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THE KING’S BUSINESS
as one prefer.; an egg or a scorpion, as one has need! Its Moral Propaganda Modernism believes itself to have a message. It is quietly, but certainly, organizing to the end of self-propaga tion. In educational associations, pur porting to be interdenominational; by critical cliques who, through confer ence and ecclesiastical wire-pulling, capture convention programs; by the proffer of free services to multitudi nous assemblies, skepticism in the form of “New Theology” is proving itself as successful to-day as Deism was one hundred years ago in Eng land and France, as Christless—in the proper employment of that term—as the Renaissance was in the far East four hundred years ago. Its whole trend is square against truth. The language of the Apostle is : “These also resist the truth.” That is especially true if you take Christ’s own definition of the truth: “Thy Word is truth.” One of the most notable of these “modern” preachers says this: “We have no warrant whatever for saying that God wrote the Book (the Bible) or that whatever is found in it must be re garded as His utterance. Such an idea is absolutely without foundation, and is irreverent and even blasphem ous.” And mark you, he wrote those words in 1909, nearly twenty years after he had had an opportunity to read “A Plea for the Old Sword,” by Joseph Parker, a volume which had utterly demolished his former series of “Tentative Suggestions.” If there is any one thing that re cent years has scientifically demon strated it is that the modern minister who imagines himself commissioned in “New Theology” is utterly un moved by the force of historical facts, the impact of logical processes; and,
of course, he is impervious to Scrip ture appeals. He does all of this in the name of “Science” ; he defends his conclusions on the ground of hav ing “thought” his way to them; when the truth is exactly what the great Wendell Phillips expressed when he said: “Wycliff gave the masses the Bible—the right to think!” Never, in the history of the world, have men who did not know the Book been capable of ' thinking clearly and strongly; and never have the men who have opposed the teaching of its pages thought other than crookedly; and never have the people who fol lowed such thinkers been able to escape the awful consequence men tioned by the Apostle Paul, namely, “Corruption of mind.” To this hour doubts regarding the authority of the Bible, and the deity of Jesus Christ, have done one thing well, namely, they have deepened the world’s dark ness. No wonder Dwight N. Hillis says: “Therefore, recognizing that unhappiness comes through doubt, every wise man will exclaim with Wordsworth: “Great God! I’d rather be A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, So might I standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.” It is needless here aqd now to elab orate the immoral influences of infi delity. They are not matters of past history only; but a present output as well. The very men in our universi ties who are naming the Scriptures “myths” and the Son of God merely a “unique man” are also the men who are teaching youth that the decalogue is a social code already out-lived ana supplanted by one that lays a light
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