Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries — John Shaqi
Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th CenturiesJones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Religion
Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries
Jones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Mysticism; Reformers
This religious and saving Faith, through which the soul discovers God
and makes the supreme life-adjustment to Him, is profoundly moral and,
in the best sense of the word, rational. It does not begin with an
assumption, blind or otherwise, as to Christ's metaphysical nature, it
does not depend upon the adoption of systematically formulated
doctrines; it becomes operative through the discovery of a personal
Life, historically lived--and continued through the centuries as a
transforming Spirit--rich enough in its experience to exhibit the
infinite significance of life, inwardly deep enough in its spiritual
resources to reveal the character of God, and strong enough in
sympathy, in tenderness, in patience, and in self-giving love to beget
forever trust and confidence and love on the part of all who thus find
Him.
The God whom we learn to know in Christ--the God historically
revealed--is no vague first Cause, no abstract Reality, no all-negating
Absolute. He is a concrete Person, whose traits of character are
intensely moral and spiritual. His will is no fateful swing of
mechanical law; it is a morally good will which works patiently and
forever toward a harmonized world, a Kingdom of God. The central trait
of His character is Love. He does not become Father, He is not
reconciled to us by persuasive offerings and sacrifices. He is
inherently and by essential disposition Father and the God of all
Grace. He is not remote and absentee--making a world "in the
beginning," and leaving it to run by law, or only occasionally
interrupting its normal processes--He is immanent Spirit, working
always, the God of beauty and organizing purpose. He {xlv} is Life and
Light and Truth, an Immanuel God who can and does show Himself in a
personal Incarnation, and so exhibits the course and goal of the race.
The way of Faith is a way to God, and the religion of this type is as
properly _a first-hand religion_ as that of any other type.
I have, of course, by no means exhausted the types of mature religion.
There are other ways of approach to God, other roads by which the soul
finds the way home--"On the East three gates; on the North three gates;
on the South three gates; and on the West three gates"--and they will
continue to be sacred ways--_viae sacrae_--for those who travel them
and thus find their heart's desire. What we should learn from this
brief study is that religion is too rich and complex an experience to
be squeezed down to some one isolated aspect of life or of
consciousness. There are many ways to God and any way that actually
brings the soul to Him is a good way, but the best way is that one
which produces upon the imperfect personal life the profoundest saving
effects, the most dynamic moral reinforcement, and which brings into
sway over the will the goal of life most adequate for men like us in a
social world like ours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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