Indian Summer
Turn off the news, sit back, and reflect on your summer vacation. The whole secret of enjoying vacations lies in knowing when to do it. Of course only a tyro would try to enjoy a vacation while he was enduring it. Some unusual friends of ours drove twelve thousand miles in eight weeks with three talented, inquisitive, precocious children, camping as they went. This tour de force of togetherness presumably had the classic quality of Men Against the Sea (though I believe the Bounty’s boat became less crowded as it lost passengers). When these folks can bring themselves to talk about their trip their enjoyment will begin. You know what you had to go through this summer: traffic, heat, expense, gnats, sand, expense, rain, whining children.… You can imagine how unnerved a vacationer could become by expecting to enjoy a day of combat behind the wheel or a night of fatigue on a camp cot designed to give new meaning to the phrase “sacked in.”
No, the time to enjoy vacations is two to three months after they are over. While the sales manager is explaining the new line let your mind glide back to that lake. Your line isn’t snagged in lakeweed, and the one respectable bass that you caught is just nibbling.…
I had anticipated my last vacation with more foreboding than usual: the camp was a thousand miles away and situated in the north woods. You know what civilized man can expect when he flings away centuries of culture and leaves power steering for pre-plumbing primitivism.
But at the end of the impassable road I found a modern camp, a cabin with all the luxuries of civilization, and superlative Christian fellowship.
Now I remember the friends, the fireplace, the northern lights, and the rainbow. Especially the rainbow. It was evening, the rain was over, no skyscrapers cut off the view, no smog dimmed the glory. A vast double bow arched the whole firmament. Mirrored in the lake, it became a perfect orb of light, like the rainbow around the throne. In the stillness I knew a journey to wilderness was wisdom, not mere conformity.
The world of the Wall and the Bomb is still circled by God’s sovereign promise, kept by his longsuffering for his purposes of grace. Turn on the newscast, but don’t forget the rainbow.
Explore Attic And Arctic
Deep gratitude for … the August 31 issue speaking for Christian education.
I want our children to have a vital, constant companionship with Jesus Christ, plus the finest intellectual training available.…
Christians should take up the test tube, the microscope, and each tool available with the confident joy of a child exploring each nook of his own home. Someone may tell the child that a ghost is in the attic, and a foolish child will be denied the joys of attic treasures in spite of his parents’ insistence that no ghost is there.
If we truly fear to learn, we have denied our faith.
Bethesda, Md.
Hardly an issue arrives which does not stimulate and enrich my thought. The Christian education issue did so to an unusual degree, particularly through Traina’s “The Bible in Christian Education,” the lead editorial—“The Crisis in the Church Colleges,” and the excerpted panel discussion, “Christianity in Higher Education”.…
For several years I was dean and instructor in a Bible college. I found there a very fine biblical emphasis and thorough program of Bible study. Most of the students appreciated this and profited by it. But in this group I found very few who had any sense whatever of the value or importance of “secular” learning.… Literature, history, and similar courses were necessary evils, to be avoided as far as possible in favor of the Bible and Bible-related courses.
In Christian liberal arts colleges, on the other hand (at least in those with which I am familiar), there is sometimes a tendency to regard Bible study as a kind of spiritual duty which is nice to do, but which, when necessary, can be dispensed with without too much loss. So, when schedule conflicts arise, the first thing which some students suggest dispensing with is their Bible course (while piously proclaiming their reluctance to do so).
How can Christian young people be brought to realize that it is not a question of biblical or secular knowledge, but of biblical and secular knowledge, both of which are indispensable to a Christian who desires to function effectively and meaningfully in today’s world? This, it seems to me, is a deep-seated problem in motivation.…
Bryan College
Dayton, Tenn. Dean
The timely comments by Dr. John Brobeck (“Christianity in Higher Education”) should be seriously studied by all evangelical Christians. My own experience at three large universities has almost exactly paralleled that of Dr. Brobeck: The evangelical Christian position has virtually no influence in the university community. I think Dr. Brobeck shows exceedingly wise insight into this problem when he so aptly states that if this situation is to be remedied, it must be attempted first by the Christian community.…
It is to be hoped that evangelical Christian leaders in particular will give careful consideration to his suggested solutions and place their shoulders to the wheel.
LERNER B. HINSHAW, M.D.
School of Medicine
University of Oklahoma
Oklahoma City, Okla.
I wish to thank you for the article, “Christ and the Leaderless Legions”.… It is interesting, relevant, biblical, and sound theologically.…
Millington, Md.
Song Of Songs
Thank you very much for the sane and timely article by Robert Laurin on “The Song of Songs and Its Modern Message” (Aug. 3 issue). It seems to me quite timely [in view] … of the recent edition of The Amplified Old Testament. Its translators have taken some lamentable liberty with their personal interpretation of the Song of Solomon. It seems quite incongruous … for the translators to place such an interpretation in the text in such a way as to make it seem the only true and desirable one. As Mr. Laurin has pointed out, the drama of Solomon, the Shulamite maiden, and her country lover is only one of several interpretations held by evangelical scholars.…
Mountain View Baptist Church
Corvallis, Ore.
While I do not take a stand against sex in marriage, I realize that there is another side to the question, which our Lord commanded.
There is a verse in Ecclesiastes which tells man to “err thou always in her [a wife’s] love,” and another which says, “Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes, but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.”
Is there a conspiracy among the Christian magazines—Moody Monthly, Eternity, The Sunday School Times, and CHRISTIANITY TODAY—to present an elastic code of morality? All these magazines have recently glorified sex in marriage, and made it honorable and wholesome.…
As lovers of the Book, I believe that we would … agree that if sex is necessary because of the prevalent fornication, that there must be some restraints; and that marriage limits sex from promiscuity to partnership; from “continually” to continence “for seasons”; from concupiscence to child-bearing; “as being heirs together of the grace of life.” If there were no constraints, how could one keep himself when the other partner is absent, or sick, or otherwise unavailable?…
Berlin Bible Church
Narrowsburg, N.Y.
To Tell A Secret
I appreciated Dr. Harold Lindsell’s Christian-hearted book review of Frank Buchman’s Secret (Aug. 3 issue). He says the “secret” is obscure in the book. I disagree.…
Because of this Lutheran pastor’s message to me as a Penn State freshman, I am now at work in the evangelical wing of the United Presbyterian ministry, digging deep in the Word of God he loved.
North Presbyterian
Pittsburgh, Pa.
To Him It Is Sin
The article on “Christian Depression” (News, Aug. 3 issue) was thought-provoking. Dr. Busby therein refuses to see that the depression of certain students at Moody Bible Institute was caused by “something wrong in their spiritual lives.” Contrariwise, his analysis is that “the truth was that they were often going without adequate sleep, or food, or protection in bad weather.”
Are these really two different matters? Is not refusal to obey God’s natural laws an act of disobedience and therefore a spiritual problem? In fact, is it no longer true that “to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17)?
Christian and Missionary Alliance
Cambridge Springs, Pa.
Karl Barth And The Bible
Regarding the statement of Markus Barth (Eutychus, Aug. 3. issue) that his father “has never said … in his Dogmatics … that the Bible does err”: What about the following, quoted from Vol. I/2, pp. 528f. of the Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1956): “… The prophets and apostles as such, even in their office, … were real, historical men as we are, and … actually guilty of error in their spoken and written word”?
Liverpool, N. Y.
North Of The Border
I must confess that I was a little irked by the statement about the activities of the Baptist General Convention of Oregon-Washington with regard to Baptist Churches in Canada (News, Aug. 3 issue). As a member of the executive board of our convention … let me say that no effort has ever been made … to lead existing churches into our work. Those churches which cooperate with us do so on their own initiative. The churches that have been “planted” are in areas with no Baptist church, and from which a cry for help has come.…
In due time churches from Western Canada will be able to seat messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention as the call of the lost looms higher in importance than relations with other Baptist bodies.…
Northtown Baptist Church
Spokane, Wash.
Knight Of The Faith
Your contributing editor from London, Philip E. Hughes, is to be commended for his rightness and clarity (Current Religious Thought, July 6 issue). He presents the Protestant view of the ecumenical effort currently being made by my Church—the Roman Catholic—as he sees it, without fear or favor.…
In another place (News) you advert to the “new look” of Martin Luther in Roman Catholicism. This to me is one of the most hopeful signs in the current ecumenical movement. Many of us see him now as a veritable “knight of the faith” along with Sören Kierkegaard last century—yes, and with Robert Browning of Hughes’ own London. The difference is, of course, that both the latter rebelled against any and all institutional churches precisely as the Quakers—those truly godly individualists who continue to do great good in their ministry of active good will among us—rebelled in the seventeenth century against the “meeting-houses.” The Church and individual Christianity, however, are alike essential in their differing ways of witness to the fact that the Lord Christ commands all of us.
Athens, Ohio
Concerning Trinity
In reply to the Rev. Frederick Hammond’s letter (Aug. 31 issue) concerning Dr. Hughes’ May 11 “Review of Current Religious Thought,” I wish to state that the “Episcopal clergyman’s” letter was originally printed in the Episcopal Evangel, the official organ of the Episcopal Diocese of Montana, and was reprinted with their permission in Trinity magazine with proper credit afforded the source.
Trinity could hardly be considered as published by a “group of dissidents of St. Mark’s parish” since most of the publishers have never seen St. Mark’s parish.
The staff of the magazine are primarily Episcopalians. All of them are Christians and members in good standing in their particular denominational affiliations. To the best of my knowledge, none of them have any connection with St. Mark’s church, Van Nuys, at this time.
Certainly Trinity has no connection with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, and would not be officially recognized by that diocese. It is not specifically an Episcopal publication, but a Christian publication, published by an interdenominational society [which is] presided over by the Rev. Robert Harvey, vicar of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Ridgecrest, California, and Dean of the Deanery of the Diocese of San Joaquin.…
[This should] correct the confusion concerning CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s supposed error, and also the Rev. Hammond’s misunderstanding of the background of Trinity magazine.
Executive Secretary
Blessed Trinity Society
Van Nuys, Calif.
