The Crusade Invisible by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 10, 1910

“The Crusade Invisible”

By C. M. S.

In the former article under this title the fact was made apparent that a concerted movement is now on in the higher institutions of learning, both in men’s colleges, women’s colleges, and coeducational institutions, to discredit the Bible as a revelation from God to man, to discredit Moses and Jesus, and, in fact, to eliminate the God of the Bible himself from the conception of the students. The Old Testament and the New Testament are attacked seriatim both for what they record and for what they reveal.

To ease the transition, from the religion of heaven to the philosophy of human invention that is to take the place of vital religion in the lives of these young people, “the students are admonished to surrender their idea, gained at uninformed family altars, that Christianity is the only religion worth considering.”

To these trainers of the newer generation all religions, practically, are equally good or equally bad. The effect of such teaching upon missionary endeavor is at once apparent. But we are not left to infer what attitude these educators sustain toward missionary work; for, says Mr. Bolce: “The coeducational classes of Michigan are taught that fatuity can go no farther than to attempt to make a Hindu turn his back upon his own ancient culture to accept Christianity.” If that were true of the Hindu, it would be likewise true of the Shintu, the Confucian, the Mohammedan, and of the believer in every other religion. From such a standpoint, every religion of the world is the effort of divinity to express himself to humanity, and no matter how discordant, all are equally speaking the precepts and purposes of whoever or whatever is animating and actuating the universe.

This gives us, instead of one authoritative voice from the Almighty, a multitude of voices, discordant and mutually contradictory. This nation-wide education puts evolution in the place of creation and makes the Creator the creature of circumstance. It puts philosophy in the place of religion, and cuts humanity adrift from the one anchor of hope. Where stands the infallible Word of God, a rock of defense, a strong tower of trust, it would put the vacillating, inconstant, undependable and unsatisfying imaginings of the human mind, still tremulous and uncertain as the ocean ooze from which it is supposed to have evolved. What a transmigration of trust is this!

Where such instructors permit the idea of a great “first cause” to be retained, and call that God, they boldly affirm that this being is revealing himself to man to-day through them even as he did through the prophets of old, and that “the sense of the divine presence is taking on new form in accordance with more careful psychology and a greater precision of thought.” The education that they are giving thus becomes in their estimation a new revelation of God, a new gospel, sweeping aside everything to which Christendom has held through the centuries as a basis for belief and hope and comfort.

Assuming thus to speak for that power which actuates creation, it is not to be wondered at that they should ultimately assume relationship with him. So it is taught that “the superman, or uebermensch, is God, just as much as any Deity in the sky.” Now “the superman” is only man, the higher man, the man developed out of the class of the ordinary into the class of the extraordinary

through some self-invented exploitation of his own faculties. It is a self-elevation, partaking of nothing so much as of that spirit which actuated Lucifer when he declared to himself, “I will be like the Most High,” and to Adam and Eve, “Ye shall be as gods.” But this is the deity of the new collegiate religion. Having lost the God of the Bible,—or having turned their back upon him,—they create this new deity. Says the editor of the Cosmopolitan, in his introduction to Mr. Bolce’s article, “They champion the doctrine that the human race is divine.” Says Mr. Bolce: “With the belief that the race of man is divine and destined to exert increasing sway over the visible and invisible world in which we dwell, college-bred girls by the thousands are beginning to devote themselves, thus spiritually awakened, to the leading of mankind to peace and power along new lines.”

But if the race be divine, the need of a Saviour no longer exists. The Son of God did not become man in order to save divine beings. So he is necessarily eliminated from this new gospel. Said one college professor to an inquiring student: “Make your soul worth saving, and it will be saved.” It is a gospel of self-salvation, a gospel of works, without the necessity or possibility of an atonement. The individual is to make his own soul worthy of salvation. He thus becomes his own savior. These students are taught that it is absurd for humanity to stake its hope of salvation on much of what the Christian world has regarded as inspired writing. So there is introduced the new salvation, the salvation of each individual by his own efforts. Says Mr. Bolce: “Thousands of contemporary women students are fashioning their lives in accordance with the conviction that right thinking will save humanity.”

What is the result, to the individual, of such an education and the acceptance of such propositions? One of the young women frankly admits that “the day’s result is absolute confusion or a settled agnosticism.” One of the instructors asserts that their work is “a hopeless pursuit of ultimate reality,” and that “our quest is an endless one. We never reach a satisfying conclusion of thought; no results withstand the blasting force of our own criticisms.” Thus does this educational campaign destroy faith and hope, and put in their place doubt and despair. And upwards of three hundred thousand young men and women thus educated, with faith in God and his Word destroyed, are going out from those institutions of learning every year to perpetuate in the homes they shall establish and the schools they conduct, the same dogmas of disbelief in God and his Word and purpose.

What relation have these facts to the work of the third angel’s message? This development is the master effort of the deceiver of souls to frustrate, to the greatest possible extent, the results of the proclamation of the message we are commissioned to give. That message is based upon the Word of God. But we are confronting a new generation that has been educated specifically to a positive disbelief in that Word. This undermining of the confidence of the people in the Bible is designed to take the edge off all Bible truth, but particularly to take the very heart out of the great threefold message of Revelation 14. They believe in no judgment to come, no Creator of the heavens and the earth. The commandments are to them but a human compilation of precepts, and they have no faith in Jesus. Said Jesus to his disciples: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” This question is a prophecy in itself. It looked forward to this identical time. It had in view the conditions we face to-day. The answer that must be given is: There will be but little faith. The campaign of doubt, directed by the higher institutions of learning and ably seconded by many of the most eloquent preachers of the day, is fast turning into a world-encircling desert the fields where must be accomplished the last work of the third angel’s message. That campaign is well termed “The Crusade Invisible.” It is one of the chief factors in preparing the world for the harvest of the great day. One of the most striking features of the present situation is that such a message as that committed to this people should be due just at this time, and that its proclamation should be actually going on just now. The truth and the enemy of the truth are meeting in the final struggle.

C. M. S.