Part IV.

Summary and Conclusion.

These criticisms now before the Church will furnish food for reflection, and no doubt will be duly pondered before the approaching Assembly.

It is clear as noon-day that the Articles have not in any real sense been withdrawn. Dr Gibb has affirmed, on the contrary, that they have been adopted by his and other Committees, and above, he says, that, so far as his own Committee is concerned, they are meanwhile held "in retentis." Let anyone read his letter reprinted in the appendix of this pamphlet entitled "Presbyterian and Methodist Unanimity," and it will be futile to affirm that these Articles have been withdrawn. According to Dr Gibb's report adopted by the Assembly, it is "inexpedient" to submit the Articles at this stage. That is all. When Dr Gibb thinks it expedient to submit them, or any other Articles like them, he will do so, when the Church is sufficiently "educated" to receive them.

In reply to Dr Watt, honoured by the Church as Professor and as Moderator of last Assembly, I humbly submit that his explanation only makes matters worse. In the first place, the Professor was silent till so late as May 4, six months after the Articles had been before the Church. It was somewhat late in the day to declare that it was a "preposterous delusion" to affirm "that these articles were meant to be a doctrinal basis on which the negotiating Churches were to unite." That the Articles are "preposterous" I would readily admit; but that there is no "delusion" as to what was Dr Gibb's intention or about his declarations is clear as noon-day. Dr Gibb and Dr Watt stand in irreconcilable opposition on this vital point. Let anyone read Dr Gibb's report circulated at the Assembly and his letter already referred to, both attached hereto, and the "preposterous delusion" will be seen to be Dr Watt's own. Then, the Professor says, the Articles were "simply meant for feelers"; that is the astounding thing to me and many more, that such "feelers" should, in the first instance, have been "thrown out," not by members of other Churches, but by the Convener of the Presbyterian Committee and the two Theological Professors of a Presbyterian Church. That they proved to be more than "feelers" became abundantly manifest, from Dr Gibb's heralding them through the colony, before they had ever come before his Assembly, as a "doctrinal basis" on which the three Committees had already agreed to unite. Let it be remembered that Dr Gibb spoke as follows on his way to the Assembly of these very Articles: "He was of opinion that the Wesleyan proposals would be approved by the General Assembly of Presbyterians" ('Daily Times,' Nov. 7, 1903). (Here the "feelers thrown out" are already "Wesleyan" proposals!). Let the report of the Convener of the Con-gregational Committee already referred to (at page 4) be borne in mind. Further, let the fact that the Articles in question, from the time they emerged from Dr Gibb's sub-committee (of himself and the two Professors) up to the present hour, have never undergone any appreciable doctrinal change, and then the accuracy with which the "feelers were thrown out" will appear as wonderful as it is significant. And page 44 I will add, that if these things are duly weighed, I shall be forgiven the persistence with which I have held to the task of expounding the significance of the Articles in question, and of insisting that the Church at large shall duly weigh what is meant by giving carte blanche to Dr Gibb's Committee anew to "begin" negotiations for an incorporating Union, and to proceed to formulate a new doctrinal basis for the Presbyterian. Church of New Zealand.

In view of what lies before the Church in the near future, and of any proposals, under cover of "Union," for Creed revision or construction within the Presbyterian Church, the foregoing criticisms and facts ought to be duly weighed. And it may not be useless if I emphasise as briefly as possible some closing points.

1. First and foremost, as I have pointed out in my Presbytery speech, before representatives from various Churches can sit down together to frame a common Creed, they must state clearly their personal relation to Holy Scripture. It will be found that four-fifths of the attacks levelled against the Westminster Confession within Presbyterian Churches are due to its loyalty to Scripture as the Word of God. And it is because men have altered their standpoint of regarding the Scriptures themselves that the Confession is assailed. Would it not be more straightforward if the critics of the Confession should make this clear? Would it not be a work of immense service, as being foundation work, if the critics of the Confession, and the Higher Critics of the Bible, should come together and say precisely what portions of the Holy Scriptures they regard as the Word of God, and as true, trustworthy, and of divine authority? Some portions of Scripture are, we are assured, myth and legend; our Lord mistook the true nature of the Old Testament Scriptures which "testified of Him." What "is certainly not history" He regarded as "history." Regarding the Old Testament Scriptures, "He attached Himself to the notions of His contemporaries"! And His contemporaries, as we know from our contemporaries, were all wrong in their notions. In short, it is a commonplace of the times that great portions of Scripture are certainly only man's word about God, and that only an undetermined, diminishing, and ever-varying portion is God's Word about man; reverie and Revela-tion are inextricably mixed. Until critics are agreed on what is reverie and what is Revelation, how is it possible for a Creed, founded on Scripture, to be constructed so as honestly to be confesed by all parties? "The Westminster divines took the following vow, which was read afresh every Monday morning that its solemn influence might be constantly felt: 'I do seriously promise and vow, in the' presence of Almighty God, that in this Assembly whereof I am a member, I will maintain nothing in point of doctrine but what I believe to be most agreeable to the Word of God.' One of the cardinal regulations of the Assembly was in these words: "What any man undertakes to prove as necessary, he shall make good out of page 45 Scripture.'" By Scripture, they meant the whole of the Old and New Testaments. These, they called, "the Word of God." Is it not fair to ask the assailants of our Confession what portions of these Scriptures do they regard as the Revelation and Word of God? Who are agreed and how many are agreed among them on the same portions? These are previous questions to all Creed making in the colony or elsewhere. It is only honest to state them.

2. If the Creed must be Scriptural, it also must be intelligible and unambiguous. It must be this, unless a lie is to be put at the very core of the Church's life. Any attempt under ambiguous phrases to enable men to put a different "sense" on the words of the Creed, to palter with the truth in a double "sense," were to make the Church an organised hypocrisy. These terrible words, terrible because true, of Paley's may be set over against any attempt, however well meant, at Creed construction, based on such lines: "It is the wilful deceit that makes the lie; and we wilfully deceive when our expressions are not true in the sense in which we believe the hearer to apprehend them."

3. Then as to the question of long or short. You can make it as short as you like to begin with; but just as surely as men will think and act differently, and think rightly or wrongly, will your Creed grow as the truth becomes defined and error is excluded. As everyone knows, the fact that men will reason, and not always reason correctly nor wisely, regarding the great questions of religion, is the cause of the existence of Creeds. Apart from the fact that the Creed is a declaration of truth and a protest against error, and therefore will grow in fulness and explicitness, just as the errors to be guarded against multiply, the Creed, as we have already pointed out, forms the common Law of the Church. And the question now is, whether you can lay down beforehand how long or how short that law shall be? If all men were reasonable, no doubt the civil and ecclesiastical law would alike be "short." But men are not all either reasonable or good. They want "decisions," and the more they are in earnest will they be determined to have them. If the Church's law is not full and explicit, they will come up to the Assembly for decisions. No doubt, because her Creed is "short," and the Church may be determined to keep it "short," an Assembly on being appealed to may refuse to entertain the question. The Assembly may play the part of Gallio, who cared for none of these things. The Supreme Court of the Church may decline to be a judge in a matter of what it deems only one of "words and names," and, like Gallio, drive the disputants from her judgment seat. But such a Church and such an Assembly will be suffering not from the "dead hand" of the seventeenth century, but from the dead hand and dead head and dead heart of the twentieth. But if the Assembly does adjudicate, then, in the absence of a Creed Law of the Church, the personal will of each Assembly becomes the Law page 46 of the Church. In short, ecclesiastical tyranny would be substituted for ecclesiastical law. Instead of every man being ruled by the well-known and clearly understood Law of the Church's Creed, her members would be ruled by the floating opinions of an ever-changing Assembly, and by the knot of ecclesiastics who might happen to rule the roost for the hour in the Supreme Court of the Church. If Dr Gibb were successful in overthrowing the Westminster Confession and substituting for it a "short" Creed like that proposed, he would establish, unconsciously I may surely say, an ecclesiastical tyranny. In the first case of controversy or of discipline under his new Creed the question would be decided, not by an interpretation and administration of an intelligible and unambiguous Law but by the sentiments of the hour and "the leader of the house."

It is a perfectly unique testimony to the unparalleled wisdom of the Westminster divines, both as statesmen and sholars, that their creedal Law has stood unaltered in its essential features as the law of millions of the most earnest, enlightened, and progressive peoples of the world; and this net only in the Church, but in the State as well. Everyone knows that the Westminster Confession is the seed-plot of the American Republic, and, by its doctrinal system of Calvinism and by its representative polity, of human freedom everywhere. And just wherever its Calvinism is ceasing to have its hold on the masses are they losing real freedom and drifting downward beneath the tyranny of mere numbers and the dictation of mobs and "unions," whether ecclesiastical or civil. Of the Calvinists, the French historian Taine, himself without religious faith, declares: "These men are the true heroes of England. They founded England, in spite of the corruption of the Stuarts, by the exercise of duty, by the practice of justice, by obstinate toil, by vindication of right, by resistance to oppression, by the conquest of liberty, by the repression of vice. They founded Scotland; they founded the Unite States; at this day they are, by their descendants, founding Australia and colonising the world."

4. That a full, intelligible, and unambiguous Creed is a bond of union, I need not prove. A Creed of the nature of that proposed, under which so many herterogeneous elements could "unite," would be no true bond of union. It would be a rope of sand, and the union formed by it would be a "colourable union" only. The union would be external only, like that of a social club, where men hold not a common faith but "opinions" only on which they complacently "agree to differ." Instead of forming an Evangelical Union, it would be the charter of what the Lord Chancellor would call a Church without a religion."

5. Nor need I do more than refer to a Church's Creed as a means of instruction and growth. Enough has been said on this aspect of it in connection with the Theological College. Here the Creed proposed, as a means of instruction, is an page 47 utter failure. The attempt to use general expressions, so that men of different "shades" of opinion may unite under them, however well meant, is utterly destructive of the power of the Creed to "instruct." This is the very thing that it declines to do. Instead of giving out light, it gives our smoke on the deepest problems of religion. And it would on that account be really impossible for anyone adopting it to say what religion he had embraced. No doubt, it could be claimed as Christian; but Dowieites are "Christians," et hoc omne genus.

"'Defend me, therefore, commonsense,' say I,
'From reveries so airy; from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up!'"

These criticisms on the proposal for Union now before the Church are earnestly and respectfully commended to the consideration of Presbyterians throughout New Zealand. If it be true that in the midst of the insurgent pressure of all forms of error and infidelity, to call upon us to strike down our symbols, is like calling on an army to strike down its flag in the face of the foe, then it will be certain that the grand banner of our fathers will not lack earnest and loyal defenders. From open and avowed enemies we have nothing to fear. Our symbols have stood the test of over two hundred and fifty years, and have, because of their own loyalty to the Bible, brought down on our fathers and upon their children visibly the blessings of that Book as precious as they are unnumbered.

It cannot be that the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand, when Presbyterianism was never so strong and abounding in works of faith and labours of love in every country of the world, is to confess that she has no distinctive mission or future before her in New Zealand. Shall we sever ourselves from the past and from connection with the great Churches of our order flourishing throughout the world? Shall we not conclude with Dr Smith, in the glowing little book on our Creed, and several times quoted: "With a past rich in glorious achievement, and a present marked by world-wide extension and triumphing missionary enthusiasm, the future of Presbyterianism is radiant with promise. Who can doubt that through historic development, through centuries of special experience, through stern battles with relentless enemies, as well as through the silent, sweeter nurture of His Love, God has constituted our Presbyterianism one of His elect agencies in the fulfilment of that gracious purpose which includes not ourselves only, but the whole world? May He thrill us with the consciousness of our Divine commission and endowment. May he give us grace, with an humble reliance on His enabling Spirit, to do our part in that great and blessed work, whose arm is the universal enthronement of our common Lord, and whose end is nothing less than the regeneration of humanity."

Now, for my friends' and brethren's sakes,
Peace be in there, I'll say,
And for the house of God our Lord,
I'll seek thy good alway.

In conclusion, let me say, that if I have written plainly, I have not written a line intentionally to wound the feelings of any of my brethren. But if one introduces controversy, controversy, it must be remembered, has certain laws of its own. And it does not always care for our feelings as its first concern. "It makes all the difference in the world," says Archbishop Whately, "whether we are content to put truth in the first place or in the second." A due balance of truth and charity is a rare achievement; so that the triumph of truth shall also be the triumph of charity. I cannot hope to have succeeded where so many fail.