Popular Religion and the Bible.
—Referring to Dr. Lyman Abbott’s levity over the book of Jonah, the Interior (Presbyterian) says:— “The Congregational ministers of New York, and largely the religious press, are stirred up by Dr. Abbott’s exegesis of the book of Jonah. That is only a twig of the upas. They fail to perceive that he wields a much more dangerous influence on his popular platform of agnostic evolution. He is only one exponent of a great and all-pervading system of philosophy which is winning its way in the secular and scientific press, in literature generally, and in pulpits and churches, and which spiritually paralyzes every man and every church into which it finds entrance. We confess to surprise that they should rise up in excitement over the question whether the book of Jonah is an allegory or a history, while they look on in silence, or with approval, as he attacks the heart of all religion, the existence of the supernatural. Destroy faith in God, and we need not trouble ourselves about the fate of the details of that faith. They are gone, one and all, from the least to the greatest.”