Fergus County argus. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1886-1946, 1893-06-08

lessor had the courage and honesty to
deny that everything found in the old
testament was the word of God. He
thought there was plenty Of evidence
of human agencies and human weak
ness in the scriptures. In this belief
he was sustained by a large element
of his church. The mere fact that he
has been suspended by the vote of in
telluctual pigmies and DWARF, who
%journeyed to Washington on a sum-
mer vacation, does not prove him in
the wrong. The world looks to stu
dents and investigators for new ideas.
Prof. Briggs is nothing to the world,
the truths for which he contends are
everything. He is only an instrument
through which the light of reason is
dispelling thedarkness of superstition.
He is offered an opportunity to return
to the church by recanting, but there
is little danger>of the professor doing
this. We presume he would invite the
faggots of old before accepting such a
proposition. There is better use for
him in this world. Let him establish
a church and expound his doctrine.
There is a demand for him as there
was for David Swing, DIR. Thomas and
Canon Farrar. The church will ulti-
mately move up to his position. 1t
cannot do otherwise. There is prog
ress in religious thought as in every
thing else. As an evidence of this the
Presbyterian church has abandoned
many of the infamous ideas of the old
Calvanistic creed. We hear nothing
now of inherited guilt and inherited
perdition; the limited atonement; the
partiality of God; infant ~damnation;
tyranny over women, election and
other absurd and obnoxious teachings
that could only have originated in the
mind of a tiend, and believed in by an
imbecile. The church is growing bet
ter; it is yielding to reason and logic;
it is more tolerent and less stilted. 1t
is discovering that faith is of little &C
count, while good deeds and right liv-
ing are the standards by which every
man and woman is measured.
Prof. Briggs is condemned because
he came to the defense of a just a low
ing God; not that he wished to dis
credit the Bible or open the way to in
fidelity. Absurd doctrines, false teach
ings and hypocrisy make infidels, not
the deductions and opinions of learned
theologians in honest search for truth.
Ii DIR. Briggs does lot believe every
thing in the old testament to be the
inspired word OF God it is because he
has a more exalted opinion of the su-
preme being and does not regard him
as a demon. Prof. David Swing, who
was churched some fifteen years ago
by this same denomination, in a re-
cent sermon of great power and elo-
quence, in speaking OF the main point
at issue in the Briggs trial, said:
One Of the most amazing things in this
trial is that full-grown men-men whs have
been studying religion and Jesus Christ un-
til their hair has become white with years
should now be attempting to hold up the
little words and dates and little incidents
of the bible when much of it's morality is
Infamous. In one book the Lord is angry
because his general took prisoners in the
war. He ordered all women and children
to be killed. In Deuteronomy the Lord
passed "A law that in warning with their
own tribes they might spare women and
children. but in warning with IA pagan tribe
they must kill anything that has the breath
of life. In the book of Joshua the Lord be
! comes worked up into a fury and says, 81
will be with you tomorrow; killeverything,
every human being, and cut the hamstrings
Of all the horses" And yet this is the God
whom the assembly calls the father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Jesus who would
not kill "a sparrow, and who blessed even
his enemies. If Jesus was the son of that
God it is u wonderful instance of the utter
failure Of the idea of h%eredityl What a
moral progress of the son over the father.
Now, no sane man believes that a
kind and loving providence could be
implicated in such bloody, inhuman
deeds. 1t is a Islander upon a just
God, and the sooner the church and
the age reject such things the better it
will be for humanity and the Christian
religion. The mind cannot be en-
shaved. Logic and reason resents
such doctrines as absurd and cruel.