Life and Doctrine

Ned Stonehouse quotes from one of Machen's letters, "[Christianity] was certainly not a way of life as distinguished from a doctrine, or a way of life expressing itself in a doctrine, but it was a way of life founded upon a doctrine. It was founded more especially upon a proclamation of something that happened. The primitive Church proclaimed the happening after the first great act in it had occurred; Jesus proclaimed it by way of prophecy, but the primitive Church and Jesus were alike in proclaiming an event," then providing this additional thought:- "He [Machen] had shown that the experience of men was not the foundational fact of the Christian gospel but what God had accomplished once for all in Christ, and that Christian experience is essentially the response which men through the Holy Spirit make to the proclamation of these glad tidings" (Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen - A Biographical Memoir, 349).

LOL: Machen on French Underwear

J. Gresham Machen served during World War I in France with the YMCA war efforts to support the troops. In one of his letters back home, he recounted how he recently escaped a German insurgence that had overtaken his previous post. He and companions had to retreat hastily, with no time to pack up any personal effects at all - everything was left behind. He had made his way back to Paris, and while there he wrote:

I have been directed to wait here in Paris till tomorrow when instructions may be given me. Naturally clothes are almost my first concern. The prices are something terrific - for instance I paid 185 francs plus a war tax for a pair of high boots. But I should not mind if I could only get the things that I desire. French underwear is cut in the queerest way imaginable, and the American variety cannot be found. But this morning I am at least fairly clean. I even had a bath! (Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir, 270).

When I first read the above, I laughed out loud.

Christian Living: Joyful and Enthusiastic

Ned B. Stonehouse quoting J. Gresham Machen in the biographical-memoir J. Gresham Machen:

Instead of stifling the pleasures afforded by the acquisition of knowledge or by the appreciation of what is beautiful, let us accept these pleasures as the gifts of a heavenly Father. Instead of obliterating the distinction between the Kingdom and the world, or on the other hand withdrawing from the world into a sort of modernized intellectual monasticism, let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically to make the world subject to God [underline CCS] (187).

Machen got it right: Christians need to be joyful and enthusiastic as they make the world subject to God, i.e., as they fulfill the Great Commission.