THE CHURCH AS A UNIVERSAL REFORM SOCIETY:
THE SOCIAL VISION OF ASA MAHAN
by
James E. Hamilton
This 25th annual meeting of the Wesleyan Theological
society is an occasion of not just one but several celebrations. Our very meeting on the
Asbury College campus this year is a part of the College's centennial celebration. On
Saturday morning we shall celebrate the centennial of William Booth's In Darkest
England and the Way Out. This morning we celebrate the thought of a man who is also
involved in these other celebrations. Asa Mahan died just 100 years ago this year. The
name of Asa Mahan immediately suggests vital concerns at the heart of the holiness
heritage in America and England. Through his preaching and his expository, polemical and
devotional writings Mahan contributed to the interdenominational impact of holiness
theology and experience and helped to lay the foundations for the kind of interests that
led to the establishing of the Wesleyan Theological Society. Oberlin College, over which
Mahan presided during its first fifteen years, was the model for many Christian schools,
Asbury College among them. Don Dayton has reminded us in Discovering an Evangelical
Heritage that these schools were often founded to be little Oberlins.1
There are other connections as well. John Wesley Hughes,
Asbury's first president, taught Scottish Common Sense Philosophy, the same tradition
which Mahan so energetically propagated at Oberlin and throughout his life. Mahan took
great interest in the Salvation Army, beginning with his move to England in 1874. He
frequently included notices of Army activities in the pages of Divine Life and
often remarked that if he were a younger man he would be a Salvationist. Robert Sandall
writes in The History of the Salvation Army that "the importance attached . .
. to the teaching of holiness was emphasized by the holding of a conference in the
Fieldgate Hall (White Chapel) in December, 1876, at which the Rev. Asa Mahan, D.D.holiness
teacher and author of Out of Darkness Into Light had been the principal
speaker."2 Mahan in fact received a Salvation Army burial with a personal
representative of General Booth in attendance.
The holiness movement, indeed American Christianity, has
produced few people like Asa Mahan. In the course of writing our collaborative biography
on Mahan, Edward Madden remarked to me that doing the biography of Asa Mahan was like
writing the history of the nineteenth century. Consider: Perry Miller argues that
revivalism was the most universal and influential factor in American experience between
1800 and the Civil War3 and Mahan was a lifelong, ardent and effective revivalist as well
as president of the most dynamic institutional center of revival during that period,
Oberlin College. Again, Sydney Ahlstrom calls Scottish Common Sense Philosophy the
official metaphysic of America during these years,4 and Mahan was one of the clearest,
most original thinkers and one of the most widely published of American philosophers in
this tradition. This was the heyday of the Christian liberal arts college and the old time
college president, and Mahan presided over Oberlin and over Adrian during their formative
years. In 1840, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal that never in the history of the
world had the doctrine of reform had such scope as at that hour,5 and Asa Mahan was at
that very time the chief advocate for reform at the most powerful reform institution in
the young republic. It was a time of political experimentation, and Mahan lent his
influence to the founding of the Liberty, Free Soil and Republican parties and then ran
for United States House of Representatives in 1872 on the Liberal Republican-Democratic
ticket of Greely and Brown.
Much of 19th century history may be interpreted in terms
of its relation to the Civil War. As an abolitionist Mahan was a part of the principal
movement that precipitated the war; he was a prominent amateur military strategist during
the war, on occasion discussing strategy in Washington with political and military
authorities, including President Lincoln. After the war, he ran for public office on a
ticket and platform designed to restore harmony and good will between the North and the
South.
In terms of Christianity, the century brought
unprecedented worldwide missionary outreach as well as intense concern with deepening the
inner life. Mahan was a lifelong promoter of foreign missions, spent his latter years
actively preaching and writing in Great Britain and regularly sent Divine Life to
missionaries throughout the world free of charge. His inspirational and formative
influence in the American Holiness and British Higher Life movements is well known to
members of this society.
This review exhausts neither the significant movements
of nineteenth century America nor Asa Mahan's many involvements. It does remind us,
however, that Mahan was one whose mind and heart brought Biblical Christianity into
creative interplay with the dominant conceptual and motivational influences of his era
Samuel Dresner writes of Abraham Joshua Heschel that in him two worlds came together:
"the eternal and the mundane present, heaven and earth."6 So with Mahan, reason
and faith, spirit and matter, faith and works, love for God and love for humankind, the
eternal and the mundane present, came together. His life affirmed the reality of the
Incarnation, salvation at work in history. In some respects a unique and solitary figure,
Asa Mahan yet represents those unsung heroes who for nearly a century held back the tide
of secularism sweeping the West, who put the Enlightenment at the service of the Cross and
who stirred the Church to such fruitful endeavors in obedience to Christ that not a few
were persuaded that the millennium was at hand.
Mahan himself firmly believed that we celebrate the
lives of great people appropriately only when we attend to their spirit and principles in
order to receive help in finding truth and in living holy lives. We should never attempt
merely to copy their thoughts or actions. In Mahan's writings on reform he reveals the
reasons behind his involvement in the great issues of his day. We find there also
his vision of society, of reform and, most importantly, of the church as a universal
reform society, a vision that he sought to impart to his students, to the Church and to
the world. Our purpose in this paper is to celebrate the life of Asa Mahan by giving
attention, first, to his view of reform and, second, to his view of the church as a
universal reform society.
REFORM
Mahan's discussion of reform is divided into three
components. There is the object of reform, the spirit of reform and the form
by which various reforms are accomplished. The object of reform is quite simply to correct
and to perfect the existing social order. A fleshing out of Mahan's position will reveal
him to be in differing senses conservative, progressive and radical.
First he is conservative in the straightforward
non-ideological sense of accepting certain metaphysical principles as basic and
unalterable and as thus constituting the foundation of moral obligation and of natural
rights. Among these is our social nature. "From the immutable laws of our nature we
are social beings,"7 writes Mahan. It follows that some types or forms of
relationship are natural, such as family or polis. Mahan thus locates himself in
the tradition of Aristotle, who held that basic human associations are rooted in nature,
rather than in those traditions which look upon all human associations as conventional and
therefore as subject to dissolution. The true reformer, Mahan says, believes that
"nature under the pressure of its own wants, and the guidance of inspiration, has
generated the institutions that ought to exist."8 Here we see the metaphysical
underpinnings of a natural law ethic applied to social institutions. Mahan's principle is
that if a given form of relationship is genuinely natural for human beings, then it is not
to be tampered with but must be respected. This is the sense in which Mahan may be called
conservative.
It does not follow from Mahan's view that every
institution or usage that arises in society has a legitimate claim to be grounded in human
nature. He argues that only institutions which "have their basis in the permanent
elements of universal humanity," and not those which are grounded in merely
accidental circumstances or local traditions, have a valid claim to perpetuity. Slavery,
for example, is based upon accidental circumstances such as skin color, parentage and
place of birth, while at the same time it violates "the eternal and immutable
distinction between a person and a thing." Slavery has not been
generated by nature and providence but has been created by the arbitrary and illegitimate
imposition of power by some men over others. Hence, slavery has no right to exist and
deserves to be totally exterminated.9
We must take care at this point or we shall miss the
full significance of the sense in which Mahan is conservative. The object of the reformer
is to correct abuses. The reformer, he writes, must then distinguish between
"the legitimate uses and abuses of the legitimate institutions of
society" and must condemn "no institution or usage on account of its abuse"
nor seek "the destruction of what ought to be."10 The master-slave relation, for
example, is an abuse of the legitimate relation between a ruler and subject. "I will
lay this down as a proposition, that, in all cases of appropriate authority, the relation
of ruler and subject, when appropriately exercised, dignifies and exalts both, and that is
a universal law which knows no exceptions."11 Slavery is an institutionalized abuse,
in Mahan's view, of the legitimate ruler-subject relation, in this case that of a master
and servant. Similarly, domestic tyranny is reprehensible abuse of the marriage
relationship. Neither slavery nor domestic tyranny are to be tolerated for a moment, but
the master-servant and husband-wife relationships are to be retained.
Underlying Mahan's position here is his conviction that
neither hierarchy nor authority is intrinsically hostile to human dignity, equality or
freedom. On the contrary, hierarchy freely respected and submission freely given actually
enhance human relationships. He writes, "Whenever lawful authority exists, and, for
the very end for which it ought to be exercised, it exalts and tends to the highest
conceivable freedom."12
Clearly, Mahan's careful distinguishing between
intolerable abuses and legitimate uses of legitimate institutions which ought not to be
destroyed is evidence of a conservative principle at work.
Second, if Mahan is conservative in the sense of
accepting the general contours of the existing order, he is progressive in the
sense of being forward, rather than backward, looking. His most harsh words seem always
directed toward those who wish to reform backwards, who always see the golden age in the
past and who believe that the fathers were wise and wisdom died with them. The great
conflict as he sees it is between reactionaries, whom he calls "stand-stillers"
and progressives, whom he dubs "the advancers." Stand-stillers support
institutions and usages simply because they exist. Advancers are concerned with seeing to
it that such institutions "conform to and find their basis in the permanent laws,
rights and interests of humanity." The hallmark of stand-stillers is appeal to
authority, to what has already been said or done. The hallmark of advancers is free
independent thought. Independent thought is always essentially forward looking even when
it is drawing upon the past for enlightenment. In the nature of the case it must be so
because the human mind is finite. We never at one point have all knowledge. Our minds grow
in thinking through the problems and issues and needs of changing conditions. Mahan is
decidedly an advancer, progressive in this sense. He aligns himself with Dr. Thomas Arnold
of England who held that conservatism of the stand-stiller variety is far worse than a
fondness for despotism and is in fact the enemy of all good. Mahan is ready to move
forward with the advancers "urging on the corrections of existing abuses . . .
whether newborn, or hoary with the frosts of sixty centuries . . . leaving the
stand-stillers 'standing still with all their might.' "13
Third, Mahan is radical in his view that
the reformer's duty is not only to reform and correct, but also to perfect the
order of things14 which nature and divine providence together have generated. A true
reformer aims at "the correction of existing abuses and the conformity of all
institutions, domestic, civil and ecclesiastical...."15 But what is the ideal or goal
of this correction process? Mahan has several answers, which he casts in terms of
conformity. "To the fundamental ideas of universal reason."16 "To the
pattern shown on the mount."17 "To the real laws of our existence and
relations."18 "To the laws of our being, physical and mental, as seen by the eye
of God himself.'''19 "To the laws of our being as far as they are known to the
mind."20
It is Mahan's use of the word "perfect" in
connection with these phrases that revealed his radicalness. Notice, then, the nature
of the perfection he espouses. First, it is perfect conformity "to the real laws of
our existence and relations."21 Mahan holds, as we have seen, that human beings share
"a common nature, and a common destiny, and consequently common interests, rights and
responsibilities."22 Human rights are not properly vindicated on the basis of
accidents but "upon the permanent and changeless laws of human nature itself, upon
the elements common to all individuals of the race,"23 such as, for example,
rationality and choice. These fundamental elements of moral agency are inherent in human
nature. Rationality requires independent thought. Choice requires freedom to live in
accord with one's conscience. We are also social beings requiring relationships with
others like ourselves. These requirements of our natures (i.e., independence of thought,
freedom of conscience and social relationships) are not conflicting but are complementary.
Society is the best context for the development of rational free people, while rationality
and freedom are indispensable for social relationship. Consequently, the perfect situation
envisaged by Mahan is a social context in which scope for freedom of thought and action is
maximized for all.
Again, this perfection calls for conformity to the
"pattern shown on the Mount,"24 a reference to the moral principles revealed on
Mount Sinai. This pattern is not something alien to our natures, as free, rational, social
beings. It is not a formal scheme to be imposed on human beings like a straight jacket. It
is a pattern largely of principles to be rationally identified and responsibly applied in
all of the varying relationships and circumstances of life. In this case also, perfection
must be seen not in terms of an ideal social form but in terms of human beings in the
varied relations of the existing social order living together freely and in righteousness
and love. Mahan's conception is not naively utopian, although his standard is high.
Mahan has a clear view of human moral depravity.
However, the only way to lower his sights would be to argue that we are not free, that we
are not obligated to live together in love and justice, or that the grace of Christ is not
equal to these things. None of these would he accept.
Mahan speaks of conformity to the laws of our being
"as seen by the eye of God himself"25 This later phrase emphasizes the need to
respect human nature as it really is. One is reminded of Thomas Aquinas' view that the
truth of things consists in their correspondence to God's ideas of them. In Mahan's
wording, God knows things as they are not as they are not. Again, he speaks of conformity
"to the ideas of universal reason."26 This phrase speaks of our capacity to
understand things as they are through rational insights. The word "universal"
indicates Mahan's belief that objective insight into fundamental principles is available
to all beings with reason, so that we are not encased in subjectivity. Moral principles
are universal in the sense that they are recognizable as obligatory by rational creatures
as such.
Finally, Mahan asserts that we must conform "to the
laws of our being as far as they are known to mind."27 This indicates Mahan's
awareness that we are finite, that our perceptions are limited and that the quest for
further knowledge goes on. "Perfect" in this case means conformity to the laws
of our being according to the degree of insight that diligent pursuit of truth is able to
attain.
An image of Mahan as something of a progressive radical
conservative emerges here. Yet he is clearly not revolutionary. He applies the standard of
perfection, but he applies it to the existing order. This does not mean that every
institution is justified simply because it exists. Some standing institutions such as
slavery need to be eliminated. The point is that needed corrections may be accomplished
piecemeal. Mahan does not view society as such an organic system that the whole must be
destroyed when some of the parts become corrupt. The revolutionary sees society as
an interdependent system whose inherent evil generates the problems that need correction.
The reformer sees society as an order of coordinated parts; radical change at one
point need not destroy the whole.28 Slavery, for example, may be abolished without
destroying family, church, or civil government. Rather, radical change accomplished
through reform often brings increased health and better functioning of the whole.
Revolutionaries often oppose reform precisely because reform may better the existing
system or order rather than destroying and replacing it.
We turn now from the object of reform to the closely
related topic of the spirit of reform. This is unquestionably the area of supreme interest
and concern for Mahan. We shall attend first to the meaning of this term and then to its
importance. "The true spirit of reform," writes Mahan, "is this: steady
conformity to the laws of our being as far as they are known to the mind, together with
the most earnest inquiry after the truth on all subjects, for the purpose of rendering
such conformity, when the truth has been discovered."29 Again he says, it is the
pursuit of knowledge "for the purpose of understanding, and living in sacred
conformity to the hallowed principles of 'righteousness, and judgment, and equity: yea,
every good path.'" 30 Once again, "It is a universal spirit, having an equal and
sacred respect for duty, and for all the true interests of humanity, according to their
intrinsic and relative importance."31
There are several things to be noticed about Mahan's
definition. First, the spirit of reform is a matter of intention. It is the intention to
discover truth in order to do what is right. This simple intention must be given a
controlling influence in one's life or one is not a true reformer. The mark of a reformer
is not to be found in the consequences produced but in the purpose or intention. Not even
the intention to produce consequences as such distinguishes a reformer's supreme goal.
Mahan is a deontologist rather than a teleologist in ethics. He strongly criticized his
colleague at Oberlin, Charles Finney, for making the intention to produce happiness the
supreme moral norm.32
The crucial thing in morals, claims Mahan, is a right
relation between intention and moral principle. It is not that results are irrelevant to
the moral life or that human wellbeing and happiness are not to be valued. Results are
relevant and wellbeing and happiness are important. But there are other considerations
besides results in view of which human consciousness affirms moral obligation. For
example, we ought to be grateful to benefactors and to respect human dignity and moral
character no matter what consequences might come. However, when we do what is right
because it is right there are three reasons for expecting good consequences to follow, at
least in terms of happiness. First, human reason requires it. Mahan follows Kant here in
holding that moral uprightness is a condition of happiness and that the morally upright
ought in fact to be made happy. These things are a requirement of practical reason.
Second, we learn from experience that this usually happens. Third, the Bible teaches that
God has connected holiness and happiness together. Reason, experience and revelation thus
concur in supporting the expectation that obeying moral principle will lead to good
consequences.
Throughout his discussion of reform Mahan consistently
gives priority to right intention and speaks only secondarily of consequences such as
happiness. He does not appeal to enlightened self-interest or to general social utility,
or to material or spiritual benefit as the basis for reform. Nor does he appeal to the
value of preserving the status quo. Human dignity is to be respected, human
wellbeing valued, and human rights and interests secured because these things are right.
A second thing to be noticed about Mahan's definition of
the spirit of reform is the order or relation between truth and right. First the truth and
then the right. One must first understand human nature and then one will be able to
recognize moral obligation, to respect human dignity and human rights and to value human
wellbeing. We must remind ourselves that this orientation is possible to Mahan only
because human beings have an identifiable nature, an essence so to speak, that does not
change and that ought not to be tampered with or violated.
This position locates Mahan within that stream of
philosophy beginning with Parmenides and including such figures as Plato, Aristotle,
Augustine and Aquinas, figures who give primacy to being over becoming. It is consistent
also with creation theology, the view that man is made in the image of God, thus with a
specific nature. On the other hand, Mahan is to be distinguished at this point from the
stream of philosophy represented by Heraclitus, Hume, Hegel, and Dewey, who hold that
reality, including so-called human reality is always changing so that there is no
identifiable permanent nature of anything. For these latter thinkers morality is a matter
of directing change toward goals subjectively chosen. There can be no question of reform
which aims at conformity to the nature of things.
It is difficult to do justice to Mahan's view of the
importance of the spirit of reform. The notion of seeking the truth in order to do what is
right is perhaps the chief integrating insight for understanding Mahan's life and thought.
To give this intention sovereign sway in one's life is to fulfill human destiny in the
only way compatible with human dignity. Scope for living out this intention is a central
human need. Freedom from impediment in living it out is a basic human right. Caring for
one another's needs and rights in this area is a fundamental obligation. The great concern
of the reformer, then, must be to cultivate this spirit personally, to propagate it in
others, and to perfect its social contexts by removing all hindrances to its free
expression. The evils which the reformer will seek to correct are above all those which
impede freedom of thought in pursuing truth and freedom of action in doing what one is
genuinely convinced is right.
Two considerations especially highlight Mahan's view of
the importance of the spirit of reform. First, for reform to occur, evil must be seen to
be evil and must be corrected because it is evil. But wrong or evil are always identified
as violations or departures from what is right or good. What is right or good in turn is
intimately related to the truth of things, things such as our inherent nature and
relations. But to perceive truth and hence the right and the good depends in turn upon the
state of mind or intention in which truth is sought, or upon what Mahan calls the
"spirit of reform." He writes as follows:
This is a spirit which ought to pervade all minds on all
subjects. In this attitude only, is the mind prepared to receive the truth on any subject,
or to be benefited by it when received. Truth itself, when received without evidence, or
any other than the spirit of honest, earnest inquiry, is not truth to the mind which thus
embraces it. It may have upon that mind all the baleful influence of the most pernicious
error.33
Mahan acknowledges that his view is paradoxical. Yet he
holds his ground. Someone may happen to have a correct opinion or belief and yet
never see wherein its real truth lies. When truth is thus obscured, right and wrong are
perceived only with difficulty. The object of reform is thus undercut because removal of
evil depends upon the conviction that the evil in question is in fact an evil which
demands correction. In addition, the moral character of the reformer is undermined. Mahan
writes,
It is by no means certain, that he is the best man,
whose intellect, perchance, embraces the most truth and the least error. The foundation of
moral character, lies deeper down, in the spirit with which truth is sought and embraced,
and error rejected. I had much rather err with an honest inquirer, than to be in the right
with the bigot, who neither embraces truth nor rejects error, out of respect to what is
intrinsic in the nature of either the one or the other.34
This, of course, does not imply that Mahan had a low
regard for truth or that he esteemed the pursuit of truth more highly than the attainment
of truth. Rather, he esteemed the pursuit crucial because he regarded the recognition of
truth and of right as dependent upon it.
The second consideration that highlights the importance
of the spirit of reform is Mahan's insistence that this spirit must be generated m the
public mind if human rights are to be respected, human interests valued and the work of
reform to go forward. "The fundamental aim of reformers," he says, "should
be, to generate in the public mind the true spirit of reform, and then to give that spirit
a right direction."35 The first concern of the reformer, then, is to bring the spirit
of the age into alignment with the spirit of reform. This inculcation of the spirit of
reform he calls "the most desirable of all reforms."36 The spirit of reform is
far more crucial than the form which any given reform effort may assume. Thus, the true
reformer will seek "to generate in the public mind the true spirit of reform, rather
than any particular form.... The form which they judge to be best will not be undervalued.
But the spirit . . . [they will value] far more highly."37 The spirit of reform is a
beautiful spirit commending itself to the public conscience. Without it reform efforts
generate a host of evils such as partiality, intolerance, denunciation, destruction and
anarchy. Under the influence of this spirit, however, "communities would in fact be
resolved into societies of universal inquiry."38 Here we come the closest, perhaps,
to Mahan's vision of a perfect social order. Each institution within that order would be,
in whatever ways were most appropriate to its specific nature and role, a society of
inquiry. In other words, the spirit of reform would pervade all spheres of human
relationships. Then, he says, "Truth would spring out of the earth, and righteousness
would look down from heaven."39
We have examined Mahan's view of the object and spirit
of reform. We turn now to the question of form. Surprisingly, Mahan has little to say on
this subject. He provides no precise definition and the larger part of his discussion is
given to warning against the dangers of too much emphasis on form. There are, however,
scattered remarks on this subject which will enable us to piece together a coherent notion
of his thinking.
Form seems to pertain to the type of action called for
when a moral principle is brought to bear on some evil that needs correction. Thus, for
example, the temperance movement called for total abstinence from all that intoxicates,
and the antislavery movement for immediate abolition of slavery. Neither of these reform
movements assumed these particular forms at all times. Mahan points out that the
temperance movement first proposed moderate use of intoxicants and then total abstinence
from ardent spirits only. Similarly, Clarkson and Wilberforce in England at first urged
gradual emancipation, later condemning this view. What we may learn from these examples,
says Mahan, is that "the form which any reform generated by the spirit of reform will
assume at any particular time will depend on the light possessed by the mind at different
stages of its research after truth."40 It follows that the form may be in fact wrong
when the spirit is right. This, argues Mahan, is of minor importance as long as a person
is living in steady conformity to all light and earnestly searching for more. On the other
hand, the form may be right and the spirit wrong. This is a disaster resulting from
valuing the form more than the spirit of reform. Finally, a reformer must never think that
because he opposes a genuine evil that he is therefore entirely right in the measures of
correction he proposes. Mahan points out that "[the reformer's] own system may need
correction as much as the one he seeks to correct."41
The crucial thing about form for Mahan is that it must
involve the application of moral principle. There are three things of significance here.
First, there are specific departments of reform, as Mahan calls them, each resting on its
own peculiar and separate principle. For example, the antislavery reform has its basis,
"on this one principle, the intrinsic wickedness and injustice, the horrid warfare
upon the dearest rights, hopes, and interest of humanity of confounding a person with a
thing."42 The temperance movement rests on the principle that alcohol is a poison and
its use as a beverage is of destructive tendency. Physiological reform is based on the
principle "that strict conformity to the laws of life and health, in respect to food,
drink, dress, etc., is necessary to the highest interest of humanity."43
Second, while branches of reform are based upon specific
principles, all reforms, taken together, are based on a single principle. "Whatever
is ascertained to be contrary to the rights, and destructive to the true interests of
humanity, ought to be corrected."44 This one principle gives unity to all genuine
reform movements. Mahan writes, "Reform is manifold, and yet it is one. E pluribus
unum. It is like many streams issuing from one common fountain, flowing on in
different channels, yet ultimately running into one and terminating their course in the
same ocean of universal good."45
It follows from this unity, thirdly, that selective
support of favored reforms is not an option. "No man is a reformer from principle, in
any one branch of reform, who is not, in spirit, and from principle, a universal
reformer."46 In Mahan's view, evangelism, benevolent societies for relief of the poor
and needy, foreign missions and reform could and in fact must derive from the same basic
principle. Mahan is unsparingly consistent in applying this principle, but seems
particularly exercised over supporters of foreign missions who are willing to fight sin
and evil abroad but refuse to take a stand against the massive oppression of slavery at
home. The cause of reform, he says, suffers more from persons who are alive to one or two
evils that need correction but are dead to all others. "than from all its enemies
together."47
THE CHURCH AS A UNIVERSAL REFORM SOCIETY
Asa Mahan was in his 90th year when he died on April 4,
1889. After exclamations of gratitude and praise to his Savior, his final words were those
of intercessory prayer for the Church of Christ. C. G. Moore reports in Divine Life
that "he prayed that God would baptize it [i.e., the church] with power, and send
forth tens of thousands to the uttermost parts of the earth with the message of
salvation."48 Mahan thus died as he had lived. For three quarters of a century he had
had a love-affair with the church. His first publication was about the church. His
experience of sanctification culminated a decade-long search for the secret of leading the
flock of God from infancy to maturity in Christ. In his preface to The True Believer
(1857), using the third person, he writes these words about himself, and his devotion to
the church: "Zion is the chosen dwelling place of his heart. He has no interests, nor
plans, which are not fully identified with her purification, blessedness, and enlargement.
Never may he be permitted to write a single line for the public eye, or ear, for any other
end."49
Mahan's commitment to reform is illuminated from this
perspective. The church is God's engine for reform in the world. The Bible, he says,
divides the moral elements of this world into two separate and conflicting kingdoms, the
Kingdom of Light, characterized by love, and the Kingdom of Darkness, characterized by
selfishness. Each seeks total dominion, and destruction of the other. "The Church,
which comprehends all the truly holy on earth, is the Kingdom of Light and Love."50
Scripture uses the term "world" to identify the Kingdom of Selfishness. The
church is to oppose nothing in the world except on the ground that it is a manifestation
of selfishness, "nor is she ever to make peace with unrighteousness, because it puts
on some particular form."51 She is an "irreconcilable, annihilating
antagonist" to such, or else she is "guilty of treason to her sacred
commission."52 All of her activities, when true to the spirit of her sacred calling,
have a single ultimate aim: "the destruction of selfishness in all its forms and
modifications, the establishment of the reign of pure and perfect love in its stead, and
the consequent correction of all the evils resulting from 'man's inhumanity to man.'"
53
The question arises as to Mahan's basis for viewing the
church in this manner. His answer concerns the relation of a Christian to God and
consequently to truth and to right and wrong. Insofar as a person has understood and
embraced the true spirit of Christianity, to that degree the supreme object of desire and
intention is to stand accepted, through grace, by a God who understands all things just as
they are, whose character is the perfection of justice, goodness and truth, and who will
be satisfied with nothing less than justice and uprightness in His creatures. The
controlling aim of such a person is to conform all opinions and judgments to God's view of
things and all activity with God's will. Nothing is more important to such a person than
to know the truth in any area in order to do what is right. But this supreme,
all-controlling aim or intention is nothing other than the spirit of reform. Mahan thus
contends that no conceivable influence is more conducive than genuine Christianity to
generating the spirit of reform and to freeing us from influences that would hinder its
expression in our lives.54
Mahan draws Biblical support for this argument from the
nature of the two Covenants, the call to repentance and Christian fellowship. Under the
Old Covenant, he says, moral obligations were inculcated not only as right and good in
themselves, but as religious obligations. Moral rectitude was necessary for offering
acceptable worship and maintaining the blessing of God. To walk humbly with God one must
also do justice and love mercy. None of this has changed for those under the New Covenant,
says Mahan. Jesus came not to destroy but to fulfill in the lives of believers the moral
imperatives of the Old Covenant. Thus, believers are instructed in the New Testament that
there is no sphere of lawful action, social, civil or religious, that should not be
considered a sphere of sacred duty.55 The call to repentance is a call to total
abandonment of moral wrong and the embracing of all that is right, or, in Mahan's words,
"all that is capable of bearing the name of sacred duty."56
Christian fellowship is a matter of the basic intentions
of the heart. When Christians find other Christians committed to finding truth in order to
do what is right, then they have fellowship. But how is this internal commitment
discovered, since we do not look upon another's heart? The Bible says, "By their
fruits you shall know them." This is the key. Fellowship, argues Mahan, does not
result from mutual consent to orthodox opinions nor from sitting next to one another in
church every Sunday. It results from partnership together in evangelistic, benevolent and
reform activities.57 Christian fellowship, then, is intrinsically related to both the
spirit and the activity of reform.
The logic of Mahan's argument is that the spirit of
reform is identical with the spirit of Christianity so that the church in its very nature
is a universal reform society. Mahan does not shy away from this outcome but boldly
asserts it. "No person is, in the true sense of the term, a reformer, who is not in
heart a real Christian."58 Conversely, "Without the true spirit of reform, no
man can possibly be a real Christian."59 The fundamental aim of Christianity is
"the correction of all abuses, a universal conformity to the laws of our existence as
far as revealed to the mind, and a quenchless thirst for knowledge on all subjects
pertaining to the duties and interests of humanity."60 The church might in a sense be
called "The Do-right Society." Mahan says he once heard of a society by this
name. He refers to it to fill out his ideal of what the church is. He writes,
I will now suppose that that society embraced as its
fundamental principle personal holiness, purity, of heart, through "repentance toward
God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ," that in the circle of its inquiries it
comprehended all duties arising from our individual constitutions, physical, intellectual,
and moral, and from our varied relations, domestic, social, ecclesiastical, and civil and
that its fundamental design was to bring all mankind distinctly to practice all the duties
arising from all the conditions and relations above referred to. That society, as every
one will see, would have been a universal reform society.61
The basic purpose of the ministry is to assist believers
in pursuing truth and influencing both the church and the world to do what is right. If a
ministry does not embrace the spirit of reform as its fundamental ideal, it is not a
ministry of Jesus Christ. If a church is not in its practice a universal reform society,
it is not a church of Jesus Christ.62
To conclude: We have given preeminence in this study to
what Mahan calls the "spirit of reform." We have treated it as the key to his
view of reform, as the crucial element linking Christianity and reform and as fundamental
to his vision of an ideal society. The question arises whether we have rightly treated
Mahan in this whole matter. A brief passage in his Autobiography provides
confirmation. As a new Christian and still in his teens, he wrestled with the question:
"What shall be my life-principle of judging and action?" He decided he would not
follow any one system of doctrine or church or party line as such but would seek to learn
from all sources and base his own opinions and choices on whatever he honestly concluded
to be true and right. Why did he adopt such a radical principle? He says he believed it
was the only way to have peace of conscience and walk closely with God. Was it an easy
decision? He says he made it with inward agony hardly less excruciating, he felt, than
crucifixion. What sort of life did he expect to lead? Sixty five years after making this
decision, he writes that he expected never to be at home anywhere and to lead just such a
life as he had led. Would he do it again? Here is his answer: "If I were standing
where I did sixty-five years ago, and had before me all I have endured and suffered, I
would, with all my heart, and with all my soul readopt this sacred principle. To one who
judges and acts in absolute conformity with this principle, truth received has always an
immortal freshness, and ever reflects upon the soul the face of the Sun of
Righteousness."63
Notes
1 Donald W. Dayton, Discovering An Evangelical
Heritage (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 35.
2 Robert Sandall, The History of the Salvation Army,
Vol. I (New York: The Salvation Army, 1947), p. 209.
3 See Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965), pp. 327.
4 See Sydney Ahlstrom, "The Scottish Philosophy and
American Theology," Church History, 24 (1955), pp. 257272.
5 A. W. Plumstead and Harrison Hayford, eds. The
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol. 7 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 403.
6 Samuel H. Dresner's "Introduction" to
Abraham Joshua Heschel, I Asked For Wonder (New York: Crossroad, 1983), p. ix.
7 Asa Mahan, "The Absolute Adaptation of Theism,
and of Christianity as the Only True Theism, to the Immutable Laws of Mind and Necessities
of Universal Humanity," Freewill Baptist Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 30 (1860), p. 124.
8 Asa Mahan, "Reform," Oberlin Evangelist,
vol.. 6, No. 5. (February, 1844), p. 37.
9 Asa Mahan, "Certain Fundamental Principles
Together With Their Application," Oberlin Quarterly Review, Article 35
(November, 1846), pp. 227234.
10 Asa Mahan, "Destructionism, Anarchy of Reform,
Come-Outism," Oberlin Evangelist, Vol.. 6, No. 13 (June, 1844), p. 99.
11 Asa Mahan, Proceedings of the National Women's
Rights Convention held at Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 57, 1853, p. 186.
12 Ibid.
13 See Mahan, "Certain Fundamental
Principles," ibid.
14 Mahan, "Reform," ibid.
15 Ibid
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Mahan, "Certain Fundamental Principles,"
ibid., p. 228.
23 Ibid
24 Mahan, "Reform," ibid.
25 Ibid
26 Ibid
27 Ibid
28Aileen S. Kraditor, "On the History of American
Reform Movements and Its Legacy Today," Continuity, No 1 (Fall, 1980), p. 39.
29 Mahan, "Reform," ibid
30 Ibid
31 Ibid
32 See James E. Hamiton and Edward H. Madden,
"Edwards, Finney and Mahan on the Derivation of Duties," Journal of the
History of Philosophy, Vol.. 13, No. 3 (July, 1975), pp. 347360.
33Asa Mahan, "True Liberality-Intolerance of
Reform," Oberlin Evangelist, Vol.. 6, No. 9 (April, 1844), p. 67.
34 Ibid
35 Mahan. "Reform." ibid
36 Mahan, "True Liberality," ibid
37 Asa Mahan, "Right Spirit in Testifying Against
Existing Evils. Fanaticism of Reform," Oberlin Evangelist, Vol.. 6, No 7
(March, 1844), p. 52.
38 Mahan, "Reform," ibid
39 Ibid
40 Ibid
41 Mahan, "True Liberality," ibid
42 Asa Mahan, "True Principles-Ultraism,"
Oberlin Evangelist, Vol.. 6, No. 6 (March 13, 1844), p. 45.
43 Asa Mahan, "Unity of Reform," Oberlin
Evangelist, Vol. 6, No. 10 (May, 1844), p. 76.
44 Ibid
45 Ibid
46 Ibid
47 Ibid
48 C. G. Moore, "Fallen Asleep," Divine
Life, Vol.. 12 (June, 1889), p. 311.
49 The True Believer (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1857), p. iii.
50 Asa Mahan, "The Church a Universal Reform
Society. Relation to the Benevolent Operation of Reform," Oberlin Evangelist,
Vol.. 6, No. 17 (August, 1844), p. 131.
51 Ibid
52 Ibid
53 Ibid
54 See Asa Mahan, "The Revelation of Christianity
to the Freedom of Human Thought and Action." I do not have the bibliographical data
for this lecture, given to the Y.M.C.A. in London, England in 1850.
55Asa Mahan, "The Church Universal Reform
Society," Oberlin Evangelist, Vol.. 6, No. 15 (July, 1844), p. 171.
56 Ibid
57 See Asa Mahan, "Brotherly Love," Oberlin
Quarterly Review, Article 1 (January, 1849), pp. 317.
58 Mahan, "Destructionism," ibid
59 Mahan, "Reform," ibid
60 Ibid
61 Mahan, "The Church a Universal Reform
Society," (July, 1844), ibid
62 Ibid
63 Asa Mahan, Autobiography (London: T. Woolmer,
1882), pp. 7072.
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