MODERN CONFLICT 
 rn/FRTHE BIBLE 
 

THE MODERN CONFLICT 
 OVER THE BIBLE 
 
THE MODEEN CONFLICT 
 OVEE THE BIBLE 
 
 BY 
 
 G. W. kcPHERSON 
 
 Volume II. 
 
 This book is dedicathd to thb Deitt of Oub Lobd 
 
 Jesub Chkist and the inspibation 
 
 OF the Biblb 
 
 YONKERS BOOK: COMPANY 
 
 34 St. Andrew's Place 
 yonkers, n. y. 
 
Copyright, 1919, by 
 
 G. w. Mcpherson 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The Author's desire, in sending forth this 
 book, is to instruct the Christian people as to the 
 conflicting views of Modernism and the Historic 
 Faith; and to expose the fallacies of the former 
 in the light of the Sacred Word. This volume 
 comprises a comparative presentation of what is 
 generally called, The New And The Old Theology. 
 By its study the plain average man, as well as the 
 scholar, is helped to arrive at a Scriptural and 
 historical understanding regarding the momen- 
 tous questions discussed. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VAOa 
 
 I. How Could God Inspire a Book? . . 1 
 
 II. Evidence from Experience .... 16 
 
 III. Scientific Evidence 32 
 
 IV. Internal Evidences 51 
 
 V. The New Theology and the Death of 
 
 Christ 69 
 
 VI. Modernism and Eschatology or Things 
 
 to Come 101 
 
 VII. A Rational Study of the Second 
 
 Coming of Christ 118 
 
 VIII. Modernism and the Resurrection . . 147 
 
 IX. The New Theology and the Judgments 159 
 
 X. Modernism and the Apostolic Church 165 
 
 XI. The Church and Its Message One . 197 
 
 xn 
 
CHAPTEE I 
 HOW COULD GOD INSPIRE A BOOK? 
 
 Isaiah's Declaration 
 
 It was IsraePs greatest prophet who said : **The 
 grass withereth, the flower f adeth, but the word of 
 our God shall stand forever'' (Isaiah). With fit- 
 ting words like these, revealing the imperishable 
 character, the deathless eternity of God's Revela- 
 tion to men, we shall proceed to discuss in this and 
 the three succeeding chapters the inspiration of 
 the Bible. In discussing the modern conflict we 
 are at once brought face to face with the question 
 of inspiration. 
 
 A Suggestive Title 
 
 The title of this chapter may sound , somewhat 
 irreverent, but it was suggested by a sermon which 
 a student in a New Theology seminary delivered 
 in his own pulpit on, ' * The Modern Point of View 
 of Religion, ' ' in which he declared that * * God can- 
 not inspire a book. He inspires only men." We 
 shall challenge the truth of this statement, as we 
 hope to prove its absurdity, and make clear that 
 the aim of the New Theolo^ of Modernism is to 
 
2 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 foist what is practically a new religion on man- 
 kind — not ** after the pattern made in the Holy 
 Mount/' and by the Crucified Lord, but rather 
 manufactured by infidels in the universities of 
 Europe and America. 
 
 The Unity of Truth 
 
 In this and subsequent chapters, it is the pur- 
 pose to make clear by way of contrast the point 
 of view of Modernism and the revelation of God 
 as disclosed in the Bible, to present fundamental 
 Christian Truth in contradistinction to Modern- 
 ism, and as taught in many of our churches and 
 universities to-day. There can be no break in 
 continuity, rather the discussion may appear to 
 be somewhat narrowed, more concentrated upon 
 vital matters of Truth, and thus more practical 
 for teacher and student. 
 
 This Discussion is Vital 
 
 With this in mind the way is clear for an exami- 
 nation of the inspiration and authority of the 
 Bible. Aside from the definition of inspiration, 
 which shall be stated presently, we are largely 
 dealing, in this chapter, in generalities; but let 
 it not be supposed that this is of small moment. 
 A discussion of this character is always vital and 
 fundamental. Indeed, it is in every conceivable 
 sense the one question, the answer to which must 
 determine all other matters of importance in the 
 realm of Christianity. 
 
HOW COULD GOD INSPIRE A BOOK? 3 
 
 Literalism and Obscubantism 
 
 It is not necessary to unduly exalt the mechani- 
 cal. No one is asked to worship a book, not even 
 the Bible, though an extreme literalism is always 
 more safe and sane than the vague obscurantism 
 of the New Theology, or the point of view of those 
 who would negative or obscure the naked facts 
 of the Bible by a false method of interpretation. 
 
 Bible Books Not of Equal Value 
 
 Neither is it the purpose to affirm that every 
 book in the Bible is of equal value, or that every 
 word is inspired. The Bible is broad and liberal, 
 in that it hears all parties, gives every objector 
 some space, even giving Satan himself a hearing. 
 Both the good and the bad have spoken to men 
 in this marvelous Book. The Spirit of God is 
 more wise and generous than the wisest jury, more 
 just than the best and msest of men. The Book 
 that was built up under the guiding hand of un- 
 erring Providence has a place in its history for 
 all the various weaknesses of human nature, as, 
 for all the various intelligencies in God's great 
 universe. 
 
 Common Objections 
 
 Some have objected to parts of the Bible as 
 being unethical, rough, or coarse. * * Surely, ' ' they 
 say, *^ these parts are not inspired.'' Of course 
 it hardly need be stated that the words of wicked 
 men, and the words of Satan, as recorded in the 
 
4 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Scriptures, were not matters of inspiration. The 
 Apostle Peter said that **holy men of old spake 
 as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.'' (II Pet. 
 1:21.) Here is inspiration. But those who made 
 an accurate record of these objectionable parts, 
 as also of all the content of Scripture, were also 
 inspired to give to the world the true history of 
 those things which God saw is good for men to 
 know. Nothing necessary to man's moral enlight- 
 enment was omitted. In this we find striking 
 proof of the frankness, openness — the honesty of 
 the Bible. If it were man's Book only, these parts 
 would be omitted; but in the human drama of 
 man's sin, and in the great Divine drama of God's 
 redemption for men, we should expect to find a 
 true statement of the manifestation of moral evil 
 in all its horrid aspects. So the writers were led 
 of God to make the record plain, as were the com- 
 pilers or editors to make these writings up into 
 a book. Doubtless, all this was included in the 
 thought of the Apostle Paul when he wrote his 
 illuminating words: **A11 Scripture is given by 
 inspiration of God" (II Tim. 3:16) — given 
 originally to inspired men, and later preserved in 
 history in the marvelous volume we call the Bible. 
 
 A Subtle Denial 
 
 The fact of the inspiration of the Bible is 
 wholly or partly denied or shaded down to-day by 
 the destructive critic in such a fashion that the 
 world's great Book is, in some respects, placed 
 
HOW COULD GOD INSPIRE A BOOK? 5 
 
 on an equality with some other sacred books of the 
 East; while some of the critics declare that our 
 Bible is, at least in parts, inferior to those other 
 sacred writings. It is this, with other conten- 
 tions of Modernism, that should be exposed and 
 refuted. 
 
 Is Faith in the Bible Indispensable? 
 
 The New Theology goes so far as to say that 
 Jesus Christ would triumph. His cause forever 
 flourish, even if men should abandon their faith 
 in the trustworthiness and inspiration of the Bible. 
 Of course it will not weaken the force of the Truth 
 to affirm that this is a shallow misrepresentation. 
 How can such a claim be accepted when it is the 
 Bible alone that gives the only account of Jesus 
 Christ, of His supernatural and miraculous con- 
 ception, His nature, teaching, mission, and au- 
 thority over men. 
 
 Natural Dr^isiONS 
 
 The name Bible signifies **the book,'' and was 
 applied for the first time by Chrysostom in the 
 fourth century to the books of the Old and New 
 Testament, which up to that time had been called 
 the * ^ Scriptures. ' ' The ancient plural has been 
 transformed into a singular noun in view of the 
 recognized unity of the books of the Bible, and 
 which is thus called. The Book, by way of emi- 
 nence. 
 
 We hardly need remind ourselves that the Bible 
 
6 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 has two general divisions, the Old and the New 
 Testament, and that both were written under the 
 form of a will or covenant or compact between 
 God and man. 
 
 The Old Testament was divided by the Jews into 
 three parts, the Law, the Prophets, and the Sacred 
 Writings. The Law comprised the five books of 
 Moses, the Prophets comprise all the prophetic 
 writings from Joshua to Malachi, the Sacred 
 Writings, or, as we say, the Poetic, or better still, 
 the Wisdom Literature, include the Book of Job, 
 the Psalms, the Proverbs, Ruth, and Lamenta- 
 tions, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. 
 
 The New Testament gives us the only original 
 account of the origin and spread of Christianity, 
 and is made up of twenty-seven books, only one 
 of which is prophetic, the book of Revelation, all 
 the others being biographical and epistolary, com- 
 prising the life of Jesus and the Apostles 's letters 
 to the churches. 
 
 Inspiration Defined 
 
 Is this large collection named the Bible, in- 
 spired? To this the Church in all ages has given 
 an affirmative answer, and we have ample reason 
 for believing that the Church in this particular 
 is correct. The word inspiration occurs only twice 
 in all the Bible, but God does not have to repeat 
 Himself in order to confirm His Truth. We be- 
 lieve that the spirit of inspiration breathes on 
 every page and illumines every truth of the Bible. 
 
HOW COULD GOD INSPIRE A BOOK? 7 
 
 The word inspiration literally means to breathe 
 into, to infuse Supernatural life or ideas into the 
 human mind. God breathed into the minds of the 
 writers of the Bible its ideas, its great spiritual 
 content, and that, in part, is what we mean by in- 
 spiration. But how God did this, how He pre- 
 pared the minds of the writers for this lofty work 
 so that there was perfect harmony between the 
 human and the Divine, we do not know; it is not 
 necessary that we should know. Of course, God 
 did not write the Bible. We have only two records 
 of where Deity wrote — God wrote the Ten Com- 
 mandments and Jesus wrote on the ground. The 
 Bible was written by man, could only have been 
 written by man, for it comes to us clothed in the 
 speech, the language of man ; and for such a work 
 man must have been prepared. This preparation 
 is, in part, what we mean by inspiration. 
 
 How God Operated Upon Them 
 
 How God did this work, or how He influenced 
 or operated upon the writers, we do not know, we 
 may only speculate. It is certain that God did not 
 do this in a mechanical way. He did not control 
 the writers as a boy controls his jumping toys. 
 In this holy work there must have been the free- 
 dom of natural expression as is seen by the dif- 
 ferent individualities of the writers. *^ Moses, 
 David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, John, Paul, and 
 others, all declare that God spoke to them, but 
 they do not tell us how God spoke, or how He 
 
8 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 operated upon them. They probably did not 
 know. ' ' The communication of life in the physical 
 and spiritual world is a profound secret. Science 
 cannot help us here. The mystery of the origin, 
 or the creation and communication of life is still 
 unknown to man. We need not remind ourselves 
 that the father and mother, who are the active 
 agents in physical creation, do not understand the 
 divine process or secret of imparting life. All 
 they know is that life, that pearl of infinite value, 
 the crown of God's creation, is in evidence, and 
 soon they begin to behold, to wonder, and to love, 
 while their hearts are enraptured with joy. 
 
 It Is IN Harmony With the Laws of Life 
 
 And so it is with the inspiration of the Bible, 
 for life is there also ; there is a holy joy that thrills 
 and fills the heart of man as he reads and appro- 
 priates the wonderful truths of the Bible. As he 
 enters into this holy experience, he knows, he can- 
 not tell just how or why, but he knows, for he 
 feels the touch and glow in his own heart (it is 
 the secret of spiritual life) that holy men of old 
 wrote as they were moved upon by the Divine 
 Spirit, and that knowledge satisfies. It is the 
 secret of life responding to life, to a higher, a 
 heavenly life. 
 
 The Original Manuscripts were Without Error 
 
 There are convincing reasons for believing that 
 
 the original manuscripts of the Bible contained 
 
HOW COULD 60D INSPIRE A BOOK? 
 
 no error. We cannot conceive of error if God in- 
 spired the writers to give these truths to men. It 
 need occasion no surprise if men deny and reject 
 this great fact, for it is natural for man to doubt 
 and to assail the Bible, especially those parts 
 which reveal and condemn his sin. 
 
 The Eeal Purpose of the Bible 
 
 The Bible must condemn sin, it must be honest 
 and perfect if it is God's Word. The fact is that 
 this Book, like aU God's work, is perfect, that is, 
 it completely fulfills the purpose for which it was 
 given. It is not intended to be simply a text-book 
 on science, though its science is perfect, it is a 
 revelation of the fact of Creation, and of the 
 Plan of Salvation, fully setting forth God's mar- 
 velous redemption; and in all these respects the 
 Bible is the perfect Book of God. 
 
 Further Definition of Inspiration 
 
 The inspiration of the Bible is clearly dis- 
 covered in the fact that God revealed, supervised, 
 selected, included what man needs to know regard- 
 ing God's Plan of redemption and His Will for 
 man. Some of these elements are included in aU 
 Scriptures, and all in some. And this constitutes, 
 also, in part, what we call inspiration. The pres- 
 ence of any or all of these elements furnishes us 
 with uncontrovertible proof of the truth of the 
 inspiration of the Bible. 
 
10 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Momentous Questions 
 
 Perhaps it will help us further, in answering the 
 matter under consideration, if we present a series 
 of pertinent, suggestive, and up-to-date questions. 
 It is believed that in the simple presentation of 
 these questions may be seen the falsity of many 
 of the theories of our time regarding the Bible. 
 For example: What is meant by the term inspi- 
 ration? Does the Bible stand alone, unique in 
 character and power? Is it possible that the 
 Christian world for millenniums has been mis- 
 taken regarding the Bible, and that for the first 
 time the truth as to its real character is begin- 
 ning to shine forth in the twentieth century? Do 
 the views men hold of inspiration sustain an im- 
 portant relation to the progress of Christianity, 
 or can the world be evangelized by those who view 
 the Bible as erroneous, or untrustworthy, and if 
 so, what shall be the message, and the authority, 
 and how shall it be done ? If the Christian people 
 should give up their faith in the Bible as a Divine 
 Revelation, could the Church of Jesus Christ sur- 
 vive? If the Bible is inspired only as the hymns 
 of Fannie Crosby, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, 
 and other pious writers, precisely the same in 
 character, what is the basis of authority in the 
 Christian Religion? If it be claimed that good 
 men are the basis of authority, who are these men, 
 what are their names, where do they live, for we 
 should like to know them, or hear them teach, or 
 preach, or read their writings, or theology — to 
 
HOW COULD GOD INSPIRE A BOOK? 11 
 
 study them at close quarters. We should like to 
 know whether these men are agreed in their views, 
 or religious opinions, or theologies, and if they 
 are not agreed, whether it is possible to believe 
 that men, modern men, good men, are the true, 
 the real, the only basis of authority in the Chris- 
 tian Religion? The discussion throughout all 
 these chapters is clustered in a general way, 
 though disconnectedly, around these momentous 
 questions. 
 
 How Jesus Used the Bible 
 
 It is well to note carefully in this study how the 
 great Teacher used the Bible. If His point of 
 view can be fully grasped, surely it ^ill be an easy 
 matter to form a correct opinion of the Old Tes- 
 tament, as to what extent it is an authority for 
 us to-day in matters of religion, whether it is as 
 Isaiah said, **The Word of God that shall stand 
 forever. '^ If we can see clearly w^hat was the 
 attitude of Jesus to the Old Testament, this whole 
 question will be rightly settled. With this knowl- 
 edge we can affirm that not only do we believe this 
 Book to be inspired, but we can truthfully say 
 that we know the Bible to be inspired. If the 
 example of Jesus is of value in the realm of con- 
 duct, of social service, as the New Theology advo- 
 cate emphasizes, surely His attitude toward the 
 Old Testament is also of great value. It is said 
 that it takes a crisis to reveal true greatness. 
 When Jesus faced a crisis, what did He do? We 
 
12 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 find that He instantly made use of the Old Tes- 
 tament. If He did not have time to pray, He 
 always had time to quote Scripture. Not once do 
 we find Him doing what the wisest of men some- 
 times do, namely — going to their fellows for coun- 
 sel, but, over and over again, we find Him fall- 
 ing back on the Old Testament, as a soldier in 
 action resorts to his cartridge belt. In His hours 
 of crisis He relied supremely upon the greatest 
 power — the Divine resources. God to Him was a 
 great Eeality, and God's Word was final — the end 
 of all controversy. The Old Testament, as we 
 have it to-day, was the text book of Jesus. When 
 Satan attacked Him at the opening of His min- 
 istry. He did not fall back even upon His own 
 Supernatural Eesources, but He won His first 
 great victory by simply declaring in a childlike 
 trust : **It is written.'' Similarly must the Chris- 
 tian people ever win. To the Son of God the Bible 
 was both his means of offense and defense ; surely 
 also it must be ours. We cannot win by a cow- 
 ardly neutrality and compromise, the spirit of 
 complacency and partial acquiescence with the 
 enemies of Christianity, but rather by coura- 
 geously standing for the Truth as did Jesus 
 Christ, and saying in a simple childlike faith: **It 
 is written." 
 
 The Great Vision for Life 
 
 The hour has come to insist on a more perfect 
 imitation of Jesus in the use we make of the Bible. 
 
HOW COULD GOD INSPIRE A BOOK? 13 
 
 Ours is the day of compromise with the Truth. 
 As a result of false training and the pride of 
 scholarship, men, in order to insure themselves 
 an economic and social advantage, are betraying 
 Jesus Christ. They refuse to stand strongly with 
 Him, to imitate Him. Questions are measured in 
 the light of economic gain, while the great Leader 
 of men viewed every matter in the light of reality. 
 With our modern compromisers it would appear 
 that selfishness is running rampant, that every 
 question has a semi-economic and materialistic 
 basis. But with Jesus Christ every question had 
 a moral basis. It was one of England *s noted 
 writers, possibly Hume or Macaulay, who said 
 that if it were to the interest of some financial 
 power to oppose the great discovery of science, 
 that the earth rotates on its axis and travels 
 around the sun once a year, the world would not 
 yet know of that great discovery. The French 
 revolution did not become a reality until a heavy 
 tax was imposed on the landed nobility. A com- 
 munity may enjoy a tranquil life until the taxes 
 are suddenly raised. The problem of interna- 
 tional as of individual relations, is to get men to 
 view matters in the light of moral realities and 
 values. ^*A11 these things will I give thee if thou 
 wilt fall down and worship me'* (Matt. 4:9), is 
 the basis of Satan's appeal to Jesus. He sought 
 for the selfish economic motive, which is the 
 motive of Hell, while the moral, the spiritual is 
 the Christ motive — the motive of God. 
 
14 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 The Example of Jesus 
 
 But in the light of all this how luminous and 
 inspiring is the example of Jesus. He stood like 
 a Majestic Rock in the midocean of life, while the 
 storms of human selfishness and sin beat furiously 
 against Him, but in vain. Four-square He stood 
 for justice, holiness, righteousness, love, and 
 Truth. His was the glory of a great spiritual 
 character and not the merely material. In the face 
 of a selfish world, and of His great antagonist, 
 Satan, Jesus Christ delivered His famous ultima- 
 tum: *^It is written.'* He did not consider it to 
 be His mission to criticize or pull down the Old 
 Testament. He was not a vain, religious icono- 
 clast, a destructive critic, or even a merely higher 
 critic, though Professor Bade presents Him in a 
 new role as a critic of the Old Testament. But 
 Jesus replies to all such false interpretation of 
 Himself in these words: ** Think not that I am 
 come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not 
 come to destroy but to fulfill. '* (Matt. 5:17.) He 
 characterized the modern destructive critic in 
 these words : * * fools and slow of heart to believe 
 all that the prophets have spoken: * Ought not 
 Christ to have suffered these things and to enter 
 into His glory T And beginning at Moses and all 
 the prophets. He expounded unto them in all the 
 Scriptures the things concerning Himself." 
 (Luke 24:25-27.) As Rev. D. S. Stearns has well 
 said, in speaking of the value of the Old Testa- 
 ment, **Now here you must make your choice. If 
 
HOW COULD GOD INSPIRE A BOOK? 15 
 
 you study prophecy, many Christians and some 
 ministers will say you are foolish; if you do not 
 study the prophets and believe them, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ will say you are foolish. Which will 
 you choose? I would a thousand times rather that 
 all the ministers I know called me foolish . . . 
 than to have my Saviour call me foolish. ^ ^ (King- 
 dom Tidings, Feb., 1919.) 
 
 OuB Pattekn 
 
 Thus we have seen the attitude of Jesus to the 
 Old Testament, and thus have we discovered our 
 own infallible Pattern. In the light of this the 
 Church has a right to call for a new allegiance to 
 Jesus Christ and to the inspired Book, which He 
 so highly honored, not because it is the Bible, but 
 because it is to man the most precious thing in 
 life, the Revelation of God Himself. Let this, 
 therefore, be our ultimatum : ' ' It is written ! ' ^ * * It 
 is written!*' **It is written !'* 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 
 
 In subsequent chapters we shall discuss the 
 Bcientific and internal evidences of the inspiration 
 of the Bible. Here we shall consider evidence 
 from experience. 
 
 Ample Eeasons 
 
 There are ample reasons for believing the Bible 
 to be inspired, reasons that can satisfy both mind 
 and heart. We have no right to ask men to accept 
 the Bible as God^s Word without furnishing them 
 with ample reasons for their acceptance. While 
 it is not reason but faith that brings us in contact 
 with God, yet Christianity appeals powerfully to 
 reason. Sublime indeed in their marvelous con- 
 descension are the words, **Come now and let us 
 reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins 
 be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow.'' 
 (Isa. 1 :18.) Here is the Supreme Eeason inviting 
 men to reason with Him over the mystery of the 
 Atonement and forgiveness, how God can be just 
 and yet acquit the guilty who believe in Jesus 
 Christ. The glory and mystery of the Atonement 
 is seen in the fact that God can make red sins and 
 
EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 17 
 
 black sins white as snow, that is, He can make 
 man as sinless before God as if he had never 
 sinned. It requires the Divine Reason to make 
 clear to men this marvelous revelation of God's 
 forgiving love. Instead of rejecting the Atone- 
 ment, let men come and reason it over with God, 
 who alone fully understands its sublime signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 If God could get men to stop and think 
 earnestly, mth honest desire, to reason with their 
 minds and hearts, and to ask God questions, while 
 conscious of their own limitations, they would 
 soon wake up in the surprise and joy of the new 
 life; they would soon submit to God, to His pro- 
 gramme for mankind; they would soon love God. 
 If we could persuade men to read and carefully 
 study the Bible, and put it to the test, it would 
 not be long before they would crowTi Jesus Christ 
 Lord of all. It is the false and indolent reason- 
 ing of men that keeps them from knowing the 
 loving God of the Bible. When we hear men talk 
 against the Bible, we may make up our minds 
 that there is something wrong, unlovely, some- 
 thing unreasonable in them. **For every one that 
 doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the 
 light, lest his deeds should be reproved.** 
 (John 3:20.) 
 
 We have ample reasons for accepting the Bible 
 as the inspired Word of God, not reasons that will 
 satisfy the abnormal critic, but, that the honest, 
 average mind, open to the Truth will see clearly 
 
18 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 and readily accept. We should like to reach many 
 of the university men with these messages, but 
 we are also concerned over the rank and file, the 
 great bulk of the ordinary folk that make up the 
 churches in America. Our greatest desire is to 
 indoctrinate the young men and women of our 
 country within and without the university in the 
 fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Already 
 the ** Modern Conflict Over the Bible'' has 
 reached not a few of our college and seminary 
 men, with the result that some of these have sepa- 
 rated themselves from certain influences and edu- 
 cational institutions. The grand old Truth can 
 win even the modern materialistic evolutionist and 
 rationalist, and destructive critic of the Bible. Our 
 object, however, is to help all classes — the mer- 
 chant, the clerk, the mechanic, the farmer, the 
 servant man and woman in every sphere, the man 
 who sweeps the streets, the sailor and the soldier, 
 and even the outcast from society. We want these 
 great truths about the Bible to be read and known 
 by men everywhere, for these truths when prac- 
 ticed can make us noble and true, for they uncover 
 to us the loving suffering heart of God. 
 
 It is to this end that we are eschewing loud- 
 sounding, technical, scholastic terms, and clothing 
 our thought in the simple plain language of the 
 average man. We love the plain English — the 
 language of Bunyan, Wesley, Bright, Spurgeon, 
 Broadus and Moody. Let these truths about God 
 be spoken simply, plainly. 
 
EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 19 
 
 Experience Reveals It 
 
 The first proposition we would submit is that 
 experience proves the Bible to be inspired. ■ 
 
 The Bible message finds us, shows us the kind 
 of men we are, furnishes us with a true photo- 
 graph of the human heart, finds us on the lowest 
 levels of life, and on the highest levels, and tells 
 us in the most direct and unvarnished way what 
 we are, and what we ought to be. There is no 
 escaping the revelation of our own innermost life, 
 when we read the Bible. No book shows man his 
 sin as does the Bible. It does not cover up the 
 sins of the learned and the rich, those in high 
 places. In the Bible, the king and the beggar are 
 on the same level before God. The Bible did not 
 cover up Jacob's dishonesty, Cain's murder, 
 David's immorality, Peter's lying and blasphemy, 
 and Saul of Tarsus whose hands were red with 
 the blood of the martyrs. If the Bible were man's 
 book, it would never give us a record of the sins 
 of its own writers. Some of the authors were 
 once high-handed sinners, but grace cleansed 
 them. We call this experimental evidence, be- 
 cause it is discovered in the moral and spiritual 
 life of those who wrote and also those who study 
 the Bible and translate its principles into life. 
 
 The Love of God and Mother's Love 
 
 No other book reads like the Bible ; it reads like 
 a book that God Himself would produce through 
 
20 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 consecrated, spirit-filled lives. Everything is done 
 in the open and above board in this book. Jesus 
 said, ** Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in 
 darkness shall be heard in the light; and that 
 which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall 
 be proclaimed upon the housetops.'' (Luke 
 12:3.) There are no secret treaties, or obliga- 
 tions endorsed in the Book of God. And this is 
 God's plan, and the Bible rings true to this frank 
 open method throughout. There is a moral and 
 spiritual tone in this Book that cannot be ap- 
 proached in any literature. The nearest approach 
 to the Bible, in this respect, is the letter a loving 
 mother would write to her child far from home. 
 There is a heart note, a fatherly, a motherly note 
 in the Bible. The writer is reminded of what a 
 friend said after his return from Palestine. 
 **Were you lonely over there?" ** Nearly died 
 from it," was his reply. *'I longed to get a letter 
 from my mother. At last it arrived in a batch 
 of letters. The first one I opened was from 
 mother, and I did not have to look at the signa- 
 ture to know that it was her letter. It sounded 
 like mother from the start, and I knew it was her 
 letter." The illustration is faulty, but it may 
 suggest that which we are trying to make clear 
 about the Bible. It speaks like God, loves like 
 God, and sounds throughout like God, from its 
 opening declaration of Creation to its consumma- 
 tion of a redeemed, a sinless, and Immortal 
 Humanity. These facts might be interpreted as 
 
EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 21 
 
 external evidence, but we prefer to make a dis- 
 tinction and class as evidence from experience 
 the varied spiritual experiences of men as they 
 are influenced by the Bible. 
 
 The Bible, the Koran and Eastern Faiths 
 
 The Bible produces the highest type of char- 
 acter, and different from any other type of 
 character to be found in aU the world. The 
 Koran produces a devout but withal a re- 
 vengeful, persecuting type. The sacred books 
 of India cannot produce the lowly, humble, 
 loving Christian type. The fruit of these 
 religions is in part moral improvement, but 
 it is characterized largely by superstition. True, 
 the East has its philosophers and reformers, 
 but that is about all it has. The latter, how- 
 ever, are largely an imitation of Western ideas 
 and propaganda. The non-Christian faiths could 
 not give to the world a Savonarola or a Luther. 
 The disciples of the Eastern religions are char- 
 acterized in part by moral growth and aspira- 
 tion, but also superstition, though some are de- 
 vout and earnest seekers after the true God. But 
 the non-Christian faiths cannot produce a Paul 
 or a Moody, or even an inferior type of Christian 
 character. The Christ-type is distinct from all 
 others. 
 
 The Christian nations, notwithstanding their 
 faults, are the enlightened, the optimistic, aggres- 
 sive, the dominant people of the earth, Educa- 
 
?2 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 tion, philanthropy and material prosperity are 
 complements of true Christianity. Wherever 
 there is an open Bible, progress is in evidence. 
 The advance of mankind in all that is highest and 
 best can be traced directly to the influence of the 
 Bible. This fact stands out unchallenged and 
 irrefutable. This is one of the strong grounds 
 of appeal to men everywhere to become Chris- 
 tians. 
 
 The Classic of Christian Experience 
 
 The individual experience of men and women, 
 the conscious joy, rest and peace in their own 
 hearts, furnish us with infallible proof of the in- 
 spiration of the Bible. Here the Christian con- 
 sciousness is eloquent and irrepressible. No 
 argument from science or philosophy can justly 
 contradict this kind of knowledge nor over- 
 throw it. 
 
 The blind man to whom Jesus gave his sight 
 has aptly put it in words that have become a 
 classic in Christian testimony. *'This one thing 
 I know that whereas I was blind now I see.'' 
 Infidelity may heap up arguments to the sun but 
 cannot refute this evidence. 
 
 How THE Writer Discovered It 
 
 It was by the gateway of experience that the 
 author of this message became acquainted with 
 God's Book. In my early life, while I did not 
 
EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 23 
 
 talk it out, yet I was exceedingly skeptical. I had 
 heard Christians tell of their experiences, but was 
 rather inclined to doubt it, and to believe that 
 their experiences could be accounted for on 
 psychological grounds, that there was no Super- 
 natural element in them, that if there is a God, 
 He does not come to men slowly, nor suddenly, 
 nor from without, or in any special way aside 
 from the natural, ordinary way of imparting 
 knowledge, namely: by education. I wondered 
 whether a certain kind of education did not ex- 
 plain it all — ^in short, whether the glowing expe- 
 riences I had heard folks tell were not largely, 
 if not wholly, imaginary, the product of self- 
 hypnotism. 
 
 I was inclined to believe that the Creative 
 Power had put in nature those elements that make 
 up or develop what we call religious experience, 
 and that man by the gradual process of natural 
 growth, or what is kno^\^l to-day as evolution, and 
 by response to religious instincts and environ- 
 ment comes into possession of a religious con- 
 sciousness, or experience, just as by proper 
 physical exercise he comes into the possession of 
 muscle. 
 
 In those early days, before I had any knowledge 
 of atheistic evolution, and rationalistic philos- 
 ophy generally, I was unconsciously a sort of 
 evolutionist and pantheist, a New Theology 
 doubter and speculator, though I did not know 
 it. Later, however, as result of higher knowledge, 
 
24 MODERN OONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 I learned that my conception was a dangerous 
 deception, as was proven by the new Christian 
 experience which had become mine and which I 
 had doubted in the lives of others. 
 
 In the light of this new experience I discovered 
 myself, my alienation from God, that sin had 
 darkened my moral perceptions and judgment, 
 that I was a **nice nasty moralist," a bewildered 
 evolutionist, a rationalistic nebula, ignorant and 
 self-righteous, in short, an unsaved, unreconciled 
 soul, with no satisfying knowledge of the true 
 * * God and without hope in the world. ' ' 
 
 But how did all this come to pass? I will ex- 
 plain. I decided to deal fairly with Jesus Christ 
 and test Him in an honest manner. I did not 
 doubt that Jesus was a historical character. I 
 set about to test Christ and His principles as we 
 would labor to prove a mathematical question, or 
 in some such intellectual, calculating, scientific 
 way. 
 
 I began a study of the Gospels. I found that 
 Jesus had made certain claims, declaring that 
 He came from God, was the unique Son of God, 
 and had come to redeem mankind — *Ho give His 
 life as a ransom for many.'' (Matt. 20:28.) He 
 affirmed that if men would do certain things they 
 would get certain results. He said: **Ask and it 
 shall be given you," etc. He invited men to prove 
 God, and to see if He was not a teacher come from 
 God. He declared that His Messiahship was 
 demonstrable, that men could find out whether 
 
EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 25 
 
 He was what He claimed to be, and could do for 
 them what He claimed He could do. This ap- 
 pealed strongly to me as eminently reasonable 
 and fair, so I set about to put Jesus Christ to 
 an honest test. 
 
 Jesus said, pray and we would receive, find, 
 and make the great discovery of God, using His 
 name in our petitions. He declared that God is 
 a Royal Benefactor, a gracious, helping Friend, 
 ever ready to hear an honest prayer and bestow 
 pardon, gifts, and graces upon men. I prayed as 
 Jesus directed, and methodically, persistently, 
 continuously, every day and night, at long and 
 short intervals, and watched for the result; but 
 no result seemed to come from this moral exer- 
 cise. Yet I continued to pray, for I argued that 
 if Christianity be true it is well worth spending a 
 lifetime to find it out. 
 
 I found that Jesus taught men to believe all 
 the Old Testament as God's Revealed Truth. He 
 also taught us to love our enemies, and I found 
 that I could not do the latter. He commanded us 
 to love God, and I tried to see in God those things 
 that would induce my cold, unresponsive heart to 
 love Him. 
 
 Again, Jesus commanded us to confess Him 
 before men, to talk about Him to men, and this 
 I tried to do to every person with whom I had 
 a good opportunity. He commanded me to deny 
 myself in a moral and ethical way and this I did. 
 Within a short time I found myself praying 
 
26 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 much, talking much, obeying as best I could the 
 teachings of Jesus, and trying to love as He com- 
 manded. I read the Bible daily, sometimes a 
 whole book at one sitting, but it was to me not a 
 warm, living, moving power. The truth is, while 
 I respected the Bible yet I did not love the Bible. 
 I was aware of the fact that I had no special love 
 for God, for Jesus Christ, nor for His people, 
 nor for the Bible, and found no happiness in this 
 religious business though I had pursued it two 
 months and more. But in God's good time the 
 great discovery was made. And this was how it 
 came about: I began a close study of the suffer- 
 ings and death of Jesus as He is portrayed in the 
 New Testament, as an offering or sacrifice for 
 sin; and in this study I was greatly impressed 
 by the fact that He died for me personally, as 
 if I were the only person in all the world. And 
 now what God asked me to see was His great 
 love for me in giving His Son to die for me, in 
 order to deliver me from the bondage of sin and 
 death and hell, and that I might have eternal life. 
 As I thought about this, over and over, and re- 
 pented and believed, gradually a spiritual illu- 
 mination became mine, that is to say, I awoke to 
 the consciousness that the Holy Spirit had come 
 to take up His abode with me, and that I was 
 changed, renewed, saved. I had a great presence 
 with me now, the presence of God. And what was 
 the result? 
 From that time on I possessed a love for our 
 
EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 27 
 
 gracious Heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ the 
 Son of God, who died to redeem me, a poor sin- 
 ner, for Christians also, and for the Bible. The 
 Bible became a new Book to me. I discovered 
 the Bible, that it is the inspired Truth of God. 
 I made the demonstration in my own experience. 
 Before this the Bible was largely a sealed Book, 
 but now it had become a vitalizing power day by 
 day in my life. Its teachings awakened my 
 dormant spiritual faculties, and directed and in- 
 spired my life as by a heavenly and irresistible 
 charm. It was the charm of a new love, a new 
 holy life with Christ in God — the Christian life. 
 I discovered that the Bible is inspired because it 
 inspired me, and through its teachings I was led 
 into an absolutely new life. 
 
 Why the Critic Objects 
 
 Why do some professedly Christian men, in and 
 out of our institutions, and some also in Christian 
 pulpits criticize the Bible and reject its inspira- 
 tion? Why? It is because these men have not 
 learned to see that the Bible, like its Heavenly 
 Author, must be discovered along the line of 
 Christian experience. This was what Jesus 
 meant when He said: **If any man will do God's 
 will he shall know." What shall he know? **He 
 shall know,'* says Jesus, ^^the doctrine, whether 
 it be of God, or whether I speak from myself." 
 (John 7:17.) That is, he will be given the power 
 to discriminate, to clearly understand the char- 
 
28 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 acter and source of our Lord's teachings. He 
 shall know whether Jesus spoke as Shakespeare, 
 Emerson, Spencer, or Haeckel spoke, out of the 
 light of human knowledge, or whether He spoke 
 from God, or gave a special revelation of God 
 to men. The inspiration and character of the 
 Bible, therefore, is a fact that is demonstrable in 
 Christian experience. 
 
 Here is where we find the key to the Bible. 
 The Bible is a spiritual Book, and cannot be un- 
 derstood by the application of the principles of 
 literary interpretation. Scholarship furnishes 
 some mechanical and valuable aids to the study 
 of the Bible. We can never afford to be apostles 
 of ignorance. But it should not be forgotten that 
 the secret of the Bible is a new spiritual life with 
 Christ in God, and the key to this is found, not 
 in scholarship, but in the hands of the Holy 
 Spirit, the Lord of Life, and when we come to 
 Christ in simple faith and joyful obedience, then 
 there is revealed to us the spiritual secret, or 
 given to us by the Holy Spirit the key by which 
 we can unlock the door and enter into the vast 
 spiritual realities and treasuries of the Bible. If 
 we would know the Bible we must first surrender 
 our intellects to the dominance of the Life-giving 
 Spirit. The yielded life is the secret. God's plan 
 is that man must first surrender to Him before 
 he can be saved and illumined intellectually and 
 spiritually. 
 
 When the teacher or preacher, or humblest lay- 
 
EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 29 
 
 man criticizes the Bible, we may rest assured that 
 they are advertising the fact that there is some- 
 thing wrong in their life, that they are holding 
 on to some sin which they are not willing to 
 abandon. If we find a teacher or preacher criti- 
 cizing the Bible unfavorably they thereby reveal 
 their ignorance of Christ, that they may be in 
 their calling simply for what they can get out of 
 it, for the same reason that a merchant usually 
 conducts his business. Doubtless these critics 
 believe that to deny the Bible is an economic ad- 
 vantage to-day. At any rate, not having discov- 
 ered the key to the Bible by a vital personal ex- 
 perience, these destructive critics, these manufac- 
 turers of doubt, imagine that to criticize the 
 Bible is proof of a superior scholarship, not 
 knowing that in so doing they are revealing to all 
 an elemental religious stupidity. We repeat, that 
 the man who loves to criticize the Bible unfavor- 
 ably, and deny its miracles, and authority, and 
 thus ignore its Lord and King, Jesus Christ, is 
 not living the true Christian life. We fear he 
 does not know Jesns Christ, that he is still in 
 his sins, hence in no state of mind to express an 
 opinion on so great a matter as the inspiration 
 of the Bible, 
 
 Unscientific and Emotional 
 
 But we meet objections to this argument for 
 the inspiration of the Bible, as to the premise and 
 conclusion, afi&rming that this point of view is 
 
30 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 unscieBtific, sentimental, visionary, emotional, 
 and untrustworthy, that it sounds like mother's 
 emotional, sentimental argument. Well, what if 
 it does? Can we afford to make light of senti- 
 ment, of emotion in religion? Sentiment and 
 emotion rule the world. The charm of the Bible 
 is that its truths get far deep into the depths of 
 our emotional nature and purifies our emotions, 
 and turns our affections towards the loving 
 God. 
 
 Our Lord never spoke slightingly of emotional 
 religion, the holy joy that expresses itself at times 
 in ecstasy and tears. *^ Jesus wepf is the short- 
 est and one of the sweetest verses in the Bible. 
 When the depths of His loving heart were stirred 
 beside the dead form of his friend Lazarus, His 
 great emotional religion could only express itself 
 for a moment in tears. God's greatest saints 
 have been weeping saints. Our sainted mothers 
 — God bless their memories — ^many of them knew 
 far more about God and His book than do many 
 of their educated children. They wept their way 
 home to God. What the pulpit lacks to-day, yes, 
 WHAT WE ALL LACK, is the old-time glowing re- 
 ligion of love and tears ! God give the American 
 pulpit more tears, and less cold intellectual carp- 
 ing criticism! Paul said that he wept day and 
 night over the souls of men. His great big heart 
 overflowed in passionate love for Christ and men. 
 God give the theological seminary more tears ! God 
 give His church everj^where a deeply emotional, 
 
EVIDENCE FROM EXPERIENCE 31 
 
 as well as intellectual religion, a religion of true 
 Christian experience, the experience by which 
 men make the great discovery that the Bible is 
 God's inspired Book. ''Christianity is nothing if 
 it is not an experience.'* 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 
 
 There are good reasons for the view that the 
 inspiration of the Bible can be demonstrated 
 scientifically. Science being classified facts, sys- 
 temized knowledge, generally in the realm of law, 
 it follows that facts in the realm of moral or 
 spiritual laws can be classified also, and desig- 
 nated a science. In this sense the inspiration of 
 the Bible can be proved scientifically, for we have 
 well-established moral facts on which to build our 
 science of inspiration. 
 
 Is THE Bible an Evolution? 
 
 One reason why the New Theology school 
 denies any special inspiration in the Bible, be- 
 yond what they claim all highly ethical literature 
 possesses, is that to them the Bible is an evolu- 
 tion, as is its environment of nature and moral 
 and mental life, that is, that all are a growth pro- 
 gressing and changing, ever evolving. If the 
 Bible is inspired, they affirm it is only as all 
 spiritual life and literature are inspired, that 
 there can be no special, unique, distinct inspira- 
 
 32 
 
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 33 
 
 tion for the Bible. All truth to them is not a 
 fixed unchanging quality and principle, it is a 
 growth. 
 
 But this we stoutly deny. Truth is a fixed, un- 
 changing and eternal princiile and quality; it 
 never progresses in the sense that man pro- 
 gresses ; it is eternal and unchanging. Truth can 
 no more be an evolution than God or Christ can 
 be an evolution, for Truth is a moral and un- 
 changing attribute. Truth is a clear index to the 
 character of God; it is a reflection of God; it is 
 a special revelation from God. Truth is not a 
 creation, it is an eternal attribute of God. When 
 Jesus said, ^^I am the Truth'' (John 14:6) He 
 meant to say that He is incapable of error, that 
 is, He is Divine. When the Apostle said of Jesus 
 that He is *'the same yesterday, to-day and for- 
 ever" (Heb. 13:8), he meant us to understand 
 that Jesus Chriot is Divine, unchanging, not an 
 evolution, but the Unchanging, Eternal One. As 
 Isaac Watts puts it: 
 
 "Thy Years Are One Eternal Day." 
 
 And God expressed the same idea of Himself, 
 when He said to Malachi, ^'I change not." 
 (Mai. 3:6.) 
 
 It is true that the Bible did not spring up over 
 night, nor is it the product of a century only, 
 for it required at least sixteen hundred years, 
 from Moses to the latter part of the First Cen- 
 
34 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 tury, to produce it. Indeed, there is good reason 
 for the view that the documents comprising parts 
 of the Book of Genesis, at least, were in existence 
 prior to the time of Moses, and were incorporated 
 by him into the Pentateuch. It is impossible to 
 believe that the Book of Genesis, covering as it 
 does a period of at least twenty-five hundred 
 years (noted Bible scholars hold different views 
 as to the length of this period), from the Creation 
 to the Mosaic period, with all its history and de- 
 tailed genealogy, could be the result of a late tra- 
 dition, and finally edited 500 B.C., as the Modern- 
 ists affirm. This view is not only unreasonable, 
 it is absurd on the face of it. 
 
 But while the Bible was a gradual growth, be- 
 cause it was a gradual Revelation, yet the Truth 
 of this Book was not a growth. In other words, 
 God's Truth does not and cannot grow, though 
 the record and volume of that Revelation was 
 gradually enlarged. 
 
 This, however, is not to say that all the 
 various parts of the Bible are of equal value 
 to us to-day. God was dealing with the race 
 in its infancy, in the Old Testament times, 
 and it was necessary to teach them as chil- 
 dren in the kindergarten department of .life, 
 as Divine Wisdom directed. This is why we 
 have Truth taught by object lessons in the Old 
 Testament, by types and symbols, also why there 
 had to be a direct communication of revealed 
 Truth by angel or theophanic manifestation. For 
 
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 35 
 
 instance, the fact and eternal necessity of the 
 Atonement was taught in the Old Testament in 
 its simplest form. There was no other way to get 
 this great revelation of God^s love and grace im- 
 planted in the hearts of men, for the Atonement 
 is, in its last analysis, a revelation of the grace, 
 the love of God. And so it was with other re- 
 vealed Truth. Is the Old Testament, therefore, 
 a perfect revelation of God to man! Yes, in the 
 sense as stated above, it was a perfect revelation 
 for that day, that is, it fulfilled the purpose for 
 which God had intended. It is not as high or 
 complete a Eevelation of God as we find in the 
 New Testament, but, as stated, it was the high- 
 est revelation or conception of God the people of 
 that day were capable of receiving. 
 
 While all this is true, let it not be forgotten 
 that the Truth itself is not a growth. God re- 
 vealed as man had the capacity to receive and 
 comprehend. The Old Testament is not a com- 
 plete Revelation without its complement and in- 
 terpreter, the New Testament — the fulfillment 
 and the enlarged Revelation of that which God 
 began to make known in the Old Testament. No 
 time will be taken to give further illustration of 
 this fact. The Old Testament is as truly the 
 Word of God as is the New Testament, but it is 
 the Truth revealed to the race when in its kinder- 
 garten department, hence it must needs appear 
 to us to-day, in the light of the New Testament, 
 as not quite complete. The Revelation in Jesus 
 
36 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Christ makes the Old Testament whole, full, com- 
 plete, and glorious. 
 
 The New Theology must not confuse man with 
 Truth. Man grows, progresses, changes, and his 
 growth in the moral lightness of God will be con- 
 ditioned on his appropriation and assimilation of 
 the Truth of God. The above facts will explain 
 why the New Theology speaks of the old theology 
 as unprogressive, reactionary, and why the old 
 speaks of the new as radical, critical, destructive, 
 rejectors of the Word of God. 
 
 The New Theology, or Modernism, is, as has 
 been shown heretofore, constructed largely on 
 theories, unproved assumptions, untenable hy- 
 potheses, speculative and atheistic evolution, 
 while the Old Theology is built upon the unchang- 
 ing Word of God. 
 
 Theories, however attractive, are only man's 
 wisdom, and ofttimes his folly, while the Truth is 
 God's wisdom. If this be not true then we shall 
 have to abandon all views of any special Eevela- 
 tion and inspiration regarding the Bible. 
 
 If the Bible is an evolution then Modernism is 
 correct in denying to it any special inspiration, 
 for in that case it is part of a general scheme 
 of evolution, and must be, in character, like the 
 spiritual v/orld of thought and life of which it is 
 a part ; and God and inspiration are in the Bible 
 only as God and inspiration are in everything of 
 a spiritual nature. 
 
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 37 
 
 New Theology God a Slave 
 
 To the New Theology God is thus in everything. 
 He cannot approach man objectively. He rises, 
 as it were, only from within, and makes himself 
 known only as man's natural evolution makes it 
 possible for God to manifest Himself in the grow- 
 ing consciousness of man. 
 
 God is never a revelation from without but only 
 a growing consciousness from within. God, to 
 Modernism, has hidden Himself in or has amal- 
 gamated Himself with nature working only out- 
 wardly from within and never inwardly from 
 without. If this be the truth as to God's method 
 of manifestation of Himself to man, then God is 
 a slave to the world which he has made. More- 
 over, all creation is an incarnation of God, as 
 Spinoza, the father of modern Pantheism, argued. 
 God cannot ever reveal Himself to man from 
 without. If this be the case, we must conclude 
 that the god of Modernism is not the God of the 
 Bible. What a pitiful poor fool god the New 
 Theology has! Such teaching is enough to fill 
 the hearts of sane, thoughtful, Bible-loving honest 
 men with righteous indignation and pity. 
 
 It is also clear from what has been said that 
 the god of Modernism is not a personal god and 
 free, he is a principle of nature, dumb and help- 
 less; indeed he is nature and not the Creator. 
 The New Theology is in this respect somewhat 
 akin to its twin sister. Christian Science, built on 
 the philosophy of pantheism, namely, that God is 
 
38 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 nature, that nature is God, that both are one, and 
 that evolution is our only principle of interpreta- 
 tion. The Christian Revelation, that is the Bible 
 generally, teaches that God is the Creator of na- 
 ture and of all life, and that He controls and 
 directs nature in all her domain by fixed laws, 
 unchanging principles, that He is in all and 
 THROUGH ALL AND ABOVE ALL, and is not a 
 slave to His creation, that He is an Eternal 
 Spirit, independent and free, and is not confined 
 to, but infinitely greater than the worlds which 
 He has made. The New Theology has gotten it- 
 self into a jumble of contradictions, tangled up 
 in a maze of untenable pantheistic theories that 
 must result in religious suicide. 
 
 Perhaps what has been said will help us to see 
 why Modernism appears to belittle the Bible. 
 They are forced by their philosophy of evolution, 
 rationalism and pantheism to reject the Bible as 
 a unique Revelation and specially inspired. 
 
 Man, not Truth, Progresses 
 
 This school of ethical philosophers has not yet 
 learned that it is not Truth that is progressing, 
 growing, changing, but that it is man who is pro- 
 gressing, growing, changing, for good or ill, and 
 that man can advance and keep step and stroke 
 with God only as he comprehends and assimilates 
 and lives the Truth of God. If he repents and 
 receives and obeys Christ, he shall live, otherwise 
 he must perish. 
 
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 39 
 
 When the New Theology tells us that *'God 
 cannot inspire a book; that He inspires only- 
 men,'' we can now understand them — ^w^hy they 
 thus teach. But the average man will persist in 
 asking: Why cannot God do this thing? It is 
 difficult for Him to believe that the god of this 
 theology is the God of the Bible, that he cannot 
 speak to men and command men. He finds it dif- 
 ficult to believe that Christ, the ** Life-quickening 
 Spirit,'' cannot inspire His own eternal Truth. 
 If they should tell us that God cannot use a New 
 Theology teacher in winning sinners to Christ, 
 that God cannot use the preacher who never 
 agonizes in prayer for souls, who never requests 
 the church to come aside with him and pray for 
 souls, we would readily believe him ; but when he 
 says, *'God cannot inspire a book," then we 
 demur, we decline to go with him, and we declare 
 that all such preaching is out of place in a Chris- 
 tian pulpit, that it is infidelity **pure and sim- 
 ple," that it is not true. 
 
 Inspiration and Cold Type 
 
 If men were ever inspired of God, the product 
 of their lives was inspired also. The inspiration 
 of God can be transmitted to writing. The truths 
 of the Bible are mighty in cold type. The Bible 
 is not made up of paste, paper, silk thread and 
 ink, but of Divine Ideas, Life-giving and Life- 
 quickening Truth. The Bible is a spiritual book, 
 that is, it is **the Book of God and the god of 
 
40 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 books/ ^ the Book that Gladstone called **the im- 
 pregnable rock,'* and that Dr. Hastings called 
 **a cube with six squares and equal sides, and on 
 whichever side it falls it is right side up.'* 
 
 The inspiration of this marvelous Book is a 
 mystery, but no more a mystery than is the 
 charging of a cold-dead wire with electricity. 
 How do we discover the current in the wire? Not 
 by an intellectual idea so much as by the sense of 
 emotion, sensation, feeling. And thus it is in our 
 discovery of the Bible. If men have learned by 
 the proper use of a certain law to charge the wire 
 with this unknown force in nature we call elec- 
 tricity, surely the All-wise God is able to cause 
 His own life to possess the Bible, to make it 
 inspired. 
 
 Our Lord was making clear the fact of inspi- 
 ration when He said, *^The words I speak unto 
 you they are spirit and they are life." (John 
 6 :63.) This is why the Bible cannot grow old and 
 die like other books, it is charged with the very 
 life of God. The Bible is a Living Spiritual 
 Product disclosing a Divine Plan of salvation and 
 not a mere book. We are now arriving close to 
 the deeper meaning of inspiration. Our Lord did 
 not say that His life and the Divine Plan could 
 be transmuted to men only in His vocal utter- 
 ances, and that once His words are p'ut on parch- 
 ments, or paper, or in cold type, they lose their 
 inspiration and power and become as dead. The 
 words, sentences, symbols, and types of the Bible 
 
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 41 
 
 which convey the Divine Ideas to men are the or- 
 dained media through which God's Truth only 
 can come, for if God speaks to or reveals Him- 
 self to man He must do it in the speech, the lan- 
 guage of man. 
 
 Inspikation and Music 
 
 We have heard folks say that they were in- 
 spired by music; but that, how^ever, is not the 
 kind of inspiration we have in the Bible. Where 
 is the inspiration of music, in the musician's mind 
 or in his instrument or in both? Can we be in- 
 spired by music aside from the human voice or 
 the mechanical instrument that conveys it to our 
 minds! If the musician can touch his instrument 
 and cause it to bring tears to our eyes, why -can- 
 not the Master Musician — God — touch the written 
 Word of God and cause it to be inspired? 
 
 The fact is that the inspiration of men is found 
 in the things they produce. We read Aristotle 
 and we feel his massive mind, his mental powers. 
 We read Kuskin and we feel his artistic, his 
 flBsthetic nature. We read Burns and we feel his 
 poetic passion. We read the Bible and we feel 
 the throbbing loving heart of God. God has in- 
 spired a book. Millions have discovered it. It is 
 a scientific fact. 
 
 Peoven by its Product 
 
 If God inspires only men, as the Modernists 
 affirm, we are justified in asking who are the men? 
 
42 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 The trouble here is that they are confusing what 
 is commonly called inspiration, that is, an exhil- 
 arating, stirring feeling, with the energizing life 
 of the Holy Spirit of God, who has revealed and 
 inspired the Bible. These two kinds of inspira- 
 tion are somewhat dissimilar and may be distinct 
 in character. The Christian experience differs 
 from all other experience, nevertheless, the com- 
 mon inspiration to holy living and service is not 
 an illustration of the inspiration we find in the 
 Bible. Some men are inspired to preach, but that 
 does not fully illustrate the inspiration which 
 produced the Bible. The latter is in the realm of 
 perfection and infallibility, the former has in it 
 the elements of imperfection. We are quickened 
 by the Spirit of God to do each his own work, the 
 writers of the Bible were illumined to produce the 
 Bible, or to give an accurate Record of God^s 
 Revelation to men. A man may be inspired to 
 preach, but not to give a new Revelation of God 
 to the world. God has no new Revelation to give 
 to this Gospel age aside from that given in the 
 Bible. The Revelation was closed about two 
 thousand years ago, the testimony of Joseph 
 Smith, the Mormon, the man of many wives, and 
 Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, the pantheistic philoso- 
 pher, the woman of several husbands, and all 
 other false teachers to the contrary. If God in- 
 spires good men in every generation as He in- 
 spired the writers of the Bible, then instead of 
 having only one, we would have numerous Bibles 
 
SCIENTIFIC EA^DENCE 43 
 
 or Books that would be of great value — new reve- 
 lations would be so voluminous that the world 
 could not stand up under the excitement, or they 
 would be so common that Divine Revelation 
 would probably become a joke to sinful men. But 
 God has not so planned it. The Revelation has 
 been closed, and will so remain until our Lord 
 returns. 
 
 Why Men's Books Die 
 
 That men are not inspired as were the writers 
 of the Bible may be seen by the influence or lon- 
 gevity of their books. Men^s most popular books 
 have a short day. There are thousands of good 
 and great books that once had a large sale, but 
 they are dead to-day. Millions of books are 
 lying on shelves as forgotten as if they had not 
 been printed — books on science, philosophy, re- 
 ligion, social economics, fiction. How quickly 
 truly great books die! Why do men's books 
 perish, while the Bible is not showing any signs 
 of decrepitude or decay! Moreover, the Bible is 
 as fresh and life-giving to each generation as is 
 the coming of the morning sun, or the sweet at- 
 mosphere of spring that drives the ice away and 
 brings forth the flowers to bloom. The Bible 
 seems to be more popular than ever, as the num- 
 bers printed are increasing yearly. The Bible 
 cannot grow old. How can it grow old when it is 
 inbreathed, inspired by the Life-giving Spirit of 
 Qqi? When God grows old and weak and 
 
44 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 perishes, then, and not till then, will the Bible 
 grow old and die. And those who are renewed by 
 the same Life-giving Spirit, they too will never 
 grow old. There is no old age in Christ, nor in 
 the Kingdom of God, but rather the bloom and 
 beauty of an eternal youth. And yet we have 
 doubters who say that **God cannot inspire a 
 book.'' 
 > 
 
 Is Adapted to Human Needs 
 
 Further proof of the inspiration of the Bible 
 is seen in its adaptability to human needs. Let us 
 illustrate: In 1894 I was preaching in Bangor, 
 Maine. At the hotel I met a noted infidel. He 
 had been a surgeon in the navy in the Civil War, 
 was a very learned man, had an immense library, 
 and was widely known in New England as a noted 
 infidel. He said: **Do you believe in immor- 
 tality r' I replied that I did. *^Well,'' he said, 
 ** prove it and I will become a Christian." I told 
 him I could do it, and began at once to read the 
 account of the Resurrection of Christ. But to 
 this he promptly objected, saying, **I do not be- 
 lieve that Book, give me scientific proof." I re- 
 plied that I would, and proceeded to give him 
 scientific proof. I said, **The Bible is adapted to 
 meet the needs of man 's spiritual life. When you 
 are thirsty there is water to slake your thirst, is 
 there not ? " and the infidel said * * yes. " * * When 
 you are hungry, there is food to satisfy your hun- 
 ger?" **Yes," he replied. **When you want 
 
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 45 
 
 companionship there are friends to meet that 
 need V^ ^^ Quite right, ' * he answered. * * When you 
 crave knowledge, there are books and a glorious 
 universe, and in every blade of grass lie lessons 
 yet untold. Is not that trueT' '^That is quite 
 true,'' replied the infidel. *'Very well then, my 
 friend, man has spiritual longings also, for man 
 is an immortal spirit, and there must be some- 
 thing. Someone, somewhere to satisfy those long- 
 ings, for how can we long for a thing that does 
 not exist? There is no contradiction between 
 man's physical, mental and social nature and the 
 world outside. When man wants something, its 
 just outside in his environment. Man is the coun- 
 terpart of the universe, the world does not seem 
 to be complete without him, nor is he complete 
 without the world. And can we imagine that 
 there is a contradiction between man^s highest 
 nature, his spiritual nature and the universe out- 
 side! It is scientifically unthinkable. Therefore, 
 God is, future life, eternal life is a reality, for 
 man longs for God and the immortal life, and he 
 cannot long for that which does not exist. And 
 the Bible was given to man to tell him about God 
 and Christ and Heaven and eternal life." 
 
 ** Where did you read that?" said the old man. 
 *'I never read it anywhere, I thought it out. It 
 is so simple, yet is it not unanswerable? Isn't it 
 scientifically correct?" The old man was looking 
 do^sTi at the floor with a grave countenance, and 
 he said, slowly, **I do not think that I am ready 
 
46 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 now to answer your argument/' and the conver- 
 sation ended. 
 
 God's great Book can meet the deepest cravings 
 of the human soul. It tells us of Heaven, of 
 Home, sweet, sweet Home. 
 
 Power Over Human Mind 
 
 The last proof of a scientific nature we would 
 submit is the power of the Bible over the human 
 mind. 
 
 Here we may see the moral or ethical and 
 spiritual effect of the Bible upon character and 
 conduct, as we can see the influence of the sun 
 upon the frozen earth, and the resultant beauty 
 in blade of grass and bursting bud and flower. 
 When we see the Bible exert a controlling influ- 
 ence upon men, all classes of men, learned and 
 unlearned, rich and poor, when we see it take a 
 lawless criminal, father or son, and a wayward 
 outcast woman, a confirmed drunkard and thief, 
 and even a murderer, and change them from bad 
 folks to good, law-abiding, God-loving folks, when 
 we see the world's greatest intellects acknowledge 
 the authority and power of the Bible, when we 
 hear the apostate Julian say, **0 Galilean, Thou 
 hast conquered"; when we see a savage, man- 
 eating people become civilized under the influence 
 of the Bible, and made lovers of God and men, 
 then we know beyond any argument that this re- 
 markable Book is undoubtedly the greatest power 
 iin the whole world — a power greater, more pd- 
 
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 47 
 
 tent, more enduring than that of any government 
 or king upon his throne, or any system of science 
 or philosophy, and that the only possible explana- 
 tion is that it is inspired of God. 
 
 If it were possible for ns to imagine ourselves 
 as outsiders and onlookers at our race, observing 
 those things that exert the greatest influence upon 
 humanity, unbiased, unprejudiced students of the 
 world of men, we would soon discover that the 
 mightiest influence in moulding the thought of 
 nations, and shaping the destiny of the world is 
 the Bible. We cannot shut our eyes to facts. The 
 Bible is unquestionably the most popular Book in 
 the world because it is the most potent influence 
 in the world for good. 
 
 Not a few noted scholars in America declare 
 that no man is educated who is not a student of 
 the literature, history and teachings of the Bible ; 
 nevertheless in our institutions we find not a few 
 persons, both students and teachers, who seem to 
 be quite ignorant of the only truly great Book in 
 all the world. 
 
 In ancient Israel every male child was sup- 
 posed to have a theological education at the age 
 of thirteen. The Old Testament was the text- 
 book. Do we ask what is the secret of the ancient 
 and modern greatness of this people, why did 
 they give to the world its laws and Divinely Re- 
 vealed Religion? We answer, because every home 
 was a theological seminary for the religious train- 
 ing of the child. Eliminating the Supernatural 
 
48 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 from the life of Jesus, any scientific student of 
 history would conclude that Jesus Christ could 
 be produced only by the Hebrew race. God hon- 
 ored this race above all other people because they 
 gave themselves to a study of His Word. This 
 was why God honored the Jewish people by using 
 Mary, a member of that race, as the medium 
 through whom His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, 
 was given as a Gift to all mankind. The Old Tes- 
 tament produced the Jewish race as a religious 
 race, and made them a great people ; and this race 
 produced the Saviour, Jesus Christ; and Jesus 
 Christ is the mightiest Force for righteousness 
 this world has ever known, and will thus continue 
 to be until the end of the programme. But back 
 of all this mighty influence we must put the Bible. 
 We know it usually takes time to produce char- 
 acter and true greatness ; but who has not seen a 
 bad man leap into prominence almost over night, 
 and in some cases, a man of ordinary mental 
 power, and also the man of extraordinary men- 
 tality? Who is he? Bunyan, the ignorant tinker. 
 Who is he? John Newton, the converted drunken 
 sailor. Who is he? Moody, the obscure shoe 
 clerk. Who is he? Sam Hadley, the hopeless 
 drunkard. But we need not give the names of 
 the most noted, we can recall men who, to-day, 
 are noble, strong, brave, loving and true, who 
 were once on the very lips of hell through sin. The 
 secret? IngersolPs lectures? Ha, ha! You 
 know. Everybody knows that it is the Bible. 
 
SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE 49 
 
 Abraham Lincoln used to boast that in his 
 youth he read only two books — ^Hhe Bible and 
 Bunyan^s * Pilgrim's Progress' *' — and by the 
 way — the two most widely circulated books in all 
 history. Of course the great martyr-President 
 read more books as he advanced in years; but 
 doubtless in these words we find the chief secret 
 of the moral greatness of this king among men — 
 the man who was used of God to save democracy, 
 to preserve liberty, to radiate light upon all man- 
 kind. 
 
 Two boys agreed to read the Bible through, 
 and the one who should accomplish his task first 
 would make a gift to the other. Said one of the 
 lads, when he had completed Genesis and Exodus, 
 **I could not go further without beginning to 
 pray, and not caring to become a Christian, I 
 stopped reading the Bible." What is the secret 
 of the power of this Book over the minds of men! 
 Other books do not thus influence men. 
 
 A young man while living in a cabin in a lonely 
 part of the Rockies, was accustomed to spend his 
 evenings reading the Bible. One evening a man, 
 who had tmce been on trial for murder in the 
 Rockies, entered the cabin, and seeing a stranger 
 reading the Bible, flew into a passion of temper 
 and threatened this man's life if he did not stop 
 reading the Bible. He shouted, **I cannot endure 
 seeing you read that Book in my presence !'' Why 
 did this man cry out against the Bible ? Because 
 it reminded him of his sin. If it had been the 
 
50 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Koran or a novel or any other book, he would 
 not have objected. The Bible rebuked him, and 
 he cried out against it, as did the demons in the 
 presence of Jesus. **What have we to do with 
 thee, Jesus, thou Son of God, art thou come to 
 torment us before the time?'' 
 
 Ah, men and women, let not the world's subtle 
 philosophies and its unbelief win you away from 
 the Bible as the voice and comfort of God to 
 your hearts. Let them say that the Bible is not 
 true, if they will, that it is not inspired of God, 
 that scholarship has proved it to be only a human, 
 faulty product, made up of fable, legend, and 
 untrustworthy history, nevertheless, the Bible 
 still stands, as it will ever stand, the one great 
 Book of God for all time, the book that is its 
 own best defense, that can prove to any honest 
 seeker after God its own inspiration, that Avill not 
 cease to speak for God, that cannot be explained 
 away, that can ever protect the weak, direct the 
 strong, place dimples of joy on the cheeks of the 
 sorrowing, bring true happiness to the living and 
 peace to the dying, and light up the grave with 
 the rainbow of hope. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 INTERNAL EVIDENCES 
 
 Chaeactee of Its Revelation 
 
 The fact of the inspiration of the Bible is seen 
 in the character of the Revelation it brings to 
 men. 
 
 God's purpose for man is not to give him to- 
 day a revelation of all the Truth there is in His 
 mind and heart, but to reveal certain truths as 
 to Creation and Redemption, which are unique 
 in their character, differing as they do from all 
 other truths, and from all other discussions of 
 the same subjects found elsewhere. 
 
 Truth and Fact 
 
 In discussing the question of inspiration it is 
 necessary to distinguish between Truth and fact. 
 A fact is not Truth, but Truth is a fact. Facts are 
 mechanical. Truth is moral. Facts come largely 
 within the realm of mechanics, science, mathe- 
 matics, while Truth comes within the realm of 
 conduct, character, ethical and spiritual relation- 
 ships. That two plus two equals four is not a 
 matter of inspiration. That the earth revolves 
 
 51 
 
62 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 around the sun on its axis, making the journey 
 once a year, is not an inspired fact. 
 
 All Truth Not Inspired 
 
 Further, all truth is not inspired. It is true 
 that a mother loves her child, but that is not a 
 matter of Divine inspiration and Revelation. It 
 is true that every child of Adam is born to 
 struggle and to suffer, but this is not a matter of 
 inspiration. God has put the inspiration, that 
 is the very life of His infinite heart in only the 
 Truth which reveals His glory, wisdom and love, 
 in the realm of the redemption of His children, 
 and in the minds of those who were Divinely 
 chosen to write this Truth in the Book we call 
 the Bible. 
 
 Divine Revelation has to do with matters that 
 man alone never could discover. Inventions, 
 facts of science and philosophy, therefore, are not 
 inspired. The ethical laws of society, which men 
 see and declare to be right, because they are edu- 
 cated to view them as such, by the Law of God, 
 are matters of Divine Revelation and inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 All true ethics are a part of Divine Revelation. It 
 is very seriously doubted whether mankind would 
 understand the nature of ethics aside from the 
 Revealed Moral Laws, as the Apostle Paul said, 
 **I had not known sin, but by the law; for I had 
 not known lust, except the law of God said, * Thou 
 shalt not covet.' '' (Rom. 7:7.) Polygamy was 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES 53 
 
 universal until the inspired Revelation of God 
 became the law of nations; and just in so far as 
 the Bible becomes the standard for ethical con- 
 duct, to that extent monogamy becomes the law 
 in the marriage relation. We cannot go back on 
 the facts of history. It is the inspired Word of 
 God that is helping the world to be moral and 
 righteous. And here we also find the great motive 
 to holy living. God has spoken, He has shown 
 us His love, and how we ought to live. As the 
 Apostle Paul again says, **The love of Christ 
 constraineth us'^ (II Cor. 5:14), and as the 
 Apostle John declares: **We love Him because 
 He first loved us.'' (I John 4:19.) 
 
 A Striking Fact 
 
 We have seen that the Bible is different in char- 
 acter from all other books, or literature, that its 
 Revelation is so uniquely a product of the heart 
 of God, so bound up in the life and work of His 
 Son Jesus Christ, that the Record of this lofty 
 Truth must of necessity be an inspired Record. 
 This great Body of Redemption Truth would be 
 inspired of God, had it come to the world through 
 the person of Satan. 
 
 And this suggests the fact that the inspiration 
 of the Bible was not wholly conditioned upon the 
 character of the men through whom God made 
 known His Truth, but upon the nature, impor- 
 tance, and purpose of the Truth itself. This fact 
 may serve to explain why bad men have at times 
 
54 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE . 
 
 been used in preaching the Gospel. We said at 
 times, it is not usually the case. They were used 
 for no other reason than that they preached the 
 Gospel. The thing they were giving forth was 
 the inspired Word of God. This in itself is proof 
 of the inspiration of the Bible. If the unworthy 
 preacher gives a message on science, philosophy, 
 or literature, God cannot use that message and 
 by it bring about spiritual results. The preach- 
 ing of a bad-living man will to some extent help 
 a community, provided he preaches the Gospel, 
 while, on the other hand, the preaching of a man 
 who lives right will not help a community if he 
 preaches something apart from or contrary to the 
 Word of God. God's Truth, as recorded in the 
 Bible, is so charged with heavenly inspiration 
 that it would produce good results if spoken by 
 men, angels, or devils. 
 
 We would not defend the presence of bad men 
 in Christian pulpits. We must insist that our 
 spiritual leaders be men of God, for God can 
 always use a good man as He cannot use a bad 
 man in preaching the Gospel. It is His plan that 
 only Spirit-filled men shall proclaim His redeem- 
 ing love. Wholesome food would nourish our 
 bodies even if served by dogs. We demand clean 
 waiters, but it is the food we eat and not 
 the waiters. We demand clean ministers, but 
 it is the Bread of Heaven we eat and which 
 gives life to our souls, and not the servants 
 who serve that Bread. This is commonplace, yet 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES 55 
 
 it serves to bring clearly before us the fact that 
 the Bible is inspired, that it is unique in power, 
 in character, and in the purpose for which it has 
 been given to the world. We do not say that it 
 was once inspired, long ago, and that it has grown 
 old and has lost the vigor of its youth. We mean 
 to say that it never grows old, that it is inspired 
 to-day as it was thousands of years ago. It is 
 tremendously alive to-day! It energizes to-day! 
 It is an ever-present, life possession for each new- 
 bom generation! Our children and their chil- 
 dren's children will rise up and call this Book 
 blessed. Everyone who reads it feels that it is 
 a message for him. Its Revelation sweeps into 
 each soul as direct from Heaven, and no power 
 can shake out that sweet conviction. As Prof. 
 Dyson Hague, M. A., has aptly put it : ^ * The Bible 
 is inspiring, because inspired; inspired because 
 inspiring. ' ' 
 
 Is THE Word of God 
 
 The character of the Bible is such that we can- 
 not say, it only contains the Word of God, that 
 it is not throughout the Word of God, that it only 
 gives glimpses here and there of God's Truth. 
 When the Apostle Paul said to Timothy, *^A11 
 Scripture is given by inspiration of God'' 
 (II Tim. 3:16), he meant, of course, the Old Tes- 
 tament practically as it is to-day. The Apostle 
 did not say that **A11 Scripture inspired of God 
 is profitable," as the revised version has it, in the 
 
56 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 sense that part of the Old Testament is inspired, 
 and part of it is not, and as it is claimed by those 
 Modernists who try to deny the inspiration of 
 the Old Testament ; for the Apostle Paul was here 
 saying, in a way in which the meaning of his 
 words cannot be gainsaid, in the clearest pos- 
 sible language, that the Old Testament is in- 
 spired. ^^All Scripture inspired of God*' in- 
 cludes all the Old Testament. All the Old Testa- 
 ment was viewed by the Apostle Paul as inspired. 
 Peter said, in speaking of the Old Testament: 
 *^For the prophecy came not in old time by the 
 will of man; but holy men of God spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost. ^» (II Pet. 1 :21.) 
 Peter here refers to the Old Testament as we 
 have it to-day. 
 
 Originated with God 
 
 Before concluding this discussion on the char- 
 acter of the Revelation the Bible brings to men, 
 it should be said that from any conceivable stand- 
 point there is no way that we can ascribe this 
 Book, as having originated, or as having been 
 created by men. No true science of anthropology, 
 psychology, or of history will for one moment 
 assert that the Bible is a human product only, 
 giving the record of the religious experiences of 
 the Hebrew race. The noblest spirits everywhere 
 testify, as men read this Book, that its dominant 
 spirit is that of another and higher order of life, 
 that it has come down from Heaven more than 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES 67 
 
 it has come up from earth, that it is a spiritual 
 message out from the world of Spirit, a Revela- 
 tion of God's Plan for the ages, and His great 
 love for man, all of which Modernism flatly 
 denies. 
 
 There are other internal evidences of the in- 
 spiration of the Bible which should not be over- 
 looked. 
 
 Testimony of Jesus 
 
 We have the testimony of Jesus Christ. It 
 should be said that this is one of the most if not 
 the most important, as a Christian views the sub- 
 ject, or as any honest student must view it. After 
 all that can be said, the fact remains that Jesus 
 Christ is the Supreme Wonder of the Book. He 
 7S the Heart of the Bible as He is of history. All 
 the Old Testament types and much of its proph- 
 ecies are fulfilled in Him. As Dr. Hague further 
 states, ^* Christ is the key to the Old Testament; 
 He only can make clear its purposes; as He is 
 the one grand theme of the New Testament. No 
 Jew can properly study his own race if he rejects 
 the Messiahship of Jesus. No historian can write 
 a history of the world if he does not put Christ 
 at its center. All history points back to Him, as 
 all history pointed forward to Him. Christ and 
 not the theory of evolution is the key to the inter- 
 pretation of history, as He is to the interpretation 
 of the Old and the New Testament. 
 
 *^ Jesus Christ is not only the great Subject of 
 
58 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 the Bible, He is the great Subject of humanity. 
 Long after this terrible war will have been ended 
 and forgotten, Christ the Divine Son Incarnate, 
 the Man of Calvary and the Open Grave, will 
 loom in the vision and thought of men larger 
 than ever before." *^The Jesus Myth'' of the 
 New Theology cannot survive. 
 
 '* Jesus Christ is the great Fact of history, but 
 He is more ; He is the great Force of history. He 
 is more still, He is the great future of History. 
 It can be truly said of the Bible, as it will be 
 of the future of the race, that *The glory of God 
 doth lighten it and the Lamb is the Light thereof. ' 
 Jesus Christ is the Hope of the world, the Center 
 of the world's desire, the Arch that spans history, 
 the Keystone of prophecy, the Eevealer, the Ee- 
 deemer, the Saviour, the Risen, the Reigning, the 
 Coming Lord and King. So long as the Bible is 
 read, so long will it draw the hearts of men to 
 Christ as a magnet, and so long will men stand 
 for it, live for it, die for it." 
 
 What did Jesus say about the Old Testament? 
 If He gave His endorsement to the Jewish Scrip- 
 tures, that to a Christian should be the end of all 
 argument. What did Jesus say? 
 
 We find that Jesus Christ endorsed Moses, the 
 Psalms, and the Prophets. He declared that they 
 all wrote of Him. By Moses He meant the Pen- 
 tateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Jesus 
 spent His ministry, largely, in teaching, inter- 
 preting, and enforcing the Old Testament. He 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES 59 
 
 was pre-eminently a Bible preacher. The New 
 Theology advocates seem to spend much of their 
 time criticizing the Old Testament, belittling it, 
 and yet they say that Jesus is Lord. What in- 
 consistency, what humbug! Has the Devil ever 
 had a more sure-enough bunch of moral idiots 
 than these men? Nevertheless, they pose as hon- 
 est seekers after Truth. They say, ** These old 
 theology folks are narrow, unlearned, ignorant,'* 
 etc. Well, possibly some of them are, but they 
 are not a lot of intellectual tricksters. They are 
 at least consistent. They accept a premise and go 
 to its conclusion. They do not say, as the New 
 Theology says, that Jesus Christ was the Incar- 
 nate Son, or God manifest in flesh, and then vir- 
 tually throw it into the teeth of Christ that He 
 was an ignoramus or a palpable liar. 
 
 Jesus Christ endorsed the Old Testament and 
 that is sufficient. He endorsed those parts of the 
 Old Testament which contain the miraculous ele- 
 ment, and which He knew that men would deny. 
 He endorsed the account of the miracle of the 
 manna in the desert and said that this manna was 
 a type of Himself, of the true Bread which came 
 down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. 
 (John 6:32-35.) 
 
 Jesus Christ endorsed the account of Jacob's 
 ladder. He said that this was a type of His 
 Second Coming. Nathaniel had just accepted 
 Jesus as Messiah and Son of God, and confessed 
 Him as such. The heart of the Master was 
 
60 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 moved. It seems that notliing so pleased Christ 
 like an acknowledgment of His Deity, His Divine 
 SonsMp. It was because Peter declared Him to 
 be the Son of God and King of Israel that Jesus 
 made him the chief spokesman, the rock, the his- 
 torical character through whom, or upon whose 
 work on Pentecost the Church was established. 
 It touches the heart of Jesus Christ to say to 
 Him, **Thou art the Son of God.'' Let us try 
 it and watch for results. "Well, Nathaniel did this, 
 and Jesus honored him for it in this way: He 
 gave him a revelation of His Second Coming, and 
 interpreted to him the significance of Jacob's 
 ladder on which angels ascended and descended. 
 Jesus said to Nathaniel, ** Hereafter ye shall see 
 Heaven open, and the angels of God ascending 
 and descending upon the Son of Man." 
 (John 1:5L) 
 
 We have also the testimony of Jesus to the 
 ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Matt. 
 10:15.) 
 
 And we have His endorsement of the histo- 
 ricity of the account of Jonah and the whale. 
 Jesus declares in the face of an ignorant, scoffing 
 world, that this miracle was one of the types 
 which God designed in history should pre-figure 
 the burial and Eesurrection of His Son. The type 
 was a miracle, befitting its ante-type, or its his- 
 torical fulfillment, which was a miracle. The 
 Jews then as now were skeptical as to the Deity 
 of Jesus, hence they asked for a sign of His 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES ' 61 
 
 Messiahship. Jesus told them that, **No sign 
 would be given them except the sign of the 
 prophet Jonas/' (Luke 11:29-30.) ^*And as 
 Jonah was three days and three nights in the 
 whale's belly," or as the twentieth century New 
 Testament has it, **For just as Jonah was inside 
 the sea monster three days and three nights, so 
 shall the Son of Man be three days and three 
 nights in the heart of the earth." (Matt. 12 :40.) 
 What better sign could they have than this, of the 
 Divine character of Jesus, the thing which told 
 them of His Resurrection? 
 
 Jesus Christ endorsed the miracle of the brazen 
 serpent and Israel's healing by looking thereto, 
 declaring that this miracle was a type of His 
 Cross and its healing power. (John 3:14-15.) 
 
 Numerous other illustrations might be sub- 
 mitted showing clearly how our Lord viewed the 
 Old Testament as the Word of God. He referred 
 to the ancient Scriptures over and over again as 
 an endorsement of His own character and mis- 
 sion. The Old Testament He used as the warp 
 and woof of His teachings. To reject the Old Tes- 
 tament, therefore, is to reject Jesus Christ, and 
 to reject Him is likewise a rejection of the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 Infidel Theology 
 
 But what have we here on our hands in many 
 of our educational institutions and churches? 
 We have a new infidel theology, camouflaged 
 
62 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 somewhat by the cloak of religion and respecta- 
 bility, and made largely in the universities, and 
 which denies the inspiration of both Old and 
 New Testament. They call it the New The- 
 ology, but it is old, very old, older than the 
 Gospel; it originated in the Garden of Eden, 
 when Satan said, reject the counsel of God, 
 **Eat it (the forbidden fruit), thou shalt not 
 surely die.'' (Gen. 3:4-5.) The New Theology 
 refers to the Old Testament miracles as ** myths,'' 
 * legends," * traditions," which contain spiritual 
 lessons, while Jesus Christ referred to them as 
 historical facts, as He did to all the Old Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 The conflict that this New Theology, this old 
 rehashed Unitarianism, has brought into the edu- 
 cational institutions, and into many of the 
 churches, is threatening their very existence. It 
 is not a conflict with the writer and other men 
 who are putting their life in the breach made 
 by these poor deluded men, to rally the slumber- 
 ing forces of the churches everywhere, to fight 
 this thing and drive it back to Hell from whence 
 it came, and thus save Evangelical Christianity 
 for America and the world. No, it is not pri- 
 marily that, but it is essentially a conflict with 
 Jesus Christ, the Author of Salvation, the 
 Founder of Christianity. Of course, these Mod- 
 ernists do not say this, namely, that they are 
 fighting Jesus Christ, but do not let us be de- 
 ceived, for this is the job they have undertaken. 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES 63 
 
 With soft, smooth, oily words they would deny 
 our contention. But we understand this conflict. 
 Here is their purpose : To reject Jesus Christ as 
 the Son of God, to make Him appear to the world 
 as a human being only, a good man, a preacher of 
 righteousness, wiiile the most radical of these 
 critics declare that Jesus was only a myth. Do 
 not let any New Theology advocate deceive you 
 as to this. Our battle cry in an age of unbelief 
 is for the Divine character work and authority 
 of the Eternal Son of God. Our mission in part 
 to-day is to expose and destroy this church-kill- 
 ing New Theology propaganda. It can be de- 
 feated. It should be defeated. This European 
 invasion of our institutions here in America is 
 more serious than would be the invasion by a 
 foreign army. In the latter case they would 
 ravish our country, as they have done in Bel- 
 gium. x\nd is there greater crime than this? 
 Yes, even blacker than this is the crime of reject- 
 ing the Word of God, and destroying the foun- 
 dation of our civilization, and turning the clock 
 of time back to the age of barbarism, hopeless- 
 ness, and despair! 
 
 Church Union Not Oue Greatest Need 
 
 The great need is not for Church Union, though 
 we should believe in the unity of the one true 
 Church of Christ, but to destroy the New The- 
 ology and drive it from our institutions. We 
 welcome Church Union on the New Testament 
 
64 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 basis, the basis of the Truth. We should desire 
 fellowship with all those who love Christ and 
 His Truth, and labor and pray for the unity of 
 the true Christ — the Body of Christ. But union 
 will probably come by addition more than by sub- 
 traction and only on the Word of God. If the 
 New Theology gets in the ascendency it will in- 
 evitably divide the Evangelical Bodies and result 
 in adding further schism to organized Chris- 
 tianity, for true believers will not fellowship with 
 those who reject the Bible as the Word of God 
 and the Deity of Christ. When Christians are 
 ready to accept the New Testament teachings, 
 and simplicity and democracy, ayid reject eccle- 
 siastical autocracy, as a basis of unity, then we 
 shall see it realized. Those who hope to see 
 Christian Union brought about by getting Chris- 
 tians to co-operate in some form of religious 
 effort are doomed to failure. It must be on the 
 only true Foundation laid — which is Jesus Christ. 
 But the call to-day is to defeat and destroy the 
 New Theology apostasy in all our institutions and 
 Denominations and thus conserve true Chris- 
 tianity for the whole world. 
 
 We should have no fear for the Bible ; what we 
 fear is the influence of the money power in the 
 hands of the few, and these few making war with 
 the New Theology on Evangelical Religion and 
 the inspiration and authority of the Bible. We 
 fear for the effect of this propaganda on the life 
 of the present and coming generations, though its 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES 65 
 
 falsity must in due time be manifest. God's 
 Truth must ultimately win, and because we know 
 this, notice is given that the enemies of Christ 
 will be defeated and destroyed, that in the mani- 
 festation of His power, in the day of the universal 
 triumph of His Kingdom Modernism will have no 
 place. 
 
 Its Plan 
 
 The last proof we would give as to the inspira- 
 tion of the Bible is its Unity, its Plan. 
 
 There is a plan back of the Bible. This Book 
 sticks together like a building, or better, like the 
 human body. Back of all the varied materials 
 out of which the Bible has been made, there is a 
 plan drawn up by the great Architect. There is 
 a Mind back of the Bible. 
 
 Go to yonder vacant lot and you will find much 
 material, there is brick and mortar and stone and 
 lumber. What does it mean? A building is to 
 be erected there. If we go back later we shall find 
 a magnificent edifice, that all those disconnected 
 materials have been united together in one solid, 
 beautiful structure, making clear that there was 
 back of this an architect and a plan. 
 
 So it is with the Bible. 
 
 Anyone who has studied the history and the 
 origin of the Bible must be struck with its for- 
 mation. As Professor Dyson Hague has well 
 said: 
 
 That it ever was a book, and is to-day the Book of the 
 
66 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 world is really a literary miracle. There was never any order 
 given to any man to plan the Bible, nor was there any 
 concerted plan given to any body of men to write the Bible. 
 The way the Bible came to be is one of the great mysteries. 
 One man wrote in Arabia, another in Syria, a third in Pales- 
 tine, another in Greece and Italy; and some wrote hundreds 
 of years after or before the others, and the first part was 
 written about sixteen hundred years before the last man who 
 wrote was born. 
 
 Men's books are not made that way. A man thinks it out, 
 gathers his material, and within a few years his book is com- 
 pleted. But the creation of the Bible covers a span of sixty 
 generations, and its creation enlarges our conception of the 
 patience and wisdom of God. Slowly the great Book grew, 
 here a little, there a little, and at last it came forth in its 
 completeness before the world. And so the New Testament 
 as the Old grew without any pre-arranged plan. Matthew, 
 Mark, Luke and John did not consult one another, as neither 
 did Paul and Peter and James and John. They wrote as 
 they felt the need and the mai'velous unity of the New Tes- 
 tament is the result. The Bible is a marvel; it is transcen- 
 dental: it is the miracle of all literature in its formation; 
 and yet in it we have perfect harmony, order, sequence 
 throughout. 
 
 The explanation? God I 
 
 The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books; it is a library 
 written by thirty or forty different authors, in three different 
 languages, upon totally different topics, under different cir- 
 cumstances, and yet it is a unit. It is made up of history, 
 biography, theology, poetry, prophecy, philosophy, jurispru- 
 dence, genealogy, ethnology, narrative of adventure, travel 
 of romantic interest, and yet it is a unit, the one great idea 
 of redemption for men permeates it throughout. 
 
INTERNAL EVIDENCES 67 
 
 The explanation? God! 
 
 We never think of it now as sixty-six books, but one book. 
 Why does the Bible live? Why is it known and loved in 
 every land? The Germans know, with few exceptions, only 
 German authors. The English know, with few exceptions, 
 only English authors. And only a few writers as Dante, 
 Goethe, Shakespeare have overleaped national boundaries 
 and become known by other countries. But the Bible has 
 overleaped the boundaries of all nationality and time. It 
 was written in a language that is now dead, and by men who 
 died thousands of years ago, yet it is the most vital and 
 widely circulated book in the world. 
 
 The explanation? God! The Plan and Unity 
 of the Bible are proof of its inspiration. 
 
 If men have any doubt as to the truth of the 
 New Testament, let them study the promise by 
 Jesus Christ of the coming of the Holy Spirit, 
 and how that promise was fulfilled after His de- 
 parture, exactly as He had foretold. 
 
 Read the Bible 
 
 Another word from Professor Hague: 
 
 We need say no more — except, read the Book. As Sir 
 Walter Scott once said: "In the whole world it is The Book; 
 all other books are mere leaves, fragments. Read and obey 
 this universal Book — the eternal Book. It is the one great 
 commanding Voice! All other voices are in comparison as 
 dying whispers. Read this Book which is unapproachable in 
 grandeur, and is high above all other books as heaven is above 
 earth, as the Son of God is above the sons of men. Do not 
 read it as you read other books, as you would study or 
 analyze a book in literature or science. No. Read this Book 
 
68 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 with becoming reverence. Put off thy shoes from off thy 
 feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. 
 Ask the Holy Spirit who gave it to help you. Read this 
 Book — supernatural in origin; inexpressible in value; infinite 
 in scope; divine in authorship, though human in penman- 
 ship; regenerative in power; infallible in authority; personal 
 in application; inspired in totality. 
 
 My fellow traveler, to repeat Mr. Hague's 
 words: **Eead this Book/' and when the loved 
 ones gather to bid us farewell, we shall find a 
 comfort that no language can express, for this is 
 the book which assures the Saints that in Heaven 
 there are no broken ties, no parting, no farewells. 
 
 We close with a quotation from an unknown 
 author : 
 
 The Bible contains the Mind of God, the state of man, 
 the doom of the impenitent, and the eternal happiness of 
 believers in Christ. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts bind- 
 ing, its histories true, its decisions immutable. Read it to be 
 wise, believe it to be safe, practice it to be holy. It con- 
 tains light to direct you, food to support you. It is the 
 Christian's charter. Christ is its subject, our good its design, 
 and the glory of God its end. 
 
 Thus we have taken a glance at the Bible, its 
 character and inspiration. But all these glorious 
 facts Modernism denies. Its mission is to tear 
 down, to destroy. It would even pull down the 
 Son of God from His throne. The mission of 
 the truth, however, is to build up and bless and 
 save. Wliich is our choice, the New or the Old 
 Theology? 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE NEW THEOLOGY AND THE 
 DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 In this comparative study of the New Theology 
 of Modernism and fundamental Christian Truth, 
 as the former is seen to-day in religious educa- 
 tion in both church and college, it is necessary to 
 examine the attack of Modernism on the New 
 Testament teachings regarding the death of 
 Christ. It would be well to submit a few of the 
 many outstanding passages against which Mod- 
 ernism is at war, before presenting the points of 
 view of both New and Old Theology. It will be 
 noticed that these passages are among the most 
 striking statements or revelations to be found in 
 the Bible. 
 
 "And ye know that he was manifested to take away sins; 
 and in him is no sin." (I John 3:5.) "So Christ was once 
 offered to bear the sins of many." (Heb. 9:28.) "And he 
 is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but 
 also for the sins of the whole world." (I John 2:2.) "The 
 Twentieth Century New Testament" rendered this passage: 
 "And he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins." 
 
 In the light of these, and many other similar 
 passages which could be quoted, we shall now ad- 
 vance to discuss the death of Christ. 
 
70 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 We would say at the outset, in the ^vords of 
 Professor Franklin Johnson, that, ** These Pas- 
 sages are an example of the almost countless 
 declarations in God's Word of a Substitutionary 
 Atonement. If we reject the doctrine we do it 
 at our peril. Any speculation which sets itself 
 against this mighty current of revelation flowing 
 through the Bible is destined to be swept away,'' 
 as the great Niagara sweeps away a dust cloud. 
 
 This chapter consists of a comparative study 
 of The New Theology of Modernism and the 
 death of Christ. The religious conflict to-day be- 
 tween unbelief, philosophy, and the destructive 
 criticism on the one hand, and the naked facts 
 of the Bible on the other, has for its principle 
 battle-ground the Substitutionary Atonement. 
 Modernism is attacking all along the line the New 
 Testament teachings regarding the Cross and all 
 subsequent Revelation, especially the Resurrec- 
 tion and the Second Coming of Christ, and it is 
 the duty of those who believe the Bible to come 
 to the defense of the Gospel. To this Christians 
 are as truly called to-day as was the Apostle Paul 
 in his day. Of course it need hardly be stated 
 that the substitutionary death of Christ for sin- 
 ful men is an unpopular truth, glorious though it 
 be. While advocates of the New Theology are 
 opposed to this great truth, nevertheless they do 
 not welcome a public discussion of it. Some of 
 the most advanced of the Modernists affirm that 
 '*no modern man believes in the Atonement and 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 71 
 
 justification by faith in Jesus Christ, that these, 
 and the Second Coming Revelation, are divisive 
 doctrines, unpractical, nor necessary to the 
 brotherhood of man.'' Doubtless, the offense of 
 the Cross, of which the Apostle long ago wrote, 
 has not yet ceased; for at salvation through the 
 blood philosophers still smile and wag their 
 heads. Yet multitudes are interested to know the 
 Truth. Somehow there seems to be an intuitive 
 feeling, a deep conviction in the human heart that 
 there is some profound significance in the death 
 of Christ, that will not down ; that it has in it the 
 drawing power of the Unseen — the tenacity, vital- 
 ity, and persistency of God. The Cross therefore 
 should call forth, not our apology, but our exulta- 
 tion. 
 
 Teaching of Modeknism 
 
 The teaching of Modernism is, that there is no 
 such thing as atonement by or salvation through 
 the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. They 
 stoutly reject the words atonement, substitution, 
 sin-bearer, propitiation. Their contention is that 
 man is saved by himself, by his ovm efforts, good 
 works, or by his own character, as he responds 
 to the best impulses of his nature; and that in 
 this he is aided by the idealism or example of 
 Jesus ; that it is ideas that save men and not the 
 very life and power of God ; that the only signifi- 
 cance in the death of Christ is that God is for- 
 bearing and loving towards men. They declare 
 
72 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 that all men are the children of God ; that human 
 nature is Divine; that it is not sinful only as we 
 make it sinful; that man by nature is not alien- 
 ated from God by sin ; that man has never fallen ; 
 that he is always rising, advancing; that he can 
 save himself by morally developing his own 
 character. 
 
 The trouble with this kind of doctrine is: it 
 cannot convert anybody to anything except to an 
 idea, nor determine human character and destiny. 
 This thing is like the thistle-down, it has no prop- 
 agating life in it. 
 
 If we will go to any religious service where 
 Modernism is lectured about and hear a person 
 get up in meeting and say, * * I was made a Chris- 
 tian here under the pastor's lectures,'' then we 
 shall take this all back and apologize to the Uni- 
 tarian lecturer. But it is difficult to see how a 
 bad man ever was or could be changed into a good 
 man under the preaching of the New Theology. 
 
 MoEAx. Influence Theoky 
 
 The teachers of Modernism say that the 
 ** Moral Influence Theory" explains all there is 
 in the death of Christ. What they mean by that 
 is that Jesus exerts a good influence on men by 
 His death. But so does every martyr exert a 
 good influence who dies for righteousness' sake. 
 If the author of this message were crucified be- 
 cause he dared to tell the truth, many would say, 
 *<Well, truly, he was a good man, he was a 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 73 
 
 prophef But that feeling would not deeply 
 affect the world, it would not redeem from sin. 
 No, a thousand times no. True, it would exert, 
 for the passing moment, a good influence, it would 
 reveal great love, but it would not change the 
 lives of men, nor redeem them from sin. And 
 precisely so it would be with Christ, if that were 
 all He did by His death — to reveal human love, to 
 exert a good influence upon men, to make clear 
 that He was true to His principles, brave to the 
 last. That in itself would never save this sinning 
 world. If the ** Moral Influence Theory" pre- 
 sents the true meaning of the death of Jesus 
 Christ then we may look to the martyrs for salva- 
 tion as hopefully as we may look to Christ. The 
 trouble with Modernism is it would whittle the 
 Cross away until we see in it only a good example 
 of patient, suffering love, but our self-sacrificing 
 mothers and grandmothers revealed in character, 
 to this world, the same kind of a cross. The New 
 Theology practically teaches that the only differ- 
 ence between man^s cross and the Cross of Christ 
 is one of degree. ** Christ," they say, ** being 
 purer, holier, revealed more of the love of God 
 than man reveals; but the revelation is the same 
 in character." 
 
 Thus we have given a fair statement of the 
 teaching of the New Theology, or as they say, 
 **the modern point of view of religion," as to 
 our Lord^s death. To say less would be unfair 
 to these teachers ; for we are now discussing one 
 
74 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 of the most momentous questions in the religious 
 world. We must get deep beneath the surface, 
 and at the facts. Everything, according to the 
 Scriptures, hinges on this truth. Why did Jesus 
 Christ die? What does it all mean? Let us see. 
 
 The Old Theology 
 
 We shall see that the Old Theology is con- 
 structed on the Scriptures. The Bible teaches 
 that our Lord died as a Substitute for men; that 
 by His death God transferred sacrifice from man 
 to Himself ; that in His death Christ offered Him- 
 self up as an ** atoning sacrifice'' to God for the 
 sins of the entire human family — all the sins that 
 have been committed from Adam to the present 
 time, and that ever will be committed. This then 
 is what the Scripture teaches, and what we can 
 well afford to believe. It is clear that the Cross 
 was a Divine, a Supernatural work, therefore a 
 perfect work. We need not believe this as **mere 
 theology.'' The ** atoning sacrifice" was an un- 
 veiling of the heart of God. By it we know the 
 kind of God we have; as by it also we know the 
 kind of men we are; our need, our worth, the 
 depths to which man by sin has fallen ; but withal 
 our magnificent possibilities, and the heights to 
 which by grace we may attain. 
 
 Li the words of that eminent physician. Dr. 
 Kelly of Johns Hopkins, we would say: **We be- 
 lieve that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, without 
 human father, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 75 
 
 born of the Virgin Mary, and lived in a human 
 body for the purpose of dying on the * accursed 
 tree,' to redeem man from the dominion and 
 power of Satan, sin and death. 
 
 ' * We believe that all men are by nature sinners, 
 alienated from God, utterly lost, and that the Son 
 of God came to seek and save by his atoning 
 death this lost race of men, that in His death He 
 paid the Infinite penalty of the sin and guilt of 
 the whole world. 
 
 **The Old Theology further claims that he who 
 receives the Lord Jesus as his Saviour is born 
 again spiritually, that he is now one body with 
 Christ — the Head — and will live with Him for- 
 ever. 
 
 **We believe that no man is saved by his own 
 good works, by the cultivation of his own char- 
 acter, that good works are the result of salvation, 
 or of being in a saved state, that guilty sinners 
 are saved only through faith, on the basis of the 
 finished work of Christ in man's behalf.'' 
 
 It might be added that the Old Theology 
 further teaches that sin did not take God by sur- 
 prise, that in eternity the Cross was planned, that 
 Jesus Christ was * ^ the Lamb slain from the foun- 
 dation of the world" (Rev. 13:8), that Adam's 
 Fall brought into our race the awful fact of sin 
 and death, as God forewarned it would do, and 
 that Christ as the perfect Representative of both 
 God and man, came to redeem man from all the 
 consequences of his sin. The momentous ques- 
 
76 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 tion now for man to decide is, will he accept 
 Christ and live, or will he reject Christ and 
 perish? Will he believe the Record that God has 
 given concerning His Son, or will he make God 
 a liar and die in his sins? 
 
 Principal Objections 
 
 But to this real Gospel we hear objections from 
 Modernism. Let us state some of their objections 
 to salvation by grace through the * ' atoning sacri- 
 fice'* and risen life of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Many persons who have only a superficial kaowl- 
 edge of the Bible, and who want an easier way 
 than God's way — the way of the Cross — are 
 easily led away by these objections. The Devil 
 has a way of making error appear plausible. Let 
 us examine their objections to the Atonement of 
 Christ. 
 
 Objection 1 
 
 "Atonement Not Found in New Testament'' 
 
 They say, * * The word atonement is not found in 
 the New Testament." An advocate of Modern- 
 ism was heard to boast of this in his pulpit. He 
 said, **Find it in the New Testament if you can." 
 Even a noted theologian — a New Theology one — 
 said before his students the same thing: **The 
 word atonement is not found in the New Testa- 
 ment," the inference being, if the word is not 
 found there the fact of the Atonement is not 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 77 
 
 there. This objection, however, is captious. We 
 open the New Testament and in the first epistle 
 of John 2 :2, we find these words : ** And He is the 
 propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, 
 but also for the sins of the whole world.*' The 
 term propitiation here signifies atonement, and is 
 so translated in **The Twentieth Century New 
 Testament.'' 
 
 When the teacher of Modernism makes a state- 
 ment as to what the Bible teaches it is seldom safe 
 to accept it until first an investigation has been 
 made, for these men are habitually misrepresent- 
 ing the Bible. It is astonishing how ignorant 
 many of these teachers appear to be of the Bible. 
 They are always studying and teaching what 
 other men think about the Bible and not what the 
 Bible says of itself. The Bible is its own inter- 
 preter. As the Apostle Paul says, to know the 
 Bible we must ^'Compare Scripture with Scrip- 
 ture" (I Cor. 2:13), not compare Dr. Jones with 
 Dr. Smith, etc. 
 
 . . . Even if the word atonement were not in 
 the New Testament we have the fact of the Atone- 
 ment plainly stated. And a fact revealed is the 
 important thing. Here are some of the passages 
 without regard to special order: **And ye know 
 that He was manifested to take away our sins; 
 and in Him is no sin." (I John 3:5). *'So Christ 
 was once offered to bear the sins of many." 
 (Heb. 9 :28.) ** And He is the propitiation for our 
 sins ; and not for ours only, but also for the sins 
 
78 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 of the whole world/' (IJohn2:2.) ** Whom God 
 sent forth to be a propitiation through faith in 
 his blood, to declare His righteousness for the 
 remission of sins that are past, through the for- 
 bearance of God.'' (Rom. 3:25.) ^^Behold the 
 Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the 
 world." (John 1 :29.) ^^Even as the Son of man 
 came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, 
 and to give His life a ransom for many." (Matt. 
 20:28.) ^^For He hath made Him to be sin for 
 us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the 
 righteousness of God in Him." (II Cor. 5:21.) 
 ''By the which will we are sanctified through the 
 offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. ' ' 
 (Heb. 10:10.) 
 
 Would not the average man conclude that these 
 passages clearly reveal that Jesus died as man's 
 Substitute, and made atonement for guilty men? 
 Do they not all seem to be clearly condensed in 
 these words, ''And he is the propitiation for our 
 sins?" If these passages were submitted to a 
 jury for a verdict as to what they teach, their 
 decision would be unanimous that Jesus Christ 
 made an atonement for sin by His death on the 
 Cross. We have no need to show what the New 
 Testament writers say the result of the Atone- 
 ment is. Note one reference only. The Apostle 
 Paul said that it has brought about the reconcilia- 
 tion of God to man, and this should be cause for 
 great rejoicing. In it God is now reconciled to 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 79 
 
 man in Christ, and by the Atonement man may 
 now become reconciled to God. (Romans.) 
 
 Objection 2 
 
 **SiN AND Guilt Not Teansferable'^ 
 
 Here is another objection. They say that *^sin 
 and guilt are not transferable. ' ' A widely known 
 New Theology teacher used to try to make much 
 of this in his classroom. This is one of the popu- 
 lar objections advanced in the effort to prove that 
 Christ did not offer Himself as an ** atoning sac- 
 rifice *' to God. This objection also is captious. 
 It presents a feeble effort to evade the real issue 
 involved in our Lord's death, and to oppose Reve- 
 lation by reason, and not the highest tj^e of 
 reason. 
 
 Sin and guilt are not transferable as between 
 men; but men may be sharers of the sin and guilt 
 of others. It is not fair to compare the relation 
 that obtains between men to the relation that ob- 
 tains between Christ and men. There are no 
 existing human relations by which we can wholly 
 illustrate the latter, for Christ was God, and 
 Christ could do a work that men could not do in 
 their relations to each other. This fact should 
 ever be remembered. Modernism is at war 
 against the power or ability of God to do by the 
 death of Christ a certain work for man. More- 
 over, these men assume to be capable judges as 
 to what God is able or not able to do for men. 
 
80 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 The Scriptures say that Christ died as a Substi- 
 tute for man, but the New Theology says that 
 Christ could not do this; consequently, the ques- 
 tion is, whom shall we believe? Their assump- 
 tion is one of great boldness, as it involves a 
 denial of the wisdom and power of God. 
 
 In our Lord's death for mankind it is evident 
 that He was not actually guilty of the sins of 
 others, but He judicially assumed the sin and 
 guilt of men ; thus in His death sin and guilt were, 
 in this sense, transferred. The Apostle Peter 
 says: **Who His own self bare our sins in His 
 own body on the tree.'' (I Peter 2:24.) The re- 
 lation our Lord Jesus Christ sustained to men 
 and to God was judicial and official, yet essen- 
 tially a moral relation; that is to say: a relation 
 within the realm of moral law. He was in His 
 death as He is in His life the Representative of 
 both God and man. The Scriptures affirm that 
 sin transgressed God's law, the penalty of which 
 is death, and that Jesus Christ, as the Represen- 
 tative of man, took this penalty upon Himself 
 and offered Himself up to God as man's Substi- 
 tute, man's sin-bearer. Thus He lifted the pen- 
 alty of human sin ; and as a consequence, man is 
 given an opportunity to go free from it by accept- 
 ing Jesus Christ. As our Lord Himself said: 
 **He gave His life as a ransom for many." 
 (Matt. 20:28.) And we should note how well 
 pleased God was with this redeeming work, for it 
 was prompted by his own eternal love. Man's 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 81 
 
 sin and guilt, therefore, were judicially trans- 
 ferred to Christ, who could not take the penalty 
 of one without the penalty of the other. And now 
 the soul that accepts Christ, God cannot reckon 
 as guilty but looks upon such a one as pardoned, 
 acquitted, justified, that is, reckoned as sinless, 
 set free from sin. God can never again have any 
 claim against that one on account of past sins. 
 This is the glorious Gospel with which the New 
 Theology is at war. 
 
 Jesus Christ in His death dealt effectually with 
 sin and guilt. Sin and guilt are inseparable. 
 When man is saved through the merits of Christ 
 he loses his sense of guilt; in some cases instan- 
 taneously ; in other cases gradually ; as thousands 
 can witness. The saved can now hold up their 
 heads in society. Formerly they were bowed by 
 the sense and shame of wrong-doing, as David 
 said, **Mine iniquities have taken hold on me so 
 that I am not able to look up*' (Ps. 40:12) ; but 
 now they look up and laugh and sing, because of 
 the new consciousness of freedom from sin and 
 guilt. Herein then is the great miracle of Divine 
 grace. They remember their past sins hut the 
 guilt has gone. How triumphantly the Apostle 
 Paul affirms it: ** There is therefore now no con- 
 demnation to them which are in Christ Jesus'' 
 (Rom. 8:1); no condemnation from without, nor 
 from within, conscience is now at rest, for guilt 
 has gone. 
 
 Wliy did guilt depart when the soul accepted 
 
82 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Jesus as Redeemer and Lord? The answer is 
 clear. The Holy Spirit applied the merits of the 
 Saviour's death, as also the power of His living 
 life to the soul, hence sin and guilt must depart. 
 The redeemed man is now living in the new ele- 
 ment of Spirit where, before God, he is covered 
 by the merits of the precious blood of Christ. 
 God has given the saved in Christ a new sense, a 
 sense of freedom from the power, dominion and 
 guilt of sin. 
 
 Thus it has been shown that sin and guilt were 
 judicially transferred to Christ and that in His 
 death He made provision for their removal. If 
 this is not the case, how account for the testimony 
 of Christian experience to this very thing? It 
 should be remembered that guilt is not merely 
 memory. A man remembers his sin, but his sense 
 of guilt has gone since he came to Christ. As 
 stated, this is a miracle of grace. The late Dr. 
 W. N. Clarke defined guilt as, **the consciousness 
 of the fact that you are the man who did the 
 deed." But we have seen that memory is still 
 active, yet the sense of guilt has gone. Guilt is 
 more than memory, and God provided for its re- 
 moval with sin in the glorious death of His Son. 
 A mystery to be sure, but the truth of which is 
 demonstrated in human experience, blessed be 
 His name. 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 83 
 Objection 3 
 
 ''It Is Immoral'' 
 
 Another objection of Modernism to our Lord's 
 atoning sacrifice is, that ''It is immoral.'' Jesus 
 suffered in man's place and they call this "im- 
 moral." Jesus suffered that man might not suf- 
 fer and they call this "immoral." This is a 
 claim that one person cannot morally suffer for 
 another. If man by suffering can prevent others 
 from suffering, should not this be viewed as the 
 most exalted moral service? We so view it when 
 our loved sons go forth to battle. But if this is 
 immorality, then the noblest men and w^omen who 
 ever lived are the most immoral. The husband 
 is immoral when he suffers over the frailties of 
 his wife, and thus shields her from the condem- 
 nation of society; and the wife is immoral when 
 she similarly protects her wayward husband. The 
 mother is immoral when she suffers in order that 
 her child may not suffer. The patriot is immoral 
 when he dies for his country. If the Atonement 
 is immoral, then we can say that sympathy is im- 
 moral. Men often sympathize for those who de- 
 serve no sympathy, as they often suffer for those 
 who are undeserving. And are we to call all this 
 immoral? If the element of vicarious and substi- 
 tionary suffering were taken out of the world, 
 liberty would die, man would be changed into a 
 beast, and love would perish. Furthermore, "it 
 is the teaching of Christ's redeeming death that 
 
84 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 has produced in history, during the last nineteen 
 hundred years, the highest type of morality. If 
 the result of the teaching of the Atonement is 
 the highest morality, how can the doctrine he 
 immoral?" 
 
 Objection 4 
 
 ** Legal Gospel'' 
 
 There is still another objection of Modernism 
 to the fact of the Atonement, and which must not 
 be overlooked. They say that this is **a legal 
 gospel." Well, thank God it is, but it is more. 
 Let us get at the facts and not spend time quar- 
 reling over words. We are living in a moral 
 universe, a universe of law, and every inch of 
 space is crammed full of law. Man was made 
 under a moral government; and he has always 
 lived, and always will live under that govern- 
 ment ; and he must either be a loyal subject or a 
 moral rebel against God; though men may not 
 always see this. Jesus Christ while in the flesh 
 lived under, and obeyed perfectly this govern- 
 ment of God. The only class who object to law, 
 to government, human and divine, are anarch- 
 ists. But why should men object to the legal 
 aspect of our Lord's death, when it is known that 
 He was here among men, in a moral universe, as 
 the Representative of both God and man, in an 
 official capacity, in an attitude of Infinite love, 
 to do a judicial and redeeming work? Moreover, 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 85 
 
 is it fair to assume that our Lord could not do 
 this work in any other than a harsh, mechanical, 
 arbitrary way? The service of His loving heart 
 could never be mechanical. It should not be for- 
 gotten that God's law reveals His wisdom, jus- 
 tice, and His love. Jesus Christ came to lift from 
 men the penalty of the broken law, which penalty 
 is death, and the New Theology calls that sacri- 
 ficial service, in a sort of slurring or disparaging 
 manner, **a legal gospel.'' If a human being, in 
 harmony with law, could give his life to redeem 
 another life from death, would we look upon his 
 heroism as a merely legal act, or would we not 
 rather view it as a service of self-sacrificing love f 
 Let them call it legal if they will, for so it was, 
 yet the death of Christ was an act of incom- 
 parable love, in its revelation of grace for sinful 
 men, and as a display of the justice, holiness, and 
 wisdom of God. 
 
 Jesus Christ did a work for man by His death 
 that man could not do for himself. In it we see 
 the strong stooping to succor the weak, the help- 
 less,, the undone. It is the Infinite passion in the 
 heart of Jesus Christ on the Cross that fires the 
 souls of men into a flame of love and devotion 
 to Him. Men forget the legal and see in this 
 eternal heart-throb Him whom they would lov- 
 ingly worship and adore, and seeing this they 
 sing: **He died for me. He died for me." And 
 because He died we shall not die, but live and 
 
86 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 serve and love and reign with Him. Legality? 
 Yes ; but O what love ! what love ! 
 
 Love Displayed by Atonement 
 
 The objections of Modernism to the ** atoning 
 sacrifice^' of Christ have been removed, and in 
 so doing we have not minimized but rather 
 exalted the love of God. Divine love is never 
 slighted nor insulted when we tell the truth. What 
 has been made clear is that the surface and super- 
 ficial view of our Lord's death is inadequate, un- 
 scriptural, hence untrue. To hold to this theory, 
 **The Moral Influence Theory, '^ as Professor 
 Franklin Johnson truly says, ** would be to shrivel 
 the ocean to the dimensions of a pond and bid the 
 admiral sail his navies on it, or to blot out all 
 the worlds save those of the solar system and 
 bid the astronomer enlarge his science.'' And 
 Dr. Johnson further states, **An Atonement of 
 Infinite cost, flowing from Infinite love, procuring 
 deliverance from Infinite loss, melts the coldest 
 heart and inflames the warmest;" and he adds: 
 **The Moral Influence Theory" *^ makes the death 
 of Christ spectacular, a feeble effort to display 
 the love of God rather than an offering to God 
 necessary for the salvation of men. It struggles 
 in vain to find a worthy reason for the awful sac- 
 rifice. Hence this theory may be charged with 
 essential immorality. In any case, the death of 
 Christ if interpreted in this manner will not 
 prove to be the power of God unto salvation. ' ' , 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 87 
 
 When the Cross is seen as God has so plainly 
 set it forth in His word, the mind is gripped, the 
 conscience is aroused, the will is subdued, sin is 
 hated and forsaken, and the life is won to com- 
 plete obedience. The soul finds rest. Here, in 
 the perfect work of Christ, we have a real, vital, 
 conquering, transforming power. And the the- 
 ology which rejects this mighty work of God for 
 man is the most colossal delusion of time. As 
 John Wesley in his day truly said of it: **It is 
 the spawn of hell.'' 
 
 Results of Apostasy 
 
 And now, under the influence of such preach- 
 ing, do we wonder that many of our churches 
 have deteriorated into helpless ethical clubs, re- 
 sorting to every conceivable trick and device to 
 interest the people? Do we wonder that this sort 
 of teaching has driven many of the pulpits out 
 of the soul-winning business; that it has created 
 a dislike for evangelists, and Evangelical Truth; 
 that it has brought upon us such a state of con- 
 fusion, division and strife, the unity and har- 
 mony of the Body of Christ are seriously threat- 
 ened everywhere? Instead of bringing the 
 churches together in a more real and vital fellow- 
 ship, the New Theology is destroying the spirit- 
 ual unity the churches formerly enjoyed. Unity, 
 harmony and progress are only possible on the 
 basis of our Lord's redeeming death. If the New 
 Theology advocates will not join hands with 
 
88 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Christ's followers around the Cross, then we 
 must say to them with great sorrow in our 
 hearts, we cannot hold fellowship with that 
 which is anti- Christ, and their antagonism to 
 Christ and to His Gospel may force into a new 
 re-alignment the true-followers of Christ. The 
 hour with its perils calls for a real Christian 
 fellowship. 
 
 We know that the Holy Spirit of God witnesses 
 only with the blood. When we honor the Cross 
 God will save to the uttermost. It is when we 
 can truly say, **Who loved me, and gave himself 
 for me'' (Gal. 2:20) that the shout of halleluiah 
 is in the soul. It is a foretaste of glory to be 
 able to testify, * * He died for me. ' ' Ah, my friend, 
 do we not see it now morely clearly than ever 
 before? Come and say it now in your heart, 
 **He died for me." **Who loved me, and gave 
 Himself for me." Come and praise Him! The 
 glory of His eternal love must break over our 
 vision if we would view His lovely Cross. If 
 the death of our Lord Jesus Christ was not what 
 the Bible reveals it to be, surely then it was an 
 unspeakable blunder, an unpardonable cruelty. 
 
 We have seen the apostasy of the Prussian 
 Modernism, that it breaks down and parts com- 
 pany with Jesus at His Cross, that it is an effort 
 of Satan, through those whom He has deceived, 
 to strike a death-blow at the very heart of the 
 Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 89 
 
 Cause of Deception 
 
 We are now ready to raise a practical question. 
 How have these friends been deceived and led 
 astray! Many of those who reject the *' atoning 
 sacrifice'^ are thoughtful, scholarly, and some ap- 
 pear to be reverent men. How can we explain 
 their departure from the Gospel? Why do they 
 hold views so radically different from those held 
 by the greatest minds in the Churches in all ages I 
 The answer is at hand. 
 
 The New Theology advocates are, as a class, 
 evolutionists, and some are Unitarians, though 
 they may be members of Orthodox Churches, 
 Modernism, as has been shown previously, is 
 built on speculative philosophy, rationalism as 
 opposed to Revelation and faith, on evolution as 
 an explanation of how man got here, and on a 
 false view of the universe, and of the moral 
 nature of God and man. Also the radical or de- 
 structive criticism of the Bible has made its con- 
 tribution though, as stated heretofore, there is a 
 sensible and helpful higher criticism of the Bible. 
 
 It was seen that the philosophy of evolution 
 denies the Fall of man as recorded in the book 
 of Genesis, and that Haeckel, the German evolu- 
 tionist, says: **With a single stroke Darwin has 
 annihilated the dogma of Creation.** And they 
 termed Darwin's Origin of Species as ^* Anti- 
 Genesis.'' Genesis says that Adam fell, and by 
 his sin brought upon himself and his posterity 
 an estrangement from God and the penalty of 
 
90 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 death. Evolutionists deny this and say there was 
 no Fall. Professor Shailer Mathews, of the 
 Divinity School of Chicago University, who is an 
 evolutionist, and a radical New Theology advo- 
 cate, said in his class-room in the presence of 
 the writer, **The Fall of man was the passing 
 of the non-moral man to the moral man,'^ that is, 
 it was the passing of the animal man to the man 
 of moral sense or conscience. In other words, it 
 was not a fall but an upward bound in the evolu- 
 tion of man, thus denying the record as given in 
 the book of Genesis. It follows, therefore, as 
 plainly as the sun in the heavens, that if Genesis 
 is incorrect, if man's death and alienation from 
 the Father did not come as a result of sin, then 
 there is no ground nor occasion for the redeem- 
 ing death of Jesus Christ. The New Theology 
 evolutionists are consistent in denying the Atone- 
 ment, that is, if they can prove that evolution 
 is an established fact, and that the Fall as stated 
 in Genesis is not to be accepted as historical. 
 But it has been proven that evolution is still 
 within the realm of presumption, in fact that it 
 is false. 
 
 It is not our purpose, however, to argue here 
 that Darwin's evolution is false, that it is not a 
 true explanation of how man got here, for this 
 has been done by able scientists. Evolution to 
 this hour is an unproved hypothesis. And we can 
 well afford to boldly affirm this and challenge the 
 evolutionists to p^^ov^ the contrary, though in so 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 91 
 
 doing we may be called * ^unscientific, ' * ** behind 
 the times/' and *^ ignorant'' by the dogmatic evo- 
 lutionist. As Philip Mauro, that astute thinker, 
 has well said: *' There has never been produced 
 a single instance of reproduction of one living 
 thing of offspring of a ditferent species. There 
 has never been produced a single fact tending in 
 the slightest degree to prove that such a thing 
 ever happened in this universe." But why has 
 evolution been accepted as true by some scholars ? 
 Let Mr. Mauro reply: *^One reason for the rapid 
 spread of this philosophy is, that it affords a plat- 
 form from which skeptical and unbelieving minds 
 could, in the name of science, contradict the Bible 
 account of Creation," and we might add, thus 
 discredit the Atonement made by our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 Evolution is Satan's masterstroke, his weapon 
 in the hands of the new theologians by which they 
 are trying to break down the Cross of Christ. 
 The conflict is raging around Genesis, Calvary, 
 the Resurrection, and the Personal Coming of 
 Christ. But here at the Cross the battle is hot- 
 test, and where Modernism is laboring to under- 
 mine and destroy the Christian Faith. But Mod- 
 ernism is meeting defeat. Evolution has been 
 proven to be false, though some still cling to it 
 as their only possible working hypothesis. Error 
 dies hard. The light of recent science, however, 
 is beginning to shine upon the evolutionist, and 
 he is becoming less dogmatic, more modest and 
 
92 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 sane, and soon he must go into obscurity, or 
 acknowledge the Bible to be our only authority 
 as to Creation and Redemption. Within a few 
 decades evolution will probably be unheard of in 
 American education. 
 
 Back at the Cross 
 
 But let us come back to Calvary, for it is holy 
 delight to keep close to the Cross. Who would 
 not love to die preaching or meditating on His 
 death, there is such a universe of wisdom, mercy 
 and grace seen here? 
 
 The profound significance of that death, only 
 our Lord Himself knew. He foresaw what its 
 effect would be on the lives of unborn millions 
 in earth and Heaven, and His heart was filled 
 with joy. Jesus was never more cheerful than 
 when He went to die. He must sing a song now 
 with His disciples, though He knew the burden 
 of sorrow He was to bear for men would crush 
 His heart. Populating earth and heaven with 
 new born sons and daughters of God was to Him 
 His greatest work, hence He was glad, joyful, 
 songful. As the great Spurgeon said: **We get 
 our children by living. Jesus got his by dying," 
 or as Isaiah foretold, ' * He shall see of the travail 
 of His soul and shall be satisfied." (Isa. 53:11.) 
 **When a man dies, he dies for himself, when 
 Jesus died He died for mankind," 
 
 A glimpse should be here taken at the univer- 
 sality of our Lord's death, touching only in mer- 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 93 
 
 est outline the mountain peaks. There is the 
 Backward Vieiv, the Present Blessiyig and the 
 Future Glory, 
 
 The Backwakd View 
 
 The Backward View, Redemption is an eternal 
 fact. Planned before worlds were made or sys- 
 tems framed it is related to our race from its 
 inception. We cannot fully comprehend the 
 meaning of the Lord's death, related as it is to 
 all the moral universe of God. **This ocean of 
 love is too wide for men to navigate, the universe 
 of grace it opens up is too vast for man with his 
 tiny telescope to scan." As we get a glimpse of 
 its sweep in the eternity of the past, present and 
 future, words fall down as impotent things, 
 *Hheir backs are broken, they cannot tell the 
 story," and tears of grateful love are more be- 
 coming. 
 
 The death of Christ makes clear that God has 
 but one plan, one way of saving men, and that 
 is the way of grace. 
 
 Man, as already stated, was made under law, 
 that is, under God's moral government, and his 
 fellowship and happiness were made conditional 
 upon his obedience. But in the testing man fell, 
 he disobeyed, he sinned, he literally rebelled 
 against the perfect Will or Government of God. 
 This suggests the fact that man was made free, 
 that is, he was made a moral being in the image 
 of God, with all the powers of a free being — 
 
94 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 powers to think, to feel, to act. In the proper 
 exercise of these great powers and responsibili- 
 ties consisted his prosperity and happiness as 
 man. 
 
 God could not create any other kind or moral 
 or spiritual being and make him free. Man, 
 therefore, must have within him the possibility of 
 disobeying God. Shall it then be stated that 
 **God took a chance in creating manT' Yes, if 
 we wish to put it that way. But it was an act 
 of Infinite wisdom and love on God's part to thus 
 create man. 
 
 God is a working, a creative God. God could 
 not create a God, but He could create a perfect 
 sinless man, a being with many limitations, and 
 in whom His Fatherly heart could take delight. 
 Thus creating man in a limited way, and making 
 him subject to moral law, giving him spiritual 
 and mental powers, the powers of a free spirit, 
 did not God strikingly reveal His wisdom and 
 His love? For thus limited man can grow, make 
 progress, aspire, study, learn, invent, discover, 
 obey, wonder, worship, and adore, all of which 
 are necessary to the happiness of man. 
 
 But we have said that man in his testing re- 
 belled against the Divine goodness, he fell into 
 sin, and brought upon himself and his posterity 
 the penalty of sin which is death, or eternal sepa- 
 ration from God. In this state of separation 
 from the good God consists the fact and reality 
 of Hell. But what is God to do? God fore-knew 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 95 
 
 that man would die, though He made man not to 
 die but to live. Is it not the highest reason to 
 conclude that God, the perfectly good God, would 
 make provision for man's recovery from the 
 curse of sin and death, and from the Hell of an 
 eternal separation from His holy fellowship and 
 love? How could the good God do otherwise? 
 God must be true to Himself, to His oa^ti charac- 
 ter, to His eternal love, and God the Father must 
 move toward man to redeem, to save him, hence 
 the Substitutionary Atonement becomes a moral 
 necessity, that is, if God be true to His own char- 
 acter. And this is exactly what the '^atoning 
 sacrifice'^ for man means y that God is a loving , 
 a reconciling, a saving God, true to His own 
 character. His plan in providing for man's re- 
 demption through His own Son, by One who could 
 and would perfectly obey His Government, His 
 Will, and give Himself in death for men, has 
 shown God's love in a marvelous way, a way so 
 sublime, that aside from the Cross God could not 
 so disclose the goodness, tenderness and passion 
 of His Infinite Heart. 
 
 God's Love Compelled Atoxemext 
 
 We see then that love compelled atonement, 
 and that to argue against the atonement is to 
 argue against the love of God. God must be true 
 to His OA\Ti justice and love, to that which is in 
 His nature inherently and eternally right, and in 
 order to do this He must punish sin and destroy 
 
96 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 its power in men, He must reveal justice, He 
 must be true to Himself, to His own eternal love. 
 This is why He must move toward man to save 
 him. The heart of the Gospel is found in the 
 words : * * God so loved the world that He gave His 
 only begotten Son" (John 3:16), which in an 
 abbreviated form reads: Jesus died in man's 
 place. The Cross, therefore, has become the 
 focusing or converging place and fact in history 
 where the love, justice, and wisdom of God are 
 revealed in all their glory, grace and power, and 
 in the light of which we have the true significance 
 of the Divine Fatherhood. 
 
 God's purpose is that in His universe there 
 shall be no opposition to His holy love, that there 
 shall be no discord but perfect harmony, that all 
 moral rebellion and folly must be put away, that 
 all enemies must be destroyed, including death, 
 **That at the name of Jesus Christ every knee 
 should bow, of things in heaven, and things in 
 earth, and things under the earth ; and that every 
 tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to 
 the glory of God the Father.'' (PhiL 2:10-11.) 
 Jesus Christ came to restore perfect harmony in 
 the universe of God, and to this end man must 
 be reconciled and given a new spirit, and Satan, 
 sin and death defeated and destroyed. Any- 
 thing short of this could not be a complete pro- 
 gramme, and present a perfect Gospel of redemp- 
 tion and reconciliation for man. 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 97 
 
 SiNNEBS EVEE SaVED THROUGH ChRIST 
 
 From what has been seen the conclusion is 
 obvious: that men in every age were saved 
 through the Cross of Christ, that Christ alone, as 
 He said, is **the Way, the Truth and the Life; 
 no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.*' 
 (John 14:8.) The Apostle Peter testified to it 
 in these words: ** Neither is there salvation in any 
 other; for there is none other name under 
 heaven given among men, whereby we must be 
 saved. *' (Acts 4:12.) This is true of those who 
 preceded Christ on the earth, for God has only 
 one Saviour for men. Man has ever been saved by 
 grace through faith, as the Apostle Paul clearly 
 shows in his letters to the Romans and Gala- 
 tians. Only through the sacrifice of God's Son 
 could man ever approach the throne of Grace. 
 This holy Sacrifice reveals that man was justified 
 by faith through the goodness, the unmerited 
 favor of God. Through this holy Sacrifice sin 
 has ever been forgiven. The ancient atonements 
 which in themselves alone were coarse and crude 
 and could not please God, nevertheless were all 
 educative, typical of the one great Sacrifice for 
 sin. (Hebrews.) The Jewish atonements all 
 cried in a typical way: ** Behold the Lamb of God 
 which taketh away the sin of the world." 
 (John 1:29.) 
 
 The Present Blessing 
 Note the present blessing of the death of Jesus 
 
98 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Christ. All the gifts and graces of the Holy 
 Spirit were purchased for man at the Cross, by 
 the dying love of Jesus Christ. Here God is 
 pleased to give us full forgiveness through His 
 blood. It is here we receive the endowments of 
 the Holy Spirit. It is here where we get the wit- 
 ness that we are the children of God, and where 
 we learn to say, **Dear Father,'' **Our Father.'' 
 It is here where we get the consciousness that we 
 are saved. 
 
 The Spirit witness with the blood, 
 And tells me I am born of God. 
 
 It is here also where we get the power for ser- 
 vice, power to deny self, to aspire to reach in 
 character and deeds the highest ideals, in short 
 where we are ** filled with all the fulness of God." 
 (Eph. 3:19.) 
 
 It is here at the Cross where the preacher gets 
 his equipment for preaching the Gospel. It is 
 here, in this place of holy fellowship, of inner 
 shelter, of reinforcement and refreshing, where 
 his face begins to shine, where he receives the 
 power that destroys his sin and moves the world. 
 Would we know the secret of the failure of much 
 of our modern preaching, we will find it in the 
 fact that the preachers have been flirting with 
 Modernism, they have not been living close to the 
 ** Ancient Sacrifice," consequently, their mes- 
 sages are not baptized with the power and pas- 
 sion of the Cross, It is here at the Cross, also, 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND DEATH OF CHRIST 99 
 
 where we learn the social selfishness and isola- 
 tion, or the exceeding sinfulness of sin, where we 
 learn to hate sin, where we get God^s estimate of 
 sin, where no sin appears small, and where God 
 has made a covenant sealed with precious blood 
 that He would put away man's sin, and thus make 
 him a true son of God and brother of men. To 
 Christianity, therefore, the Cross is central, fun- 
 damental, and indispensable. It is not simply the 
 one sign, but it is in itself the one dynamic and 
 faith by which man must ever conquer. 
 
 The Future Glory 
 
 The Cross is also a prophecy of that which is 
 to be. '^He that spared not His own Son, but 
 delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not 
 with Him also freely give us all things?'' (Rom. 
 8:32.) Who can picture the ^^ all things?" The 
 resurrection to glory, a permanent place in the 
 coming Kingdom, a welcome to the returning 
 Conqueror of sin and death, a reunion with 
 ** those we loved and lost awhile," will be part of 
 the **all things." The triumph will be down here 
 on a rejuvenated earth. *^In that great day this 
 old world, so long robed in the darkness of sel- 
 fishness and sin, will shine in splendor like a new- 
 born sun." In that great day peace and right- 
 eousness will cover the earth, for brotherhood will 
 become real, and swords and spears and bombs 
 and shells will be as dust beneath the chariots of 
 the redeemed. In that great and glorious day, 
 
100 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 when the Master of love, the Conqueror of sin and 
 death shall come in His glory, and shall have de- 
 livered up the Kingdom to the Father, that * * God 
 may be all in alP' (I Cor. 15:28), then, and not 
 till then shall we see the true significance, splen- 
 dor and glory of what Kipling called the 
 ** Ancient Sacrifice." 
 
 glorious Cross, glorious Crown, 
 Resurrection Day! 
 Ye angels from the skies come down 
 And bear my soul away. 
 
 Which shall it be, Modernism, New Theology, 
 or His lovely Cross? 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY OR THINGS TO 
 
 COME 
 
 It is mth a feeling of gladness that we now 
 take up the question of Modernism in its relation 
 to Things To Come, and show the danger in 
 adopting a false hypothesis in the interpretation 
 of the Bible, of all history, and all life, as the 
 Modernists have done. 
 
 It has been shown from the beginning, in the 
 development of this message, that our prr>blem 
 is to expose the falsity, and completely overthrow 
 the application of the theory of evolution to the 
 interpretation of the Bible and Christianity, as a 
 method in opposition to the facts of the Bible, 
 and to any true scientific method of interpreta- 
 tion. For we have seen that, invariably, the facts 
 of the Bible have been twisted and distorted in 
 order to make them fit into the creed of the Mod- 
 ernist and his hypothesis of evolution. We have 
 clearly seen that in this effort he must deny every 
 fundamental Christian revelation. We have also 
 seen that it is the adoption of this method by 
 the university that has Prussianized our modern 
 
 101 
 
102 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 education, and created our modem religious 
 problem, a problem that constitutes a real peril 
 to the authority of the Scriptures, faith in the 
 Deity of Jesus Christ, the security and progress 
 of Christianity. 
 
 It hardly need to be said that this whole matter 
 of eschatology can only be presented in general 
 outline, as it would require many volumes to dis- 
 cuss it in all matters of detail. This is why, as 
 may be seen, these concluding chapters on Things 
 To Come must necessarily be brief. But in this 
 practical, comparative statement and outline the 
 student will see how scientifically true is our 
 diagnosis of Modernism and its peril to the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 Sources of Information 
 
 By the term eschatology is meant those things 
 that have to do with the future life of men both 
 on earth and in Heaven. But before discussing 
 some of these things it is necessary to inquire, 
 what is the source of our authority? Without 
 disregarding the value of Church history, 
 especially the development of doctrine during 
 the first four centuries a.d., it must be affirmed 
 that there is after all, in our study of Things To 
 Come, only one great authority — the Bible. 
 There is nothing that can take its place, either 
 ancient or modern. Here is the true Guide in our 
 approach to these momentous matters, for in so 
 far as we have means of knowing it is in this 
 
MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 103 
 
 great Book that we find the only authorities on 
 these great matters which relate to man's future 
 life. No philosophy of religion nor science can 
 give material assistance here. We are shut in to 
 the authority of Jesus and His Apostles, to the 
 trustworthiness of the things they taught and 
 wrote on the question of man's future life; and 
 no classroom air of assumed additional knowl- 
 edge can successfully contradict this fact. Let 
 it be stated, therefore, with much emphasis that 
 we can as well study botany by eliminating the 
 sun as we can study Things To Come by 
 eliminating the Bible. In fact it is not an exag- 
 geration to say that where the Bible is silent it 
 is never safe nor wise to affirm, for beyond its 
 illumination we can only at the best indulge in 
 unprofitable speculation. But where the Scrip- 
 tures speak plainly there we can affirm and dog- 
 matize, for notwithstanding all the destructive 
 critics of the school of Modernism may have 
 said against the naked facts of Revelation as re- 
 corded in the Bible, this Record is still to us 
 authority, the very Word of God, His glorious 
 Truth to all mankind. 
 
 Man's Knowledge Limited 
 
 There are many things pertaining to man's 
 future life of which we are totally ignorant, and 
 it will not weaken the truth to make this fact 
 plain. No Christian should hesitate to reply in 
 the words, I do not know, to many questions that 
 
104 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 might be asked regarding eschatology, for God 
 has not revealed details, only outstanding events, 
 He has not given a complete map of the future, 
 only a partial and at places a somewhat dim out- 
 line. This fact should be emphasized, that God 
 has given to His children some real satisfying 
 knowledge of the great beyond, of the ultimate 
 and the eternity of man, but let it be remembered 
 that it is only a partial outline of those realities 
 that man shall fully understand in the life be- 
 yond. These realities should constitute an im- 
 portant part of the message of the Churches in 
 the present age. Indeed, there can be no com- 
 plete Gospel taught where Things to Come are 
 slighted, belittled, or ignored. 
 
 A Wise PKECAUTioisr 
 
 Related to these outlines there are innumerable 
 details, which in themselves will be events of 
 glorious revelation. But for all practical and 
 necessary purposes here, for the development of 
 character, of faith and hope and love, for inspi- 
 ration to service as we travel on toward Home, 
 God has given sufficient Revelation in His Word. 
 As to the future, care should be taken not to pre- 
 sume, guess, or speculate. The New Theology 
 claims that we have a right to speculate regard- 
 ing man's future life, to assume on what we know 
 of the character of God. But what do we know 
 about the character of God aside from that which 
 the Scriptures reveal? The Bible assures us that 
 
MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 105 
 
 the Revelation has been closed, and that it is un- 
 wise to speculate beyond that which has been 
 written. (I Cor. 4:6.) Guessing, presuming, 
 conjecturing, philosophizing, speculating here in 
 a way that would add to or contradict the Bible 
 is a wild-goose chase; and it is more, it is a sin. 
 (Rev. 22:18-19.) If the contention of Modernism 
 be admitted, there is danger of turning from our 
 holy study in disgust, of shutting out from our 
 vision, as the New Theology has done, the re- 
 vealed realities of the future life, as they are dis- 
 closed to us in the Bible, and giving our attention 
 to speculative hypotheses, theosophy, philosophy, 
 spiritism, new thought fads, a kind of milk and 
 water social salvation, and all kinds of vagaries, 
 if we do not finally end in hopeless infidelity. 
 
 Should Study Sckiptukes 
 
 And there is another important fact to notice. 
 Since we are shut in to the Scriptures, it follows 
 that we should be earnest students of that which 
 the Bible reveals concerning man's future life. 
 Thoughtless and irreverent persons should not 
 touch this holy theme. In making our exegesis 
 we should follow the apostolic direction — *^ Which 
 things also we speak, not in the words which 
 man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy 
 Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with 
 spiritual'' (I Cor. 2:13), that is, using the Scrip- 
 tures only, otherwise we shall be bewildered in 
 the confusioii of our ignorance. We desire, there- 
 
106 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 fore, to emphasize the importance, in our reli- 
 gious thinking and teaching, of keeping in closest 
 company with the Bible. Here we have the essen- 
 tial difference in method between the New and 
 the Old Theology. The Old exalts what God has 
 said in the Scriptures; the New exalts what man 
 has said outside the Scriptures. The Old makes 
 no apology for the inspired Book, but accepts it 
 as it is, the Word of God; the New exalts scholar- 
 ship (and which the Old does by no means de- 
 spise), man's wisdom above Revelation, hence 
 they choose certain parts of Scripture that are 
 to their liking, and other parts they brush over 
 as untrustworthy. If certain passages are found 
 to be opposed to Modernism they say, *'That is 
 Pauline,'' or ^*That is Petrine," or **That is 
 Apocalyptic," or ^*That is Johannine," or **That 
 is traditional," or **That is supposed by the lat- 
 est scholarship to be legendary," or ** There is a 
 question as to the authenticity of that passage," 
 etc. It is a very simple method if one wants to 
 reject a difficult passage that is opposed to a pre- 
 conceived theory, or to speculative theology. 
 
 The Futuee Revelation 
 
 In discussing Modernism And Eschatology we 
 should not overlook the large place God has 
 given in His word to the revelation of things to 
 come. In the very nature of the case the claims 
 of the future must have a large place. In the last 
 book in the Bible about nineteen chapters out of 
 
MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 107 
 
 twenty-two are largely devoted to the realities of 
 the future life. Nearly every book in the New 
 Testament contains references to future events. 
 To the Second Coming of Christ alone we have 
 about three hundred references, one out of about 
 every twenty-five verses in the New Testament, 
 while in the Old Testament it is referred to more 
 often than His first Advent. It is exceedingly 
 interesting to know that one-half of the Bible is 
 prophecy, much of which has to do with man's 
 future life. And we are exhorted to study 
 prophecy more than any other subject. The Book 
 of Revelation, which the New Theology belittles 
 by calling it '* apocalyptic," contains more Old 
 Testament quotations than the gospels and epis- 
 tles combined, or in all about two hundred and 
 forty-five references. The last invitation to the 
 sinning and lost, the last prayer, and the last 
 recorded words of Jesus are found in this book. 
 Moreover, our Lord devoted much of His min- 
 istry in teaching of Things To Come — the fact 
 of man's part in the final triumph of the King- 
 dom of God. He made numerous references to 
 the state of the righteous and the wicked in the 
 world beyond, in order to incite to repentance 
 and holiness of life here. And from this we are 
 fully justified in concluding that the fact of man's 
 future life should have a large place in the 
 preaching and teaching of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 But as we look about us what do we find ? Read 
 
108 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 the New York newspapers on Saturday and see 
 the subjects that some of the preachers announce 
 for the Sunday sermons: *'A Snowball Service," 
 **An Orange Service/' *^Our Need of More Bath- 
 tubs/' **The Coming Election," *'The Books in 
 The Bible I Believe to Be Inspired/' **A Lec- 
 ture on Spiritism by New York's Greatest Bible 
 Lecturer," **Can the Modern Man Accept the 
 Pauline Doctrines?" '*Can We Dogmatize about 
 the Future!" *^The Modern Point of View of 
 Religion," ^*The Results of the Recent Election," 
 etc., etc. If Modernism would be seen in its true 
 garb, go and hear a lecture from one of their 
 chief lights on eschatology. It would not be 
 thought unkind in saying that the Apostle Paul 
 described this class of teachers and preachers 
 when he said: ** Professing themselves to be wise, 
 they become fools." (Rom. 1 :22.) Think of sub- 
 stituting for the eternal verities a lecture on 
 ** bath-tubs, as if the tub, and not the blood-red 
 Cross, and the Empty Grave, is the way into the 
 Kingdom of God." 
 
 TuENED Church Into a Club 
 
 The New Theology in its effort to humanize, 
 rationalize, and circumscribe within earthly limits 
 the ** Eternal Gospel" has by so doing aposta- 
 tized the Church of God. They have turned the 
 Church into an ethieal and social club. A club 
 may be a good thing but not when made a sub- 
 stitute for a Church. They would shut out fram 
 
MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 109 
 
 the thought and vision of men the great Home- 
 land, and the coming Kingdom of God on earth. 
 The Apostle Paul in speaking of those, ** whose 
 minds are given up to earthly things,'^ further 
 described the new theologians and their deluded 
 disciples ; and he adds : **For many walk, of whom 
 I have told you often, and now tell you even weep- 
 ing, that they are the enemies of the Cross of 
 Christ; whose end is destruction, whose god is 
 their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, 
 who mind earthly things'' (or whose mind is 
 fastened on earthly things.) **For our conver- 
 sation is in heaven, from whence also we look for 
 the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ." (Phil. 
 3:18-20.) The true Christian has his heart in 
 Heaven while he plods earth's dusty highways; 
 and as he seeks to do good in the performance of 
 his labors, he sings with joy the children's hynm: 
 
 I^m a pilgrim, I'm a stranger, 
 
 I can tarry, I can tarry but a night. 
 
 Saving Society 
 
 But Modernism would turn men's thoughts 
 only to the passing, the transient things, having 
 its face in the dust, and its back toward man's 
 Eternal Home. Rejecting the Bible Revelation 
 as to the future, it turns its attention to society, 
 and talks much of ^* saving society," not of saving 
 individuals, for that they cannot do. **The social 
 uplift,'* **the social conscience," *Hhe social 
 
no MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 spirit/' ** social repentance," ** civic righteous- 
 ness/' ^*our need of a reconstructed religion'' — 
 mark you, not a reconstructed man — these are 
 their lofty themes. But when the New Theology 
 can win individuals to Christ, then we shall listen 
 to them when they talk about saving society for 
 Christ, for society can only be saved as individ- 
 uals are made Christians. Dean Hodges has 
 truthfully said : 
 
 Wlien we are busiest with our problems of ethics, and our 
 problems in philanthropy, the Christian minister stands up 
 and says that we have not got sight of the real thing. We 
 have not touched the man. The body is not the man. Who- 
 ever would find him, must address the heart. He must be 
 born again to enter the new life. Carpets and curtains make 
 some difference; the Ten Commandments make more; but 
 that which is essential is the spiritual impulse of religion. 
 The supreme thing in solving the Social Question is not a 
 new coat or even a new thought, but a new heart; and God 
 alone can give that through Jesus Christ. 
 
 Here then is the supreme test of any Christian 
 teaching. Can it ivin individuals to Christ in the 
 local church congregation^ To dilate on social 
 improvement is good so far as it goes, and it 
 is far from our purpose to undervalue it, yet it 
 is only one of the results of a great cause, one 
 of the flowers on the tree of Christianity. What 
 would we think of a farmer cutting down his 
 apple orchard and giving as his reason that he 
 must devote his time to the improvement of apple 
 blossoms? Perhaps we would say that that 
 
MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 111 
 
 fanner must have been converted to the New 
 Theology method, for that is what this school is 
 doing. They are trying to cut down the tree. 
 They deny the Deity of Christ and Eedemption 
 by His blood, they never teach the necessity of 
 the new birth, they ignore the baptism of the Holy 
 Spirit, they deny the Resurrection of the body, 
 the Miracles, the Personal Second Coming of 
 Christ, the days of Judgment, Heaven and Hell 
 as real places, in short, they would cut down the 
 tree, while they devote themselves assiduously to 
 learned discussions on blossoms. It is so fine, so 
 cultured, so practical! God help us to apply our 
 religion to every day life, and reveal Jesus Christ, 
 for this is our supreme task, and should be our 
 holy delight ; but it is as easy to produce blossoms 
 and fruit by destroying the tree, to erect a great 
 building by throwing to the winds the architect's 
 plan, to live in a physical body without a head 
 or a heart, as it is to have a wholesome society, 
 a Christian civilization without believing and 
 teaching the fundamental doctrines of the Chris- 
 tian Religion. What blood and bones are to the 
 body, so doctrines are to the Church of Christ. 
 Oh the pity, the folly, the insanity of any the- 
 ology, or scheme of social reconstruction, that 
 would turn man's thoughts away from the great 
 realities of the future life — man's larger life, his 
 permanent life. Man's life here is important, its 
 responsibilities are great and numerous, but it is, 
 after all, like the chick peeping in its shell to be 
 
112 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 set free, it is like the grain of gold flowing from 
 a mountain range of gems, in a narrow and 
 swiftly rmming current, to an ocean that is shore- 
 less. 
 
 MiSINTEKPEETING FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE 
 
 In describing the attitude of the New and Old 
 Theology to Things To Come there is another 
 fact that should be considered, namely, the way 
 Modernism treats the highly figurative portions 
 of the Bible, especially those figurative parts 
 found in the Book of Daniel, our Lord's dis- 
 courses on His Second Coming, and the major 
 part of the Book of Eevelation. They refer to 
 these portions of our Bible as ** apocalyptic, *' that 
 is, in their thought, untrustworthy, highly pic- 
 torial and figurative, and not to be understood in 
 any literal sense, and serving absolutely no prac- 
 tical purpose. 
 
 Scholars tell us that there are fourteen 
 apocryphal books in all, but these never had a 
 place in any of our Protestant Bibles. The Book 
 of Daniel and the Book of Revelation never 
 properly belonged to that collection; but because 
 we find in these great books some of the same 
 style of highly pictorial literature, we find in the 
 fourteen books mentioned. Modernism would be- 
 little those two inspired productions. It should 
 be said, however, that this is not the real reason 
 why this school speaks slightingly of Jesus, 
 Daniel, and the Apocalypse, or the Book of Reve- 
 
MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 113 
 
 lation. The reason as given above is a covert 
 one, given to conceal. The cause for the rejec- 
 tion of these two books by our modern rational- 
 ists is, that they do not want to accept the doc- 
 trines of these books relative to the Personal 
 Coming of Christ, the Millennium, and the King- 
 dom of God, when our Lord shall reign on earth. 
 Here then is their real reason for slurring these 
 great inspired books, speaking of them as *' apoc- 
 alyptic.'' About two-thirds of these books were 
 written in the highly figurative, pictorial, sym- 
 bolic, or as the New Theology says, in the 
 ** apocalyptic" style. 
 
 It should not be imagined that because a liter- 
 ature is highly figurative that it is of no value, 
 as we sometimes hear ignorant persons remark. 
 Great authorities in literature affirm that figura- 
 tive language is more rich, more suggestive, more 
 full of meaning than literal language. As Dr. 
 Sylvester Burnham of Colgate Divinity School, 
 one of our greatest living Bible scholars, truly 
 said, **A11 figures of speech can be reduced to 
 their literal meaning. ' ' The Bible contains much 
 figurative language. Our Lord often resorted to 
 the use of figures of speech in order to make the 
 Truth more vivid and impressive. Let us not, 
 therefore, think that the Book of Daniel and the 
 Book of Eevelation can be ruled out because these 
 books contain some highly figurative language. It 
 is the business of the student to find the meaning 
 
114 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 of the symbols employed, and give to men the 
 interpretation as God intended he should do. 
 
 Here is an illustration of the way that Modern- 
 ism treats, for instance, the Book of Revelation. 
 The late Dr. W. N. Clarke, who produced a New 
 Theology text book, entitled **An Outline of 
 Christian Theology,'^ in which he gives the New 
 Theology point of view, says on page 388, in re- 
 ferring to the Book of Revelation, that this book 
 *^was neither intended for exact fulfillment nor 
 capable of receiving it. ' ' What he meant is, that 
 the prophecies contained in this book are not 
 trustworthy, but spurious. Of course, if they 
 were not ** intended for exact fulfillment,'' they 
 are untrustworthy. Thus he seems to deny the 
 inspiration and authority of this book. His 
 method of discrediting the Apocalypse is obvious. 
 It is easy to get rid of the teaching of a book 
 if one does not care to accept it by saying that 
 it cannot be fulfilled, that it is untrustworthy. 
 Dr. Clarke did not, in so many words, say that 
 this book is a fabrication or spurious as a Divine 
 revelation, but his words would naturally convey 
 that idea. However, an assertion of this kind 
 does not prove this book to be spurious. 
 
 The same writer again states of this book that, 
 **It gloriously exalts Christ and foretells His vic- 
 tory." Does not this sound strange following the 
 former statement? The book is ^^not intended 
 for exact fulfillment, nor capable of receiving it," 
 yet *4t exalts Christ and foretells His victory." 
 
MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 115 
 
 How would a contradictory statement like that 
 be received in a court of justice? This is a fair 
 sample of the way in which modernism treats the 
 Bible as a whole. It might be said that this is 
 their uniform method of handling the Bible. It 
 seems that what Dr. Clarke meant to say was, 
 parts of this book I accept and parts I reject. 
 Yet we cannot but ask, how can this book * ^fore- 
 tell Christ ^s victory,'' if its prophecies are * in- 
 capable of being received,'' and were *^not in- 
 tended for exact fulfillment?" 
 
 Millennium Rejected 
 
 Again, this same author further states, **we 
 cannot make time-calculations about its millen- 
 nium in the 20th chapter." He affirms on the 
 same page, 388, ** since this is the only mention 
 of a millennium, it follows that there is no ground 
 for a question of a pre-millennial or post-millen- 
 nial advent. ' ' This is only another way of saving 
 that we cannot afford to believe God unless He 
 repeats Himself and submits His revelation to 
 two or more witnesses. John's veracity is ques- 
 tioned, his testimony ruled out (this great 
 Apostle who is now banished and suffering in a 
 prison cell, who was ready to lay down his life 
 for his Divine Lord), by the twentieth century 
 New Theology, albeit that this same Apostle is 
 one of those to whom God intrusted a special 
 revelation regarding the Second Coming of His 
 Son. 
 
116 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 New Theology Dilemma 
 
 However, if this principle of exegesis is sound, 
 then we shall have to reject most of our Bible, 
 for in rare instances did God give any inspired 
 writer the identical revelation He gave to other 
 writers. It becomes obvious that such a method 
 of interpretation is iconoclastic, unscientific, 
 ignoring every principle of interpretation. It is 
 a rejection of the authority of the Scriptures, and 
 an exaltation of man's wisdom above the Word 
 of God. And we have in not a few pulpits men, 
 who ought to know better, who are spinning this 
 arrogance of Modernism, pretending a superior 
 scholarship, and claiming to give ** *the true his- 
 torical interpretation,' ^the modern point of view 
 of religion,' * something acceptable to the modern 
 man,' *the results of the latest scholarship,' " 
 and that as a result of this exhibition of their 
 ignorance, they have knocked the Old Theology 
 ** moss-backs" into a cocked hat. If we had the 
 genius of the Holy Spirit Himself, we could not 
 describe in words the ignorance and impotence, 
 if not blasphemy, of this so-called New Theology. 
 
 Yet this is the abomination that is crammed 
 into the minds of the students in not a few of our 
 seminaries as a preparation for the holy work 
 of winning the world to God. Hear what the in- 
 spired John says about this majestic book: 
 
 **For I testify unto every man that heareth 
 the words of the prophecy of this book. If any 
 man shall add unto these things, God shall add 
 
MODERNISM AND ESCHATOLOGY 117 
 
 unto Mm the plagnes that are written in this 
 book: 
 
 **And if any man shall take away from the 
 words of the book of this prophecy, God shall 
 take away his part out of the Book of Life, and 
 out of the holy city, and from the things which 
 are written in this book." (Rev. 22:18-19.) 
 
 Here then are the woes pronounced upon the 
 teachers who deny or misrepresent this final mes- 
 sage of God to man. 
 
 We have dwelt at length under this general 
 division of our topic, and we trust the way has 
 been cleared for what shall follow, as we examine 
 some of the great Christian doctrines, those who 
 have to do with man^s future, and see what is the 
 attitude of Modernism toward them. 
 
 We shall take up in subsequent chapters: 
 
 First. The Second Coming of Christ. 
 
 Second. The Resurrection. 
 
 Third. The Judgment. 
 
 Fourth. The Message of the Apostolic Church. 
 
 Fifth. The Church and Its Message One. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A RATIONAL STUDY OF THE SECOND COMING OF 
 CHRIST 
 
 The Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 is the key to future things. If we do not see this 
 we cannot interpret the Bible, and endless con- 
 fusion will result. Let the student fail to see 
 that Jesus Christ himself, in his coming tri- 
 umphant manifestation, is the only solution of 
 the problem of life, the secret of man's triumph, 
 and he cannot teach the Bible; he will be forced 
 to adopt some scheme of philosophy, like evolu- 
 tion, in order to explain the purposes, methods 
 and plan of God. At no point therefore in the 
 great Christian Revelation is the New Theology, 
 or Modernism, so decidedly at war against the 
 Bible as its teachings regarding the coming of 
 Christ. They are quite aware that they cannot 
 hold to this revelation and teach Modernism, or 
 any other kind of *4sm,'' as a substitute for Jesus 
 Christ. Consequently, here is where the battle is 
 j&ercest to-day; and it is here where the forces 
 of Satan will meet their final overthrow. 
 
 The position of Modernism, as opposed to the 
 
 118 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 119 
 
 Bible, is, that our Lord will never return to this 
 planet in personal or bodily appearance ; that the 
 coming of Christ is unseen, moral and continu- 
 ous ; that He is coming as fast as He can get into 
 this world, in the unceasing operation of natural 
 phenomena, and by the gradual unfolding opera- 
 tion of evolution in the natural, mental and moral 
 world. They also say that He has ever been com- 
 ing in history ; that He came and manifested His 
 life and power on the day of Pentecost in the 
 presence and work of the Holy Spirit there ; that 
 He came at the destruction of Jerusalem, in 
 judgment upon that city, as He has repeatedly 
 done in the life of nations; and that He always 
 comes at death. At death, they affirm, there 
 occurs the culmination of the coming of Christ. 
 
 The New Theology claims that both the Master 
 and His Apostles expected that He would return 
 to this earth in their own day, in personal appear- 
 ance, but in this, they say, they were mistaken. 
 They admit that the New Testament undoubtedly 
 teaches a personal return of Jesus, but that this 
 must be brushed aside as too literal and a deeper 
 meaning found in the language of Holy Scrip- 
 ture. 
 
 To the foregoing we would reply briefly, re- 
 minding ourselves only of some of the o'utstand- 
 ing truths, and which will constitute a complete 
 refutation of Modernism. We shall make plain 
 how far afield the New Theology has run in its 
 opposition to the facts of the Bible. 
 
120 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 All biblical scholars of note are agreed that the 
 New Testament teaches a personal coming of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. Even so radical a teacher of 
 Modernism as Dr. Shailer Mathews admits this 
 fact. The late Dr. W. N. Clarke, a New Theology 
 teacher and author, says on page 399 — ** Chris- 
 tian Theology'' — in referring to the words our 
 Lord used in setting forth His coming, **this lan- 
 guage is borrowed directly from the Prophets 
 . . . who applied it to events on the earth, in 
 which, of course, it could not be literally ful- 
 filled.*' It would seem that the argument here is, 
 because the language was, as Dr. Clarke says, 
 ** borrowed from the prophets," it cannot be liter- 
 ally fulfilled. 
 
 Eejection of the Prophets 
 
 The above is another way of saying that the 
 Prophets of the Old Testament also were mis- 
 taken, and that Jesus and the New Testament 
 writers used their misleading statements either 
 wilfully or ignorantly. Thus, according to these 
 teachers, Jesus Christ has misled the world ever 
 since as to His Second Coming. But all such 
 teaching should be accepted at its face value. It 
 is the Prussian point of view, abetted by British 
 and American Modernism, against both the 
 Prophets and Jesus Christ. But some of these 
 teachers reply: **We would prefer not to say that 
 Jesus was mistaken but that He used pictorial 
 language to reveal a spiritual fact. ' ' Does it not 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 121 
 
 appear strange, however, that Jesus should do 
 this thing, knomng that His Apostles would mis- 
 understand Him? That they understood Him to 
 teach a literal Personal Eeturn to this earth is 
 unquestioned, as a great volume of passages 
 makes clear. We quote only one of these: **Ye 
 men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into 
 Heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up 
 from you into Heaven, shall so come in like man- 
 ner as ye have seen Him go into Heaven." 
 (Acts 1:9-11.) 
 
 Manner of His Coming 
 
 Here is a plain literal statement as to the man- 
 ner of His Coming, and shows that this was the 
 view held by the New Testament writers. This 
 being true, is it not reasonable to suppose that 
 when our Lord used language, setting forth His 
 Coming in the heavens, in a personal, visible 
 manner. He intended His disciples to understand 
 it as a literal fact? As stated, the disciples so 
 understood it. And is it fair to put the judgment 
 of the men of our late day over against the view 
 held by those men, namely, Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
 John, Peter and Paul — those who were the great- 
 est interpreters of what Jesus said, who knew 
 Him personally, heard His words, and to whom 
 He gave His truth to pass on for unborn mil- 
 lions? We affirm that this is a reasonable as- 
 sumption, more reasonable than to believe that 
 God waited until the dawn of Darwin and Shailer 
 
122 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Mathews, or the Modernists of the Nineteenth 
 and Twentieth Century to show to them and to 
 the world that the Apostles were mistaken in this 
 matter. 
 
 Were the Apostles Mistaken? 
 
 Were the Apostles really mistaken as to the 
 time of our Lord's coming? The New Theology 
 boldly affirms that they were. 
 
 Jesus taught that His Coming is imminent, that 
 is, it is imminent in the sense, and only in the 
 sense that no one could possibly know the day 
 or the hour of this great event. He commanded 
 His disciples to watch for it, to be ready for the 
 Coming King. He says: *^But of that day and 
 hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of 
 heaven, but my Father only.'' (Matt. 24:36.) 
 And in verse 42 He says: *' Watch, therefore, for 
 ye know not what hour your Lord doth come." 
 Again in Matt. 25:13, ''Watch, therefore, for 
 ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein 
 the Son of man cometh." The Apostles, there- 
 fore, did not know the time of His Coming, and 
 how natural, as true disciples of Jesus, that they 
 should be looking for it. In so doing they proved 
 their loyalty to their Lord. 
 
 The Apostles never affirmed that Jesus was 
 coming in their day, but they did state, over and 
 over again, that they were looking, expecting, 
 watching for His Reappearance, as every true 
 Christian from that day to this has been looking 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 123 
 
 for Him, expecting Jesus to come back. This is 
 the true Christian attitude toward Jesus Christ. 
 It is: 
 
 1. An attitude of faith; 
 
 2. An attitude of obedience; 
 
 3. An attitude of hope (the blessed hope) ; 
 
 4. An attitude of expectant love; 
 
 5. An attitude of tranquil peace; 
 
 6. An attitude of holiness ; 
 
 7. An attitude of joy; 
 
 8. An attitude that is the great incentive to 
 service. 
 
 9. An attitude that transforms the common- 
 place and turns life into a gladsome song. 
 
 Had the Apostles done otherwise than to teach 
 that Jesus might come at any hour they would 
 have been unfaithful to their Lord. Believing in 
 His Coming proved their loyalty, as it is one of 
 the tests of true discipleship. Instead, therefore, 
 of using this expectant attitude of the disciples 
 as an argument against the Second Coming of 
 Christ, and as proof that the Apostles taught 
 that He would come in their day, it is rather the 
 strongest argument in behalf of His Personal 
 Coming, and an unanswerable argument at that. 
 But one of the facts in this connection which we 
 desire to stress is, that the Apostles never posi- 
 tively affirmed that Jesus would return in their 
 day. 
 
124 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Much Confusion of Thought 
 
 There exists to-day much confusion of thought 
 regarding the Second Coming of Christ. The 
 cause for this is obvious. One of the principal 
 reasons is because the pulpit, in most cases, has 
 been silent regarding it, and the theological semi- 
 naries also are disinclined to discuss it. During 
 the three years of the writer's attendance at a 
 certain seminary, he never heard the doctrine 
 mentioned, though the seminary is supposed to 
 be the place where the Bible is studied, and this 
 is one of the most conspicuous teachings in the 
 Word of God. The silence of the churches and 
 the seminaries is due to a number of reasons. 
 The pulpit is somewhat fearful of discussing a 
 question that may appear unpopular. It is so 
 easy to float with the current, and many preach- 
 ers prefer that to a struggle against error. They 
 seek the line of least resistance. For, let it be 
 remembered, to the world outside, and to the 
 world inside the church, this is rather an unpop- 
 ular doctrine. It ought, of course, to be the most 
 popular of all doctrines, but a sinning world and 
 a wordly church and pulpit never can love the 
 appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. To all such 
 this teaching would be decidedly awakening and 
 disturbing, hence the silence on the part of many. 
 It requires piety to teach this revelation and live 
 up to its high and holy demands. 
 
 Another cause of the confusion and silence, and 
 it might also be said, of the general ignorance re- 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 125 
 
 garding this truth, is due to the fact that there 
 are taught a variety of views as to our Lord's 
 Appearing, and most plain people have never 
 taken the time to study closely these various 
 opinions and learn what the Sacred Word says 
 about it, and thus arrive at an intelligent deci- 
 sion for themselves. Many persons do not even 
 know the difference between pre-millennial and 
 post-millennial. They have not examined closely 
 into the above points of view and they hold mth 
 total indifference any teaching that presents the 
 Coming as Personal and visible either as pre- 
 millennial or post-millennial. For the sake, 
 therefore, of clarity of thought we shall submit 
 definitions and fully explain the principal teach- 
 ings regarding the Second Coming of Christ. It 
 is believed that after the reader has studied 
 these he will be in a position to intelligently de- 
 cide that which is true or false regarding the 
 coming of our Lord. 
 
 POST-MILLENNIALISM 
 
 By post-millennialist is meant a person who 
 holds to the view that Jesus will not return until 
 first the Millennium has come. Those who believe 
 this maintain that the world is gradually becom- 
 ing better and, under the influence of the Gospel, 
 will finally become so highly civilized or Chris- 
 tianized, that all people everywhere, black and 
 white and yellow, Mohammedans, Buddhists, 
 Confucians, Parsees, Israelites, Brahmans, Athe- 
 
126 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 ists, Agnostics, Infidels, will have become follow- 
 ers of Christ — until, in other words, the last 
 human being will have been saved. The post- 
 millennialist believes that as a result of the in- 
 dividual evangelization of every human being the 
 peoples of the earth will have been transformed 
 into a perfect race, a heavenly Christian brother- 
 hood, a perfect socio-religious society that is 
 called in the Bible, the Millennium. And when the 
 perfect state will have come, then the Lord Jesus 
 will return to this earth in Personal Visible Ap- 
 pearance as King to rule over the nations as 
 **King of kings and Lord of lords. '^ This then 
 is what is known as post-millennialism. 
 
 Origin and Philosophy of Post-Millennialism 
 It is of interest to note that this view was 
 foreign to the followers of Christ until the 
 eighteenth century when it 
 
 was instituted by Daniel Whitby, an English divine, or pro- 
 claimed by him as a new hypothesis, namely, that the Church 
 would prosper and extend until the world should be converted, 
 and this triumph of the Church would constitute the Mil- 
 lennium; and that Jesus would not come until after the 
 Millennium. No wonder that he calls it a "new hypothesis" 
 for he himself bears testimony in his ''treatise on Traditions" 
 that the doctrine of the millennium, or the reign of Saints 
 on earth a thousand years, passed among the best of Chris- 
 tians for two hundred and fifty years, for a tradition 
 APOSTOLICAL, and as such, is delivered by many fathers 
 of the second and third century, who speak of it as the 
 tradition (teaching) of our Lord and His Apostles. 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 127 
 
 For want of space v/e refer the reader to "The Voice of 
 The Church," by D. T. Taylor, to show the long line of 
 eminent witnesses, embracing Hermas, Justin, and the Mar- 
 tyrs, Luther, Melanchthon, Mede, Milton, Bunyan, Burnett, 
 Watts, Wesley, Toplady, and a host of others, illustrious in 
 the annals of the Churcli, who, through the past eighteen cen- 
 turies, have borne overwhelming testimony to the truth of 
 the pre-millennial coming of Christ. (From "Jesus is Com- 
 ing," by W. E. Blackstone, pp. 23, 24.) 
 
 From the above it is clear why post-millennial- 
 ists seldom, if ever, teach the Coming of the 
 Lord, or, if they do teach it, this great event is 
 always preceded by the Millennimn. 
 
 The question is, "will the coming of Christ occur before 
 the Millennium, and may it, therefore, happen at any 
 moment; or will it occur after the Millennium, and thus be, 
 at least, a thousand years in the future, as post-millennial- 
 ists believe." (Blackstone, p. 24.) 
 
 To this school the Coming of Christ is **a far 
 oif divine event toward which the whole creation 
 moves," and that their business is to prepare 
 the world for it by first bringing in the Millen- 
 nium. According to this view, the preparation, 
 therefore, and not His Coming is of the greater 
 importance, which necessarily makes this doc- 
 trine of our Lord^s Return one of secondary 
 value and relegates it to the background. This 
 accounts for the indifference on the part of many 
 Christians to His Coming. Indeed, the American 
 Church is showing far more interest in the return 
 of our soldier boys from France than it has ever 
 
128 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 manifested in the greatest event in the future 
 history of man: the return of the Son of God. 
 
 This is why the post-millennialist never refers 
 to His Return as **that blessed hope" (Tit. 
 2:13), and why he considers the Second Advent 
 as rather visionary, and of small concern. The 
 claim is made that the world, in its present state, 
 does not need this message, that its deepest need 
 is a boost toward the natural brotherhood of 
 man. Of course they must admit that, judging 
 by the slow progress the Church has made dur- 
 ing the last nineteen hundred years, it will be 
 many millenniums yet before the Lord can come 
 back, before the earth will be turned into a Para- 
 dise, ready for the great King, unless, as they 
 say, * * the Church universal should suddenly wake 
 up and evangelize the world." Little wonder 
 why this glorious doctrine of our Lord's Return 
 has no power over the vast majority of Chris- 
 tians in America, when post-millennialism has 
 been for a century the view generally presented. 
 His appearing is the lost hope of modern Chris- 
 tianity. The powerful incentive to holiness, soul- 
 winning and missionary service which this doc- 
 trine brings cannot grip the hearts of Christians. 
 So little interest in His Coming is in evidence 
 that those whose testimony rings out clear and 
 strong on this ** blessed hope" are viewed with a 
 bit of suspicion and as a rather peculiar people. 
 They tell us that the Millennium will be brought 
 in through 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 129 
 
 the preaching of the Gospel plus good clean politics, a 
 League of Nations, perchance, better tenements, hospitals and 
 charitable institutions, through doctors, nurses, philanthro- 
 pists, trusts, labor unions, secret societies, temperance reform, 
 etc., etc. This is the only vision of post-millennialism. 
 
 Pre-Millennialism 
 
 By pre-millennialism is meant that the Lord 
 will return before the Millennium, that it will be 
 the manifestation of His power and glory as Son 
 of God and King and Judge that will finally usher 
 in the Millennium. Pre-millennialists affirm that 
 this is what the Scriptures plainly teach, namely 
 that the w^hole world will not be converted before 
 Christ returns, but that there will be, prior to, 
 His Second Advent, a great falling away, a time 
 of ** great distress among nations,*' and that the 
 man of sin (Anti-Christ) must first be revealed. 
 It was the Apostle Paul who said : 
 
 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall 
 not come, except there come a falling away first, and that 
 man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. "Who opposes 
 and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is 
 worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of 
 God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not 
 that when I was yet with you, I told you these things. And 
 now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in 
 his time. For the mystery of iniquity doeth already work: 
 only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of 
 the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed whom 
 the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of his mouth, and 
 shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. Even he 
 whose coming is after the workings of Satan with all power 
 and signs and lying wonders. (II Thess. 2:1:12.) 
 
130 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 This ought to settle the question whether the 
 world is to be converted before Christ returns. 
 Listen further to the words of the Apostle in 
 II Tim. 3:1: 
 
 In the last days perilous times shall come. 
 
 Perilous because of the indifference of the professing 
 Church, because of the waxing worse of evil men and se- 
 ducers, because in the world outside, of a time of fierceness, 
 unrest, confusion, war, as described by our Lord in' Matt. 
 24th chap., 
 
 as Dr. I. M. Haldeman reminds us in his book, 
 '^The Coming of Christ/' p. 136. 
 
 Pre-millennialists teach that the good and bad 
 will be here until the end of this age, the time of 
 the harvest, or the Second Coming of Christ, as 
 Jesus so clearly set forth in Matt. 13:37-42. 
 
 There is much loose and foolish talk about the 
 world growing better. The race can make moral 
 and spiritual progress only as men and women 
 are redeemed by the blood of Christ and born 
 anew by the work of the Holy Spirit. Education 
 cannot change the moral nature of man, neither 
 can environment redeem. Better clothes and 
 food and transportation are material advan- 
 tages; but these things cannot lift the sinning 
 world to God. Social and material improvement 
 are much to be desired, but these things cannot 
 change a bad man into a good man. 
 
 The pre-millennial view gives us a true science 
 of history, a proper interpretation of human 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 131 
 
 events and progress. We believe that God has 
 always been in history, but we also believe that 
 much of history has no God in it. The Devil 
 has had not a small share in the history of our 
 race, and is playing a big part in some of the 
 schemes of our present day. Sin and sorrow and 
 heartaches still make up much of the programme. 
 God can only get into those lives that welcome 
 Him, and many are still slamming the door of 
 the heart in His face. Human history has been 
 an incoming and receding tide. There is no 
 scientific or historical proof that man is any dif- 
 ferent to-day in nature from what he was thou- 
 sands of years before Christ came. With what 
 we believe is the passing, and finally mil be the 
 complete collapse of the theory of evolution, we 
 shall come back to a more sane view of the his- 
 tory and nature of man. Man hates and loves 
 to-day as he did in the time of Cain and Abel. 
 If the increase in crime proves anything it would 
 show that man has rather degenerated than ad- 
 vanced. In the United States crime is increasing 
 at an alarming rate, and has been for one hun- 
 dred years, yet in the face of this flowing current 
 of human blood, preachers and teachers are spin- 
 ning out their false theories of a rapidly ad- 
 vancing civilization. To hear them one would 
 get the impression that they are **only putting 
 it on,'* in order to appear as optimists, that this 
 is the best front to present in the presence of 
 serious facts which call for a true explanation. 
 
132 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 We would imagine, to hear those false teachers, 
 that the birds sing more sweetly to-day than they 
 did in the Garden of Eden, that the rain and sun 
 and atmosphere are more refreshing. But babies 
 were as cunning and sweet and intelligent in the 
 ante-diluvian world as they are to-day in Amer- 
 ica, and, judging by the decline in the birth rate, 
 our people probably think babies were a bit more 
 attractive and welcome in the long, long ago. We 
 are told that the devilish art of strangling the 
 God-given infant to death, long before it has a 
 chance to defend itself, was unknown to the 
 wicked ancients; and this form of murder is one 
 of the signs of a world rapidly growing better 
 under the influence of modern education and civi- 
 lization? No, men are ever in nature the same, 
 only as they are saved by the power of God. 
 Life with its joy and sorrow, aspiration and dis- 
 appointment, progress and retrogression make 
 up the circle from birth to growth and maturity, 
 decay and death. What we need to see are facts 
 and not fine spun theories which misrepresent 
 life. The Word of God has given us the only 
 true picture of humanity and the history of our 
 race. 
 
 Just prior to the Great War post-millennialists 
 declared that humanity had made too much prog- 
 resis to ever have another war, and while they 
 were denying the Word of God, the most terrible 
 catastrophe of all time broke loose upon the 
 world. And, for a short period, these prophets 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 133 
 
 were silenced. But now they are returning to 
 their false philosophy. More human beings, men, 
 women and helpless children were either killed 
 outright or slowly starved to death, as a result of 
 this war, than were destroyed by war during the 
 first eight hundred years of the Christian era. 
 And to-day, when the foundations of society and 
 civilization are tottering, men are shutting their 
 eyes to facts, and crying, *'See! See! the Mil- 
 lennium is nearly here! Perhaps to-morrow it 
 will be ushered in!*' 
 
 Many religious teachers talk as if they had 
 only just awakened from a long, long sleep, and 
 are oblivious to what has been going on and is 
 now transpiring on the earth. Our modern world 
 is on a volcano, and who knows what may happen 
 to-morrow! During the last five years man^s sin 
 has caused 14,000,000 men, women and children 
 to go to their graves. Eivers of blood have been 
 shed. The heart of the world is still wrung with 
 grief. God forewarned of all this in His Book, 
 but men are so stupid and blind that they will 
 not see. By the side of this groaning ocean of 
 suffering humanity they think they almost hear 
 the music of the Millennium. 
 
 They tell us that the great Allied Nations gave 
 their sons in a sacred cause, and that this was a 
 holy war. Undoubtedly it was, if war is ever 
 holy. But they forget that our enemies say the 
 same of their sacred dead, and that this has been 
 the conviction regarding every war in history on 
 
134 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 the part of those who have been called on to 
 mourn for those they loved. But war is war, and 
 **war is hell/' and war will continue so long as 
 men are out of harmony with God. No human 
 Leagues will be able to alter the fact. Man 
 dominated by sin has ever failed, but there is 
 coming a day when war will have been abolished, 
 and man's foes will have been put beneath the 
 Conqueror's feet, when even death itself will be 
 destroyed, and that glad day is here when the 
 Great Deliverer returns. The hope of the Church 
 and the world is in the Coming Lord. 
 
 When Constantine was converted, and the Roman Empire 
 became, nominally. Christian it appeared to many that the 
 Millennium had come, and that they had the Kingdom on 
 earth. The Church, hand in hand now with the world, 
 plunged into the dark ages, until awakened by God's great 
 prophets in the sixteenth century, who began to proclaim 
 again the comforting hope and blessed promise of the Coming 
 of Christ; and since that time the subject so long neglected, 
 has been studied and preached with increasing interest. 
 Indeed in the last two centuries, it seems to have risen (with 
 the doctrine of salvation by simple faith in a crucified 
 Saviour) into somewhat the same prominence which it occu- 
 pied in the early Church. God be praised for it. But about 
 the year seventeen hundred a new error crept into the Church, 
 to wit: post-millennialism. ("Jesus is Coming," p. 23.) 
 
 We have no space to submit further proof that 
 Christ will come before the Millennium. We here 
 submit a list of a few of the many passages which 
 clearly set forth this fact from various points of 
 view. If the reader still has doubt as to the 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 135 
 
 heresy of post-millennialism he should study 
 earnestly these passages. 
 
 The Anti-Christ is pre-milliennial — see II Thess. 2:8. In 
 Matt. 24:29-31— The coming of the Son of God is said to 
 be immediately after the Tribulation. But this Tribulation 
 is pre-millennial or before the reign of peace. Matt. 24:21; 
 Luke 21:24, etc.; Isa. 24:16-23, and 60, 2, etc. Therefore, 
 the coming is pre-millennial. 
 
 The true Church is a persecuted, suffering, cross-bearing 
 people (John 15:19-21 and 16:33) thereunto appointed (I 
 Thess. 3:3) so that "all that will live godly in Christ Jesus 
 shall suffer persecution" (II Tim. 3:12); and this will con- 
 tinue until Christ comes (II Thess. 1:4-10) which precludes 
 any Millennium until after His Coming. We are nowhere 
 in the New Testament directed to look for the Millennium 
 before the coming of Christ, but are taught that evil men 
 and seducers will wax worse and worse, that as it was in 
 the days of Noah and Lot so shall it be at the coming of 
 the Son of Man. (Matt. 13; II Pet. 3:3-4; I Tim. 4:1-2; 
 II Tim. 3:13; II Tim. 4:3-4; Luke 17:26-37; Matt. 24:37-51.) 
 And such is the number of the tares that theii' destruction 
 before the har\Tst would endanger the childi'en of the King- 
 dom. This absolutely precludes the idea of a millennial reign 
 of righteousness in this dispensation. 
 
 But while we are not told to look for a Millennium, we 
 are repeatedly and solemnly enjoined to look for the return 
 of the Lord. So again we conclude that His return must be 
 pre-millennial. The millennial kingdom will be a literal reign 
 of Christ on the earth and not simply a spiritual exaltation 
 of the Church. 
 
 "A King shall reign in righteousness" (Isa. 32:1; Jer. 
 23:1-6), "upon the throne of David" (Isa. 9:6-7; Luke 
 
136 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 1:32-33), "in Jerusalem" (Jer. 3:17; Zeeh. 14:16). The 
 Apostles shall sit upon the twelve thrones (Matt. 19:28) 
 and the Saints shall reign on the earth (Rev. 5:10). (From 
 "Jesus Is Coming," by Dr. Blackstone.) 
 
 But did not Christ return in His spiritual kingdom at Pen- 
 tecost as John the Baptist said, "the Kingdom of Heaven is 
 at hand." "At hand." Here is precisely the same as is used 
 in Romans 13:12. "The day is at hand," yet nineteen cen- 
 turies has passed and still the day has not come. Simi- 
 larly, James 5:8, "The coming of the Lord draweth nigh," 
 or is at hand — it is the same word in I Pet. 4:7, "The end 
 of all things is at hand." Who would pretend that the word 
 does not at least permit not only the lapse of a long inter- 
 vening period between the possibility of other dispensations 
 intervening as in last quotation from Peter. (A. C. Gaebelin, 
 in "Our Hope.") 
 
 FuETHER Cause of Confusion 
 
 Another cause of confusion is found in the fact 
 that the friends who do not believe in the Coming 
 of Christ make this great matter appear as small, 
 narrow, literal, local, circumscribed, or human- 
 like. They say, **It does not seem to be like 
 God^s big universal way of doing things,'' thus 
 they affirm, *Hhis doctrine dishonors the Lord 
 and man's highest intelligence. It seems," they 
 say, **to be out of harmony with the quiet order 
 of God we see everywhere. And because of all 
 this, it is most difficult to believe in a Personal 
 Physical Manifestation or Coming of Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 But what are the facts as to this objection? As 
 to nature and her phenomena we find that God's 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 137 
 
 plan therein has in it sudden and decidedly 
 abrupt changes, in cyclone, shooting stars, elec- 
 tric storms, and earthquake, when, in the latter 
 case, whole communities are sometimes de- 
 stroyed. And all this strange phenomena in 
 nature is necessary. Nature seems to be full of 
 the clysmic, the startling, the sensational, all of 
 which is in perfect harmony with the order or 
 plan of God. And why object to the sudden and 
 startling in the higher kingdom when it is part of 
 the Divine plan in the lower order? 
 
 This, however, is not the principal cause for 
 the confusion which exists regarding the Coming 
 of Christ. It lies much deeper, and may be dis- 
 covered in part at least in a false presentation 
 of this glorious truth. For instance, who has 
 not heard the idea expressed that Jesus is com- 
 ing in a physical body, yet nothing could be 
 farther from the truth. The student is asked to 
 go slowly here, to think with great care, for this 
 matter calls for the most earnest consideration. 
 
 To remove this difficulty we start by saying: 
 there are only two bodies in earth and heaven, 
 the physical and the spirihial body. Men are liv- 
 ing in the former, the earthly, Jesus has for the 
 center of His Personality the latter, the heavenly, 
 or the spiritual body, or better, as the New Tes- 
 tament says, the immortal, the glorified body. 
 The earthly, the physical body, is in harmony 
 with the lower order, a perfect vehicle for man^s 
 physical environment and earthly tenancy, but 
 
138 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 the heavenly, the immortal body, is in perfect 
 harmony with the higher order, the Kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 Onr Lord's body has the human or physical 
 appearance only, and we are far from certain 
 that it has all the appearance of his earthly 
 body. We must say that there are at least some 
 resemblance, some marks or signs of identity. 
 The nail prints are in His hands, the spear mark 
 is in His side. Thomas saw these. (John 
 20:25-27.) With this resurrection symbol of the 
 triumph of man over corruption, as seen in 
 Christ, our Lord could enter into fellowship, in 
 a most personal way, with His disciples. He 
 could eat with them and talk with them. So far 
 as the New Testament reveals, it was a body that 
 had a resemblance to the body of His humiliation, 
 but it was not a physical body for it had no blood 
 in it. In this body Jesus could appear and dis- 
 appear suddenly, but this could not be done in a 
 physical body. There is now in the resurrection 
 body no sign of hunger, thirst, weakness, or 
 fatigue. It had no need of rest. It could now 
 navigate unhindered by gravitation, and move 
 more quickly than the sun-ray, the lightning, or 
 the wireless message. Marvelous body! Glorious 
 body! 
 
 Let us not, however, wonder at this new body 
 of Jesus, for it is little more marvelous than 
 some of the remarkable things we see happening 
 in nature. The caterpillar yesterday is the beau- 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 139 
 
 tiful butterfly to-day. The tiny germ of nine 
 months ago is the charming baby to-day in its 
 mother *s arms. Who understands the beauty, 
 wisdom and greatness of God^s works? The 
 Apostle Paul says: *^ There are also celestial 
 bodies and bodies terrestrial'' (1 Cor. 15:40), 
 but these bodies are different in nature, function 
 and glory. (Verses 41-50.) There is an onward 
 and upward movement from the mortal to the im- 
 mortal body in the Kingdom of God. Yet some 
 might justly object to this application of the term, 
 evolution. We do not use it as such. However 
 that may be, we can all find great comfort in the 
 Apostle's sermon on the Eesurrection, wherein 
 he reveals the importance, order, method and 
 victory of the new immortal body. (I Cor., chap. 
 15.) This is also the body the saints will have 
 in the resurrection life, and which is presented 
 more fully in the chapter on The Eesurrection. 
 We are confining our thoughts here to the new 
 body of Jesus, and the important bearing this fact 
 must have on the reasonableness, the rationality 
 of the Second Coming, or of His Glorious Ap- 
 pearing. (Titus 2:13.) Let us therefore rid our 
 thought of the impression that the Lord will re- 
 turn in a physical body, for as the Apostle Paul 
 says, **Now this I say brethren that flesh and 
 blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God." 
 (I Cor. 15:50.) Of this glorious body, belonging 
 to the higher order, into which the saved shall 
 enter, we know absolutely nothing, only that it is 
 
140 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 immortal and glorious, indestructible and eter- 
 nal. But beyond these general facts silence is 
 becoming. It is the symbol through which the 
 Second Person in the Godhead manifests Himself 
 in His relation to man, thus showing us in a 
 never-ending way His own eternal love. We are 
 not saying that Jesus Christ is wholly confined 
 to this body, for being God in nature the attribute 
 of omnipresence must be His. But His infinite 
 Personality and Heart are ever revealed to men 
 through the exalted, glorified human body. 
 
 We have dwelt at length on this point, in order 
 to stress the fact that the Coming of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ will not be in a physical, but in an 
 immortal body, and that it is as much in harmony 
 with God's order in His Kingdom that His Son 
 should thus manifest Himself again as is the 
 earthly manifestation to-day on the part of men 
 by means of earthly physical bodies. 
 
 God has ever manifested Himself to men in 
 symbols. Nature herself is a vast collection of 
 symbols in which or by which God reveals His 
 wisdom, power and love. Even the work of the 
 Divine Spirit in this dispensation is to reveal to 
 us Jesus, the earthly, human, suffering Jesus, 
 and the Jesus of the Resurrection and the glory 
 and the Second Coming. Man cannot conceive of 
 existence aside from some kind of symbolism. 
 The first Advent of our Lord was in a body 
 which was subject to natural laws, the second Ad- 
 vent will be in a body which is not subject to 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 141 
 
 natural laws. It will not be a physical body that 
 shall descend to Mount Olivet, but aji immortal 
 body, the radiance and glory of which will sur- 
 round our planet. As He tried to express it to 
 His disciples in Matt. 24:27, ''For as the light- 
 ning Cometh out of the east and shineth even 
 unto the west; so shall also the coming of the 
 Son of Man be.^' In verse 30 He adds: ''And 
 then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in 
 heaven" — the sign is the glorified human body. 
 The redeemed mil know Jesus by that sign. Here 
 He comes, our real Brother, our exalted Head, 
 yet very God of very God. Let not the thought- 
 less say that this is clysmic and sensational. 
 Doubtless His Coming will be all that to those 
 who reject Him. But infinitely more than the 
 sweet sun-burst of the morning light is to our 
 awakening vision will the glory of His Coming 
 be to those who love Him — "unto all them that 
 love his appearing." (I Tim. 4:8.) 
 
 From what has been said we conclude "that 
 beyond the possibility of a doubt, our Lord in- 
 tended His disciples to understand, that for some 
 great purpose, and in some visible manner, and 
 at some unknown future time, He would come 
 back again." 
 
 This chapter is concluded with some general 
 observations. 
 
 1. God did not reveal to His Son when He was 
 on earth the time of His return to this planet, 
 but He did reveal to Kim what the state of the 
 
142 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 world would be prior to His return, and the signs 
 that shall precede His Second Advent. 
 
 Admitting what has been said to be true, 
 does not permit to argue against a Visible Com- 
 ing, nor to affirm that the time of His Second 
 Advent is not now known to Jesus Christ. Doubt- 
 less after He was glorified in Heaven, the 
 Father made clear to His Son the time of His 
 Second Advent. 
 
 2. The destruction of Jerusalem of which our 
 Lord prophesied in Matt., 24th chapter, and 
 Luke, 21st chapter, was doubtless intended as a 
 type of His Second Coming, to wit: it would be 
 a time of judgment. 
 
 3. That the Second Coming did not occur at 
 the destruction of Jerusalem is known by the fact 
 that there was then no Resurrection of the right- 
 eous dead as Paul makes clear will occur at the 
 Coming of Christ. (I Thess. 4:17.) 
 
 4. A reign of righteousness and peace did not 
 come to this earth at the destruction of Jerusa- 
 lem, and such a reign is revealed in Rev. 20:5-6 
 when our Lord returns, or soon thereafter. 
 
 5. Jesus Christ came in judgment to the Jews, 
 as a nation, at the destruction of Jerusalem, but 
 there was no General Judgment of the righteous 
 at this time, as will occur at the Second Coming 
 of Christ. This is the Judgment of rewards, and 
 on the basis of works, and will take place at the 
 Marriage Supper of the Lamb, immediately after 
 the Second Coming of Christ. (I Thess. 4:17.) 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 143 
 
 6. Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 a.d., but we 
 have a distinct prophecy of the Coming of Christ 
 about the year 95 a.d., the time when John wrote 
 the Book of Revelation. (Rev. 20:6.) 
 
 The Holy Spibit and the Second Coming 
 
 Further, the coming of the Holy Spirit could 
 not have been the fulfillment of the prophecy of 
 our Lord^s Return, and for the following rea- 
 sons: 
 
 The work of the Holy Spirit was revealed by 
 Jesus to be: 
 
 1. To convict the world of sin because men re- 
 ject Christ as their Saviour; but Jesus when He 
 Comes will destroy or banish sin. (John 16:8-9.) 
 
 2. The Holy Spirit will convict men of their 
 need of righteousness, but righteousness, after 
 the Coming of Christ, A\ill become universal. 
 (John 16:10.) 
 
 3. The Holy Spirit comes to convict the world 
 of God's righteous Judgment; but Jesus at His 
 Coming will execute Judgment. (John 16:11.) 
 
 4. The Holy Spirit comes to reveal Jesus as 
 Saviour; but Jesus at His Coming will conclude 
 the age of gospel grace. (John 16:13-14) (Rev. 
 22:11.) 
 
 5. The Holy Spirit when He comes does not 
 destroy death; but Jesus \vill abolish death at 
 His Coming. (Heb. 2:14-15; John 3:8; II Tim. 
 1:10.) 
 
 6. The Holy Spirit works unseen ; but the Com- 
 
144 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 ing of our Lord will be a Visible Event, when 
 He will be ** honored in His people/' (II Thess. 
 1:10; John 16:13; Eev. 1:7.) 
 
 7. The sign of the coming of the Holy Spirit 
 was cloven tongues like as of fire which rested 
 on the disciples; but the sign of the Coming of 
 Christ will be His own visible glory in the 
 heavens. (Acts 2:3; Matt. 24:30.) 
 
 8. Many of the prophecies of our Lord's Com- 
 ing were made after the advent of the Holy Spirit 
 on Pentecost, including all these found in the New 
 Testament outside the four Gospels. This fact 
 alone is sufficient to prove beyond a doubt the fal- 
 lacious contention of the New Theology, namely: 
 that the prophecies of the Second Coming of 
 Christ are wholly fulfilled in the work of the Holy 
 Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit and the 
 Work of Christ, as revealed in the New Testa- 
 ment, are in a sense as distinct as the office of 
 President and Secretary of State in these United 
 States; and only the misinformed would confuse 
 or identify them as one. One in Nature they are, 
 but not one in function, though working co-ordi- 
 natively in the great Trinity of God. 
 
 This is the Church Age, not the age of the 
 triumphant Kingdom. This is the Day when the 
 Holy Spirit of God is here to build up the re- 
 deemed Church, or the Mystical Body of Christ. 
 The Day of the universal Kingdom will follow 
 the Coming of Christ, when the real King and 
 His Kingdom will be manifested on earth. 
 
SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 145 
 
 Toward this glorious consummation we advance, 
 and thus we pray: ''Thy Kingdom come/' And 
 while we labor and wait and watch, let us yield 
 ourselves to the Holy Spirit who represents 
 Jesus here to-day, for only can we honor and 
 worship the absent Lord as we honor His Rep- 
 resentative. Let Him preside in the work of the 
 Church. 
 
 Soon our day of suffering and trial will be 
 over, for the Great King Himself will come, and 
 all will be changed. Our night mil be turned 
 into morning, our sorrow into joy, our tears into 
 laughter, our fear into glad Hosannahs! The 
 sound of His voice will not be as the thunders, 
 but resonant mth the tones of eternal love, the 
 sweetest music in Heaven. The manifestation of 
 His presence will not alarm His loved ones. The 
 light that shall illumine the world will not dazzle 
 our eyes; it will be sweet and effulgent, softer 
 than the holiest sunset, or the twilight glow; it 
 will comfort and quiet, transform and cheer, for 
 it will be the very light of God. Day of exulta- 
 tion, for all the earth shall know that the Lord 
 God is here in His might! This, then, beloved 
 children of God, is no time for despair. What if 
 the earth should reek and groan beneath the 
 curse of man's sin, and the blackness of the mid- 
 night should convulse our social order, and men 
 should rave and oppress and destroy! Ring out 
 sweet bells of joy! Ring out sweet bells of an 
 eternal emancipation! Ring out sweet bells of a 
 
146 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 happy never-ending reunion, for the Lord of 
 Glory is coming for His own I 
 
 It may be at morn, when the day is awaking, 
 When sunlight thro' darkness and shadows are breaking, 
 That Jesus will come in the fullness of glory. 
 To receive from the world "His own." 
 
 It may be at midday, it may be at twilight, 
 It may be perchance, that the blackness of midnight 
 Will burst into light in the blaze of His glory. 
 When Jesus receives "His own." 
 
 While its hosts cry Hosanna, from heaven descending 
 With glorified saints and the angels attending, 
 With grace on His brow, like a halo of glory. 
 Will Jesus receive "His own." 
 
 Oh, joy! Oh, delight! Should we go without dying; 
 No sickness, no sadness, no dread, and no crying; 
 Caught up thro' the clouds, with our Lord into glory, 
 When Jesus receives "His own." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MODERNISM AND THE RESURRECTION 
 
 It has been seen, according to Modernism or the 
 modern rationalism, that the Coming of Christ is 
 a continuous event which culminates at death. 
 We shall now examine this theology further 
 as to its teachings concerning the Resurrection. 
 It will be seen to be a denial of the Resurrection 
 of the body. The New Theology teaches that 
 God will never raise up man's body from the 
 dust, in the Day called in Scripture, the Resur- 
 rection Day, or the Last Day, and give to man a 
 new, a glorified, an Immortal Body. 
 
 Resurrection at Death 
 
 The New Theology teaches that the Resurrec- 
 tion occurs at death for both the righteous and 
 the wicked. The late Dr. Clarke says: **If we 
 accept the view of Christ's Coming that has been 
 expressed on previous pages, we shall naturally 
 think that each human being's resurrection takes 
 place at death." (Page 410, Ch. Theo.) Again 
 he states: **It is most probable that the human 
 spirit will arise from death to the life beyond 
 
 147 
 
148 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 with an organism adapted to its uses in that 
 life.^' (Page 409, Ch. Theo.) And again: ^at 
 is not taught that Christ's Resurrection added a 
 new element to human destiny. '^ (Page 407, Ch. 
 Theo.) These references furnish us with a clear 
 view of the position of Modernism as to the 
 Resurrection. Let us examine these teachings in 
 the light of Scripture and see if they have any- 
 thing on which to stand. 
 
 There is not a hint in Scripture that the Resur- 
 rection takes place at death. Further, we have 
 not the slightest reason to suppose that the New 
 Testament writers attached any other meaning 
 to the Resurrection than the reviving of dead 
 bodies. The term *^ Resurrection '' cannot be 
 Scripturally used if applied only to the spirit of 
 man, yet this is the only sense in which the New 
 Theology uses it. They say that it is the spirit 
 of man and not his body that is raised up at 
 death, not that the spirit dies, but that it passes 
 on or is raised up, having been clothed with the 
 new body or organism at the moment of its de- 
 parture from the human body. But the New 
 Testament writers never speak of the Resurrec- 
 tion of a living spirit at death; with them it is 
 always the ** Resurrection of the dead,'* some- 
 thing that is dead and not something that never 
 dies. Moreover it is always presented as an 
 event that occurs, not at death, but that shall take 
 place at some future time. If the Resurrection 
 takes place at death, as the New Theology affirms, 
 
MODERNISM AND THE RESURRECTION 149 
 
 then it is an ever-occurring event, a past, present 
 and future event of perpetual occurrence, taking 
 place as often as a human spirit passes out of the 
 body. But, as stated, there is no support in 
 Scripture for this speculation. 
 
 To make clear that the Resurrection does not 
 take place at death, and that it has not occurred 
 in the past, but is an event of the future, note the 
 Apostle PauPs words: **Who concerning the 
 truth have erred, saying that the Resurrection is 
 past already; and overthrew the faith of some.*' 
 (II Tim. 2:18.) It is inconceivable that the 
 Apostle Paul would have used such words if the 
 Resurrection takes place at death. If this were 
 the case, he would have said, '*The Resurrection 
 is an event of continuous occurrence as it takes 
 place at death.'' The only possible conclusion 
 from the Apostle's words is, that the Resurrec- 
 tion had not taken place up to that time, that it 
 is an event of the future. It might be added here, 
 if God decreed the Resurrection to take place at 
 death, why did He make an exception to His uni- 
 versal plan as seen by the time of the Resurrec- 
 tion of Christ? 
 
 Resurrection and Second Coming Simultaneous 
 Events 
 Note further that the Resurrection and the Sec- 
 ond Coming of Christ are simultaneous occur- 
 rences in New Testament teaching. The New 
 Theology so views them in assigning these events 
 
150 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 to the hour of death. But we have seen that these 
 events do not occur at death, hence we must look 
 to the future for both the Resurrection and the 
 Second Coming of Christ. And here the Scrip- 
 tures blaze the way. The Apostle Paul associates 
 them together in his first letter to the Church at 
 Corinth. He says: **B'ut every man in his own 
 order; Christ the first fruits (from the dead); 
 afterward they that are Christ's at His Coming. 
 Then cometh the end. (I Cor. 15:23-24.) Here 
 are three events occurring simultaneously: 
 
 The Second Coming of Christ; 
 
 The Resurrection of the Saints ; 
 
 The End of the Gospel Age. 
 
 And this is in keeping with the Scriptures 
 throughout. 
 
 New Testament Position 
 
 What does the New Testament teach as to the 
 Resurrection of the body? Have we ample rea- 
 son for believing that God will raise the dead? 
 Well, God has already raised some from among 
 the dead. He raised up Jesus Christ and others. 
 But do the Scriptures teach that there is a Resur- 
 rection for all men? To this our Lord replies. 
 He was affirming a General Resurrection and the 
 men of His day marveled, they shook their wise 
 heads and said, ** Impossible,'' or, as our Modern- 
 ists would say, ** unscientific, sheerest nonsense." 
 But to the rationalists in our Lord's day we hear 
 Him replj; ** Marvel rot at this; for the hour 
 
MODERNISM AND THE RESURRECTION 151 
 
 is coming, in which all that are in their graves 
 shall hear His voice, and they shall come forth.'' 
 (John 5:28.) The New Theology speculators 
 were a bit shocked at this startling announce- 
 ment. We can fancy that they ridiculed the Man 
 of the Open Grave, saying: **This fellow is igno- 
 rant, he never went to college, he is not familiar 
 with the latest scientific works, he has not 
 brushed up against university men, and is out of 
 touch with modern thought.*' But we hear Jesus 
 say: **Do not wonder at this, for the time is com- 
 ing when all who are in their graves will hear 
 His voice and will come out." When He speaks, 
 we shall hear His voice and come forth to Judg- 
 ment and to Glory. Father will come out. 
 Mother will come out. Loved ones will come out. 
 They will all come out. No one will be missing 
 there. And to put double emphasis an this great 
 event Jesus adds: ''And this is the Father's will 
 which hath sent me, that of all which He hath 
 given me I should lose nothing, but should raise 
 it up again at the Last Day." (John 6:39.) In 
 verse 40 He says: ''And this is the will of Him 
 that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, 
 and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life ; 
 and I will raise him up at the Last Day." The 
 following facts are clearly revealed: 
 
 1. It will be a Resurrection of dead bodies. 
 
 2. It will occur on the Last Day. 
 
 3. Immortality for the entire man, for body, 
 
152 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE) 
 
 soul and spirit, is conditioned on the Resurrec- 
 tion of the saints, and is never spoken of as be- 
 longing to the unsaved. The unsaved in Hell 
 have everlasting existence, but they have not an 
 immortal body. They are not glorified. Even 
 the state of their existence is called in Scripture 
 ** everlasting punishment,'' *^The Second Death, '^ 
 '^everlasting destruction," etc. 
 
 Further, we should not overlook the fact that 
 dead bodies were raised up in our Lord's day on 
 earth. When He raised Lazarus He designated 
 to Himself a new name. To assure Mary and 
 Martha of His mission He said: **I am the Resur- 
 rection and the Life," that is as if He had said: 
 **I have power in Myself to raise the dead and 
 impart the Glorified Life, the Immortal Life." 
 At the Saviour's death God gave witness to its 
 acceptance as an Atonement for sin, by raising 
 up some of the saints. **A^d the graves were 
 opened; and many bodies of the saints which 
 slept arose, and came out of the graves after His 
 resurrection, and went into the holy city, and ap- 
 peared unto many." (Matt. 27:52.) 
 
 The Immortal Body 
 
 And we should not fail to see that Immortality 
 for the entire man is conditioned on his life in 
 Christ, that is, for body, soul and spirit, and that 
 it is always associated in the New Testament 
 with the Resurrection of the Saints. Immortality 
 
MODERNISM AND THE RESURRECTION 15S 
 
 in the Bible, in its relation to man, never means 
 endless existence aside from this Glorified Body, 
 but rather a glorified existence with Christ in the 
 New Immortal Body. This is a truth that should 
 not be forgotten. Dr. Clarke says: **It is not 
 taught that Christ's Resurrection added a new 
 element of human destiny. (Page 407, Ch. Theo.) 
 But over against this New Theology we must 
 place the authority of the Apostle Paul. He says : 
 **For if we have been planted together in the 
 likeness of His death, we shall be also in the like- 
 ness of His Resurrection." (Rom. 6:5.) Here 
 then is added a new element of infinite value, 
 namely: likeness to Christ's Resurrection. In 
 other words, the new element added is, an Im- 
 mortal Body. No hint is given in the Scriptures 
 of this Immortal Body aside from the redeemed 
 in Christ and His Resurrection. As a commen- 
 tary on this glorious truth, the Apostle again 
 stated: **But now is Christ risen from the dead, 
 and become the first-fruits of them that slept. 
 For since by man came death, by man came also 
 the Resurrection of the dead. And as we have 
 borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear 
 the image of the heavenly. (I Cor. 15:20, 21, 
 49.) Again: *^And He is before all things, and 
 by Him all things consist : And He is the head of 
 the body, the Church; Who is the beginning, the 
 firstborn from the dead: that in all things He 
 might have the pre-eminence.'' (Col. 1:17-18.) 
 In the light of these passages, we affirm again 
 
154 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 that Christ's Resurrection added a new element 
 to human destiny, namely, an Immortal Body. 
 
 Here then is the summary of what we have 
 already learned of the Resurrection : 
 
 1. The Resurrection does not occur at death 
 but is an event of the future. 
 
 2. Jesus Christ was raised up from the dead. 
 
 3. This was the first Resurrection of its kind 
 that has ever occurred in human history, because 
 in Christ we see the first Immortal and Glorified 
 Body of human appearance, a type of the New 
 Bodies which His saints shall have in the Resur- 
 rection. 
 
 4. Christ's Resurrection was the first-fruits of 
 those who are at rest. In other words, it shows 
 the Saints what they are to be in the Resurrection 
 Body. 
 
 5. Being an Immortal Body it was the first of 
 a new race of redeemed men, as the body of 
 Adam was the first of a new race of human 
 bodies. 
 
 6. Likeness to Christ means identity with Him 
 in this new Immortal Body. 
 
 7. Christ being the Head of the Body, the 
 Church, it follows that the Body must be pos- 
 sessed with the same Immortal Life as the Head. 
 
 8. Likeness thus to Christ in the Immortal 
 Body is the ultimate of redemption, in so far as 
 it has been revealed to us in the Word of God. 
 
MODERNISM AND THE RESURRECTION 155 
 
 It was a glimpse of this New Immortal Body 
 which David had when he said : * * I shall be satis- 
 fied when I awake with Thy likeness/' (Ps. 
 17:15.) As our Lord's death is the basis of our 
 forgiveness and reconciliation, so likemse His 
 Resurrection is the pledge of our Salvation and 
 Resurrection in an Immortal Body. 
 
 Only in Christ is man Immortal, that is, in the 
 Scriptural meaning of this term, and as used in 
 these pages. Man exists outside of Christ, but 
 he is not Immortal. If we belong to Christ, that 
 is, if we have been made anew by the operation 
 of the Holy Spirit, if we have been translated 
 out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom 
 of God's dear Son, then **This corruptible must 
 put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on 
 immortality." (I Cor. 15:53.) Surely a new ele- 
 ment has been added to humanity by the Resur- 
 rection of Christ, viz., an Immortal Body. It is 
 clear, therefore, that the New Theology is in con- 
 flict with the New Testament in its teaching on 
 the Resurrection. 
 
 Paul's Consistency 
 
 Again, it should not be forgotten that the 
 Apostle Paul's teaching on the Resurrection is 
 consistent throughout. His words in II Cor. 
 5:1-4, which in part reads: **For we know that, 
 if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dis- 
 solved, we have a building of God, a house not 
 made wHh hands, eternal in the heaven??," etc, 
 
166 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 cannot be used as a denial or refutation of his 
 other teachings on the Eesurrection, as seems to 
 be claimed by the New Theology. These words 
 by the Apostle Paul are somewhat obscure, the 
 meaning of which is by no means as clear as his 
 other teaching on the Resurrection; nevertheless, 
 they are in no wise a denial of the Resurrection 
 of the body. 
 
 If these words can be construed as suggesting 
 the possibility of a new body for man to inhabit 
 at the hour of death, then this new body, or to 
 use the Apostle's words, this ** house which is 
 from Heaven '' (verse 2), cannot be the Resur- 
 rection Body, and can serve only as a temporary 
 organism or vehicle for the spirit of man between 
 death and the Resurrection, after which man will 
 get his permanent, his Glorified Body in which 
 he will forever dwell. By no law or principle of 
 exegesis can we make the Apostle's words here 
 define his idea of the Resurrection Body. Doubt- 
 less the idea prominent in the Apostle's mind is 
 that God in His own gracious infinite provision 
 will not leave His child alone at the hour of 
 death, but will fully protect and provide for the 
 wants of the spirit of man at that hour. This 
 is the fact that should be emphasized here in this 
 connection, and not the precise way in which God 
 will do this service or make His provision. The 
 Apostle Paul's words are somewhat ambiguous 
 as to just what he means by this ** house from 
 Heaven.'* One thing is evident that he did not 
 
MODERNISM AND THE RESURRECTION 157 
 
 have in mind the Resurrection Body, and no hon- 
 est interpreter will so construe them. Some in- 
 terpreters claim that ''this house which is from 
 Heaven'^ means that God has a dwelling-place 
 for His child to inhabit at the hour of death, in 
 the heavenly world. 
 
 Now note, it is this somewhat obscure passage 
 at which the New Theology grasps to help them 
 bolster up their theory that the Resurrection 
 occurs at death, while they brush aside all the 
 other teachings of God's Word on this glorious 
 doctrine. But we ask, why do they thus treat 
 the Bible? The answer is clear. It is the same 
 old story over again. It is an illustration of how 
 the evolutionist uses the Scriptures. This soli- 
 tary passage is used because, to the new theolo- 
 gian, it seems more in harmony with the theory 
 of evolution than do the other teachings in the 
 New Testament regarding the Resurrection. We 
 have shown heretofore that the evolutionist is 
 consistent with his working hypothesis, his theory 
 of evolution, on which his New Theology has 
 largely been constructed. It is the same illus- 
 tration over and over again of how these men 
 exalt the wisdom of men above the Word of God. 
 These theologians tell us that the old doctrine of 
 the Resurrection is unscientific ; but all such loud- 
 sounding, unproved, and unprovable assertions 
 amount to nothing. Science is totally ignorant of 
 how God works in the world unseen, as it is igno- 
 rant also of the processes of life which we %qq 
 
158 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 before our eyes every day. It is futile and fool- 
 ish to claim that God cannot create a New Body 
 at the hour of the Resurrection, with which to 
 clothe the Spirit of man. While the new theologian 
 denies this old doctrine and refers to it as un- 
 scientific, that God should create a New Body 
 at the Resurrection hour, yet to them it is scien- 
 tific for God to create a new body at the hour 
 of death. Their reasoning on this matter is, that 
 God can do this at the hour of death but He can- 
 not do it at some future time ! Oh, the logic, the 
 wisdom, the science of the New Theology I Say, 
 my friend, can you not furnish words sufiiciently 
 ironic to fully portray or describe the reasoning 
 process of these scientific new theologians? Con- 
 gratulations to the profound science of Mod- 
 ernism I 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE NEW THEOLOGY AND THE JUDGMENTS 
 
 We shall now take up the doctrine of the Judg- 
 ment. The New Theology approaches this doc- 
 trine as it does all matters relating to future 
 things, not in a reverent attitude toward the 
 Scriptures, to find out what they teach, but in a 
 speculative sort of way, using the Scriptures only 
 in an accommodating sense. 
 
 We have seen in our study thus far one fact 
 that stands out prominent in the point of view 
 of Modernism and that is, it is consistent 
 throughout with the evolutionary hypothesis. 
 This philosophy is their working principle, their 
 guiding star, hence every Scripture that appears 
 to be opposed to this principle must be brushed 
 aside, or explained away, or if need be, dis- 
 credited. For example, if this type of religious 
 thinker finds numerous passages in the Scrip- 
 tures that teach the very opposite of that which 
 he believes, and only one passage that seems to 
 favor his philosophy, he will ignore the former, 
 however plain they may be, and work his ques- 
 tionable passage, assiduously, in order to help 
 bolster up his teachings. There is furnished a 
 striking illustration of this in the teaching of this 
 
 159 
 
160 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 school regarding one of the Judgments, and 
 which we shall take up presently. 
 
 Treating the Bible in this subversive manner, 
 and using it only as an aid to defend a certain 
 philosophy is the shame and moral crime of the 
 speculative new theology. In the adoption of any 
 such method of interpretation reason is always 
 made supreme, philosophy the indispensable 
 thing, and Divine Revelation of secondary value. 
 If we keep this in mind we shall understand why 
 men of learning, ability, and some of apparently 
 devout spirit, can teach as they do regarding, for 
 example, the Coming of Christ, the Resurrection, 
 and the Judgments. With this in mind, it is easy 
 to understand why these teachers say, ** Jesus 
 Christ comes at death, the Resurrection occurs at 
 death, the final Judgment takes place at death.'* 
 
 Difficulties Removed? 
 
 This method of interpretation removes a num- 
 ber of difficulties relative to the facts or doc- 
 trines referred to. Adopting the philosophy 
 of evolution simplifies the study. For in- 
 stance, the preacher and teacher need not now 
 bother about the intermediate state of man be- 
 tween death and the Resurrection — to him there 
 is no such state. And he does not need to think 
 of the Millennium — to him there is no Millen- 
 nium. To believe in the Millennium, as the New 
 Testament teaches, would be to oppose the prin- 
 ciple of evolution, which allows for only a grad- 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND JUDGMENT 161 
 
 ual development of the human race, with no sud- 
 den changes. Introducing a Millennium might 
 necessitate an abrupt change, outwardly at least, 
 as would the Second Coming of Christ, the 
 Resurrection, and the Judgments, and of course 
 such could not be tolerated by the evolutionist. 
 How smoothly this whole method works for the 
 New Theology advocate. Away old intermediary 
 state, away the Coming of Christ in the heavens, 
 away false Resurrection hope, away old sensa- 
 tional Judgment Day, away all such childish and 
 unscientific notions, for they are out of harmony 
 with the philosophy of evolution! Isn't it sane, 
 simple, practicable, scientific? 
 
 Does the Judgment Take Place at Death? 
 
 Now, let a close examination be made of the 
 teaching of Modernism relative to the Judgment. 
 This teaching places the final Judgment at death. 
 Dr. Clarke states: *^It is certain that one Judg- 
 ment occurs for every human being in the pas- 
 sage from this life to another.'' (Ch. Theo., 
 page 414.) Note, this theologian says : ''It is cer- 
 tain." We wonder how he knew! He did not 
 tell us. But we are not so sure about it. In fact, 
 there is a big question mark in our thought about 
 the Judgment taking place at death. The apos- 
 tasy has no place in its speculative theology for 
 any Judgment after death, or some later time. 
 We have the same difficulty in accepting this view 
 we have in accepting any of the New Theology 
 
162 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 point of view, and that is, the Bible is not only- 
 silent as to it, but the teaching of the Scriptures 
 is opposed to it. That is our trouble. The Bible 
 states one thing, and Modernism states the oppo- 
 site. That is our trouble. We cannot harmonize 
 the grand old Book and the speculative theology. 
 Perhaps some day we shall be able to do this, 
 when we get more light, when we shall have 
 drunk to our mind ^s content of the wisdom of the 
 modern school; but in our present state of igno- 
 rance we cannot harmonize the modern rational- 
 ism with Christ and Paul. Should it be said that 
 the latter are out of date? Who knows but that 
 the New Theology lights are correct? 
 
 But let us get down to sense : There is one pas- 
 sage on which the New Theology author bases his 
 doctrines of Judgment at death. Here it is: **And 
 as it is ordained for men to die but once (death 
 being followed by judgment)," etc. (Heb. 
 9:27.) This passage does not say that judgment 
 occurs immediately at death, but it does teach 
 that man goes into another world in which the 
 next great event for him will be the Judgment of 
 God. By any fair interpretation this is the only 
 possible meaning of these words. And this is in 
 harmony with the other passages which throw 
 much light on this matter. Let a few of these be 
 examined and see what they say. 
 
 Teaching of Jesus 
 What does our Lord say on this question of 
 
NEW THEOLOGY AND JUDGMENT 163 
 
 Judgment? The New Theology advocates are 
 quick to assert that Jesus Christ is a higher au- 
 thority than the Apostle Paul. We are assuming 
 that Paul wrote the above passage. Does the 
 great Day of Judgment for man occur at death? 
 Jesus answers: **The men of Nineveh shall rise 
 in judgment with this generation, and shall con- 
 demn it.'' And again, ^*The Queen of the South 
 shall rise up in the judgment with this genera- 
 tion, and shall condemn it." (Matt. 12:41-42.) 
 Again our Lord declares : ** Verily I say unto you, 
 It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom 
 and Gomorrah in the Day of Judgment, than for 
 that city." (Matt. 10:15.) The Queen of the 
 South lived nearly 1000 years before Christ but 
 she had not been judged. The Ninevites lived 
 many hundreds of years before Jesus spoke these 
 words, but they had not yet been judged. The 
 people of Sodom and Gomorrah lived nearly 
 2000 years prior to Christ's time, but they had 
 not yet entered into the Day of Judgment. We 
 could not imagine our Lord using these words 
 had all these people been judged at the time of 
 their departure from this world. 
 
 Peter's Revelation 
 
 The Apostle Peter writing on this same ques- 
 tion of the Judgment says, in referring to the 
 people of Sodom and Gomorrah, **The Lord 
 knoweth how to deliver the godly out of tempta- 
 tion, and to reserve the unjust unto the Day of 
 
164 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Judgment to be punished.'' (II Peter 2:9.) 
 Here we have not only a special Day of Judgment 
 brought to light, but we have an intermediate 
 state between death and the Judgment, revealed 
 also, that state which Modernists have ruled out. 
 From all these passages and others which might 
 be submitted, the following facts are in evidence : 
 
 1. The Judgment does not occur at death. 
 (Matt. 10:15; Matt. 12:41-42.) 
 
 2. Judgment will occur at some fixed day in the 
 future. (Acts 17:31.) 
 
 3. The Judgment will occur simultaneously for 
 the righteous. (I Thess. 4:17.) 
 
 4. There is an intermediate state for man be- 
 tween death and the Judgment. (II Pet. 2:9; 
 Luke 16:23-31.) 
 
 5. For the righteous the intermediate state is 
 Paradise, for the wicked it is Tartarus. (Luke 
 23:43; II Pet. 2:4.) 
 
 6. There is a separate judgment for the wicked 
 called the judgment of the great white throne. 
 (Rev. 20:11-12.) 
 
 In the Scriptures a variety of names are given 
 to the Judgment, as : 
 
 *^The Great Day of Their Wrath.'' (Rev. 
 5:15.) 
 
 *^ Judgment of the Great Day." (Jude 1:6.) 
 *^Day of Judgment." (II Pet. 2:9.) 
 **Day of The Lord." (II Pet. 2:10.) 
 
CHAPTER X 
 MODERNISM AND THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH 
 
 The Approach to Our Study 
 
 The book of Acts shows us the background of 
 the Apostolic message by giving us the record 
 of the first Christian Church, its spiritual bap- 
 tism, simple organization, and nature and power 
 over men. Tradition says that Luke wrote this 
 book, the contents of which suggest a rather early 
 authorship, probably not later than 45 a.d. The 
 silence of the book regarding the missionary 
 work of Barnabas may indicate that Luke had 
 not as yet learned of the details of his ministry. 
 It is thought by some that Barnabas labored in 
 remote parts of the Roman Empire, possibly in 
 Africa, and that the report of his labors had not 
 yet reached Luke. 
 
 Had the book of Acts a late origin it would 
 probably contain more general information re- 
 garding the spread of Christianity. The book is 
 made up of the history of the Church at Jerusa- 
 lem, and the Apostles' relation thereto, of the 
 great Pentecostal baptism, and missionary work 
 in neighboring regions, and the evangelistic tours 
 
 165 
 
166 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 of the Apostle PauL Luke was a companion of 
 Paul on these journeys. 
 
 The Critics in Error, as Usual 
 
 The critics have endeavored to show that the 
 Book of Acts was made up of various documents, 
 written, as they say, by different authors and 
 edited or compiled by Luke, to which he added 
 his own account of the missionary work of the 
 Apostle Paul. This, doubtless, is an effort on the 
 part of the critics to cast reflection on that por- 
 tion of Acts which tells of the great Pentecostal 
 baptism. They say that there is in this book a 
 variety of literary style, and that the use Luke 
 made of the personal pronoun **we'' in describ- 
 ing the missionary journeys of the Apostle is not 
 found elsewhere in the book. It requires, how- 
 ever, no argument to show that this contention 
 is groundless, for it is clear to the most ordinary 
 student the extreme to which the critic has gone 
 in his effort to discredit the Bible. The book 
 of Acts bears striking evidence throughout of a 
 single authorship. The critics* argument is 
 faulty. It is not uncommon for the same author 
 to have a variety of style. The present volume 
 contains at least two chapters quite different in 
 style from the rest of the book. Style is con- 
 ditioned on psychology, physiology, mental 
 moods and the subjects treated. The custom of 
 the New Theology to argue against the single 
 authorship of Acts, on the ground of a variety 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 167 
 
 of style, as they do against Isaiah and other parts 
 of the Bible, is a profitless business, and serves 
 to discredit the critic more than it discredits the 
 Bible. 
 
 Background of the Apostolic Message 
 
 In studying the message of the Apostles it is 
 necessary to see clearly the historic background. 
 Luke is a good witness for he was probably near 
 the scenes if he were not actually present where 
 the Apostles had their marvelous experience with 
 Jesus, and he, doubtless, knew at first hand of the 
 revelation on the Day of Pentecost. 
 
 With Luke, Pentecost was one of the points of 
 historic origins of the Church, although there are 
 those to-day who hold that the Church had its 
 origin only under the direct personal influence of 
 Jesus. It is true, the symbols of the Church 
 originated prior to Pentecost, as water baptism 
 and the Lord's supper. Jesus had been baptized 
 as, doubtless, were all His disciples — if not by 
 Him then by His direction or under His au- 
 thority. The disciples also, with their Master, 
 commemorated by ^^the breaking of bread*' the 
 sufferings of Jesus. But it should be remembered 
 that the Church does not consist of outward sym- 
 bols only, but also and much more of reality, 
 even though the supper and baptism, which were 
 taken over from Judaism and given a loftier 
 meaning, were intended to be permanent memo- 
 rials in the Church of Christ. 
 
168 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Again : we also find that after the Resurrection, 
 Jesus ** breathed on His disciples and said unto 
 them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost/' (John 
 20:22.) But Pentecost was something even more 
 than that. There was yet to be seen and experi- 
 enced a special baptism of the Holy Spirit. In 
 this connection it should be further observed that 
 there were holy men and women prior to the 
 Christian Era who were filled with the Holy 
 Spirit, who were members of the old Jewish 
 Synagogue; but this was not the Christian 
 Church. The old was an institution largely of 
 outward ceremonies, of types and signs and sym- 
 bols, comprising within itself one great type of 
 the Christian Church — the Mystical Body of 
 Jesus Christ. There were some great things that 
 were first necessary, in order that God bring into 
 existence the Church of Christ. What were 
 these ? 
 
 Formation of the Church 
 
 The Church was founded by Jesus ; but it could 
 not have been crystallized into a great spiritual 
 organism and formal organization and sent on 
 its world-wide mission until certain events had 
 taken place, and, in a measure had been seen and 
 understood. The Church was not built organ- 
 ically but only historically on the Apostle Peter. 
 The Church was built on Christ. When Jesus 
 said, **Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will 
 build my church ; and the gates of hell shall not 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 169 
 
 prevail against if (Matt. 16:17), He doubtless 
 refers to Peter as the historical character and 
 agent on Pentecost, and to that vision of His own 
 Deity, to that confession of His nature by Peter 
 when he said: *^Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
 the living God*' (Verse 16) ; for it was this vision 
 at Pentecost, of the exalted. Divine Christ, that 
 the Holy Spirit used to kindle that mighty moral 
 conflagration that was in its very nature destined 
 to resist all the powers of evil, or against which 
 **the gates of hell shall not prevail." (Verse 17.) 
 But what were those great events which had to 
 be seen before Pentecost could become a reality 
 and the Church an expanding power? 
 
 The Necessity of Jesus' Death 
 
 First of all, it was necessary to see that Jesus 
 came to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. 
 This was the way He was to conquer Satan and 
 redeem mankind. *'For this purpose the Son of 
 God was manifested that He might destroy the 
 works of the Devil.'' (I John 3 :8.) Satan hates 
 the blood of the Cross. The purpose of the in- 
 terview on the Mount of Transfiguration between 
 Moses, Elias and Jesus was to strengthen the 
 Master and prepare Him for the great struggle 
 with Satan in the Garden and on the Cross. 
 
 And behold there talked with Him two men, Moses and 
 Elias: who appeared in glory and spake of his decease which 
 he should accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9:30-31.) 
 
170 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Jesus did not come to reign as an earthly king 
 over the Jews. His Apostles looked for this, and 
 for places of honor in the Kingdom, but Jesus 
 rebuked them, saying: **Ye know not what ye 
 ask/' (Matt. 20:22.) In verse 28 He states 
 plainly **the Son of man came not to be minis- 
 tered unto but to minister and to give his life a 
 ransom for many. ' ' The Apostle Peter declared : 
 
 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins. . . . That he 
 might bring us to God. (I Pet. 3 :8.) 
 
 As Hebrews has it: 
 
 By the which will we are sanctified through the offering 
 of the body of Christ once for all. (Heb. 10:10.) 
 
 Jesus therefore came to die. This was His 
 great work, the giving of Himself up as an offer- 
 ing to God for sin. 
 
 Resukrection and Ascension Necessary 
 
 Furthermore, in order that men may under- 
 stand the significance of Jesus' death, His resur- 
 rection was necessary. And more. His ascension, 
 exaltation, and glorification in heaven, or His 
 being seated in the place of authority, or on the 
 throne of God. All this had first to take place 
 before the Church could be established on the 
 earth. 
 
 And all this was necessary before the Holy 
 Spirit could be sent. 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 171 
 
 This Jesus spake of the Spirit, which they that believe in 
 him should receive: for the Holy Spirit was not yet given; 
 because that Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John, 7:38-39.) 
 
 How plain, therefore, is every step in the 
 Divine Plan. Thus has been s^een the events 
 which first had to come to pass before the Church 
 of Christ could be formed in the earth. 
 
 1. The Death of Christ for the putting away of 
 sin. 
 
 2. The Resurrection of Christ. 
 
 3. The Exaltation and Glorification of Jesus in 
 Heaven. 
 
 4. The Coming of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 God is Ready to Bun^D 
 
 God is now ready to build His Church ; but how 
 is it to be done? It is to be accomplished by the 
 Holy Spirit regenerating those who believe on 
 Jesus, and who call upon God in prayer. (Acts 
 2:21.) The gift of tongues was given to the 
 disciples on Pentecost to mark the inauguration 
 of this great enterprise, to convict the Jews of 
 sin, the sin of rejecting Jesus (verse 22), and to 
 show the beginning of the dispensation of grace, 
 which is the age of the Holy Spirit. This special 
 baptism could never be repeated, that is, with 
 its miraculous manifestations, no more than the 
 Incarnation of Christ in flesh could be repeated. 
 It marked the beginning of the New Age when 
 God began to incarnate Himself in men, and to 
 deal with them in grace. This, however, in no 
 
172 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 way denies the special enduement of the Spirit 
 upon believers in this Church Age, or the bap- 
 tism of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Church Ordinances, a Place 
 
 In the new expansive spiritual power which 
 took possession of the infant Church on Pente- 
 cost and transformed it at once into a soul-win- 
 ning movement, we would not fail to state that 
 the confession of Jesus, or the sign or initiation 
 into the new fellowship and service was water 
 baptism. Immediately upon the conversion of a 
 soul to Christ this confession was enjoined, for it 
 embodied in its ritualism a declaration of all 
 those great events which made the Church a 
 reality, namely: the death, resurrection and 
 Lordship of Jesus. This confession having been 
 made, and by which is declared the remission of 
 sins, the new disciple was now ready for the most 
 sacred expression of his love to and fellowship 
 with his Saviour, as illustrated by **the breaking 
 of bread. ' ' In this the sufferings of Jesus in be- 
 half of sinful men is commemorated. (Acts 
 2 :28-41.) Doubtless it was in connection with the 
 surrender of the life to Christ as set forth by 
 water baptism, that the baptism of the Holy 
 Spirit was experienced, though we have one in- 
 stance later when the Holy Spirit fell upon them 
 prior to water baptism. (Acts 10:47.) Only a 
 few minutes, however, intervened, for Peter at 
 once, following the manifestation of the Holy 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 173 
 
 Spirit, baptized them into the name of the Lord 
 Jesus. They had previously been baptized by the 
 baptism of John. The proximity of these two 
 baptisms in this instance confirms what has been 
 stated above, that water baptism and the baptism 
 of the Holy Spirit occurs in the life of the be- 
 liever in Christ at practically the same time, and 
 that the former constitutes in itself the very 
 core of the disciples' confession of Jesus as Lord, 
 and was considered by the Apostolic Church as 
 vital and necessary to full discipleship. 
 
 Pentecost Creates the Apostolic Message 
 
 It should be carefully noted that there could be 
 no Apostolic ministry until first there had been 
 the Day of Pentecost, with its incarnation of the 
 Holy Spirit in the lives of these disciples, as also 
 without this there could be no Christian Church. 
 The Church is made up of all those who have 
 been created in Jesus Christ anew by the ener- 
 gizing power of the Holy Spirit, or to whom are 
 given a new life. Thus the Apostle Paul says: 
 *^ Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new 
 creation; old things have passed away; behold all 
 things are become new." (II Cor. 5:16.) The 
 Apostolic ministry is the message of this new 
 life. The Gospel is a message of life ; that is why 
 it is a thing of power. 
 
 A Striking Picture 
 
 Let us look at the picture a moment. Jesus had 
 
174 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 been crucified, and laid away in Joseph's tomb. 
 The disciples lost hope and returned to their old 
 callings. But to their astonishment Jesus ap- 
 peared and all was changed. Their tears have 
 dried, their hope revived, their joy restored, for 
 they had seen the risen Lord. They were differ- 
 ent men. Everything was changed. Even to 
 them death itself must have lost its power. But 
 in this time of new resurrection joy, did Jesus 
 send them out on their life mission to preach the 
 Gospel of the Kesurrection? Not yet. They were 
 not prepared. What can be lacking to transform 
 these glad lives into flaming evangelists? 
 
 This is what they lacked. Not yet did they un- 
 derstand the necessity for His death and resur- 
 rection. They did not know that Jesus must 
 ascend into Heaven, be glorified there, and, that 
 to preach His Gospel, the Holy Spirit must be- 
 come incarnated in them. In other words, they 
 needed a teacher, some one to interpret Jesus to 
 them, for, notwithstanding their joy. He was still 
 a profound mystery to them. 
 
 Here then is seen the importance of Pentecost, 
 where the Spirit comes to take up the work which, 
 in a sense, Jesus terminated when he ascended 
 into Heaven, to be our Lord's Representative to 
 men: to interpret to men the love, character, 
 nature, mission or work of Jesus. Our Lord said 
 in speaking of the Spirit: **He shall glorify me: 
 for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it 
 unto you/' (John 16:14.) Now the disciples 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 175 
 
 have the inner Light, the heavenly Presence who 
 gives the mental and moral illumination to see 
 and understand Jesus Christ. 
 
 This then is the background of the Church, and 
 the experiences in which the Apostles were pre- 
 pared for their great work. 
 
 The Vindication of Jesus 
 
 But Pentecost also is where we see the real 
 vindication of Jesus, and where the Apostles 
 were set on fire for their supreme task. Here the 
 disciples saw as they never saw it before, that 
 their Master is true. No one on this earth ever 
 made such a claim as Jesus Christ, but Pentecost 
 demonstrated all His claim. Pentecost demon- 
 strated the truth of the Old Testament prophecy, 
 as the Apostle Peter, God's spokesman on that 
 day, made clear. ^ ^ This is that which was spoken 
 by the prophet Joel ; and it shall come to pass in 
 the last days, saith God, I wall pour out of my 
 Spirit upon all flesh.'' (Acts 2:16-21.) Pente- 
 cost vindicated Jesus in the fulfillment of the 
 promise He had made concerning the coming of 
 the Holy Spirit. *'And I shall pray the Father 
 and He shall give you another Comforter, that 
 He may abide wdth you forever." (John 
 14:16-17.) ^'But when the Comforter is come 
 whom I will send from the Father, even the Spirit 
 of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he 
 shall testify of me." (John 15:16.) Pentecost 
 vindicated God who also gave a similar promise 
 
176 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 as stated in Acts 1:4: **Aiid being assembled to- 
 gether with them, commanded them that they 
 should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for 
 the promise of the Father ... ye shall be bap- 
 tized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence. ' ' 
 Pentecost made clear the truth of all that Jesus 
 had said regarding Himself. He declared His 
 unity with God. '*! and my Father are one.'* 
 (John 10:30.) Pentecost proved it. He said He 
 was the Son of God. (Verse 36.) Pentecost 
 demonstrated that fact. Jesus said it was neces- 
 sary that He be crucified, raised from the dead, 
 and be glorified, and that then He would send the 
 Holy Spirit. (Luke 17:35; John 15-16.) Pente- 
 cost confirms all that. He declared that to Him 
 was given all power in all worlds (Matt. 
 28:18-20), and that He had a right to command 
 all men, to lay down a programme of world- 
 wide evangelization, for He is the Lord. Pente- 
 cost vindicates that claim. 
 
 If after the Eesurrection there lingered any 
 doubt of the truth of Jesus 's words, and the 
 reality of the world to which he had gone, it was 
 banished at Pentecost. Here the disciples were 
 cemented together in the bond of heavenly love. 
 Here the world-wide missionary movement had 
 its birth in the Church. Here the Gospel of sal- 
 vation was first preached. Here is where the 
 disciples first discovered that they could win the 
 multitude. Here they saw for the first time the 
 meaning of our Lord's death (Acts 2:23), His 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 177 
 
 resurrection, and exaltation. How vital there- 
 fore was the coming of the Holy Spirit, in order 
 to interpret to men the character of Jesus and 
 His mission. 
 
 Dr. a. J. Gordon's Testimony 
 
 As the late Dr. A. J. Gordon had so admirably 
 summed up this essential work of the Second and 
 Third Persons in the Trinity in the following 
 words : 
 
 Not until Jesus had sat down on his Father^s throne, sum- 
 ming up all his ministry in himself "I am he that liveth and 
 was dead and behold I am alive for evermore," did the full 
 Christ stand ready to be communicated to his Church. By 
 the first Adam's sin God's communion with man through the 
 Holy Ghost was broken, and their union ruptured. When 
 the second Adam came up from the Cross and Resurrection 
 and took the place at God's right hand, there was a restora- 
 tion of the broken fellowship between God and man. . . . 
 I The place which the Son had won in the Father's heart he 
 had won for us also. All of acceptance and standing and 
 privilege which was now his was ours also, by redemptive 
 rights; and the Holy Spirit was sent to confirm and realize 
 to us what Christ had won for us. Without the expiatory 
 work for us the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in us 
 were impossible; and on the other hand, without the work 
 of the Spirit within us, the work of Christ for us were with- 
 out avail. ("Ministry of the Spirit," p. 30.) 
 
 Bunyan expressed it, in part, this way: *^ Jesus 
 is now the Throne of Grace for He has become 
 grace enthroned.^' Guthrie said: **God is a God 
 of order, Jesus ascended into heaven to pre- 
 
178 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 pare heaven for us and sent the Holy Spirit here 
 to prepare us for heaven." Jesus Himself said, 
 in referring to Pentecost, **In that day ye shall 
 know that I am in the Father and ye in me and 
 I in you (John 14:20), and greater works shaU 
 ye do because I go unto my Father/' (John 
 14:2.) These Spirit-baptized disciples could do 
 what the Lord Himself had done while in the 
 flesh — win men to God — but now, because of His 
 finished work, in much larger numbers. glori- 
 ous privilege of the Church of Christ! The Sec- 
 ond Person is in Heaven working there for us, 
 and the Third Person of the Trinity is working 
 here in our hearts. Jesus, in a sense, had come 
 back to His disciples in the Person of His Rep- 
 resentative, the Holy Spirit, but this is not what 
 we mean by His Second Coming, which shines so 
 brightly on the pages of the New Testament, and 
 of which the Holy Spirit gave special revelation 
 subsequent to Pentecost. Here, then, on Pente- 
 cost, in this mighty baptism of the Divine Spirit, 
 is found one of the principal starting points of 
 the Church, as a great moral power, an organized 
 and spirit-filled missionary movement. Pente- 
 cost was necessary to give the true meaning to 
 the person, doctrine and work of Jesus Christ, 
 and to give the Church its living message. 
 
 Denial by the New Theology 
 
 We have seen the meaning of Pentecost and 
 the character of the Church — how vitally the lat- 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 179 
 
 ter is related to Christ its only Head, and to the 
 Holy Spirit its only life. We shall stop here a 
 moment and remind ourselves of the fact that the 
 New Theology is at war against the Supernatu- 
 ral manifestation at Pentecost, and in the life 
 and work of Christ. We had better make up our 
 minds to marshal our guns and fight our modem 
 battle here to a finish. It is over the Super- 
 natural, as stated heretofore, that Modernism is 
 at war against the Bible. 
 
 We have shown that the Modernist is an evolu- 
 tionist, and that he has no room in his thought 
 for a miracle, but here is a Church that is estab- 
 lished on miracles and the Supernatural. The 
 Incarnation, Atonement, Eesurrection, Ascen- 
 sion, Coming of the Holy Spirit, and the Second 
 Coming of Christ, all these, to our understand- 
 ing, are miracles — a revelation of the Super- 
 natural, apparently aside from natural law. 
 This is why the advocates of the New Theology 
 labor to undermine the miraculous element in the 
 Bible, and to belittle Pentecost with its ** rushing 
 wind,'' and ** cloven tongues like as of fire,'' etc. 
 
 Dr. Rail of Denver University, who is typical 
 of this School, says in his *^New Testament His- 
 tory," p. 145: 
 
 No one can say that such a miracle should not have oc- 
 curred [referring to Pentecost] . . . such a gift of foreign 
 speech would have had two possible meanings, one to con- 
 vince those outsiders, tb^ other to aid the discinle? in later 
 
180 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 foreign mission work. It failed to do the jfirst and we do 
 find no reference to the latter. 
 
 Thus Dr. Rail would have us infer that no 
 miracle was wrought on Pentecost. As a matter 
 of fact it did ^* convince those outsiders," for 
 were not three thousand of them converted in a 
 day? (Acts 2:41.) Luke also says: 
 
 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came- 
 together, and were confounded, because that every man heard 
 them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed 
 and marveled, etc. (Acts 2:6-7.) 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that the Christian Church 
 was established on a Supernatural revelation of 
 God, a revelation that made clear the purpose 
 and character of His infinite love as seen in the 
 sufferings and triumph of our blessed Lord. 
 
 We have seen how the Church came to be, and 
 in this we have learned the secret as to how God 
 builds His Church in every age. It is evident 
 that the first Church had a simple organization 
 only incident to its new life. This first Assembly 
 of believers, or the Church, was so plain and dem- 
 ocratic that it appears in striking contrast to the 
 ecclesiastical pomp and show of certain branches 
 of the Church in our day. There is always pres- 
 ent the danger that pride in numbers and wealth, 
 with the accompanying feeling of special privi- 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 181 
 
 lege and aloofness, may take possession of the 
 Ministry of the Church of Christ. History has 
 made it clear that this has been one of the weak- 
 nesses of the various branches of the one true 
 Church. 
 
 But such was not the sin of the Apostolic 
 Church. They were truly democratic and 
 brotherly. We have seen that the Church con- 
 sists of a holy fellowship of regenerated, Spirit- 
 baptized believers, built up around Christ as its 
 living Head, and standing for Him, and for the 
 great things He accomplished for men; that this 
 fellowship, with its two simple ordinances — bap- 
 tism and the supper, or * * the breaking of bread, ' ' 
 is built on Christ, headed up in Christ, so that it 
 may rightly be called the Body of Christ. We 
 have seen that this Church has, as the secret of 
 its life, the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of 
 Jesus, which is the Spirit of God. This then is 
 the starting point, the foundation, and the nature 
 of the Church. We shall see as we proceed how 
 glorious is this Bride of Christ. We can say of 
 this infant Church in the words of LongfeUow: 
 
 Child! new-born denizen 
 
 Of life's great city! On thy head 
 
 The glory of the morn is shed 
 
 Like a celestial benison! 
 
 Here at the portal thou dost stand. 
 
 And with thy little hand 
 
 Thou openest the mysterious gate 
 
 Into the future's undiscovered land. 
 
182 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 MiNISTKY OF THE ChURCH 
 
 We have little space to discuss tlie Ministry, 
 only to stop long enough to say, that, like the 
 Church itself, the Ministry is begotten of the 
 Holy Spirit. Who are the Clergy, and how are 
 they made, and are they a self -perpetuating body 
 within the Church! are questions that are all an- 
 swered in the book of Acts. The Clergy are called 
 and ordained of God, and the various local 
 churches recognize the call and work of the Holy 
 Spirit in those lives, and approve their separa- 
 tion to service. 
 
 Hands are laid on these men in recognition of 
 the call of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is Sover- 
 eign in this business, and the Church and Clergy 
 thus recognize His sovereignty. He calls and 
 ordains whom He wills. The Church, co-oper- 
 ating with Him, or better, in grateful recognition 
 of His own work, sets apart certain men to teach 
 and preach, and to serve in lesser capacities. 
 
 The Only Apostolic Succession 
 
 How clear a revelation of this we have in the 
 first Church at Pentecost. An Apostle was to be 
 chosen; but how was it done? It was not done 
 by the Apostles holding themselves aloof from 
 the Church and electing him; but by both the 
 Apostles and the Church co-operating together 
 in prayer and deliberation, under the guidance of 
 the Holy Spirit. They evidently believed in con- 
 gregational church government, for the one hun- 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 183 
 
 dred and twenty disciples voted on the choice of 
 a successor to Judas in the Apostolic office, the 
 highest office in Christ's Church. Even the 
 Apostles were perpetuated by the Holj^ Spirit, 
 working through the Church, and not by the 
 Apostles themselves. The Ministry of the 
 Church therefore is not a self -perpetuating body. 
 Their act of ordaining is simply the outward 
 recognition of what the Holy Spirit has already 
 done in the God-called person, and as expressed 
 by or through the Spirit-baptized Body of be- 
 lievers — or true Church of Christ. Note carefully 
 the words used in Acts 1:23-26 to describe the 
 government of the Church, and method of the 
 Holy Spirit in selecting an Apostle. 
 
 Electing an Apostle 
 First, they had a prayer service, 
 
 And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the 
 hearts of all men, Show whether of these two thou hast 
 chosen, That he may take part of this ministiy and apostle- 
 ship, from which Judas by transgression fell, . . . And 
 they [the entire body of the disciples] gave forth their lots 
 [or expressed their choice by vote] ; and the lot fell upon 
 Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven Apostles. 
 
 No Self-Peepetuating Ministey 
 
 There is no self-perpefuating Apostolic succes- 
 sion of Ministry in the Church. The true IVIin- 
 istry is a succession of the ever present work of 
 the Holy Spirit, who imparts spiritual gifts to 
 
184 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 the members of Christ's Mystical Body. Here is 
 where we find the only trne succession, namely: 
 the regenerated Church, made possible by the 
 work of the Holy Spirit, who is always creating 
 souls anew in Jesus Christ. "We are justified 
 therefore in calling this the glorious and never- 
 ceasing Apostolic succession of the new life in 
 the Church or Body of Christ. This succession 
 cannot be simply ecclesiastical; it is always 
 spiritual. The ecclesiastical is a part of the fruit 
 of this spiritual succession. 
 
 And this succession of regenerated souls is as 
 real in the laity as it is in the Clergy. Without 
 this new life neither laity nor Clergy could pos- 
 sibly be members of Christ's Mystical Body or 
 His Church. 
 
 From this new life in Christ which makes upi 
 His Church there springs forth spontaneously, as 
 it were, the God-called men to teach and preach 
 the Gospel. Upon one here and another there 
 God lays His hand. 
 
 We have striking illustrations of the above in 
 the Word of God, but for our present purpose we 
 shall refer to only one, which is found in 
 Acts 13 :2. 
 
 As they ministered to the Lord and fasted and prayed, the 
 Holy Ghost said, seporrate unto me Barnabas and Saul for 
 the work whereunto I have called them. 
 
 The Church was the spiritual organism through 
 which the Holy Spirit revealed His will for Bar- 
 nabas and Saul. 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 185 
 
 The Church Identified 
 
 It is clear that we have identified the true 
 Christian Church, its Ministry and government. 
 The Pastors, as we have them to-day, or the 
 Elders, or Bishops (for these all have the same 
 significance in the Greek from which they are 
 derived), simply mean the overseers, the shep- 
 herds, the leaders of the local churches of Jesus 
 Christ; and the Teachers and Evangelists — all 
 these are the servants of Christ in the churches, 
 and whose work it is, in part, to ordain those 
 whom the Holy Spirit has already called and or- 
 dained to preach the Gospel as manifest by their 
 spiritual gifts. 
 
 The Pope of Later Origin 
 
 It should be said that there was no Pope in 
 the early Church. Later the Bishop, or Elder, or 
 Pastor, in some cases, as the churches multiplied 
 in many parts of the Empire, were separated 
 from their work as the shepherds of local flocks, 
 and were given by their brethren the Clergy, 
 doubtless after consultation with the local 
 churches, the general oversight of all the 
 churches in a district or province, which geo- 
 graphical section was, later in the centuries, 
 called a diocese. The Pope came into existence 
 in the fourth century, and serves as an illustra- 
 tion of the danger of the Bishop of one diocese 
 arrogating to himself special right because of the 
 prominence of the Metropolitan Bishopric, and 
 
186 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 thus assuming an unscriptural lordship over 
 God's heritage, in violation of the Divine Plan 
 of government for the Church. God has no room 
 for an ecclesiastical autocracy in His Church for 
 all are brethren. Christ is the only Pope. The 
 Holy Spirit is His only Vice-gerent on earth. He 
 said: 
 
 But be not ye called Rabbi; for one is your Master, even 
 Christ; and all ye ai'e brethren. And call no man your 
 father . . . for one is your Father which is in heaven. 
 Neither be ye called Masters: for one is your Master, even 
 Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your 
 servant. (Matt. 23:8-11.) 
 
 Where then is there any authority for a Pope, 
 or for calling men *^Holy Father T' etc. Not in 
 God's Word. This is mentioned here because it 
 is vital, and shows the sad departure in history 
 from the simple spiritual brotherhood of the 
 early Church. So far has the Roman Catholic 
 branch of the Church departed in their doctrine 
 and practice of the so-called Apostolic succession, 
 that they do not even view their own people as 
 members of the Church. They are only **The 
 Faithful.'' To them (the ecclesiastical side) it 
 is the hierarchy only that constitute the Church, 
 from Pope down to parish priest. And, of 
 course, all other branches of the Church of Jesus, 
 as Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopa- 
 lian, etc., are only '* sects." This unchristian po- 
 sition is a serious and lamentable error, and eon- 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 187 
 
 stitutes one of the unpassable barriers to any- 
 outward organic unity among these churches of 
 Christ, as it creates one of our most serious polit- 
 ical problems. 
 
 But we have seen that the Ministry is created 
 by the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28) and that this true 
 and only Apostolic succession has been identified 
 as the entire regenerated Body of Christ — the 
 true Church in every age. No truth is worthy of 
 more careful study to-day than the work of the 
 Holy Spirit in forming Christ's Church. Heresy 
 can lay its chilly hand of death upon Christ's 
 Bride only when the Holy Spirit is grieved, 
 ignored, or forgotten. May we not only say: **I 
 believe in the Holy Ghost,'' but may we wholly 
 yield to Him, and in the words of Charles Wesley 
 pray : 
 
 Leader of faithful souls and guide 
 Of all who travel to the sky, 
 Come and with us, e'en us abide, 
 Who would on Thee alone rely; 
 On Thee alone our spirits stay, 
 While held in life's uneven way. 
 
 So far as the Church has any government — and 
 it has a real government — ^it was the government 
 of the whole Church, or as they expanded, of the 
 various churches in co-operation with their Pas- 
 tors or leaders, and all under the leadership of 
 the Holy Spirit. The great formal worship and 
 organization, as we see -.t develop later, and as 
 
188 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 we see it to-day in certain churches, notably the 
 Protestant Episcopal and Roman Catholic 
 Churches, were the result of the growth of cen- 
 turies, and is foreign to Apostolic Christianity. 
 If there had been any form of government that 
 took precedence over all others, in this early 
 Church, it was the blending of congregational and 
 presbyterian and episcopal — primarily govern- 
 ment by the entire body of the Church, directed 
 by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Wherever we have regenerated souls who are 
 led of the Holy Spirit, and teaching the true doc- 
 trines of Christ, observing His ordinances, and 
 thus bound together in a fellowship for the pur- 
 pose of furthering His cause, there we find the 
 true Apostolic Church, the Church whose con- 
 tinuous creation and extension do not depend 
 upon a line of ecclesiastical descent, like the per- 
 petuation of a royal family. Christ's Church is 
 His people in fellowship and work with Him. The 
 ecclesiastical organization which developed in 
 the Roman Catholic Branch, in centuries subse- 
 quent to the Apostles' time, cannot illustrate it. 
 By this, however, we do not mean to say that 
 God has not and could not use this organization, 
 provided it be a part of His regenerated Church, 
 and teaches Christ's doctrines, and doe^ its work 
 in the spirit of Christian brotherhood and love. 
 But this organization is not in itself the Church 
 of Christ, apart from the other members of 
 Christ's body, for the Church is one, and is a 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 189 
 
 spiritual regenerated organism. Its descent and 
 growth from Jesus down to this day has never 
 been broken. The secret of its continuance is its 
 own inherent life. This true Church has always 
 been present in the Roman Catholic Branch, the 
 Greek Branch, and later in the Protestant 
 Branches which arose, or came into being because 
 of a desire for a Church more holy, more pure, 
 more brotherly, more free — separate from any 
 alliance with the State or world. And there were 
 times and places when and where this true 
 Church has existed outside of all these great 
 Branches. God's work is a work of life, and is 
 not a matter of mere forms and organizations, 
 for, as stated, these are only incident to His 
 Church. Doubtless they are necessary somewhat 
 as the scaffold is necessary to the erection of the 
 structure. 
 
 The Ministry of Divine Appointment 
 
 It should not be inferred or believed from any- 
 thing that has been stated regarding the Ministry 
 in Christ's Church that these holy God-called and 
 God-ordained men are on an equality with all 
 other members of Christ's holy Church. They 
 occupy the same position in grace, but not in 
 service. Like the laity they both are sinners 
 saved by grace; but to these God-ordained men, 
 to teach and preach and labor as the local lead- 
 ers of the various churches, have been given a 
 unique and special authority in the affairs of the 
 
190 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Church. It is God's plan that through these men 
 the Holy Spirit shall guide into the knowledge 
 of the Truth, and into the aggressive forward 
 movements of God in the world. And the local 
 churches should everywhere recognize this fact, 
 and love, honor and hold in highest esteem those 
 whom God appointed to minister to them the 
 riches of Christ. If it be objected that this view 
 of the Clergy creates a *^ class of rulers'* in the 
 Church, our only answer is that the New Testa- 
 ment is alive with the fact that God Himself is 
 responsible for the special creation of this 
 *^ class,'' if we wish to so designate the Ministers 
 of our Lord. God has set these men over the 
 churches, separated them from other pursuits, 
 and ordained them by His own mighty Spirit to 
 preach the Gospel and direct under the Chief 
 Shepherd in the affairs of His Church. Of 
 course, all this is to be done under the leadership 
 of the Holy Spirit as He^ manifests Himself in 
 the churches, and as He gives special guidance 
 to the Ministers of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 The writer has never seen God's cause prosper 
 in the local churches when the authority of the 
 Ministry was ignored or opposed in spiritual 
 matters; but he has seen glorious revivals of re- 
 ligion break forth when the church recognized 
 this spiritual leadership and co-operated with the 
 Holy Ghost and the Pastor of the flock. This 
 great truth needs fresh emphasis in these times 
 when the spirit of anarchy is abroad in the 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 191 
 
 world, and at times manifests itself even in the 
 churches of God. One of the dangers which be- 
 sets Protestantism is that we forget this, and by 
 our extreme individualism destroy the very 
 cause we profess to serve. There must be lead- 
 ers in the churches of Christ, and through these, 
 as also through the sanctified and Spirit-filled 
 Body of believers the Holy Spirit does His work. 
 If this truth had not been ignored many of the 
 little bands of believers we see to-day, isolating 
 themselves from the great Branches of Christ's 
 universal Church, would never have come into 
 existence to add further schism to the Body of 
 Christ. 
 
 The Church in Service 
 
 The new life was given to the Church for 
 various purposes, but especially to be lived out 
 before men. The follower of Christ is a citizen 
 of heaven, and it is his business to reveal to men 
 the dignity and worth of his new citizenship. 
 (Eph. 2:19.) His Lord is in heaven and he must 
 truly represent Him. (Col. 4:1.) When the 
 world sees a Christian it must get a little glimpse 
 of heaven. (Eph. 3:15; I Cor. 3:17; Eph. 1:4, 
 5:27; I Pet. 1:15, 16:3-11.) The Holy Spirit can 
 make all this gloriously possible. He has great 
 and numerous gifts and graces of the new life 
 to bestow upon the followers of Christ, as is seen 
 in the 12th, 13th and 14th chapters of first Co- 
 rinthians. The Holy Spirit Himself is first to be 
 
192 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 received by faitli, as the Eepresentative of Jesus, 
 on the authority of God's Word, after which 
 He imparts the riches of Christ. The Christian 
 must wholly yield to Him, and be filled with the 
 Spirit of God. (Eph. 5:18.) The New Testament 
 is alive with this truth. The Apostle speaks 
 plainly of this surrender, and then of the com- 
 radeship with the Holy Spirit in this way: **For 
 it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us." 
 (Acts 15:28.) Thus the Church was called to a 
 high and holy service and fellowship. 
 
 Before the disciples, lay an Empire of 100,000- 
 000 souls, sunken in iniquity and social corrup- 
 tion. This vile state of society must be changed. 
 Idolatry was universal and must be destroyed. 
 These disciples faced their task like martyrs as 
 they were. 
 
 The temple of Aphrodite at Corinth had a thousand 
 women attached to it who were giving themselves to a life 
 of shame as part of the service of the goddess. 
 
 Christianity (not simply religion), the real 
 militant type of that day, had the task of winning 
 these, and many others like them, for Christ, of 
 so changing character that, as the Apostle said, 
 it would be a shame now to even speak of these 
 things (Eph. 5:12), much less to do them. 
 
 Making Jesus Real 
 
 But what was the chief work of the Holy Spirit 
 in the Church? It was to make Jesus real. Jesus 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 193 
 
 is the only Saviour and must ever be seen as 
 such. (Acts 4:12.) It is impossible for men to 
 understand and love Him, only as they are 
 taught by the Spirit. (Isa. 54:13.) No Modern- 
 ism, no New Theology can destroy Christianity 
 so long as men and women yield themselves 
 wholly to the Holy Spirit. This was what Jesus 
 meant when He said of His Successor: 
 
 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto 
 you from the Father, even the spirit of truth, which pro- 
 ceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. (John 
 15:26.) Howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth is come, he 
 will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of 
 himself . . . and he will show you things to come. He shall 
 glorify me; for he shall receive of mine and shall show it 
 unto you. (John 16:13-14.) 
 
 It would appear that it is the Holy Spirit in 
 the follower of Jesus who is to be the preacher, 
 the witness for Christ, for Jesus said: **And 
 when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, 
 and of righteousness, and of judgment.'* (John 
 16:8.) What a great Companion! 
 
 Here is a truth that we are not emphasizing as 
 we should: the fellowship and leadership of the 
 Spirit of God in the Church. It is only the Holy 
 Spirit who can write a biography of Jesus and 
 make Him known. Were it not for His Presence 
 our Lord would long ago have dropped out of 
 the thought of men as a great moral and spiritual 
 power in the world. Men would have forgotten 
 
194 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Jesus as they forget their beloved dead. They 
 would think of Him only as they think of Mo- 
 hammed, Buddha, etc., as a saint and great 
 teacher and leader, but they could not love Him as 
 Saviour and Lord. It takes God to interpret 
 God to men. The Apostle Paul gave a remark- 
 ably clear commentary on this fact when he said: 
 
 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit 
 of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth 
 no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not 
 the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that 
 we might know the things that are freely given us of God. 
 (I Cor. 2:10-12.) 
 
 Why should not this be so, for the Christian is 
 the temple of the Divine Spirit. (I Cor. 6:19.) 
 
 Applied Christianity 
 
 To life in all its perplexing problems the mes- 
 sage of Christ must be applied, to the so-called 
 social, political, and religious life. In fact there 
 were no distinctions of this sort made by the 
 Apostles. To them all life was sacred ; there was 
 nothing secular. 
 
 The message must be applied to the family life. 
 Christianity exalted womanhood, and revealed 
 the sanctity of the marriage relation. It taught 
 parents to love their children and children to love 
 their parents, and servants and masters to be 
 true to each other. Here as elsewhere the law of 
 love must be supreme. Christians must love each 
 
MODERNISM AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH 195 
 
 other. The measure of love for the brethren is 
 the measure of Christ's love for us. (I John 
 3:16.) They are to have Christians adjudicate 
 their differences, and not to go to law in Courts 
 where Christians do not preside as Judges. (I 
 Cor. 6:1-4.) On the Day of Pentecost when the 
 Holy Ghost implanted in their hearts the 
 Saviour's love, so rich and holy and pure was 
 their love for their brethren that they sold their 
 properties and laid the money at the Apostles' 
 feet, to be distributed to their less favored 
 brethren. Their possessions became a common 
 fund in which all shared equally or as each had 
 need. The Church is now at work in living, holy 
 service, and the new life is manifesting itself to 
 men. Here w^as a social revolution without bullet 
 or bayonet, and in this holy, helpful life we find 
 the solution of all human problems. 
 
 It is worthy of special note that it is in con- 
 nection with this lofty service that the Holy 
 Spirit speaks through Luke and says: ^^And they 
 continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine'' 
 (Acts 2:42), as much as to say that this gene- 
 rosity must have been taught and enjoined and 
 later approved by the Apostles. There was no 
 need of a magnetic speaker or a professional 
 beggar to draw out their gifts. Because the Holy 
 Spirit was Sovereign in the Church, their gene- 
 rosity flowed out of others in need. (II Cor. 
 2:21.) These disciples were putting into prac- 
 tice the new commandment of Jesus that they 
 
196 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 love one another. (Luke 6:27, 32, 35; Eom. 
 13:8; GaL 5:14; I Thess. 4:9; I Pet. 1:22; I John 
 3:11, 4:7, 11.) They were now learning of ^*the 
 love of Christ which passeth knowledge ' ' (Eph. 
 3:19), the love that gave Jesus to die. 
 
 Thus we have taken a glance at the beginning of 
 that mighty institution, the Christian Church, the 
 secret- of which is God Himself who has come to 
 redeem men and dwell in them, but which the 
 New Theology of Modernism would interpret as 
 a product of evolution, and not of a special reve- 
 lation and redemption. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 
 
 We have seen that the Church with its holy 
 worship does not depend upon a form, that it is 
 a spiritual brotherhood or organism we are deal- 
 ing with, and not a mere formal organization. 
 Any form of worship, or even organization, is 
 only incident to the Church itself. In this holy 
 mystical body of Christ, in this Fellowship of the 
 ** Apostles and Martyrs, '' in this Communion 
 **with God, of the sanctified,'' in this ** Temple 
 of God's true spiritual worship," in this ^* Par- 
 ticipation of His promised presence," in this 
 *^ Flock that He feeds," this **Fold of His watch- 
 ful care" we find a unity of purpose, message, 
 doctrine and life. We have seen that it was a 
 fellowship around Christ and His doctrines, 
 under the influence of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The Message Its Unity 
 
 On all the great truths of Christianity we find 
 that the Apostles were a unit. True, there were 
 some minor differences as to non-essentials, and 
 which were quickly righted, as circumcision, holy- 
 
 197 
 
198 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 days, eating of meats, etc. It was Christ's doc- 
 trine and, as to all essential truth, there was no 
 conflict, no difference of opinion, for differences 
 regarding Christ, His work and doctrines, could 
 not exist in such an atmosphere. Had one of 
 their number denied any Christian fundamental 
 truth as, for example, the atonement for sin, con- 
 fession of sin, forgiveness of sin, sanctification or 
 holiness of life, the resurrection, the presence 
 and leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship 
 of Jesus, and His second coming, such an one 
 would quickly. be separated from them. 
 
 Discipline on Basis of Doctrine 
 
 John was the Apostle of love, yet it is he who 
 voices the strictest discipline of the early Church, 
 as to the matter of teaching sound doctrine. He 
 says: *^For many deceivers are entered into the 
 world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come 
 in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an anti- 
 christ. Look to yourselves that we lose not those 
 things which we have wrought, but that we re- 
 ceive a full reward. Whosoever transgresseth 
 and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath 
 not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of 
 Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If 
 there come any unto you, and bring not this doc- 
 trine, receive him not into your house, neither 
 bid him God speed. For he that biddeth him God 
 speed is partaker of his evil deeds. (II 
 John 7:1.) 
 
THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 199 
 
 There is no mistaking this discipline. Fellow- 
 ship with a Unitarian, or with those who deny the 
 Incarnation, is forbidden. They are forbidden 
 to visit him in his home, preach in his pulpit, 
 wish him God's blessing, nor permit him to even 
 enter their homes, lest, as the Apostle of love 
 says, they become sharers in his guilt, or **evil 
 deeds." We find that the Apostle Paul endorsed 
 the position of John in this matter, when he said : 
 **But though we or an angel of heaven preach 
 any other gospel unto you than that which we 
 have preached unto you, let him be accursed.'* 
 (Gal. 1:9.) There was no ** pussy-footing'' with 
 false teachers in the early Church. Would to 
 God we had to-day their measure of love, their 
 courage, and loyalty to Jesus Christ. 
 
 From this we see how the Apostles viewed the 
 danger of doing aught that would in any way 
 compromise the position of the Church as to the 
 true doctrine of Christ. Here also the Holy 
 Spirit must be sovereign. We have seen that the 
 Spirit's work is to reveal, interpret, magnify 
 and glorify Jesus in the Church, and any recog- 
 nition of false teachers **Who deny that Jesus is 
 come in the flesh," or who deny the Incarnation, 
 or support sentimentally or in any way any false 
 teacher who denies the great doctrines of Christ, 
 or any one of these doctrines, is strictly for- 
 bidden, for such an one is at war with the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
200 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Every Doctrine Sacred 
 
 It is not too mucli to say that the Apostles 
 viewed a denial of one doctrine of Christ as a 
 denial of all. Suppose, for example, one of them 
 had affirmed that Jesus, in His sacrificial death, 
 had not made full provision for the putting away 
 of sin, that is, for its forgiveness, that would be 
 thought the same as a denial of the Resurrection 
 or the Second Coming, or a repudiation of all the 
 doctrines of Christ. Each doctrine was an inte- 
 gral part of all the others, related to them in one 
 complete Revelation that cannot be broken. To 
 cut one doctrine out would be like pulling one 
 finger out of the hand, the hand henceforth would 
 be marred and imperfect. 
 
 Christ and His Doctrines One 
 
 Further, in a very important sense, the doc- 
 trines stood for Christ and must stand or fall 
 with Christ. For instance, could the Pentecostal 
 revival have been possible, had Peter stood up 
 and denied the Atonement through the blood of 
 Christ, or the Resurrection, or His exaltation in 
 glory, or His coming again? No, there never 
 could have been a baptism of the Spirit had 
 Peter slighted, or slurred, or ignored, or denied 
 these truths. The doctrines of Christ, as to these 
 matters, and the prophecies concerning the same, 
 constituted, so far as the record in Acts tells us, 
 the substance of this great sermon. He is be- 
 nighted indeed who talks against doctrinal 
 
THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 201 
 
 preaching, as if there were a Gospel of Christ 
 made up of other than doctrine. 
 
 Passed Christ's Doctrine On 
 
 The Apostles taught the Christian doctrine as 
 they received it from Christ, and passed it on in 
 their writings and oral ministries to others, and 
 thus to succeeding centuries. The Church was 
 built around the following: 
 
 1. ** Jesus Christ has come in the flesh'' — or 
 the Incarnation. 
 
 2. ^* Jesus Christ died for our sins according 
 to the Scripture," or the Atonement. 
 
 3. The Resurrection is proof of His Lordship 
 and Deity. **For to this end Christ both died 
 and rose that He might be the Lord of the dead 
 and the living." 
 
 4. The regenerating and sanctifying work of 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 5. The mediatorial work of Jesus as our High 
 Priest and Intercessor before the Throne of 
 God. 
 
 6. The Resurrection of all men to judgment 
 
 7. The Second Coming of Christ. 
 
 8. World-Avide evangelization. 
 
 9. The final coming and triumph of the King- 
 dom of God. 
 
 Doctrines Their Unity and Mission 
 The world mission of the Church is the result 
 
202 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 of a great cause, and Jesus Christ as a living 
 Fact is that Cause. Here we find in this early- 
 Church the harmony and unity we need to-day. 
 We are deeply in need of this same holy fellow- 
 ship, and of this love for the Church and the 
 Truth, for all the Truth, and the zeal to 
 teach it. 
 
 When the Apostle Paul was about to leave 
 Ephesus he indulged in a personal commenda- 
 tion of his ministry in these words: ** Wherefore, 
 I take you to record this day that I am pure 
 from the blood of all men, for I have not shunned 
 to declare unto you all the counsel of God." 
 Then he adds this wise warning to the Elders or 
 the local Pastors: ^'Take heed therefore unto 
 yourselves and to the flocJc over which the Holy 
 Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the 
 Church of God which he hath purchased with his 
 own blood/' (Acts 20:26-28.) This Apostle was 
 no compromiser, no trimmer, no time-server. He 
 had no apology for any one of Christ 's great doc- 
 trines. What an inscription for a preacher's 
 tombstone: **He preached the whole counsel of 
 God.'' 
 
 A New Testament Illustration 
 
 Before concluding this message an illustration 
 will be given as to how the Christian doctrines 
 worked in the ancient center of the world's cul- 
 ture — ^Athens. The Apostle Paul was the 
 preacher. He was laboring at Mars Hill. Hia 
 
THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 203 
 
 meeting place was the Court room, his audience 
 was made up of the scholars of Athens. What 
 did this Apostle preach? After a tactful intro- 
 duction on Creation and God^s good Providence 
 for all men, he plunged into his real message 
 which was about Jesus, the Resurrection and the 
 Judgment. It was a new, strange and startling 
 message, but not much more startling were it 
 preached to-day in many of our pulpits. The 
 philosophers, the rationalists, the Modernists, 
 the New Theology advocates of that day were 
 present. They listened courteously to the 
 Apostle until he got into a discussion of the 
 Resurrection and God's judgment for man's sin. 
 Then the scholars and critics became restless, 
 waxed hot at this sensational fellow, created an 
 uproar, and broke up the meeting. Exit Paul! 
 What a tribute to the great Apostle. And what 
 a tribute it is to a preacher in any day to create 
 a similar uproar in his congregation where the 
 true Christian doctrines have not been heard. 
 There is always something sensational in the 
 Gospel of Jesus, something arousing, awakening, 
 striking, commanding. The Gospel of Christ is 
 a living and not a dead thing. There is power in 
 it — God's power. 
 
 The Result of Doctrinal Preaching 
 
 But what was the result of this sermon? The 
 Apostle *^was forced to leave the Court." Some 
 of the brethren would be forced to quit their 
 
204 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 pulpits to-day if they thundered out the whole 
 Gospel, or else they would witness the mightiest 
 religious revival of their ministry. Try it, 
 brother. Preach **the whole counsel of God.** 
 Imitate the old-time preachers of the Apostolic 
 days. Preach the old doctrines, and you will soon 
 experience a time of refreshing. **True preach- 
 ing will inevitably produce a revival or a riot.** 
 It was so with the Apostle Paul. And what 
 then! There were, however, some who joined 
 the preacher. No true minister will lack a fol- 
 lowing. These who followed became believers in 
 Christ. ** Among them were Dionysius, a mem- 
 ber of the Court (possibly a lawyer or a judge), 
 a woman named Demaris, and several others.** 
 A respectable ingathering from the preaching of 
 one sermon on the great old doctrines of Christ, 
 more real conversions than the Modernists have 
 made in a generation of preaching of moral plati- 
 tudes over the divinity of human nature, soci- 
 ology, social redemption, and the religious base in 
 the modern sinner. Dionysius, we are told by 
 Eusebius, *' became the first Bishop (Pastor) of 
 Athens and suffered martyrdom.** This sermon 
 on the old doctrines produced a church, a diocese 
 and a Bishop. Talk about results! 0, that we 
 could read aright the history of Christ's Church! 
 The conversion of the Roman Empire gives elo- 
 quent testimony! A whole nation burned their 
 idols and fell captive at the pierced feet of 
 
THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 205 
 
 Christ, to place all the laurels of praise upon His 
 thorn-pierced brow. 
 
 The New Gospel of Modernism 
 
 But we have on our hands to-day a new gospel 
 of Modernism, called, the New Theology. **How 
 many sermons have you heard in your church 
 during the last twelve months on salvation 
 through the work of Christ on the Cross T' was 
 the query asked of a thoughtful member of 
 a large church. ^^AVhen our pastor candidated 
 he preached on the Atonement, for he knew that 
 we are an orthodox church, but for years he has 
 never touched on our Lord's death.'' **Is he 
 orthodox?" **0, yes, he is orthodox." ^*How 
 often has he preached on. How to get saved?'* 
 **He never touches on that matter." ^'Well, how 
 about the resurrection?" ^^He gives a sermon- 
 ette on that on Easter in order to be in fashion. ' ' 
 **I suppose you get some comforting messages 
 on the Coming of Jesus?" **It is twenty years 
 since we heard a sermon on that precious truth. 
 Our pastors seem to be afraid of it; but my 
 heart longs to hear it; I find much about it in 
 my Bible, and I believe it." 
 
 The above is a true history of many a pulpit. 
 Modernism has silenced many of the pulpits, 
 locked the lips of the preachers, and blinded them 
 to the message of the gospel of Christ. 
 
 A Wise Layman 
 
 On Staten Island a noble layman went one. 
 
206 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 Sunday morning to hear his pastor, and to his 
 surprise the wise man in the pulpit tried to ex- 
 plain why he did not believe such and such a 
 book in the Bible. Upon hearing the attack on 
 God's Word, this layman with his family arose 
 and left the building. His pastor was concerned 
 and called on him and said, **I saw you leave. I 
 was fearful some one was ill.'' **No one was ill, 
 but I made up my mind long ago that I would 
 never sit and listen to any man deny the Word 
 of God. I shall never hear you preach again. ' ' 
 
 This noble layman was courteous regarding 
 the matter. We wonder whether the Apostles 
 would not have protested in even a more vigor- 
 ous fashion had they been there. It is true that 
 God expects His people to rebuke openly these 
 teachers who deny His Truth. Surely, the least 
 we can do is to withdraw at once from the service, 
 for we are forbidden to fellowship with such. 
 Some martyrs for the Gospel are needed in 
 America to-day. 
 
 How TO Destroy the New Theology 
 
 One of the ways to help defeat Modernism is 
 to get the Theological Seminaries and Colleges 
 and Pulpits to take up afresh a study of the early 
 Church. God has given a pattern for the 
 churches to-day in this old first Pentecostal 
 Church. We need to make a fresh, deep, earnest 
 study of this Church. By patterning after this 
 Ideal no church can fail in its mission. Any 
 
THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 207 
 
 church that stands for similar things is standing 
 four-square to every wind that blows. Science and 
 philosophy could not affect the message of such 
 a church, and doubt could not exist in its mission- 
 ary atmosphere. Modern schemes of social re- 
 demption, as a substitute for the Gospel, this 
 church would spurn away. It is the Spirit-filled 
 church, and that church is the greatest social and 
 upbuilding power. 
 
 Social Redemption a Faece 
 
 A lifeless church resorting to the gospel of so- 
 called social redemption, in order to revive its 
 passing life, is like a physician resorting to 
 oxygen to save his dying patient — it is a case of 
 desperate need. But the message of Christ's re- 
 deeming love can destroy the disease of doubt 
 and false doctrine. Modernism secularizes, en- 
 slaves, destroys, but true Christianity spiritual- 
 izes, builds up, emancipates and ennobles the 
 Church. Here then is our task, to save the 
 churches to-day. Only the Old Theology of 
 Jesus and His love can do it. If the orthodox 
 churches do not arouse themselves to this great 
 service, then orthodoxy also will become an 
 empty, hollow formality, denying the power of 
 the Gospel. Like the old church of Pergamus our 
 doom ^dll be that of the ancient Modernists; we 
 shall dwell where the throne of Satan stands. 
 The New Unitarian Theology strangles and pros- 
 trates the Church, making it a helpless thing, 
 
208 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 like a ship that has been broken by the storm and 
 cast a wreck upon the shore. 
 
 Concluding Thoughts 
 
 We have endeavored to give a true statement 
 of the religious crisis in the religious world, or 
 the conflict between Modernism and Christianity. 
 We have tried to be fair, to present facts, to ap- 
 peal to the intelligence of men. We have seen 
 that the enemy is subtle, unscrupulous and re- 
 sourceful, that he is marshaling powerful finan- 
 cial forces to help him back up this Satanic prop- 
 aganda. Not in the history of Christianity has 
 such a responsibility rested upon the true follow- 
 ers of Christ. 
 
 One of the greatest dangers lies in a timid 
 leadership in pulpit and pew. Many know their 
 duty but they hesitate. The element of warning 
 is absent in their ministry. Men are feared more 
 than God. Many have submitted to the tempta- 
 tion to be on the popular side. But, if need be, 
 the business of the pulpit is to be unpopular, and 
 to create opinions, convictions, and lead men. 
 Thought to-day appears to run in waves, fad- 
 waves, fad-ideas, and oft-times the university and 
 pulpit are caught in these currents and carried on 
 with the tide of public opinion. Some think that 
 this is the operation of evolution; but it is only 
 the latest idea, or book, or theory, or hypothesis, 
 or speculative hobby, advocated by Professor So 
 and So, etc. And the business seems to have 
 
THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 209 
 
 become hypnotic. Even many of the teachers in 
 the preparatory schools have been inoculated by 
 this germ of Modernism, *^ broad mindedness/' 
 gas ! gas ! This is the fatal disease that has slain 
 Germany, and that will conquer America, unless 
 we lead the people up to Jesus Christ, and on- 
 ward to the Word of God. 
 
 Why This Book Has Been Wkitten 
 
 It is hoped that by this message help will come 
 to the churches and institutions of learning. We 
 may not understand the subtle temptation of the 
 modern teacher, but we believe we know some- 
 what of his problem. We do not ask him to 
 abandon research and reason, but to see that 
 God's Truth is higher than man's reason, and 
 that his submission to God's Revelation as given 
 in Jesus Christ will result in the highest culture. 
 We plead with the teacher to rise up to the heroic 
 faith of the fathers, to seek for his own life the 
 spiritual baptism that gave us the Christian 
 Church — our best — that he in turn may enrich 
 others and pass on the legacy to coming genera- 
 tions. 
 
 We have not, by any means, lost faith in the 
 teacher, nor in the noble army of young men and 
 women in our institutions. What we desire to 
 do is to bring to them the great vision and con- 
 viction, the joy and strength of a living faith, and 
 to call them on to the larger and greatest tasks. 
 We want to see the University return to Funda- 
 
210 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLB» 
 
 mental Things, to the Great Realities, to an 
 Apostolic Faith and Vision, to a type of conse- 
 cration to God and His Truth that shall safe- 
 guard our education, create a holy brotherhood, 
 save and transform the coming generations, and 
 thus radiate a light upon all mankind. 
 
 A Living Message 
 
 This is a living message. It was born of a 
 great conviction. As these words were being 
 written, memories of the past came in like a flood, 
 of the vast army of Saints and Martyrs who 
 sealed their testimony by their blood. These 
 seemed near to help and cheer. This, therefore, 
 has been a sacred, a holy service, and God cannot 
 send it forth in vain. To the inspiration of His 
 eternal Truth, and the Deity of His own beloved 
 Son, we dedicate this volume. 
 
 As we wrote we were not unmindful of the 
 noble men and women who are the financial sup- 
 porters of our institutions at home, and our mis- 
 sionary work abroad — those who give large 
 treasure to the cause of furthering the Church of 
 God. Much depends on them. It would seem 
 that this message could well be written for these 
 alone. They have their great and subtle tempta- 
 tions. They want to serve their generation well; 
 but they are perplexed. Where shall they bestow 
 the Lord's goods? Many of these noble men and 
 women have seen that Modernism is undermining 
 our Christian education at home and abroad, and 
 
THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 211 
 
 their hearts are wrung with grief. This message 
 will help all such to understand more fully their 
 obligations. They will now see that they cannot 
 afford to support those churches, missionary so- 
 cieties, and educational institutions that, in any 
 way, defend or are in s^nnpathy with the modern 
 religious apostasy. They know now that the 
 subtle Unitarian propaganda of the New The- 
 ology will destroy our work abroad as at home. 
 And further, these friends, we believe, will be 
 helped to speak out more boldly, to say with the 
 Psalmist: **Lo I have not refrained my lips, 
 Lord, thou knowest.^' (Ps. 40:9.) These, we 
 trust, will make a firm and emphatic protest, and 
 demand that the teachers and preachers of Mod- 
 ernism must go from our churches and educa- 
 tional institutions. 
 
 A Task of Joy and Sorrow 
 
 But the task though sacred and holy has been 
 mixed with sorrow. If this were a movement 
 against infidelity outside the churches, as in other 
 days, it would be child's play; but to many this 
 will appear as a propaganda against the institu- 
 tions we cherish. The enemies of Christianity 
 being intrenched inside the churches make it dif- 
 ficult to discuss these great matters, for in so 
 doing we may alienate those who are weak and 
 timid. Many well-meaning people are blind to 
 the danger we have discussed. These weak and 
 ignorant ones, and others who are compromising 
 
212 MODERN CONFLICT OVER THE BIBLE 
 
 with this evil, have not learned to value and love 
 the Lord as highly as they esteem their personal 
 friends, among whom are some of the advocates 
 of the New Theology. It is possible that these 
 friends, if they are not converted by this mes- 
 sage, will view the author with pity, perchance 
 indulge in hard, unchristian words, declare that 
 he is a meddler, disturbing factor, and be induced 
 to oppose his influence, as a certain financial 
 power in New York has already labored to do 
 through various agencies in America. It matters 
 not. We are able to say with the great martyr, 
 Paul, **But none of these things move me." We 
 should not forget that the Church is called to 
 suffer with Christ, to be privileged to say, **I am 
 crucified with Christ.'' The cost has been 
 counted; but it is as nothing to having the sense 
 of the approval of God. This sacrificial labor has 
 been joyous. We must strike this enemy of God 
 and man and strike him hard. And we must strike 
 him again and again, for he is a hydra-headed 
 monster, and will show his fangs when we 
 thought he was dead. Remember that this is that 
 ** spirit of anti-christ which has come into the 
 world'' (I John 4:3) and the goal for which 
 they are striving is to get the Church universal 
 to reject Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It is 
 to this end that they are waging their battle 
 against Bible theology, against the fact of sin and 
 regeneration, and against ecclesiology ^r\^ es- 
 chatology. 
 
THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE ONE 213 
 
 Men and women of the modern Church, shall 
 we join hands with Christ's followers in all lands 
 in opposition to this subtle evil? Everything we 
 treasure as sacred in both worlds is now at stake. 
 A higher, nobler, holier service than this we can- 
 not do. The Word of our God shall standi 
 Amen, and Amen! 
 
 **He which testifieth these things saith. Surely 
 I come quickly. Even so, come Lord Jesus. The 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. 
 Amen.'' (Rev. 22:20-2L) 
 
 FAITH OF OUR FATHERS 
 
 Faith of our fathers* living still 
 In spite of dungeon, fire and sword; 
 how our hearts beat high with joy, 
 Whene'er we hear that glorious word; 
 Faith of our fathers I holy faith! 
 We will be true to Thee till death! 
 
 Our fathers chained in prison dark 
 Were still in heart and conscience free, 
 How sweet would be their children's fatei 
 If they like them could die for Thee. 
 Faith of our fathers I holy faith! 
 We will be true to Thee till death! 
 
 Faith of our fathers! We will love 
 Both friend and foe in all our strife; 
 And preach Thee, too, as love knows how 
 By kindly words and virtuous life; 
 Faith of our fathers! holy faith! 
 We will be true to Thee till death. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPtEB PAGE 
 
 I. Excerpts from Text-books and Refer- 
 ence Books Used In Our Modern 
 
 Religious Education 1 
 
 (The excerpts refer to every Biblical doctrine from 
 demons to angels, and make clear what is taught 
 in our religious education.) 
 
 II. Correspondence with the Presidents 
 OF OUR Colleges, Universities and 
 Theological Seminaries .... 21 
 
 III. Modernism in America 38 
 
 IV. Contributory Causes to the New 
 
 Theology 63 
 
 V. The Conflict and Its Problem . . . 103 
 
 VI. What is Modernism? 136 
 
 VII. The Remedy — Education and Reform- 
 ation 173 
 
 VIII. The Remedy — Reformation by the 
 
 Local Churches 216 
 
 IX. The Remedy — Organization .... 231 
 
The Crisis in Church and College 
 
 By 
 
 a W. McPHERSON 
 
 SECOND EDITION, 1920, 256 PAGES 
 Volume I. 
 
 This volume is handsomely bound, cloth, gold letters, 
 large readable type. 
 
 Dr. James M, Gray, Dean of the Moody Bible Institute^ 
 Chicago, says of this book .* 
 
 "Dear Dr. McPHERSON: I have read your stirring book, 
 •The Crisis in Church and College,* and I shall write a com- 
 mendatory review of it for the July Number of The Christian 
 Workers' Magazine." 
 
 Yours fraternally, 
 
 James M. Gray. 
 
 In this review Dr. Gray says, among other things, "It is 
 the only book of its kind." 
 
 Dr, Len G, Broughton says: 
 
 "My Dear Dr. McPHERSON: I have read your book 
 and I consider it one of the ablest presentations of the modern 
 religious questions that has appeared in cur day. I shall 
 study this book further." 
 
 Yours fraternally, 
 
 Len G. Broughton. 
 
 YONKERS BOOK COMPANY 
 
 34 St. Andrew's Place 
 YONKERS, N. Y. 
 
Date Due 
 
 
 
 
 
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