form now to its present reality!" Live under its rules today! We postpone our obedience, waiting for the world to change. We twiddle our fingers while we speculate on the coming of that lovely day when the spirit of peace will be so characteristic of international relationships that it will be perfectly reasonable for us to disarm. We look forward with wistful hope to that fair era, when employees and employers will be so thoroughly and unanimously Christian that we can feel it is safe to be honest in business. We resolve that when all church-members leave off all hypocrisy and behave in a thoroughly Christlike way, we shall then begin the experiment of trusting them and smiling back at their rather dubious approaches. And we determine that when men are certain to understand us without the imputing of wrong motives to our deeds, we shall then be willing to involve ourselves in the terrific risk of being serviceable in spirit and useful in accomplishment. To all of this, Jesus seems to be replying: "You are losing all the peculiar joy of my revelation by your foolish postponement. Any of the philosophers could have told you almost as much as you know, theoretically. The one thing that I insisted on then and insist on now is a prompt acceptance of these principles as being valid for your lives. An intellectual assent to the present status of an argument in a moot philosophical question may give you the right to call yourself a philosopher. But not a Christian. You have no right to be called a Christian until you have actually started on the journey directed. You must act now on the basis of your beliefs. The sandals are ready. True the roads are not altogether clothed with velvets. A philosopher may comment on various types of carpeting and the theoretical happiness of the accomplishment at some indistinguishable future The Christian straps the sandals on and starts date. away." But Jesus has not yet proposed his strongest urge. He would have us understand that in addition to depriving ourselves of the joy of his revelation, we are by our hesitancy debarring ourselves from any possibility of real helpfulness toward carpeting the world. We might be tempted to assume that the possession of our sandals might be the last discouragement against any alleviation of road conditions. History proves the contrary. The great Christians have become great not through cleverness in verbal defense of the gospel, but through sincerity in incarnating its principles without fear or delay. Great lives of immediate commitment have made the greatest difference in the environment of life. There is a primary Sunday-school song which I love to hear echoing through our church halls as it wells up from little throats: 66 Give," said the little stream, As it hurried down the hill; “I'm small, I know, but wherever I go Here the desirable ideal seems to be greener fields. The little stream might have demanded some token of appreciation before it started down into parched meadows. It might have dammed itself up and insisted that some proof be afforded that a life of giving actually produced finer green. But it was wiser than most of us. It knew that it could give. So it hurried down the hill. And it found to its pleasure and surprise that though it was small, wherever it went the fields grew greener still! Take Jesus in earnest, now. Do not wait for an unborn millennium. What he urged, he urged for today. Stand no more by your palace-door querulous, demanding proof that all the world's roads have been carpeted. Yield to the simple charm of Christ's device. Strap on the sandals of the gospel today, and start anew on life's journey. ΧΙ THE FIRST CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST It is always easier to be satisfied with surface indications. The temptation to avoid the hard work of investigating under significances and hidden motives is always with us. Never has it appeared to more appealing advantage than in the recent controversy which has been sweeping through the churches. We have bandied about hot words, have fallen into groups around personalities, have flaunted our own truths in the outraged faces of our theological foes, and have put religion, for the time being, on the front pages of our newspapers. The one thing we have not adequately done is the obviously necessary thing— up to date we have neglected to dig under the surface. We need to get back to the roots of the controversy. Who started this dispute, and when? What was the initial point of cleavage? Over what did Christian faith first take pugnacious sides? Who was the first Christian Fundamentalist? Nor can we plunge into this promising field of inquiry until we have paused long enough to do the unattractive spade-work of definition. We cannot be satisfied with the hissing titles of the heated dispute. We have determined to avoid the superficialities of careless thinking, with labeled classes whose boundaries vary with each man's view-point. What is a Fundamentalist? Ask his enemies, and you will be informed that a Fundamentalist is a ranting, narrow-minded, unreasonable, bigoted, emotional, bitter-spirited, ignorant, uncultured, hypocritical dogmatist, who deliberately shuts his mind to new ideas and dares truth to penetrate his bulwarks. This is a perfect portrait of the Fundamentalist at his worst. The unfortunate- feature about the portrait is in the fact that there is no such creature. The picture is a malicious caricature. You could search the world without finding one Fundamentalist who will fit into that absurd word-sketch. The foes of the Fundamentalist have had recourse to the ancient game of ridicule and rebuke. They have deliberately left out everything that was good, and have exaggerated everything that was bad. The result is a fiendish libel. What are Fundamentalists at their best? Is not this the Christ-question? Would not this line of inquiry arrive at his results? Let others spend their time in eager search after foibles and follies and sins. Let us dare look the Fundamentalist straight in the eyes and ask him to let us see him at his best. At their finest, then, Fundamentalists are marked by a deep respect for the heritage of the past. They know that this is not the first generation which ever lived. They are conscious that any decade, however astounding in its recorded progress, yet has much to credit to those decades which, at slower pace perhaps, went before. They are modest before the great learning and the great lives of lost centuries. They are respectful toward the spiritual contributions of recorded history. They sincerely honor the spiritual leaders of by-gone generations. In all this they are simply expressing their scorn for the haughty sneer which so often mounts the lips of youth, |