The Gentle Spirit of Modern Orthodoxy
By Plymouth Rock
The orthodoxy of to-day is such a gentle, blushing, gracious, what-would-you-have-good-sir, sort of a body, that it is down-right cruelty to slap it in the face. It is so inspired with the spirit of conciliation, that almost anything you ask it will gracefully give. Ask it to give up the divine authority of all the Bible, except “the most spiritually instructive and elevating” parts and it will. Ask it to give up the Genesis account of the creation, as an historic record, and with smiling blandness and a bow, it will say it must insist no more on the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; and it will straightway cease to insist. Command it to cancel from its hymns and sermons such sanguinary expressions as the saved in Heaven sing: “To him who washed us from our sins in his own blood,” and it will quickly take the wink from Germany, and do as you desire. Bid it hush harsh words, descriptive of the destiny of those dying impenitent, and in meek humility it will put hades for hell; and send so much gospel to hades, that one is put to it to say which he would prefer to use as the world in which he will repent—this or that.—Plymouth Rock, in Christian at Work.