p. 5 | A CAUSE OF ALARM by S.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 18, 1905

A CAUSE OF ALARM.

By S.

As an indication of the trend of teaching in popular pulpits, popular religious colleges, and a great portion of the religious press of the world, we quote below some statements from an article in the Bible Student and Teacher, by Dr. E. Fitch Burr (Congregationalist). The writer is a staunch upholder of the Bible as the Word of God, and, tho he speaks only for Congregationalists, intimates that the conditions he reveals are by no means confined to the body he represents. He says:

The condition of things among us is very serious—so serious that it would be the height of unwisdom to blink it. Beneath the fair crust of Christian forms and professions, boils and tosses an amazing amount of unchristian and anti-Christian thinking. We do not know exactly how much; but that it is formidably great, we do know. Every now and then eruptions occur which startle us as with a blow. Latterly, these outbreaks have sometimes come in groups, and with almost volcanic violence; and the impact on us has been as when the smith with both hands smites the anvil. We are shocked—shocked at the mass of destructive material belched out from most unexpected quarters; from pulpits noted for orthodoxy; from seminaries supposed to be bound to the old Gospel by more than seven green withes, which not even a Samson could break; from associations, Presbyteries, conferences, where grey heads listen patiently to attacks on the Bible, which a few years ago would have raised a storm of astonishment and protest.

Lo, the new departures of a few years ago have expanded into the "New Christianity" of the higher criticism, the destructive criticism of the Bible. Under the egis of the Christian name, this unwelcome immigrant has come to great estate among us. Its shadow covers and chills great denominations, great presses, and great educational institutions. To multitudes the Old Testament is gone, and the New Testament is either gone or going. Not a few deny or question fundamental Christian doctrines—the Messiahship of Jesus, His miraculous birth and incarnation, His miracles, His atonement, His resurrection and ascension, and even His reliability as a religious teacher. Many whose standing in the ministry is still unchallenged, question all these doctrines; and very many more are plainly feeling their way in the same depths of various stages of descent. These men, even the most radical of them, are preaching their views without hindrance in our churches and presses. They occupy chairs in our colleges and seminaries. The defection is so great that no ecclesiastical discipline is attempted.

The leading colleges of New England invite to their chairs and pulpits the most radical Unitarians, Universalists, and Rationalists; and, as if the home supply was not large enough, are at the trouble of importing them. Whole associations, Presbyteries, conferences, are dominated by views of the Bible which defy all the Protestant confessions, and which would, a few years ago, have been met by storms of protest and excommunication.

In view of this general situation, the friends of the old Bible naturally look with anxious eyes to see where stand their missionary societies. What do they find? I will speak only for Congregationalists. Other Protestant denominations must speak for themselves. They find that the higher criticism now sits at the council board and swarms in the constituency of each of their three missionary societies. Whoever sees that much, sees reason for grave apprehension. All these societies are on the brink—liable to be crowded over at any moment by the pressure from behind.

For some reason the shepherds have not spoken, or have spoken the wrong thing. Even watchmen who have clearly seen the enemy entering the gates in force, and have deplored the fact, have not seen their way clear to put a trumpet to their lips. Wonderful silence!

Another fact gives us even profounder concern, gives vast weight and exasperation to our other sources of anxiety. If all our educational institutions were in the hands of believing and faithful men, backsliding missionary societies would not mean so much. They must soon retrace their steps or die. But, as matters now stand, they threaten to go from bad to worse by reinforcements from behind. All the leading colleges in the East, and all our technical Congregational seminaries, both East and West, are in active sympathy with the principles and methods of the higher criticism—as is shown either by the position of those who control them, or by publications of their professors, or by the reports of their students, or by the radical critics invited to their lectureships, and decorated with their honors.

The fact is, that the misgivings and anxieties warranted by the present condition of our colleges and seminaries and denominational societies, great as these anxieties are, should be much enhanced when we consider that our churches, generally, are not aware of the extent of the ministerial apostasy, have lost the ancient safeguards against it, and are now being attacked from within by enemies who swear by all the evangelists that they are best of friends.

Such a condition of things in the religious world should be indeed cause for serious thought and prayer and warning. Are the conditions overdrawn in any way? Are not the statements in perfect accord with what we know to exist—not in the Congregational Church alone, but in all the great religious bodies to-day? Satan's most effective adjutants are cleverly ensconced within the church body itself, assailing the very foundations upon which the church rests. This condition of things is indeed cause for alarm—not that there is any danger of the cause of God being overthrown; but there is the certainty of thousands of souls being shipwrecked who might have triumphed with the triumph of the cause of truth and righteousness.