Whittier that are far more pervaded with the Christlike spirit than some in the Hebrew Psalmody." When you have transmuted the casket to more malleable metal you find the image too of softer mold; the brow of wrath is readily smoothed, and the traits of grace alone left remaining, the linea- ments of Matthew 11:28-30 are left, and those of 13:30, 49, 50, .are obliter- ated. Dr. Abbcit affirms faith in miracles. But says, "I do not believe that the laws of nature have ever been violated, for this would be to believe that God who dwells in nature and animates it has violated the laws of his own being." Thus, with his school of thinkers, he (1) misrepresents the Christian concep- tion of a miracle which views it as an act of God unrelated to natural law, though in the highest degree harmo- nious with it's original intent; and he (2) represents the Almighty a bound and blind Samson treading the monoto- nous grind of the evolutionary mill, a captive of the philosophical Philistines; bound, as fettered by "the laws of his own being," Wind, since this is sheer pantheism, for if there were any begin- ning, or any foreseen final issue we would have the miraculous. So, then the miracles in which the Doctor be- lieves are not miracles in the sense of his question, the terms of the diction- ary, or the usage of faith, or the vocab- ulary of theology. He shows that he does not believe in the resurrection of Christ, which he says he believes in, by defin- ing that transcendent sign without which our faith and preaching are. vain, and we still in our sin and in the bonds ol iniquity (1 Cor. 15:16, 17 ): "I think there is no better attested fact in an- cient history than the resurrection of Christ. . . . But I regard it not as an extraordinary event, but as an extra- ordinary evidence of an ordinary event; . . . Every death is a resurrection. Death is the dropping of the body from the spirit. Resurrection is the upspringing of the spirit from the body." (This is, perhaps, too refined for you, Reader, this stooping of the spirit to lay the body in the dust, and then its jumping up again, but the Doctor is a higher critic. For us—well, we do not see why the spirit could not just drop the body and let that end it, or spring up and ' let that be the upshot of it.) Here again, we see that the resur- rection he believes in is not a resurrec- tion in the ordinary, or in the Scrip- tural, sense, nor, in fact, a resurrection
when destroyed, or weeded out, that the maladies disappeared, as had been demonstrated times without number. The "Scientist" standing pat, the doctor called in other members of his profes- sion who severally identified the several bacteria, applying • to them their iden- tical names. But notwithstanding that both the germs and their effects, under the glass, were as demonstrable as those of the weeds in the garden, the "Scientist" maintained his philosophy. Can we wonder that common sense took him for a fool? LYMAN ABBOT We do not know INVESTIGATE», what profit there is possessing Dr. Ab- bot's confession of faith, but it seems some are concerned about it, and at their request in a late copy of the Out- look ( Aug. 17) he reiterates it. Some have asked him, "Do I believe: In a personal God? In the divinity of Jesus Christ? In his resurrection? In the miracles? In the inspiration of tBe Bible?" Dr. Abbot has been before the public in pulpit, on platform, by pen, with sermons, lectures, books, commen- taries, and editorials, for 50 years. We will venture that a novice in our Bible Institute in a ten-minute talk on a cor- ner, or in a mission, would leave no doubt as to his belief on all these points. What has been the matter with Dr. Abbot? DR. ABBOT'S The Doctor answers the CONFESSION, above questions cate- gorically in the affirm- ative. We wish he had rested the case there. But he proceeds: "My faith in God rests on my faith in Christ as God manifested in the flesh — not as God a nd man, but as God in man." Pret- tily, but not fairly, said, for doubtless the questioners mean "Do you believe in the divinity of Christ as God and man." The Doctor says: "On my faith in Christ rests also my faith in the Bible." Considering the Christ as de- fined by Doctor Abbot, we are prepared for the statements: "The Bible is the casket which contains the image of my Master—that is enough; whether it be lead or silver or gold is matter of minor concern." But whether he believes it to be gold is the question put to him, and after he has affirmed that he does, why does he seek to justify the fact that he does not, and proceed to say that "There are modern writers on law that may be as valuable as Moses (i. e., their writings as his); there are poems of Browning and Tennyson and our own
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