Teachers of "Advanced Theology."
By Editor
PERHAPS if everybody knew the whole truth about the so-called liberal, or advanced thinkers in religion, simple-minded Christians would be less blamed for refusing to follow their lead. The following from the Christian at Work is just what we would naturally expect to be the case:— But every man acquainted with the world will still insist with Emerson that depravity is at the root of much of the free-thinking of this day, as it has been in every age during the past. A German professor, "whose name is known throughout Christendom," tells Joseph Cook, "that it is believed that more than a few theological pupils in Holland are immoral men;" and Mr. Cook adds, on what he considers adequate testimony for so grave a statement: "There is not a little theological discussion in Europe conducted by immoral men. It is a fact that men sometimes come out of semi-rationalistic theological courses in France and Holland with the filth of the pit upon them, and go into the State churches as preachers, or into certain universities as professors; and when books are published by them, all must, forsooth, sit down and pick them to pieces, and study them with painstaking candor; for, if we do not, liberalism will criticise us for narrowness." Some of the glamour that now hangs radiant around the critical school would quickly vanish if it were generally known that it represented not the love of knowledge and truth, but only a base desire to make "the worse appear the better reason," for the express purpose of obtaining unrebuked license to indulge in sensuality and sin.