THE BIBLE AND THE EVANGELICAL FAITH
Long, long ago there was the Edict of Henry VIII, seventy-three years before the King James' Version, and we recognize that in that Edict we discover the hand of the over-ruling God, It did not depend upon the Sovereign himself in any sense; but we thank God for the thing that happened, and for the chained Bible. The chain is gone, and the Bible is with us of the Evangelical faith today.
The theme announced has infinite possibilities which it is not my intention to attempt to explore, It would be futile to make any such attempt in a necessarily brief consideration, I want rather to follow the line of inclusive simplicity, dealing with what the writer of the letter to the Hebrews spoke of as "the first principles of the oracles of God,"
The subject then, "The Evangelical Faith and the Bible," consists of a phrase in which two matters merge, the Bible, and the Evangelical Faith. The one is concrete, the other is abstract, they are, however, intimately related, of which, more shortly.
Our method will be quite briefly and simply first, a question in the realm of the abstract, what is the evangelical faith? Second, a consideration of the relation of that faith to the Bible,
What do we mean when we speak of the evangelical faith? It is good sometimes thus to ask ourselves what we mean by things we easily say, We are very apt to take things for granted, and imagine we know them, when we do not know them at all, I agree with Josh Billings who said "I'd rather be certain of a few things, than know so many that ain't so."
The word faith may be used in two ways quite naturally, first of individual action, I said action, not sentiment, because we believe that Professor James was right, there is a will to believe, Or we may use the word faith of a system of belief, It is in that second sense that we employ it now,
The phrase then, the evangelical faith, refers to the whole body or system of truth concerning which there is confidence and assurance, Whether we speak of faith as an individual action, or as the system of belief, it has a common quality, and that is one of assurance, of confidence, Faith is not gullibility. Faith is not guessing, Faith is not hoping, Faith is being sure, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for," because it is "the evidence of things not seen," We are thinking of the faith, as Paul thought of it when writing to the Philippians he spoke of "striving for the faith of the Gospel"; or as Jude thought of it when he said, "The faith which was once for all delivered to the saints,"
The Christian religion is distinguished from all others in this fact, The faith is not a quest, It is confidence in a revelation, and consequently it is a revelation in itself, Just as logos may stand for the thing spoken and the method of the revelation, so with the faith, As I have said, faith is not a quest, I am told that I ought to be engaged in a quest for truth. I am not so engaged, I am engaged, and have been for half a century in an attempted diligent study and question into the truth as it has been revealed to man from God, That is my understanding of the faith,
Now we come to the word, Evangelical, This is the predominant note, What does evangelical mean? The announcement of good news, that is very elementary, but it is final. I have always had very great sympathy with the Scot who was sitting waiting in a dentist's outer room, He had to wait some time, and the dentist found him looking at a book, which was an English dictionary; and when the dentist expressed some surprise, the Scot said, "Oh it is verra interesting, but the stories are unco' short"! In the Oxford Dictionary I found six and a half columns of cognate words, all round about the word evangel; and all the six and a half columns again and again, in many connections and applications, stressed the word Gospel, good news, That is the evangelical faith,
Thus, when we speak of the evangelical faith two ideas merge in the mind, First it is a message, not the announcement of a human discovery, but the declaration of a Divine revelation, Secondly it is good, it brings comfort, it brings confidence, it brings courage, The evangelical faith is the confidence, the assurance, based upon a Divine revelation, which is good news for a storm-tossed and wounded world, to every man in his deplorable condition of helplessness,
Second then, what is the relation of the Bible to the evangelical faith? Everything I have already said is the outcome of the Bible, Take this Book away, and the world has no evangelical faith, We may discuss with great appropriateness comparative religions, Great attempts have been made to find a common denominator, It never will be found, There is no common denominator if Christianity is included, A common denominator may be found in the rest, There is no evangelical faith apart from this Book, There is no direct message from God to man claimed by any other form of religion of which I know anything, and I have not been utterly idle in consideration of such matters,
And certainly there is no assurance of comfort, of confidence, of courage, or hope, The study of other religions is full of interest, But what is found in them? Questing, wondering, hoping; but no assurance, no finding, no answer to the questing; no solution, no reply to the wondering; no promise in the presence of the hope,
But in this Book its claims are very clear and definite, It claims to be a message from God to man, I will dare to gather up the whole of the evangelical faith into a brief statement, What is this message of God to man which constitutes the bedrock of the evangelical faith? For the moment I am not asking anything about its implications or its applications, for that is an almost infinite sphere of consideration, and most important, But what is the essence? I submit that the profoundest student and professor of theology, and the most recent recruit of the Salvation Army will agree with me that the whole message of the evangelical faith is found in John 3:16, Yes, I think we had better repeat it, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have the life of the ages, eternal life,"
That is the highest message of the Bible, That is the supreme declaration that God has made to man, not only in the Literature, but in the Person of His Son,
But we are thinking of the Literature, and that is the absolute message of the Bible, If we follow it through as a growing manifestation, we find it proceeds from a glimmering twilight to the full-orbed sun-rising, That is the Faith, The background is a perishing world, but all round it is a God of love, and the fact that that God has made a way of redemption and renewal for that perishing world, That is, as I understand it, the evangelical faith, We are in the glimmering twilight as we read the ancient and poetic history, and hear God whisper into the heart of a woman, in view of all the tragedy resulting from acts of rebellion, a hope that there should come a Seed that should bruise the head of the serpent, From that first whisper down on through the messages of prophets, seers, and psalmists, never complete, through singing, sighing, sobbing and hoping, it was a message rightly read, of God's love of a perishing world, and His purpose to save that world,
Reverently let it at once be said, that is the Cross, The evangelical faith is centered there, It can be nowhere else, The Cross, not as a martyrdom, not as an example, but a mystery, a manifestation, and a clear message, All that is in this Book, It is its message, We do not know anything about the Cross until we come here. We do not know anything about God until we come there, that is the faith of the Book,
Some men today are merely concerned with what can only be termed the Social Gospel, Alexander McLaren, was asked the question, How far should a man be warranted in attempting to deal with conditions, individual, social, and economic? Alexander McLaren said, "Put one foot of your compass on Calvary, and swing the other as wide as you can, You are limited by your compass, but keep one foot in the Cross, If you do so, you will be true to the evangel in every application of life," I believe that to be true.
In the year 1800 there was one, John Burton, who was a great friend of Robert Hall, and a great lover of children, He wrote a little volume of Hymns. Here is one of the best from that book:
"Holy Bible, book divine,
Precious treasure, thou art mine;
Mine to tell me whence I came,
Mine to teach me what I am,
Mine to chide me when I rove,
Mine to show a Saviour's love;
Mine art thou to guide my feet,
Mine to judge, condemn, acquit,
Mine to comfort in distress,
If the Holy Spirit bless;
Mine to show by living faith
Man can triumph over death,
Mine to tell of joys to come,
And the rebel sinner's doom;
Holy Bible, book divine,
Precious treasure, thou art mine,"
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