A Sign of the Times by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 1, 1906

A Sign of the Times

By C. M. S.

In speaking of the approach of the great day of God, Paul said, “That day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” We see frequent illustrations of a falling away, which should be to us a herald of that day’s approach.

Statistics of the Presbyterian Church (North) record a decrease of ten per cent a year in the number of candidates for the ministry. In the Presbyterian Church (South) the decrease has been five per cent. A similar state of affairs is reported to exist among the Congregationalists. Statistics have not been published along this line by other denominations; but there is no reason to suppose that this is a feature of these two denominations only. It is more reasonable to look upon it as a symptom of the times, and indicative of the condition of things generally.

Various reasons are given for this condition, such as the increasing spirit of worldliness in the churches, commercialism, low state of vital piety, materialism, lust for luxury, and the worship of mammon. Some do not regard these as the cause, but declare unqualifiedly that the true cause lies in the tyranny of creed; that young men shun the pulpit because it is not a place of intellectual freedom; that the higher education brings with it a horror of credal bonds, and leads them to see a contradiction between the belief of the church and the more advanced “modern knowledge.”

To such as hold this view the remedy lies in permitting the younger ministers more freedom of teaching in the pulpit, bringing their religious teachings “into harmony with the facts known,” which have been learned “in library and laboratory,” and discarding “useless tradition.”

Certainly useless tradition has never been an essential of salvation, and such dogmas as are founded upon it are founded upon sand; and the sooner they are discarded, the better for all concerned. Every creed that has been formed has fettered and hindered the growth and progress of the truth of God. Creeds were not intended so to be by those who formulated them; but such they have proved to be. The creed thrown over the church is the bushel turned over the candle. So the church can well afford to let it go—it can not afford not to. Banish the creed, banish tradition, but let the church and the world have the pure Word, untrameled, unfettered, unhindered.

But what of “modern knowledge” and the “facts known,” which have been found out “in library and laboratory,” and with which the young preacher should seek to harmonize his religious teaching? This is but another way of stating that modern religious teaching must harmonize with evolution and the higher criticism, and that the churches must allow their ministers to teach this clerical infidelity, or see the pursuits of the world swallowing up the young men who started out to study for the ministry.

Higher criticism—an attempt to vivisect the living Word—and evolution—an attempt to dethrone the Creator of the heavens and the earth—have combined their forces to overthrow faith in God and his Word. These studies have been fostered in theological schools, and some who had started out to be ministers have been stranded on these rocks. Others are being stranded every day before they have left the academies by the apparently learned disquisitions of these philosophers, and so have gone into the great drift of unbelief.

Now comes the proposition that this “modern thought” shall have free course in the pulpit, to finish off in the congregation the damage which it began in the minister in the course of his theological training. This will be done under the plea that it will unhamper the minister, give him a more inviting field, and thus increase the number of candidates for that kind of ministry—give infidelity a freer sweep in the sacred desk. The result will be that these twin deceptions will perform the same undermining work in the congregation that they have done in the ministry, discrediting in one breath, as both of these evils do, both the Word and the Author of the Word.

We can not tell how rapidly these errors will work in undermining faith. They have been working rapidly in that direction; they are working more rapidly now. The great majority formerly looked upon them with distrust. Now, because they are advocated by those high in sacred office, the mass are more ready to accept, and so more easily deceived. The decrease of real Christian faith goes on as rapidly as this philosophy prevails, and the ratio increases as the philosophy gains adherents in the sacred desk.

There is no divine command that the minister of the gospel should be bound to a creed; but he is commanded to preach the Word, to be instant in season, out of season, ever ready to give a reason of the hope that is in him, to teach faith, and trust, and hope in God. Whatever work has a tendency to tear down, to undermine, to scatter, that he is to leave to the enemy of souls. Every man has a right to do as he pleases in the matter of teaching or listening to teachings of higher criticism and evolution, so far as human rights are concerned. But God did not include such work in the great commission to his servants. Theirs was to be the work of propagating faith and the knowledge of God—not the “science” of the evolution of man from the slime of the ocean bed. Theirs was to be a work of teaching faith in God’s own record of his work and the surety of his purpose concerning man—not a scheme of proving nature her own author, life a spontaneous phenomenon, and man an evolved bit of protoplasm, the product of a fortunate chance, whose end is shrouded in mystery unfathomable. Theirs was to be the work of preparing men to meet their Lord when he should return. Let them do that. The creed can not tell them what to teach; but the great Word and the Holy Spirit can. There is the true source of evangelical preparation, and of true evangelical success. That will mean freedom in the pulpit, freedom in the truth; but it does not mean freedom to preach faith-destroying, soul-destroying philosophies, while professing the name of Christ and the occupation of his servant. It is dishonoring to Christ to claim that such teachings are the message of Christ for these times. To attempt to remedy the falling away in the ranks of the clergy by teaching to the congregations these same philosophies of distrust and open unbelief, is only to increase the malady and make the situation more hopeless.

Every power of the enemy is now in full swing to give a negative answer to the question of Christ, “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” That faith-destroying force is gaining in power. Higher criticism is its right wing, evolution its left, and in the center the enemy of all good comes on with all the confederated elements of strife and discord and doubt. In such times it is the privilege of the true child of God to be so anchored to the Infinite that he shall not be moved by any of these things, nor ensnared in the great falling away. C. M. S.