Life Indeed by J. Russell Howden
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Page 5 |
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Preface
All life has two sides, the inner and the outer, the theoretical and the practical. And this is true of the life of Christian discipleship as well as of every other form of life. There is the inner side which is creed, and the outer, which is experience. Unfortunately, human nature is prone to divorce the one from the other, and to set them off against one another as opposing sides.
Nothing is more disgusting than creed divorced from conduct, profession without reality. And, because this is so, many Christians are inclined to decry all theory or doctrine of Christianity. They emphasize experience to the exclusion of doctrine. Their attitude is very much the attitude enshrined in Pope’s famous couplet:
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For forms of faith let senseless bigots fight, He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right. |
But mere empiricism is apt to be dangerous in discipleship as in other things. It is not only that we have had by God’s grace some experience of His love, we must also seek to set that experience in relationship with His Word if we are to avoid what has often turned to presumptuous extravagance on the one hand or to despair on the other.
