tt speed and by what route. But they need not be agreed upon
all the topics of which they lllay talk by the way!' (Is the editor talking
to the point?) "We should be glad to walk with Professor Sasse and
with all the others who hold the creeds that he holds and to talk with
them as we go of these high lllatters about which we do not agree.
It might be, if they did not too soon cast us from their company for that
lack of agreement, we might together make some progress toward the
goal which we naively seek and which they also must at least desire
.as a station on their pilgrimage-the making of the world a better
542 Theological Observer. - .!titC!)licf).{jeitgelcf)iC!)tlid)es.
place for those WI10 live in it." - There it is: the chief thing, the first
and last thing, on the program of the liberal churches is this-worldliness-
the very thing against which Professor Sasse has been holding out from
the beginning. E.
Men, Masters, and Messiahs. - Under this striking heading Time
(April 20, 1936) presents a variegated, if not formidable, array of cultists
and fanatics that recalls to one's mind the somewhat severe, but neverthe-
less trne line of the old German Reformation hymn: "Viel Sekten und
viel Schwaermerei auf einen Haufen kommt herbei." - In Calumet, Mich.,
during the week of Easter, Father Joseph Alderic Paquet of St. Ann's
Homan Catholic Church, having unlocked the tabernacle of his altar and
uncovered a ciborium to distribute the consecrated host, discovered to his
amazement three fresh roses, all "moistly spotted with what appeared
to be blood." Father Paquet called the occurence mysterious, if not
miraculous. - At Ohio State University a Jewish Rabbi, a Catholic priest,
and a Methodist minister jointly conducted Holy ~Week services designed
to allay the wide-spread Christian conviction that Jews alone were re-
sponsible for crucifying Jesus Christ. Certainly all three were crucifying
Christ anew during the Holy Week of 1936. - On Good Friday, near
Albuquerque, N. Mex., Los Hermanos Penitentes reenacted their bloody
version of Christ's Passion with increased attention from sightseers and
the Press. - In Quebec, Can., Good Friday was celebrated as a national
holy-day, Mayor J. E. Gregoire ordering all theaters, public buildings,
shops, etc., to be closed for the day. The citizens were directed to observe
at four o'clock in the afternoon a minute of holy silence, whilc the city
fire alarm pealed nineteen times. - In Rome, where Pope Pius XI re-
mained in ailing privacy, Easter was the quietest in years. - In Moscow
sixty thousand staunch Christians, mostly old men and women, packed
the city's twenty-eight surviving churches to celebrate the feast of Christ's
resurrection in spite of the fury and mockery of atheistic propagandists_
- ~I\.t the same time, on the morning of Easter Day, in Ollerup, Denmark,
the Rev. Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman lay abed for an hour in the
Hotel Gymnastik "to receive the orders of the day from God." Afterwards,
in the private stadium of Physical Culturist Kiels Bukh, he held what
he expected would turn out to be the Oxford Group's "greatest house
party." Bad weather, however, cut the attendance to about fifteen thousand
persons. In the spaciou8 stadium the United Lutheran Church pastor,
inventor and promoter of what is commonly known as Buchmanism,
preached to his large audience: "I challenge Denmark to be a miracle
among the nations, her national policy dictated by God. . .. Denmark
can demonstrate to the nations that spiritual power is the first force
in the world. The true patriot gives his life to bring about his country's
resurrection. All those who oppose God's control are public enemies."
To his "first-century Christian fellowship" Buchman found the Danes
very receptive. Among his converts he could count Dr. Hans Fuglsang
Damgaard, primate of the state church (Lutheran); Dean Brodersen of
the Cathedral of Copenhagen; Director Gunnar Gregersen of the National
Technological Institute, the world-famous physical culturist Niels Bukh, etc.
Buchmanism's prime idea is that the world needs a "moral and spiritual
awakening," on the basis of absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute
Theological Observer. - .Ritd)lidJ<3ettgefd)id)tfid)es. 543
unselfishness, absolute love. Frank Buchman was born fifty· eight years
ago in Pennsburg, Pa., of a Pennsylvania Dutch distilling family. He
studied at Muhlenberg College, at Mount Airy Theological Seminary,
became a Lutheran pastor, did welfare work for Lutheran boys at Over-
brook, Pa., quarreled with the trustees of his hospice, went to England
with a bitter heart, had a "stirring, heart-warming religious experience"
in 1908, in a rural English church, received new spiritual powers, which
enable him to "probe" souls and "cleanse" them by extracting confessions,
invaded British and United States colleges, became famous for his
"house parties," persuaded people publicly to "share" their sins, - mostly,
as 'l'ime remarks, misdeeds of a sexual nature. Buchmanism "radiates
.good fellowship." The founder laughs a great deal, often signs his letters
"Yours merrily, Frank," declares the letters P-R-A-Y to stand for "Power-
ful Radiograms Always Yours." Buchmanism, now about twenty years
·old, still rallies around one man. Rom Landau in his book, just off the
press, God Is My Adventu1-e (Doubleday, Doran) calls Frank Buchman
"the most successful and shrewdest revivalist of our time," hut condemns
the Buchman movement as "theologically frivolous." - Besides Buchman,
Author Landau, a thirty-seven-year-old Pole, lists in his new book also
Bhri Sadgaru Meher Baba, a "long-haired, silky-mustached Parsee," who
four years ago came to the United States. He is addressed by his fol-
lowers as the "God-man," the "Messiah," the "Perfect Master." Fanatic
Meher Baba ,never speaks, has been silent since 1925, professes himself
to be in an "infinite state," into which he fell when he kissed an ancient
holy woman named Hazrat Babajan, an act which threw him into a coma
that lasted nine months. - Every Easter Monday large posters in front
of the Albert Hall in London announce Easter services of the Elim Four-
square Revivalists (not connected with Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's
Four-square Gospel Church in Los Angeles), led by Welshman George
Jeffreys, who knows how to whip up to hot fervor his praying, swaying,
singing, shouting audience. Jeffreys professes to be a literal Bible-believer,
practises baptism by immersion, has healed his own facial paralysis by
prayer, and now heals patients who suffer from paralysis, blindness, tumors,
cancers, etc. In the past nine months more than one hundred and fifty
persons have solemnly sworn that Jeffreys has cured them by prayer from
ailments such as those just mentioned. - Twenty seven years ago Mrs.
Annie Besant and. Rev. Chas. Leadbeater, famed theosophists, declared
Jiddu Krishnamurti, Brahman Hindu, to be the "Vehicle of the new World
Teacher," the Lord Maitreya, whose last incarnation on earth was Jesus
Christ. Krishnamurti, at that time a twelve-year-old moppet, calmly
accepted Annie Besant's announcement; but in 1929 he renounced the
enforced godship, though he is still a practising theosophist seer, living
near OJ ai, Cal. Lecture tours in Mexico, South America, Holland, and
elsewhere have during the last years occupied much of his time. - An
unaccountable modern mystic is the "Harmonious Developer," George Ivan-
ovitch Gurdjieff, a "Levantine with a huge, shaved head, piercing eyes,
walrus mustache, and a bull-muscled frame." He is the strange head
of an odd cult, which such people as the late novelist Katharine Mansfield,
the late editor Alfred Richard Orage of the New English Weekly, and
others have at one time 01' another espoused. At Fontainebleau, France,
544 Theological Observer. - .!l:itd)lid)~8ettgefd)id)md)es.
Gurdjieff used to conduct t.he Institute for the Harmonious Development
of Man, where he taught his followers intricate dances, for which he
composed more than five thousand pieces of music. Six years ago Har-
monious Developer Gurdjieff came to Manhattan, where he wrote a monu·
mental work, Tales Told by Beelzebub to His Grandson. - In Los Angeles
the local ministerial association discovered a huge swindle concern which
for a small sum (ca. $10) conferred on applicants such titles as Doctor
of Divinity, Bishop, etc. Among those who received an ordination certifi-
cate, together with the Doctor title, was also the Rev. Drake Googoo,
who upon investigation turned out to be none other than Funnyman Joe
Penner's famous duck. - Indeed "viel Sekten und viel Sohwaermerei,"
together with much mockery and blasphemy, which Time has most skil-
fully presented in its interesting and instructive article "Men, :J{asters,
and Messiahs"! And what about our dear Lutheran Church in thi"
dreadful inundation of spiritual delusions? The old command "Preach
the Gospel" still stands and still must be followed. J. T. M.
Attitude of the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant
Churches toward the Bible. - In a review of Dr. Machen's recent book
The Ohristian Faith in the Modern World the Amerioan, a Roman
Catholic weekly, says: "In popular language Dr. Machen develops the
Scriptural proofs for the fundamental Christian doctrines of the nature
and existence of God, the blessed Trinity, and the divinity of Christ.
Painfully aware of the doctrinal chaos in the various Protestant churches,
he meets and refutes from the Bible the chief forms of error or skepticism
that for years have been sapping the vitality of Protestantism and have
brought it to its present state of helplessness and indifference. As
a modern, courageous, and able defense of the essentials of faith, his
book deserves sympathetic reading. Its great fault is due to the original
sin of Protestantism in rejecting the authority of Christ's Church and
proclaiming the Bible as the only rule of faith and conduct. . .. 'i'he
most potent fact in the modern world and in religious history since the
days of Luther is that the attempt to get along without the infallible
guidance of the true Church leads only to heresy and disunion. In true
Protestant style Dr. Machen cheerfully claims to solvc every spiritual
problem by the Bible."
From the words just quoted it is evident that the Roman Catholic
Church does not accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and conduct,.
but subjects it to the interpretation of the Church, meaning thereby the
Roman Catholic Church (the traditions and the Pope speaking "infallibly"
eilJ oathedra). This wrong attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward
the Bible is of course well known. But the Roman Catholic reviewer
of Dr. Machen's book is not so well acquainted with the attitude which
many Protestants take toward the Bible as he thinks he is. He attributes
the "doctrinal chaos in the various cllUrches" to the acceptance of the
Bible on the part of the Protestant churches as the only rule of faith
and life. But this is exactly what many Protestant churches, all those
in the Reformed group and some others, are not doing; they are making
essentially the same mistake that the Roman Catholic Church makes.
While the Roman Catholic Church subjects the Bible to the interpre-
tation of the Church, always meaning thereby the Roman Catholic Church,
Theological Observer. - .!Hrd)ndj~3eitgefdjidjmdjes. 545
the Reformed group of churches among the Protestants subject the Bible
to an interpretation of their own human reason. In the final analysis
both the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformed churches are doing
essentially the same thing: they are sU]ljecting the Bible to the judgment
of human reason. In theory the Reformed churches accept the Bible
as the only rule of faith and life, but not in practise. We should rather
say that they did this years ago; many are not even doing that much now.
Over against the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformed group of
Protestants the Lutheran Church, wherever she has remained true to her
Confessions, is the only Church which ~1Ccepts the Bible both in theo,-y
and praotise as the only rule of faith and life. .And we do most emphatic-
ally insist that the Bible needs no interpretation, but that its statements
are clear and can have but one meaning. ~When Paul wrote his epistles
to the Cln'istian congregations of his day, he expected the members of those
churches to whom his letters were addressed to read and understand them.
The psalmist says: "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto
my path," Ps. 119,105. J. H. C. FRITZ.
New Ten Commandments. -.At a recent meeting the Philadelphia
Methodist Conference accepted a report of its social service commission
which embodied ten social commandments. On account of the frequency
with which sociological topics axe diseussed nowadays, we submit tbese
commandments to ou,. rC8cclcrs.
"We can rememher the words of Christ: 1) 'Give ye them to eat.'
2) We can cultivate a soci al conscience, so that any social injustice done
to a bn;'ther man may instantly he recognized as a sin against the heavenly
Father. 3) liVe can refuse to recognize anyone as converted to Christ
until he has been cOllverted to a passion for righteousness and to a willing-
ness to suffer for the emancipation of the oppressed, among whom are the
Negro, the unemployed, sweat-shop slaves, and dwellers in the slUJlls.
4) vVe can more carefully measure all human relationships by the teach-
ings of One who said: 'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.' With
those much-disturbed Methodist laymen of Chicago we believe that there
should be a Scriptural basis for the Church's position on economic
questions. But we also contend that the social gospel is au inevitable
development of the message of Jesus. Unless we proclaim it, we are
disloyal to the Christ and are expediting the ruin of civilization.
5) Believing with Kagawa that 'the love of Christ must be expressed
through economics,' we can engage in a sympathetic study of the coopera-
tive movements, especially the Rochdale system, as a method of rebuilding
the social order hy democratic processes rather than through methuds
of force. 6) Proud of that select group of Methodist young people who
think it nobler to go to prison as a Christian pacifist than to go to the
battle-field as a national hero, we can teach that 'the moral equivalent
for war' is fonnd in heing 'continuously and dangerously' engaged in
rebuilding the social order in accord with the Sermon on the :Mount.
7) liVe can actively promote constructive social legislation. 8) We hold
that war is not only a sin, hut 'the most colossal and ruinous social sin
that afflicts mankind to-day,' since it involves not only the slaughter
of human beings, but fosters lying instead of truth, breeds hatred instead
35
546 Theological Observer. - oRird}lid}'8eitgefd)id)tnd)e!5.
of love, substitutes military necessity for the Moral Law, and nullifies
in a few months that which has taken the Ohurch a generation to develop
in human character. 9) International wars must be forestalled by the
readjustment of national laws, tariffs, and resources, so that congested
populations may have the necessities of life through the Ohristian method
of international sharing. Oivil wars must be forestalled also by a process
of sharing the fruits of toil with the toiler as well as with the investor.
10) The labor question is more than a problem of economic organization,
because it deals with the coronation of the common man and the con-
struction of a social order which includes 'bread, brotherhood, and freedom.'
Of these three, OOIlllnunism offers only the bread, but 'man cannot live
by bread alone.' Fascism repUdiates brotherhood. Socialism in practise
may evolve into a denial of freedom. Our hope is in democracy in every
area of human life. This civilization cannot endure permanently balf
autocratic and half democratic." A.
Brief Items. - How much the race question is still a live issue
became evident in a declaration of John J. Oornwell, former governor of
'Vest Virginia, with respect to the resolutions of the Episcopal Ohurch
League for Industrial Democracy, advocating not only rejection of the
antisedition bills which have been introduced in Oongress, but likewise
equality between whites and Negroes in the official positions of the Ohurch.
As the Liv'ing Ohurah reports, he said: "If that is going to be the doctrine
of the Protestant Episcopal Ohurch, I am going to do what AI. Smith
said he'd do - I shall take a walk." - From the East comes the unusual
news that Dr. Archey D. Ball, minister of J:<'irst Methodist Ohurch, Engle-
wood, N. J., has been requested not to return when his present year of
service is ended. The conservative members of his congregation, so we are
told, are dissatisfied with the liberal preaching and the social gospel of
tlJeir pastor. The papers describe him as a strong crusader against war
and Fascism and other matters which advocates of the social gospel have
put on the black list. - Dr. Kraeling of Yale Divinity School has published
the text of a little parchment fragment found in Dura-Europos, on the
Euphrates, in 1933. According to the editor this fragment belongs to
Tatian's Diatessaron and gives a part of the account of the burial of our
Lord. It seoms the fragment belongs to the first half of the third century,
and we have evidence now that the Diatessaron was originally written in
Greek, not in Syriac, as was held by many experts in former years.
Recent discoveries in the field of manuscripts having to do with the New
Testament almost lead a person to hold his breath and ask, What's next?
- Quoting from a pamphlet which has the title The Mob 8till Rides, the
OhTistian Oentuiry informs its readers that of the eighty-four persons
lynched from 1931 to the close of 1935, forty-one per cent. "were either
not even accused of crime or were charged with only minor offenses;
that of the other fifty-nine per cent. many were certainly innocent of the
crimes with which they were charged; that only a fourth of the victims
were so much as accused of actual or attempted assaults on women, - the
usual cause alleged to justify mob killings; and that in a number of
these cases the commission's investigators could find no convincing evi-
dence of guilt." The commission in question is the Oommission on Inter-
Theological Observer. - StitdJlidJ-,seitgefdJid;Hid;es 547
racial Cooperation. - The Allgemeine E1!. -Luth. Kirohenzeitung reports
a notice which appeared in a Russian paper, that recently again ten
priests were exiled or shot. In Siberia the authorities have prohibited
Christian burial or the reading of masses for the dead. People who accord
a Christian burial to their deceased are disfranchised. - In the Lutheran
of April 9 Dr. J. L. Neve of Hamma Divinity School sounds a very clear
note on the meaning of the death of Christ, setting forth the teaching of
the vicarious atonement. "He, the Holy One, tasted death in our place.
His death has a vicarious significance; it has the significance of the One
dying for all men." We hope that this is the teaching on the meaning of
the Cross which obtains in the U. L. C. in general. - A campaign against
atheism and Communism in the United States was decided upon at a con-
ference held recently at Richmond, Va., attended by religious and lay
leaders. Significantly the place of meeting was old St. John's Church,
where Patrick Henry uttered the famous sentence "Give me liberty or
give me death." The movement is to be called America for God. Several
bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church and one of the Methodist
Church are among the clergymen sponsoring this endeavor. - Svenskyr-
kotidnig reports the following: "The Roman Catholic Church again lifts
its proud head in Bohemia. The World vVar brought on a revolt against
the Catholic Church, and some two million Catholics became Evangelicals.
The Catholic Church, nothing daunted, began in a quiet way to regain its
lost territory. Able priests were appointed; a Catholic party was organ-
ized in politics; Catholic diplomats found their way into the adminstra-
tion and in every position of vantage. Last year there was held at Prague
a general Catholic Day, in which the Roman Catholic Church celebrated
its come-back. A Catholic laymen's movement has been organized. A bitter
and merciless fight against the Evangelicals is on. :Marriages, for example,
are broken up by Catholic interference. Christian toleration is daily
receiving a blow in the face. Bohemia is getting a whiff from the Middle
Ages." N.L. O. N.B.-"The second precept of the Church-to receive
the blessed Sacrament three times a year at the least, of which Easter
is to be one - is embodied in the English and Canadian prayer-books
in the rubrics of the Communion office. The Roman Church demands
once only. The first part of the precept (the reception) is a divine law,
and wilful disregard is a mortal sin; the rest of it (the number of times)
is ecclesiastical law, disregard of which is a grave sin." So writes an
Episcopalian rector in the Li1,"ing OhU1·ch. A passage which is apropos
is Matt. 15, 9: "In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the
commandments of men." - Liverpool Cathedral in England became some-
what of a storm center when on a certain Sunday in March one of the
canons drew the attention of the audience to the omission in the prayers
of the invocation of blessings on what the ministers of the state were
proposing to do. According to the canon the government officials were
not pursuing a course dedicated to truth and peace, and therefore the
Church would only stultify itself if it offered prayer for the success
of the government in its undertakings. What strikes us is that' the
church dignitaries were not satisfied with suppressing the customary
prayer, but felt they ought to comment on it before the assembled con-
gregation, which made the whole affair take on a theatrical aspect. - 'IVhile
548 Theological Observer. - .Ritd)nd)"~eitgefd)id)t1id)e!l.
Harvard University is celehrating its tercentenary, Union Seminary in
New York is observing its centenary. The latter occasion is to be made
memorable by the raising of a fund of $403,000 for the maintenance of
faculty members who retire. A friend of the school has promised $150,000
if the remaining amount will be raised by others by June 3. It is sur-
prising to sec what funds people will provide to assist in the preaching
of a gospel which refers mainly to the present life. - The Episcopalians
lost a famous missionary bishop, the Right Reverend John McKim, who
gave fifty-four years to the work of his Church in Japan. He died iIt
Honolulu at the age of eighty-three. - The Presbytery of New York has
refused to obey the Presbyterian General Assembly, which in 1934 and
1935 ordered that ecclesiastical proceedings be instituted against members
of the Independent Board of Foreign Missions, onc of whose members
belongs to this presbytery. The motive does not seem to be endorsement
of the stand of the Independent Board, which opposes Modernism, but
a desire to avoid controversy. Will the Assembly now include the powerful
:New York Presbytery among the rebels of whose disloyalty it complains?-
Sherwood Eddy, while maintaining that the Soviet government is "seeking
to give equal justice to all the poor, to all the masses, to end unemploy-
ment, poverty, and injustice," nevertheless says that for him acceptance
of the position of this government is morally impossible bcc8use l. its
denial of political and civil liberties; 2. the violence of its continuing
revolution; 3. its harsh dogmatic atheism. (Abridged from N.l~. C. B.)
- From August 30 to September 4, under the auspices of the National
Conference of Jews and Christians, the National Seminar will be held
for Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders at Hartford, Conn. Dis-
cussing general subjects, such as "The Religious Issues Presentcd by
Science," "The Issues Prescnted by the Totalitarian States of the 'Yorld,"
"Methods of Training the Clergy," selected at random from a formidable
list, the debaters undoubtedly will valiantly endeavor to avoid stepping
on each other's toes. - In 1928 the contributions received in Protestant
churches of the United States amounted to $532,368,714. In 1935 the
total was $304,672,999, which means there was a decrease of forty-three
per cent. If all of the work done by the Federal Council of Churches,
whose secretaries and clerks are responsible for this information, were of
such an enlightening type, we could regard its activities with more
complacency. - At the convention of the National Education Association
held recently in St. Louis, the statement was made that of the twelve
million Kegroes in our country eighty per cent. are literate and that
Negro colleges last year had an enrolment of twenty-five thousand. A.
IT. 2lu!ihmb.
$ii~hnantt§ "l8efcnutui§, l8efenuini{litanb, l8efennen" nodi etnmaI.
Unter ber ii6erfcljrift "merfe~rte UneUe noer ®cljrift unD f8efennini?;"
~aoen ruir 6ereit!3 in ben ®1Jalten De?; "Theological Observer" (d. Vol. VII,
No.5, l))(ainummer 1936, ®. 385 ff.) auf hie falfclje ®tellung aUfmerffam
gemacljt, bie hie mobern~rationanftifclje 5tljeologie, toie immer fie ficlj ie~
l1.leiIig nennen mag, ber ®cljl:ift unh bem fBefennini§ gegennoer einnimmt.
9Coclj narex aHl in bem lJorigen ~rtifeI fommt biefe falfcfje ®tellung in
Theological Observer. - .rehcfjlicfj'.8eitgefdJidjtHdjes. 549
U'otifetung III he§ \j3iifjlmannfcfjen WUffate§ aum Wu§btud. OUg!. "W. ~.
53. sr." Wt.5, 69. ~aljrg., 31. :;'Sanuar 1936, 0. @"i. 98.)