The Newton Chapel; Chapel Talks by Members of the Faculty of the Newton Theological Institution (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: XII THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY THERE is no religion in the Bible. The Bible is not religion but a description of religion. All the religion there is is in human hearts. The relation of the Bible to religion is the relation of a map to the region that it charts. Hills and valleys, watercourses and forests, are not in the map but in the country itself. Strictly speaking, we cannot teach religion any more than we can teach vision or love. We can tell others what course to pursue, to fulfil the conditions for experiencing it, but we cannot go much farther than that. We do not always understand what is meant by the phrase which has almost become cant, " Christianity is a life." If it means that Christianity is conduct, it is much more than conduct. But if those who use this phrase mean that Christianity is a spiritual experience of new relations to God and to men and to the world, then it is the statement of a profound and ultimate truth. Dr. Emil Reich has recently called attention to the fact that one of the great problems of the modernworld is how to account for Christianity. We are all familiar with the way Gibbon and Milman and a host of lesser historians have sought to account for it. But the point that they all miss, and that even Uhlhorn himself does not appear to conceive sharply, is that the excellence of the Christian doctrines and their adaptation to the needs of human nature do not satisfactorily, account for the marvelous vitality of the Christian faith. What they overlook is that Christianity is primarily a spiritual experience, and that what has kept Christianity vital and aggressive and victorious is that millions of men who have followed the directions of Jesus have entered into the heart of this experience. The " peace of God " has pervaded their hearts; ...