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THE K I N G ’S B U S I N E S S
July 1925
We are face to face today with the greatest crisis— I say it advisedly— in the history of the world. Why? Because in the controversies of the past, men and women have appealed to the Scriptures as their basis of settlement. But today our Bible is being wrested from us and we are left with no foun dation upon which to base our argument. Not the least of the many contributing causes of the growing critical and skeptical attitude toward the Bible and the Christian reli gion is evolution. Probably no philosophy has ever had such an influence over the thinking world as evolution. Haeckel, that great German evolutionist said, “With a sin gle stroke Darwin has annihilated the dogma of creation.” And he termed Darwin’s Origin of Species “Anti-Genesis.” Yet Genesis stands unshaken, while evolution is, even yet, an empty theory and an unproved assumption. In spite of this fact, however, evolution is openly taught in many of our schools, and has gained an alarming hold upon both teacher and student. The time has come when Christian people should rise and put an end to the array of insidious teaching, which is being handed out to our children, and such teachers should be prevented from masquerading around under the guise of pretended scholarship and the cloak of religion, for every Modernist, every Liberalist in America today is a sympathizer either secretly or openly with Communism. Listen to this from Robert Blatchford, the prominent English socialist: “No Adam, no Fall;.- No Fall, No Atonement; no Atonement, no Saviour. Accepting evolution, how can we believe in a Fall? When did man fall? Was it before he ceased to be a monkey, or after? Was it when he was a tree man, or later? Was it in the stone age, or the bronze age, or in the age of iron? And if there never was a Fall, why should there be any Atone ment?” Modernism Leads to Communism The name that stands at the beginning of Anarchism, occupying a position similar to. that of Karl Marx, is Michel Bakunin, a Russian. Bakunin nursed a fierce volcanic wrath within his heart against the two great evils— as he termed it— “the belief in God,” and the idea that the State was the regulator of society. “The beginning of the lies,” he declared, “that have ground down this poor old world in slavery , is God. Tear out .of your hearts the belief in the existence of. God. Until this is done you will never know what freedom is. The first lie is God. The second is the idea of right. And when you have freed your minds from the fear of God and from the childish respect for right, then all the remaining chains that bind you— called civiliza tion, property, marriage, morality, justice— will snap asun der like threads.” And Bakunin has his followers even down to this day. Who is to blame? Where shall we go to run down this evil thing? We should go to the source,— to that place where these God-denying, soul-destroying theories are brought into being and where the youth of our land are fed and nourished—the universities and colleges and seminaries where these damnable doctrines' are taught. Listen again to Mr. Bouck White, well known radical writer and agitator, in an interview to the New York Sun:— “I am a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, and I wish to speak a word for that institution. Some of my comrades of the revolution look coldly on the seminary up there. They regard the men engaged in modern Biblical scholar ship as a set of academic owls, quite blind to and uncon cerned with the economic upheaval of our time, but they are vastly in error. The professors at Union and whosoever teaches the ‘higher criticism’ are doing more than perhaps any other one group to advance the Social Revolution.
“Christendom reposes upon a book, the Bible. So long as that Bible was supposed to teach peace and quietness, Christendom had peace and quietness. But now comes Bibligal scholarship, and shows by cool, masterly science that the Bible is one long cry for human and popular rights, against the arrogance of the monied mighty. Pro fessors A, B, C, and D at Union, yes and President Z him self, are deserving of a place alongside of Karl Marx, for in their discoveries as to the real, the social meanings of the Biblical writings, they are planting mines of social dynamite underneath this civilization of massive property rights, to blow up the whole apparatus. "And where got I these dynamic results? From Union seminary, and from the superb scholars of her faculty. They are men who deserve no longer to be despised and boy cotted by the proletarian workers. Rather they merit high place in our ranks. Let it be known to every forward looker: The schools and pulpits where the ‘higher criti cism’ of the Scriptures is taught, are seminaries of social revolution.” O.ut of this school, my friends, came Harry Emerson Fos- dick, the late pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New York City. And Dr. Fosdick is by no means the only one. Out of these schools come graduates who go out into the world, not knowing either what they believe or what they shall preach. Educated doubters! What a tragedy that young men who enter our seminaries with the avowed intention of becoming useful ministers of Jesus Christ, should lose during their seminary course that glowing love and passion that is born of the Spirit of God! The Remedy And now what shall we do about it? What is the remedy? There are a lot of things we can do, and the first one is-—- We can withdraw our money from these institutions. If contributing to these institutions puts them upon such a financial basis that they are able to employ teachers and continue in their unscriptural teaching, leading astray young men and women for whom Christ died, then so long as the world standeth I will withdraw my support from such institutions as teach evolution or any other theory contrary to the Word of God. One of the most pressing needs of the hour is Christian teachers. We need Christian biologists and Christian geolo gists. We need Christian teachers in every grade and department of our school life, so that our boys and girls may come up through the years acquainted with God, famil iar with the old-fashioned Bible religion of primitive Chris tianity, and when study is over and work begins, they shall be prepared to give to their country all that is best and purest out of the God-given combination of Christianity, education and civilization. And now what can I dor—what is my share? I’ll tell you what I can do. I can preach the Gospel. What is there in all the theories that besmirch the pages of our books today that can offer the consolation found in the old Gospel— that Gospel whose dynamic power alike governs the universe and saves the individual? The Gospel of God—His Atonement, His burial, His resurrection, His Ascension, His intercession, His coming again,— all these things are as a red flag in the face of the Modernist, and he would if he could, snatch from us every foundation stone of our faith. But let us never forget that God rules. Cults and isms, theories and philosophies will come and go, but God’s power is from everlasting to everlasting, and He who was once the Babe of the Manger, the Carpenter of Nazareth, the Despised and Crucified One, shall one day rule as King of kings and Lord of lords.
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