Article July 12, 1913 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from R. J. Campbell, William T. McElveen

[Rev. R. J. Campbell, M.A., in The Christian Commonwealth.]

"Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour." The man who used these words meant far more by them than that Jesus was only a human being who had been divinely chosen for the work of delivering Judea from her foreign oppressors and instituting an era of freedom and righteous government. Indeed, I question if he was thinking about that at all. By "a Prince" he meant a person preeminent over all human beings; and by "a Saviour" he meant a spiritual deliverer. This assumption is strengthened by what follows. He was to "give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins."

And here I should like to observe that doctrines grow out of psychological experiences, not vice versa. The experience comes first, the doctrine after. It is not the place of Christ in the Godhead that we have to reckon with at the beginning of our spiritual life, so much as his saviorhood. Do we need a savior or do we not? What do we need one for? — that is, if we need one at all. This is a point on which today, as at the beginnings of Christianity, a great variety of experience exists. The world needs saving in many ways. We still have with us those who long chiefly for social salvation, the setting to rights of our national and international relations; you could hardly interest them in anything else; they feel, and quite genuinely, that if we could only secure a better adjustment of material conditions there would not be much left to trouble about. In this, you see, they are very like the enthusiastic patriots of Palestine in Jesus' day. Then there are those who are oppressed by the thought of the world's suffering; they would like to abolish it utterly; if only pain could go, if only the miseries and inharmonies due to the infirmities of the flesh could be removed, anything further in the way of salvation, they think, could be left to take care of itself. Perhaps I am not stating this quite fairly. It might be better to say that when thinking about the subject of saviorhood there are many sensitive and generous natures in our midst who instinctively feel that what is most wanted is salvation from suffering. And I am not indisposed to agree with them,— at any rate up to a point. It is one's pity for the sorrow and pain of the world that makes one long for a root remedy.

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