THE SOLITARY THRONE ADDRESSES GIVEN AT THE KESWICK CONVENTION ON THE GLO RY AND THE UNIQUENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE BY Dr. S. M. ZWEMER Professor of Christian Missions and the History of Religion, Princeton Theological Seminary PICKERING & INGLIS LONDON GLASGOW MANCHESTER EDINBURGH Dr. SAMUEL M, ZWEMER LoNJ>ON • • 14 PA.TRRNOSTBR Row, B.C.4 GLASGOW• • 229 BOTHWBLL STB.BRT, C,2 MANCBBSTER • 185 DEANSGATE, 8 EDINBURGH • GEORGE IV BRIDGE, 1 TORONTO - • HOM& EVANGEL, 418 CHURCH ST., 2 NEW YORK • LOIZE.AUX BROS., 19 WEST 21ST ST. Preface THIS little book consists of five addresses given at the Keswick Con­ vention in the summer of 1937. The title is borrowed from a statement made by Mahatma Gandhi in one of his books : " I am unable to place Jesus Christ on a solitary throne." He believes, as do all Hindus, in many incarnations, and not in the unique origin, character and mes­ sages of our Saviour. The finalityof Christ­ ianity is being challenged even in so-called Christian circles. But the Lamb is on the Throne and He alone is worthy to open the seals of the Book of Life and History. The other addresses deal with the same theme of the matchless Christ, Who makes His ministers a flame of fire, and Who Himself dwells in light inaccessible and full of glory. And in Whose light is the life Made and Printed Great Britain f:o 4:11375 of men. 6 PREFACE The last chapter shows how feeble is our faith in view of the greatness of God's promises, and the wealth of our heritage. May the messages in this printed form be used of God, more widely than they were when first uttered. SAMUEL M. ZWEMER. Contents •.&.oz 9 EDINBURGH, August, 1937. I. THE SOLITARY THRONE' •• 31 II, HIS MINISTERS A FLAME, , , 55 III, PHOTOPHOBIA, 77 IV, THE GLORY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE,, , 95 V, THE HINTERLAND OF THE SOUL, , , I The Solitary Throne UNLESS Jesus Christ is Lord of all He is not Lord at all. It has often impressed me as a great and very solemn truth that on two of the most solemn occasions in the life of our Lord upon earth, His self-asser­ tion and the utter audacity of His claims were such as to prevent His classification with men. The self-assertion and utter audacity of His claims on these occasions make it impossible for anyone who reads the Gospels to doubt that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Both of these occasions were almost parentheses. They were when Christ was in the synagogue at Capernaum, when He burst into a thanksgiving to His Father, using these words : " I thank Thee, 0 Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. For so it seemed good in Thy sight." The other occasion was an interruption. Madame Guyon says that "the interrup- 9 10 ' THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE 11 tions are the opportunities." That is a to Jesus Christ our Lord. And therefore great statement, because if you will take it is hard to be a witnessing Christian. How the interruptions in the work of Jesus, or hard it is to be a Christian witnessing for in the words of Jesus, you will find that Christ over against the testimony of other every interruption was the revelation of a voices that challenge Christ's supremacy, new splendour in the character of our Lord. or that supplant Him in the hearts and Here a question was asked by Thomas : lives of men and women and little children. "How can we know the way? " "Jesus At home and abroad, even in Christian saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, circles, there are many voices that are and the Life ; no man cometh unto the raised against the supremacy and the Father, but by Me." finality and the sufficiency of the Christian No person with ordinary intelligence religion. Many people who profess and who reads even these two passages in the call themselves Christians have lost the Gospels of Matthew and John, can doubt sense of Christ's supremacy and sufficiency, for a moment that, whatever the world may and therefore also the urgency of their say, Christ asserted His absoluteness and message. finality. He said that He was the only And there is confusion of tongues, as channel of truth and life and light. The we all know. When a Methodist bishop aloofness and the transcendence of Jesus, in America asserts in public that Mahatma the Son of Man, are so self-evident, that Gandhi is the greatest Christian in India, anyone who accepts the New Testament one begins to wonder what it means when can only come to that conclusion as to the Gandhi says in his latest book : " I cannot face value of Christ in His own Book. place Christ on a solitary throne, because It is so easy for us at home here to sing : I believe God has been incarnate again and "All hail the power of Jesu's Name!" again." Or when in the Student Movement But' all round the world, rival faiths and of America, one of our former leaders uses new religions and strange cults are chal- in his book, "Christ or Christianity ? " lenging this hymn of the Church which words like these : · "One of the most tragic ascribes all glory and praise and honour blunders of Christendom has been the 13 12 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE placing of such extreme emphasis upon the great non-Christian religions to-day, that uniqueness of Jesus that an unbridgeable every Mohammedan mosque built in gulf has been created be,tween Him and the London or Berlin or Paris or New York, rest of mankind. If all 'human beings were every temple to Christian Science, is a created in the spiritual image of God, and direct challenge to the supremacy and the if there is only one kind of personality, then finality of Jesus Christ. In what sense is the only difference between Jesus and other Christ different from all other religious men is one of maturity." leaders and personalities ? What is His Wilhelm Hauer, a representative of the pre-eminence ? neo-paganism of Germany, and a Professor When we look at Him we see that in one of the Universities there, uses words the historic Jesus rises, like an inac­ like these: "The Ten Commandments laid cessible peak of the Himalayas, above down in the Scriptures do not suffice for the all other mountains and foothills of human building up of the present-day Christianity. greatness. Man's effort has failed to The Semitic character of Christianity is measure His height. History, philosophy, undoubted, but such is also its condemna­ art, have already paid Him their highest tion. Jesus said : 'Salvation is of the tribute. Every newspaper . published in Jews,' but He was mistaken. Belief in the New York, in Chicago, in Buenos Ayres, Resurrection is not the heart of Christianity, in London, has on its front page an acknow­ but is a worldly doctrine. Many of Jesus' ledgment of the Christ of history. It is words and deeds touch a chord deep in our 1937, A.D. hearts. But we protest against His being He is the historic dividing line be­ imposed on us as a leader and pattern. tween what happened before He came, We must not allow our native religious and what happened after His revelation. life, which grows immediately out of our Even Mohammed in Arabia, as a keen own genius, to be diverted into any Semitic student once said, had Christ on the brain. foreign tracks." He could not leave Jesus Christ alone. Voices like these appear to you and me And in the . Koran he speaks of Him as as being unusual. But I submit that the "The Spirit of God, the Word of Truth." 14 THE SOLITARY THRONE THE SOLITARY THRONE 15 Napoleon on St. Helena said : " I know all human thought, and all human ideals men, and Jesus was no man. Charlemagne, in religion ? Alexander the Great, and I, founded Surely missionaries ought not to be great empires upon force, and here is One narrow-minded ; and all of us, I think, who founded an empire upon love. And - who have been abroad, and have had now I am alone and forsaken, and there are opportunity to study the faiths of non­ millions who would die for Him." Christians, are quite willing to admit that Jean Paul Richter, of Germany, in a won­ these religions which are nearly all older derful passage, said : " 0 Thou who art than Christianity have much to commend mightiest among the mighty, and the them. They have certain spiritual and holiest among the holy, Thou with Thy moral values. pierced hands, hast lifted empires off their In Confucianism you have the sacred­ hinges, and turned the tide of human ness of the family. No Chinese boy would history!" ever speak to his father as some American Rabbi Klausner, the President of the lads do. In Hinduism you have the great University in Jerusalem, in one of his books conception of the immanence of God : on Jesus Christ, says : "His parables are "Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, matchless ; His ethics are unsurpassed by And Spirit with spirit can meet. anything in the Old Testament ; He is Closer is He than breathing, the supreme fruit of the tree of And nearer than hands or feet . " Judaism." In Buddhism you have a commentary on Now all that is very beautiful, but it is the most pessimistic book in the Bible, in a sense inadequate, and beside the point.