Evangelicalism

“ The sense of sin, the contrition for man's fallen state, which are required by Evangelicalism, can never be truly felt by any child; but whenever a sensitive, dreamy, and enthusiastic child comes under strong Evangelistic influence, it is sure to manifest "signs of saving grace". ”

“ They are told that all the religions have been simply the John the Baptist of ours; that all the gods of antiquity have withered and sunken into the Jehovah of the Jews; that all the longings and aspirations of the race are realized in the motto of the Evangelical Alliance, "Liberty in non-essentials;" that all there is, or ever was of religion can be found in the apostle's creed; that there is nothing left to be discovered; that all the thinkers are dead, and all the living should simply be believers; that we have only to repeat the epitaph found on the grave of wisdom ”

“ If these truths are rejected because they are evangelical, and the more fashionable doctrine of a sincere though imperfect obedience, combined with a submission to a prescribed formula of religion, which leaves the heart unrenewed, be substituted in their room, we may gain the applause of those who trust in themselves that they are righteous, but we shall be guilty of an awful departure from the spirit and the design of our commission, and justly incur the displeasure of Jesus Christ. ”

“ The Evangelical Alliance, made up of all orthodox denominations of the world, met only a few years ago, and here is their creed: They believe in the divine inspiration, authority and sufficiency of the holy Scriptures; the right and duty of private judgment in the interpretation of the holy Scriptures, but if you interpret wrong you are damned. They believe in the unity of the godhead and the Trinity of the persons therein. They believe in the utter depravity of human nature. There can be no more infamous doctrine than that. They look upon a little child as a lump of depravity. ”

“ Evangelical religion, like the religion of the New Testament, requires us not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, and it produces a distaste for those frivolous and pernicious amusements in which the votaries of this world delight; but I am not aware that it has an antisocial tendency, unless you mean by that expression, that its tendency is to mark out the essential difference between a real Christian and one who bears only the name. ”

“ If the religion of today is constituted of such elements as of old ruled Christ out of the synagogues, it will avoid whatever follows the example of our Lord, and prefers Christ to creed. Christian Science is the most Evangelic religion on earth, according to the Spirit and tenor of Christianity, and the power of Christ as taught in the four gospels. Truth, casting out evils and healing the sick; Love, fulfilling the law, and keeping man unspotted from the world, — these practical manifestations of religion constitute the only Evangelical Christianity, and they need no creed. ”

“ Doctrines that deny the substance and practicality of all Christ's teachings cannot be evangelical; and evangelical religion can be established on no other claim than the authenticity of the Gospels, which support unequivocally the proof that Christian Science, as defined and practised by Jesus, heals the sick, casts out error, and will destroy death. ”

“ On comparison you will discover that, if any of our modern congregations are Christian, the apostolic congregation of Jerusalem was heretic. If the pope is a Christian, Paul was not. If the orthodox creed tells what one must believe in order to be a Christian, then Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. If the religion and the theocracy which Jesus preached are to become the universal religion, all dogmas must fall, and God alone be all in all. Man must become his own priest, prince, and prophet. ”

“ After my long experience, after my patience and forbearance, I have surely the right to protest against the untruth (would that I could apply to it any other word!) that evangelical religion, or any religion in a violent form, is a wholesome or valuable or desirable adjunct to human life. It divides heart from heart. ”

“ We must sit down humbly in the presence of God, look the whole subject in the face, examine clearly what the Lord Jesus calls sin, and what the Lord Jesus calls doing His will. We must then try to realize that it is terribly possible to live a careless, easy–going, half–worldly life, and yet at the same time to maintain evangelical principles and call ourselves evangelical people! Once we see that sin is far viler and far nearer to us and sticks more closely to us than we supposed, we will be led, I trust and believe, to get nearer to Christ. ”

“ The Bible is very far from being the only rule of faith and practice, even among Protestants; else why so many different faiths? so many antagonistical systems of theology? So many contradictory forms of church policy? and last, but not least, so much wrath, contention, strife and rangling, all about words—which discussion only darkens, and explanations mystify? and the church of Christ, that should be the focus of peace, holiness and love, resembles the arena of vulgar politics.
To the “law and the testimony” we will go, and from them take nothing by example and precept. ”

“ Above all it is indisputable that the Catholic Church, in order to emphasise her opposition to the so-called Evangelical freedom, devoted herself ever more assiduously to promoting a true inward life of religion among the people, the lower clergy and the bishops. ”

“ Evangelical means and order they love to keep, for they diligently assemble themselves to wait upon God, to enable them to worship Him, where they both pray and prophesy, one by one, as prepared and moved in their hearts by His Spirit, and as anything is revealed to them. ”

“ Difficult, indeed, it is to measure so great a change, and it is not wholly easy to ascertain with precision its various and concurrent causes, and to attribute to each its proper potency. But we shall certainly not be wrong if, among those causes, we assign a prominent place to the Evangelical revival of religion. It would be a mistake to claim for the Evangelical movement the whole credit of our social reform and philanthropic work. Even in the darkest times of spiritual torpor and general profligacy England could show a creditable amount of practical benevolence. ”

“ We shall not refer to the moral condition of man in countries under the influence of the gospel, compared with his condition in pagan lands. We will not dwell upon the fact which, of itself, is sufficient to establish at once and for ever the Divine origin of evangelical religion, and the truth of the distinctive views developed in the preceding chapters—that the most holy men and woman that have ever lived have been those who exercised most constant and implicit faith in Christ. ”

“ Our conversation happened to [376] turn on the state of religion in the country, and on the evangelical and anti-evangelical clergy and laity of our own church; when he stated that, in the discharge of his professional duties, he was often called to witness the termination of human life—the retiring of the actors from the busy stage—the departure of intelligent beings from one world to another—and that he had uniformly found, that those who imbibe evangelical sentiments die much more like the Christians of the Bible than those who do not. ”

“ Indeed, the evangelical minister requires, on the part of his adherents, a higher degree of virtue than his opponent, and he employs more powerful motives to enforce it. He requires the entire renovation of the soul, and such a conversion from all the evil habits and impure propensities of our nature, as shall constitute us new creatures in Christ Jesus. Do you enforce virtue from an appeal to the authority of God? so does your evangelical brother. Do you enforce it by a reference to its own loveliness, and its tendency to promote personal and relative happiness? ”

“ If evangelical churches refuse fellowship with the Church of Christ, Scientist, or with Christian Science, they must rest their opinions of Truth and Love on the evidences of the physical senses, rather than on the teaching and practice of Jesus, or the works of the Spirit. ”

“ Observe, reader, how adroitly they can adorn lies, and how frightfully they can suppress and despise truth under cover of virtue. All the evangelical Scriptures teach us that the church of Christ was and is, in doctrine, life, and worship, a people separated from the world. ”

“ If by Christianity you mean the orthodox church, then I unhesitatingly answer that it does retard civilization, always has retarded it, and always will. I can imagine no man who can be benefitted by being made a Catholic or a Presbyterian or a Baptist or a Methodist—or, in other words, by being made an orthodox Christian. But by Christianity I do not mean morality, kindness, forgiveness, justice. ”

“ The Protestant evangelical denominations have so tied up one another's hands, and their own, that, between them all, a man cannot become a preacher at all, anywhere, without [pg 389] accepting some book besides the Bible.... There is nothing imaginary in the statement that the creed power is now beginning to prohibit the Bible as really as Rome did, though in a subtler way.”641
When faithful teachers expound the word of God, there arise men of learning, ministers professing to understand the Scriptures, who denounce sound doctrine as heresy, and thus turn away inquirers after truth. ”

“ That this evangelical righteousness and salvation shall not be confined to the Jewish nation, but shall be extended to the Gentiles; My arms shall judge the people. Those that will not yield to the judgments of God's mouth shall be crushed by the judgments of his hand. Some shall thus be judged by the gospel, for for judgment Christ came into this world; but others, and those of the isles, shall wait upon him, and bid his gospel, and the commands as well as the comforts of it, welcome. ”

“ The Shibboleth of this absolute authority is the name of the Lord Christ, and the assertion that the Lord dwells in the hearts of these judges.' But the assertion is ill supported by the fruits they exhibit,—the monstrous insolence with which they reprobate and condemn.
But the evangelicals are not alone to blame for the bald and undeveloped nature of their religious life; the same want of free and living growth in religion characterises their opponents. ”

“ If therefore we would be true Christians of the Catholic church, we must put off this partiality of the carnal Jew; we must enter into a Catholic affection for all men, love the spirit of the gospel wherever we see it; not work ourselves up into an abhorrence of a George Fox, or an Ignatius Loyola; but be equally glad of the light of the gospel wherever it shines, or from whatever quarter it comes; and give the same praise to God for an eminent example of piety, wherever it appears, either in Papist or Protestant. ”

“ The things related by the Evangelists are certainly of the most momentous character, affecting the principles of our conduct here, and our happiness for ever. The religion of Jesus Christ aims at nothing less than the utter overthrow of [pg viii] all other systems of religion in the world; denouncing them as inadequate to the wants of man, false in their foundations, and dangerous in their tendency. It not only solicits the grave attention of all, to whom its doctrines are presented, but it demands their cordial belief, as a matter of vital concernment. ”

“ Our evangelists must remove from the van of their evangelic force all that sharp fence of metaphysical subtlety and scholastic dogma, which, being ostentatiously paraded in creeds and catechisms, has given more just offence to those without than edification to those within the Church; the gospel must be presented to the world with all that catholic breadth, kindly humanity, and popular directness which were its boast before it was laced and screwed into artificial shapes by the decrees of intolerent councils, and the subtleties of ingenious schoolmen. ”

“ The law and faith in Jesus Christ—that means love towards our fellow men; it means equality; it means fraternity; it means revolt against the idolatries, in whose name the greatest malefactors are and believe themselves absolved of their crimes by the purchase of indulgences! Only through faith and the practice of the Evangelical law will our sins be remitted. ”

“ Now that they have enriched themselves, they laugh and exult over the fact that it is possible in the name of the Evangel to enjoy all sorts of evangelical freedom, and at the same time to be the Evangel’s worst enemy. ”

“ The hand distribution of religious tracts is an age-old form of missionary evangelism-as old as the history of printing presses. [5] It has been a potent force in various religious movements down through the years. [6] This form of evangelism is utilized today on a large scale by various religious sects whose colporteurs carry the Gospel to thousands upon thousands of homes and seek through personal visitations to win adherents to their faith. [7] It is more than preaching; it is more than distribution of religious literature. ”

“ Thus the doctrine in which lay the whole creative force, the truth and the life of Christianity, was that which from the first caused the dislike of the Jew and the persecution of the Gentile—the kingship of Christ, involving the headship of a universal religion, and a power which was not that of Cæsar. ”

“ An evangelical church is composed of a number of persons who have come to agreement in a certain message about Christ and who desire to unite in the propagation of that message, as it is set forth in their creed on the basis of the Bible. No one is forced to unite himself with the body thus formed ”

“ Using the word religion in its highest and best sense, the people are becoming more religious. We are far more religious —using the word in its best sense—than when we believed in human slavery, but we are not as orthodox as we were then. We have more principle and less piety. We care more for the right and less for the creed. The old orthodox dogmas are mouldy. You will find moss on their backs. They are only brought out when a new candidate for the ministry is to be examined. ”