of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and thus the glory of God’s name in its own midst and throughout the whole world. In this action both those who belong to the ecclesiastical order and those who belong to the rest of the congregation possess a promise and a responsibility which is in each case their own, yet is in each case of the same importance in the sight of God and in their relation to one another, and in the last resort is common to both.
3. The secondary form of the church service consists in an effort which is unceasingly the task of the whole congregation and which must always be repeated anew. It is the effort, critical in spirit, after a sincere and humble proclamation and understanding of the divine Word—a proclamation and understanding which correspond to the institution of the church as originated by Jesus Christ.
LECTURE XIX
(Art. 24)
THE STATE’S SERVICE OF GOD
1. No sphere exists in which Jesus Christ is not already to-day secretly or openly the only Lord and the supreme judge. No other law exists which can have the right of limiting the church’s task and of setting aside faith in Jesus Christ, active in love. The political order in its varying forms is no less an order for the service of God, in which rulers and ruled are called to obedience to God, to thankfulness and to penitence.
2. The significance of the political order as service of God is clearly seen, wherever the form of political power then in force honours God by providing for justice and peace, so far as human insight and human ability can, and by providing and preserving freedom for the true church to proclaim the forgiveness of sins and eternal life in accordance with the task laid upon her. The significance of the political order as service of God is obscured, wherever the form of political power then in force seeks to operate for its own advantage, violating and suppressing justice and peace, advancing the false church or becoming itself the false church.
3. Faith in Jesus Christ, active in love, will enter on positive co-operation in the tasks and aims of the political power then in force or it will passively withdraw from this power’s responsibility according in either case as the significance of the state as service of God is made clear or obscured in its application by the political power.
4. The duty of obedience to the political order, which is bound up with its significance—made clear or obscured—of serving God, and the duty of prayer for the holders of the form of political power then in force, does not cease, but merely adopts a new form, when a choice must be made in the conflict between faith in Jesus Christ, active in love, and the claims of a particular political power, and when, this being the case, God must be obeyed rather than men.
LECTURE XX
(Art. 25b)
THE GIFT OF COMFORT AND HOPE
1. The necessity but also the questionableness and danger of the service rendered by the state to God reminds the church of the fact that her life and all Christian life here and now takes place within the bounds of a still unredeemed world of sinful men, whose reconciliation with God is indeed already accomplished in Jesus Christ, yet is still hidden.
2. The power with which the church serves her Lord here and now and the confidence with which she does so, cannot therefore be founded on what men can feel and think, say and do within the compass of the church. They find their basis in the comfort given to these men, which tells them that their sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ, and in the certain hope that Jesus Christ Himself, as Lord of all creation, will reveal His righteousness as eternal life.
3. On the basis of this comfort and this hope the confession of the church begins and ends with the prayer for that action of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which alone makes all human knowledge of God and all human service of God true, and which makes amends for all human error and all human disobedience. It is from the revelation of this Triune God that the church springs and it is the same revelation that she goes to meet.
“NATURAL THEOLOGY” AND THE TEACHING OF THE REFORMATION
I
Lord Gifford, who died in 1887, left a will containing two unambiguously clear requirements in regard to the lectures to be held in the four Scottish Universities on the basis of the lectureship founded by him. The law of good faith towards the will of the founder demands that those who have the honour to be commissioned with the holding of this lectureship shall take note of these requirements without altering their meaning. It requires also that the content of their lectures shall meet these requirements within the limits of what is possible for the lecturers. The two requirements of Lord Gifford are as follows:—
1. The lecturers shall have as their subject “Natural Theology” “in the widest sense of the term”; by this is clearly meant the highest perfection of what in the history of the Christian church has generally been understood by “Natural Theology”—a science of God, of the relations in which the world stands to Him and of the human ethics and morality resulting from the knowledge of Him. This science is to be constructed independently of all historical religions and religious bodies as a strict natural science like chemistry and astronomy “without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous revelation.” According to the presuppositions of “Natural Theology” as Lord Gifford understood the term—and he was perfectly correct in understanding it in this way—there does exist a knowledge of God and His connection with the world and men, apart from any special and supernatural revelation. This is a knowledge which perhaps requires and is capable of development and cultivation, but is none the less a knowledge which man as man is master of, just as he is of chemical and astronomical knowledge. It is a knowledge of which man, since as man he still stands in an original relation to God, indisputably possesses, and it is therefore a knowledge which he only requires to discover, as something which he himself possesses, as he discovers the mathematical laws which lie at the basis of chemistry and astronomy, in order then to apply them to these sciences. It is just this knowledge which is at man’s disposal from his origin, which “Natural Theology” has in the course of its development to present.
2. The Gifford Lectures shall serve the “promoting, advancing, teaching and diffusing” of the study of such natural theology, and that “among all classes of society” and “among the whole population of Scotland.” What is required therefore is both a definite service intensively, the deepening and clarifying of this science within itself, to be afforded by means of these lectures, and a definite service extensively—public teaching in its import and propaganda for its methods and results.
II
I feel that more than one, though perhaps not all, of those who in the past have given these lectures must have had to rack their brains over these requirements of Lord Gifford’s, but I am sure that to none of my distinguished predecessors have they given so much trouble as to me.
Permit me to state at once quite frankly the reason for this. I certainly see—with astonishment—that such a science as Lord Gifford had in mind does exist, but I do not see how it is possible for it to exist. I am convinced that so far as it has existed and still exists, it owes its existence to a
