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Show VICTIMS OF HIGEER CRITICISM. It was a happy, yet pointed phase of the Jesuit Father, who recently saitt in New York that the Protestants of the world were the victims of so-called I hieheir criticism. i It is almost a daily occurrence now for some noted nonCatholic divine to write himself out of the communion to which he has belonged on the ground that he has, outgrown the belief which he has professed and sKvorn to teach. Indeetl, the floundering that is everywhere every-where manifest among the sects is a sign of dissolving Christianity on their part, and is capable of no other interpretation. inter-pretation. Thei so-called higher critics are the advance-guard of infidelity. By way of showing our readers the state of mind of a large and influential class of Protestants, as well as the wont of exact thought, we reproduce the following from the New York Sun: "When Bishop Thoburn, Methodist missionary bishop to India and Malaysia, Malay-sia, essayed to get over the difficulty of the new Biblical criticism by suggesting sug-gesting to the missionary conference, on Tuesday, that Christ rather than the Bible is the foundation, of Chris tianity, on the ground that 'the Re-vealer'is Re-vealer'is worth infinitely more than the revealed,' he simply begged the question in a very discreditable way, and he was properly rebuked when the Rev. Dr. Piei-son said It is "impossible to impair the integrity of the written Word without impairing the living Word.' "Bishop Thoburn is reported to have pooh-poohed this utterance of Dr. Pier-son Pier-son as a 'cranky little statement,' to which he did not think it worth while to reply. The real reason why he does not reply, however; Is that It is unanswerable. The sole foundation of all Protestant belief in Christ as 'the Revealer' is the Bible, and consequently consequent-ly the infallible authority of the Bible cannot le destroyed without destroying that belief. This Methodist bishop knows of Christ, of the Incarnation, of the supernatural character of Jesus, only as he gets the knowledge from the Scriptures, and it is impossible for him to believe in the one without be lieving in the other. "It has become fashionable for preachers and theologians who have given up the theory or dogma of the Divine inspiration and consequent infallibility in-fallibility of thes Bible, to undertake to save themselves from the reproach of complete infidelity by protesting that they believe in Christ rather than in the Bible. But how can that be? How can they believe in the Incarnation, Incarna-tion, impossible naturally, without believing be-lieving absolutely in the Bible, whence alone they get "it?." Nor is that miracle any less incredible, as tested by natural nat-ural demonstration, than the miracle of Jonah and the whale, than any of the other miracles of Scripture or than the dog-ma of the infallible inspiration of the Bible. " 'Perhaps too much time has. been devoted to tire Bible,' Bishop Thoburn told the missionary conference. That cannot be true unless too much time has been devoted to missionary effort, the sole Impulse and justification for which come from such devotion. If the Bible is not' 'wisdom from on high' there is no reason for sending out Christian missions to upset other religions re-ligions a3 not illuminated by the 'lamp of life.' "If Bishop Thoburn has been preaching preach-ing to the acute Oriental mind that the declaration of the infallibility of the Scriptures as the essential fori id at ion of the belief he would incttlcate is a 'cranky little statement,' the self-sacrificing efforts by which the Methodists have sustained him- as a missionary in India have been cruelly wasted, and he has been making himself ridiculous In Oriental eye." : - ' |