Los Angeles herald., 1893-01-08
SUNDAY, JANUARY 8, 1893.
PROFESSOR BRIGGS DELIvERANcE.


We confess to much doubt as to
whether Professor Briggs has helped the
cause of the church or of Christ in his
apparent triumph over his theological
opponents. There is no doubt that the
men and women who gave the money to
found Andover and Union seminaries
and Princeton college gave it to main
tain belief very dear to them, and that
it was not the belief that Prof. Briggs
now feels called upon to declare Tor.
That he has departed from that faith
honestly is clear, and has even grown
out of it in the ordinary way that SO many
have travelled; but there will always be
those who will believe he should have
left the pulpit to another who did be-
lieve what thai pulpit stood for,
and not have quarreled with the
great body OF believers over mere points
OF doctrine. To many it would
have seemed more sincere to have
left them with his blessing, it he could
not abide with them, than to have
helped tear the church asunder by his
course. He was moi. t.doing the work the
founders of the faith ordained and paid
their fortunes to have done. Why
would it not have been better to have
put away even the appearance of invit-
ing wastefnl wrangle before the world
which has already seen too much OF
theological strife? We take small in
terest in the disagreements of theologi-
cal professors. 1t is not new shading
OF one dogma, but the placing OF less
stress on all dogmss, that the world is
asking for. We look upon the differ
ences between Andover and Union SEM
mary as wholly inadequate outcome
of the real controversy going on in the
land. Neither OF them comes much
nearer the mass of the people by
widening the gulf between themselves.
Nor does the laundering of DR.. LYMAN
Abbot against the traditionalism of
Princeton greatly interest us, for even
he cannot yet come to see the wider
bearing of the thing of which be COM
plains; for we hold it an ofense against
mankind to create and maintain any
dividing line of purely intellectual be-
lief which assumes the sinfulness and
destruction of all those who are not on
our side of it. The very things that
separate the church from the world and
SO pitifully limit its power and influence
are the very things that so endlessly
and apparently hopelessly divide the
churches themselves. And yet they
seem wholly unconscious of it, and con
tinus each to substitute their warning
metaphysical strifes for the bread for
which the great world is hungering.
Why do men continually make this
mistake? They respect each others be-
liefs in every thing else in the world, but
all the splendid literature of the Scrip
lures and the reason and experience of
mankind go for nothing to those who
are dividing the very churches them
selves into factions it were we'll nigh i'm
possible to classify or to count. And
this is the entertainment, the hope,
the salvation to which the worlds
people are invited. They are the
great majority of every community,
of about the same type as to
ability and attainments. doing the bulk
of the business and carving on the main
work OF the worlds civilization. In all
things else, the majorities are accorded
natural power and supremacy; but here
small and dwindling minority, them
selves stricken with internal strife, give
themselves up to quarreling in the cor
raj of a sixteenth century creed, and in
vite the attention and allegiance of the
nineteenth century, into whose convic-
tions is being woven the unassailable
and blessed truth that Christianity is
simply Christ in human lives.
Any just and intelligent man or wom-
an today, who ie led by natural selection
to find peace and helpful home in some
church, should join IL and make it a
sacred thing; but who can say it is duty
or an advantage otherwise? Can it be
claimed that the world is not in the
main sensible and fair in it's judgments
on these things? Is anybody quite sure
it is not better to keep out of the theo-
logical ranks entirely than to recruit
them with the result of making the din
more general and common belief in
common policy further off than ever? In
a word, can it be fairly said that men
who fail to find peace and res inside
church doctrine based on a conception
of Gods purpose as promulgated three
centuries ago, and which they neither
believe nor understand. are wicked and
lost men? And yet is not this assump-
tion the underlying logic of the prevail
ing theology that is urged upon the
world = urged even while 1t is itself
stricken with strife?
The tendency in all this is to parti-
sanship that is dangerous and SO often
almost fatal to simple truth and manly
duty. The mighty instinct Of the masses
is always safer than the learning of the