OUR EUROPEAN LETTER by Jean Vuilleumier

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Jan 24, 1906

OUR EUROPEAN LETTER.

By Jean Vuilleumier

[From Our Own Correspondent.]

A One Hundred Years' Conflict around the Bible on Calvin's Battle-ground.

The Religious Condition of Geneva in 1806.

IN 1806, religion, in Geneva, was at a low ebb. French infidelity had made deep inroads on the faith of the once mighty church of Calvin. In the theological school which the reformers had founded, nothing but a miserable deism was taught. Incredible as it may seem, the Bible was not even used as a text-book, except for the study of Hebrew and Greek. No doctrinal course was to be found on the list of studies. And the great majority of pastors of the churches in Geneva had no faith in Christ as the Saviour and the Son of God.

A Great Revival Begins.

Between 1815 and 1820, an English Methodist and a Scotch Baptist, named Wilcox and Haldane, both laymen, spent some time in Geneva, sowing the seeds of Gospel truth. These seeds took ground in the hearts of a company of theological students named Gaussen, Bost, Malan, Guers, Merle d'Aubigné, Frédéric Monod, and others.

A great fire was kindled. The cardinal doctrines of the Bible, such as the divinity of Christ, salvation through faith and not through works, the new birth, the vicarious death, the resurrection and the second coming of Christ, began to be preached with juvenile enthusiasm by these young men. The "venerable company" of pastors in Geneva became alarmed, and endeavored by every means in their power to stop the proclamation of what they called dangerous errors. Several of the young revivalists were discharged and went abroad, preaching in many darkened districts of Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland, and Canada, the glorious, and to them newly-discovered, doctrine of the Gospel.

In 1821, some of them founded in Geneva a school of theology, from which the truth could be sent forth as of old. Among the founders were Louis Gaussen and Merle d'Aubigné. The former took up the doctrinal teaching of the Bible, and the latter, ecclesiastical history. He has since become widely known by his "History of the Reformation in the 16th Century."

The school of the "Oratoire" soon became a powerful center of religious revival and profound and reverential Bible study. Scores of faithful preachers and colporteurs went out from it; the official churches were themselves benefited, and for a time it seemed that the Bible had gained the day, and it had, gloriously.

An Unexpected Storm.

In 1851, however, a painful event took place. In the very school of the "Oratoire," some Belgian, French, and Canadian theological students rose up suddenly and decidedly against the authenticity and the authority of the Bible. Instead of discharging said students, the professors thought best to take up with them a thorough study of the very truths called in question by them. Among many books which grew out of this discussion, was a powerful work by Gaussen on the "Canon of the Holy Scriptures." Twenty years before, the same man had written a masterly treatise on "Theopneustia: the Plenary Inspiration of the Scriptures."

Another enthusiastic champion arose at that time to use his pen and voice against the attacks on the Bible. This was Count Agénor de Gasparin, a prolific writer and eloquent speaker, who had been a deputy at the French Chamber, where his defense of liberty of conscience had cost him his seat. In 1853, Gasparin published a work entitled "The Schools of Doubt and the School of Faith," in which he unmasked the "pious" enemies of the Bible, and forced an open discussion of this important question. Again, the day was won. The impenitent adversaries seemed to beat a retreat and wait for better times.

A Scene In Geneva; Mount Blanc in the Distance.

German Higher Critics at Work.

All this while, however, German rationalism had been quietly at work seeking, through scientific weapons, successfully to overthrow, while pretending to build up, the whole structure of the Sacred Writings. Eickhorn, De Wette, Schleiermacher, Reuss, plied their mighty minds to the task of creating modern biblical, or "higher, criticism." In 1876, J. Wellhausen summed up and presented with an enormous and apparently irresistible array of so-called "scientific facts," the ingenious theories of his predecessors of half a century. The sum total of it all was that none of the books of the Old Testament were written before 800 B.C. The prophetical books were written first, and are partially authentic; then came the books of Moses, "so called," which were "elaborated by pious forgers after the Babylonish captivity;" and finally the Psalms, which are wrongly attributed to David. As to Daniel, it was written two or three hundred years after the time of that prophet, and, of course, by another pious forger. "Thus," says Wellhausen, "the primitive history of Israel, as found in the books which bear the names of Moses and Joshua, must be eliminated in their entirety as impossible . . . and wholly unworthy of confidence."

French Protestantism Contaminated.

The success of Wellhausen has been prodigious. Hypnotized by his teaching, the professors of our divinity schools have imbibed it, and teach it to their students. In Paris, Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, Montauban, the new generations of ministers are being fed on this poisonous food. Prominent among these false teachers was the late Auguste Sabatier, of the Paris theological academy, whose talent enabled him to exert a wide influence, and from under whose brilliant teaching scores and scores of young pastors went out to spread infidelity throughout the ranks of the Huguenots.

So far, the deadly work was going on mainly among the clergy. Now it was ready to take another step. In 1888, the Revue de Théologie Pratique propounded the question "as to how the young ministers were to initiate their flocks into the results of present day evangelical [?] theology."

In the same year, a scholarly pastor in Lausanne said publicly: "The absolute authority of the Holy Scriptures can no more serve as a foundation to our faith. Pastors know it, but dare not say so; and yet, the secret is oozing out, and thus skepticism is spreading among the people."

More recently some ministers, growing bolder, have begun to write books designed for the general public and even the Sunday-schools, bringing out the Old Testament history according to the new religion. In these books the miraculous events in the history of the patriarchs and of Israel are called legends, passed under silence, or explained away. Yet there is little harmony among critics, some going a good deal farther than others.

In the Sunday-schools.

Still another bold and fearful step was to be taken. In the Sunday-school work, these blind promoters of infidelity found themselves facing a strange and disagreeable situation. If they taught the Old and New Testament in the old-fashioned way, as being true throughout, what about their honesty and sincerity? And if they began to tell the children that the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, the confusion of tongues, and the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, were not true events, but pious legends and myths, who knew what might happen? Perhaps a revolution among the Christian people would place these pastors where their work would have to stop. Both their pocketbook and their new theology might suffer from their acting frankly and honestly. Which of the two should they sacrifice—their position, or their honesty? Things have come to a point where neither silence nor utterance is safe.

Hence the following advertisement which occurred not long ago in our religious papers, emanating from the Sunday-school district committee of one of the Swiss cantons:-

Desirous of promoting the spiritual [?] welfare of our children, and especially of importing more light on the study and teaching of the Old Testament to our Sunday-school teachers, the Sunday-school Board calls for prize essays on the following subject:

How are we to present to children the narratives of the Old Testament, while taking into account, on the one hand, the requirements of Christ, our faith, and on the other, the results of science and of Bible criticism!

A prize of 1,000 francs was to be given to the best essayist.

Recent Developments.

This question is leavening at the present time the whole body of Protestant churches in France. In the State Church, as in the Free Church, the younger and more advanced (?) members of the clergy are calling loudly for an amendment to the confessions of faith, such as will allow them to teach their ideas in an unobstructed way. The older members, while shaken in their faith, are not disposed to go so far as their young colleagues, and therefore oppose the change proposed.

Two years ago, at Clairac, where the Free Churches held their annual conference, the two parties came up face to face with opposite resolutions. A stormy debate was avoided by the question being ruled out as unconstitutional. And yet, the leading men in these churches advocate a rapprochement, if not a fusion, with the elder churches from which they seceded in 1848. They urge (1) that these national churches will be placed on the same footing as they themselves when the new bill shall become a law; (2) that these official churches are "evoluting in a clearly evangelical sense" toward the "great redemption facts." Indeed, the only evolution which has taken place is that of the Free Churches toward unbelief and higher criticism.

At Rheims, last May, at the general synod of the official churches, a significant resolution was passed. In view of the impending separation of the churches from the state, it was voted to invite their "liberal," or Unitarian, sister churches, from which they had seceded in 1872, to join them again in a "national synod," as soon as the separation law shall be enforced by the government. Here again is a resolution by the greater body of the Huguenot churches which is distinctly a step backward toward a more complete and disastrous apostasy from the old standard of the Reformers, of the Apostles, and of our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ.

And if these things be not "signs of the times," we would like to know what are. The last great apostasy is upon us. JEAN VUILLEUMIER.

Gland, Switzerland.