Jesus believed that old book to be the word of God. But he was not a "scholar." He was the son of a country joiner, and you must not expect him to rise too far above his environment. It surprises me that the "scholars" have not called more attention to the ignorance of Jesus in this respect. They will no doubt pay more attention to this later on; for asChristian"scholars" it becomes them to be consistent, and I have no doubt that they will shortly, in this respect, make up for lost time.
To expect that none of our young people will be influenced by this parade of scholarship is to expect too much. But faith in Christ should keep them from rushing rashly out against a book that Christ professed to live up to and came to fulfill. This battle of the scholars over the truth of the Bible is only being fought. We have no wish that it should not be fought. Everything has a right to be tested with caution and fairness, and when the battle is lost, it will be time enough for us to pass over to the side of the enemy. This question as to the truth of the Old Testament will be settled, and as sure as Christ is the Son of God, and has all power in heaven and on earth, it will be settled upon the lines of the attitude which he took up towards that book, and it will be settled to the disgrace of those who professed to believe in Jesus, but deserted his position before full examination was made. That no transcriber ever made a slip, or that no translator ever made a mistake, is not held by any one. But the day that it is proved that the Old Testament is not substantially true, faith in Christ and Christianity will get a shake from which it will never recover.
We have not lost faith in the Bible. There is no need for doing so. The word of the Lord will endure forever. But meantime, brethren, let us be faithful, prayerful, and cautious, and be not easily moved from the rock of God's word by the pretensions of "scholars" or of science, falsely so called.
I do not know that there is any necessary connection between the two, but a belief in evolution and scholarly doubts about large portions of the Old Testament, as a rule, go together. You must not profess to know anything of science in many quarters if you doubt evolution. In the bulk of even religious books it is referred to as a matter that science has settled beyond dispute. To expect that many of our young people will not be so far carried along by this current is to expect too much. Many of them will be carried so far; it is a question of how many and how far.
There perhaps never was a theory before believed by as many educated people without proof as the theory of evolution. It is an unproved theory; there is not a fact beneath it. That you have low forms of life, and forms rising higher and higher till you get to man, is fact. But that a higher species ever came from a lower is without proof. Let those who doubt this say when and where such a thing took place, and name the witnesses. Not only are there no facts in proof of it, but it flies in the face of facts without number. If like from like is not established, then nothing can be established by observation and experience. What other theory do we believe which contradicts all that we know to be true in regard to the subject to which it refers?
Not only does it contradict fact and experience, it contradicts reason. If you listen to the voice of reason, you can no more believe that the greater came from the less than you can believe that something came from nothing. We are intuitively bound to believe that an effect can not be greater than its cause. But the theory of evolution contradicts this at every step along the whole line.
I am anxious to find the truth in regard to anything that has a bearing upon my belief in God or religion. But in trying to find the truth, I have never regretted being true to myself. To slavishly follow others is, to say the least of it, unmanly. I do not believe in evolution because God has so made me that I can not. Wherever man came from, he sprang not from anything beneath him. When a man asks me to believe a thing that has not facts, but only theory to support it,—said theory contradicting fact, experience and reason,—he asks me more than I can grant. The thing is absurd, and must one day die.
I am agreeably surprised that we, as a people, have suffered so little as yet from the sources of error referred to. Still they are all living dangers, and if we would hold fast the faith once for all delivered to the saints, we must see to our own standing, and as God has given us opportunity let us be helpful to others. Our ground is God-given and well tested. The fellowship with God and with each other that it has brought to us has given us much happiness here. Let us be faithful and earnest the few years that we have to remain here, and our happiness will be increased when the Lord comes to reward us all according to our works.