The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 1910. A DIFFICULT POSITION

New Zealand Tablet, 31 March 1910, Page 501

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 1910. A DIFFICULT POSITION

- OME short time ago, owing to the death of Professor Dunlop, the authorities of the Presby ten an Church of New Zealand were called ll P on to select a new professor of theology for Zm. their students’ theological college at Dunedin _ —certainly the ...most important appointment '''thin the power of the Presbyterian Church 111 this country to bestow. ’ There were f a considerable number of candidates, almost- all , ■ , . of whom were men of unquestioned ability and scholarship. It was considered desirable, however, that, in addition to being a ripe and accomplished scholar, the occupant of this important position should be a man of marked and inspiring personality—one who would have a direct and immediate personal influence over the mind and character of his students. On this ground, and hoping great things from him in this regard, .the Assembly selected the Rev. John Dickie, of Tarland, Scotland. ' '■« " ' " The 'good man’ has come, and was duly inducted into the professorship last week. The position .of the new professor—as is clearly disclosed in the carefullybalanced and tactfully suggestive address delivered by the special speaker on the occasion— a particularly delicate one. We have every reason to believe that Professor Dickie is a man of high scholastic attainments, conspicuous ability, and distinctively attractive personality, ; and we should judge that he will require all his gifts of head and heart to enable him to please his new masters. What is expected of him by the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand was voiced by the Rev. T. Tait, M.A., 8.D., who delivered the special address to the professor. In the first place, he is cautioned against going too far with the Higher Critics. ‘We would not be ignorant,’ said the speaker, ‘of such results of their labors as are of enduring value and stimulus. We heartily acknowledge our indebtedness for the pure gold that has issued from the sifting fires of their scholarly and capable criticism. But, when they so accentuate the value of religious experience as to depreciate dogma, or so exalt the boasted scientific method as to preclude the supernatural, we must, with polite firmness, refuse to be caught in their toils.’ And, on the other hand, he is practically told not to be afraid to go as far as he finds himself able in that direction. Not,’ continues the Rev. Mr. Tait, that we would suggest timorous dealing with the thought of the age. lam sure no minister in our Church would seek to take out the eyes of reason and immure a professor in what some would call the prisonhouse of a creed. Not for a moment do we contemplate our teachers of theology as wearing the shackles that fetter thought and cripple research.’ The deliverance reminds one somewhat of the wayfarer who, .crossing a dangerous stream one dark night on a shaky plank, thought it well to make friends of the powers both of light and of darkness, and, as he stumbled along, ejaculated fervently, God is good’ —then added with almost equal fervor, But the devil isn’t bad.’ Or, to take a more classical illustration, it reminds one of Newman’s descriptionwritten in his Anglican days— the typical.‘ safe ’ man in the church,

so highly , appraised and so much desiderated by the Anglican bishops of his day. ‘ln the present day,’ he said, writing .of the then condition of the Anglican Church, ; ‘ mistiness is the mother of wisdom. A man who can set down half-a-dozen general propositions, which escape from destroying one another only by being, diluted into truisms, who can hold the balance between opposites so skilfully as to do without fulcrum -or beam, who never , enunciates a truth without guarding himself against being supposed to exclude the contradictorywho holds that Scripture is the only authority, yet that the Church is to be deferred to, that faith only justifies, yet that it does not justify, without works, that grace does .not depend on the sacraments, yet is. not given without them, that bishops are a divine ordinance, yet those who have them not are in the same religious condition as those who havethis is your safe man and the hope of the Church; this is what the Church is ■said to want, not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well-judging persons, to guide it through the channel of no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybd>‘s of Aye and No.’ : , ’ • “ ■' * Such is, in effect, the rule which the new Presbyterian professor is called upon to fill. He is to proclaim the old dogmas, but at the same time he is to be permitted to inculcate principles that are subversive of all dogma. He is to preach the old Gospel of the Westminster Confession, and at the same time the new Gospel of the Higher Criticism as far as he finds himself able — that is, as far as he can do so without over-balancing. , It will be interesting to watch the progress of whatto those who have a fixed, firm, definite body of belief — like a sort of theological tight-rope act. For the sake of the future .of what has been one of the most influential of the Protestant churches, of the Dominion we cannot but hope that the conservative element ,in the Presbyterian body will make itself felt, and that her young ministers will be saved from the plague and blight of a withering ‘ modernism.’ Catholics probably do not realise at all adequately the evils they escape by.being members of a Church which like its Divine Founder— on these great questions, as one having authority.’ " In the Catholic Church alone with its unerring, infallible guidance—are the claims both of reason and of revelation adjusted and harmonised. ‘ Contemplate Christ,’ says an old Catholic writer, and, as it happens, a German at that, ‘in, and with His creation the Church ; the only adequate" authority ; the only authority representing Him, and thou ’ wilt then stamp His image on thy soul. Should it, however, be stated, in ridicule of this principle, that it were the same as to say— “ Look at the Bible through the spectacles of the Church, be not disturbed, for it is better for thee to contemplate the star by the aid of a glass, than to let it escape thy dull organ of vision, and be lost in mist and darkness. Spectacles, besides, thou must always use, but only beware lest thou get them constructed by the first casual glass grinder, and fixed upon thy nose.” ’