THIS is not the first excursion Dr. Maclean has made into territory that has given ample scope to his lively but erratic imagination. In this book, however, he has taken all the courage he had in both hands and boldly proclaimed to the world the views he holds on the Church’s duty to the blessed dead and also to the dead who are not blessed. He begins badly by stressing the alleged discrepancies in the gospel accounts of the resurrection of our Lord. Dr. Maclean must be aware that these alleged discrepancies have been answered long ago in a way that is quite satisfactory to any unbiased mind. But for one who has lost himself amidst the dim light of psychical research one need not wonder that he should have hazy views of the gospel narratives. In fact it would appear that Dr. Maclean in these wanderings in the mysterious land into which he has entered finds the Bible more of a handicap than a help in his explorations. At least this is the impression his words leave on us when he says: “There are those who always appeal to the Bible, as if it were the last entrenchment of obscurantism, the foe of all change and progress. If a truth be not found in the Bible, then it cannot be true . . . . We realise that the invisible world which enfolds us is a realm of wonder and of mystery. A God whose last word was spoken nineteen centuries ago would be an exhausted and an outworn God.”
* “Death Cannot Sever,” by Norman Maclean, Minister of St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Edinburgh. Hodder & Stoughton, London.
Dr. Maclean’s inference in this last sentence is highly objectionable; if God willed to speak nineteen centuries ago as He certainly has done on some of the most vital matters that ever affected the destiny of man have we or has he a right to say that this God is “an exhausted and an outworn God?” Besides, we mean to pull Dr. Maclean up as he flies away on the wings of his imagination and lets drop from his lips such words as these: “If a truth be not found in the Bible, then it cannot be true.” That is a mis-statement of the matter. Dr. Maclean must know that the Bible has a great deal to say about the dead and if it is silent on certain points where Dr. Maclean is eloquent then all the worse for Dr. Maclean. While we write thus we do not wish to leave the impression on our readers’ minds that Dr. Maclean has thrown the Bible overboard altogether. This is not so; for he makes his appeal to the Bible as setting before us many mysterious messages from angel messengers to men but even here he seems to have lost his way, e.g., in referring to Paul’s conversion he says that Paul was “endowed with the faculties of clairvoyance and clairaudience.” He explains these two terms as follows: “Clairvoyance is the faculty by which persons possessing it see spirits in their tenuous bodies though they are invisible to ordinary sight; and clairaudience is the faculty by which the spirits’ voices are heard though themselves may not be seen.” If this is the new light in which Dr. Maclean glories we pray that it may never cast its dim shadows on the Damascus road at the spot where a light above the noonday glory of the Syrian sun shone well nigh two thousand years ago and brought a soul from the dim obscurities into the marvellous light of the Kingdom of God’s dear Son. We further object to Dr. Maclean’s method of appealing to Scripture as in certain instances it is useless for the purpose he quotes it. Take for instance (1) “Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. ii. 9-11). Dr. Maclean’s comment on these words is: “There it is, emblazoned in language of surpassing exaltation—the fellowship that bridges the chasm between time and eternity.” The hosts in heaven and the redeemed on earth join in adoration of their Lord—”The living and the dead are united in a common adoration.” But what has this to do with the subject that has captured Dr. Maclean’s mind and imagination and which is carrying him he knows not whither? Absolutely nothing as far as we can see.
(2) The fallen tree is a stumbling block to Dr. Maclean and this is the way he gets rid of it: “As the tree falls so shall it be” they quote with unction, consigning their fellows to the flames. The patience of these gentle Christians with the torture of other people is one of the marvels of the human heart. Think of a sated epicurean being quoted as a decisive factor in the destiny of Christian souls! There is no analogy between trees and souls. And, if there were, it is not true to say that the tree lies forever as it falls. Other forces are straightly brought to bear on it. The forester clears it away, the sawmill cuts it into boards; and the table at which I now write may be the tree thrown down by the winter gales of long ago. And even, if left to itself, the tree does not lie very long; for it crumbles into dust and becomes grass and verdure again.
We presume Dr. Maclean never saw any analogy between the cutting down of a tree and the cutting off of a soul yet we read: “Cut it down why cumbereth it the ground,” etc. From one with Dr. Maclean’s outlook we need not wonder that the author of Ecclesiastes is a “sated Epicurean” but between the Epicureans and the writer of Ecclesiastes there is a world of difference.
(3) Dr. Maclean cannot accept the doctrine that the souls of believers at death are made perfect in holiness and immediately pass into glory. “It is no flight of the imagination to say,” he writes, “that the living and the dead are so inextricably knit together that the felicity of the latter is dependent on the former. Without us they cannot be made perfect.” Dr. Maclean must know from his classical training that he is playing on the word perfect and giving it a meaning different from that which it has in the well known passage in Hebrews. Dr. Maclean seems to believe in the doctrine that our Lord went to hell to preach to the lost; his language, at any rate, decidedly points in that direction. This is how he writes on the subject: “And because the foes of all mention of the dead before God are forever quoting the Bible, wresting it to their own purpose, their attention should be drawn to that obscure passage which tells how Jesus descended to Hades and there preached to the spirits in prison. In the early days the Church made a great deal of that passage . . . . The words throb with romance and sparkle with vision. The noble of the pagan world heard from the lips of Jesus the glad tidings of the love of God, and they set forth on pilgrimage heavenward. The early Christian Church did not believe that man was in death stripped bare of his freedom of will and fixed immutably forever, in woe or bliss. Otherwise there would have been no meaning in the story of Christ preaching to the spirits in prison.” If this is not the doctrine of the Larger Hope then we do not know what it is. It is of little or no consequence to us what the early Christian Church believed if their beliefs are contrary to Scripture. There were many errors which crept into the Church after the times of the Apostles and these are not part of the accepted faith of the Church. But as our allotted space is now exhausted we must reserve for another issue a criticism of Dr. Maclean’s views on prayers for the dead. He wields a fluent pen, and he clothes his subject in a fascinating Celtic glamour but he is given to build heavy superstructures on mere sentiment but sentiment which will make a tremendous appeal to many. All these qualities make his book one of the most dangerous that has emanated from a Church of Scotland minister since the days of Robinson of Kilmun who for his heretical opinions was deposed from the ministry. We have been at pains to quote Dr. Maclean at considerable length, not that we wish our readers to drink of these unwholesome waters, but that they may have evidence from his own words as to what his teaching really is. Surely the Church of Scotland will not allow the teaching of this book to go unchallenged.