Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-07
DR.. parkhurst Will Be the Next Vic
tim of the HereSy Hunters.
HIS VERY RADICAL UTTERANCES
Have Already Marked the Doctor for an
Ecclesiastical Trial.
A BITTER ATTACK on THE ASSEMBLY
rsPKcrAL TELEGRAM TO THE DIsrArcH.1

hunters may find rare browsing between its
aesthetic covers. DR.. Parkhurst is not in
thoroughly good standing with the Presby-
terv that brought about the trial of DR..
Briggs, and the least additional weight is
like to break the camel's backbone. He is
one of the inner coterie that shares with
DR. Briggs the hidden mysteries of the Chi
Alpha Club. Others of this circle are the
half dozen young divines in possession of
the pulpits of the most fashionable West
side Presbyterian Churches in the CITY,
They are Henry VanDyke, Jr., Wilton
Merle Smith, George Alexander, Charles L.
Thompson, James II. McIlvaine.
DR.. Parkhurst first distinguished himself
and paralyzed his brother Presbyterians by
announcing publicly that he had never read
The Westminster Confession OF Faith until
his attention had been called to it one year
ago by the agitation over the proposal TO
revise it. As minister, DR. Parkhurst
had taken years ago vow TO receive and
adopt this Confession as his rule of faith and
practice; and as a director of the Union
Theological Seminary, he had sworn to up
hold the same The effect of this announce
Inent therefore may be imagined
STRONGLY FOR REVISION
When at last Dr. Parkhurst did read the
Confession the enthusiasm with which he
went in for its revision struck even his
friends as singular, and excited the resent
ment of the Conservatives. He wanted re-
vision badly, and was quite free TO say so in
the most picturesque and emphatic language
of which he is capable. The impression
was not lacking that Dr. Parkhurst's re-
vision of the document would have stopped
little short ofits complete annihilatioD. In
this he did not share the opinion ascribed to
the Chi Alpha coterie; to let the Contes-
sion remain untouched as sort of whitened
Eepulchre, and to construct another and
shorter creed, in the Briggsensian style of
architecture, to mark the progress of
thought at the close of the nineteenth CEN
tury.
After revision was disposed of, DR.. Park
hurst came in for a share of attention at the
time of the Briggs trouble He referred,
one Sunday morning in his pulpit, to the
action of the anti-BriggS men, and his
language was printed the following morn
ing in everv daily newspaper in the country.
To put it mildly his sermon was a TRADE
against the modern church.
sAwDUsT FOR BRAINS.
He asked the church if the young preach
ers were to pump out their brains and fill
their heads with sawdust" to qualify for
front place in the procession. He turned
1llS bdCh Oll ldNlu Tie SdlItT, WHICH
the standards of his church positively direct
him to use twice during each service. He
announced TO the public that he had been
obliged to have IN expurgated edition of the
Psalms for his private use, so often had he
found David in conflict with Christ and his
own reason. He cast reflections upon
Princeton, the pet school of the church.
But worst of all, he upbraided the New
York Presbytery for 'sniffing heresy,"
- I i. L.
tory cOmposes herself to write the history
of this affair (meaning the Briggs affair."
may the tears she sheds be sufficient TO OBJ
literate the record" This last sentence is
now pasted in the scrap books of more than
one member of the New York Presbytery,
ready for a day of reckoning.
During the Briggs debate at Detroit Dr.
Parkhurst gave further offense to the New
York men that sat beside him on the floor
Of the General Assembly. One of the
speakers, DR.. Dickey. of Philadelphia, as
sured the commissioners to whom he was
pleading for mercy to DR.. Briggs, that she
would hold an opinion until his church
should tell him that it was a wrong opinion
and then he would surrender it, This e1-
preston of good will from the mild and
gentle advocate of Dr. Briggs called forth
some applause, Not from Dr. Parkhurst
however, who turning to his colleague be-
elOG INN, tACldAlu6u DGdl, uodI, ludL all
intelligent man should say that
ATTACKING THE ASSEMBLY,
Still greater grew the distance that separ-
ated DR.. Parkhurst from his Presbytery
when few weeks later he published a long
and bitter attack upon the General As
sembly for attempting to force DR. Briggs
from the faculty of Union Seminary. Now
comes this volume of sermons, under the
mysterious title 'Three Gates on a Side,"
that reflects the attitude of the eloquent and
poetical pulpit orator of Madison Square |
toward the Presbyterian Church and her |
historic creed. |
The sermons are not controversial; they |
are quiet talks TO his people, of the kind |
that has made his pulpit famous, full of |
light and disparaging references to the |
sacred dogmas of the modern e1pounders of |
Calvanism. Nothing particularly contra
confessional is in them when viewed |
through the ChiAlpha spectacles, but |
much that requires explanation, when |
placed under the powerful microscope in
use at Princeton. The bacillus of heresy
is there. In the present temper of the
New York Presbytery this book cannot
pass unnoticed.
This style of preaching has become popular
in this city, especially in the pulpits of the
Young divines above mentioned. There is
a free and independent spirit developing in /
handling the topics of the Old and New
Testaments that certainly answers in every
particular the eclecticism and rationalism
that condemned David Swing. The remark
of DR.. Parkharst about his expurgated
edition oil the Psalms is an example. The
custom fgliding over the imprecatory sent
ences in that part of the Bible is almost uni
vcrsal.
HARD TO COMBINE.
IL is hard for the young men to see how
the bitter, revengeful spirit of the Psalmist
comports with the love and mercy
that are Sthe central ideas of the |
Gospel So when, in reading the
Old Testament scriptures to his congregs-
tion, the modern preacher strikes those
passages which the preacher of a generation
ago was wont to roll as a sweet morsal un-
der his tongue. calling upon the Lord to
destroy utterly, by fire or by sword, the
enemies, men, women and children like
wise the baggage of the particular psalmist
or prophet so writing, there is painful
hiatus, as the pastors eve scurries down the
page III search of less sanguinary petition.
There are stories, too, in the Old Testa-
nent, which in former davs the mothers
taught to the son at her knee as first duty
OF motherhood, that are never referred to
in modern pulpits, except to prove the er-
rancy of the Bible. The young men of the
Presbyterian pulpits have gone away from
the Theological Seminary with an i'm
preston that these horrid stories are in
Ierpolations into the inspired record, and
with a conviction that the Bible is better
without them.
Hence this clecticisIn which leads Dr.
Parkhurst to expurgate his Bible. 1t
wonld greatly please the conservative elders
Il, ,L,, |