Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-05-23
ONE-EYED ORTHODOXY.
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH,

parsons and laymen have taken whack a.
1t on one side or the other and yet religion
lives. As grow wiser, we will come tc
hold the General Assembly only once in ter
years.
A good many people NOWADAYS are doubt
less remembering the interesting Assembly
of 1887 in which, even as to-day, the part5
of orthodoxy had a majority OF votes. Re
ligton had hard time of it that year. The
majority seized the opportunity and ex
PEELED as many of the minority as they con
veniently could. That, unhappily, Is the
temper of orthodoxy always Someho ow
bigotry and orthodoxy seem to go together
1t Is, of course, the heretics who call the
orthodox bigoted. They themselves believe
that their actions are impelled by con.
science and regard for truth and love for
God. That is what they thought when they
piled the rack and the thumbscrew and
lighted the fagots or the Inqusition. 1t is
unfortunate that the orthodox have SO
| much of the love of God in their hearts that
| they appear to have no room left for the
| love of man. The heretics seem to have a
monopoly of brotherly love-
And somehow, we outsiders, who are not
much interested in the technique of ortho-
doxy, have a kind of liking for brotherly
| love. Most of us are on the side of the
| heretics. And when the orthodox put the
may possibly do in 1892, all our sympathy
| goes with the defeated party.
The Fault of Orthodoxy.
IT is said that Dungala, the Indian god
| of things-as- -they-are, has but one eye. He
| sees only one side. He cannot understand
| that there is another side Whoever de-
cares that there is really another side is
| liar, and the truth is not in him. Dungala
would be good patron saint for the party
of aggressive orthodoxy. 1 do not mean
only in Portland, but everywhere and
always. The orthodox party sees things-as-
they-are, and is resolved that all things shall
remain as they are. Orthodoxy has never
been able to make allowances for differ
ences.
That is my chief objection to orthodoxy.
The orthodox may hold the truth, or they
may not. The trouble with them is, that even
when they do maintain the truth, they
maintain 1t in narrow, bigoted, unbroth-
erly, and unchristian way. They want to
put out all who disagree with them. They
cannot see that all the great truths are so
big that the different people must look at
them from different points of view. They
say, These truths have always been looked
at from this point of view; consequently,
there is no other point of view.
In the General Assembly of 1887 the ortho-
dox were in the majority. They proceeded to
expell the heretics. They actually turned
out the Synod of Western Reserve, of Utica
of Geneva, and of Genesee, and the Third
Presbytery of Philadelphia. Mr. David Ben
nett Hill never executed a coup more clever,
more effective, and in the end, more disas-
trous. 1t was case of ecclesiastical
gerrymander of the worst kind. 1t was as If
Democratic majority in the State Assembly
should disfranchise Allegheny county. The
result of course. was division. Presbyteri-
anism was long after divided into New
School and Old School.
The point of difference, 1 believe, between
the orthodox and the heritics, was that one
side believed in mediate and the other in
immediate imputation! Who can tell to-
day which is the orthodox and which the
heretical position? Who knows, indeed,
what imputation means, whether immediate
or mediate? All this has long gone into the
theological dust heap.
Something in the Portland Fight.
THEY have something better to fight over
at Portland. That IS an enoourag ement.
The question of scriptural tnerranoy is vast
ly more interesting than the question of i'm
mediate imputatfon. One would think, also,
that it would be considerably more easy of
settlement. The Orthodox say there are no
errors in the Bible. The book of HOLY
Scripture is exact, accurate and infallible in
all its religion, all its science, all its history
and chronology, and all its grammar.
The heret1cs say no. Surely there is no
room here for a priori discussion. This is q
matter Of fact. You set down column of
figures, and your neighbor says you have
made blunder. Will you then, putting the
figures behind you, enter upon discussion
of the probability of mathematical errancy?
Absurd You say show me the mistake.
This the heretics are very willing to do. 1t |
Is plain, they say, that the Bible is not infal- |
lible verbally, for there are 150 900 different |
readings, in which cases nobody knows ex-
actly what the right word is. 1t is not in |
fall1ble historically. Two writers describe |
the same event differently. One SAYS that |
there were two blind men at the gate of |
Jericho, another says there was but one. |
Dates differ. All the marks are found here |
which appear in any other quite human his
tory. 1t is not 1nfallible scientifically. |
Genesis and geology cannot be made |
to fit together. 1t is not infalIible
The Old Testament contains much
against which our New Testament con-
science revolts. The provisions made for
conduct in the old time were the best that
men knew or could receive then; we have
outgrown many of them now. A man who
who should attempt here in Pittsburg to
take the Bible as an infallible and an iner-
rant guide in morals, and should shape his
conduct according to certain precepts and
examples which he might find between its
covers, would be thrust into O patrol wagon.
The Bible nowhere claims to be inerrant |
The New Testament writer's did not regard |
the Old Testament as inerrant. Even in the |
Reformation days. neither Luther nor Cal
vim believed in an inerrant Bible 1t was
not until the Reformation had begun to de-
cline in enthusiasm and spiritual fervor.
that it came to be thought that mot only
the substance of truth and the views pro-
posed in their minutest detail, but even the
Identical words, all and in particular were
supplied and dictated by the Holy Ghost.
Not word is contained in the HOLY Scrip-
ture which is not in the strictest sense in
,pired, the very interpunction not ex-
,epted."
This notion which the orthodox party are
intent upon upholding in the General As
;embly came into the foolish heads of blind
5heologians not earlier than the seventeenth
The Bible Not Endangered
IT matters little, except for the inter-
ssts of the Presbyterian Church, which way
the question is decided at Portland, or
whether or not it is decided at all, either
'mediately" or Immediately" There is no
1anger that even the largest kind of a ma
ority will be able to put the Bible under a
glass case and paddock the case The Bible
S so great, SO true, and so inspired, that it
has not the slightest need of being fenced off
With barbed-wire barrier of pious lies, 1t ia
20 be read andto be studied. The actual truth
lbout it is to be found out and proclaimed |
The sooner, the better; and the more of it. |