King's Business - 1920-08

737

THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S

eration for the acceptance of the philosophies and traditions of men which go to make up their false creeds. They cease to be soul winners having dropped out of their teachings and their lives salvation through the atonement of Christ, they cease to give thought to pointing men to Him as the Savior, and devote themselves to the promotion of humanitarian Social Service based on the ethics of the Bible but excluding all doctrinal truths that lead to the re­ generation of the soul. They oppose revivals. The writer has known preparations for very great re­ vivals to be suddenly discontinued through the machination of modernists. It is difficult to understand how those who have been consciously born from above and consciously anointed to preach salvation through regeneration by the Spirit can be guilty of so great a crime against the souls of men as that of pre- v e n t i n g revivals, t h u s thwarting Evangelists, God’s specialists in soul­ winning, who are as truly His “ gifts” to the church as are “ pastors and teach­ ers.” The explanation is to be found in the fact that Modernists are not only “ deceiving,” they are “ being deceived.” They cannot consistently promote re­ vivals. They are at times placed un­ der what must be to them the embarass- ing and painful necessity of “ keeping up with the (evangelical) procession,” by making themselves seem to be further­ ing revivals, even sitting on the speak­ ers’ platform and preaching from it: When, according to their teaching in their own churches they do not believe in anything that is prayed, or sung or said by the evangelist in charge or by his colaborers. They substitute for the gospel of grace “ another gospel” which is not another, viz, the gospel of works. Eph. 2, 8: “ For by grace are ye saved through faith—-not of works, lest any man should boast. Theirs is the offering of Cain. “Now

Cain was a tiller of the ground— Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” It was a blood­ less offering of the fruit of his own la- bors. It did not symbolize the atone­ ment as did Abel’s. God regarded as so important the truth, “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission,” that He taught it daily for hundreds of years in a na­ tional object-lesson to Israel and to all the world through that nation. They are blinded by vainglory. They labor under the strange delusion, de­ spite the ten thousands of evidences to the contrary all about them, that only the mentally weak, the unscholarly, the uninformed believe, in these days of en­ lightenment, in the God of the Bible and in its plenary inspiration. The spirit of vain-glory is upon them, and since the spirit of vain-glory is the spirit of fanaticism, they are in fanaticism. They have not so much that form of it which cries, “ I am holier than thou,” as that equally virulent type that insists “ I am wiser than thou.” The Sunday School Times has lately published an article written by a Univer­ sity Graduate and entitled “Was My Uni­ versity Pagan?” In this article the following passages occur: “ For that night we were to have a special treat in the form of an informal heart to heart conference with one of the popular professors in the English de­ partment of the college. One of his first remarks was, ‘A man with a first- rate mind, when he enters college will be ready to say, “There is no God.’ And he added, ‘The idea of the Bible as an inspired book was definitely abandoned by all intelligent men fifty years ago.’ ” We see that in his estimation he was a man “ of a first-rate mind.” The following is a well authenticated quotation from a minister who rated himself as “ a worth-while preacher” :— “ I no longer preach acceptance of the Bible. I do not preach the heaven or

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