Note and Comment

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 29, 1902

Something of the general character of modern revivalistic effort is reflected in the tour of an “evangelist” who is going about among the churches in northern Illinois, with the advertisement, “Forty dollars a week and fifty conversions guaranteed or money refunded.” In any community where religious work is in a healthy state, such evangelism would find no opportunity to get started.

Among recent inventions which are attracting public notice, is one by the chief of the United States Weather Bureau, Prof. Willis L. Moore, which is intended to do much to ameliorate the discomfort of hot weather. Professor Moore has devised “a cold stove,” an apparatus somewhat resembling a stove in appearance, and which operates, the inventor says, by the action of gravity, taking in warm air from without, cooling it, and passing it out into the room. The mechanism inside the “stove” works automatically, being stimulated by a high temperature out of doors, but coming to a stop when the outside temperature is not above 65°. The air which flows out at the bottom of the “stove” is at a temperature only slightly above freezing, hence the temperature of the room is readily lowered to the desired point. The cost of running the “cold stove” is not stated, but if moderate, the invention will doubtless be utilized to a large extent.

Recently before the National Educational Association, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, delivered an address in which he strongly advocated the reading of the Bible in the public schools. He did not, however, advocate this for religious reasons, but on the ground that a knowledge of the Bible as literature was essential to an appreciation of classical English literature, most young students of this day being so deficient in Biblical knowledge that the Biblical allusions contained in standard English poetry — Milton’s writings for example — are unintelligible to their minds. As regards the importance of the Bible as literature to a proper education in the meaning and use of the English language, Dr. Butler certainly does not overstate the truth; but as regards the place in which the Bible should be read and studied, the public schools are debarred by the necessity of separating religion from governmental control. The Bible is the foundation of religious teaching in this country, and from this, its primary purpose, it cannot be separated. Hence Bible study must be taken up elsewhere than in institutions controlled and maintained by the state. As the Chicago Tribune,

which makes note of Dr. Butler’s address, observes, “The home and the Sunday school will have to do what the public school, as at present organized, is incapable of doing.” Biblical instruction is primarily the duty and privilege of the parent, and after the parent the duty of the instructor in the church or denominational school. It is never the duty of the state.

A voice against the “higher criticism” which has so nearly displaced the old-time orthodoxy in the Protestant churches, is now rarely heard in these bodies; but there are still a few who dare to stand up in defense of the old belief. One of these is the Rev. L. W. Munhall, a Methodist evangelist, who has published a pamphlet entitled “A Crisis in Methodism,” in which he asserts that as a result of the inroads of Bible criticism, the spiritual life of Methodism is dying out. In his pamphlet he says:—

What is the real cause of our spiritual decline? Many causes have been named, some of which explain in part; but, for myself, I believe the real cause of it all is the dishonor put upon God’s holy Word in many of our educational institutions, by some editors of church periodicals, and not a few preachers; because of which the Holy Spirit has been grieved, and has withdrawn his power in large measure from us. Because of their commanding influence, our educational institutions are the chief offenders. Of course, I know that all these institutions are not given to this mischievous business, but most of the leading ones are. In the faculties of these institutions are men who are skeptics and rationalists; who do not at all believe that the Bible is God’s Word nor in the doctrines of Methodism, and who do not hesitate to let the students know their position. They repeat infidel objections to the Bible, and call it modern scholarship, and then give the young men under them for instruction to understand that they believe it all; and many of these young men take up with these skeptical views, and go out into the ministry, not to preach the gospel of the blessed God, but their questionings, rationalism, and agnosticism.

Dr. Munhall finds himself opposed and ridiculed as an ignoramus by other Methodist authorities, and the tide of sentiment in support of the latter-day critics is too strong to be materially affected by his protest and warning. He will find, like Luther, that the church as a body has hopelessly departed from the pathway of the inspired Word, and that a new home must be found for the faith once delivered unto the saints. The Protestant churches are reaping the inevitable result of their rejection of the heaven-sent message, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” This message opens the way to a new understanding of the Word of God, which effectually debars the ideas in which “higher criticism” has its foundation.