Controlled largely by the evolutionary hypothesis, secularists believe in the gradual growth of mankind and the ultimate ascendancy of innate human good. They take no cognizance of the two irreconcilable forces personalized in Christ and Satan. They do not see the unfolding plan of salvation, with the implanted law of spiritual cause and effect operating in nations as in individuals. They therefore look at events from a fundamentally inadequate and fallacious angle. They constantly fail to place the emphasis in the right place, from the standpoint of the really crucial hours, events, and epochs in history. They frequently miss the essential point or span that the prophecy-guided, Christian historian must tenaciously seek from human records, find, and apply. We cannot, therefore, accept their verdicts as final, or follow their process of reaching conclusions—and this despite their ponderous, heavily documented histories that appear to be most stately and impartial.
Blindly looking for gradual betterment of the race and the triumph of right by human might, the secularized history teacher's erratic theories concerning the future are matched only by his groundless speculations as regards the remote past. Denying for the most part a fiat creation, the world flood, the virgin birth, and vicarious death of Christ, and scouting a catastrophic end to the present world order through the second advent of Christ, with final banishment of sin and sinners,—on what basis dare we take them as safe and final guides?
From the days of Heroditus, father of history, to the present, historians have concerned themselves chiefly with the human side, and have left the divine largely out of their reckoning. They have interpreted the finite, but have missed the Infinite. But to leave the divine element untouched, by ignoring or evading it,—in such a stupendous event, for example, as the Reformation of the sixteenth century,—is to distort and actually falsify history, and thus to miss its true intent by discarding the determining factor. Such a historian deliberately expunges divine Providence from his calculations, and refuses to see other than the human side. Thus he leaves out the central force of history—the only means by which he could discern the goal toward which all history is moving. As a result, pitiful confusion and futile guessing ensue. One cannot dispose of difficulties simply by ignoring them. And he cannot be truly scientific who deliberately ignores or evades vital facts or relevant factors in the body of data from which he educes his fundamental conclusions. The hand of God in history is the most important fact of history, —God working out His all-embracing purpose with individuals and with nations. If this, then, be eliminated from one's premises, the conclusions are bound to be far afield. And such is precisely the predicament of the secularized historian.
No pilot is safe to follow who casts overboard his compass and ventures onto the high seas, no matter how masterful a seaman he may be or how many other nautical instruments of precision he may employ. We dare not ride his ship. A history teacher without the inspired compass of God's revelation knows not whither he is going or whence he came. Instead of moving with swift safety toward a known part, he drives forward blindly through perils unseen to a goal unknown.
What does the recorder of contemporary history inscribe today ? What are his fundamental interests and concerns? Is he interested in what we, in the light of inspired prophecy, must recognize and stress? No. This it could not be. He exploits that which is of human interest, not that which God emphasizes. He lacks the divinely revealed perspective that gives point, purpose, and understanding to all human action.
Be it never forgotten that contemporary secular historians missed the greatest event in the universe,—the tremendous transaction of Calvary. If they knew of it, they thought of it only as the disposition of a Galilean peasant, a visionary insurrectionist. They were not looking for the Messiah, and did not recognize Him when He came. Instead, they recorded the trifling, human bickerings of the moment, the endless fightings and struggles for human advantage. Such is the plight of those unguided by the inspired light of prophecy. What tragic misplacement of values ! What misconceived emphasis ! Can we wholly trust, then, the evaluation of the secular chronicler in other instances? Again we say, No ! We must have inspired guidance, else we, too, shall flounder and miss the really essential, the determining things of history.
Ours must be the divine view of far horizons. We must take in the eternities of the past and the future, as well as the present moving drama of time. We as Seventh-day Adventists must always seek for the things God emphasizes. We must place ourselves under the steadying spell of God's eternal purpose. We must have a grasp of eternity here in the midst of time. Thus our objectives and our historical method must be fundamentally different from the secular, and any attempt to adopt that approach must be viewed with alarm and met with resistance.
Some secularized historians place the three leading world religions—Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam—in a row on the landscape of history as three lofty mountain peaks of about equal height and beauty. But just compare the life story of Gautama Buddha or Mohammed with that of Christ! Treatment of these three religions on virtual equality is not even good history. And to caricature the supreme event of history,—the advent, life, and death of Jesus Christ,—is to assume a most grave responsibility. This entire pagan attitude we must reject.
History, we are told, deals with achievement. Christ's miraculous birth, sinless life, and atoning death, while central in the divine plan of salvation, is also the supreme event of human history, the outstanding achievement of all history, unique and unparalleled. Measured by any unit that may be chosen, the coming of 'Christ, the Son of God, to earth to live a sinless life among men as the Son of man, was the most stupendous event of all time. Irreverent chroniclers who miss or ignore the cross as the central fact in the scheme of history commit a dreadful blunder, and do despite to the very spirit of truth. Here is ineradicable evidence of God in history. And the perfection of Christ's life is paralleled only by the uniqueness and perfection of His teachings. Their conquering power through the centuries may be explained only by the incarnation of Christ on earth. Bring these matchless factors together,—His perfect character and teachings, His sinless life and atoning death,—and we find the supreme affirmation of God in history.
Even Christian historians without the infallible guidance of the prophetic outlines we cherish, and without the priceless exposition of history—past, present, and future—vouchsafed to this people through the Spirit of prophecy, see only "men as trees" walking, and the march of nations only in confused, blurred outline, not knowing whither they are really destined. That is why Seventh-day Adventist historians must be fundamentally and irreconcilably different in their viewpoint, emphasis, and teaching from the secularized university historians. The Adventist history teacher has neither capitalized his privilege nor performed his bounden duty until he has revealed the inner, final meaning of history; and this is impossible for the worldly historian. We must never once forget that—
"In the annals of human history the growth of nations, the rise and fall of empires, appear as dependent on the will and prowess of man. The shaping of events seems, to a great degree, to be determined by his power, ambition, or caprice. But in the word of God the curtain is drawn aside, and we behold, behind, above, and through all the play and counterplay of human interests and power and passions, the agencies of the All-merciful One, silently, patiently working out the counsels of His own will. The Bible reveals the true philosophy of history." "As the wheel-like complications (of Ezekiel's vision) were under the guidance of the hand beneath the wings of the cherubim, so the complicated play of human events is under divine control. Amidst the strife and tumult of nations, He that sitteth above the cherubim still guides the affairs of the earth."—"Education," pp. 173, 178.
The loom of history is steadily weaving its living pattern in the tapestry of human affairs, and we must perceive and proclaim the hand that fashions it all.
And now let us turn from the largely negative side to the positive and constructive aspect of the question. The why of history is its philosophy. And the why is fully as fundamental as the what and the how. We must, of course, know the facts of history that we may, with certainty, find its meaning. But one may study sedulously the materials from which history is made, and yet actually miss that which made the materials. History is not simply the record of the struggling development of man, or the sum total of innumerable biographies. True history must and does have a meaning. It must be seen as a whole, with part related to part. The true student must find the goal toward which all history is moving. History assuredly indicates such a goal, and movement in the direction of that goal.
The Christian historian finds God in and through all history—finds Him revealed in the human record, finds Him expressed through the events of history as truly as the scientist finds His handiwork disclosed in the things of nature. And as the true philosopher interprets life, so the reverent historian interprets history. He grasps the vast scheme of a divine mind revealing itself through history, and his findings assume immeasurable significance. But to avow such a goal in history, under the constraint of a divine, overruling Providence, causes a lifting of the eyebrows among secularists. They deny such a thesis. As a consequence, many of the really important facts of history, as relate to its divine philosophy, pass unnoticed through the mesh of their secularized sieve, and are virtually lost to them.
Be it never forgotten that the perception of an event is always determined by a historian's vision, and by the clarity and fidelity of his concepts. That is his test and standard.
A true philosophy of history must accept the reality of the unseen. It must begin with God and heaven and eternity, and move from thence to earth and time and man. It must recognize the unity of history, and the fact that all existence is sustained from the beginning to the end by one identical law and beneficent purpose. It must also recognize that specific, recorded acts reveal the process by which God has operated in relation to humanity to effect that beneficent purpose, and that history is really the progressive revelation of the will and way of God, spanning the realm of time and the world of humanity. So conceived, the study of history, next to the study of theology itself, is perhaps the greatest training in Christian certainty and Christian philosophy opened to man. But such a conception is almost entirely absent from the secularist's category.
Aside from the ultimate meaning, or philosophy, of history, the historian is concerned with facts, the actual events, the science of history. His responsibility is to handle and appraise the unceasing, exhaustless flow of events that, in varied form, find expression in the recorded acts. It is his task to make known the things of the past—to recapture, as it were, its essential facts and processes. He is not only to tell what has been, but he is to evaluate it. It is his to explain the facts forming the events. His is not to praise or to censure, but to describe. Thus, it is the interpretation, plus the materials from which history is made, that constitutes the historical process. That is why the historian's philosophy, or working premise, is of such paramount importance—because it profoundly affects and determines his conclusions. For example, Edward Gibbon's slant against Christianity in his monumental history of Rome's "Decline and Fall" was not, as disclosed through his "Memoirs," the product of his historical research, but rather, the product of his life's attitude. And so his classic presentation was made agreeable to that concept. And Rollin, who so clearly senses the four prophesied world powers,—Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome,—failed to see the Papacy as the eleventh horn, because he was a Roman Catholic.
Reconstruction of the past is a perilous task, because of the human equation, unless the inspired outline is ever before one as his accepted guide. It cannot be too emphatically stressed that all sound historical study must he pursued under the influence of the true philosophy of history, else the investigator will inevitably go astray. There are periods and movements of manifest destiny; but the material is vast in amount and varied in kind, and human behavior is exceedingly bewildering, yes, insolvably complex, without the divine clue. One may read human records until the mind and judgment is as well in confusion, for much in history is hidden, purposely distorted, or fragmentary, and not at all suggestive of God's leading. The existence of the catastrophic in history presents a problem that baffles mere human understanding.
______ To be concluded in October
