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NEW YEAR’S DAY-A VISION-Page Four
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VOLUME EIGHT
NUMBER FORTY-FIVE
DUBOSE DEMOLISHES CRITICS
Eloquent New Pastor of the First Methodist Church, Atlanta, Delivers, Before “lhe Gideons," an Address of Crushing
Logic on ‘ The Bible Challenged"—Unique Reply to Those Who Would Shut Out Bible From Public Schools.
T
eons” was a notable illustration of Dr. Du-
Bose ’s power as a thinker and speaker.
The address was delivered by request, as a
special reply to the recent socialistic raidings
against the Bible in public schools, and is
worthyof careful study and the widest possible
ciculation. Dr. Dußose said:
THE BIBLE CHALLENGED.
To attempt a defense of the Bible seems lit
tle less than a gratuity. The Book which
has had, in some of its parts, a history of
at least four thousand years, has attained an
exceptional standing in the court of human
judgment, and is, by that token, able to main
tain its own claims. But the cause of the
Bible is further enhanced in the fact that it
has outlived all the great world-empires, and
that its teachings have dimmed the glory, and
discounted the tenets, of all the old religions,
so that, while these have fallen into decay, or
exist only as fetiches and obstructive supersti
tions, the religion of the Bible shows every
year,' the vigor of an endless youth, and the
quality of an endless spiritual and ethical per
tinency. Can a book concerning which so
much is admitted be in need of defense?
The answer must be an unequivocal nega
tive —namely, that the Bible is its own defense,
and that the history which it has made is an
argument that must ever convince and compel
the collective thought and faith of enlightened
men. Indeed, a spiritual consciousness abides
in the written Scriptures, which gives them the
semblance and force of an individual life, quite
unique, and clothes them with an insistency
wholly unequaled in literature.
But it remains, in spite of these tremendous
facts, that the Bible has been, and is still be
ing challenged—not by individual critics and
skeptics alone, but also by schools of socalled
liberal thought, by partizan organizations, and
by many secular affiliations. A concrete ex
ample of such partizan and conventional chal
lenge of the Book has recently found wide pub
licity through the local press, and because of
this, not a few susceptible minds have been dis
tressed by haphazard and irresponsible utter
ances.
HAT the pulpit of Atlanta has re
ceived an able addition, and the
forces of civic righteousness a
fearless and forceful champion in
the coming of Dr. H. M. Dußose, of
Augusta, is manifest from his rec
ord, both before and since his com
ing to Georgia’s capital city. His
address before the Atlanta “Gid-
ATLANTA, GA., JANUA
Not the Book, but the People, Need Defense.
How shall these and other like assaults upon
the Christian Scriptures he met? The issues
should be pointedly and directly joined, and
that with serious and studied argumentation.
A defense should be made, not indeed of the
Book, which does not need it, but of that death
less human consciousness—expressed in con
science, thought and emotion—to whose hunger
and needs the Bible is heaven’s perfect an
swer. The Bible needs no apology, but the mil
lions of men and women whose struggle
with poverty and sin, and millions more who
; bi
W 1
DR. H. M. DUBOSE,
Pastor First M. E. Church, Atlanta.
are beset by the lust and perils of wealth, with
millions also, of little children who have not
yet come into the tragic knowledge of either
poverty or wealth, and to whom sin is not yet a
chain to bind —these are entitled to a defense
against those who malign the word of God, and
who seek to break its healing and saving pow
er over man’s minds. The State, too, repre
senting the whole order of social and civic life,
in which is bound up the destinies of all its
peoples, is entitled to defense against those
who would discredit and remove the source of
those principles upon which it rests for a foun
dation.
The general mind of the people of all Chris-
OUR NEW FIELD EDITOR—Page Five
tian States is naturally reverent toward the
Bible. The multitudes silently allow the
claims of revelation. Even where there is
no religious conformity, this reverence for the
Word x is generally present. It is the need of
the State no less than the need of the Church,
to have this latent reverence stirred into an
activity whose fruit will be absolute righteous
ness in both private and public conduct. He
who helps to strengthen this reverence for the
Bible, is not only in the line of true disciple
ship, but also exhibits the true loyalty of citi
zenship—moral anarchy and treason —whoso-
ever purposes to confuse and efface the rever
ence of men for that Book, the same is the foe
of a sound and responsible public sentiment,
and is no less the abettor of a spirit whose ten
dency is to weaken the authority and stability
of the commonwealth. These, I know, are
strong asseverations, but they are deliberately
framed in refutation of the socialistic and dan
gerous utterances of men who seek to sow,
where invited and where not invited, the seeds
of moral anarchy and treason; for, if the con
sciences of men be separated from the teach
ings of the Bible, then must the world fall heir
to an utterly negative and nihilistic creed.
Then must it be clearly seen that the advocates
of the highest civilization have been mistaken
in setting up purity, righteousness and justice
as standards, and that their contraries, or, at
best, some weak counterfeits of them, are the
true aims and sum of living. If the Bible is
rejected and its teachings are rooted out of
the consciousness of men, then agnosticism, in
stead of faith, and anarchy, instead of author
ity and law, are inevitable substitutes..
When the Bible goes down the “Red Flag”
goes up. Repeal the Ten Commandments and
the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, and
you leave society at the mercy of a seafull of
moral privateers. Statesmanship is never so
short-sighted as when it hedges against the
Bible, one of whose constantly reiterated doc
trines is respect for magistrates and adminis
trative authority. And labor and industry
are nothing else than purblind, when they tol
erate indictments against that volume, whose
chief theme and inspiration are the life, the
words and the deeds of Jesus the carpenter.
The Gideons Stand by the Book.
It is a reassuring reflection to us that, as
members o| the Order of Gideons, we have
committed ourselves especially to the task of
promoting reverence for the Scriptures, and
to this end have busied ourselves in putting the
Bible in the way of those men whose active
habits of business and thought mark them as
(Continued on Page 4.)
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