January 1928
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
9
That was a wise word of George Mac Donald’s “The words of the wise are as nails—but their examples are as ham mers that drive the nails home.” * * * God has been calling home some of the great intercessors of earth in recent months. Thomas E. Stephens of the Great Commission Prayer League is gone; Mrs. Penn-Lewis of England is gone; Rev. E. D. Whiteside of Pittsburgh, a great man of prayer of the Christian Alliance Church, has gone. Who will fill their places? * * * Dr. Frank Crane, the clergyman-jour nalist, when asked by a newspaper re cently for his opinion about the science of Genesis, replied: “The Biblical account of creation simply speaks of things that God did—it does not say how He did them. The scientists’ discovery was mere ly the discovery of the manner in which, God works. Science found out that the Creator grows things, but does not make them. God builds a tree by making the oak grow out of the acorn. That is His process.” We are not so sure of Dr. Crane’s statement that the Bible throws no light upon the matter of how things came to be. We are told that “He spake and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast." Of course Dr. Crane is trying to leave the door open for the theory of evolution, yet, strange to say, he talks about “growth.” It takes no scientist to discover that “God grows things,” but growth from acorn to oak furnishes no evidence for evolutionists. Out of the nearly 2 , 000,000 species, not one has ever been known to have evolved from an other. Isa. 45:18 at least makes it clear that God did not create a ball of mud out of which everything else evolved. * * * When the same paper asked the opinion of Vernon Kellogg, zoologist, he came back with an argument long ago shown to be utter nonsense: “It is asked how the scientific theory of world evolution may be harmonized with the Biblical account,” says the professor. “It may well first be asked how the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis can be harmonized with the account in the second chapter.” The critics attempted to make out that two contradictory accounts of creation, written by different persons, were, by someone, put together. Is it rational to think that anyone would put together in consecutive order two accounts flatly con tradicting one another, and expect it to be accepted as the Word of God? In the first chapter, the calling into being of male and female on the sixth day is re corded to show their place in creation; the details of how they were created are reserved, as is very often done in Scrip ture accounts. * * * ■ The United Presbyterian has called at tention to the fact that the element of hate is necessary to the make-up of an up right individual and of a social group of high standards:
“One of the signs of national decay,” says this writer; “is the decline of anger and the absence of moral indignation. For the physician, nothing is more ominous than the loss of the sense of pain. The superficial observer may think that the patient is better because he is quieter; but the doctor knows that the end is near. “One of the greatest 'needs, of oür day is a revival of social anger. Vice and political corruption have made our cities a disgrace, and yet no blow is struck strong enough to sting the calloused sides of vice protectors’.” It is interesting to note in the advance sheets of statistics of religious bodies of the United States, that the Unitarians had 411 churches in 1916, but now have only 353. That is a net loss of 58 churches in ten years. Their membership has dropped from 82,515 to 60,152, a loss of 22,363, If this ratio .continues, this church will be extinct in 60 years. And now we are wondering how to reconcile these conditions with the warnings so fre quently given out by Unitarian ministers, that if the Protestant ministers do not quit preaching worn-out dogmas and swing over to evolution, their churches will soon be empty. Most of the de nominations seem to be making better progress than the Unitarians. * * * Before us is a Fundamentalist paper in which a whole page is devoted to a criti cism of a Methodist bishop because he has stated that while he cannot align himself with the Fundamentalists, he is neverthe less “an Essentialist." In spite of his statement that he accepts the atonement, deity of Christ, the resurrection, necessity of regeneration, etc., this editor argues that if the bishop really believed in the essentials, he would not be afraid to call himself a Fundamentalist. We think we can understand what a Method ist preacher means by calling himself an Essentialist. He will not accept the dis- pensational ideas of many prominent Fun damentalists, nor does he consider some of the ideas that have grown up around the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ, essential. But does that make him a Modernist? Must a man be rejected merely because he likes the word “Essen tialist” better than Fundamentalist”? * * * Sadhu John Nelson Christananda, Hindu Christian teacher who recently vis ited the Bible Institute, - expressed his great surprise at our American women in the following language: “Many of your women are excellent, but I find a ten dency to abuse the great liberty that they have been granted. A tree is far more beautiful in the summer when it is cover ed with leaves than when naked in the winter, and yet your women have not learned this simple lesson from nature. Their present mode of dress may be hy gienic, but it is far from common sense, if they really desire the beauty which they say they do.” In this connection, we find a report by Dr. Hoye E. Dearholt, of the Wiscon sin Tuberculosis Association, that for the first time in the history of the association all of his state’s 20 sanatoriums are filled with patients seeking recovery from the white plague. Not only this, but many of the institutions have long waiting lists. Dr. Dearholt holds that the scantiness of modern women’s dress is responsible for this alarming condition. Girls between 15 and 25, striving for a boyish figure and wearing scanty clothing, he says, have lowered their resistance to a point where they are easy prey of tuberculosis. In his
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