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THE KING’S BUSINESS
The B ib le A lw ay s A ttacked
By WILLIAM EVANS, Ph. D., D. D.
ental philospphy with its keen logic and reason; of the renaissance of the fifteenth century with its worship of reason and attempted dethronement of faith, to under stand . that if the Bible had not been a divine book it would have been destroyed centuries ago. So dire was the condition,of Christian ity in England in the eighteenth century that Bishop Butler in his “Advertisement” to his “Analogy of Religion” says : “It has come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christiaimy is not so much a subject for inquiry; but that it is now, at .length, discovered to be fictitious ; and accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule.” Can the greatest pessimist amongst us say that Christianity is in anything like such a condition today? Voltaire said that in one hundred years from his day, the Bible would be an unknown book; that if a man wanted to find it he would have to go to some antiquarian bookstore, and there, on some back shelf, he migh, perhaps, find a copy of the Bible. Over one hundred years have passed since Voltaire made this statement, and it does not look as though it were anywhere near being fulfilled, for the Bible today is a more popular book than ever before in all its history. We venture to say that the theological controversies raging around the Bible today are nothing but a rehash of those of the past centuries, served up in new dress, as a comparison will show. The Bible withstood the shocks of those days, and why should it not withstand the same shocks today? In spite of all oppo-
TTIRST, we should remember that the Bible has ever been an object of the severest attack. It has always been a “tried stone” laid in Zion. God has already assured us that the place of the Bible shall not be undisputed or unassailed (Isaiah 28:16). God has forewarned us to expect that some builders will refuse to build upon this stone, and that they will scorn it and cast it aside. But He also assures us that the stone will remain unshaken, and that He that, buildeth upon it “will not make haste” —that is to say, he will not be thrown into panic or anxiety when confronted with such opposition. The Word of God will abide even though heaven and earth pass away (Matthew 5.:18), The past centuries have.witnessed forms of opposition to the Word of God much more severe than those which characterize the criticism in our day. One has only to think back to that dark period • at the birth of Christianity when its Founder lay dead in that tomb in Joseph’s garden. Surely no enterprise ever seemed more hopeless or so completely at an end. Yet forth from the shadow of that cross and tomb there went forth a band of men to proclaim the truths contained in the Bible, and that with glorious victory and unprecedented success. • Or, again, one has only to look back upon those dark days when the Apostle Paul, the champion, the leader, the fore most representative of Christianity, lay languishing in the Roman prison, his head about to be laid upon the executioner’s block, in order to realize in what straits' the religion of Christ then found itself. Yet it survived even this shock. The student of history has but to think of those dark days of opposition from paganism with its gross sensuality; of ori
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