The Church and the Colleges by William W. Prescott

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 26, 1909

The Church and the Colleges

By William W. Prescott

In the September number of the Cosmopolitan Magazine Mr. Harold Bolce completes his series of articles “dealing with scholastic repudiation of all solemn authority.” In concluding his work, Mr. Bolce presents in condensed form the response of some leading representatives of the church to the indictment framed by college professors, and this to a certain extent gives the answer to some startling teachings which appeared in his previous articles.

A thoughtful reading of Mr. Bolce’s well-written reply in behalf of the leading ministers of the gospel leaves the impression that assertion has been met by assertion, and denial by denial, and that there is still lacking an authoritative dealing with the question based upon the Word of God instead of upon mere creedal statements.

Perhaps the most suggestive portions of Mr. Bolce’s article are those which reveal that discriminating observers of present tendencies in the religious world are able to point out such results of the rejection of the special message for this generation as to fulfil very clearly those delineations of last-day conditions found in the Scriptures. We quote one paragraph:—

Throughout America the conviction is strong in church circles that what is best in our present-day civilization is menaced. It is agreed on many sides that a new renaissance, with all its liberty of thinking and riot of brilliant apostasy, is indeed possible. That professors are teaching that there is nothing fundamentally true or sacred, that no commandments came from God, that society by its approval can constitute any action right, or by its censure decree it to be wrong, is dangerously suggestive of that period of intellectual brilliancy, but moral decay, that placed Boccaccio, the teller of immoral tales, in a professor’s chair in the University of Florence. From the churches’ standpoint the universities are building a new tower of Babel, and in their alarm over the lack of religious instruction in the universities, they have undertaken to establish religious societies inside of college walls.

During the last half century the world has heard from very many representatives of the church that the law of God has been abolished, and that we “are not under the law, but under grace,” meaning thereby that there is no longer any positive obligation to conform the life to the requirements of the ten commandments. The teaching now being given by college professors that “there is nothing fundamentally true or sacred, that no commandments are from God,” may properly be regarded as the fruit of the seed sown by those who now seek to counteract the results of their own work. Doubtless the actuating motive of some of those ministers who have thus attempted to set aside God’s law was the desire to escape the obligation to

observe the seventh-day Sabbath, but in their effort to do this they have contributed to a result which they did not foresee. Their attempt to abolish the ten commandments and then re-enact nine of them, omitting the fourth, has awakened in the minds of the present generation a question regarding the authority of God as a ruler of the universe, and has left men free to set up their own standard, or to accept the consensus of public opinion as the only standard of right. What has thus been done can not be undone by emphasizing human creeds and dogmas.

The reference to the tower of Babel is a striking one. In the olden time men set themselves against the word of God, and sought by human means to find out the mysteries of God, and to provide a means of escape from a second world-catastrophe. The wise men of to-day are attempting the same thing, although not in the same way. But the builders of this Babel tower of speculation, human philosophy, and scientific hypothesis will be brought to confusion no less surely than were their prototypes in the plain of Shinar.

Another paragraph from Mr. Bolce’s article is of special significance:—

Clergymen rooted and grounded in the orthodox faith lament the passing of the appeals to fear. They say that nothing in the universe is so certain as sin’s retribution, and that the incarnation, ministry, and crucifixion of the Son of God are meaningless if they do not purchase for the repentant immunity from the wrath to come. The various theories, denials, explanations, etc., regarding beliefs to which humanity throughout Christian ages has subscribed, lead Dr. Keigwin to say that the modern preacher too often “is proclaiming either a blindly amiable God or a purely ethical redemption.” And he says that he does not wonder that a spiritual famine stares the world in the face. Pastors in all parts of America say, with an emphasis born of profound faith in God and the Bible and with unmistakable reverence for litanies and songs, that what is needed is not the enthronement of a new Jehovah, but the recognition and fear of the Lord of hosts, the Creator of earth and heaven, who visits the iniquities of the fathers upon even the third and fourth generations, and who has eternal joys in paradise reserved for those who serve and worship him. “We are told,” says Dr. Keigwin, “that we need a new theology, but it will not do for the age to be caught by a term. The new theology of our age was just as new when Lot moved into Sodom. New theology then rejected supernaturalism and glorified man above God. It does so now.”

That false emphasis upon, and that false interpretation of, the love of God which excludes his justice are responsible for a namby-pamby gospel which ignores the wrath of God, and holds out the hope of redemption either here or hereafter to every despiser of God’s goodness. Now comes the inevitable result— “a spiritual famine.”

The gods which have newly come up in this generation are quite different from the God of the Bible. But who is responsible for this state of things? Surely not those who have in this generation carried to the world this message: “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” Those who have rejected this message, and who have taught the people smooth things, have been sowing to the wind, and they ought not to be surprised if they now reap the whirlwind.

The situation revealed in this series of articles by Mr. Bolce constitutes a startling fulfilment of prophecy. Without any thought of expounding the predictions of Scripture, this writer, after much painstaking study of actual conditions, has submitted the clearest evidence of that apostasy, of that repudiation of the truth, of that exaltation of the creature above the Creator, which it was long ago declared would characterize the very last days. Such undesigned testimony to the fulfilment of the prophetic word ought to have great weight in the minds of thinking people.

It remains for those who know the truth for this time to proclaim it most earnestly, and to set forth with clearness and power that threefold message in which alone can be found the answer to all the scientific and theological vagaries of the present hour, and which reveals the only hope in this time of the fall of Babylon—the personal coming of Christ to save his people from the wrath to come. W. W. P.