The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-05-26
Sunday School
son
Bv WILLIAM E. GILROY, d. D

By WILLIAM E. GILROY, D. d.
Readers of this column nave
probably themselves corrected an
uncorrected slip in the comment on
the lesson for April %, in winch IN
an unthinking moment I attributed
to Paul the great address by
Stephen in Acts 7. Paul, OF course
was not a Christian at the time,
and his recorded addresses do not
appear until late in the Book OF
Acts. The slip did not affect the
use made of the reference.
The period between the Old ana
New Testaments is one to which
comparatively little attention IS
paid by Bible readers, but it was
of great importance in the develop
ment of Judaism and in the pre-
paration for Christianity. Over 400
years elapsed between the last
writing of the Old Testament and
the first writing in the New. The
period was not without religious
writing, as readers of the Apoc-
ryphal Books of the Old Testament
well know, but the IA books, vary
ing in value, were not part OF the
Hebrew Canon, which closed with
the Book of Malachi. ~
The Apocryphal Books were in
cluded by Miles Coverdale in his
English version of the Bible in
1885, and they were retained in
the Authorized Version of King
James in 1911, though now they
seldom, if ever, are retained in
published copies Of the Authorized
Version. They are commonly
found in pulpit Bibles, and in the
older type of Family Bibles. "
Readers who wish some under.
standing and knowledge of the his
tory of the period should turn to
the Apocryphal Books, and parti'
cularly to the Two Books of Mac
cabees. IT,
This period of over 400 years saw
the rise and fall of the Persian
Empire, its overthrow in the world
conquest of Alexander the Great
and the ascendancy of Greece, and
the domination of the world by
Rome, completed shortly before the
Christian era, which was to con-
tinue throughout four centuries OF
Christian development.
The confusion and contrasts, the
struggles for power, the persecu
lions and the bitter sufferings and
destruction of masses of people,
that have marked recent years in
our own time, are prevalent in that
history along with the evidences
of deep faith and religious feeling.
The records of cruelty would be al
most incredible, had I not seen, only
the night before writing these
words, the films of the terrible
atrocities committed by Nazi fiends
in the prison camps of Germany.
It is in the light, or darkness, of
such present-day fiendishness that
one reads of the slaughter Of 5000
Jewish worshippers within the very
pIGClI1CLS VI Iilc 1CI11p1C, WIlCll
Alexander Jannaeus brought in his
mercenary troops, to effect this
wholesale murder, when the wor-
shippers had protested against
the dissertation of the altar and
of their religious rites.
That faith and hope and good
ness, and devout expectation Of the
coming of the Messiah, could per-
sist through all the prosecutions
and cruelties, the murderous rival
tries and struggle for power, and
the repeated and determined eff
forts to pervert the purity of re-
ligion, ought to give Us faith that
out of our own dark times a new
era of truth and love and right
BUSINESS will dawn for mankind
for it was out of these four GEN.
turtles that there came the life,
and teaching, and Gospel, and saw
ing power of the Man of Galilee.
In deed and in truth we can say
that God is not dead, and that
Christ has overcome the world.