THE KING’S BUSINESS 185 arians, but, with hundreds like them, enthusiasts in Jewish evangelism. Dr. J. H. Barrows, of “The Parliament of Religions’’ fame, said, at the Chicago Christian-Jewish conference, “The Christian Church expects the national conversion of the Jews to Christianity, Zechariah says, ‘They shall be as though the Lord had not cast them off, for I am the Lord thy God.’ We believe that Christ shall come and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. We believe that Christianity needs Judaism, that is, it needs the mighty reinforcement ■ that shall come from Israel and hasten the consummation of all things. Did mot ,Paul say, ‘If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?’ ” T he same W riter continues : “It is time to tell them (these milieu^ arians) kindly but plainly.” Phew 1that the little man who wrote that should tell the exegetical scholarship of Christendom ranged (exegetically, at least) •on the side of Chiliasm) “Kindly but plainly!’” (See Dr. Torrey’s “R eturn oe the L ord J esus ,” especially a list of Chiliasts, in the Supplement, by the writer. ) And what will our critic teH us so “Kindly but plainly ” ? “That the pope is not Antichrist.” Good, we knew it. “Rome is not the Scarlet Woman.” So;- But it is pretty generally agreed she is a “Mother of harlots,” and our friend must look to it that he becomes hot a pastor of one of them. Again, that “the letters to the Seven churches do not contain, nor pretend to contain a scheme of history foretold.” Dr.' A. A. Hodge, of Princeton, of world-wide fame, said of a certain scholar and his great work, “There is, probably, no man in America better qualified for it than himself.” That brilliant critical intellect referred to said, “What John did was to sketch our present age, in the seven Asiatic epistles, coming down to our time.” That is told “plainly” enough! N ot “ progressive .” Our Chicago pastor wonders why we cannot find enough incentive in the thought a “progressive triumph . . . if they (i. e., we) could grasp it.” We answer, Because we cannot grasp a will o’ the wisp. A triumph of which 20 centuries of “progress” has brought no sign; of which, till two centuries ago, the Church never dreamed; against the hope of which the Word from the beginning, specially warns; and which the high est anti-Chiliastic exegetes themselves repudiate (Milligan, for instance in his work on Revelation.) We could not exhaust the list of scholarship that repudiates that, progress, But we are able “to grasp” the triumph of “ the C oming P rinc E.” And we are in the very best of company in so doing: “The majority of exegetes, both in learning, number, and research, adopt the pre-millenial view, following the plain, and undeniable sense of the Sacred text.”— Dean Alford. “Almost every believing Christian in Germany holds this view.”— The almost peerless Franz Delitzsh. “It has got in our days an incomparably more thorough and exegetical foundation and establishment than ever before.”— Kliefoth, none more com petent to speak on that point. “This doctrine of the Millennium, spread so widely in the first three centuries, which has constantly reappeared .at different epochs, is supported by more ancient and formal texts than many doctrines now universally ac cepted.”— Renan, of the French Forty. “When pre-millenarians are found in such company, it does, indeed, seem to be a touch of the heroic in anyone to call in question their scholarship pr knowledge of God’s Word.”— Nathaniel West.'
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