Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1900-04-19
STANDS FOX A NEW CREED.
Rev DIR. Parkhurst Attacks the West.
minister Professions of Faith.

New York, April 16.-Dr. Charles
Parkhurst in his sermon yesterday Wig
orously attacked the Westminster con-
fession of faith. He said:
''We ought to have new confession
of faith. tits surprising that the Pres
byterian church is able to do as much
as it is doing with such an incubus
strapped upon us as we are tottering
under in our present confession. In the
first place the thing needed is not
system of theology, for that is VIVA;
our present confession is, bu, a simple,
brief Saxon statement of a half
dozen or SO of the vital ingredients of
Jesus Christ's message to the world.
Il could get along with confession
of faith containing but the little thaI
Jesus said when he was trying to make
Christian of Nicodemus: God so low
ed the world that he gave his only he
gotten Son, that whoever believeth in
Him. should not perish, but have eter-
nal life That gives to us the doctrine
of Gods unlimited love, human guilt,
the divinity of Christ, salvation thru
Christ, faith in Christ, immortality
every word Saxon, three quarters of
the words monosyllables, profound
All oily SIS13 SlhlPlC
for any 4-year-old.
AT any rate, we want new creed.
Amending this one will not meet the
necessities of the case. Better give il
dignifed place in the museum for
what it is than hack to pieces and re-
vamp it for what it is not. 1t is like
human nature in this respect, that
mending ii will not make it whole,
and its only chance lies in being born
again.
And then, once more, if there were
among us the distinct feeling which the
gospel so wonderfully guarantees, that
everything in all this great Christian
matter pivots on absolute and uncondi-
tional love of God, we should be intol-
Grant toward everything that states or
even suggests anything like a partial
or an arbitrary love on Gods part,
loving some because He chose to, and
damning the rest in order to show
what He could do and how Just He
was.
Nov, that is our book, the Presby-
terrain confession of faith, in the third
chapter. If we are thoro Presbyter-
ians and believe what our doctrinal
prospectus advertises us as believing,
we believe it probable that some Of
the children in your homes, little chill
dren, perhaps the babe of our bosom
is damned, already damned. damned
before it was born, damned from ever.
lasting to everlasting, and then you
are invited to come into church ant
say Our Father &s
"Why. any man who should become
a father for the sake of the JOY and
glory he would use in burning and
racking his own offspring, deliberate
ly creating child with a view to the
agony into which he was going to tor
ture it, would be chased from the
earth as fend and as an ebullition.
itsIJ does not meet the case to say
that it is only in the book and that
nobody breaches it. 1t is true that 40.
body breaches it, and equally true,
doubt not, that nobody believes it, new.
ertheless it is printed on the flag De.
meath which the Presbyterian army is
marching, and it hurts US as demon.
ination. Men are staying out because
it is there, and men are going out be-
cause it is there"