THE BREACH IN THE WALL.
By S
There is perhaps no question just now that is receiving more attention in the religious and digest weeklies than the question of Biblical criticism in the church, college, and Sunday-schools. The fashionable formal church has swallowed the “higher critic” and the evolution theory, and it has come to be the “proper” and popular thing to turn the church services into “learned” criticisms of God’s Word. The precious moments that should be used in giving to hungry souls the bread of life, or God’s message for to-day, are consumed in blind flounderings in the dark pools of doubt and positive unbelief. Precious messages of instruction, admonition, encouragement, and consolation are given second or third place or none at all, while criticism of the text is all in all. One of the live questions in this field just now is the question of teaching the “higher criticism” in the Sunday-schools, and it is being warmly advocated by pastors and college professors. The primary object of the Sunday-school was to teach the Word of God, by direct study of the text, to all who could be gathered into its fold, especially the young, and in nearly all such schools the young predominate. With many of them the only Bible study they are privileged to take part in is that conducted in the Sunday-school class. They have there been taught that the Bible is the Word of God, and from it they have learned of Christ’s life and teachings, the record of His dealings with His people anciently, the story of creation, the law of God, the penalty for transgression, the love of God for man, and the provision He has made for man’s regeneration and redemption. All of this has aroused the ire of the enemy of man, and he is seeking earnestly to turn this auxiliary of the church into a citadel of his own, by contaminating with infidelity the teachings of those who have the pupil’s instruction in charge. It was only recently that this matter was taken up, but it is coming to the front with surprising rapidity. Greater progress could be made by winning first the college professors. This would bring into line the ministerial graduates and any of the clergy who consider being “up to date” as the first requisite of a clergyman. This accomplished, the winning of the multitude would be much facilitated. That was the course taken until evolution and the “higher criticism” have become a fad, and now the battle for the multitude has begun in earnest. Hitherto the protoplasm theory of creation and the kind of Bible study known as the “higher criticism” have not made remarkable progress among the rank and file of church people. They have listened to it from the pulpits, but the early education in regard to the Bible as the Word of God has kept them from any enthusiastic scramble away from the light they have known into the blinding fog of the new doubt where their feet have not strayed before and where no guide is promised or possible. All this is now to be changed. The evolutionist and the “higher critic” are now in control of the teaching force of the Sunday-school, and they will teach the old teachers how to teach the new doubt, and find new teachers for the places of those who perversely adhere to the “antiquated” belief that the Bible is God’s Word, giving the true history of creation, and the fall of man, the way of salvation, and the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice. All that must go, and in its place is to be set up the philosophy of unbelief and the doctrine of doubt. Here is what the editor of the Congregationalist, A. E. Dunning, D.D., has to say in regard to the necessity of teaching the “higher criticism” in the Sunday-school (Mr.9Dunning is a member of the International Committee on Sunday-school lessons):— A widening chasm divides the teaching of the Bible in schools and colleges from its teaching in many Sunday-schools. The accepted principles of the development of life and the growth of literature, as taught in public schools, are being contradicted in Sunday-schools, in the effort to defend theories of the creation of the universe and of the composition of the Bible which are contrary to known laws of the evolution of nature and of literature. The consequences of such opposing teachings are not difficult to predict. The main conclusions of Biblical criticism are now accepted with practical unanimity by all scholars who have given attention to them. They have displaced traditional theories among educated people, just as the truths of geology and astronomy have supplanted the age-long imaginations of men concerning the structure of the earth and the laws of the universe. They are assumed in nearly all teachers’ Bibles and recent commentaries, and in the majority of lesson helps. The last step, their acceptance in the popular mind, can be hindered only temporarily by unreasoning conservatism, ignorance, or prejudice. The results of criticism, so far as they correct false theories of the Bible and illumine its revealed truth, should be known and used by the teacher to increase the power of his teaching. One of the principal “false theories” which that criticism seeks to “correct” is that the Biblical account of the creation is true. It is doing all in its power to “correct” that divine record by turning it into a myth, and putting man and his protoplasmic cell in the place of God and His creative Word, making man the corrector of divinity, and the plastic cell of senseless matter the giver of life and all we have and are. The “accepted principles of the development of life,” of which the editor of the Congregationalist speaks, is the evolution theory, the theory which unbelieving man has invented to discredit and subvert the teachings of the whole Bible by disputing God’s own record of His work. That theory this religious writer calls “accepted principles” and “known laws of evolution,” making no secret of the fact that he has rejected God’s Word for the theories of men, declaring that these conclusions “are now accepted with practical unanimity by all scholars who have given attention to them.” Thus we see the fearful prevalence of these faith-destroying doctrines in what should be the strongholds of Christian faith. The “last step” of which he speaks, “their acceptance in the popular mind,” is now being prepared for in the proposal to have these things taught in the Sunday-schools. As the present adult generation was taught to believe God’s Word, the progress of these worldly theories has not been sufficiently rapid. Now the minds of the children are to be honeycombed with these dogmas of doubt in order that the faithless campaign may go on unhindered. So when the last message of God is being given to this generation men will refuse to believe because they do not believe the Word in which that message is contained. That is Satan’s deep-laid plot, and he has found able lieutenants in those who should have stood shoulder to shoulder to resist his invasion. There is no reference in this extract to prevailing prayer, strong faith, and the help of the Holy Spirit to give the teacher power in his teaching, but the dissection and dissipation and disintegration of the Word of truth is the prime essential for power in that work. It may be necessary to dissect a flower in order to find its family relations and put it in its proper species; but it is evident to all that flowers do not grow or propagate by the process. Neither does faith in the Word of God grow—neither does the Word itself grow and increase in us—by our attempts to tear it into fragments and scatter the fragments to the winds, even tho the process is decorated by the gaudy title of “the higher criticism.” Camden M. Coburn, D.D., of New York City (Methodist Episcopal), declares that “there is a present need in Sunday-school work of a greater utilization of the results of modern Biblical criticism.” Amory H. Bradford, D.D., one of the editors of the Outlook, advocates the teaching of these “modern ideas” in the Sunday-school, but thinks the time is not yet ripe to begin this work because of the lack of a sufficient number of teachers who are familiar with the ideas. Milton S. Terry, D.D., of Garrett Biblical Institute (Methodist Episcopal), considers the task comparatively easy and one that should be undertaken at once. W. C. Bitting, D.D., of New York (Baptist), declares without qualification that there is need for Biblical criticism in every Sunday-school, and that “it should hold the supreme place.” The writer recently heard a well-known pastor of one of the largest churches on the Pacific Coast hold the Bible as we have it up to the ridicule of his audience the while he preached a sermon without once turning a leaf of the Book of books. Thus is Satan preparing soil for his last sharp conflict on the earth. Undermining faith is his principal occupation just now, and the land is full of his pulpits where once the Word of God had honored place. The wall of faith is his object of special attack, and doctors of divinity are helping him to widen every breach he can make therein. S.