An Obvious Conclusion Acknowledged
ONE difficulty which we have found in dealing with the scientific infidelity which has been thrusting itself upon us, with the avowed purpose of supplanting well-established truths, has been the fact that it was so often clothed in language capable of a double interpretation. The new views were often suggested rather than openly stated. By an apparently slight and plausible modification in the interpretation of familiar passages of Scripture, by abolishing any distinction between the physical and the spiritual, and by playing upon the twofold sense of some words, it has been possible to introduce among us the beginnings of a system of teaching which, when logically developed, would overthrow the very foundations of Christianity in general, and the third angel’s message in particular. All this teaching would have carried with it, in large degree, its own antidote, if the conclusions involved in the first positions had been openly avowed. Here was the difficulty. The premises were stoutly maintained, but the conclusions were either denied or so carefully hidden under a veneering of truth that many were being deceived. Some of the advocates, however, of this new philosophy are beginning to acknowledge the inevitable conclusions of their premises. One of these is Dr. Lyman Abbott, of New York. His present position and its real meaning, as well as its relation to a kind of teaching which is quite familiar to us, is so clearly presented in an editorial in a recent issue of the New York Sun, that we quote it entire. It is entitled “The Confession of Dr. Abbott:—” Dr. Lyman Abbott announced in a sermon to Harvard students on Sunday [December 18] that he no longer believes in “a great first Cause.” “My God,” he said, “is a great and ever-present force.” That is, he has become a pantheist. The confession seemed to him so startling that, after having made it, he declared his expectation that forthwith “the newspapers will brand me as a heretic.” If any newspaper is surprised by this confession, it must be ignorant of the outgivings of Dr. Abbott, and of the school of theology to which he belongs, for a long time past, or be incapable of drawing an obvious logical conclusion. This school of theology, the “New Theology,” has given up the dogmatic premises of the old theology, and according to past religious standards it is wholly heretical. Measured by those tests, it is as infidel as was Ingersoll himself, the difference between it and him being rather in form of statement than in substance of thought. Dr. Abbott tried to save himself at Cambridge by saying, after making his formal pantheistic confession, “Yet God has a personality.” He had described his divinity as the “one energy” which “has always been working,” and the only possible attribute of personality he had given it was “intelligence.” That simply means that the “energy” “works” through the laws of nature, and the science which knows no personality in God would agree with him entirely. Actually, there is as much personality in electricity as in Dr. Abbott’s “energy.” Dr. Abbott, however, will be disappointed in his expectation of being denounced as a heretic. The Presbyterian clergyman who threw overboard the Westminster Confession is not haled for trial as a heretic, but held tight in the embrace of his presbytery. The Union Theological Seminary constructs an indefinite creed of its own, and there is no outcry in the religious world. The miracle of the incarnation is explained away in nominally orthodox pulpits, and reduced to a “merely symbolic, a purely imaginative significance,” yet no trials for heresy result. Dr. Abbott himself had classed the prophets of the Old Testament with contemporary men of genius, yet nothing was done to him and no expressions of surprise at his conclusions were heard. And now, also, when he makes bold to declare to Harvard students his square pantheism, there will be no excitement in any quarter. Everybody who knew anything about his school of religious thought knew very well already that its reasoning was pantheistic. All the same, ought such a man to be occupying the pulpit of a Christian church founded on belief in a “great first Cause” and on belief in the fact of the incarnation and in something more than mere “energy,” even if it be an “intelligent energy”? Ought he not to be on a platform wholly independent of religion as it was once conceived to be? In this connection it seems appropriate to call attention to two brief extracts from the spirit of prophecy. The first one shows that much of the religion of the present day is heathenism in disguise. It reads as follows:— The god of many professedly wise men, of philosophers, poets, politicians, journalists,—the god of polished fashionable circles, of many colleges and universities, even of some theological institutions,—is little better than Baal, the sun-god of Phenicia.—“Great Controversy,” page 583. The second quotation makes it clear that this conception of God as “a divine, ever-present, all-pervading Intelligence” is emphatically anti-Christian. Here it is:— If God is an essence pervading all nature, then he dwells in all men; and in order to attain holiness, man has only to develop the power that is within him. These theories, followed to their logical conclusion, sweep away the whole Christian economy. They do away with the necessity for the atonement, and make man his own savior.—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VIII, page 291. Years ago we were told that “all who value their eternal interests should be on their guard against the inroads of skepticism,” and that “the very pillars of truth will be assailed.” The time has surely come when we ought to give most earnest heed to this instruction. In the three messages of Revelation 14, as God gave them to this people, we shall find “a solid, immovable platform.” Here we can take our stand. “Woe to him who shall move a block or stir a pin of these messages. The true understanding of these messages is of vital importance.” It is our privilege and duty to give these messages to the world as God has given them to us, without any of the interpretations of a pantheistic science.