"INFIDEL AS INGERSOLL WAS."
By Editor
Verdict of a Secular Paper.
WE are surprised that any one is surprised at the recent utterance of Dr. Abbott: "My God is a good and ever-present force." The New York Sun comments thus: "That is, he has become a pantheist. If any newspaper is surprised by this confession it must be ignorant of the outgivings of Dr. Abbott, and of the School of Theology to which he belongs, for a long time past, or be incapable of drawing an obvious logical conclusion. The new theology has given up the dogmatic premises of the old theology, and, according to past religious standards, it is wholly heretical. Measured by those tests, it is as infidel as was Ingersoll himself, the difference being rather in form of statement than in substance of thought. Ought such a man to be occupying the pulpit of a Christian church founded on belief in a 'Great First Cause' and on belief in the fact of the Incarnation and in something more than 'mere energy,' even if it be 'intelligent energy'?" And yet, Dr. Abbott is a constant preacher at Wellesley and other so-called Christian colleges! Many ministers still follow him. We wonder what the president of Brown University now thinks of his "patron and leader!" Well, there always have been freaks, fools, and men of erratic wobblings, and they will not grow less toward the end of this wicked age. God lives, and His Word is true from its first sentence to its closing Amen.—Watchword and Truth.