THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS
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and that sovereign the master of the world—the very dream that lured the Kaiser into a sea of blood from which he emerged an exile seeking security under a foreign flag. Nietzsche names Darwin as one of the three great men of his century, but, thanks to him for doing so, relieves him of responsibility for the doctrine that bears his name by crediting Hegel with an earlier announcement of the theory. Nietzsche died in an insane asylum, hut his philosophy has wrought the moral ruin of a multitude, if it is not actually responsible for bringing up on the world its greatest war. Do not cherish the delusion that it makes no difference what a man thinks upon these fundamental things. WM. J. BRYAN. ROOSEVELT AND ROMANISM Toward the end of his life, and after he had ceased to be President, Mr. Roosevelt visited some of the capitals of Europe, and among other places, he went to Rome. ‘“The Pope,” he writes, “had no right whatever to expect that I would be willing to see him if he made it a condition that I should not see the Methodists, who were conducting their work in an entirely reputable way.” Every effort was made to induce Mr. Roosevelt to alter his posi tion, Cardinal Merry del Yal going to the length of informing an intermediary that, if Mr. Roosevelt would consent to agree secretly not to visit the Methodists he was quite willing that it should be publicly announced that the ex-Presi- dent had made no such agreement! Roosevelt’s comment is characteristic: “Why, a Tammany Boodle Alderman would have been ashamed to make such a proposal.” As Mr. Roosevelt refused to budge from his position, he was not presented to the Vatican.
F A C T S - N O T
THEORIES
HERE is peril in calling facts of the Atonement accomp lished by our Lord in shed ding His blood by any other name than “facts.” It comes back to the fundamental question of fact whether there
was any real atonement at all. For the man who waives aside orthodox statements of the facts of the Atone ment as “theories” of it has no facts as a rule to substitute. It is the thoughtful orthodox man who discusses theories of the facts he believes in, interested in the theories only so far as they grow to include all the unques tioned facts. Facts accomplished by the Lord’s blood on Calvary may or may not be explained, or remain explicable, but the facts are not disturbed by that. Just as the fact of seeing by human eyes cannot be scientifically detailed in all particulars, and the fact of word assimilation has many mysteries, as have all physical activities, and still more profoundly all - intellectual life. But all the facts remain. And we wise ly discriminate between facts we never question and theories of them which in terest us but do not convince. The peril, mind it well and strictly, appears when we dismiss facts as if they were mere theories. And this pe^il is with us in present-day discus sions of Christ’s death upon the Cross. Here then are the facts, let us never call them theories! Dr. Daniel Dor chester in “Concessions of Liberalists to Orthodoxy” (p. 142) gives a com prehensive summary: “1. Christ’s death is the central and the centralizing fact of the Bible; “2. It is the most wonderful ex-
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