Aldersgate Bicentenary Anniversary
Methodism is this year celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of the Alders-gate Street experience,—the epochal prayer meeting of Wednesday, May 24, 1738, at which time John Wesley, already a Church of England minister, had his heart "strangely warmed" and went forth a new man to perform his mighty work of spiritual revival for the church of God. He had arisen at five on that morning and read in 2 Peter 1 :4 of the exceeding great and precious promises given us whereby we should become partakers of the divine nature. In the afternoon he went to St. Paul's, where he heard the anthem based on Psalms 130 which told how the psalmist cried from the depths, seeking forgiveness and covering, and was waiting for the Lord and His plenteous redemption, just as men watch for the dawn.
In the evening he unwillingly attended a prayer meeting on Aldersgate Street, where someone read from Luther's "Preface to the Epistle to the Romans" concerning justification by faith and of faith's divine, transforming work in us, making us "to be born anew of God ;" how faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, giving certainty and peace—a living, active, busy flame, so that it is impossible for one who has it not to do good incessantly ; that such a man will go anywhere gladly, without compulsion, and serve any one, suffer anything in praise and love; and of how it is impossible to separate heat and light from the divine fire. Then something happened. Here are Wesley's own words:
"About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt that I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and had saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, 'This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?' Then was I taught that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our salvation; but, that as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdeth them, according to the counsels of His own will. After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations; but cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and He sent me help from His holy place. And herein I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted. I was striving, yea, fighting with all my might under the law, as well as under grace; but then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered: now, I was always conqueror."—Christian Advocate, April 8.
Wesley was never the same after that prayer-meeting night. The new man in Wesley was born, and a new procedure for his whole life was inevitable. He had been unusually religious and was a diligent preacher. But, like the rich young ruler, he had lacked the "one thing" until his heart was strangely warmed that eventful night. It was not new doctrine but new life that came to him. Before Aldersgate, he was seeking the salvation of his own soul by self-examination and rigid discipline; after Aldersgate, his passion was the salvation of others. Before, he was unwilling to preach and travel among the poor, but after that heartwarming he was more than willing to spend his life and have it be spent for others.
Wesley had an encyclopedic mind and compassed much of the knowledge of his time. He read Hebrew and Greek, and both read and spoke. Latin, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. He traveled extensively, and read constantly. He avoided authoritarianism on the one hand and mysticism on the other. Out of Aldersgate sprang the great revival compassing Britain and touching the far shores of America. The Christian church was saved from general lapse into formalism and spiritual decay. New life was restored, and new hope reborn.
Methodism and the heartwarming rapidly spread, and by the time Wesley died there were 79,000 adherents in England and 20,000 in America. It was God's movement, in its time, owned and approved of Him. Today there are 12,000,000 members of the various groups called Methodists, and millions more are denominated adherents. But the "heartwarming" has largely passed, and formalism, worldliness, higher criticism, liberalism, and departure have sadly changed the noble revival Wesley started. The experience stands as a sobering lesson to us. Neglecting the imperative spiritual experience, and refusing to accept heaven's advancing light on the second advent, the judgment hour, the sanctuary, and the Sabbath, Methodism has fallen from its high estate until it constitutes part of the apostate religious Babylon out from which God is calling His remnant people.
This sketch should not be closed, however, without alluding to the fact that we as workers must have personally that same strange, fundamental "heartwarming" experienced by Wesley and Luther and every other great instrument of God through the centuries. The solemn charges of the Spirit of prophecy concerning formal, unconverted men whose ministry is light, mechanical, and unspiritual, should send us all to our knees in heart searching. Prominent names of men, living and dead, might be cited as serving in our ministry for years before a true spiritual awakening transformed their service. This is the great imperative taught by Aldersgate.
spiritual awakening transformed their service. This is the great imperative taught by Aldersgate.
Modernism's Changing Course
An amazing transition is taking place in the modernist camp in North America, the significance of which must not be lost upon the advent worker. Never within memory of this observer has such a sharp turn been taken in the religious world as is revealed within the past year, and particularly within the last few months. This is revealed through the religious press of the country. The Presbyterian titles its editorial of February 24, "Repentant Liberalism," and writes rather optimistically of changed attitudes and the "thirty repudiated doctrines of liberalism," declaring:
"The last century saw an enormous resurgence of this under the guise of an enlightenment which degenerated into Modernism and now struggles with the Spirit, of God under the guise of liberalism. But the truth is mighty and shall prevail. Men are coming over to God."
But the American Lutheran (February), with truer insight into the change, heads its editorial, "Modernism Thou Hast Triumphed!" Here are its observations:
"The Modernists have suddenly ceased to deny the nativity, the virgin birth, the divinity of our Lord. Their dwindling congregations have taught them this supreme folly. Today they are working with great zeal at the task of substitution. The writer sat for a week at the press table at the World Conference on Life and Work at Oxford last July. Not a word was said by anybody against the divinity of our Lord, the incarnation, the atonement. Today the work of the liberalist is to put something else in the Saviour's place. We hereby coin a new word. The liberal churchman of today is a substitutionist. Shrewdly he has succeeded in crowding out the Christ Child in our printed liturgies. O substitutionist, thou hast conquered! But it is a temporary victory, even as his loudmouthed verbal attack on the virgin birth and the divinity of Christ, of a decade or so ago."
The term "substitutionist" is a rather happy and accurate one, for the nature of this change, misconceived by some, is clearly perceived by others. It is not a return to Fundamentalism, but a substitution for the genuine, that will deceive many. The Christian Century (February i6) speaks in Modernistic analysis of what is happening to the church. Thus:
"As the church awakes to the truth of the Christian gospel and seeks to reestablish in its own life the historic faith which it had allowed to become uncertain and confused, it will also become aware of the vast distance which separates modern secular society from the presuppositions upon which the Christian faith rests. The comfortable belief that the world was steadily becoming Christian will be seen to have been a delusion. Instead of becoming Christian, modern culture has been steadily drifting away from the Christian faith and has been drawing the church with it. The church has been fascinated by the ideology of science. Its intellectual leadership has been trying for a hundred years to adjust the ideology of the faith to the prevailing secular culture, an effort which reached its fulfillment in the psychology of religion which has finally imprisoned the Christian faith in the subjective walls of religious experience."
Referring to recent discussions in its editorial columns, it adds:
"The church is now beginning to react from the complacent assumption that its faith must be adjusted to the concepts of secular or scientific culture. It is beginning to assert the autonomy of its own faith. It is losing its awe of science and its servile attitude toward it. Instead of asking the secular intellect what it may believe, it is beginning to affirm the Christian faith in the terms in which this faith was given, in terms that are appropriate to it, even though these terms are incommensurable with scientific concepts. The church is having an experience of self-evangelization, as though it were receiving its gospel for the first time. This experience rests upon a declaration of the church's ideological independence of secular culture. It affirms that Christianity is itself a culture, a culture distinguished from secular culture by its orientation toward God. It claims that science cannot create a culture oriented toward God. Only God Himself can create such a culture, and this He has already done in His creation of •the living historic community called the Christian church."
Realizing the difficulties created by Modernism's own former rankly secularized attitude, it senses the hostility that will now confront its changed position. Strange seem the words:
"But if the church effectively declares its independence, it will at once become conscious that it stands over against secular culture with the responsibility of evangelizing it. And here it will make an unexpected discovery. For this undertaking will prove to be surprisingly reminiscent of the evangelistic activity of the early church. Our modern world presents many features strikingly like those of the world into which the young church was thrust at the beginning. For many it will be difficult to believe that there is any such parallel. We have grown so accustomed to the assumption that Christianity has 'transformed the world' that it seems like disloyalty to question the assumption. A generation ago no one would have questioned it. At that time the leaders and prophets of Christianity cherished the belief that the Western world was well on the way toward becoming a Christian world. There were then no 'pessimists' or 'cynics' or "realists' to tell us how lightly the claims of the Christian faith rested upon our secular civilization. Nations were supposed to be becoming more and more Christian. Business, said even Walter Rauschenbusch, prophet of the social gospel, was becoming Christian. The social order was believed to be evolving steadily toward the kingdom of God. The evangelization of the world might be completed within another generation."
But disillusioned Modernism has been forced to change, which fact is frankly acknowledged:
"A wholly different mood has come upon thoughtful people. Disillusionment with respect to the foundations of Western civilization is general, both within the church and outside it. The modern church, once it has committed itself fully to its own gospel, must have no illusion as to the character of the world it will then confront or the kind of hearing it will be accorded. It will confront a world in many respects like the pagan society of the first century, and in certain respects more hostile to Christianity than was that society. . . . Christians do not realize how far the world of our time has drifted away from Christian faith. We imagine that •there still burns in the contemporary secular mind a backlog of Christian conviction and a strong predilection for the Christian faith. But we are uncritical observers. So long as Christianity follows the course of adjusting itself to secular culture, we will obviously be quite unaware of any gulf between Christianity and the contemporary world. But the moment the church checks itself in this procedure and returns to its own true character, affirming the truth of its historic ideology, it will be startled at the distance which separates the typical modern mind from the Christian faith. And when it undertakes to present Christianity to this modern mind it will learn by its own experience what the primitive Christian community faced."
That they expect to meet hostility from a world led astray by their former positions which are now repudiated, is freely admitted:
"The first Christians believed something that had never been believed before. They confronted a world that had never heard of the faith which they preached. They did not expect an easy acceptance of their evangel. They expected indifference, controversy, hostility, with occasional hospitality and commitment. So the modern church, affirming afresh that Christianity is true, rejoicing in its faith as an almost new discovery, and going everywhere preaching the word, will find its evangelism confronting a society once predisposed in its favor but now listening as to one who speaks in an unknown tongue. The truth is that the Western world, though it still calls itself Christian, has gone far adrift from the Christian ideology."
Modernism is responsible for the tragic present drift and misconception. It cannot pass on the responsibility to another. In the Reformation, the Bible only was taken as the platform of the protesting church. But the incoming of radical criticism stripped the Bible of authority. Human fancy took the place of divine revelation, and the evolution theory supplanted the doctrine of creationism, resulting in tragic, utopian secularization and an emasculating breakdown of faith. We witness today the strange dilemma, together with Modernism's attempt to extricate itself from a fatal course.
