BIBLE STUDY AND BELIEF NECESSARY
by C. A. L. Totten

There never was a day in which earnest Bible study was more necessary than the present one, nor was there ever a day in which so rich a harvest stood ready for the reaping. Most religious people are literally afraid to investigate the Bible, and well they may be if the canons of "Higher Criticism" are to guide their study. Most of the laity consider it beyond their sphere, and so far as "Moses and the Prophets" are concerned, even the clergy almost entirely neglect them.

We readily grant that Sin, Repentance and the Gospel of a Saviour are the vital "ends" of apostolic work. Nevertheless we hold that Christ and the Resurrection cannot he successfully preached in this age upon the undermined foundation left by the higher critics. It is well for them if they can hold their own souls within the fold; we question it; but be this as it may, it is the rest of men that are the ones whom Christ desires to save, and they have logic left, and cannot be savingly reached by any other means than a logical exegesis of the whole Bible, and a satisfactory explanation of its inspiration as such, upon the basis that it is "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." For, not though one rose from the dead, will men believe, unless they likewise are taught to believe implicitly and are made to understand, "Moses and the Prophets."

It is the Bible that atheists and infidels attack - the Old Test ament chiefly - for they are logical, and perceive that if the foundation goes, the superstructure cannot stand, no matter how eloquently it can be clothed in agnostic sermons. Hence this Old Test ament is our one and only bulwark of defence, and the Romance of History will make of him who reads "Moses and the Prophets" in the light of Anglo-Saxon facts, a GNOSTIC indeed, and one who can fully show whereon he stands, and why he " knows".

It will not do to preach Christ and deny Moses. It will not do to doubt the universality of the Flood, and ask men to accept a Saviour who alludes to it! It will not do to doubt Joshua's Long Day, with the sun and moon poised in midheaven while he fought , and yet stultify our hearts with hopes of a LONGER DAY when even sun and moon will not be needed! If the story of Eden and the Deluge, of Jericho and Joshua, are myths or fables, and not literal facts, then, to the still rational mind, all that follows them is equally so, and faith, lost in those who foretold His advent, can never be savingly and logically found again in Christ and His apostles.

If, therefore, we are to resume our place militantly among the noble army of those who have already testified for Jesus Christ with their lives and works, we must repudiate it into this iniquitous school of criticism, and recapture, somehow or other, the Ararat redoubt, replace the Long Day in our scientific chronology, believe Moses rather than the Moabite stone, and the Bible rather than a sun-burned brick dug up at Babylon.