Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 64:254 (Apr 1907)
Article: Dogma And Life
Author: Burnett T. Stafford

BSac 64:254 (April 1907) p. 250

Dogma And Life

Reverend Burnett T. Stafford

[It gives me pleasure to commend the principles and teaching of this article by the Rev. B. T. Stafford, on “Dogma and Life.” It is certain as anything can be that there is an immovable substratum of truth underlying every Divine manifestation, which the human mind may elucidate and view from different points, but can never change. And it is so that the Christian life and civilization are built up on the unchangeable facts of the Incarnate Life of the Son of God. We may meditate on those facts and see more and more of their wondrous significance, now emphasizing one feature and now another; but to deny their reality and call that “spiritual interpretation,” is to put our own vain fancies in the place of God’s revelation, and to trick out our unbelief with a deceptive appearance of faith. It will not do. It destroys the foundations, and leaves us a mere human philosophy in the place of a divine religion. No such philosophy ever has been, or ever will be, able to withstand the active resistance and antagonism of human selfishness.—Charles Tyler Olmsted, D.D., D.C.L., Bishop of the Diocese Central New York.]

The seeker after truth does not go very far before he comes to the background of mystery. Over it he cannot climb, and through it he cannot dig. At various points and in inexplicable ways, through it come the streams of life and power. They come in an order, fixed and harmonious. Sometimes their lines of action seem to clash: full knowledge of their operation and end makes it clear that they all combine in a most wonderful way to produce results of unsurpassable beauty and beneficence. The wise investigator soon concludes that it is a waste of time and energy to speculate on this background of mystery: it is here round about him, above and beneath him, and certain it is that through it come the streams of creative energy. His chief and constant privilege is to accept

BSac 64:254 (April 1907) p. 251

it, and then by study endeavor to understand the laws governing the manifested life proceeding from it. Always and everywhere, the points of human contact with this background of mystery are the same. On them rests all sound and enduring knowledge, and apart from them there is no life. They are the dogmas—the fixed decrees of the Almighty God—the premises of constructive thought and sound conclusion. One of its dogmas—fixed and unvariable voices—is that 2X2=4. The one delighting in the speculation which comes from an untrained imagination, or a rebellious will, may try to convince himself, and others, that it will not matter much if it be said that 2X2=3 or 5; for, after all, it is the mere matter of accepting a mathematical tradition, which had its origin in the rude beginnings of ...