5
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
January 1930
the reverse of the old method. Is this new method right? Will it succeed? These questions were answered in the negative by Dr. Nathan E. Wood, Professor of Theology at Gordon Col lege, in an address to the alumni of that college last May. Dr. Wood has a right to speak, for he has spent more than sixty fruitful years in the ministry. We ought never to forget that we are the ministers of Christ’s Gospel . . . We have been personally called and com missioned by our Lord, not because we are expert business men, or familiar with political management, or with art, or literature, or the economic machineries of the world . . . A sum mer school advertises as instructors a group of t e a c h e r s from a school of agriculture. They are to teach ministers in rural communities how to raise vegetables, grain and cattle; how to abolish pests which prey on growing crops, so that they may show their parishioners how properly to manage farms. It is urged with plausibility that in this way the minister may win men to Christ. What a travesty on the ministry of Christ! . . . Our clear business is to set forth God to man. We are to do this through words in a message of “good news,” and to all men it is “news” o f the most up-to-date kind. There is nothing so new and so fresh to men whose minds are occupied all the week with the business and the affairs of life, as the Gospel of redemption. -o- A New Estimate of Modernism r^ "'H E editor of The New York a tt i r i Vorld, Mr. Walter Lippmann, has written a book, “ A Preface to Mor als,” which is attracting a good deal of attention. He does not write as a Christian, nor even as a friend of Chris tianity. With his general conclusions, both Conservatives and Liberals will doubtless find fault. His estimate of the two schools of thought, as represented by Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick and Dr. J. Gresham Machen, will give little comfort to the Modernist and will be a great conso lation to conservative defenders of historic Christianity. Mr. Lippmann shows how Dr. Fosdick has none of the certainty and assurance that Christian preachers have had who have accepted the Bible as authoritative. He writes: Churchmen like Dr. Fosdick can make no such claim about their message. They reject revelation. They reject the author ity of any church to speak directly for God. They reject the literal inspiration o f the Bible. They reject many parts of the Bible as not only uninspired, but false and misleading. They do not believe in God as a Lawgiver, Father and Spectator of human life. When they say this or that message in the Bible is permanently valid, they mean only that in their judgment, according to their reading o f human experience, it is a well-tested truth. To say this is not merely to deny that the Bible is authori tative in astronomy and biology; it is to deny equally that it is authoritative as to what is good and bad for men. Some thing which hitherto has been quite fundamental is left out of Modernist creeds. That something is the most abiding of all the experiences of religion, namely, the conviction that religion comes from God! One would seek far for any more clear statement con cerning the complete bankruptcy of Liberalism than Mr. Lippmann gives. He is certain that such a religion will not attract people to churches. Their sense of the om-
The Freudian Menace _T has been predicted by not a few careful obser vers that a more subtle and dangerous foe to the Church than evolution has ever been will yet be found in the sphere of psychology. This is so because evolution is, after all, only a theory con cerning the origin and development of life, while the false psychology becomes a philosophy of life. Evo lution strikes indirectly at the foundations of the Chris tian faith, it is true, but the popular forms of behavioristic psychology of the day practically deny and displace every idea of moral obligation to God and man. The prevalent Freudian craze is an evidence of the deep descent in folly and shame of which fallen men are capable when they cut loose from the restraints of the Christian revelation. It is difficult to discuss Freudianism without giving offense to those who are accustomed to clean thinking. Dr. W. A. Squires, Director of Religious Education of the Presbyterian Church, writing of some of the Freudian theories in The Presbyterian says: If I should explain what these theories are and this article were published in The Presbyterian, the publishers would lay themselves liable to fine and imprisonment for sending obscene literature through the mails. That these words are not the ravings of a fanatic or an alarmist, is proved by the fact that there has been an arrest in one of the Southern States for doing that which Dr. Squires has mentioned. An irate father whose daugh ter rebelled against Freudian psychology, taught by a male instructor in a State College for women, must an swer before a Federal Court for sending through the mails obscene matter, which was copied from textbooks in use in the college. There will be a hue and cry about “ academic freedom” and tirades against “ bigotry,” com ing from colleges and universities all over the land, but surely the American people are not yet so “ liberal” as to permit irreligion and immorality to be taught in tax-sup ported schools. Dr. Squires is right when he says: Let us look at the situation in the light of common sense. To combat this grievous error is not narrow-minded bigotry; not hysteria. It is a duty we owe to our offspring and to the religion which we profess. Are Preachers Needed ? S OME months ago there was held in an Eastern State an interdenominational gathering of ministers and laymen for the purpose of discussing ways and means to help the rural churches. One who was present reports that the discussion centered around the question of the relation of the Church and the pastor to social, civic and political problems of the community, but that not one word was said about the duty of the Church to preach the Gos pel of Jesus Christ. Nor was this an isolated or unusual case. The modern emphasis is upon “ social service,” with the regeneration of the individual as a mere by-product—
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker