Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 56:223 (Jul 1899)
Article: The Catechumenate: Its Achievements And Its Possibilities
Author: Thomas Chalmers

BSac 56:223 (July 1899) p. 467

The Catechumenate: Its Achievements And Its Possibilities

Rev. Thomas Chalmers

The painful conclusion which the spirit of the times appears to have reached with regard to the evangelical church is, that she has been weighed in the balance and been found wanting. Bitter charges and insinuations are found in the daily press, in current popular literature; they are heard from actors on the stage, from political economists and social reformers on the platform; they are the axioms upon which a multitude of new sects are forming, for, if a man wishes to catch the ear of the public for some new theory, he plans to preface the defense of the peculiar principles of his system by a diatribe against the church. And sadder perhaps than all this, these charges constitute the principal justification of the conduct of the vast mass of non-churchgoers. Without wasting time declaiming against the cruel injustice of these accusations, we should set about the simple discharge of our task as the best means of driving our accusers to the wall.

Evangelical Christianity has her opportunity in the times when society is enthralled in moral evil and when the latent moral earnestness of the race needs to be called to the conflict. Evangelical Christianity is the only power that has ever been able to bring this moral earnestness to bear triumphantly on the forces of iniquity. The present age presents us an opportunity similar to that which was seized by the apostolic Christianity of the first three Chris-

BSac 56:223 (July 1899) p. 468

tian centuries; by the Protestant Christianity of the sixteenth, and by the Puritan Christianity of the seventeenth.

The Genesis Of The Idea Of The Catechumenate

The natural reply which we would expect the Christian moral earnestness of our race to make to the Prince of evil when he points to the desolation he has wrought on the succeeding generations, and reaches out his hands for the only generation he has not yet touched, is, “The children of the past generations are yours; these children are God’s.” Here lies the foundation for the idea of the catechumenate. It is the acceptance of Satan’s challenge with regard to the youth. It is the earnest and systematic attempt to guarantee to all the children of our generation a solemn warning as to the plans of Satan, and an assurance of the counter purposes of God with respect to their souls. It is the method that, at all earnest times in the moral history of the race, the church has relied upon with greatest success. And with a keen sense that the moral evils of our day are great enough to call for the most earnest and humble searching of means by which they may be stayed, we have been led to an old method as a practical plan for social regener...