In his first letter to the church at Thessalonica the apostle Paul said to the believers, “For this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that, when ye received from us the word of the message, even the word of God, ye accepted it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God.” This is a sufficient cause for thankfulness in behalf of any church. Prosperity is assured to every individual and to the church as a whole, when the word of God is thus accepted. This is the foundation of all genuine Christian experience. A growing weakness which must end in a complete departure from the true faith is the inevitable consequence of treating the word of God as though it were the word of men. So it was in the great falling away which plunged the church and the world into the Dark Ages. There arose men “speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them,” the human interpretation of the Word of God took the place of the Word itself, and thus the living power of the Word was made of none effect. Darkness settled down upon the world because the Word of God, which is a lamp to the feet and a light to the path, was practically taken away from the people. In the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and as the strength of that movement, an effort was made to restore the Word of God to its rightful place as the voice of God to each individual. Its teaching on any subject was presented as final and authoritative. Thus the historian D’Aubigné says: “The sole and infallible authority of the Word of God was the primary and fundamental principle of the Reformation. Every reform in detail that was afterward carried out in the doctrine, morals, or government of the church, and in its worship, was but a consequence of this first principle. In these days we can scarcely imagine the sensation produced by this elementary and simple but long-neglected truth.” The same historian says again: “The Reformers and the apostles set up the Word of God as the only light, as they exalt the sacrifice of Christ as the only righteousness. By mingling any authority of man with this absolute authority of God, or any human righteousness with this perfect righteousness of Christ, we vitiate both the foundations of Christianity.” And in “the famous Protest that henceforward gave the name of Protestant to the renovated church,” we find the following statements: “Now, seeing that . . . there is no sure doctrine but such as is conformable to the Word of God; that the Lord forbids the teaching of any other doctrine; that each text of the Holy Scriptures ought to be explained by other and clearer texts; that this holy book is in all things necessary for the Christian, easy of understanding, and calculated to scatter the darkness; we are resolved, with the grace of God, to maintain the pure and exclusive preaching of his only Word, such as is contained in the Biblical books of the Old and New Testaments, without adding anything thereto that may be contrary to it. This Word is the only truth; it is the sure rule of all doctrine and of all life, and can never fail or deceive us. He who builds on this foundation shall stand against all the powers of hell, whilst all the human vanities that are set up against it shall fall before the face of God!” This was the platform of the Reformers. This is the foundation upon which Protestantism was built. This is the foundation of a genuine Christianity. But a great departure is being made from the principles laid down by the Reformers. The very foundation of Christianity is being removed. The Protestantism of to-day is not the Protestantism of the sixteenth century. That which is known as the “Higher Criticism,” or the “New Theology,” or the “New Experience” is in reality another falling away from the Christianity of the early church. This evil principle has been at work for a long time, undermining5confidence in the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, but now it comes out openly in its warfare against the position that the Bible is the Word of God. In support of these strong statements we present some quotations from two journals which may be regarded as leading exponents of this modern infidelity. In The Outlook (New York) of February 14 appeared an editorial under the heading “The New Religious Experience,” from which we take the following extract: “The new religious experience looks for its final authority to the Voice within. The secret of whatever authority it recognizes in either church or Bible is the response which the soul makes to the word which they utter. . . . The New Experience is more slow to recognize that the authority of the Bible is of the same description as that of the church, but it is gradually and half-unconsciously coming to this faith. A text of Scripture is no longer conclusive as to doctrine; a precept of Scripture is no longer conclusive as a command. The Bible is less and less looked upon as itself the word of God—a title never in the Bible applied to the Bible; it is looked upon as able to evoke the word of God in the soul of man.” In its issue of February 28, after quoting a statement from the Sun (New York), that “a very great change, a tremendous religious revolution, is involved in this new view and new method of criticism of the Bible so generally accepted on the authority of science and scholarship, and even of teachers of religion and theology themselves,” The Outlook says: “It is clearly worse than futile for clergymen to insist that there is no such revolution; clearly it is their duty to prepare their congregations to meet it, by showing them that the religious life is not identified with or dependent upon the old unscientific view of the Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice, and as constituting, not merely a supreme minister to faith, but the foundation on which faith must rest.” In The Independent of February 12 there was published an editorial under the heading “The Recession of Inspiration,” from which we take the following: “The church has by this time learned that the Bible is not the one final source of authority in religion. We have learned that we may and must judge the Bible. First we must judge whether it is an inspired authority, and then we must judge of the nature of its inspiration as a whole, and of the value of its several parts. This implies that there is something above the Bible by which it must be tested, and that something is another form of the voice of God. It is the reason and the conscience, our intellectual and our moral sense, enhanced and clarified as far as possible, which are the likeness and the utterance of God in us.” Twenty-five years ago the religious sense of Protestantism in this country would have been greatly shocked by such utterances as these, but the undermining process has been carried on so gradually that the people have hardly realized that the foundation of Protestantism was being removed. And even now there seems to be such a fascination in the idea of a scientific view of religion, and of “the scientific relation of man to God,” that men are abandoning their faith in the Word of God, and resting their confidence in science falsely so called. It is time for a new protest. It is time to remember the instruction and the charge given through the apostle Paul: “Every scripture is inspired of God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness. . . . I charge thee in the sight of God, and of Christ Jesus, . . . preach the word.” It is time to raise the cry throughout the whole world, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. . . . Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” It is time to give the threefold message in the power of the Spirit.