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VOL. IV. RICHMOt
The Bib
The times call for a re-affirmation by the
church of her faith in the Bible as Godword,
a supernatural revelation of His will,
and that for our good always. Perhaps Bible
study of one sort or another has never been
so widespread, and yet the attacks upon the
Bible have rarely been so persistent and never
before have they been so dangerous as now.
THE BIBLE AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
The hostility of Roman Catholic leaders
ana oy dews and others to the Bible in the
public schools, is by no means lessening.
A devout West Virginian teaching in Colorado
has told me how she has had to repress
her longing to speak the truth to children
of the five or six nationalities in her
school room, because by State law the greatest
of all books is forbidden in the sclmols.
A Christian man, superintendent of schools
in a Mississippi Gulf town, feeling the same
desire, does not yield to it in his white schools.
Only in his negro schools does he at times
venture to open the Book; and tiiis through
an understanding negro teacher, a Christian
from Virginia. When the superintendent visits
this school, the old negro gets out his Bible
and lays it on the desk and leads the singing
of a hymn. This superintendent remarked after
hearing a hymn sung in S. P. U. Chapel,
' I would not dare to ask my classes to sing a
hymn except in the negro schools; there we
sometimes sing "Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me;" in
the white schools we are permitted to sing
All Coons look alike to me," no hymns.
Vet Cardinal Gibbons in a letter diagnosing
"the prevailing unrest" to be found in America
is quoted as saying: "I fear that we are
all forced to admit that, in a certain sense,
there is a decline of religions faith in this
country, for we see evidences of it on all
sides. There is nothing so sacred as not to be
denied by some one. In regard to matters of
religion, we see in an ever increasing number
a great deal of indifferentism. What are the
causes of this- I feel that it is largely due to
the want of respect for the sacred Scriptures,
to worldliness, to rationalism, or the rejection
the principle of authority, to the inordinate
love of wealth, pleasure, and honors; and
lastly to our system of education, according to
which the education of the school must be independent
of religion. These and others too
numerous to mention, are to my mind, the
'"Uses of such religious indifferentism in this
country." (Quoted in Lit. Dig. 3:30-12). Is
"?t the one crying need of national life the
' ringing back into the schools of the people
the Hook which has made our people great,
and which alone can keep America from the
fate of Rome and of Italy t
THE BIBLE IN CURRENT PRINT.
' he attack on the Bible has changed its
MD, NEW ORLEANS, ATLANTA, JUNE
f _ ? , f
>ie in tne
method in late years. It is now the indirect
and veiled attack. That attack is not
only seen in books published about the
Bible in which the so-called assured results
of the rationalistic criticism are adopted, but
in an activity manifested in substituting such
works for the conservative sort. The Bible
helps, dictionaries, and reference books that
are most advertised and kept before the public,
are of the mediating and negative school
or worse. The literature study courses, and
hand books, put forward by the Y. M. C. A.
authorities are frequently of this sort. These
hooks are often attractive in their style and
make-up, and their hurtful principles are
veiled to many eyes. A friend of mine told me
of an interview with Professor George Adams
Smith in Scotland, and the inquiry made of the
great scholar as to the fundamentals of faith
as affected by his writings. Dr. Smith's reply
to him was, Don't read my books.
Principal Simon of Bradford, England, deilares
(Some Bible Problems, p. 284, quoted in
Bible Student and Teacher, March, 1911) ;
"What the Christian Church needs to-be on its
guard against is the acceptance of the reconstruction
of the history of Israel which eliminates
the special divine acts, revelations, and
inspiration, whose purpose was the reconciliation
of God and man."
Our missionary literature is not free from
this danger. The Northern General Assembly
of 1911 bad an overture from Los Angeles
calling attention to this fact. The great Missionary
Conference at Edinurgh in 1910 has
been criticised for a disposition to compromise
with the destructive criticism. An editorial
in the Missionary Review of the World,
March, 1911, states that "many missionaries
wrote to the conference expressing views opposed
to the so-called higher criticism, but
were ignored; while the newer schools' ideas
are found in the reports of the conference.
Evidence of the terrible havoc of the higher
criticism on the foreign field was before the
commission. But, says the Rev. T. Wright
Ilay, we look in vain for any protest from the
conference against the criticism of the Scriptures
which has wrought such havoc.
Dr. Mabie in the Bombay Guardian, is quoted
as saying that "one of the triumphs of
Satan in the present day is to get himself
ignored. At the recent World's Missionary
Conference one can almost fancy there was
'a conspiracy of silence' on this head
except by one speaker who congratulated the
conference that the "belief in Satan and evil
spirits, once s<5 prominent a characteristic of
the Christian religion, had now happily almost
disappeared.' "
The same disposition to ignore the doctrines
of the Bible is manifest in change from pro
western presbyter/am
v\l Presbyter/an
rnern presbyter)an
> 5. 1912. NO. 23.
Schools
fesscdly religious journals into distinctive secular
ones: e. P. the OlltlimV and llio Indn
pendent. Besides all this there is the exposition
of error and the propagation of antiScriptural
principles in the popular magazines
and volumes of fiction. Of the influence of bad
books circulating from public libraries one
testifies in the London Standard (quoted in
Lit. Dig. 3:30-12), to having seen in a respectable
public reading library a book which
from a military mess had been thrown out as
unfit. The theme of a recent Glasgow speaker
(Brit. Week. Feb. 22, 1912). "Is Glasgow
Becoming Pagan," might be aptly turned to
suit conditions in our own land; paganism being
defined not as atheism nor infidelity, but
as the ^substitution of something better for
itnd His gospel.
THE ?IBLE IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL.
The wfcrst is yet to come. Our Sunday
sctooIs are iu danger. A determined effort
is being macie to poison the fountain source,
and by capturing the Sunday school literature,
to destroy the Bible's supremacy in
the future Church itself. The Presbyterian,
Philadelphia, March 13, 20 and 27, has
important information on this point taken
from a paper, "A Dangerous Germ," by
Rev. D. J. McCaslin, D. D., published by
request of the Minister's Association of Minneapolis.
Dr. McCaslin's paper is a study of
educational evolution during the last decade,
especially Sabbath school instruction and management.
Iii the address in Clarksville last June the
writer called attention to the significant fact
that in the Intermediate Graded Manuals, 3rd
quarter, lesson 37 is not from the Holy Scriptures,
but is from one of those books of the
Roman Catholic Bible rejected by Protestants;
nnrl tKof 4-Ua ^? 1
uuu tuui/ tuo icsauns ui me *tni quarier are
eon-biblical. (Expositor, May, 1911, p. 474).
One help intimates that the giving of the law
on Sinai was done in a thunder storm; another
help (since' suppressed) explains that
it was the sun's heat which set fire to Elijah's
sacrifice. The Intermediate Graded Lessons
in the Berean Teacher's Manual, the Pilgrim
Teacher's Manual, and the Westminster Man
uals, 4th quarter, are unbiblical or extrabiblical,
being lessons from Wm. P^nn, John Eliot,
S .T Mfllo Mftol r???T ?J m wn
uvui jvu r? a?u i' l uuces vv niara.
The fact was made evident that the Graded
Lesson Syndicate was .exerting an influence
with the International Lesson Committee. Rev.
Dr. J. T. McFarland, editor of the Board,
Methodist Episcopal Church, defends this action
(Expositor, April, 1911). He declares
that "the Bible is not to be regarded as the
exclusive subject of study in the Sunday
schools." Dr. McCaslin's paper states that
few pastors and Sabbath school workers have
thoroughly investigated the history, substance,