BLUE BANNER FAITH and LIFE J. G. VOS, Editor and Manager
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
BLUE BANNER FAITH AND LIFE J. G. VOS, Editor and Manager Copyright © 2016 The Board of Education and Publication of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (Crown & Covenant Publications) 7408 Penn Avenue • Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15208 All rights are reserved by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America and its Board of Education & Publication (Crown & Covenant Publications). Except for personal use of one digital copy by the user, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. This project is made possible by the History Committee of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (rparchives.org). BLUE BANNER FAITH AND LIFE VOLUME 4 JANUARY - MARCH, 1949 NUMBER 1 1*1 i m i i m i i i | mi II M 1 ■M c ; 1 ■__ __M ___ _____ ___________________________________j_______________________ ^ “AS GOD HATH APPOINTED THE ELECT UNTO GLORY, SO HATH j HE, BY THE ETERNAL AND MOST FREE PURPOSE OF HIS WILL, j FOREORDAINED ALL THE MEANS THEREUNTO. WHEREFORE | THEY WHO ARE ELECTED, BEING FALLEN IN ADAM, ARE RE- 1 DEEMED BY CHRIST, ARE EFFECTUALLY CALLED UNTO FAITH I IN CHRIST BY HIS SPIRIT WORKING IN DUE SEASON, ARE I JUSTIFIED, ADOPTED, SANCTIFIED, AND KEPT BY HIS POWER j 1 THROUGH FAITH UNTO SALVATION. NEITHER ARE ANY OTHER 1 I REDEEMED BY CHRIST, EFFECTUALLY CALLED, JUSTIFIED, ( | ADOPTED, SANCTIFIED, AND SAVED, BUT THE ELECT ONLY.” I ' THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION OF FAITH,in.6 ! A Quarterly Publication Devoted to Expounding, Defending and Applying the System of Doctrine set forth in the Word of God and Summarized in the Standards of the Covenanter (Reformed Presbyterian) Church. Subscription $1.50 per year postpaid anywhere J. G. VOS, Editor and Publisher R. F. D. No. 1 Clay Center, Kansas TILL THE PERFECT DAY We still believe, though oft seems baffled His truth is mighty, though its power Faith’s noble, age-long fight; To man’s rash heart seem slow; For right we stand, though gloom the scaffold His grace shall fruit, though oft its flower With shadows to affright; Seem frayed while tempests blow; For truth we strive, though still be raffled And hope, though threatening clouds may lower, His seamless robe of light. Their frowns spans with a bow., Faith’s goodly fight will we maintain, Undaunted, still we watch and pray Assured that righteousness shall reign. Till Christ bring in the perfect day. (Author unknown) Can peach renew lost bloom, Safe where I cannot die yet, Or violet lost perfume, Safe where I hope to lie too, Or sullied snow grow white Safe from the fume and the fret; As overnight? You, and you, Man cannot compass it; j Whom I never forget. Yet never fear! The leper Naaman Safe from the frost and the snow, Shows what God will and can. Safe from the storm and the sun, God who worked there is working here. Safe whore the seeds wait to grow Wherefore let shame, not gloom One by one, Betinge thy brow; And to come back in blow.* God who worked then is working now. C. G. Rossetti •blow: bloom C. G. Rossetti I sing of a city whose greatness hath won me: Where proverty, peril and pain are unknown: The trance of its wonderful splendor is on me; I dream of its King and the grace of His throne: Slain Lamb and strong Lion who ransomed His own. City eternal! How great is thy glery! The wealth of the universe centers in thee: The Lamb is thy light, and salvation thy story; Thy river of life flows abundant and free, Its banks all encompassed by life’s healing tree. (Author unknown. Adapted) Though sun and moon and stars be not, the heavens a vanished scroll, The pillars of the earth are His. Be fixed in God, my soul. The waves may roar, the nations rage, and yet at His command At the four comers of the earth the four great angels stand, And swiftly hasteneth the day foretold in His sure Word, The kingdom of the world shall be the kingdom of the Lord. (Author unknown. Adapted) 3 BLUE BANNER FAITH AND LIFE VOLUME 4 JANUARY-MARCH, 1949 NUMBER 1 Sketches From Our History Contending for the Faith Through the Ages CHAPTER IV GLEAMS OF LIGHT IN MEDIEVAL DARKNESS The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, Ages, but much of it was not truly Christian In which was brought about by internal weakness spirit because it did not proceed from a Biblical and decadence, on the one hand, and by repeated view of the way of salvation. waves' of invasion by the vigorous Germanic peoples of central and eastern Europe, on the Missionary work was indeed carried on dur other, occasioned a general eclipse of education ing the Middle Ages, and that on an extensive and learning throughout most of Europe, which scale. The common Protestant notion that mis was followed by a general decline in knowledge sionary work came to a dead stop and remained of Christian truth on the part of the people. As at a standstill for centuries is pure myth. Not the Church expanded to include practically the only did devoted missionaries carry the Christian entire population of Europe, it slumped into a Faith to the regions of central, northern and eas condition of ignorance and thus became a doc- tern Europe, but missionaries penetrated as far trinally corrupt Church. The Middle Ages were, across Asia as Karakorum, in Outer Mongolia, and in general, a period of doctrinal retrogression. Peking, 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean. By With some exceptions, the Church during a period the year 1304 there were five thousand baptized of a thousand years moved farther from the truth Christians in Peking, with two organized church instead of closer to the truth. Between the death es. What hampered missionary work in the Mid of Augustine (A.D. 430) and M artin L uther’s dle Ages was not lack of zeal so much as lack of posting of his 95 Theses on the church door of a pure Gospel to proclaim to the heathen world. W ittenberg (A.D. 1517), there was very little pro The truth of God had become so corrupted with gress on the highway of truth, but much move human errors that it was but a feebly flickering ment in the direction of error. At the beginning light of Christian truth that these earnest mes of this period the Church possessed a rather high sengers of the cross carried to those in pagan degree of doctrinal purity; at its close, it had laps darkness. ed to an abysmally low degree. The one really notable exception to this general decline is the The Crusades have sometimes been called doctrine of the atonement of Christ, in which missionary movements, but this is a mistake. real progress in the direction of an accurate state They were primarily military expeditions, though ment of Scriptural truth was undoubtedly made they had extensive social consequences. Waged by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the close by the nations of Europe for the primary purpose of the eleventh century. While there was little of regaining the “holy” places of Palestine from real progress in witnessing for the truth during the Mohammedans, they met with temporary suc the Middle Ages, there were some remarkable at cess but eventual total failure. Christianity can tempts to resist the general decline and to hold not be propagated by force of arms, but only by the line of truth against the increasing inroads of the power of truth made effective by the Holy error. We shall consider some of these gleams of Spiiut. light in the medieval darkness in the present article. Within the Church a false ideal of powerful centralized government gained the ascendancy, Externally, the Church made great progress and the Roman papacy became the virtual suc through the conversion of central, northern and cessor of the imperial throne in the power-poli- eastern Europe, and the British Isles, to the Chris tics of Europe. The simple form of church gov tian Faith. This territorial gain was, however, ernment set forth in the New Testament was for counterbalanced by the loss of North Africa and gotten as the bishops, archbishops and popes ac most of Spain to Mohammedanism. There was quired more and more power. The Church be plenty of activity in the Church during the Middle came a monarchy in which the pope, as the re 4 preservative of Christ on earth, reigned as a from family, friends and society into a mona crowned and enthroned ruler. stery or convent. In the course of time celi In the sphere of worship there was gross cor bacy was required of the priesthood as a matter ruption. Mary the mother of Jesus came to be of church law. While monasticism was not an regarded as almost divine. The popular worship unmixed evil, as some orders of monks achieved became largely invocation of Mary and the saints. remarkable results in civilizing and Christianiz As this idolatrous worship became prevalent, faith ing the regions of central and northern Europe, in Jesus Christ as the Redeemer became weaker yet it was wrong in principle, and eventually it and less clear. Superstition and a legalistic view became a notorious evil. Many monasteries de of salvation (salvation by works) became almost generated into dens of laziness, immorality and universal. Large elements of European paganism general corruption. found their way into the Church, disguised only by a thin veneer of Christian terminology.