Machen looks back

It's been a while since I've posted anything on my hero J. Gresham Machen. So this week I'll be sharing some of my favorite excerpts from his autobiographical essay Christianity in Conflict published in 1932. It's an illuminating essay full of vintage Machen. He wrote it, in part, to answer the question "how it has come about that contrary to the majority of the men of our day I am a believer in the truth of the Bible and an adherent of the redemptive religion which the Bible presents." A large part of the answer to that question was the foundation laid by Machen's parents. Here he pays tribute to his father: a lawyer, lover of books, and faithful elder.

He was a profoundly Christian man, who had read widely and meditated earnestly upon the really great things of our holy Faith. His Christian experience was not of the emotional or pietistical type, but was a quiet stream whose waters ran deep. He did not adopt that "Touch not, taste not, handle not" attitude toward the good things or the wonders of God's world which too often today causes earnest Christian people to consecrate to God only an impoverished man, but in his case true learning and true piety went hand in hand. Every Sunday morning and Sunday night, and on Wednesday night, he was in his place in Church, and a similar faithfulness characterized all his service as an elder in the Presbyterian Church. At that time the Protestant churches had not yet become political lobbies, and Presbyterian elders were chosen not because they were "outstanding men in the community," but because they were men of God. I love to think of that old Presbyterian session in the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church of Baltimore. It is a refreshing memory in these days of ruthless and heartless machinery in the Church. God grant that the memory may some day become actuality again and that the old Christian virtues may be revived!

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity in Conflict