Neglect of the New Testament by Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 27, 1901

Neglect of the New Testament.

By Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones

[Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, in Unity.]

WHATEVER the conventional claim may be, there is no disguising the fact that the New Testament is to-day a much-neglected book. Intelligent, respectable people, who would resent the charge of indifference to the moral and religious interests of themselves, their homes, and of society—indeed, those who claim to be especially interested in religion, church-members boastful of their Christianity—do not read their New Testament as once it was read by representatives of their class. It is the volume that is allowed to remain on the table unopened. It is the last thing the business man talks about, and it is seldom the volume used in common for fireside reading or family worship.

Young men and young women who push their way thru college, boast of their acquaintance with Greek or Latin classics, are alert over their Shakespeare and their Browning, who blush when found guilty of a misquotation in the modern classics, or are found so far behind the times as to be unacquainted with the last sensation in literature, smile over their ignorance of the New Testament, and consider it a good joke if they credit a saying of Isaiah to Paul, or are found in a state of mental confusion over the Pentateuch and the Apocalypse.