Greater Uncertainty
of their isolation back to the battle with the world. Under their leadership, home and foreign missions received a powerful impetus.
These congregations also took the initiative in organizing Sunday schools and many other kinds of associations. As a result of these movements the distribution of Bibles and tracts, evangelism, philanthropy, and many other Christian actions were made to serve the spread of the Kingdom of God. All of Christianity was shaken out of its slumber and stirred into new, vital life.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that both movements suffered from a narrowness of Christian vision. Neither paid sufficient attention to the first article of the Apostle's Creed, namely, that God is the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. The earthly terrains of art and science, literature and politics, family and society were not recognized in their full meaning and significance and were therefore also not reformed and renewed on the basis of Christian principles.
Resting in the wounds of Jesus or being converted and then going out to convert others seemed to be the entire content of the Christian life. Sentimentality and an unhealthy sensibility often characterized the first state and frenzied and thoughtless activity the other.
Consciousness was often suppressed for the sake of emotion and will, and there was no harmony between man's capacities and powers.
The freedom of the children of God—dominion over the world, the grateful enjoyment of every good gift given by the Father of all light, the faithful exercise of the earthly calling, the open eye, the broad view, the spacious heart-none of these came to fruition. The Christian life was often seen to be alongside, sometimes above, and occasionally even at enmity with human life. Here Christianity was not like a leaven that mixes with the dough and leavens the whole.
Greater Uncertainty
A great uncertainty resulted from the mixture of these different elements into the life of faith. It was continually being driven in different directions—orthodox and pietist, Moravian and Methodist, rationalist and mystical—preventing it from taking a consistent course and growing steadily in the grace and knowledge of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Even more damaging to the spiritual life than these differences in religious viewpoint, however, was the cutting judgment of philosophy on man's capacity to know, and the impact of historical research on the Holy Scriptures as the source of truth.
Since the time of Immanuel Kant, a philosophical notion has been gaining ever wider acceptance: man, bound as he is by a finite, limited, sense perception, can never gain a genuine knowledge of invisible, eternal things. Historical criticism has added its seal to this position by announcing the untrustworthiness and unreliability of not only the confessions but also of the Scriptures of the prophets and apostles. Thus, we can find no more certainty—not outside of us, not within us. All that is certain is what we see with our own eyes and touch with our own hands. As soon as we go beyond this, there is nothing that can step forward with authority to demand man's subservience. Every man is his own measure for those things he cannot see, and one man's opinions are as good as another's.
Therefore let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. Or, at least let everyone seek salvation in his own way, for religion is a private matter. In this domain no one has access to the truth.
This philosophy of unbelief is gaining ground-even among those who confess Christ—faster than one might think. And large masses live on in this frame of mind, inwardly swayed this way and that by doubt, tossed up and down like billows on the sea, finding no peace or joy.
Often those who carry the name of believers hide the uncertainty in their hearts behind a noisy concern for all kinds of things. And the theologians spare no effort to blaze a path through the maze of claims to the knowledge of eternal things. How can we gain this certainty of faith which is essential for peace of heart?