By J.H. Garrison
IT IS an epoch in world-history when one appears who offers a new and improved way of life to mankind. If that way be demonstrated by actual experience to be the only true way for man to fulfill his destiny and attain to the highest development which is possible for him, and the only way in which society, government and civilization can be brought to perfection, then the introduction of such a way divides all the centuries into two great divisions--Before and After. Christ's way, having been demonstrated in the judgment of the most capable minds to be such a way, has divided all history into its two recognized divisions of B. C. and A. D.
Such was the unique character of his teaching, of his life, and of the life to which he called his disciples, that after his resurrection, when men began to accept him as their Savior and Lord, the new movement was designated as "The Way." Saul of Tarsus asked and received authority from the high priest "that if he found any that were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem." (Acts 9:2) After Saul had been converted, he refers repeatedly to Christ and his teaching as "the Way." He departed from the synagogue in Corinth because "some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude." (Acts 19:9) At Ephesus, "there arose no small stir concerning the Way," when the number of converts began to interfere with the business of Demetrius, the silversmith, who made the silver shrines of Diana. (Acts 19:23) In his defense of his Jewish brethren at Jerusalem, he tells them that "being zealous for God, even as ye are all this day, I persecuted this Way unto the death." (Acts 22:4) In his defense before Felix, he said: "But this I confess unto thee, that after the Way which they call a sect, so serve I the God of our fathers." (Acts 24:14) Felix is referred to as "having more exact knowledge concerning the Way."
These quotations suffice to show how soon what we now call Christianity was conceived as a new way of life--so unique, so transcendent in its character as to be designated "the Way." Whether Paul's Roman citizenship, which had familiarized him with the great highways built by that empire, led him to choose such a name for the great spiritual highway which Christ had built for the earth's millions to travel upon, or whether the words of Jesus, in which he declared himself "the Way," had come down through the first disciples to Paul, matters not. The thing of chief importance is that in the very beginning of Christianity its most striking characteristic, and one which attracted the attention alike of friends and foes, was that it presented a new method of living; that it was a new life manifesting itself by the new motives which prompted it, the new principles which governed it, and the new goal to which it led.
It would be well, it seems to me, to return to that simple and original conception of Christianity. It would cure many of the ills and errors that hinder the progress of Christianity in our time. Christianity as "the Way" antedates the church, with all its questions of organization and government. It antedates the theological puzzles and problems which have since divided and weakened the church. Especially is it important to note that it antedates all that deadly formalism which conceives of salvation as a matter of belonging to the right church, with the right creed, the right kind of government, the right kind of liturgy, and an unbroken chain of ecclesiastical succession.
In those hale and undegenerate days, Christianity was a Way of life; it was following Christ. It was accepting him as leader, and identifying oneself with him in propagating his teaching, his life, his Way among men. It involved faith in Christ, submission to Christ, sharing the life of Christ, and walking in the Way which he taught and exemplified. That was so simple that a child could understand it, and yet involves all that is vital and fundamental in Christianity. Out of that have come the church and all the agencies associated with it that are doing Christ's work in the world. They are the stream, not the fountain.
The cry, "Back to Christ!" needs a new and more vital interpretation than that which has been given to it by those who raised the slogan. Nothing is needed more than to get " back to Christ," not with the view, however, of undermining the authority of the apostles of Christ, nor the validity of the New Testament writings outside the gospels, but with the view of looking at the great problems of life through his eyes, of feeling the impulse of his supreme personality, of understanding his plans for world-wide conquest and his method of carrying out those plans, and of submitting more loyally to his Way than the church has done in the past.
