The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-07-18

VI SuO OlO oCuOOl' DObu VI shOoO
men, in their addresses to the natives
and in their published utterances,
held the position that no heather
could possibly be saved by living up
to the best light, moral and spiritual,
of his own religion; knowledge of
and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
was absolutely essential to salvation.
1t mattered not that the consequence
of this doctrine, in the hopeless dam
nation of the great mass of mankind,
was too fearful to contemplate; these
men and scores of other missionaries
heroically adhered to this horrible
faith and preached it to the world.
We can sympathize with the Hindu
rajah who is reported to have replied
to the evangelistic entreaties of a
missionary,-"I prefer to go to hell
with my fathers rather than worship
a God who can act so unjustly."
In the Calvinistic churches of to-
day the Suitability of the heather by
adhesion to the best light they pos
sess is an open question.
The Bible According to CaIvinism.
Half century ago, every Presby
terrain divine believed and taught
that the Bible is the infallible Word
of God, that its language in every
part as we'll as its doctrine is inspired
by God, and therefore that it is the
one supreme authority to which the
human mind must bow in all matters
of faith and duty. The position of
supreme authority which by the Rom
anist was given to the church, by the
Calvinist was given to the Bible, in
terpreted in it's plain and literal sense
of comparing scripture wi h scripture.
The infallibility and the supreme
authority of the Bible as taught by
the early Calvinist and the orthodox
generally has received many rude
shocks as the generations have come
and gone. Long before the reforma-
ton era, the discoveries of Copper
nicus and Calico in the sphere of
astronomy set the world and the
church thinking. The church issued
its anathema against the new astron-
omy which, by making the sun the
center of our system and the earth
revolving body, seemed to contradict
the infallible word of God. But the
anathema of the church could not
prevent the world from thinking and
the new astronomy was established
and the church then proceeded to
harmonic it with the Bible.
Within the memory of people still
living the science of geology has be-
come an established fact in spite of
the denunciations of enraged ortho-
doxy; for did not the biologists con-
tradict the teaching of Moses9 In
vain did churchmen rage against the
new science of the earth; the old
theory of the creation of the world
some six thousand years ago, by the
fiat of an extra cosmic deity, had to be
given up. Then came a period of
harmonizing Genesis with geology
showing that the Scriptures. rightly
interpreted in sense which no hui
man mind had ever thought of be-
fore, could be brought into accord
with the facts revealed in rock and
river-bed and deep sea cave. Today
it is a matter of indifference to all
people of intelligence whether the
Bible can be harmonized with geol-
ogy or not; we go to the facts and
phenomena discoverable in the
earth's crust for the story of the
earth's genesis.
The rise of what is called the
higher criticism is within the mem
DRY of multitudes of living men.
This mode of study, now recognized
as a science, or at least scientific
method, has led to the conclusion
that the Bible, considered as history,
is not infallible. Investigation of an
Gent temples and mounds in Egypt,
Syria and Babylon have indeed
brought some remarkable evidence
in support of portions of the Bible
history; but it has also brought evil
dence equally remarkable that some
of the biblical records are not histor-
ically correct. A more careful study
of the beginnings of the Christian re.
ligion than what our reforming ia
theirs were able to devote to their
task has proved that Jesus and his
apostles are not to be credited with
the whole of what we call Christianity;
nor even with the whole of what we
have been accustomed to consider
the essentials of Christianity. Some
of the most characteristic teachings
of Jesus were current before in the
ethics of the ancient Egyptian relig-
ion, of Buddha and of Zoroaster. In