Show SEMON BY DR PADEN Speaks of Ancient i Wars of Extermination Exter-mination t 1 OLD TESTAMENT MORALITY I + NOT TO BE JUDGED 3Y CONDUCT OF CLOSES OR JOSHUA + The Morality of the Bible I the Morality Mor-ality of the Bible a a Whole and I Tested By the End and Not the Beginning Series of Highly EegingA Interesting Sermons Initiated + Dr Paden ot the First Presbyterian church Is preaching a series of highly Interesting sermons on Old Testament morality Last night he spoke of the wars of extermination and on next Sunday evening he will speak on polygamy as practiced in ancient ages Dr Paden took for his text last night Iho words Of tho allies of these people which the Lord thy ales doth givo thee for an inheritance in-heritance thou shalt save alive nothing that brcathoth but thou shalt utterly destroy de-stroy them Deuteronomy xx 16 The Son or Man Is not come to destroy mens lives but to save them Luke ix 5 He said in part We are nOt going to judge the morality of the Bible by either the conduct or the code of Moses Joshua or David As Canon Mozeiy wisely suggests the morality moral-ity of tho BIblo is the morality of the Bible as a whole and the waole is tested by the 0 and not by the beginning The laws of the Bible arc progressive ana as they rise from one stage t another they blot out the commands of an inferior standard and substitute the commands of I a higher standard The standard of Moses I I Is revised and corrected by Christ and the spirit of Elijah gives way to the srlrt EUja spirit of Christ As Mozeiy says The I morality of tho author of the dispensation dispensa-tion is the true morality of the dispensation dispensa-tion The final morals are the true morals mor-als the temporary are but the scaffold Ins The true morals are contained in the end and In the whole The morality of the Scripture Is the morality of the end of the Scripture It is the last standard reached and what everything else led up to The upshot of the dispen tatlon Is Its test and no ono will say that the intention of the author of the old dispensation as revealed in Its tendency ten-dency and finally set forth in the New Testament was that wars of extermination extermina-tion should have permanent sanction One is not therefore obliged to defend the morals or the methods of the Old Testament Testa-ment as worthy or all acceptation every where and always Polygamy slavery and wars of extermination belong inspirit in-spirit to a preChristian era of progress or are unChristian survivals of this lower moral and religious stage of development War Itsplf which is always cruel Will one day be placed in tho same category But as wo are not to find our moral standard In the book of Judges we have no right to expect Gideon and Deborah to live up to the standard laid down in the gospel of Luke And a we are not to fashion our conduct according to the standard which prevailed during the days I of Joshua Samson and David we have no right to expect the struggters In the night to live according to the light of the frt or the nineteenth century We must have somo regard for historical perspective perspect-ive we must take Into consideration the semisavage conditions and the crude moral perceptions of these ancient people This is peculiarly true of their way ot dealing with their enemies for we ourselves our-selves with all our superior light are not without blame in this matter After 1900 ears of the influence of Jesus war is still cruel and often quite Indiscriminate Indiscrim-inate in its consequences the innocent still suffer with the guilty and the passion pas-sion for justice still not infrequently thrashes Itself into a passion without justice justcer for a moment to understand the conditions under which Joshua made his conquest Put yourselves in hIs place and you will be less ready perhaps to criti cise his conduct First you will find that in those days war meant if needs be the extermination of the people conquered In less civilized communities the doom of the defeated tribe was not even mitigated by slavery The black tag of hno quarter quar-ter was flung out over every battlefield I Joshuas expedition had been defeated it would have been annlhllated under such conditions Warring clans must either exterminate or be exterminated War with the Canaanltes meant war to the death They would have given no quarter and expected none I Moreover the conditions of the Israelit ish invaders made the Imprisonment of treacherouscaptives impracticable if not impossible Uney had enough to do to watch the unconquercd Canaanites who plotted for ther destruction without weakening their position by filling their camps with captured but treacherous enemies They could not parole them such n thing as setting a enemy free on his word of honor tnat he would not or again take up arms against his captors was unheard of in those days Such enemies ene-mies as the Caraanjtes have no word of mes Carcmie honor Indeed It Is hard to imagine how Joshua could have safely dealt with the Canaanites otherwise than he did Ha could not parole them and as for absorbing ab-sorbing or assimilating them that meant moral suicide For these Canaanites were moral outlaws out-laws Their religion was notoriously irri mor both in oluptuimsness and cruelty cruel-ty Children were burned alive in sacrifice I sacri-fice to Moloch In the ceremonies of Thommuz groat mourning was followed by monstrous orgies As Lenormant says The Canaanites were remarkable for the I cruelty that stamped all tho ceremonies of their worship and the precepts of their religion No other people ever rivaled them in the mixture of blood and debauchery de-bauchery with which they thought to honor dlety Men charge Joshua with cruelty who would lynch their neighbors for Canaan itish immorality and inhumanity For the Canaamtisn cities ware a Sodom and Gomorrah they were so many nests of rattlers and vipers Sodomites and savages sav-ages There is truth In the declaration sometimes made that the destruction of these people by the sword was as much a visitation of deserved penalty as the destruction of the cities of the plain by fire from heaven or the burial of Pompeii Pom-peii beneath an avalancho of lava and hot ashes As I declared a while ago that I did not see how under the circumstances the Israelites could have done better than to utterly destroy the Canaanites now I am ready to say L do not see how under the circumstances his people being such as they were and their enemies such as they were I do not see how God could have counseled any better course On the oth or hand I am just as sure that In our stage of intellectual moral and spiritual development ami under the conditions which hold in the world today WB can find no sanction in theo obsolete outgrown out-grown laws for similar wars of extermi would such laws have nation nor any grip on our moral consciousness though seemingly announced from heaven As there was a day when the moral sense of Gods chosen people could receive no higher law the day has now come when the moral sense of Gods children must repudiate such laws belonging to pudiate as a stage of development which the followers of Jesus have long since passed by 1Ye are I not followers of Moses or Joshua but followers of Christ |