“The Parting of the Ways”
By Francis M. Wilcox
In this age of the world, perhaps as never before in the history of the church, the line of demarcation is being drawn between truth and error. Every soul will be tested as to where he stands, and it will be only by the spiritual wisdom which comes from above that the seeker after truth will be enabled to find his way through the fog and mysticism which cloud much of the religious teaching of the present time. The great Christian church to-day is confronted with a species of subtle, insidious skepticism quite unknown to the ages of the past. Some of the great religious teachers present a strange spectacle. Professedly ministers of the gospel of Christ, the exponents of the Word, the ambassadors of the gospel, they nevertheless deny some of the cardinal and fundamental principles upon which the whole scheme of salvation is based. They use their sacred office to pull down that which they are supposed to be set to uphold. And the sad feature of it is that these men not only deceive themselves, but draw others off into the mazes of doubt and unbelief, leaving them stranded and shipwrecked, without hope and without God in the world. A striking example of this subtle skepticism which is working in the great Christian church was seen in the characterization of the Scriptures of Truth as the “paper pope” at a meeting of five hundred Methodist ministers held recently in New York City. According to the Washington Herald of March 18, 1913, which we quote, a book on higher criticism, published by a Methodist Book Concern, declares that the most advanced ministers looked upon the Bible as “part fiction, part history, and still another part the Word of God.” One minister, Dr. J. Vincent Hamilton, took occasion at the New York meeting to criticize the publication in question. He declared that “the Methodist Church has come to the parting of the ways,” and felt that the time had come for those who maintained faith in the Scriptures to rally to their support. In reply “several ministers declared that the ‘paper pope,’ the Bible, would have to be discredited as the Pope of Rome had been by Martin Luther. The assertion that a majority of those present at the day’s meeting had declared in favor of higher criticism and against the views held by Dr. Hamilton, was made by many of those present at the meeting. The argument at times was very heated.” Admitting that in this large assembly of Methodist ministers there were some who looked with disfavor upon this onslaught against the Scriptures of Truth, it is significant “that apart from the opposition speaker, Dr. Hamilton, only one other man came to the defense of the old faith, Rev. W. Waldo Weller, of Long Island.” It is indeed true, as Dr. Hamilton stated, that when in a large convention of Methodist preachers such sentiments can be expressed against the Word of God with protests from only two of the delegates, “the Methodist Church has come to the parting of the ways.” How art thou fallen, O church of Wesley and Whitefield! But the higher critics are by no means confined to the Methodist Church. Such incidents as this have been duplicated in other ministerial conventions in various places. It reveals to us the tendency of the times. Subtly and insidiously the enemy of all truth and righteousness is seeking to undermine the very foundations of the Christian faith. He no longer finds his best emissaries to be such men as Thomas Paine, Charles Bradlaugh, and Robert Ingersoll, nor his best methods of attack the coarse, blatant utterances of these apostles of unbelief. He chooses now the men of holy orders. His attacks are through the medium of cultured speech and by such insinuating and suggestive methods as to be more adaptable to the refinement of the age. They are, however, none the less pervasive in their influence, and the end will be disbelief in God and the rejection of all divine revelation. We who read these words will be participants in the final controversy. We have come to the parting of the ways. We, with our fellows, must determine whether we shall stand by the Bible and accept the Scriptures as the revelation of heaven, or whether we shall permit insidious disbelief to come in and weaken our faith and lead us to a denial of God and the loss of hope in him. May God give us strength to stand firmly upon the solid foundation which is afforded us in his infallible Word. F. M. W.