The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1924-01-03
BY w. H. PORTERFIELD

on the SUBJECT.
BY w. H. PORTERFIELD
TIN a bleak December day, in a
IL modest home in a little Iowa
N town, a mother bent over the
corpse of her golden haired baby
daughter.
About the wee coffin had gathered
sympathizing neighbors. sorrowing
women. many of them also bereaveG
of husband or child by the dread
scourage, diphtheria, mingling their
tears with hers.
Into the little group came a gray
haired man, stalwart Of frame, firm
of step, a good man, an earnest
Christian, Elder S. of the Presbyteriaa
Church. Now the mother had been
raised a Baptist. At heart, she was
| an Armenian. though she did not
know what the word meant.
Elder S., too, bent over the child
and, as if ashamed. brushed away /
tear. Then ne spoke.
Had the child been christened?"
The mother shook her head and went
on weeping silently.
That is bad. very bad" he
muttered.
The mother blazed up in her
wrath.
Baptism or No Baptism
My baby went straight to heaven
and I know 1t. baptism or no
baptism" she walled f1ercely.
The shores Of hell are lined with
the skulls and cross bones of I'M
baptized children solemnIy declared
the old man as he walked out.
All this occurred forty-six years ago
and Elder S, was a fundamentals
He believed the Bible to have been
written by the very finger Of God, be-
lieved 1t from Genesis to Revelations.
commas, semi-colons, periods, and
capital letters. He believed in a literal
He'll, a personal devil and that the
baptism Of infants was not only neces-
sary, but 1t was the only way to in
sure eternal salvation for the infant.
Was Not First One
But Elder S. was not the first fun
years before, that uncompromising
genius. Jonathan Edwards, had
thundered from his Boston pulpit:
IAN children are vipers in the
sight Of Godr'
1t was Jonathan Edwards who is
declared to have been the original
author of the following story:
A group OF little children seated
upon the hard benches Of a New
England church in the early Eign-
teenth Century sat with terror
stricken faces as the famous doctor
described to them the horrors of a hell
in which they might be consumed
eternally.
why" said the good doctor
there are stars IN the heavens so
far away It would take a little bird
million years to reach them. Now
suppose one Of these little birds
should fly down to the sea shore. pick
up q tiny grain Of sand, and fly with
1t TO that farthest start And sup
pose it should then return to earth
and get another little grain of sand
and 50 continue till all the earth was
carried to that inconceivably dis
tant star. by that time it would be
sun-up in hell"'
Goes Back Farther
But even Jonathan Edwards was
not the first fundamentalist. Two
hundred years before the founder Of
the doctrine Of election. John Calvin,
had erunciated the theory God fore.
ordained some souls to be saved and
some TO be damned and that was all
there was to it!
And before John Calvin had come
the fathers of that church which
drove Peter Abelard. the great mod
ERNST OF the Eleventh Century, into
a monastery and finally to his grave.
And there were those who made
Gallileo recant when he said the
world moved and the sun stood still,
and so back through the corridors of
searching for the first great funda-
mentaIist, for the one who nrst held
firmly to dogma in the face Of all
the persuasion and reasoning and tes-
timony of all the five senses and the
element of common sense, into the
bargain.
For your fundamentalist in theology
is your true conservative. He be-
heves in holding to the faith of the
fathers as he understands 1t and is
above all things uncompromisingl
opposed to new doctrines as being
"upsetting and subversive of the