366 THE KING’S BUSINESS now maintained by many of our new theologians, that Christ never rose. If so, let us have a clear statement regarding the matter. “Finally; if Christ did rise in a bloodless body, animated by the eternal Spirit of God, and yet a body which, on the authority of His own word, had flesh and bones, what does the Editor say to the statement that ‘He is the first fruits of them that slept’ and the later fruits shall be like Him? In other words, that His risen body is a sample of the risen body of all saints ? Give to your readers a clear, intelligent, scientific; and yet scriptural exegesis of this incident. Gladly would I have any blunders of mine corrected. “Will the Editor of the Christian Advocate give us a clear exegesis of the statement, ‘There is a natural body and there is also a spiritual body!’ ” The Editor of the Christian Advocate seems to think that the view pre sented by Dr. Riley is something new and original with him. It is substan tially the view that has been held by a great many scholars for many years. In the book WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES written by the writer of this editorial and published in 1898, and which has been translated into several foreign languages and which has had a large circulation and is used as a text book in a number of institutions, the same view is not only advanced but proven from Scripture. This view, however, was not original with the writer of WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES. For the Editor of the Christian Ad vocate to speak of a view so widely held and so clearly proven as “an exhibition of exegetical stupidity by a teacher of the Church” greater than any other he has ever heard of does not injure Dr. Riley in any way but is simply an exhibi tion of his own lack of familiarity with current thought and of his own rancour of heart. We have not seen Dr. Riley’s reply printed in the California Chris tian Advocate but it may have been. We give it here that it may have a wide circulation. Keeping the Bible from the People T HE Devil hates the Bible: He does everything in his power to discredit it. He is back of all the attempts of the Destructive Critics to under mine faith in the Word of God. This is not to say that the Destructive Critics are consciously doing the Devil’s work, but they are doing it none the less really. But openly discrediting the Bible is not the Devil’s only method; where he cannot discredit it, he tries to keep people from studying it. One of his methods is by getting them to study something else. This was the method that he pursued very largely in the Church of Rome, to put the Bible in the background (where it does not openly oppose and seek to destroy it). He has led the Church of Rome to substitute catechisms, lives of saints and other things for the Bible. But the Devil has done the same thing in the Protestant Church, he has induced people to study devotional books instead of going right to the source from which all true devotional books derive whatever is good in them. One of his most subtle efforts to induce men to forsake the Bible or to substitute something else for the Bible is found in the International Graded Lessons. In the issue of the Sunday School Times of June 6th; Mr. Trumbull has a most excellent article upon this matter which we here reproduce, in as far as it bears on the present subject. The article is in answer to a question. The question was as follows:
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter