June 1927
342
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are common to many lives. Certainly Dr. Fosdick would not give such an institution as the confessional a place in our church life. It would be an invasion of the sacred privacies of our lives, and an outrage on all religious freedom.” 1 H B H Is th e Bible a Product of Evolution? W E have long been hearing from those of liberalist turn of mind that the Bible is not God’s Révéla tion, but simply the “history of man’s successive stages of the discovery o f God.” Dr. Millikan, for instance, in a recent address, ex- ■ pressed this idea, tracing the history of religion from the period of animal and human blood sacrifices to the pres
and puzzled souls, he is doing well to remind preachers of a Scriptural duty which often is not properly regarded. We cannot but feel a sorrow, however, for burdened souls who find their way into the studies of ministers who repudiate the Bible and salvation by grace. If Dr. Fosdick has no “Thus saith the Lord” for the sinsick and afflicted, he has nothing but stones for those who seek bread. We are reminded of the story of the English clergy man, Charles Barry, who told at a ministers’ meeting how he was getting ready for bed one night when a poor woman called him out. “My mother is dying,” she said, “and I want you to come and get her in.” The preacher understood that this dying mother wanted peace regarding the future. But he had become a Modernist. He went
ent-day spiritual con ceptions and desire for social progress, and de clared religion taught the doctrine of evolu tion. “Take, for instance,.- the Santa Claus ideal,” said Dr. Millikan. “At 3 years of age Santa Claus is the most real thing in the world. At 7 years of age the boy has sized up the chim-g ney entrances and the fifty-two inches of the girth of S a n t a Claus and concludes the story is a lie. At 30 years of age the boy has become a father with a 3-year- old boy ' of his own. A g a i n he believes in Santa Claus, and the Christmas spirit is the most beautiful thing in the world.” But—is the B i b l e any such production ? That it is the Book in which God r e v e a l s Himself progressively
and tried to talk to the d y i n g w o m a n . He talked about character and the advantage of having a good record when one is about to face eternity. The poor woman t o s s e d upon her bed and t u r n e d her face a wa y . She found no c o m f o r t . Mr. Barry t h o u g h t d e s p e r a t e l y a n d began finally to quote the words of the old hymn taught him by his own mother: “There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Immanuel’s veins, And sinners plunged be neath that flood Lose all their g u i l t y stains.” The very repeating
of the words •seemed to take him back to the days when he preached Christ crucified, and he went on and told the sin-burdened w o m a n of Christ’s dying as the Lamb of God for her.
to man we may grant, for progress of truth there is in the Bible. The germ of all truth is in the opening chapters of Genesis, but the full flower of truth was not beheld by men until the Lord Christ came. This does not mean, however, that the blood sacrifices were “the groping inventions of a people dowered with a genius for religion.” These were God’s appointed means of speaking to the inmost souls of the people of those times- concerning “the Lamb of God,” who “in the fulness of time” should redeem the world. New Testament writers, at great length, show how the Old Testament law was the school-master given of God to teach the world the necessity of dependence upon a Divine Redeemer. Take for instance, the subject of immortality, which is only dimly revealed in the Old Testament. The Late Dr. Joseph Cook, of Boston, was speaking once in the Metro politan Tabernacle on the profound subject of personal immortality. He discoursed for a considerable time on the évidence afforded by the Old Testament, and then said: “Having studied this great question by the light of the moon, let us now pass into the radiant sunshine.”- Thereupon he produced the massive evidence of the New
As he told the story to the ministers, he said with tear- stained face, “Brethren,, it got her in—and whafs more~-$m it got me in too—and I ’m going to preach that the rest of ■my life.” If Dr. Fosdick means, as Romanist papers have been -reporting, that the Church should put in operation such a confessional as the Roman church maintains, with the thought that men should confess their sins to preachers instead of God as the Scripture enjoins—may the Lord deliver u s ! In no sense does any man need a mediator between his soul and God, other than the One who stands a t the right hand of the Throne, nor does God’s Word require any oral statement of our sins to ministers or any looking to them for absolution. Faithful Protestant pastors will certainly minister to burdened souls by praying with them, counseling with them from the Scriptures, and pointing them to the Christ of God, but as Dr. Frank M. Goodchild has put it— “No man should be obliged to receive into his mind, as the confessor must, the stream of impurity and mean ness and littleness and-various kinds of 'wrong doing that'
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