ieve in God, believe also in Me.'--S. JOHN xiv. 1.
'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father
but by Me.'--S. JOHN xiv. 6.
'He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.'--S. JOHN xiv. 9.
'Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name
under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.'--ACTS iv. 12.
'He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and
the Son.'--2 S. JOHN 9.
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V
THEISM WITHOUT CHRIST
By Theism without Christ is not meant a system like Judaism or
Mohammedanism, but a modern school which maintains that faith in God
becomes weakened and impaired by being associated with faith in Jesus.
There are those who cling with tenacity to the first article of the
Apostles' Creed, 'I believe in God the Father Almighty,' but who reject
with equal fervour the second article of the Creed, 'And in Jesus
Christ, His only Son, our Lord.' They resist with horror the
suggestion that the world is under no overruling Providence, or that
the humblest human being is not regarded with the tender love of the
Infinite God: they rival the most {128} mystical worshipper in the
ardour of the language with which in prayer they address the Father in
Heaven, but they refuse to bow in the Name of Jesus: they go to the
Father, as they think, without Him: they assert that to look to Him is
virtually to look away from God. They are as hostile as we can be to
the Substitutes for Christianity which we have been considering. They
have no sympathy with those who loudly deny that there is a God, or
with those who say that it is impossible to find out whether there is a
God or not, or with those who think that the Creator and the Creation
are one, that the universe is God, or with those who, not believing in
any Unseen and Eternal God, insist that the proper object of the
worship of mankind is man. In the proclamation of the existence of an
All-Wise and All-holy Being, in the proclamation that He has made the
world and rules it to its minutest detail, in the proclamation that
{129} there is a life beyond the grave, they are the allies of the
Christian Church. But then they go on to argue, For those who hold
these doctrines, Christ is quite superfluous: to hold them in their
purity Christ must be dethroned and His name no longer specially
revered. Some may still wish to speak of Him as among the Great
Teachers of the world, but some, in order to pr
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