Truth!—It is a false and futile notion that truth must be guarded with sheltering watchcare, protected with hothouse insulation, and preserved from conflict with error. Nay; rather give it a fair field and no favors, and it will prevail. Truth is a giant tree, not a fragile plant. Man's fears for its survival would at times be laughable if not so serious.
Experimental!—It is admittedly easier to preach on doctrinal and intellectual themes than on phases of fundamental Christian experience; for the first merely requires adequate information and effective presentation, while the second demands an actual personal experience in the truth presented. It calls for a life that witnesses to and substantiates what is declared. Otherwise inconsistency renders the effort null and void. Many of our flock are perishing for these very messages, which are effective only when buttressed by experimental knowledge and personal conviction.
Rededication!—Through constant handling of the things of God there is danger lest their sacredness, their freshness, their potency, be lost out of our own lives as workers. We too must drink constantly at the fountain for our own spiritual refreshment. We too must be warmed at the fires of consecration, lest the lukewarmness of the times or the chill of this world fall upon us. We must periodically renew our allegiance, coming to God in a special way as sinners saved by grace, for fresh cleansing and rededication. We cannot live today on the experience of last year or of last month.
Dispensationalism!—We need to watch and guard against the teaching of so-called "dispensationalism" current among certain Fundamentalists, quite as much as to reckon with the perversions of Modernism. Modernism is notoriously but sugar-coated infidelity; but such Fundamentalism, professing loyalty to the word, rejects the historic Protestant platform and says that the teachings in the gospel, up until the time of the resurrection, belong to the Jewish age or dispensation of the law, and not to the Christian church. The conclusions and effects of such a position are immediately apparent. But we shall unmask all such fallacies by unswervingly witnessing to the positive truth.
Ethics!—Has the individual worker an intrinsic moral right to inject any kind of issue he chooses into the church, and so consume the time, thought, and energy of the leadership to meet it, and, further, to bring bewilderment, perplexity, and confusion in the ranks? We maintain that he has not. Any man with some leadership and personality can of course gather about him a group who will accept without challenge almost anything he propounds. Some ever follow like sheep. But the acceptance of credentials conveys obligations that cannot be honorably ignored. We are bound by the principle of preservation of unity and concord. And the one who flaunts these wholesome constraints commits a breach of ministerial ethics.
L. E. F.
