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Show ; DEVTH THROES OF AN ENEMY. :: , Nearlv n: hundred ve:u- ago. Count Joseph De f j ' ; f Maistre, ambassador fioni France to the court of Russia, foretold in his treatise on "Sectarian , Chuches" that the disintegration of Protestantism I -would begin with its preachers. He wrote: "In all ; f these churches (separated from Catholic unity) the ; j great changes I announce will begin with the clergy, I and the church which will be the most exposed to ' ; European influence will be the first to afford this great raid interet-trug spectachv' (Chapter v, page 321.) A few vvl... . ;: . !' ! i ..airdidate for 1 the ministry, nanud Avehionlt.'. Diuck,--presented himself before the New York presbytery for ordination. ordi-nation. Examined as t ) his belief in revelation and . the inspiratir.ii : ?!? Bible. Mr. Black candidly admitted that !:;- .:i; n- t believe the story of Adam and Eve, the exitc:ico of the Garden of Eden, and, furthermore, that he had his doubts of the inspira tion cf the first eleven chapter- vf Genesis. Not- withstanding his denials and :'- t'oubts. the ordina- i tion of the young man was fohnnlly approved at "S the meeting of the New York presbytery convened I in New York City, Oct. 4. It We do no injustice to the members of the presbytery presby-tery the Presbyterian ministers present if we assume as-sume that they each and all protested against the inspiration of the first eleven chapters of the Bible and, while out of harmony with the creed of their church, were in entire accord with the rejections of Mr. Black. The eleven chapters cf the Book of Genesis contain, con-tain, all told. 299 verses. Let us take, for the sake of brevity, the first verse of the first chapter: "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth." Now will Mr. Black, or any member of the - presbytery that consented to his ordination, give us,the exact "scientific" account of the creation? When they have satisfied us of the soundness f the "scientific" method, we can apply their ex- 1 pla nation to the other 293 verses. An easier prob- l ; lem than this could hardly be proposed. We await r with patience its solution. j When every member of this New York pres- bytery was entering the ministry, he solemnly 1 avowed that he had been called to it by Jesus Christ, and it so happens that the first eleven chapters of Genesis, repudiated by these Presby- terian ministers, are actually endorsed without any ' qualification or mental reservation whatever by our j Blessed Lord himself. The eleven chapters deal principally with three great events in the history r of the human race: ! ? (1) The creation of male and female. ' (2) The martyrdom of Abel. (3) The flood. I' ; Now listen to what our Divine Lord spoke and .? believed : "And he answered and said unto them : I : 'Have ye not read, that He who made man in the beginning, made them male and female?' And he j said:' Tor this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife; and they I shall be in one flesh. Wherefore they -are no more l .' ' wo ut one npsh. What, therefore, God hath t joined together, let no man put asunder." St. Matt. ! xix:4-6. 1 (2) "That upon you may come all the just blood that hath been shed upon the earth from the blood j . of Abel the just, even unto the blood of Zacharias, whom you killed between the temple and the al- I tar." St. Matt. xxiii:35. (3) "And as it was in the days of Noe, so also I ' ha11 the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in I G davs of the flood, they were eating and drink- ; ing, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered the ark; and they knew not till ; j the flood came and took them all awav." St. Matt ; xxiv:37. I Had Mr. Black and the presbytery which or- : ; ; dained him been present at that controversy, they , ivould have told our Savior that his doctrines'' were "unscientific"; that the schools of thought, ad- l j : vanced thinkers, and the universities, had decided : I ( against the "traditional view" ; that Professor Eliot, ; David Starr Jordan and Rockefeller's university A had pronounced against the Biblical account of the . ; ; creation of man, the murder of Abel, and the storv -' ' JH the flood; and ttat Preferred to march with these men than to walk with Jesus Christ. And our Lord's answer would be to them what it was to the scribes and the Jewish doctors of learning: "You have made void the Word of God through your learning, falsely so-called." With infidelity in the ministry, higher critics in one Protestant pulpit, and vaudeville entertainment entertain-ment in another, religion as a revelation need no longer be sought. Upon all the vessels of your temples, tem-ples, upon your mascot, the Bible, and upon the pulpits of the house where your fathers worshipped, there is written the ominous word "Ichabod" ("Our glory has left us."). |