Morning journal and courier., 1891-06-09
MIR. rownE.s ADDRESS
Recently Delivered at the Church o1
 the Measiah. aa-

WAs: hdIpoI, 4oGteu anu ndOOoy AA 1uus- trations of Religion at Yale:"
 Of MT. Totten as prophet, MT. Towne said: It would be difficult to !, exaggerate the folly and mischief of his pretentions to knowledge of the Bible, and of terrors to come on the world. He claims to be . scribe, who has had Special and personal instruction in some of the matters pertain ing to the kingdom of heavenly dint of laborious study, not without prayer, nev- CT unanswered" By extraordinary con- ceit in prayer he comes to extravagant conceit of knowledge and delivers mes- sage as if he were God Almighty's private secretary commissioned to announce the crack of doom. He tells us that his ''studies of scripture have been chiefly chronolog- ical, with view to discover the accurate
 scale of time employed thsrein," and in his most recent performance he takes a header into the apocryphal Fourth Book of Esdras, after what he calls Ca chrono- logical nut" This nut is pas sage which never had any mean ing except that of purpose ly obscure statement of historical facts and of historical expectation; yet he pretends
 to see in it ''accurate history and consum-
 claim, as an "entirely new and original discovery" of his own, that this is ''the
 most remarkable Messianic prophecy in
 existence" His own success in cracking
 nuts he emphasizes by telling us that "the
 Hebrew seers were seldom successful" in their tefort to discover the meaning of
 'the times and the seasons.'" And be- cause he got hold of his nut by Chicago man writing to him he thinks we may see
 ''the momentous significance of the days in which we live," and 8 ''most vivid veri- fcation of my labors." If he should ever make respectable approach to knowledge in the Bible, he will discover, after almost everybody else, that the kingdom of God is eternal and
 spiritual, that it cometh not by observa-
 tion and has no earthly times and seasons; and that only from ignorance and error did the earliest Christians expect an end
 of the world. This early Christian mis-
 take, the blunderers in bible study have fallen into now for hundreds of years, and
 MT. Totten is but the last of them. All
 history teaches that the gods hate prophets, and never more surely mako a
 man mad to his own destruction than by
 planting in him the conceit of guessing
 the times and the seasons of doom to the
 world. And of all the prophetic cranks
 the mathematical have ever been the
 worst. The true word of God deals with
 justice, and mercy, and trust, and if MT.
 Totten would take counsel of scripture
 wisely studied he would let alone conjur- ing with mathematics and guessing at
 times and seasons.
 AS to Dr. Harper, Mir. Towne said: The
 marvellous thing is to see Dr. Harper's ad-
 mirable zeal in study, and energy in teach
 ing, devoted, through a course of uni
 versity lectures, to a matter 50 utterly re-
 mote and practically worthless as "The
 Early Traditions and Institutions of the
 Hebrews" The "twelve outline studies' elaborated by him, through world of de- tails which he lacked time to more than glance at, had only this clear result, to show that Hebrew ideas, stories and writ ings were similar to those of other ancient nations. The fact clearly known to the scholar is, that they are so exactly similar sion set up by Jewish divinity of . divine origin and character. A full and fair treat ment of the whole case of Hebrew ideas and institutions and writings would cut away entirely the conceit of tho Jew of any thing peculiar and favored in his people, anything sacred and divine in his scrip ture. Not only were all things Hebrew out of the worlds common stock, but if we broadly study in all human history for divine truth we find everywhere-not less truly than in Hebrew sources-that "God made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, that they
 should seek God, if haply they might feel
 after him and find him." and that in fact
 others, even better than the Hebrews, did
 reach some knowledge "that in hin we
 he is our father, and that Eve are his off
 spring" Dr. Harper tried to save ortho- dox Jewish appearance by the claim that ideas and stories told and taught among the nations appear in Hebrew scripture under divinely purified form This claim no fair scholar can make. It is not true
 Those early ideas appear elsewhere in as pure form as in Hebrew writings And Hebrew writings and action reflect as ignorant barbarity as anything to be found anywhere in ancient history. You open to the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy, and read commandment to surely kill, to stone to death, anyone proposing to leave the Hebrewsreligion for any other; it may be "thy brother, thy son, thy daugh or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul; neither shall thine eye pity, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal, bat thou shalt surely kill, thine hand shall be first to put to death." The amount of murdering bar parity in early Hebrew history and scripture forms blackness of dark ness worse than anything elsewhere found in history, and the idea that it was of God has done more harm than any other false thing in all human his tory. No shedding of human blood has been so cruel and 50 enormous as that done by Christians in consequence of &C., cepting the Hebrew spirit and scripture as Gods. Dr. Harper has no reason to ac- cept any people or books as divine, but only truth got out of them.
 And that truth is Q simple law of con- duet summed up by Christ in love and mercy to our fellow men. The scholar in ancient history finds the ideas of fall of man, wrath of God, blood atonement and special salvation part of heathen barbar- sm as well as Hebrew, and the scholar of Christ finds his truth free from them. There is no excuse now for holding on to hese ancient ideas, least of all in the uni yersity devoted to Christian culture. It is sad business to have finger in chapel and preside at Dwight hall and come here n Mir. Moody, a set of false ideas which hould never have got out of the heathen world into the Christian, if men had taken nly the spirit of Christ and had looked nly for the simple truth of Christ, in- tead of letting false Hebrew pretension impose upon them. Moody goes about as he evangelist of special salvation, just as 'etzel went about as the evangelist of spe- ial indulgences. A church is kept going a the college which is entirely on the false pecial salvation foundation; and even )wight Hall is carried on upon the same false view of special salva- ion. The result is a nearly total failure 1 f true Christian ministry for the great ody of students. There is no proper uni ersity teaching of religion. If we look t great universities, their rise and times f best service to mankind, and es- 'ecially if we look at Oxford and in England and at Har- ard, so early founded by Puritan sm, we find that the best university ulture gets wholly away from Hebrew limitations and rises to the highest human | nd moral level, which also was the level, | ,hrist "We know that God spake unto | loses," was one of the chief words of l hose who crucifed Christ, and by nothing an Christ and his truth be more | urely betrayed than by Semitic influences citing up text and dogma against the pirit of universal love. The Presbyterian rganization has just committed the rime against Christ, the sin against the oly spirit of love, out of Semitic, 'hich nailed Christ upon his cross of R,,A |