THE DOCTRINE OF A UNIVERSAL FATHERHOOD.
[Quoted in the Literary Digest from a new book by the Rev. A. Lincoln Shute.] THE Old Testament knows nothing of a universal divine Fatherhood. In perfect harmony and consistency with the writers of the old dispensation, Christ and His apostles teach a conditional moral and spiritual fatherhood and sonship. In the divine family this sonship is by grace and not by nature, not from Adam, but from Christ, not based on creation, but grounded in redemption. Christ, by His atonement makes it universal in infancy, universally possible for all free intelligences, but not thereby actually universal for all classes regardless of their moral choice or nature. Also . . . the doctrine of the universal fatherhood is weak, in that it is based neither on Scripture nor in any necessity of reason, that it is inconsistent with evangelical Christianity, involves horrible absurdities, is fraught with the gravest dangers because of its fundamental relation to unscriptural systems of theology, and, therefore, is a most cruel and deceptive doctrine.