The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1921-05-27
"THE LOST BIBLE"
PROPHETIC SERMON
By Rev. J. E. Cortner, Retiring Mod
orator of General Assembly.

In opening the session Rev. ]. E
Cortner, Dyersburg, Tenn, the re
tiring moderator, declared that the
Bible has been crowded out of oul
social, commercial and domestic life
with the result that divorce is on the
increase and that thousands of homes
are unhappy.
Taking "The Lost Bible" for his
subject and basing his remarks on
the statement from II. Kings 22:S
II have found the book of the law in
the house of the Lord" Rev. Mr..
Cortner said in part:
"The old saying that history re-
peats itself is fulfilled in the modern
movement away from the Bible. Is
rael's priests forsook the word of the
Lord and became priests of Belail.
| Our first repetition of this direful
sin is found in the French Revolu-
! tion, when France threw away the
Bible, disregarded Gods Sabbath and
set up q prostitute who was wor-
SHIPPED as the goddess of reason. This
error caused rivers of the bluest
blood in France to flow be>ore it was
corrected. The most modern illus
tration has come in the world war
and grew out of Germany's repudia-
tion of Gods word. The world has
been on fire for the last seven years
because the book of the law has
again been lost.
The Bible is lost to the home
when it is covered by the dust of dis
use as surely as it was lost in Jo-
siahs time, and this 10 one of the
reasons why our divorce courts are
overruning and the Juvenile courts
are distressingly busy. And when
our people permit the Bible to be lost
from their everyday lives they can
not expect anything else but that la
Dor and capital shall fly at each 9TH
er's throats; our politics become a
stencil in the nostrils of decent peo-
pie, and our law-makers sacrifice
their, constituency to political gain
and party supremacy.
"The Book OF the Law" has been
excluded from our schools by proph-
cts of the new order. These prophets
tell us that much of the Bible is OBJ
solete and has no bearing upon the
problems of twentieth Cen.
tury life. The faith of thousands of
Students, earnest seekers after the
truth, has been destroyed through
higher criticism and infidelity of So
called Christian teachers. The re-
suit is that these boys and girls re-
turn to their homes either blatant |
infidels or else denying the funda-
mentals of Christian faith. Our
church should revoke the credentials
If every minister who departs from
The faith of our fathers.
"And most deplorable of all, the
Bible is being lost from our r~pulpits.
Think of the Bible being loss in the
church! And yet this is an actual
condition existing in many of the
churches to-day Post graduates
rom German universities have car
led the poison of German apostacy
nto our pulpits and the Bible has
,een deliberately lost as result.
"These prophets of the new order
re pro&aiming new Gospel-the
.ospel of works During the recent
var they declared that our soldiers
we're by their death saved The God
ead, the Word, The ministry and
very christian influence are striving
o eliminate war and promote uni
ersal peace, yet we ere told by these
loral lepers, by virtue of a soldiers
cath, men are saved from their sins
through this agency of the devil
yar. If such e doctrine be true of our
older boys, it is also true of the
[un and the unspeakable Turk.
Then they are creating shorter
ible. Since such doctrines as these
annot be reconciled to the Bible,
hey are reconciling the Bible to the
octrines Unwilling to bring their
yes up to the standard of the Bible,
hey are bringing the Bible down to
leir lives. The New Testament
the only part of the Bible in print
, far) from which has been elimi-
ated the divinity and atonement of
hrist, His second coming, the in
,iration of the word, the condem-
alton of false prophets, ETC., has
cen. butchered until it is no longer
Bible. The greatest neeo of our
mes is to again find the Bible that
rs been lost"