MY FAITH BY HOWARD A. KELLY ENTIRELY aside from its intrinsic merit, the association of subject and author makes the following article of uncommon and noteworthy interest. Dr. Howard Atwood Kelly, of Baltimore, holds a position almost unique in his profession. With academic, professional, and honorary degrees from the Universities of Pennsylvania, Washington and Lee, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh, his rank as a scholar is clearly recognized. For some twenty years professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins University, his place as a worker and teacher in the applied science of his profession has been beyond question the highest in America and Europe. At least a dozen learned societies in England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria, France, and the United States have welcomed him to membership as a master in his specialty in surgery. Finally, his published works have caused him to be reckoned the most eminent of all authorities in his own field. Equally energetic and effective in another direction, Dr. Kelly has been a leader in church and Sunday-school work. In this day, when we are accustomed to the impression that workers in physical science are seldom also workers in religion, such an expression as the following becomes of genuine significance.-THE EDITOR. T is curious, puzzling, and almost unaccountable to note that men and women who have advanced beyond middle life are loath to discuss the questions of faith. Is there a God? A future life for human beings? Is such a life conditional, depending on our conduct or attitude toward God in this world? Is there anywhere reliable revelation from God to man? Is it possible God Himself has visited this earth and walked among men? All these questions, of supreme interest, which belong to the domain of what is called "religion" are rarely discussed in Christian countries, and this anomalous condition of so-called Christian lands becomes yet more puzzling when I come to study conditions elsewhere. In Japan, in China, in India those who profess Shintoism, Taoism, Buddhism, or Mahometism are what they profess to be, genuine Shintoists, Taoists, Buddhists, and Mahometans, and the more earnest they are in their faith the more they are esteemed, and great merit is attached to a thorough acquaintance with their scriptures. But there is something about Christianity and the Christian's Bible which makes this faith utterly different and diametrically opposite to all others in the world. The English-speaking countries profess to be Christian, but on investigation I find that the number of those who are heartily committed to, and can give coherent reason for, such faith is comparatively few, and that there is no really Christian country and never has been. As human nature goes, and as history rolls on in its present channels, it does not look as if there ever would be a wholly Christian land-certainly not under the existing order of things. A few years ago I interested myself in gathering some notes on the subject, endeavoring to ascertain what the common idea of "being a Christian" meant. I asked anybody and everybody in all classes, from the friend at my dinner table to the barber who shaved me, and most of my queries were put when traveling, as I had then more leisure to achieve a twofold objectto find out what percentage could give a correct answer, and to have a little earnest conversation on the true character and claims of the Christian life with those whose answer was incorrect. A stack of answers on cards filed away in my room would make it appear, with rare exceptions, that man's salvation depends on his own good works, generally summarized by the speakers in an echo of the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would have them treat you." I recollect one of my hazy-minded friends being rather startled by the query, and eagerly asking: "Why, you don't think I'm a Jew, do you?" This plan of interrogating many entire strangers may appear to some bold and aggressive, but I do not remember receiving a single rebuff. Now, many people are willing week after week to flock to church and hear a sermon some fifteen to forty-five minutes long; but no sooner is the threshold of the church recrossed than the subject is forgotten or dismissed with a brief comment or criticism. Anything like real earnest talk between men and women on this vital subject is rare, and rarer still is any real quest for the truth. Young people who are idealists are sometimes willing to talk about man's relation to God, and often take a definite stand for some form of religion, but, growing older, they are one by one swallowed up by the interests and activities of the world; early impressions fade and often only a habit of church-going is retained, with some conventional form of faith. Further impressions are gained from the daily papers, the latest magazine article, or casual conversation rather than from any continuous earnest consideration of the subject. From this there arises that notable lukewarmness in the churches to-day and a manner of life in the world's week day ill according with the Sunday profession, and bringing a charge of hypocrisy on the Church. But earnest consideration is is often checked by an equally curious dislike men show to open Bible study. I may ride about in the cars reading the Koran or Confucius, and men will regard me with interest and perhaps whisper it about that I am of rather a scholarly turn of mind; but should I take out my Bible and study it openly I am looked at askance, and few men, I note, want to go over and sit beside a man so engaged, still less to hear from him what he there finds in the way of spiritual truth and refreshment. Yet the faith of every man ought to be a matter of sympathetic interest to his fellows. I think a partial explanation is that the Bible is the one book which probes deeply into the secrets of the heart and leaves the best man no ground to stand on, but commands him to confess sin and repent: "For there is none righteous, no, not one." This slight circumspection of a wide field of inquiry leads me on to consider three subjects which ought to touch the secret springs of a man's life: What I believe. What my faith means to me. It is not an easy task to step aside from an excessively busy and practical life and adequately state just what is one's faith and the reasons for it, and almost impossible to analyze coolly and critically that which lies within the realm of the emotions. At best any categorical statements must seem, as the author reviews them, woefully cold and inefficient, and though I shrink from the danger of inadequate fulfillment of so responsible an undertaking yet for the sake of others to be won for Christ I do not refrain, but commit such efforts to the Author of my faith. I have, within the past twenty years of my life, come out of uncertainty and doubt into a faith which is an absolute dominating conviction of the truth and about which I have not a shadow of doubt. I have been intimately associated with eminent scientific workers; have heard them discuss the profoundest questions; have myself engaged in scientific work and so know the value of such opinions. I was once profoundly disturbed in the traditional faith in which I had been brought up-that of a Protestant Episcopalian-by inroads which were made upon the book of Genesis by the higher critics. I could not then gainsay them, not knowing Hebrew nor archæology well, and to me, as to many, to pull out one great prop was to make the whole foundation uncertain. So I floundered on for some years trying, as some of my higher critical friends are trying to-day, to continue to use the Bible as the word of God and at the same time holding it of composite authorship, a curious and disastrous piece of mental gymnastics-a bridge over the chasm separating an older Bible-loving generation from a newer Bible-emancipated race. I saw in the book a great light and glow of heat, yet shivered out in the cold. I One day it occurred to me to see what the book had to say about itself. As a short, but perhaps not the best method, I took a concordance and looked out Word," when I found that the Bible claimed from one end to the other to be the authoritative Word of God to man. then tried the natural plan of taking it as my text-book of religion, as I would use a text-book in any science, testing it by submitting to its conditions. I found that Christ Himself invites men (John vii. 17) to do this, I now believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, inspired in a sense. utterly different from that of any merely human book. I believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, without human father, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. That all men without exception are by nature sinners, alienated from God, and when thus utterly lost in sin the Son of God Himself came down to earth, and by shedding His blood upon the cross paid the infinite penalty of the guilt of the whole world. I believe he who thus receives Jesus Christ as his Saviour is born again. spiritually as definitely as in his first birth, and, so born spiritually, has new privileges, appetites, and affections; that he is one body with Christ the Head and will live with Him forever. I believe no man can save himself by good works, or what is commonly known as a "moral life," such works being but the necessary fruits and evidence of the faith within. Satan I believe to be the cause of man's fall and sin, and his rebellion against God as rightful governor. Satan is the Prince of all the kingdoms of this world, yet will in the end be cast into the pit and made harmless. Christ will come again in glory to earth to reign even as He went away from the earth, and I look for His return day by day. because as I use it day by day as spiritual food, I discover in my own life as well as in the lives of those who likewise use it a transformation correcting evil tendencies, purifying affections, giving pure desires, and teaching that concerning the righteousness of God which those who do not so use it can know nothing of. It is as really food for the spirit as bread is for the body. Perhaps one of my strongest reasons for believing the Bible is that it reveals to me, as no other book in the world could do, that which appeals to me as a physician, a diagnosis of my spiritual condition. It shows me clearly what I am by natureone lost in sin and alienated from the life that is in God. I find in it a consistent and wonderful revelation, from Genesis to Revelation, of the character of God, a God far removed from any of my natural imaginings. It also reveals a tenderness and nearness of God in Christ which satisfies the heart's longings, and shows me that the infinite. God, Creator of the world, took our very nature upon Him that He might in infinite love be one with His people to redeem them. I believe in it because it reveals a religion adapted to all classes and races, and it is intellectual suicide knowing it not to believe it. What it means to me is as intimate and difficult a question to answer as to be required to give reasons for love of father and mother, wife and children. But this reasonable faith gives me a different relation to family and friends; greater tenderness to these and deeper interest in all men. It takes away the fear of death and creates a bond with those gone before. It shows me God as a Father who perfectly understands, who can give control of appetites and affections, and rouse one to fight with self instead of being self-contented. And if faith so reveals God to me I go without question wherever He may lead me. I can put His assertions and commands above every seeming probability in life, dismissing cherished convictions and looking upon the wisdom and ratiocinations of men as folly if opposed to Him. I place no limits to faith when once vested in God, the sum of all wisdom and knowledge, and can trust Him though I should have to stand alone before the world de I believe the Bible to be God's word, claring Him to be true. BEING AN EPISODE IN THE CAREER OF RAOUL, GENTLEMAN OF R FORTUNE BY H. C. BAILEY AOUL condemned the wine of the Ewe Lamb. The Ewe Lamb would give him only Rhenish when he wanted "the good blood of Burgundy." (Raoul talks so much of wine that I think he must have been a very temperate little man.) Observe him, then, taking his ease in the wainscoted guest room of the Ewe Lamb and condemning his liquor. He had probably a leg on the table. The landlord ushered in with respect two lean men dressed in a dull gray frieze. Their faces also were gray, their hair lank. They were absurdly alike and joyless. Raoul cocked his head on one side. Judas Iscariot and son." "This maiden," the alderman continued, this maiden is the daughter of my cousin Oswald Fruytiers, who is dead, and the ward of my brother Corbleu, are there more of your family?" -my brother Jan van Hessels, the goldsmith in Bergen op Zoom. Bergen, you know, is within the Spanish bounds, and my brother writes that there is no way to send Catarina safely. Look you now, I believe that my brother does not wish to send Catarina. He has all her father's money, and he would not want to give it up." "He is, faith, your own brother, Peter Major." Raoul turned: Major." Raoul turned: "Peter Minor, do you love your Catarina?" The councilor was puzzled. "But she is my affianced bride," he cried. The maiden and the dowry were promised. I have the bond," cried the alder come to you and I ask what do you advise, other guests, two lusty French merchants "And achieved them, mordieu. But I never undertook to find a wife for Peter Minor." "My son the councilor dare not go to Bergen himself. But you, you do not fear the Spaniards" "I fear nothing but God and bad wine." "Well, sir, very well. Now look you, I give you commission to go to Bergen and seek out this maiden privily and learn of her if my brother be ready to pay her dowry. If he will, it is very well, and you shall bring her openly. But if he will not, look you, you shall take her away unknown to him and she must bring with her some of his jewels to be her dowry. He is the goldsmith of Bergen, and there must be rich goods easy for her to take. And you shall get her out of the town and bring her to me here in Rotterdam." Raoul looked him between the eyes. “You―alderman!" said Raoul. And how if the maiden will bring herself for love of of that," he jerked a nod at the councilor, "but will not steal her dowry?" "You shall tell her that the dowry is in the bond, and she is shamed to be a wife without it." "Fifty gold florins now-a hundred more if I do your work." Raoul's prices had risen. The two Peters recoiled, and began to higgle. At last they consented, and Raoul howled for the landlord and ink and paper. Raoul, left alone, looked at his bond and laughed. "If I kept the dowry and left Peter Minor the bride!" he suggested to himself. "That would be amusing." So in the springtime the Eel and Cradle at Bergen op Zoom welcomed a little guest. He announced for all men to hear that he was a poor Spanish gentleman on his way to join Don Julian Romero. Whereat and a square-faced Englishman, looked upon him askance. He treated them with full Spanish arrogance. 66 Lie first (it is a maxim of Raoul's) "Lie first. There will always be room for the truth. Truth first-then no room for the lie when you need it." Raoul fed full and drank, and went out from the Eel and Cradle in the twilight. He learned that Master Jan van Hessels, goldsmith, was an alderman, that he lived at the sign of the Brazen Serpent, in the Street of St. Anthony, in the new town. The street was something rural and houses few in it. Jan van Hessels's Brazen Serpent was big, and back from it ran a walled garden where the scent of the limes hung fragrant. Raoul, hat on one side, nonchalant, swaggered along to the garden gate. Five rascals with cudgels sprang out upon him. But Raoul, for all his airs, was wholly alert. Sideways he sprang, six feet at a bound. Out leaped sword and dagger. "What! What! How, knaves? Is there man-killing toward?" he thundered in Spanish. "Then, by good Sant' Iago" He lunged on the invocation. "A The cudgelers did not await him. Spaniard," they muttered, "a Spaniard!" and turning, fled together-fled into the Brazen Serpent and slammed its door behind them. Then behold Raoul, most truculent, stalking up to that door and battering upon it with the hilt of his bare sword. At last a little wicket opened and some one asked his business. 66 Business? That word to a gentleman? Rascal! Open your door, rogue, and produce me the man of the house." The wicket was shut again, and after a while the door was opened and a serving man quavered out a question as to Raoul's name. Raoul took him by the ear and jerked him. "Bring forth your knave master, knave." The servant shuffled on and brought him to an inner room, and hurriedly withdrew. Raoul had no need to ask whom he beheld. Master Alderman Jan van Hessels, grayfaced, goggle-eyed, was true brother of Peter. Raoul, hat cocked over one ear, sword twirling in finger and thumb, looked him up and down. |