Among the lawyers who practise their profession in New York City it is not surprising that there should be those who are profoundly religious. Lawyers are generally educated and thoughtful men. They read. But it is certainly not common to find one who is a theological scholar, who reads Greek and who studies minutely the sources of the Christian doctrine. Jesus himself encountered lawyers. "A certain lawyer," St. Luke says, "stood up and tempted him." The Jewish theocracy was legalistic, and throughout most of its history Christianity itself has developed Canon Law alongside of Civil Law, requiring trained jurists for its interpretation. The law of God is supposed to be the background upon which human laws are based. And in the Epistle to the Romans the relation of the law to the gospel is a large part of the subject matter. St. Paul himself was a lawyer—until he got converted.
But in his study of the Epistle to the Romans Mr. Brown has risen to a plane far above the legalistic aspect of religion. He has set forth with rare scholarship and skill the vivid human side of the Apostle's experience as a man, his conflict with evil and his conquest through Christ. This could be done only by one who himself has passed through a similar struggle and who has reached the goal of victory. It is a mysticalexperience of the highest order that the author here appreciates and sets forth in these lectures to Friends.
The problem of evil is the fundamental fact of human experience. In the form of pain it is far more universal thatn any other thing that men encounter. As sin, the law in the members, it is realized by all religions. The Apostle's consciousness was aware of it as causing the whole creation to groan and travail in pain together until now. He saw particularly how the Jewish law was not a remedy or means of escape but a provocative and intensifying rule of conduct given to emphasize the need of redemption rather than as a source of healing to the nations. By its very inadequacy men would be driven to accept Christ as the only remedy for sin. They must rise above the flood of evil to the plane of divine grace.
With St. Paul the power of faith is purely a matter of personal experience. He does not attempt philosophically to synthesize evil as a necessary and integral part of Being for the evolution of life and character. Byt he does point out that in giving the law to Moses the divine purpose of pressure, or providing a propaedeutic system, is evident. God drives the world to Himself with the scourge of pain and sin. Mill's famous statement that he would refuse to call any Being good who is not what we mean by good when we apply the word to our fellow-creatures becomes in the light of this plan and method the merest sentimentalism. God's ways are not our ways.
The Apostle saw the world as it was to be seen in his time and place. But his learning, his intensity and his spiritual insight gave him a perception of profound truths which still fascinates the attention of mankind. His earnestness and sincerity are nowhere more apparent than in this letter to the Romans. He wrote through an amanuensis dictating at a high speed in the way that we preachers call "extempore," walking up and down, perhaps pausing to rest a moment at the places Mr. Brown notes as benedictions. It is probable that he spoke to his congregations in exactly the same fashion. And this gives a freshness and reality to his writings that keeps them alive. Mr. Brown's study of the structure of the Epistle is extremely valuable as revealing a psychological process in the development of thought by a speaker. His careful investigation of the words that the theologians have twisted for generations and rendered cryptic is also most illuminating. He has rescued the terms imprisoned by centuries of professional bickering and given them new life and meaning.
The value of Christianity as a world religion is in its power to lift the individual up to the plane of consciousness indicated by the Christ Spirit. To the men of St. Paul's day such an expression as "where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God" had doubtless a very literal significance. This significance in our modern culture is almost lost. It is regarded as Oriental metaphor. But the personal apprehension of the mind of Christ in St. Paul's experience, as Mr. Brown portrays it, goes far toward making real that qualitative knowledge that is the property of great art, great music and great poetry and is the essence of great religion. The story of the gospels and the logos of St. John are doubtless necessary to complete the picture for the modern man, but the Epistle to the Romans is a trumpet blast out of the past proclaiming the birth of an era which in a sense has only just begun.
The institutional absorption of the Christian religion has tended to remove the Christ Spirit from the realm of common life. By doctrine, by sacrament and ceremony the Christ has sometimes been almost lost to the daily human side of existence. His story and its application, so simple in its original lay relationships, has been looked upon as a play to be seen and admired on Sundays and forgotten during the week. When a layman presents us with so able and scholarly as study as Mr. Brown has made of this Epistle one must feel that the value and power of Christ to the modern world will not be lost.
1At the time he wrote this introduction, Herbert Parrish, D.D., was the author of The Mystery of Character (New York: E.S. Gorham, 1917), A New God for America (New York: The Century Co., 1928), What Is There Left to Believe (Sears Publishing Company, Inc., 1931) and an article, "The Break-up of Protestantism," in The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 139, no. 3 (March 1927).