There is, my beloved, extant among us these days a confession of Christ that is general. By general we mean it does not like to go into particulars. And it is in the general that we are so brave and bold in professing not to be ashamed of Christ. Take, to make the test, that upon which our religion rests, the Holy Bible. People respect it as a sacred book; something is missing in a Christian home if it is not there; they reverence it in the general. But when it comes to the particular, how little is it really pondered; how little do men feel bound by its particular statements; how easily are its direct communications set aside when they conflict with their notions or feelings or wishes.
Did God actually create man out of the dust of the ground, or is he the creature of evolution? Is the account of the fall of man into sin to be taken literally, or is it only an allegory, a poetic interpretation, a childish and primitive way to account for sin and its sad consequences? Is there a personal devil, or is the devil only to stand for evil in the abstract? The narrative of Balaam, or Jonah, of the men in the fiery oven,--are they to be received as they read? And when it comes to the New Testament,--how are we to understand the conception of the virgin birth of our Savior? how His glorious ascension? how His descent into hell? how His words of the Sacrament: "Take, eat; this is my body. Take, drink; this is my blood," literally or figuratively, "is" meaning "represents"? Does Baptism work forgiveness of sin? Is it the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, as St. Paul says to Titus, chapter 3? Go, and question among Christ's followers, consult the thousands of books that are flooding the market,--what do they teach? They are ashamed to admit that God created the world in six days of twenty-four hours each; it's unscientific; they blush at the accounts of Balaam's ass and of Jonah's whale. The blood doctrine of the cross, that Christ has redeemed us by His holy, precious blood and by His innocent suffering and death, is repugnant to many. Christ's body and blood in the Sacrament, Baptism the means of a new birth,--they are abashed to acknowledge such teachings. It is the tendency of the age to acknowledge everything in general, and in particular nothing, nothing distinct and definite. People are ashamed of the words of Christ. Why tinker and twist in order not to make the writings say but the one thing they do say? What is this but being ashamed?