Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 62:245 (Jan 1905)
Article: The Definition And Doctrine Of God In The Prayer-Book
Author: Burnett T. Stafford

BSac 62:245 (Jan 1905) p. 54

The Definition And Doctrine Of God In The Prayer-Book

Rev. Burnett T. Stafford

“We are not … masters over our beliefs, but draw our conclusions from obvious premises with unerring certainty, not guided by the volitions, which here count for but little, and play an arbitrary part, if any. Belief is responsible from the standpoint of accepted premises, and not on the ground of conclusions drawn. The reasoning faculty is true to itself.”

Doctor August Drähms

The truth set forth in this statement has abundant confirmatory evidence in life and philosophy. That which unites or divides men is found to be, in the last analysis, a matter of definition. The fundamental assumptions at the source of Chinese civilization are quite other than those out of which come the culture and strength of Anglo-Saxon life. The direct influence of definitions in men’s minds upon their work is beyond dispute. In the writings of Quintilian, one may constantly detect the social and political flavor always coming from the soil of despotism. His idea of society was despotic, and of any other he had not the first notion. The pure Calvinistic idea of God permeated Puritan society from center to circumference. It touched and colored every thought and institution, whether secular or religious, and accordingly gave to everything a sandstone grit and granite hardness. The Hildebrandine development of the papacy came out of an entirely false definition of the church, and what should be its normal progress through the world. The definition of the

BSac 62:245 (Jan 1905) p. 55

state to which both Greeks and Romans tenaciously held to the very last compelled, the one to either execute or banish its greatest men, and the other to vent persecuting fury on Christian congregations all over the Empire. The idea of government held by Charles I. was expressed by “kingly prerogative.” It was one of the baleful political maxims of the Caesars bestowed to the modern world. The definition on which rested the Petition of Rights and the Grand Remonstrance was the old Teutonic one of freedom as it had been enriched and made wonderfully strong by Hebrew thought and the Christian doctrine of man. Definitions made real in the life of a people produce after their kind. They give an enduring solidity, chiefly seen in its capacity for unlimited growth, or they cause arrested development and decay. The natural resources of South America are in every way equal, if not in some marked particulars superior, to those of North, That which has produced the vast superiority of the civilization of the latter over the former, has been the social, political, and religious definitions which have entered into the character of her people. These have produced intelligence, self-reli...