T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
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VIGOROUS AND VITAL E have often called attention to the fact that the fundamental heresy of the present lies in the denial of the sinfulness of
of a divine interposition to cure it. The Tiberal’ view obviously precludes the necessity of the Cross or of any other interposition save on the part of pen ologists and clever physicians. “ Is it not time, in ail reason, to cry a halt? If there is any- truth in our re ligion, sin is a hell-deserving offense against holy law; and, unless there be some supernatural deliverance, it is bound to involve the sinner in spiritual and eternal death, that is to say, aliena tion from God. “ The loss, in any measure, of this view of sin is a real and momentous loss because it leaves God out of the reckoning, impairs the sense of account ability, nullifies the atonement and— if followed to its logical conclusion— lands the soul in outer darkness.”— Lutheran Survey. ^ ^ H i M ARTIFICIAL ABORIGINES “ When a new idea gets control of an unfurnished mind,” says Samuel Croth- ers, “ it has the time of its life. There is •nothing inside to molest it or make it afraid. I have pupils who are bubbling over with modernness. They are effer vescing with contemporaneousness. But they are continually repeating the blun ders of their great-great-grandfathers. They call old sins by new names, and they pride themselves on their up-to- date primitiveness. They have learned a few things that other people don’t know; and they have never found out some things that the race found out long ago. They are pleased to think that they are original. So they are— aboriginal. These artificial aborigines are harder to civilize than the natural aborigines, because they think that civi lization is a stage that they have gone through.” The Missionaries want the K. B. Help us send it to them.
sin. As soon as sin is accounted for on any other ground than that of its true character, the whole Gospel becomes a worthless fabric, and the Bible is re duced to the status of an ordinary book, of whatever ethical value any particular reader may ascribe to it. It no longer stands as the revealed Word of God and is shorn of its authority. Every man makes his own Christ by as- scribing to Jesus of Nazareth just what ever it suits him to ascribe. The cross means nothing more than the signifi cance that the individual’s own theories may attribute to it. Whenever the Bible is taken in its literal meaning the sinner is convicted of his sin, as God sees it, and the Cross appears to him as an in evitable and absolute necessity to sal vation. Any variation whatever from the literal teaching of the Scriptures concerning sin is equivalent to the de nial of the very essence of the Gospel. More testimony on this subject is needed like that given by the venerable Dr. David James Burrell of New York City: “ The tendency of our time is to re duce all things to a physical basis.- The germ theory is exploited as furnishing a clew to the 'whole labyrinth » f moral problems. “ Sin is one of the phenomena which must be accounted for in this way. It is designated as a physical malady, due to the heredity and environment, and to be dealt with accordingly. A while ago we were introduced to the bacillus of indolence; and the professors of moral therapeutics have made us familiar with the germs of kleptomania, dipsomania and other phases of sin. “ The old view is that ‘sin is any want of conformity unto or -transgression of the divine law,’ involving the necessity
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