The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1900-04-11
TERMS ARE DEFINED
Rev. Bruce Griffith breaches
Second Sermon
ANSWERING ED HOWE
Theology a Science Christi
anity--a Life.
HOWE

The second sermon by Rev. Bruce
| Griffith in answer to Ed Howe was de-
| livered Sunday to a greater audience thar
| the large one of the Sunday before. The
interest is unusual and is increasing
Rev. Griffith said in part:
| ''One Of the chief points of attack made
| by Mr.. Howe in his second lay sermon
was on Christianity because of the i'm.
projections of theology, or othodoxy
Now. orthodoxy IS relative term. The.
ology Is science, Christianity is life
Theology IS the human arrangement Of
Gods laws, according to mans best un-
derstanding Of them. Botany is the scien.
tific arrangement of the laws Of the Yege-
table kingdom, but the vegetable king
| dom was before botany, the latter springs
from the former. So with theology. The
ology grows out of religion. It has never
yet been perfect It never will be per
fected by men. Every Bible might he
destroyed and Christianity would live. al
most without change.
cause the Masaic account of creation does
not harmonic with science. Whoever
claimed that the Bible was written to
teach geology, or any other natural sci
ence? Whoever knew a Jew, especially
in the age Of Moses, to be a scientist?
Moses used many traditions Of former
ages in the introduction to his inspired
history of the Jewish people. But from
all he draws not scientific, but religious
and moral lessons. There is a relisi rus
truth in his story of the temptation and
fall, in the destruction Of a race end a
city by flood and by fire and Of the saw
ing Of a portion Of the inhabitants of
such.
''The Bible was written for and is an
authority on moral and religious life-not
on anything else. To take it apart from
its legitimate place is to bring it into
disrepute.
THE above reply is applicable to the
matter of evolution. AS an authority on
religion and morals the Bible does not
touch the matter of evolution. The
assault on evolution because it does not
harmonic with Genesis is as foolish in
this age as the assault on the Bible be-
cause it does not presume to teach sci
ence. Shakespeare was mistaken on his
ideas of witches, but who casts Shakes
peare aside on ethical and aesthetic
teachings for that reason? His writings
were not presumed to teach scientific
witchcraft.
There is an evolution all through
Scripture. From Terah, father Of Abram,
the psgan nomad in distant Ur of the
Chaldees, down to the Jewish nation in
the height of its religious, civil and
natural glory, is the most complete story
of human evolution ever written by man.
There is evolution all through the New
Testament in Gospels and Epistles, and,
quality all, in the characters of its men,
Likewise there Is evolution in creeds. in
thology all sciences are progressive
Thank God Christian people do not be-
lieve all things they did several centuries
ago. and do believe some things they
then did not believe.
Another statement to which we take
exception is that this is not a Christian
nation The speaker here traced the evil
dent Providence in the discovery Of
America at a time when a new principle
of religion and civil liberty had been just
born of the Reformation PERIOD showed
the value Of the stock with which the
first colonies were planted, from
Plymouth to Florida, and the results that
they worked out in the form of free gov
eminent with equal liberty for every form
of belief.
THE religious census compiled in con-
nection with the census of 1880 shows that
out of the 62,622, $50 inhabitants of the
United States, 496So.0Oo are Protestants,
communicates and adherents. OF Roman
Catholics there are $4,000 making in all
$500 900 Christians and adherents to
Christianity, as against 5630,OOO nom
increase in church membership in the
twenty-one leading Protestant denomina-
tons from 1880 to 1890 amounted to AZ per
cent, after deducting all losses.
The last point discussed was the state
ment that the men who are foremost in
the progress and moral advancement are
outside the church. and that the great,
active world outside of the church and
not influenced by it Here the speaker
showed the unmeasured influence of the
Christian educational institutions of New
England and the middle states, founded
in the early colonial period and, based on
Christian bases which moulded the lead
ing thinking men of north and south for
a century IN civil and literary life. Mas
sachusetts was superior to South aero
lima in the day OF Webster and Hayne,
because her Institutions OF education had