THE KING’S BUSINESS
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output there is a much more popular and persistent demand, are still, not to be counted, since they oppose any thing like ‘critical thought.’ The cir cumstance that ‘Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible’ (a volume that has lost the period and turned itself into an interrogation point) is repugnant to them, justifies me in classifying them with Dowie, the ‘Holy Rollers,’ or any other fake company I care to name, while such a theological semi nary as that of Louisville, Ky., which educates more men every year than all of its sister seminaries of the North, the graduates of which occupy the most conspicuous pulpits of America, is to be dismissed with a sneer, since .it does not teach “the composite nature of the Pentateuch and Isaiah and the synoptic Gospels.” It is little wonder that division arid spiritual deadness are marking the fields served by the graduates from the feet of this President and in structor. The time used to be when the masterly opponents of the Church were on the outside! Rousseau, Vol taire, Hume, were named “infidels,” and their influence was nullified by the confessed fact that they had no sympathy with Christ or His Church. The time has now come when the chief opponents of the Church are on the inside. In. the language of Mr. Spurgeon, “They have stolen the liv ery of heaven to serve the devil in.” Their literary productions are like the oriental pot; you can put in your hand and take out what you please. A recent article entitled, “The Awak ening of American Protestantism,” has in it sections that would suit the most orthodox in the land, and other paragraphs that would please the most infidel. Two volumes, recently, from liberal pens, contain chapters which are devotion itself; and others which are the incarnation of doubt. So- called modern theology is fish or fowl,
up against the millions, and the most keen-minded, that “everything mili tates against the infallible theory.” And, in order to give the world a further proof of their personal, as well as their professional superiority, these stranded ministers, now assuming to be instructors, speak of their intellect ual equals, as “mossbacks,” because, forsooth, they believe in the super naturalism of the world’s transcend ent Volume, and in the very deity of the matchless Man from Nazareth. A writer whose position at the head of a freak theological seminary—the saving characteristic of which is its liberal endowment—admits that men who are at the head of the Bible schools of America are “convention ally moral,” but indicts them as be ing “frankly anti-modern; hostile to evolution in all its implications.” Af ter having thus disposed of them, the author proceeds to say: “Every Protestant theological seminary which makes any pretense to more than strict denominationalism is teaching the composite nature of the Penta teuch and of Isaiah and the synoptic Gospels.” He continues: “Since Dr. Green’s death there has been no worthy champion of anti-criticism in America. The literature which his successors circulate, as a rule, is rhet orical rather than convincing. The real issues are now seen to be theo- logica 1 and not biblical.” Sentences which, when analyzed, mean, “Men who are easily my equals, who have enjoyed equal, if not better, educa tional advantages than I have known, who have made for themselves a name more widely called, are nevertheless riot worthy to be called ‘theologians’ since they do not speak my ‘liberal shibboleth’; and the institutions over which they preside notwithstanding the fact that some of them have many times as many students as the one over which I preside, and for their
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