642 T HE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S “ orthodoxy,” and others from the standpoint of the “ Modernists.” This has resulted in much confusion and has distressed many godly missionaries and native preachers and teachers. Dr. Thomas’ report of .his visit, as published in the Sunday School Times, contained a kindly but definite criticism upon the conditions. This has awakened some definite interest upon the part of ministers and laymen who were not aware of the seriousness of the conditions. As a result of last summer’s conferences in China, a Bible Union was organized by the native leaders with a membership of over two hundred, all of whom signed a statement' of doctrine. Among religious papers which have taken this matter up in a definite way is the good old paper “ The Presbyterian’.’ of Philadelphia, which has held firm to the faith of the fathers and has also been loyal to its denomina tional position. In its issue of March 31, Dr. John Pox, President of the American Bible Society,—one of God’s good soldiers—has an article which should have wide-spread notice. Dr. Pox quotes from page 540 of a book written by Dr. Arthur' J. Brown, Secretary of the Board of Foreign Mis sions, entitled “ Mastery of the Par East,” and comments upon same, as follows: " . “The typical missionary oi the first quarter of a century alter the opening of the country, was a man of the Puritan type. He kept the Sabbath as our New England forefathers did a century ago. He looked upon dancing, smoking, and card-playing, as sins in which no true follower of Christ should indulge. In theology and Biblical criticism he was strongly conservative, and he held as a vital truth the premillennial view of the second coming of Christ. The higher* criticism and liberal theology were deemed dangerous heresies. In most of the evangelical churches of America and Great Britain conservatives and liberals have learned to live and work together in peace, but in Korea the few men who hold ‘the modem view’ have a'rough road to travel, particularly in the Presbyterian group of mis sions.” Has not the church the right to ask its secretary of foreign missions this question: Who are the Presbyterian missionaries in Korea who do not regard “the higher criticism and liberal theology” as “dangerous heresies?” Is h e n o t bound much more to answer than Dr. Griffith-Thomas is bound to name the Pres- byterian “liberals” in China? But not content with this unflattering, not to say contemptuous, portraiture of the first missionaries in Korea, Dr. Brown proceeds to belabor their converts: “The Korean converts naturally reproduced the ‘prevailing type.’ The re sult was a Christian experience like that of Bunyan’s Pilgrim. Salvation was an escape from the City of Destruction. Satan was not a rhetorical expression, hut a real and malignant personage—‘your adversary,’ ‘who as a roaring bon walketh about seeking whom he may devour.’ The accounts of the Garden of Eden, the experience of Jonah, the virgin birth of our Lord, the resurrection of Lazarus, and of the gates of pearl and the streets of pure gold in the Heavenly City were taken as historical descriptions of actual facts.” I am not so unsophisticated perhaps, and therefore I am not so ready to be lieve that Dr. Brqwn is really as black as he has painted himself. I have known Dr. Brown for many years, and esteem him highly, and I shall venture to add I know something of his limitations, and among them, with all due respect to him, is a propensity for letting his considerable talent for missionary rhetoric rather, out-run his theological knowledge and soundness of doctrinal judgment. If we were to take his words about the virgin birth, about the raising of Lazarus, about Jonah, about Job, about Satan, at their face value, should we not be compelled to conclude, however reluctantly, that his resignation as a secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions was already over due? No man rejecting or questioning such doctrines has any right to he a secretary of any hoard.
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