SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
QUOTES
FROM ADDRESSES AND ARTICLES BY SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
"If we could only realise that Christ is all, what a power
there would be in our Christianity! Remember that if we get near to Christ we
shall get near to each other. If a number of people are met in a large room,
where the windows look out upon beautiful scenery and everything is an
attraction, you will find some will go to the windows, others will gather round
the book-cases, others round the fireplace, and so on; but if they are invited
there to meet some person of commanding presence and attraction, everything
else is forgotten. If Christ had the place in our creed and heart that He ought
to have, there would be personal loyalty and personal love, and this is just
what He claims."
Nowhere does the Bible enjoin upon the Christian
to become a pilgrim; and, using the word in its spiritual sense, the visit of a
Romanist to Rome, for example, is the very antithesis of a 'pilgrimage.' 'What
!' (our readers will exclaim with indignant surprise) 'Does not the Scripture
tell us we ought to become pilgrims? The answer is a great big NO. The
aim which human religion always sets before its votaries is to gain Divine
favour by efforts to become something that they are not ; the true effort of
the Christian life is to realise and live up to what, by Gods grace, we
are. The Christian is a pilgrim; let him see to it that he lives as a pilgrim."
"Here, then, is the answer to the question, 'What is it about?
The Bible is about Christ. The public facts of His life and death are matters
of evidence, and undisputed; but the hidden facts on which faith depends are
entirely matters of revelation. For example, no one doubts that 'Christ died
for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and the only Scriptures then
in existence were those we call the Old Testament. To disparage them,
therefore, is to undermine faith, for if they be not what Christ said they
were, it is certain that He was not what He declared Himself to be; and, as we
have seen, the Kenosis theories of the critics are here of no avail. The real
question at issue, therefore, is not the authority of the Bible, but the Deity
of Christ, and in defending the Bible "we are contending for our all.
"You know the First Epistle to the Corinthians, with all its wealth of
truth and exhortation, and rebuke and warning. And now the Apostle takes up the
pen to sign it: 'The salutation of me, Paul, with mine own hand. If any man
love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema; let him be accursed.
It is an awful word. I do not think we should use these words first against
those who seem to us to come under them, but use them rather by turning them
like a searchlight upon our own hearts and lives."
"My eye fell upon an
advertisement in The Times to-day. It is headed, ' A religion of common sense,'
There is no religion of common sense, but there are plenty of religions of
uncommon nonsense. There is a. religion of Divine revelation, and this is what
we want."
"The movements I have indicated - and especially the New
Theology, Spiritualism and Christian Science - are but divisions of the great
army which is even now being marshalled and trained for the terrible struggle
of the latter days. What is the distinctive peril of these awfully solemn
times? Atheism has been killed by the growth of an enlightened rationalism, as
has also the blind and stupid infidelity of Hume. And drunkenness, dishonesty
and vice are denounced as earnestly by men of the world as by the Christian.
Our distinctive peril is in none of these, but in a subtle kind of spurious
Christianity - a cult that teaches the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
men, and inculcates a high philanthropy and a pure and charming code of ethics,
and that adopts every Christian truth, excepting only what is vital -
everything except the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and redemption by the
blood of His cross."
Spiritualism, the New Theology, Christian
Science, etc. - all these systems acknowledge God, but all agree in ignoring
sin and Satan, death and judgment to come. And their ultimate aim is to
disparage and dethrone the Lord Jesus Christ. For, as Luther phrased it, Satan
'hath no other business in hand.' Every 'spirit' cult is anti-Christian." - In
Evangelical Christendom.
Why should we not investigate for ourselves these
intensely interesting phenomena? The answer is two-fold:
1st. Because of
the Divine prohibition; and
2nd. Because of warnings derived from the
experience of others. "For those who yield themselves to spirit influence
cannot shake free from that influence at will, and many a Christian life has
been wrecked by frequenting spiritualistic séances." - Article on
Spiritualism in The Association News.
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