execution against her son.

Carlson and his wife are members of the Rolling Hills (California) Covenant Church. According to church records, Carlson traces his personal conversion back to the age of twelve.

Carlson earned a degree in anthropology at Stanford University and was active in the local Inter-Varsity chapter. He studied for his medical degree at George Washington University, Washington, D. C., and served there as an officer of the local chapter of the Christian Medical Society.

He has also attended the University of California at Los Angeles and North Park College, the Covenant-related school in Chicago.

As Carlson’s fate hung in the balances for days, Christians throughout the globe joined in prayer that his life might be spared. The threat against him produced daily front-page stories in newspapers all over the free world. There was no direct contact with Carlson, however, and the rebel radio gave out no information on his whereabouts or well-being.

As Congolese forces and mercenaries began a drive against the rebels at Stanleyville last month, new fears were raised about Carlson’s fate. Rebel leaders considered the drive as American-inspired.

Presbyterian Protest

National Presbyterian Church, a Washington. D. C., landmark of architectural and historical distinction, will probably be torn down within two or three years.

Before the congregational meeting began last month which consummated a land trade transaction, a dozen pickets marched outside the church to register their displeasure over planned destruction of the 80-year-old Romanesque structure. A new church and Presbyterian center will be built near Washington Cathedral. A site chosen earlier proved impractical.

A protest against the planned destruction of the church was voiced by an official of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Battle On The Right

Billy James Hargis was given thirty days to show cause why the Internal Revenue-Service should not revoke the tax-exempt status of his anti-Communist Christian Crusade.

Tax officials in Washington said they had filed the usual “proposal of revocation” last month and that the notice had been presented to Hargis by the IRS office in Oklahoma City.

Reason for the revocation, they said, was “political activities.” The order affects Christian Echoes National Ministry, Inc., parent organization of the crusade.

According to IRS spokesmen. Hargis was given thirty days to present his case before the Oklahoma City branch. If his plea is rejected, he can then appeal to the Washington headquarters.

“If the administration can close down an opposing voice, doesn’t this set a precedent?” he asked at a press interview. “Couldn’t a conservative administration close down an opposing voice?”

Hargis denied that his crusade was guilty of abusing its tax-exempt status by engaging in political activity. He said that he supported Senator Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign but that the organization had not taken sides. He pointed out that one of the crusade’s six trustees actively supported Johnson.

Hargis countered that a number of liberal organizations had violated the Internal Revenue Code with published statements supporting Johnson. Among these, he said, were the Chicago Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, the Christian Century Foundation, and the Methodist Student Movement.

Hargis has also cited violations by the National Council of Churches and by a tax-exempt organization with which Dr. Martin Luther King is associated. Hargis said if his own organization loses tax exemption privileges he will file lawsuits against these two groups.

‘Down With Grace’

Students at a Fairfax County, Virginia, high school began saying grace at meals last month, and the practice was immediately challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The students won editorial support, however, from the Washington Star, one of three daily newspapers in the nation’s capital. The Star questioned how the practice, which it regards as initiated, sponsored, and administered by students, “impinges upon, or even remotely approaches” the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The issue arose when an ACLU chapter announced it would challenge the suburban county school board on its right to permit the practice, contending that the student council that initiated the practice is a quasi-administrative body.

The editorial, “Now—Down with Grace!” follows:

“It is good to read that the students in Fairfax County’s W. T. Woodson High School are continuing to say grace at meals despite a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Grace at Woodson is said on an entirely voluntary basis by children who want to participate. The simple prayer was written by students. In short, the school authorities, except that the prayer is posted on a wall in the cafeteria and that the recitation is on school property, have nothing to do with the procedure.

“But these details may not be enough to save the situation. The grace which is recited alludes once to the Lord God’ and again to the ‘Lord.’ Conceivably these are fatal flaws. If the ACLU takes the issue to court the Supreme Court may hold that the Fairfax pupils are in violation of the First Amendment.

“All of which leads us to wonder how silly a nation can get. How can anyone possibly believe that the recital of grace by school children impinges upon, or even remotely approaches, the First Amendment’s pronouncement that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof’?”

The Man, The Flame, And, The Oak

An eternal flame, lighted by Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy on November 25, 1963, is the central symbolic feature of the design selected for the grave of the late President John F. Kennedy.

The design was unveiled last month by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, whose recollections of the late President’s comments about the beauty of the area just below the Custis-Lee Mansion overlooking the Potomac River and the city of Washington led Mrs. Kennedy to select it as a gravesite for her husband. Designer John Carl Warnecke said the President’s grave in Arlington Cemetery is also a private grave and should express “the belief and faith in God of John F. Kennedy.”

Robert F. Kennedy expressed appreciation to Warnecke and told the press that the design had the approval of Mrs. Kennedy and the entire family.

The sculptured font from which the flame emerges is an abstract form of a triangle, symbol of the Trinity. The triangular font rests on a circular form with a square base. This combination of triangle, circle, and square symbolizes pure oppositions, suggesting “the universal antitheses of life versus death, body versus soul, mortality versus immortality, finite versus infinite.” The flame emerges from its sculptured, triangular font in constantly changing forms, as if in flight. It symbolizes the resurrection and eternal life.

The grave itself is a simple rectangular grass plot. In front of the eternal flame is a marker on which is etched only: “John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1917–1963.” A small cross is incised above the name. Behind the flame is a long low marble wall, with a seal of the President of the United States. The truncated triangular form of the wall is a symbolic expression of the Trinity.

The circular twelve-foot-wide walk by which visitors will approach the gravesite is said to be representative “of unity, completion, entirety, universality—symbolizing the unity of man.”

The grave design blends into the surrounding hillside area. It is simple in its classic, clean lines, more a landscape construction than a sculpture of marble. It is intended to be a grave, not a monument.

Most of the estimated cost of $2,000,000 will be spent on approaches, landscaping, and facilities to handle the visitors. It is estimated that almost 8,000,000 persons have visited the Kennedy grave in the past year. During the summer the average was 50,000 a day. The Kennedy family has offered to pay the total cost but will probably pay only for the immediate grave area, an amount estimated to be between $200,000 and $400,000. Congress will be asked to follow its custom and appropriate the rest.

The young President lies and the eternal flame burns near a large oak with a ninety-foot spread, estimated to be 140 to 150 years old.

Bcc Under Fire

Intense indignation was aroused in South Africa by what was described there as a “sensational statement” issued by the British Council of Churches. A BCC unit had prepared a report on “The Future of South Africa,” and the offending statement came after discussion of this report in full council. The BCC thereafter requested the British government urgently to consider what measures were required to ensure that Britain no longer acted “in such a way as to encourage apartheid,” and asked for an early meeting with the Foreign Secretary for discussion on British policy toward South Africa. In addition, the council instructed its international department to express itself further following the report of the U. N. committee that is considering “the feasibility, effectiveness and implications of measures which could … be taken … under the United Nations’ Charter,” and following the judgment of the International Court of Justice concerning Southwest Africa.

A South African opposition newspaper, the Cape Times, forecasts that the BCC deputation to the Foreign Secretary will “urge cutting the flow of capital to the Republic, prohibiting all arms, ending sterling advantages, insisting that South African visitors to Britain have visas, and penalising all immigrants to South Africa.” The same paper asks what similar action the BCC proposed some years ago against “the bloody suppressors of Hungary or the bloodier subjugators of Tibet.”

The Moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church. Dr. A. J. van der Merwe, describing the strictures of the BCC (of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is chairman) as irresponsible, said it was no part of the Church’s task “to suggest measures that must necessarily lead to naked aggression.” The (evangelical) Church of England in South Africa publicly dissociated itself from the BCC’s “evil proposals.”

Dr. Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, finally issued a statement that expressed his “concern at the misrepresentation” of the council’s proceedings. He pointed out that the report had been composed by a group of Christians “having deep knowledge of South Africa and love for all her people,” contained “a careful analysis of the effects of apartheid,” and “examined what attitude the Churches in Britain should urge Her Majesty’s Government to adopt.”

Text: Isaiah 40:9–11, 28–31.

1. Naturalists tell of an invisible line—real, definite, unchangeably fixed, at a given altitude above sea level—known as the “snake line.” We are told that in certain mountainous areas in New England one of the first questions of a prospective purchaser of a farm is likely to be: “Is this farm above the snake line?” Below that line there may be deadly reptiles, imperiling man and beast; above that line no snake can live. Below that line an unsuspecting child or an unwary adult might fall victim to one of these deadly reptiles; above, they may move about in untroubled security.

The upper altitude is kept securely inviolate, not by visible defenses of man-made barriers, but by an immutable mandate of the living God, dating back to the creation of the reptile world, in which God said in effect, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther!” Security is purely a matter of altitude: pitch camp below the snake line, and invite possible disaster; pitch camp above the snake line, and be safe!

2. Scripture suggests a line similar to the “snake line” of the naturalists, which marks the division between a lower and an upper spiritual altitude. Below, the soul is never secure against the molestations of Satan, that wily reptile, that deceiver and destroyer of souls; above, Satan cannot come. Below, there is spiritual depletion, spiritual poverty, weariness, exhaustion, and collapse; above, there is spiritual replenishment, abundance, security, and endurance.

The upper altitude is suggested in Paul’s reference to the blessedness of sitting “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6) and in his exhortation: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. 3:1, 2).

Similarly, the Prophet Isaiah speaks of God as dwelling “in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit … (Isa. 57:15). There, near to the heart of God, “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isa. 40:31). This text is an invitation not merely to spend a holy hour in the upper altitude, above the spiritual snake line, but to pitch camp and abide. “Waiting upon the Lord” means more than an occasional coming up for air, or an occasional flight to the upper altitude for refuge. Instead, it calls for trustful abiding like that of the babe nestled in its mother’s arms. The text suggests that there are two levels on which the Christian life may be lived or attempted, and draws attention to the results to be expected:

1. Security Of The Upper Altitude

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength … mount up with wings as eagles … run, and not be weary … walk, and not faint.”

1. Here is the promise of more strength to endure the strains, temptations, and irritations of life.

(1) Those inclinations of the flesh, those creeping things—like fear, hate, envy, wrath, impurity—that thrive in the lowlands, disappear in the open sunlight of the divine presence. One of the vivid recollections of my boyhood is that of walking barefooted with others along the banks of the creek, finding a large, flat rock on the warm ground near the water’s edge, and discovering the fantastic aggregation of tiny wriggling creatures that stirred underneath. There, hidden from the sunlight, the slimy surface of the muck was alive with innumerable creeping things. But when the stone was lifted there was a frantic scurrying for cover, and in a moment every creature had burrowed into the darkness beneath the surface. To catch these creatures and dispose of them one by one would have been unthinkable; yet, to dispose of the whole aggregation required only a moment of open sunlight.

The way to deal with our many sins is not to struggle with them singly but to let the light of heaven into the soul. The way to acquire the Christian graces is not to strive for them one at a time but to open the heart and life to the Holy Spirit. Then, simultaneously, the nine-fold “fruit of the Spirit” makes its appearance: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal. 5:22, 23).

(2) Those breakdowns that are so common in the lowlands are no problem in the upper altitude. “They shall run and not be weary,” though others are falling exhausted by the wayside. “They shall walk and not faint,” though others are breaking down. Those who lived through the great depression of the early thirties know something about hard times and fainting spirits. New York papers reported that on a single day, on Manhattan Island alone, eighty-eight persons had taken their own lives. In dark despair some had taken poison; others had turned on the gas; still others had leaped from tall buildings or cast themselves in front of on-rushing subway trains. But in the midst of the human misery of those days there were those who bore their losses and sorrows without breaking under the load.

One prosperous businessman in the metropolitan area had lost his business, his home, and his liquid assets, and was left deeply in debt besides. He was a deacon in his church, a Sunday school teacher, and head usher. On Sunday mornings he continued in his place with the usual cheerful greeting, and he did the same on Sunday evening and at the midweek services. Casual acquaintances would never suspect that he had suffered financial reverses, and close acquaintances never ceased to marvel at the fortitude with which he faced economic disaster. How could he do it? The answer lay in his close fellowship with his Lord and the daily renewal of his strength. He was like that spring in the desert valley which never ceases to flow, even through the longest drought, because it is mysteriously fed by the inexhaustible waters of some distant mountain lake.

2. Here is the promise of more calmness of soul in the time of trial. The strong do not tremble. Fortified by continuous “renewal,” the soul is adequate. “The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps. 27:1b).

“In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15b). But how can a person be quiet and confident walking in the fog of the lowlands, out of step with God, alone in his struggles, conscious of the disapproval of God, and apprehensive of His descending judgments? Is not our want of serenity the index to our spiritual altitude, the reflection of our unbelief and want of commitment?

In total commitment, and nothing less, is complete serenity to be found. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies [present yourselves bodily] a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1). Accept the total pattern of godly living. Live by principle—not by convenience, emotion, or the mood of the moment. No commitment means no serenity: partial commitment means partial serenity; full commitment means full serenity.

3. Here is the promise of more freedom from struggle. The strong do not struggle.

(1) Most of our struggles and consequent failures are due to low altitude. There were saints in the wicked city of Ephesus (Eph. 1:1), and there were sinners in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3). In a given environment one person finds serenity while another is kept in constant agitation and struggle. The one lives on the high altitude, where “it is well with my soul”; the other is living below the “snake line.” A little girl coming in from the flower garden with soiled hands, dress, and shoes made this refreshing observation: “Mother, I know why flowers grow; they want to get up out of the dirt.” Saints grow spiritually tall by stretching toward higher and higher altitudes.

(2) Most of the characteristic triumphs of believers are achieved not in combat but in the avoidance of combat. Even the Archangel Michael would not venture into combat with Satan, but said, “The Lord rebuke thee!” (Jude 9). Occasionally an unseasonable frost will strike when fruit orchards are in full bloom. Fruit farmers may struggle day and night to save the crop, by means of smudge pots and smoke screens. But, as one experienced fruit farmer pointed out, the freeze that kills the fruit in the valley will often leave the blossoms on the uplands Completely unharmed. The “freeze line” and the “snake line” seem to have something in common.

There is a better strategy than the strategy of struggle. One of our famous airmen, near the close of World War I, landed his frail craft at Kobar, Arabia. Here a large rat managed to get into his airplane. The airman became aware of its presence when he was in mid-air and heard the sound of gnawing behind him. Alarmed by the threat of disaster, he remembered that rats cannot live in high altitudes. Accordingly, he nosed his plane upward until breathing was difficult. When at length he descended to a lower level the gnawing has ceased, and upon landing he found that the rat had died.

Truly, “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” But what about those who do not “wait upon the Lord,” and do not “renew their strength.” and do not “mount up with wings as eagles”? The alternative is a grim one indeed:

II. Insecurity Of The Lower Altitude

1. The eagle is well aware of the perils of the lowlands. While he may have to forage for a living in the lowlands, he builds his nest in the high cliffs beyond the reach of invasion from the reptile world. He does not needlessly expose himself and does not spend his leisure time defending his life against hazards from which the upper altitudes are free.

2. The aviator is constantly warned against the peril of low flying. Want of alertness at this point has accounted for many disasters. An army bomber, flying over fog-shrouded New York City at about four miles a minute, crashed into the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State Building. Thirteen persons were killed, and in addition to the destruction of the airplane there was property damage of about half a million dollars. After an exhaustive inquiry into the cause of the crash, there was only one answer: The plane was flying too low! There was no adverse weather, no malfunctioning of the plane; but the required altitude had not been maintained.

3. The Christian needs to realize the peril of low altitude.

(1) A man’s associations generally reveal his spiritual altitude. Kindred spirits gravitate together, and on each level a person will find himself in associations congenial to his own spirit. Wholesome associations raise favorable presumptions as to what a man is, while unwholesome associations raise correspondingly unfavorable presumptions. Although such presumptions are not always valid, and “guilt by association” has rightly been condemned as a basis of judgment, unwholesome associations often provide important clues in the detection of crime. “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful” (Ps. 1:1).

(2) A man’s associations may determine his conduct, his character, and his destiny. Those are our best friends in whose presence we can be our best selves. And when a good man gets into bad company, he generally ceases to be a good man. A heartbroken mother, appealing to the judge on behalf of her son who had been convicted of crime, kept repeating, “He is such a good boy; he just got into bad company!” She did not realize that when a good boy gets into bad company, he ceases to be a good boy; and when a good girl gets into bad company, she ceases to be a good girl. “Evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Cor. 15:33b). Even so stalwart a saint as the Apostle Peter could not maintain his spiritual integrity while sitting among the enemies of Christ but shamefully denied his Lord (Mark 14:66–72).

(3) A man’s associations may be his making or his undoing. For the aspiring Christian who has moved up to high ground, the fellowship of kindred spirits is one of the choicest gifts of God and one of the most powerful safeguards to Christian living. But the old associations, below the “snake line.” must be forever broken. One man who had been redeemed from a life of drunkenness and sin, and who had set an inspiring example of Christian living for more than a year, fell back into his former loathsome state, to the astonishment and dismay of his Christian friends. They would not have been surprised if they had known that he was still parking his car every day in the same old place, and walking past the open door of the same saloon that had been his downfall before. One moment of weakness, one more drink, and he was back in the old life!

There is something highly suggestive in one little phrase often overlooked in the biblical account of the shipwreck of the Apostle Paul by the Island of Melita (Acts 28:1–6). Because of the cold, a fire was built for the comfort of the shipwrecked.

As the Apostle Paul was laying a bundle of sticks on the fire, a deadly viper sprang out and fastened itself on his hand. By a miracle, Paul escaped harm; and he shook off the viper “into the fire”! There was finality in that gesture, and that viper would never jeopardize another life. Only by such finality can the defeated Christian move up from his precarious existence to the security “above the snake line.” He cannot drift to higher ground; there must be finality in his break with the old and his commitment to the new.

The appeal of our text is not an appeal to make a few minor adjustments, to improve our manners, to lay aside a few vices that can be conveniently spared, or to develop a few minor virtues, but to move the whole of life to higher ground. Thus in one sweeping gesture a thousand problems are solved. Near to the heart of God there is one decisive principle: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Life built around this principle is life at its best. The divine imperative is not merely to “lay aside the sin which doth so easily beset us,” but to lay aside “every weight” as well (Heb. 12:1). The “weights” may often be as damaging to the Christian life as the “sins.”

Some boys climbing in the high cliffs along the shore of Nova Scotia came upon an eagle’s nest. In it were some tiny baby eagles. One of these they took home with them and placed with a mother hen and her tiny chicks. Here the little pet grew; but, becoming more and more unlike the chicks, he began to stand alone in the barnyard looking up toward the sun. In the course of time he would try his wings, flopping along the ground. One day as he was standing in the sunlight as usual, another eagle flew over the barnyard. The pet eagle became strangely agitated. Standing on tiptoes, he unfolded his wings, and with a strange cry he rose from the ground, higher and higher, and presently disappeared from sight. It was a great day in the life of that eagle when he discovered that he was not made to be an ordinary barnyard fowl, to spend his life scratching in the dirt, but that his place was up there in the heavenly blue. And what a day for the defeated Christian when he comes into his true inheritance and takes his place in the intimate fellowship of the Heavenly Father, in the sweet security of those who truly “wait upon the Lord,” living above the “snake line.”—Chapter 3 from Sermons Preached without Notes, by Charles W. Koller (Grand Rapids. Mich.: Baker Book House, 1964). Used by permission.

MEMORIZATION AND NOTE-FREE PREACHING

In preparing for the pulpit, as in all areas of learning, there is no escape from a certain amount of pure memorization. Perhaps half of the total effort is expended in “saturation”; another 40 per cent in “organization”; and a final 10 per cent in “memorization.” The observance of a few simple rules will help enormously toward efficient memorization.

1. The use of visual aids in outlining. With most people, the visual memory is stronger than the oral memory, and perhaps stronger than the logical memory.

(1) Indentation. Subordination is instantly recognized by indentation. Let the sub-point be set to the right, about six spaces, beneath the point which it supports or elaborates. And let the illustration be similarly set in, as an addendum to the particular point that it illustrates.

(2) Underscoring. This is generally reserved for the title of the sermon, the “Intr.,” the “Concl.,” and the main points. Some have favored the use of different colored pencils for keeping the outline clearly in mind. Others definitely prefer one color. Too much underscoring will blur the visual image.

(3) Numerals, not letters. Use a Roman numeral for a main point, an Arabic numeral for a sub-point, and an Arabic in parentheses for further subordination—I, 1, (1). In enumerating points, the mind functions, not in terms of “Reason A,” “Reason B,” and “Reason C,” but in terms of “the first reason,” “the second reason,” and “the third reason.”

(4) Handwriting, not typewriting. For concise notation, handwriting affords greater flexibility, especially in getting a point on one line. Besides, the handwritten page, by the added effort involved and by its irregularities in penmanship, gives a stronger visual image.

(5) Points and cues, not paragraphs. A “cue” is a word or phrase which aims to bring a complete thought to mind; a “point” is the expression of the thought itself. A cue is often adequate for recalling an illustration, but for other uses a point is preferable.

2. Brevity of statement. Every line represents a paragraph; a paragraph normally runs to about one hundred words; and an outline for a thirty-minute sermon would run to about thirty or thirty-six lines. Abbreviations may be freely used, provided the meaning is clear; and words like “and,” “the,” and “soon” may often be omitted without obscuring the sense.

Brevity is not only a convenience; it is also an element of force. “Whatever can be said in fifty words and is said in seventy-five is weakened by about fifty per cent.” The preacher who disciplines himself to the use of one side of one sheet of paper (8½ x 11 inches) for a sermon outline is not only helping himself toward a note-free pulpit delivery; he is at the same time developing two additional qualities that are desirable—accuracy and force.

Where the preacher is saturated with his subject, the sermon outline does not need to be elaborately spelled out. The briefest reference will bring back the full thought, much as a “cue” of two or three words will bring to mind an illustration, the telling of which requires two or three minutes.

3. Statement of parallel points in parallel form, wherever possible without obscuring the thought.

4. Limitation of points to a maximum of five in a series. There is no merit or sacredness attaching to any particular number of points, but the memory tends to bog down when there are more than five points in a series.

5. Observance of the natural laws of memory. The long-familiar formula calls for impression, association, and repetition.

Of superlative importance is the law of distributed effort or spaced learning. “The man who sits down and repeats a thing over and over until he finally fastens it in his memory is using twice as much time and energy as is necessary to achieve the same results when the repeating process is done at judicious intervals.”

A practice that could be decisive in the attainment of freedom from notes, at least for Sunday mornings, is that of preaching the sermon to oneself the very last thing before going to sleep on Saturday night. Then, immediately upon awakening, think the sermon through again. It is often amazing how the whole sermon comes back.

One further precaution: Just before the time of speaking, go over the notes once more to refresh the memory; then trust God and go ahead!—Adapted from Expository Preaching without Notes, by Charles W. Koller (Grand Rapids. Mich.: Baker Book House, 1962). Used by permission.

No New Morality: Christian Personal Values and Sexual Morality, by Douglas Rhymes (Bobbs-Merrill, 1964, 155 pp.,$3.50), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The “No” in the title is not a rejection of the new morality espoused by John A. T. Robinson and others, but a declaration that it is not new at all. It is, contends Rhymes, as old as the Gospels, for it is the teaching of Christ. Christ indeed has “respect for codes and for moral laws, but … He refuses to accept that there are codes and moral laws which permit of no exceptions.” Christ taught that only the demand of love is unconditional, says Rhymes.

It was Paul who taught another view of morality. Under Greek influence, the Apostle dualistically regarded man as “flesh” and “spirit” and, viewing flesh as the lower aspect of man, summoned men to live not by “the law of the flesh” but by the “law of the spirit.” The Church, asserts Rhymes, strangely followed Paul rather than Christ and, thus misled, adopted a legalistic system of ethics that defines the good as the right relation to law, rather than as a right relation to persons. This is, says Rhymes, “an attitude for which St. Paul, not Christ, must take the blame.”

Today some voices in the Church, and, it seems, the world with almost one voice, are rejecting this impersonal legalistic morality. “This long-standing traditional morality, based upon authoritarian law and suspicion of the flesh,” asserts Rhymes, “is today being rejected on all sides, and especially among the younger generation.” Apparently the world “on all sides” is more perceptive of what constitutes a proper ethic than the Church has ever been since the days of Paul. (It is amazing what liberating theologians ask one to believe!)

Where does Rhymes’s substitution of a “standard of personal responsibility” to love one’s neighbor for a legal “external standard” lead him? In fairness, it must be said that his discussion of the nature of love and of the difference between love and lust is ethically sensitive and highly perceptive. After reading this, one feels it is superfluous to say that Rhymes is not in favor of rape. Yet it is fair to point out that he, on the basis of his ethics, cannot always be opposed to rape (or child abuse, or sexual perversion), because of his basic contention that there can be no moral law or code which allows for no exceptions. To think that the one demand of love can ever be so codified that it unconditionally forbids rape, for example, is to depart from the ethics of Christ and, according to Rhymes, to fall into the error of Paul. Rhymes’s morality, which is older than Paul if it stems only from Christ, would at least seem new to many pagans, who often practice a higher morality than Christ seemingly taught. Pagans have had laws against rape that allowed for no exceptions, least of all exceptions in the name of ethics.

How does Rhymes’s ethics affect his counseling? He reports being asked by a boy why he could not “have sex” if his girl friend were willing. Rhymes’s whole answer was a series of questions asked to sensitize the boy’s feeling of responsibility; “at the end.” says Rhymes, “I told him that no one could really answer his question but himself.” This is the best answer Rhymes could give within his ethical position. If it is the best the Church can give youth, then the Church has no word for the moral decline of our time.

If the demand of love can never take the form of a law that allows no exceptions, then Rhymes (though he seems reluctant) must confess that “it is possible to conceive of situations where such self-giving outside of marriage might have to be judged in the light of all the circ*mstances rather than be met with outright condemnation.”

Again, it is the substitution of “internal disposition” for a moral law in which some things are always wrong that leads to his view on hom*osexuality. He frankly asserts that from the standpoint of the morality of his book, hom*osexuality should be approached from the position that “hom*osexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection.” If the act is an expression of selfless love for another, it is then a moral act. Such a view of the occasional permissibility of hom*osexuality, and indeed of any other conceivable sin, is not incidental to Rhymes’s ethics; it is of its very fabric. Indeed, such “proper” exceptions must be regarded not only as permissible but, being an expression of love, as obligatory!

There is in the Christian ethical tradition a recognition of exceptions to moral laws; for example, the right of revolution. But it is one thing to leave moral room for the possible exception and another to recognize exceptions after one has removed that quality from moral law which makes them exceptions.

Rhymes strives for a morality in which love is, without exception, the one absolute requirement. Yet he finishes with a morality of love in which no act is, without exception, always wrong. Very obviously, something has gone wrong in his attempt to relate law and love; he has failed to prove his thesis that love is of such a nature that it cannot regard any act as always evil, without falling into legalism.

Rhymes decries the fact, and with some right, that the Church is often more indignant about sexual immorality than about other forms. Yet something similar is occurring in the reaction to this so-called new morality. Many people are troubled by what they regard as the undermining of morality by such men as Rhymes and Robinson; yet few decry the doctrinal aberrations on which this morality rests. Rhymes’s easy rejection of biblical authority; his faith in the salvific power of self-awareness; his belief that Christ calls us to know ourselves and thereby to gain that sense of personal responsibility which reduces moral laws to a merely pedagogical function; his contention that Jesus confronted man “with the possibilities which lie within” and revealed to the Centurion “his capacity for faith”; his belief that there is an ethic that “can win acceptance,” one “where Christians and humanists can stand on common moral ground”; and his claim that such an ethic is “entirely in accord with the mind of Christ and the attitude of Christ”—all these doctrinal aberrations should concern us at least as much as does the “new morality.” For the latter is built on the former. Indeed, it is these unbiblical views that lend the air of credence to the grand illusion that this new morality is not new at all but as old as the mind of Christ.

I say there ought to be at least an equal concern; for where your theology is, there will your ethics be also.

The Obstacle To Communism

Religion Can Conquer Communism, by O. K. and M. Moore Armstrong (Nelson, 1964, 258 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

The subtitle of this work, The Spiritual Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain, is more dearly indicative of its contents than the title itself. This volume brings within a readable compass a chronicle of the steps by which Soviet imperialism entrenched itself in the great land-mass of eastern Europe and northern Asia and thereby established a frightful hegemony over a belt of countries in the middle of Europe from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The writers trace the rise of Marxism, the establishment of the bridgehead of tyranny in Russia in 1917, and the expansionist tactics that have marked Communism’s career during the past forty-seven years. In general, the facts presented are well known and reasonably well documented.

One of the outstanding features of the work is the conciseness of its presentation of a formidable mass of material. The record of cruelty and mendacity by which this “experiment” in the remaking of mankind has been carried forward is presented within the rationale by which it was prosecuted and justified, namely, the materialistic view of man, the rigidly pre-determined dialectic of history, and the relativism of all morality.

The writers speak “from within,” having been involved in politics through elected office, and having served on one of the denominational committees at the San Francisco meetings that organized the United Nations. The tone of the work is moderate when measured against the massive brutalities and cynicism of the Red masters in the achievement of their goals. Chapters four through twelve might well be entitled, “Lest We Forget,” for they are painful reading to a nation whose leaders appear to have thrown away, to a large extent, the fruits of victory in World War II at the conference table.

The volume is basically one with a spiritual orientation. The authors recognize that the application of Marx’s “Total War Upon Mankind” involves a fundamental (as opposed to the claim of some liberals that it is incidental) assault upon the principles and organs of religion. One of the book’s merits is that it unmasks the superficial view that coexistence implies abandonment by the men of the Kremlin of all save economic forms of conflict. It is shown that religious faith has proved to be the one unpulverizable obstacle in the way of Communist planning and a major target for continuing warfare.

Red opposition to the Christian religion is shown in its varied phases: in the U. S. S. R. as initially an all-out frontal assault, coupled with some tactical adjustments (particularly during World War II); outside the Soviet Union, as unbending at the core and pragmatic in some of its methods. The authors see clearly the strategy of the Marxist imperialists and alert us to the major tactical features of the struggle, ranging from attacks with the broadaxe to the somewhat subtle insinuation of secular counterparts for every Christian usage.

The authors utilize their exposition to project their major thesis, namely, that there is something that can be done by the free world, and that this “something” must utilize spiritual resources. Whereas Communist leaders prostitute truth and utilize the Great Lie as a weapon, Christianity possesses within her arsenal forces of truth that can be brought to bear upon the situation in eastern Europe.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

• A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, by Gleason L. Archer, Jr. (Moody, $6.95). A serviceable treatment of Old Testament problems, written from the evangelical perspective as a text for college, seminary, and other serious students.

• The Old Testament, by Robert Davidson, from the “Knowing Christianity” series (Lippincott, $2.95). A deeply satisfying biblical interpretation of Old Testament theology that does not jump too quickly to the fuller disclosures of the New Testament.

• The Right to Silence: Privileged Communication and the Pastor, by William Harold Tiemann (John Knox, $4). A discussion of a minister’s legal and theological right to withhold from the courts evidence received in pastoral confidence.

The book promotes no easy optimism, no panaceas. The expositions are made with instruction in mind. No one whose heart beats with the suffering and the oppressed can lay the book down and be the same.

Every work of this type incurs the risk of appearing facile in its proposals. The authors have, however, shown an awareness of the difference between strategy and tactics: their faith is that, in the long pull, Communism’s war of attrition upon the Christian faith will be recorded in history for the ephemeral thing it is. Tactically, they make modest proposals, including the use of information, tourism, and interpersonal contacts to modify public policy in Communist lands. Faith is expressed that the embodiment of the Christian message in human lives may ultimately undermine the cruelty of the system, and finally preside in triumph over the forces of Marxist enslavement.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Who Is The Rebel?

Rebels With a Cause, by Frank S. Mead (Abingdon, 1964, 160 pp., $2.75), is reviewed by William B. Williamson, rector, Church of the Atonement, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

From a “Letter from Jerusalem,” in which the Roman Brutus gives an informal, first-hand account of St. John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul, to “The Big Bass Drum,” the story of the founder of the Salvation Army, Frank S. Mead, relates little-known facts concerning “a rebel’s-eye view of the church and church history.”

The style of Rebels With a Cause is informal and narrative, which makes for fascinating reading. This informality and high readability can be seen in the following quote from Letter from Jerusalem”: “He [Jesus] has become Public Enemy No. 1 in every Foreign Office in this part of our world.… Could you believe that any one man could cause such commotion?” In a similarly easy-to-read manner, Simon and his followers are described as the greatest magicians of them all. Simon was recognized in his day as “the sorcerer” and was thought of by some as the father of Christian Gnosticism. In any event, Simon and his followers contributed much to the “source of the developing debate in the church over the person and place of Jesus Christ.”

Rebels With a Cause sheds light on little-known “rebels” as well as on the well-known ones. “It is concerned with men and women who heard the beat of a different drum and broke step to travel a different road to the kingdom.… They are the imps of God scampering among us as we struggle up the holy hill, jabbing at us with their little darts of ridicule and righteous anger.…” This refreshing book, which covers many branches of Christendom, gives insight into history’s religious rebels and enables us to understand more fully the Christian non-conformist of today. Indeed, each story in Rebels With a Cause makes us think more clearly about those who are considered rebels today. It also shows us that it takes time and understanding to evaluate “rebels” and to see whether they are simply rebels or “rebels with a cause.”

WILLIAM B. WILLIAMSON

The Names And The Issues

Introduction to Theology, by Marianne H. Micks (Seabury, 1964, 204 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Samuel J. Mikolaski, professor of theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

This book derives from an expansion of lectures that the author gave to a conference on Christian ministries in the Episcopal Church last year. It bears unmistakably the stamp of its purpose, which is to range over certain names and issues of classical and contemporary theology in an introductory fashion. The fifteen chapters are grouped evenly under three heads, corresponding roughly to biblical theology, historical theology, and contemporary theology.

Useful discussions occur on crucial biblical passages that undergird such doctrines as the Incarnation. There are splendid short introductions to Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Abelard, Luther, Cranmer, and the Thirty-nine Articles, among others. In these are reflected the strong incarnation theology of the writer, her perceptive insights into the nature of human sin and guilt, and the need of divinely provided redemption. An interesting feature of the book is its treatment of Luther. Continental writers sometimes complain that Episcopalians ignore the Reformation, but that cannot be said of the author of this volume.

Some notations may be made. For example, is “universalism” the best theological term to express what the author probably intends as the “universality” of the Church (p. 59)? Does the author really mean “pietism” when she uses the infelicitous term “spiritualism” (p. 73)? Certain definitions like those of “body” (p. 62), “matter and spirit” (p. 71), and the “divine image” in man (pp. 148, 149) require sharpening. Did Luther say that Galatians is an epistle of “straw” (hence worthless) or a “strawy” epistle (hence hard to chew) (p. 68)? Should the impression be left that for Augustine evil is privation, when deprivation or defection of the will also figures prominently in his theology against the Manicheans (cf. Confessions, Bk. VII, chaps. 3, 12, 16)?

While the threefold division of the book into biblical, historical, and contemporary theology is helpful, it succeeds least, I feel, in the crucially important last section. Contemporary theology is employed as the foil for the function of reason in theology, and as a base for an attempt to provide a theological rationale for faith. I have wondered whether the theologians chosen match the terms of the earlier discussion. I have tried but failed to understand how the need of man in his sin (admittedly requiring atonement) can be met in the categories of Kierkegaard and Tillich. Nor have I been able to see (in the appeal to Bultmann) why we should not de-mythicize the eschatology of Jesus or the Cross, which are claimed by Bultmann to be so crucial (pp. 52, 145). With such a splendid thrust made for the doctrine of salvation (p. 120), it is hard to see how the warm personal categories of early Christianity follow from the uncertain existential leap of Kierkegaard or the ontological truisms of Tillich. How can we “limit” (theologically and philosophically) the undifferentiated diffusion of Tillich’s “ultimate concern” with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

This volume can serve a very useful purpose: to introduce important names and issues of Christian history. It combines the delicacy of Episcopal interest in early confessional theology with interest in certain strands of modern Continental and American dogmatic perspectives.

SAMUEL J. MIKOLASKI

No Heaven For Me!

Hellbent for Election, by P. Speshock (Zondervan, 1964, 183 pp., $2.93), is reviewed by Frank E. Gaebelein, co-editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Mr. Speshock has written a lively allegory somewhat on the pattern of C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. The main character is a Christian whose suicide was motivated by his disillusionment at the failure of Christians to live in accord with their beliefs and by his desire to spend eternity with his unbelieving sister. Preferring her company to that of Christians he has known, he arrives in heaven determined not to stay there and doggedly persisting in his endeavor to be sent to hell. The book tells of his journey back to earth in immaterial form with Alexis, the Individual Counselor assigned to him. Hellbent recalls crucial experiences of his youth and adult life culminating in his violent death, which is described in harrowing detail.

The book is largely dialogue, at which the author is expert. It is almost always lively and at times brilliant. The inconsistencies and hypocrisies of Christians are unsparingly displayed. The satire is often biting. But there is also a real sense of the joy of the redeemed, conveyed especially through the character of Alexis, the Individual Counselor.

Finally, Hellbent is allowed a visit to hell. Here the picture is terrifying. Those who know May Sinclair’s appalling story, “Where Their Worm Dieth Not,” will recognize the similarity between the concept of hell she sets forth and that of Mr. Speshock. This glimpse of what lostness really is, coupled with the revelation that his atheist sister was converted through his death, reconciles Hellbent to heaven.

The book is astringent and even disturbing. Its chief value is that it shows with a real measure of power the pursuing love of God that will not let his own go. On the other hand, the concept of what constitutes a Christian seems over-rational and almost antinomian. Moreover, the treatment of suicide has questionable implications.

Mr. Speshock is a gifted writer, although obviously no C. S. Lewis. Many will read Hellbent for Election with enthusiasm; others will be perturbed by it.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN

Between Hostility And Enthusiasm

Psychiatry and Religious Faith, by Robert G. Gassert, S. J., and Bernard H. Hall (Viking, 1964, 171 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, director of health services, University of Illinois, Urbana.

Although this book is written primarily for priests and nuns, it is addressed to the Roman Catholic laity as well. And in a brief foreword, Karl Menninger commends it also to his fellow Presbyterians. The authors are a Jesuit priest and a Catholic psychiatrist.

Disclaiming any intent to deal with the broader theoretical issues between psychiatry and religion, the authors first confront the widespread notion that psychiatry is irreligious. This attitude is characterized as “wholesale presumptuousness,” since psychiatry as a medical discipline is neither more nor less religious than any other science. However, they acknowledge that psychiatry must be distinguished from the practice of particular psychiatrists, which may be dangerous and harmful to the faith of their patients. Needed is a sober medium between an unexamined hostility and an uncritical enthusiasm.

The book is deeply committed to the orthodox Freudian dual-instinct theory and to the controversial unitary concept of mental illness long advocated by Karl Menninger. In a strongly defensive section, the authors discuss a query commonly put to psychiatrists, “Are you a Freudian?” The question is made to appear naïve and irrelevant. “The psychiatrist is embarrassed, not for himself, but for the questioner,” the authors declare, and they then proceed to defend Freud’s place in science. The authors do not recognize that the question usually refers, not to Freud’s psychology, but to his atheistic philosophy; in this context the question is highly pertinent.

The authors’ statement that “the psychiatrist himself cannot be sectarian in his work with patients” asserts an unrealizable ideal. The professed neutrality of the psychotherapist is now generally recognized as wishful self-deception, since every psychiatrist inevitably reveals his personal philosophy in the course of the verbal and non-verbal intercommunication of the therapeutic situation.

The chapters on psychiatric treatment trace the diagnostic process and subsequent management of a patient by a graphic case history, touching upon most of the common methods of therapy. The latter third of the book will be especially helpful to Catholic priests and supervisors, since it deals specifically with psychiatric referral, selection of religious candidates, and the delicate problem of confidentiality involving the patient who is a member of an order, his superior, and the psychiatrist.

This book, described by its authors as “only a primer,” fulfills well its declared purpose of seeking to convey an enlightened attitude toward the mentally ill and the mental health professions. An undeclared objective seems to be to buffer some of the opposition among Catholics to psychoanalysis and psychiatry.

ORVILLE S. WALTERS

A Primer

An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, by J. Harold Greenlee (Eerdmans, 1964, 160 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by John H. Skilton, professor of New Testament language and literature, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Professor Greenlee’s manual is a serviceable introduction to the textual criticism of the New Testament. It is designed as a primer for beginning students but can be read by others with enjoyment and benefit. It offers a brief treatment of such essential subjects as paleography, the sources of the New Testament text, the transmission of the text, and the printed text (with a survey of the history of the textual criticism of the New Testament in modern times), and it furnishes some guidance in the practice of textual criticism. Special features of the work include instruction both in the use of critical apparatuses found in various editions of the Greek New Testament and in the collation and classification of manuscripts.

Naturally, opinions will differ on what subjects should be covered in a primer and how extensive the coverage should be. The reviewer would favor, for example, a longer treatment of Streeter’s theories of textual criticism and of eclecticism. It would also seem desirable to set forth clearly the sharp distinction between the two kinds of internal evidence of readings made by Westcott and Hort (see pp. 78 f.). But appreciation is due Professor Greenlee for the useful information he has included.

JOHN H. SKILTON

Crackling Fresh

From Prison in Rome: The Letters to the Philippians and Philemon, by E. M. Blaiklock (Pickering & Inglis [Glasgow], 1964, 300 pp., 9s. 6d.), is reviewed by A. Morgan Derham, editorial secretary, The Scripture Union, London, England.

Dr. Blaiklock’s academic disciplines have made him so familiar with the world of the New Testament that if he were transported back in history and set down in ancient Rome, probably he would hardly notice that he was no longer in his native New Zealand; he would slip easily into a toga and be only too ready to show you the way to the Forum! Moreover, his knowledge of classical studies makes him rightly critical of the excesses committed in the name of New Testament scholarship, and his position as a layman makes him sharply aware of the realities of life in the non-clerical world in which the great majority of Christian readers (as opposed to writers) live.

The result of all this is a commentary, paragraph by paragraph, that crackles with fresh and informative comment, throws unexpected light on familiar passages, and makes shrewd thrusts at the easy-going Christianity that flourishes today. Furthermore, Dr. Blaiklock commands a wide vocabulary and a vivid writing style, so that the book is both educational and delightful.

The translation used is Dr. Blaiklock’s own, and not the least among the attractions of the book are the paragraphs in which he shows us the translator at work and gives his reasons for a particular rendering.

A. MORGAN DERHAM

Like No Other

The History Of Education, by John E. Wise, S. J. (Sheed & Ward, 1964, 494 pp., $5), is reviewed by Cornelius Jaarsma, professor of education, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Here is an interpretative history of education written from a Christian point of view. That the author is of Roman Catholic conviction is clear from his analysis of facts, men, and movements. In the preface he states that “history is the narration of facts in perspective,” and he is true to this conception of history throughout his work. The book, whose subtitle is An Analytic Survey from the Age of Homer to the Present, is comprehensive, analytic, and interpretative, and a welcome addition to the historical accounts of developing theory and practice in education. I know of no other history-of-education textbook in the English language that seeks to evaluate educational ideals and theories from a Christian perspective.

The author tries to be objective in selecting and describing movements, events, and ideas, and he largely succeds. Psychological movements in education beginning with Pestalozzi and continuing through Herbart and James are clearly and objectively set forth. Rarely does one find an author of Christian persuasion expounding John Dewey’s views with such fairness and with such an effort at understanding. A Protestant will differ with Wise’s interpretation of Luther and Calvin, but he must admit that the author’s desire to be fair and historically accurate is very much in evidence. The origin of the American public school, with Horace Mann and others, and the development of secularism in American education are accurately and cautiously portrayed.

Among the outstanding features of the book are the selections quoted from educational classics. They are well chosen, set apart in blocks of bold type, and appropriately placed. A comprehensive bibliography is included also.

Christian teachers will study this book with great profit, especially if their reading in the history of education has been confined to secular textbooks. Although Protestants will at times take issue with the author’s views, they will appreciate Wise’s attempt to be Christian in his interpretation of educational theory and practice.

CORNELIUS JAARSMA

Book Briefs

The Story of the Wise Men (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 42 pp., $4.95). The story of the Magi as recorded by Matthew, accompanied by pictures of the same story as carved in four stone capitals in the Cathedral of Autun in Burgundy by Gislebertus, who, though but little known until recently, was one of the greatest sculptors of the Middle Ages. A book of disturbing beauty.

The House of Christmas, by H. Harold Kent (Eerdmans, 1964, 123 pp., $2.95). Short essays on Christmas themes. Biblical material in fine style. A lovely gift, to give or receive.

The Christian Year: Sermons of the Fathers, Volume I, edited by George W. Forell (Nelson, 1964, 384 pp., $6.50). Sermons by men who range from Pope Leo to Jonathan Edwards, from Bernard of Clairvaux to Schleiermacher, arranged in the sequence of the church year.

The Douglass Devotional, by Earl L. Douglass (Evans-Lippincott, 1964, 385 pp., $2.95). An excellent daily devotional reader that will help shift thoughts from the cares of the day to the concerns of the spirit.

The Growth and Decline of the Cuban Republic, by Fulgencio Batista (Devin-Adair, 1964, 300 pp., $6.50). The author is the Batista who once ruled Cuba.

The Searching Wind, by Ruby A. Jones (Warner, 1964, 112 pp., $2.50). Devotional material in which nature and grace are blended in exquisite style.

Architects of Conservative Judaism, by Herbert Parzen (Jonathan David, 1964, 240 pp., $5.95). A critical study of the lives of the founders of the Conservative movement, one of the three major Jewish denominations.

World Communism: The Disintegration of a Secular Faith, by Richard Lowenthal (Oxford, 1964, 296 pp., $6). The author, who is at the Free University of West Berlin, traces the inner logic and historic developments of that process in which world Communism is coming apart at the seams.

The Scope of Grace, edited by Philip J. Hefner (Fortress, 1964, 320 pp., $4.95). Learned essays on the wide-ranging subject of nature and grace in which the authors roam from Robert Frost to the morality of God. Compiled in honor of Joseph Sittler, professor of theology at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.

The God We Seek, by Paul Weiss (Southern Illinois University Press, 1964, 258 pp., $5.50). The God for whom Yale University Professor Weiss seeks is one for whom Christianity is only a species of religion in general. As the title suggests, such a God has not yet been found.

The Twentieth Century Atlas of the Christian World, by Anton Freitag, S.V.D. (Hawthorn, 1963, 200 pp., $20). The story of Christian missions, Roman Catholic version; with maps, pictures, and illustrations, and one chapter on Protestant missions. An educational volume of fine craftsmanship.

The World’s Cardinal, by M. C. Devine (Daughters of St. Paul, 1964, 356 pp., $5.75). The first full-length biography of Richard Cardinal Cushing.

The Layman’s Bible Commentary: Vol. V, Deuteronomy, Joshua, by Edward P. Blair; Vol. VII, I and II Kings, I and II Chronicles, by Robert C. Dentan; Vol. X, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, by J. Coert Rylaarsdam; Vol. XI, Isaiah, by G. Ernest Wright (John Knox, 1964, 124, 155, 160, 159 pp., $2 each). With these four volumes the Layman’s Bible Commentary, a product of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., is completed.

God’s Glory: Romans 14:13–16:27, by Donald Grey Barnhouse (Eerdmans, 1964. 202 pp., $4.50). Volume X in the “Exposition of Bible Doctrines” series, taking the Epistle to the Romans as the point of departure.

The Collect’d Writings of St. Hereticus, edited by Robert McAfee Brown (Westminster, 1964, 153 pp., $3.95). Humorous writing.

The Art and Thought of Michelangelo, by Charles de Tolnay (Pantheon, 1964, 194 pp., $7.95). An unencumbered study presenting a cross section of Michelangelo’s ideas as they appear in his writings and in his artistic works.

Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism, by James Burnham (John Day, 1964, 312 pp., $5.95). The author argues that the contraction of the West on the world’s scene is due to the inadequacies of the liberal political faith, which is the weakness by which the West may commit suicide. Delightful reading.

Bible Encyclopedia for Children, by Cecil Northcott (Westminster, 1964, 176 pp., $3.95). A useful, very attractive presentation of the chief people, events, and ideas of the Bible for children—from about ten years and up.

Dramatic Personages, by Denis de Rougemont (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 170 pp., $4.50). Perceptive essays that are to be savored by the religious connoisseur, rather than gulped down by the unknowing. Translated from the French.

Paperbacks

Money, Mania and Morals: The Churches and Gambling, by Lycurgus M. Starkey, Jr. (Abingdon, 1964, 128 pp., $1.50). This book explores all aspects of gambling, including the arguments for and against legalization, and comes to the verdict: No dice! Starkey argues that gambling is wrong in principle, not merely in excess.

The Meaning of Sanctorum Communio, by Stephen Benko (Alec R. Allenson, 1964, 152 pp., $3.85).

Spirit of Power, by Paul W. F. Harms (Concordia, 1964, 94 pp., $1).

Audio-Visual Resource Guide 1965, edited by Janet Isbell (Department of Audio-Visual and Broadcast Education, National Council of Churches, 1964, 524 pp., $3.95). For use in religious education. Classified evaluations of more than 3,750 current, church-related A-V materials.

David Brainerd: Beloved Yankee, by David Wynbeek (Eerdmans, 1964, 256 pp., $2.25). First published in 1961.

Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, by P. T. Forsyth (Eerdmans, 1964, 270 pp., $1.95). By an author who believes that Christianity stands or falls with its preaching. First printed in 1907. Very worth reading.

Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel, by H. Wheeler Robinson (Fortress, 1964, 40 pp., $.75). A study of the concept that throws light on the oscillation between the individual and the group in the biblical designation of Israel.

Theologians of Our Time, edited by Leonhard Reinisch (University of Notre Dame, 1964, 235 pp., $2.25). Five distinguished critics evaluate the thought of a dozen great contemporary theologians, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Good reading for students and studious ministers.

With the approach of Bible Sunday CHRISTIANITY TODAY turns a spotlight on the Inspired Book. Emile Cailliet writes on “Books and The Book,” George A. Turner surveys a decade of research in the Gospel of John, Reinier Schippers evaluates recent computer-studies of Pauline writings, and Thomas Cosmades reports on present-day Turkish sites of the seven churches of the Apocalypse.

A series of brief, readable essays on “The Eternal Verities” gets under way in this issue, with J. Gresham Machen the first of a number of evangelical stalwarts from whose writings the material will be drawn.

“Unto us a child is born.” So the prophet heralded in words close to the heart of every parent God’s greatest gift to lost humanity. No wonder Paul, contemplating the glorious fulfillment of Isaiah’s announcement, exclaimed, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” When God came into human life he entrusted his only begotten Son to an earthly home, and the Saviour was reared by a godly mother and her devout husband. Immeasurably above us by reason of his Deity, the Child of Bethlehem has an essential bond with us through his humanity. And the joyous exclamation, “Unto us a child is born,” re-echoes whenever the Giver of all life entrusts a new life to a father and mother.

The bond between our imperfect humanity and the perfect Son of God lends poignancy to the youth problem. The sad paradox is that children who should be our greatest joy bring sorrow to many a home. Among the domestic problems of our nation, none is greater than that of delinquent youth. It is ironic that the announcement of the Population Reference Bureau that this year a total of 3.1 million persons in the United States will celebrate their seventeenth birthday—nearly one million more than the number of seventeen-year-olds in 1963—is accompanied by a note of foreboding, as it points to inevitable social problems of which delinquency is foremost. The increase of crimes committed by American young people has been almost three times as great as the phenomenal growth in adolescent population. So much for the sheer magnitude of the problem. Though reasons why youth go astray are complex, it is possible to isolate some of the basic factors leading to juvenile delinquency and, having isolated them, to point to remedies.

Chief among these factors is the deprivation of youth. And contributing to their deprivation is their exploitation. Few generations of children have been more pampered materially than this one. On the other hand, few have been so deprived of what they most need for growth into strong and responsible maturity.

Wherein lie their exploitation and deprivation? Answers to the question shout at us from every side. Recent decades have witnessed the mushroom growth of the cult of the teen-ager, so that we are fast becoming a teen-age society. Mass-media publicity of latest adolescent fads; bigger allowances and promotion of charge accounts for youngsters (teen-age income now totals $12 billion annually); automobiles as teen-age status symbols; special telephones for offspring of the affluent; emotional and sexual over-stimulation through the moral looseness of the day and through the social precocity demanded of children by ambitious parents—these are only a few symptoms of the exploitation of youth.

The result is that young people have been led to believe that the teen-age years are the apex of life instead of a preparatory step toward manhood and womanhood. Thus millions of our youth are being cheated out of precious experiences of childhood which, once past, can never be regained. Adult pressures, often selfish and at best thoughtless, emphasize the outward accouterments of maturity. But growth must come from within. The process of maturation cannot be hurried, and to give immature youth the prerogatives of maturity before they are ready to handle them leads to trouble.

Along with emphasis upon material things and the development of forced maturity, there goes the deprivation of youth. This transcends even the loss of authentic childhood experiences. The deepest deprivation is emotional and spiritual. It may well be that the future history of education will judge as a critical defect of the American home and school of the last four decades the failure to understand that for youth authority is both creative and essential. Parents and schools that do not have the moral fortitude to say “no” to children are depriving them of the very foundation of emotional stability. Behind the burst of juvenile criminality is disrespect for law, and behind disrespect for law is disrespect for authority.

In a powerful phrase in Second Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul speaks of “the mystery of lawlessness.” Though eschatological, the phrase has a present significance. It is interesting that in certain New Testament contexts the word “mystery” refers to what has become an open secret. Behind the lawlessness among youth today, whether in Harlem riots or in Labor Day disorders of more privileged youth at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, or Seaside, Oregon, the “mystery” is a want of respect for authority. Young people devoid of an inner structure of authority just do not have what is essential for growth into maturity.

The Fifth Commandment declares, “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” But for children to obey this commandment, parents must pay a price. They must be worthy of honor. They must not cheat in matters of integrity. They must have the strength to demand of children the respect and obedience that are a true expression of love. Let parents never think that they can cut corners in ethics, nourish their prejudices, live chiefly for the things of this world, maintain a religious and even an evangelical front, and at the same time receive from clear-eyed youth loving respect and obedience.

One of the sociological phenomena in America is that in great cities like New York and San Francisco that have a considerable Chinese community, juvenile delinquency among these people is practically unknown. The acknowledged reason is the firm structure of authority in the Chinese family. Surely it is a reproach to a nominally Christian nation that children from homes of a non-Christian culture have a moral stability lacking in our youth.

Isaiah said of the virgin-born Child, “His name shall be called Immanuel.” And now, when it is hard to be a Christian and hard also to be a Christian parent, let believing fathers and mothers find strength and comfort in knowing that the Holy Child who came into this lost, suffering, sinful world on the first Christmas is their “Immanuel.” He is never more truly “God with us” than when we strive humbly and in accord with the Scriptures to lead our children to that loving respect and obedience that are the basis of character strong enough to withstand the winds of the shoddy ethics and moral relativism blowing so persistently in our society.

Children must be evangelized; they must know the way of salvation. The Child of Bethlehem was called not only “Immanuel” but also “Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” Yet Christian nurture remains an inescapable obligation. Parents and schools that fail to instill respect for authority have yet to take the first step in preparing youth to face “the mystery of lawlessness” so prevalent today.

The crime bill in the United States now runs $20 billion a year. Offenses have increased four times faster than the population—which may seem a marginal matter, until hoodlums strike just down the road. While a task force of intellectuals projects the Great Society, the number of serious crimes in the District of Columbia in a single month has increased 19.3 per cent over last year’s figure. p*rnography has become a $500 million a year business, which is lightly tolerable as a mirror of modernity until some teen-ager seriously wonders whether his grandparents read the Prophets only because they didn’t have Playboy. United States illegitimacy has increased 300 per cent in ten years; that too may seem no cause for alarm, until a friend’s teen-age daughter drops out of college to raise her out-of-wedlock baby. The 25,000 suicides a year cease to be cold, impersonal statistics when John Smith is suddenly absent from the car pool and nobody can understand why he did it.

Modern man conceals his inner anxieties from his neighbors, who are busy submerging their own discontents. He scarcely remembers the strands of tragedy that scar the hinterlands of contemporary existence. The “great” wars sired man’s feeling of life’s futility; the lightning-spread of Communism spawned a sense of his smidgen-smallness; and the loosening grip of the supernatural heightened his sense of meaninglessness. Even intellectuals mounted philosophies of despair as the last silver linings faded from the clouds of doubt. Some mortals conceal their fears beneath a zest for life in an age of spectacular science. But the rising tide of irreligion, the immoral tone of society, and the uncertainty over future destiny have worked toward a dehumanization of modern man. A bright-tinted sepulcher, his sick soul is mirrored on the screen and stage, is chronicled in every newspaper, and casts a shadow on every Main Street.

This wayward society the Church of Jesus Christ illumines with the evangel of God’s grace. Its first word is not the false assurance that “things are better than you think,” for in truth modern man’s predicament is worse than he thinks. The worldling is neither spiritually asleep nor in a moral coma; worse yet, as the New Testament insists, he is spiritually dead, though he thinks himself alive. Lost in sin, his life is not simply life without meaning and life without God; it is survival without life.

The problem of meaning gains special urgency in these distraught times. The pervasive secularism nullifies an interest in eternal realities. The sudden arrival of the space age has dwarfed man’s spirit. The swift dominion of atheistic Communism over much of the earth has detoured human energy to wrong purposes. The nuclear potential for massive destruction seems to relegate respect for spiritual power to the past. Scientism discourages religious faith by exalting only scientific knowledge as genuine and dependable. An affluent society’s creature comforts coupled with the prospect of state welfare seem to promise all the security man needs. If he does have problems of balance, he can make it down any street to the psychiatrist’s office.

Modern man is separated from what he is meant to be, from what God intends him to be. Live for this or that though he may, in his heart of hearts he feels that he is not living for anything really worthwhile. Yet he dare not wholly abandon his quest for meaning. The blank walls of apathy and boredom invite failure of nerve, and beyond inner emptiness stands mental breakdown. A person who loses heart for life is all dressed up with no place to go but the cemetery.

Yet man cannot “invent” a satisfying meaning for his life. No one really thirsts for reality who lacks all interest in theology. For what makes sense of our experience is a divine given. The worth, meaning, and goal of life are connected with God’s purpose and provision. We come from God; we return to God; we have a duty under God; and our destiny in eternity turns on whether we receive God’s grace and live for him. The meaning of our lives is inseparable from the meaning of the Incarnation and the Atonement and the Resurrection; these great saving events disclose what God intends us to be. The New Testament speaks of “fullness of life.” The Apostle Paul knew that life’s durable meaning must be spiritual and moral, and he affirmed: “To me to live is Christ.”

The Christian knows with Paul that “in Christ all things cohere.” His great discovery is that the One who stands at the beginning of creation and at the center of history stands also as the source of his new life. The Christian knows more. He knows that the future belongs to all who are in Christ. Others may moan, “Stop the world, I want to get off!,” but he urges them, “Stop your flight, and get on the Rock!” We who know Christ know who we are and what we shall be. We know the true identity and worth of the individual. Moreover, we know why we are, that is, the meaning of human existence. Not only in one’s fate after death but in the sanctification of life here and now the Gospel makes a decisive difference. So the Christian cries out, “Meet Christ and live!” And where this summons is truly heard, men may hear in it the echo of the Redeemer’s own victory shout: “I was dead, and am alive again.” That is why those who truly know Christ have it in their power to unleash a tide of Christian compassion and reconciliation around the world.

The man freed by Christ need fear nothing—and he alone need not fear. In the ancient world the fear of death terrified pagan mankind. In the pre-Reformation world guilt and fear harassed even religious souls. In the modern world the fear of meaninglessness grips bewildered spirits. The Gospel of Christ carries tidings of great joy to every man afraid of life and of the future. The redemption that Christ offers erases all these fears and more. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight”—so Phillips Brooks’s words in “O Little Town of Bethlehem” speak still in these days. The Christian evangel is the one true hope of our times. The only good news remaining to our century is a message almost too good to be true—that Christ died for sinners and that he lives to remake us in his image. The Christian evangel is the one message that decisively determines the currents of destiny in modern society.

This page introduces a series of short fortnightly essays on the great verities of the Christian religion. The material will be drawn from many sources. The first ten essays are from the pen of the late J. Gresham Machen, distinguished New Testament scholar. These are excerpted from radio addresses published after his death by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company under the title, “The Christian Faith in the Modern World,” and soon to be reissued in paperback.—ED.

No thoughtful man can possibly look out upon the world today without observing that we are in the midst of a tremendous emergency. It does seem perfectly clear to thoughtful people, whether they are Christians or not, that humanity is standing over an abyss.

At such a time, is it any wonder that this world with its pressing problems should seem to many persons quite sufficient to occupy all our thoughts; is it any wonder that the pressing problems that are before our very eyes should crowd out attention to God and to an unseen world?

Persons who adopt that attitude may with some plausibility argue that the most important thing that you have to do for a man is not always the first thing that you must do for him. If a man is in the water, drowning, the most important thing to do for him is to preach the Gospel to him for the saving of his soul. But that is not the first thing to do for him. The first thing to do for him is to pull him out of the water and give him artificial respiration.

It might seem to be the same way with humanity as a whole. Humanity is drowning in the water, or, to change the figure slightly, is sinking in the mire. The first thing to do might seem to be to pull it out, in order that after it has been pulled out we may ask it to deal with the unseen things. Let the Church show what it can do with the plain emergency as it actually exists in this world—so the argument might run—and then, if it proves able to do that, the world may think it worth listening to if it talks about God.

Plausible reasoning this is—plausible but utterly untrue.

In the first place, the program that this reasoning proposes will not work. It proposes that we shall first deal with the political and social emergency, and then afterwards deal with the unseen things. But what was it that brought the emergency upon us in the first place? Was it something in the realm of that which can be seen? Not at all. The physical resources of the world were amply sufficient for the world’s needs. No, the thing that brought the emergency upon us was something in the realm of the unseen things.

Moreover, if it was something within that realm that brought the emergency to us in the first place, it is also something in that realm that keeps the emergency with us today. The distress of the world is due clearly to an evil that is within the soul of man.

Hence these so-called “practical” men who would neglect the realm of the soul and of the soul’s relations to God in order to deal with the economic problems of the day are the most impractical people that could possibly be imagined.

The truth is that that analogy of the drowning man does not apply to the evils of society. To pull a drowning man out of the water is a simple physical effort. But to pull society out of the mire into which it has fallen today is not a simple physical effort at all, but is a highly complex matter; and at the very heart of it is that mysterious portion of the mechanism which is known as the soul of man.

It is impossible, therefore, to deal first with the social and political evils of the day, and then deal afterwards with the unseen things, for the simple reason that without dealing with the unseen things you cannot deal successfully with those social and political problems at all.

God has so ordered the course of this world that in this case—unlike that case of the drowning man—it is impossible to attain the lower end until the higher end has been attained. It is impossible to deal successfully even with these political and social problems until we have come to be right with God. No emergency can possibly be so pressing as to permit us to postpone attention to the unseen things.

Indeed, the emergency ought to have exactly the opposite effect; the evils of the time, instead of leading us away from God, ought to lead us to him.

Is this not a time when we ought seriously to ask ourselves whether there is not some lost secret which must be regained if humanity is to be saved from the abyss?

I am asking you to turn away from yourself and your opinions and your troubles; and I am asking you to turn instead to a word from God.

Where can I find that word? Not in myself and not in you, but in an old Book that has been sealed by the seals of prejudice and unbelief but that will, if it is rediscovered, again set the world aflame and that will show you, be you wise or unwise, rich or poor, the way by which you can come into communion with the living God.—J. G. M.

The eternal significance of Christmas is being largely obscured by secularization. One has but to look at the large department stores in a city like Tokyo to realize that the celebration of the coming of Christ has been starkly transformed into a gimmick for bigger business here and abroad.

Tokyo and Washington, as far as Christmas is concerned, vary only in degree. But judgment for the exploitation of Christ’s coming rests far more on America because of our national heritage.

The wonder of Christmas, its eternal implications, the mystery of the Incarnation, are being lost. None of these can be appreciated until the Christ of Bethlehem becomes one’s Saviour from sin and the Lord of one’s life.

That Christmas has become for so many merely a pagan holiday, dedicated to the flesh and lacking in spiritual significance, is but one indication of the moral and spiritual blindness of this generation. That there was no room for Jesus in the inn was prophetic of our own generation, where, for millions, he is neither wanted nor welcomed. That he was born in a stable was prophetic of those who in every generation welcome him with humble hearts.

There was no ceremony or show on that first Christmas. There were only a guiding star, a few wise men with prophetic vision, a few shepherds who heard a message from heaven and who went, saw, and worshiped. There were others who recognized in this babe the long-promised Redeemer. All these things remind us that the supernatural significance of Christmas was revealed by the Holy Spirit then, as it is now.

One can imagine the smug complacency of those fortunate enough to have secured shelter in the inn. Their physical wants taken care of, they were oblivious that the Son of God lay close by. They were satisfied with food and entertainment, while on the plains east of the city the heavenly host sang to shepherds, those unremarkable men to whom was revealed the message of the Saviour’s advent.

Was there not a prophetic note in this complacency—a warning to a sophisticated twentieth century that God still reveals himself to the humble of heart while rejecting the proud?

God’s meaning of Christmas can never be understood until Christ is given priority in our hearts and lives. When the transcending significance of Christ’s coming into the world breaks through by the illumination of his Spirit, Christmas is no longer just a holiday; it becomes a holy day.

The Incarnation is a mystery too deep for the human mind to comprehend; but we can believe. And when we believe, the enormity of sin and its consequences become the background for the awareness of something of God’s redeeming love and mercy. Christmas can never be rightly understood apart from the blood and death on Calvary a few years later; or from the joy of the empty tomb and the wondering gaze of disciples as they looked at his retreating form in the clouds of heaven; or from the promise, “This same Jesus … shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”

Christmas brings to remembrance one event in God’s redemptive schedule. We are told, “But when the fulness of time was come. God sent forth his Son …” (Gal. 4:4). Thus for Christians this is a season of great joy, while for others it involves nothing more lasting than excitement, pleasure, and profits in the market place.

Even the Church may share in distorting the meaning of Christmas, thereby adding to the heart-hunger and confusion of a lost and groping world. In our troubled times, uncertainties of every kind continually add to a sense of futility and need. How urgent, then, that we who bear the name of Christ interpret the meaning of Christmas to those who do not know him, to those who so desperately need the peace, joy, and hope to be found in the Saviour!

Lose the significance of Christmas and we lose the Christ of Christmas. This birth was not a trivial event in history; it was the mysterious entry of God into human flesh, Immanuel—God with us—by whom man’s fellowship with God may be restored.

What a tragedy that for so many who “celebrate” Christmas, its spiritual significance is obscure! What an opportunity for Christian witness—through a spoken word, a friendly smile, an act of compassion, a helpful hand, heart-felt love for those about us. Such witnessing is at the very heart of the Christmas spirit and can glorify God.

Years after the first Christmas the aged Apostle John heard the risen Lord say: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). He continues to stand at the door of men’s hearts. This Christmas he would use us in speaking a word for the divine guest.

The writer recently had an extended conversation with one of the nation’s leading munitions manufacturers who has shared in the making of some of our nation’s more sophisticated weapons. He is desperately afraid. His intimate knowledge of weaponry and his worldwide contacts have brought him face to face with the possibility of world destruction by the triggering of already available bombs. Although not a Christian, he seemed acquainted with many biblical references having to do with destruction. He even quoted extensively from Daniel, our Lord’s predictions, Second Peter, and the Revelation.

What has this to do with Christmas? Very much, if the true meaning of our Lord’s advent is grasped. He came to bring healing to the spirit and hope to the heart.

Christmas means that a Way has been opened into God’s presence—a way for forgiven sinners. Christmas means that Truth has been revealed, so that a world in spiritual ignorance can know Him and be free. Christmas means light out of darkness, sight for the blind, deliverance from the power of Satan.

Christmas means that the love of Christ can be shed abroad in our hearts and reflected in our attitudes toward others. Christmas means that we may be born into the Kingdom of God, no longer aliens and outcasts but children of the King because he has redeemed us to himself.

How the Church and individual Christians need to recapture the awesome radiance and grandeur of the meaning of Christmas! How we all need to accept humbly what God has revealed to us about the person and work of the one who was born in the Bethlehem manger!

In the meaning of Christmas, man is called to see sin in its true light. “And thou shalt call his name JESUS; for he shall save his people from their sins.” This was not a figure of speech; it was God’s way of telling us that only his Son could solve the problem of sin in the human heart.

“Merry Christmas” is a meaningless greeting until we have received the Christ of Christmas in our hearts. Then, and only then, the radiance of Christmas becomes real—a joy to be experienced and a glory to be reflected.

AH, SO

For sprightly and refreshing reading pick up Bishop Gerald Kennedy’s For Preachers and Other Sinners. He is my kind of man, and this is my kind of book. In it he gives the back of his hand to discussion groups, symposia, and panelists:

… the worst thing about the whole process is the assumption that any subject can be treated profitably by a panel. I heard one on atomic power by people who knew no more about it than I do. Seven times zero is still zero.

This reminds me of something the late, great Hal Lucco*ck of Yale wrote on the same subject. Describing the scene where the Philippian jailor comes to Paul crying out, “What must I do to be saved?,” he pictures Paul as answering, “Well, what do you think?”

From those kindergartens where they graduate little students in caps and gowns all the way up through college, there is a kind of style in education in which teachers think they are teaching when they have a “talk-it-over session.” This is often the emergency exit for an unprepared professor. Having run out of material, he says to the class, “Well, now, what do you think about all this?” It is pretty hard for a student to think “about” something when he doesn’t know anything. What does it matter “what he thinks” if he has never done any thinking?

A girl wrote a paper recently about the judgment of God. “He chooses the good people or God’s concept of good people.…” She has her opinion of good people, you have your opinion of good people, I have my opinion of good people. So, luckily, does God.

A young fellow teaching history of civilization in an Eastern college came upon Calvin, and immediately the class was involved in the moot question of predestination. After considerable argument one freshman girl summed it all up: “Well, it is my opinion that Calvin didn’t think this through very well!”

THE NEW CONFESSION

Some of us, while disagreeing with your general theological position, have been interested and encouraged to see your attempts to open a way for fundamentalists out of the morass of theological puerilities and anarchic individualism (e.g. McIntire) into which the movement was sinking in the first half of this century. You and your associates have made real progress in spite of your inability to get free of seventeenth-century orthodoxy’s blind alley of an in fallible text of Scripture and recover a doctrine of Scripture more in line with the Reformers and the Scriptures themselves. It was a disappointment, therefore, to see you fall back into an all-too-familiar earlier fundamentalist tactic in your articles on the Presbyterian statement of faith (Oct. 23 issue)—a disregard of Christian ethics where you think you see a chance to create confusion in what you consider an enemy camp.…

Great concern about theological correctness, with a seventeenth-century criterion, combined with an ethical unconcern have only too often been a trademark of fundamentalism. It is sad to see you letting yourself slip back into this corrupt pattern.

Union Theological Seminary

New York, N.Y.

• In the ecumenical era the public’s right to know assumes increasing importance. If the public is confused, we merely reported the facts; we did not create them. The committee has spent six years shaping a tentative document subject to still further revision.—ED.

As a United Presbyterian layman, I believe that I am in a position to appreciate some of the questions you raised.… The current weakness and inability to adhere to the nominal, doctrinal standards undoubtedly characterizes a large number of United Presbyterian churches.

Upon joining a large United Presbyterian congregation in a southern California city last year, I happened to ask the senior minister at the final orientation session for a copy of the Westminster Confession and related doctrinal standards of the United Presbyterian Church. This minister thereupon answered me with some amazement that in all his years of service at that church no new member had ever made such a request! He said that he still had a copy “somewhere” in his study, however, and that if I wanted it I could have it. This same minister further displayed a singular lack of interest to discuss the contents of our confessional standards.…

Having widely traveled throughout the United States and having attended many United Presbyterian services in different cities, I believe that far too many of our church’s ministers are hopelessly confusing and obscuring by oratorical flourish the glory of God with the glory of man.…

Corona del Mar, Calif.

THE EARLY HISTORY

Re your article “The Anonymous Congregation” (News, Oct. 23 issue): The first practical electronic secretary was developed in Milwaukee, and it was so good that the Bell Telephone System bought out the company. When this instrument first hit the market, it was offered to one of my parishioners, a man in the heating and air conditioning business, as a telephone secretary. God inspired this man, Harold J. Groeschel, to see the possibilities of using it in the work of God. He purchased a machine and had it installed at Warner Memorial Chapel. The Men’s Brotherhood took on the monthly charges due to the telephone company. I recorded a brief message of inspiration, challenge, and invitation to salvation, allowing time for the caller to leave his name, address, and telephone number if he wished to be contacted. We changed these recordings each week. While there were many pranksters and foul-mouthed callers, there were many sincere people who were helped. The calls came in at the peak, just as fast as the telephone would take them, averaging over 1,000 calls per day. We were written up in the newspapers, and we have clippings from as far away as Australia showing that this was the very first use of this type of ministry. This was late in 1952.

We later abandoned this effort for lack of time to make the contacts with the people desiring help, feeling it was wrong to promise to call them when we were too overburdened to be able to continue it. Many people were saved, and returned to their own churches. Frankly, we did not get one person into our own congregation from this effort. It was purely an effort to help people find the Lord. The service was advertised by one-inch ads in the newspapers and by cards reading, “If you’re feeling rather low, call Hopkins 6-2150.”

Warner Memorial Chapel

(Church of God)

Milwaukee, Wis.

• Our apologies to Warner Memorial Chapel. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company reports that its answering device, developed by Bell, was being delivered as early as May, 1952.—ED.

BAPTISM

The writers of the articles (“The Case For Infant Baptism” and “The Case Against Infant Baptism,” Oct. 9 issue) … consider baptism as primarily a sign of something God has already done. Lutherans and Roman Catholics among other Christians consider baptism as primarily God coming and acting in the sacrament itself.…

Ebenezer Lutheran Church

Kandiyohi, Minn.

G. R. Beasley-Murray wrote as though the Baptists were the only survivors of the Anabaptist movement.…

Church of the Brethren

Holmesville, Neb.

Dr. Bromiley’s article … is an excellent piece of theological reasoning, which is, unfortunately, its principal fault. Dr. Beasley-Murray’s more direct appeal “to the law and to the testimony” is more convincing for those who would speak “as it were the oracles of God.”

Does the New Testament really teach that baptism is a “sign of the covenant” in the same unmistakable words in which the Old Testament describes circumcision as a “token of the covenant”? Indeed, is baptism ever described in the New Testament as a “sign” of anything?…

Gemeente van Christus

Amsterdam-W, Netherlands

There was no need in the early Church to specify that the privileges of the infant seed of those under the new covenant were to be retained, any more than it was necessary to indicate that they must still worship the true God. It is beyond all reason to suppose that the New Testament writers would offer no word of apology or explanation for such a tremendous change had it been made. Our Baptist friends must produce a direct warrant for the great and sudden change they allege took place. It will not be sufficient for them to say that in regard to positive instructions no inferential reasoning can be admitted, for they themselves give the Lord’s supper to women and there is no direct and positive warrant for that.

Cobden, Ont.

It seems that someone should note that the concept of circumcision’s being replaced or supplanted by baptism appears not to have been known by the apostles at the Jerusalem Conference (Acts 15). Their knotty problem might have been easily resolved by the simple statement that baptism now took the place of circumcision, and therefore circumcision is no longer needed.…

Barboursville Baptist

Barboursville, W. Va.

In the primitive Church, converts who received the sacrament were, obviously, adults who were capable of the response of faith. But as time wore on, infants born in Christian families became the major source for church membership. In the Western church, at least, the problem was resolved by the separation of the single initiatory rite into what developed into two sacraments: holy baptism by water and holy confirmation by the laying on of hands.…

Holy confirmation makes it possible for the person of the age of reason to “ratify and confirm the promises made for him at his Baptism,” and the second initiatory rite seals the baptism and bestows upon the recipient the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, to make effectual the work begun by baptism.… ROBERTS E. EHRGOTT The Church of the Nativity (Episcopal) Indianapolis. Ind.

If infant baptism requires all the explanation which Dr. Bromiley … gives …, there must be something wrong with it.…

Dallas, Tex.

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD

In regard to your editor’s note to the letter from Father du Bois regarding Anglican belief concerning prayers for the dead (Oct. 9 issue), you appear to be unaware that in the American Prayer Book, there are direct prayers for the dead in five places—the Prayer for the Church in the Communion Office, the Collect for the Eucharist at a burial, the Office for the Visitation of the Sick, twice in the Burial Office.…

Diocese of Tennessee Lay Reader

Kingsport, Tenn.

• The reference of this correspondence and our comment was to the situation in England. The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, which in all essentials is the book of 1552, is entirely free from prayers for the dead, since these were seen by Archbishop Cranmer and his colleagues to be not only unscriptural but also indicative of a serious misunderstanding of the Gospel. The inclusion of such prayers in the American Prayer Book is regrettable for the same reasons.—ED.

My favorite Anglican theologian (C. B. Moss in The Christian Faith, p. 440) writes: “The practice of prayer for the dead does not depend upon belief in Purgatory. There is no certain case of it in Scripture, except 2 Maccabees 12:44, in the Apocrypha; 2 Timothy 1:18 is probably, but not certainly, a prayer for the dead. It cannot therefore be regarded as a dogma necessary to salvation, but it has been practised, in every part of the Church, and in every age.… If Purgatory exists at all, its purpose must be to reform the sinner, to free him from evil habits, and to make him fit for Heaven. It is not an extension of our probation.”

The reason I find myself compelled to pray for the dead is because I believe in the communion of saints—that you and I continue to have a close spiritual relationship with those who have passed through the gateway of death and are beyond the grave. I believe that this spiritual relationship includes praying for them. Our Book of Common Prayer in the Liturgy (pp. 74.75) is specific: “And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to grant them continual growth in thy love and service.…”

Anglicans believe in an Intermediate State, which we prefer to call Paradise after the words of our Lord to the penitent thief: “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Diocese of West Missouri Bishop

Kansas City, Mo.

Of the three prayers numbered “32” in “Occasional Prayer,” two include petitions for the dead. In the Office of the Burial of the Dead there are three prayers for the departed. If it be objected that these are 1928 insertions, then the answer is that the 1928 Book is the one authorized by the Church of England, even if not by the (predominantly non-Anglican) Parliament of Great Britain.…

All Saints Church

Manchester, England

I was distressed to read … that, according to Charles du Bois, “prayers for the dead (as well as belief in purgatory) are part and parcel of Anglican eschatology.” As a member of the Church of England (and therefore, I suppose, an Anglican) I am bound by the formularies to which I gave assent at my ordination. In the Thirty-nine Articles the doctrine of purgatory is expressly rejected (Article XXII), and Article VI assures me that I am not required to believe as an article of faith anything which cannot be proved by Holy Scripture.

It follows from this that in the Church of England a belief in purgatory or in prayers for the dead is a departure from orthodoxy. To be sure, there are many unorthodox people in our denomination (and amongst them in this respect was C. S. Lewis); but whilst these formularies remain it is at least possible in our country to determine what is and what is not orthodox Anglicanism.

St. Barnabas’ Vicarage

Nottingham, England

EVOLUTION AND EVANGELICALS

Re comments toward H. M. Morris’s recent book, The Twilight of Evolution (Current Religious Thought, Sept. 25 issue): As a paleontologist who is also an evangelical Christian, I wish to point out … that this book contains a number of mistakes.…

For example, the book presents serious misunderstandings of the concept of uniformitarianism (pp. 59–64), the use of fossils in dating rock strata (pp. 49–52), instances of fossils and rock formations which are stratigraphically out of order (pp. 53, 54), and the present-day formation of fossils (pp. 62, 63). Moreover, there is no significant discussion of the numerous transitional fossils (“missing links”) which clearly indicate that particular groups of organisms were the actual ancestors of other groups.

In spite of Morris’s assertions to the contrary, an evangelical Christian can quite reasonably incorporate into his own world-life view an attitude which regards evolution as God’s proximate means of creating organisms; Morris’s book seems like an attempt to revive a traditional position which many Christians today believe not to be the only biblically acceptable attitude toward the subject of evolution. It is indeed tragic that such a book is highly recommended by some evangelical Christians, for such actions complicate effective witness to scientists involved in paleontologic matters; in addition, an unfortunate effect of the book’s publicity among evangelicals is the possibility that its statements (pp. 27, 28) will deter Christian students from entering paleontology, geology, and biology, fields in which Christian witness, made effective partly by the demonstrated scientific competence of the Christian, is desperately needed today.

Dept. of Geology

Indiana University

Bloomington, Ind.

The article highlights an important and persistent problem in the area of science and faith. The topics of evolution and evolutionism deserve careful attention on the part of evangelical scholars, both in the biological sciences and in theology. Profitable discussion, in fact, will require a clear distinction between the different meanings of these two terms.

I attended the Darwin Centennial Celebration at the University of Chicago in 1959 and heard Sir Julian Huxley deliver his address entitled “The Evolutionary Vision.” It was quite obvious to me at the time that this was not a scientific lecture but a sermon expounding his personal religious beliefs. Such an extrapolation from science to a comprehensive world view should be labeled evolutionism. Other scientists soon afterward criticized this address for its disregard of accepted principles for interpreting scientific data. Huxley’s position can also be justly criticized for its view of the nature of man as well as its view of God.

The term evolution, on the other hand, can be used to describe that aspect of biology which studies processes of change. When a biologist speaks of evolution (as science) he includes topics such as genetic equilibrium, relative fitness, reproductive isolation, and polymorphism. We can confidently expect that future research will bring considerable modification in evolutionary theory. In fact, it is my obligation as a geneticist to look for inadequacies and inconsistencies in current theory and to collect data that may permit new interpretations. An unqualified global denial of evolution by a Christian, however, will be interpreted by many scientists as a failure or refusal to understand what biologists are talking about.

The distinction between evolution and evolutionism should be helpful because a similar distinction between science and scientism is already widely accepted. As a science teacher I try to help students understand the creative use of scientific investigation and the thrill of discovery. But they must also realize that scientific explanations are never final or ultimate, and that science can never explore all of reality. The results of science do, of course, affect my daily life and my ideas, but science is not a sole and sufficient guide.

I doubt that Sir Julian Huxley would accept a distinction between evolution and evolutionism, for he holds to a straight-line relationship between matters of science and matters of belief. One’s ideas of purpose and values must be brought wholly into line with one’s understanding of science. But it is possible that an unqualified denial of evolution in the name of Christ is also based upon Huxley’s premise, although in reverse direction. In my opinion, both of these positions represent a gross misunderstanding of the meaning of scientific investigation and of faith in God.

I am grateful to Dr. Hughes for his article that prompted these comments and hope that they will aid further discussion rather than hinder it.

University of Minnesota St. Paul, Minn.

MEMBERSHIP RESTORED

I appreciated very much your article entitled “Beauty and Holiness” (News, Oct. 9 issue).…

Vonda’s boy friend, Duane Kapp, is a member of the First Free Methodist Church of Phoenix, rather than the Wesleyan Methodist as you suggest. Both Vonda and Duane have been dedicated Christians. We are proud of her and also him.

It is our hope and prayer that this unusual experience of being Miss America will be a wonderful opportunity to witness for Christ.

First Free Methodist Church

Phoenix, Ariz.