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April 21, 1909. THE PRESBYTERS
The Defence of the Faith
LECKY'S TESTIMONY.
It was reserved for Christianity to present to the
world an ideal character which, through all the changes
of eighteen centuries, has inspired the hearts of men
with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of
acting 011 all ages, nations, temperaments and conditions;
has been not only the highest pattern of virtue,
but the strr>ncr#??t incontit-a '* -
?? hj us practice; and has
exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said
that the simple record of three short years of active
life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind
than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the
exhortations of moralists.?W. E. H. Lecky.
CARMACK ON RELIGION.
"I dispute no man's freedom of opinion, though why
any man should be willing to believe that man has no
pre-eminence over a beast I do not know. You say that
you can not believe the miracle of the resurrection.
T -a- ? ??
L,ei me ten you the story of a greater miracle than that.
It is the story of a poor peasant, a member of a despised,
and subject race, himself despised, the place of his birth
dsepised by his own countrymen. In a little while he
dies a felon's death and all those above him forgot he
ever lived. Yet somehow his words lived on.
"Philosophy with all its wisdom, priest-craft with all
its terrors, kings wielding the iron power of all the
world, but over armies, over dying dynasties and crumbling
thrones, rivers of blood and seas of fire, that power
swept on ana on until it has made conquest of the
north, until every king on every throne bows down
in adoration to the dead peasant of Galilee and the very
instrument of his felon's death has become a symbol of
salvation to all mankind. Do you believe that story?
It is the story of a greater miracle than that a man died
and rose from the dead.
"Young gentlemen, be not among those who scoft at
religion, which is the last hope of the world, whose
consolation you yourself will need in the time of affliction
and the hour of death."?E. VV. Carmack.
SCEPTICAL INSTRUCTORS.
The teacher who comes from the Holy of Holies into
the classroom will never knock the solid foundation of
spiritual certainties out from under the feet of his
scholars by any process of critical investigation. He
will never displace until he can replace, never pull down
until he can build better. Under the combined effect
of the secularizing tendency and of destructive criticism
the younger generation has had a hard time intellectually
and religiously. A negative process always ina:
? i?
undies immaturity.
It should not be possible in any of our Christian colleges
for students to write home, as some do today,
that "our teacher in science laughs at the uselessness,
not to say ridiculousness, of prayer, and our instructor
in the Bible tells us that Genesis is little else than a
collection of Babylonian myths."?Dvvight M. Pratt,
D. D., in the Homiletic Review.
vv:
iN OF THE SOUTH. ' 7
LIBERAL IDEA OF RELIGION.
A pretentious advocate of broad ideas, the pastor of one of
the five or six Unitarian churches in the South, which have
struggled !or existence for many years, has lately publicly
expressed himself thus:
"Take the doctrine of the vicarious atonement, which is
certainly immoral, and no wonder the whole cult that surrounds
it is discredited. The teaching that morality outside
cf faith or grace is useless or evil is an offense against the
decent principles cf life that ampiis ? *
? .v, iiv<a<irii. ?ynt-ii salvation
is a gift instead of an achievement it has no eAical
basis."
The doctrine of the vicarious atonement is the very heart
and substance of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, believed
by the whole church, both Catholic and Protestant, except by
the Unitarians' and Rationalists. At this season of the year
it is especially emphasized in most churches. The above statement,
coming from a man who represents a bare handful of
adherents, that this doctrine is immoral, is itself immoral in
its effrontery and in the opinion of all who accept the Scriptures
as God's revelation to man; it is blasphemous. Unitarians
complain when the name of Christians and Christian fpt
lowship are denied them.
This representative of a failing cult exclaims, "The spectacle
of the Unitarians being excluded from the federation of the
churches was enough to make a 3aint blush for Christianity."
This "religious liberal"' holds that religion is progressive. It
may be demonstrated by a single example that in its opposition
to the Gospel Unitarianism has not progressed much
beyond the first Christian centuries, while in common honesty
It has progres3td backward. In a work which has been
partially preserved in the writings of Origen, a Roman writer,
Celsus, who lived about A. D. 150, says that Jesus was the natural
Son of God only in the sense in which all men are the
children of God; that it is ridiculous to believe in miracles
such as the changing of water into wine, raising the dead, etc.;
that it is wronc hi holiovo in tho Ji,.lnh? ~r ?
? 0 w ?v..v.v imv *?* *nut* ui kjui nua luny
lo believe in an atonement by his death upon the cross, or
in the resurrection. To assume a supreme being and to
strive after perfection, this is the only rational religion, according
to this writer. Thus was the whole wisdom which is
now paraded by the Unitarians as the greatest progress of
the twentieth century, already advanced a few decades after
the dealn of the Apostles. The lecturer taunts the church for
"holding on to mediaevalism like grim death," while he himself
Is warming over the stale pagan wisdom of 1750 years
ago!- For who* was Celsus? A pagan and one of the bitterest
opponents of Christianity, a man who, by his writings, instigated
the bloody persecutions of the Christians. He did
not have the audacity, however, to pass his views as Christian
truth. He was honest enough to call himself a pagan
and to fight on the side of paganism against the name of *
Christ. The modern followers of this heathen enemy of
Christ love to boast of their "progress." The only progress
this barefaced paganism has made since the days of Celsus
is that now it has become bold enough to assume for ftself
the name of Christianity and to claim that it alone is the.
genuine and true religion of Christ.?L. V.
The Westminster chapel, Condon, of which G. Campbell Morgan
is pastor, has decided to give one-tenth of its aggregate income
to foreign missions. This is in addition ro what the individual
members give independently.
The men of America spend more in a year for tobacco than
the whole Christian Church has spent in the last Ave hundred
years in missions to the pagan world. Between voluminous
puffs, we can hear hundreds of them saying, "We do not believe
in missions."