What Free Thought Leads To.
An illustration of the inevitable tendencies of free thought, when faith in plenary inspiration is lost, was given in the recent session of the Unitarian Ministers' Institute at Princeton, in this State. Prof. Toy, formerly of the Southern Baptist Seminary at Louisville, but now of Harvard, gave a dissertation on Ezekiel in which he endorsed, without qualification, the most destructive criticism on the Old Testament by German scholars who deny all supernatural elements in revelation. He asserted dogmatically, as if the case no longer admitted of honest doubt, that Ezekiel originated the sacerdotal element in Judaism, and introduced into its sacred books, from the Babylonian records, the story of Eden and the Flood. The theology founded on the supposed Mosaic teachings of the creation and fall, and on which Paul builds so cogent an argument in his great Epistle to the Romans, Prof. Toy declared to be "simply a beautiful series of legends borrowed from ancient Babylon." As a curious corollary to this theory spun from ingenious brains, Prof. Toy added that Ezekiel was "a great ethical teacher, who felt an individual responsibility for the religious conduct of his nation." One must have singular ideas of ethics, and more singular qualifications for a teacher, who can borrow legends from a Pagan mythology, and invent a sacerdotal system, and deliberately insert these into the Jewish sacred books, forging for them the name and authority of Moses the great lawgiver of Israel. The Independent, and a few Baptist ministers at the South, think that an outrage on religious freedom was committed, when Prof. Toy was forced to resign his Chair at the Louisville Seminary! What is the value of a Chair for "Old Testament Interpretation" when no "Old Testament" is left to need interpretation?—Sel.