THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS 837 else m America that so aids and abets the Central Powers in their inhuman and monstrous war as the liquor interests. There is good reason to think that if England, early in the war, had suppressed the awful wastage of necessary foodstuffs by their being manufactured into beer, and the appall ing deterioration of their laboring men in necessary industries, such as the coal industry and the manufacture of munitions, the war would have been over long ago, been over before America got into it, and the loss of American life and the other evils that will come to America are directly traceable to strong drink and the liquor interests. When will we wake up to this fact and crush the head of this poisonous snake beneath the iron heel of a thoroughly aroused public sentiment?
Ss GERMAN RATIONALISM IN AMERICA In 1880 an editorial written by Dr. Mendenhall In the Methodist Review, gave credit to Germany for the diffus ion of higher criticism in America. We are now seeing what German ration alism has done for Germany— therefore let us take warning. Dr. Mendenhall said: “ It is confessed that certain American critics accept the extreme conclusions of German rationalists, and support the conclusions by a method of argument that identifies them with the rational ists of Europe. It is not creditable to the scholarship of such critics that to this day they have not advanced one theory against traditionalism, or one argument against the orthodox position that was not drawn from the rational ists across the water. Scholarship! Not an original theory in biblical criticism has been propounded by an American critic; every conclusion is borrowed, and every argument is kidnapped from foreign lands. Many of the editorials, pamphlets and books written by them are purloined, and some of them according to secret contract, from the literature of the other hemisphere; and yet they prate of learning, acumen, and insight and foresight as to the outcome of the Bible! Even the little phrase used by a home critic, “ snorting against
higher criticism,’’ was borrowed from Eichorn. Satélites, not planets, they are! Is it not time to understand where the freshet of rationalistic jargon took its rise?” .. THEIR STORIES DON’T HITCH Tihe Aviator of “ The Presbyterian” takes exception to the glorification of liberalism by a Chicago University pro fessor who tells how people have been driven from the Church by orthodox preaching and are won back again by the beautiful story of Jesus Christ as liberal preachers tell it. All of which, he says, “ makes one smile when he looks up the statistics of the ‘liberal’ and the conservative churches, which show that the so-called ‘liberal’ denomina tions are weaker in America to-day than they were a hundred years ago, and that their pulpits are only kept filled by recruits from the orthodox churches— recruits for whose' educa tion orthodox boards of education have often paid.”— Journal and Messenger. If there are things about the Bible we do not understand, it is what we do not yet need. As we put into use the knowledge we have, more comes. The only objection against the Bible is a bad life.
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