Defense of the Faith and the Saints (Volume 2 of 2)

by B. H. Roberts

That was a tremendous message to deliver to a world that supposed itself to be living in the full blaze of Christian glory! It was enough to appall the stoutest heart to be called upon to deliver it! But, my friends, Mormonism would have no right to existence unless such was the condition of the world. Of churches and creeds there were already enough; and unless there was some great, fundamental reason why a new message should be sent to the world, then Mormonism has no right to exist at all.

The vision closed, and the boy went with it to his friends, and out of it has grown what the world calls Mormonism. Now, let us talk about the substance of this vision a little while and see if we can not soften the seeming harshness with which this message of Mormonism begins: "The churches are wrong." But, my friends, the people then living were not responsible for those conditions. They had inherited them. Generations ago men had transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant of the gospel, and formulated creeds which failed to grasp or record truly the central truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the nature of God, the relationship of man to Deity, or the purpose of man's earth existence. The false notions and doctrines that obtained respecting these matters our generation inherited from preceding generations. It was a case of the fathers "eating sour grapes, and the children's teeth being set on edge."

"CREEDS ARE AN ABOMINATION."

"The creeds are an abomination, and the professors are all corrupt!" That is a severe arraignment of Christendom. Do we mean by it that the whole of Christendom is corrupt? That virtue was fled? Of course, in a certain sense, all men have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. There is none that doeth wholly good, no, not one. All flesh is corrupt before God, in that it has in it an inclination to evil—a concupiscence to sinful ways. But that is not the matter in question here. No, my friends, we do not mean to say that all Christendom is corrupt, or that virtue has fled from the earth. I pray you regard the language more closely: "The creeds are an abomination;" the "professors are corrupt;" they "teach for doctrine the commandments of men." It is the professors that are alluded to here as being "corrupt," not necessarily the confessors, of the creeds; the "professors" the "teachers" of the creeds are corrupt. What, then, do you arraign the whole Christian ministry as being corrupt? By no means. We are ready to believe that many of them like their followers are men who strive earnestly for the truth, and desire the uplifting of humanity; but those who, in the ages gone by, could formulate such creeds as exist in Christendom, expressing such beliefs about God and about man, and the relationship of God to man; those who could formulate creeds that would eternally damn innocent infants; or that could forever close the doors of mercy against the vast majority of the children of God—as well those who have died in ignorance of revealed truth, as those who died in the knowledge of it but rejected it—in the awful dogmas of eternal punishment—men who could formulate such creeds as these certainly had minds that had gone awry, that were "corrupted," so they would not or could not see the truth. So you see the harshness of this message of ours narrows down considerably when you get to analyzing it. These creed-formulators were teaching for doctrine the commandments of men; they drew near to the Lord with their lips, but their hearts were far removed from him, they had reduced religion to forms of godliness merely. The ground had to be cleared of the theological rubbish that had accumulated through the ages, that the living rocks might appear, on which God should found his Church in very deed; and thus our message had to begin with this declaration concerning the status of Christendom.

GOD'S FIRST MESSAGE CONFIRMED.

Now something singular has happened in our time, in our day, within the past few years, and more especially within the past year. Ninety years have passed away since this first message of God though Joseph Smith was given to the world declaring the churches wrong; but, mark you, we did not sit in judgment upon the world's creeds and religions and religious teachers. We have not assumed to do that. Neither did Joseph Smith, he confessed his own inability to judge the matter, hence he went to God for wisdom. We think it would have been beyond the capacity of human wisdom to determine which of the sects or churches were acceptable to God; Or say which was his Church; but God was competent to sit in judgment, and he sat in judgment, and announced the conclusion, and made Joseph Smith and the Church of Christ, that grew out of his message—God made them the heralds of this judgment of his to the inhabitants of the earth. But, to return to what I was about to remark,—after ninety years have elapsed, something remarkable occurs, and that is a wonderful confirmation of this seemingly harsh message with which our prophet began his life's work. There is at present going on in the great Catholic church—that church which holds within her communion more than one half of all the Christians of the world—within her great organization is going on what is called the "Modernist" movement. That movement, briefly told is this: a demand is made on the part of many of her scholars and theologians for wider intellectual liberty, and that the church shall come out of the darkness of the creeds and symbols of the dark ages and live in harmony with the new truths that have been developed through the inspiration of God operating upon the minds of modern men, of our present-day scientists and philosophers. In order to be exact in the statement of the matter, permit me to read to you something of the program that is suggested by this modernist movement within the Catholic church; and let no one esteem it as a light thing, as a mere "crackling of thorns beneath the pot." Rome does not so regard it, I can tell you. We are assured by a writer in the North American Review for June of this year that this revolution within the Church of Rome is one of the mightiest revolutions since that one led by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century. The Catholic church has already noted the importance that she attaches to it by issuing what is known as the "Encyclical Letter on Modernism" by the present pope of the Roman church, a document filling about one hundred printed pages, in which the errors, or supposed errors, of the modernists are detailed and reviewed from the standpoint of the orthodox within the Catholic church. In each diocese a "committee of vigilance" is appointed to keep watch that whether in pamphlet, or book, or speech, any prelate or curate of the church should presume to be in sympathy with this movement, he might be instantly reported and silenced. Some of the most gifted men within the church have been driven into retirement from official life; others have been silenced; some have been dismissed from chairs of instruction in Catholic institutions of learning; and everywhere the bishops are called upon to exercise the utmost vigilance to keep down the throbbing, intellectual life of this movement.

Newman Smyth in Scribners for February of the present year gives the following account of the vatican's efforts at suppression of modernism:

"The vatican has succeeded in putting out a few scholarly periodicals; in their places others more popular have appeared. It has persuaded some enlightened teachers to relapse into the obedience of silence for a season, yet without actual recantation of their opinions; others it has forced to stand by their own conscientious intelligence before the whole world. It has prohibited the publication of some Italian magazines, only to increase their circulation. It forbade the faithful to read the 'Program of the Modernists,' and a new and enlarged edition was called for by the public. It enjoined the Bavarian bishops to see to it that the people read the 'catechism and good books,' and it obtained from the civil authority of Innsbruck the confiscation of a lecture by a modernist professor of canonical law, only to cause forty-three editions of it to be issued within a short time, and to lead many thousand liberal German students to organize a strike in behalf of the freedom of academic teaching. The index of prohibited writings increases; but it cannot keep up with the modernist press. In short, the Encyclical Pascendi, which aimed to destroy by a blow a heresy of the schools, has succeeded in creating a literature of it for the people. It commands the utmost vigilance in every diocese in searching out modernist ideas; and in Rome itself, under the very shadow of the vatican, a scientific-religious publishing society has been established, and its issues, increasing in power as well as in number, are now to be found scattered through many lands.

"Besides all this, account should be taken of the number of secular journals which are in sympathy, more or less avowed, with the modernists. An ecclesiastical authority which in former times could bind peoples and humble kings, has yet to show whether it is mightier than the power of a free press in a free state."

To the Encyclical letter that was issued by Pope Pius, the modernists themselves have made a most bold and fearless answer, and have published it, in connection with the Pope's Encyclical to the world. (See "Program of Modernism," Putman's Sons, 1908.) This movement, by the way, is described as "a clear call for the rejuvenation of Roman Catholicism." The modernists believe that the church, the Roman Catholic church, can harmonize its teachings with the thought of this present age, that the most ancient church can survive by becoming the most modern. The ambitious designs of the modernists may further be learned by the following questions they propound, and answers they make to them:

"At this moment (1908) pregnant with all sorts of moral revolution, when the intellectual world, still alienated from Christ and his Church, progresses in a hundred ways towards some undefinable renewal of spirit, we ask ourselves frankly, Is there in the Catholic church, in that great organism in which the religious spirit of the gospel has come to embody itself—is there a power of conquest or simply a conservative instinct? Does she still hide in the secret complexities of her wonderful organization, capacities for winning adherents, or is her vitality threatened by the germs of a speedy decay? Is her mission henceforth to be limited to a suspicious vigilance over the rude and simple faith of her rapidly-dwindling followers, or will she rouse herself to the reacquisition of that social influence which she has lost through long years of listless self-isolation? For ourselves we have long since answered this critical question. We have ever watched the aspirations of the contemporary mind with sympathetic interest; our hearts have beaten in unison with its glowing enthusiasm for the new ideals of universal brotherhood; and we have seen in all its movements the symptoms of a glorious revival of religion. * * * Speaking the language of our age and thinking its thought we have tried to bring it into touch with the teachings of Catholicism, that through such contact their profound mutual affinities might be made evident. We cannot believe that the church will ultimately reject our program as mischievous."