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38 THE PRESBYTER!A1
OF THINGS NEW.
(Our readers will find this letter of "Observer," who is a
distinguished minister of the Presbyterian Church U. S. A.,
of great interest.?Editor.)
We do not propose to moralize on the New Year, nor
include in a short letter, everything which claims to
be new in even the limited area of Greater New York.
In matters of cult people have lone turned to. P.nctnn
but the metropolis is a good rival of the eccentric Hub.
And of the few things worth mentioning from this
city some, or all. may perhaps be called old. Only the
old in some new form, for "there is no new thing under
the sun."
We are constantly hearing of the "New Theology,"
and there are fresh instalments of it continually. Your
iwucis nave oceii reminaea oi the influence of Union
Theological Seminary of this city, its unlimited wealth,
of the able men who compose its faculty, its social
prestige and the controlling grip which it has upon
nearly all the ecclesiastical affairs of the Presbytery
of New York. The theological defections of Profesors
Briggs and McGiffert have not been forgotten and
their teachings continue in the institution. True, the
General Assembly of the Northern Church has disavowed
responsibility for the teachings of the Seminary
and its catalogue shows but few students whose
academic training has been in Presbyterian colleges,
nevertheless, among its professors, directors, benefactors
and warm friends there are a sufficient number
to cause its well known rationalistic teachings to pass
current in the Presbytery. The time seems to have
come when the whole Northern Church will have to
answer as to the attitude of the denomination concerning
the integrity and authority of the Scriptures
and the truth of our most important evangelical doctrines.
This question has been clearly raised by the
licensure of three and ordination of two students of
T Tninn a rroincf ~ 1 * '1 ~
.., i) uii.il vwinjjiciiiil was inaue to llic
Synod of New York, because while admitting that the
doctrine of the Virgin birth of Christ and his# resurrection
from the dead are taught in the Scriptures,
they were not ready to affirm that the first is true
and, second, that he rose from the dead in the same
body in which he was crucified, as our Confession
clearly states, and because they were generally agnostic.
It will be recalled that the Synod of New York,
while seeming to straddle in its decision, virtuallv sus
tained the licensure and ordination of candidates holding
such views, and that seventy-six ministers and elders
submitting to the jurisdiction of the Presbytery
?a larger number than complained to the Synod?
have appealed or complained to the General Assembly,
to meet in May next. Somehow or other it has
been rumored that the complaint and appeal to the
Assembly have been abandoned. Nothing could be
further from the truth.
The necessity for courage and steadfastness in this
warfare becomes more and more apparent. The Rev.
J. Wilbur Chapman, D. D., and Fred C. Ottman, D. D.,
who have just been Avelcomed most heartily in their
return from a circuit of the world and visits especially
to foreign mission stations, have startled many by tellK
.
SI OF THE SOUTH January 12, 1910.
ing that they found evidences of unsound teaching on
the part of some missionaries and emphatically declaring
that such missionaries ought to be at once recalled.
The inference is inevitable too, that in the opinion of
these honored servants, it should be seen to, somehow
or other, either by our Foreign Missionary Boards or
by our General Assemblies, that henceforth^ at least
so far as Presbyterians are concerned, no one should,
be sent in the name of our churches to preach a gospel
of uncertainty. ,
We have in our Presbyterian pulpits many able
preachers who are of unquestioned orthodoxy, but
who seem to be utterly indifferent to violent attacks
by their fellow-ministers upon the very foundations
of our faith. Occasionally one will venture to assume
an attitude that ought to call at once for inquiry
into his honesty in remaining in the ministry of evan
gelical churches of cither Episcopal or Presbyterian
government. Rev. Dr. Aked, a Baptist, may remain
undisturbed because of utterances for which a Protestant
or Methodist Episcopal or Presbyterian ought
to be quickly called to account. Perhaps another development
in the progress of the Xew Theoloo-v mav
turn sonic limelights on the clanger in the crisis
through which the Church is evidently passing. <
While the noted evangelists referred to have been
sounding a note of alarm in one of the important
churches of this great city, in another, the First of
Brooklyn, the pastor, Rev. L. Mason Clarke, D. D.,
who succeeded the late Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall,
has just stepped forth into what he Claims to be a new
and great liberty. In an address last Wednesday
evening, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary
of his ordination, the Brooklyn Eagle reports him J
as saying: "I have come to believe that miracles aie
logically possible, rationally inprobable and religiously 1
valueless. The supernatural I know is the spiritual, \
not the spectacular. I can not find that my faith tests
lIDOn OllP mirarlp T?- ?
, uijuii an experience....!
believe in Christ, not because of his virgin birth, or
his physical resurrection."
"I can not prove either of these propositions and
neither can anyone else. I believe in Christ because
I know something of his power in my life and I have
seen it in the lives of others."
Speaking of his seminary life he said in part: "Here
it was that I had to go through the fight for my faith
to see if I believed the gospel and what the gospel
really was that I did believe. I did not come out of
that fight unscathed. I lost a great many things. A
number of my former beautiful dreams vanished into
thin air. My creed was so shorn that it was a constant
surprise to me that it lived at all and that I
could live on the few truths it contained."
"in my day the theological seminary was about
as slovenly and slipshod an institution as one can
imagine... .The whole tone and atmosphere of the institution
was debilitating to mind and soul."
Speaking of the influences of Professor Riggs, which
came to him like an anchorage, he says: "I gradually
lirnkf1 witli all fti*? ?1 '
-.v. i.n-vjiugicai teacning and methodsI
had ever learned. Little by little I came out into a
liberty and joy I had never before known."
Dr. Clarke^ view of the present church will be new