5. Fundamental Fact

Amid the uncertainty, darkness, and vice spreading across the earth, the Messiah appears and lays a foundation of hope, true religion, and religious unity, unknown, unheard of, and unexpected among people. The Jews were united by blood ties and by agreement in a heavy ritual. The Gentiles rallied under every opinion and were grouped, like steel filings around a magnet, under every possible variation of thought concerning their mythology. As long as unity of opinion was regarded as a proper basis for religious union, humanity has been distracted by the multiplicity and variety of opinions. To establish what is called a system of orthodox opinions as the bond of union was, in fact, offering an incentive for new diversities in opinion and for increasing, ad infinitum, opinions, sects, and divisions. And worse than all, it was establishing self-love and pride as religious principles, as fundamental to salvation; or a love regulated by similarity of opinion is only a love of one's own opinion; and all the zeal shown in defending it is just the workings of pride of opinion.

When the Messiah appeared as the founder of a new religion, systems of religion consisting of opinions and speculations about matter and mind, God and nature, virtue and vice, had been adopted, improved, reformed, and discarded time after time. It was generally felt, and eventually universally acknowledged, that there was always something superfluous, something defective, something wrong, something that could be improved in every system of religion and morality. But the grandeur, sublimity, and beauty of the foundation of hope and of ecclesiastical or social union established by the author and founder of Christianity consisted in this: the belief in one fact, and that on the best evidence in the world, is all that is required, as far as faith goes, for salvation. The belief in this one fact and submission to one institution expressing it, is all that Heaven requires for admission into the church. A Christian, as defined not by Dr. Johnson nor any creed-maker, but by one taught from Heaven, is one who believes this one fact, has submitted to one institution, and whose behavior aligns with the morality and virtue of the great Prophet. The one fact is expressed in a single proposition — that Jesus the Nazarene is the Messiah. The evidence on which it is to be believed is the testimony of twelve men, confirmed by prophecy, miracles, and spiritual gifts. The one institution is baptism into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Every such person is a disciple in the fullest sense of the word the moment he has believed this one fact, based on the above evidence, and has submitted to the above-mentioned institution; and whether he believes the five points condemned or the five points approved by the Synod of Dort is not even asked of him; whether he holds any of the views of the Calvinists or Arminians, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, or Quakers is never once asked of such persons for admission into the Christian community called the church. The only reasonable doubt that can arise on these points is whether this one fact, in its nature and necessary results, can suffice for the salvation of the soul, and whether the open profession of it, in the public act of baptism, can be a sufficient recommendation of the person so professing to the confidence and love of the brotherhood. As to the first of these, it is repeatedly asserted, in the clearest language, by the Lord himself and the Apostles Peter, Paul, and John, that whoever believes the testimony that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, may overcome the world, has eternal life, and is, on the truthfulness of God, saved from his sins. This should settle the first point; for the witnesses agree that whoever confesses that Jesus is the Christ and is baptized should be received into the church; and not a single instance can be produced of any person being asked for any other faith for admission in the entire New Testament. The Savior expressly declared to Peter that on this fact, that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, he would build his church; and Paul has expressly declared that "no one can lay any foundation other than that Jesus is the Christ." The point we assumed is proved; and once this is proved, everything necessary for the union of all Christians on a proper basis is established.

It must strike every thoughtful person that a religion requiring much mental abstraction or exquisite refinement of thought, or that calls for the comprehension or even apprehension of refined distinctions and subtle nuances, is a religion not suited to humanity in their present circumstances. To present such a creed as the Westminster Confession, as adopted either by Baptists or Paedobaptists; such a creed as the Episcopalian, or, in fact, any sectarian creed, composed as they all are of propositions deduced by logical inferences and couched in philosophical language, to all those who are fit subjects of Heaven’s salvation—I say, to present such a creed to such people for their examination or adoption shocks all common sense. This harmful approach is what has paganized Christianity. Our sects and parties, our disputes and speculations, our orders and castes, so much resemble anything but Christianity that when we enter a modern synagogue or an ecclesiastical council, we seem to have entered a Jewish Sanhedrin, a Muslim mosque, a pagan temple, or an Egyptian cloister rather than a Christian congregation. Sometimes, indeed, our religious meetings so resemble the Areopagus, the Forum, or the Senate that we almost think we have been transported to Athens or Rome. Even Christian speakers imitate Demosthenes and Cicero. Christian doctrines are made to assume the garb of Egyptian mysteries, and Christian observances take on the pomp and pageantry of pagan ceremonies. Unity of opinion, expressed in subscription to voluminous dogmas imported from Geneva, Westminster, Edinburgh, or Rome, is made the bond of union; and a difference in the tenth or ten-thousandth shade of opinion frequently becomes the actual cause of division or expulsion. The New Testament was not designed to occupy the same place in theological seminaries that the bodies of criminals are condemned to occupy in medical schools—first doomed to the gallows, then to the dissecting knife of the spiritual anatomist. Christianity consists infinitely more in good works than in sound opinions; and while it is a joyful truth that whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, it is equally true that whoever says, 'I know him,' but does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.6