September 1924
TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
543
Was tke General Assembly Conservative? By the Rev. A. Gordon MacLennan
We have taken the liberty of culling from Dr. MacLennan’s article in The Sunday School Times of June 14, the following items of interest concerning the action of the Presbyterian General Assembly (Northern) at its meeting in Grand Rapids in May. Dr. MacLennan has given in a most interesting manner the main facts through which we can interpret its spirit and action. We wish we could have given this report to our readers earlier but are sending this to the printer the last of June for the September issue.
|RESBYTERIANS would like to accept as true the following description of the (Northern) Pres byterian General Assembly by Dr. James M. Gray. President of the Moody Bible Institute, ^written several years ago: “The writer is not a Presbyterian, and therefore with better grace can ask his readers to consider the character and the intellect represented in such an Assembly. Here are some of our greatest merchants, our greatest jurists, our greatest educators, our greatest statesmen, as well as our greatest missionaries, evangelists, and theologians. There may be seen as able and august a gathering of representatives of Chris tianity in other places and on other occasions, but few can surpass it. For sobriety o f thought, for depth as w ell as breadth o f learning, for wealth of spiritual experience, for honesty of utterance, and virility of conviction, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Am erica must com mand attention and respect throughout the world.” The General Assembly of 1924, composed of more than nine hundred Commissioners appointed by more than three hundred Presbyteries scattered over the whole of the United States and her possessions, would measure up to the above description as nearly as any held in many years. The issue involved called out the leadership of this Church from all sections of the country. Eleven ex-Moderators were Com missioners. Every Presbytery seemed to feel a respon sibility to send its ablest men to deliberate upon and decide the great matters before the Church. Presbyterians would be vitally interested in all the details of the proceedings of the Assembly, revealing as they would the varied interests and far-reaching program of His Church. But this article is to deal only with those things in the Assembly which have interest as typical of the situa tion in almost all denominations. •A, Never-to-be-Forgotten Prayer There pervaded the Assembly an atmosphere of tense ness which indicated deep conviction upon certain matters, and this spirit broke to thé surface on the first day in the election of the Moderator. Among the Conservatives there was a constant spirit of prayer. In. private rooms and meet ings of committees prayer was first and foremost. Some of the most soul-gripping prayers I have ever heard offered were heard in such gatherings. Never shall I forget going into a private room where a dozen or more men were on their knees, among them Will iam Jennings Bryan, pleading for wisdom and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. A never-to-be-forgotten prayer was offered by John MacNeil, when he seemed to lay hold on God and pleaded that God might hear the petitions ascend ing from all parts of the Church. And after the Moderator had been elected, and the strength of the Conservatives was known, the burden of the prayers in all the meetings of Conservatives seemed to be for humility and a recognition of the Psalmist’s conviction, “Not unto us, not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy Name be the glory.’-’ The committees were composed of men on both sides of the issue. No committee was solidly on either one side or the other. The election of Dr. C. E. Macartney as Mod erator was a blessed testimony to the faith, and warm tribute should be paid to the eminently fair manner in which Dr. Macartney presided over all the meetings. Only once was his ruling appealed from, and that time he was
sustained by a majority of over one hundred. His election, especially under the circumstances, was a demonstration of the attitude of the Church at large toward the present issue. Modernism bn the Foreign Field The writer was appointed Chairman of the Standing Com mittee on Foreign Missions. The task of this committee is an exceedingly large one, involving a review of the entire work of the Foreign Missionary Board. This work was divided, as is customary, among seven sub-committees each one reporting to the committee of the whole. The chairmen of the sub-committees together with the General Chairman formed a Committee on Recommendations and Nominations to membership on the Board. Naturally, the time at our disposal made it utterly impos sible to enter into any investigation of particular criticisms of the work in this department. When a question was asked on the floor of the Assembly concerning one such matter, I replied, as Chairman of the Committee, that we, as the Church at large, had to depend upon the word of the officers and secretaries of the Foreign Board as to the teaching in union institutions on the foreign field. But, lest any should misunderstand the meaning of my statement, let it be clearly recognized that there is grave concern in many quarters, and properly so, as to the teaching in the foreign field. The whole matter can be satisfactorily handled in only one way: a committee should be appointed, either by the Board of Foreign Missions or by the General Assembly, to investigate the matter and bring all the evidence to the knowledge of the Church. By such a proceeding the Board could answer all criticism. Two outstanding Conservative leaders were elected to the Board, Dr. William L. McEwan in addition to Dr. John F. Carson. To them will fall the task of safeguarding the policies of foreign missionary work. The Philadelphia Overture The “ Philadelphia Overture” asked the General Assembly to direct that members of all the Church Boards and semin ary faculties affirm or reaffirm their acceptance of the Stan dards of the Church together with the doctrinal deliver ances of the General Assembly,— this last including the “ Five Essential Points” made famous by last year’s Assembly. Both the Overture and the complaint were put in the hands of the Permanent Judicial Commission. The finding of the Commission regarding tyhe complaint was as follows: “A lter careful examination of the grounds of complaint, we find that the complaint is not directed against any action or delinquency which occurred in the adoption of the Overture by the Presbytery, but rather a protest against the effect o f its adoption by the General Assembly. It is therefore not a com plaint within the meaning o f the section above quoted, cannot be entertained as such, must be dismissed, and it is so ordered.” And the Commission thus recommended that no action be taken on the Overture, not on the basis of doctrine, but of constitutionality. Their recommendation is brief yet conclusive: “It is, therefore, the judgment of the Judicial Commission that the Overture in question proposes action by the General Assembly which would impose doctrinal tests upon ministers
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