Article June 15, 1899 Issue

The Great Question

The New York Sun

On Sunday, May 7, 1899, President Patton of Princeton University delivered an address to the graduating class at the Theological Seminary there. He spoke of the "new Christianity" as "a sort of ethical Christianity, containing sentimentality and sociology in almost equal proportions," which had become popular of late years though it is manifest that "our Christianity must be something more than ethical or we have no ethics to preach." That is, if Christianity is not something more, it is an imposture, a delusion, and proceeds from a corrupt fountain. Then Dr. Patton continued thus, according to a report in the Herald:—

"If you apply the philosophy of evolution to the origin of the literature of the Bible, you must apply it as well to its credibility. If you say that evolution accounts for everything, and that there are and have been no miracles, then you cannot possibly believe the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, or the Resurrection. If you say that man came by a gradual evolution, then you cannot believe in the fall of man.

"You cannot get along by minimizing this evolution doctrine and compromising it with your theology. If you do you will become the laughing-stock of thinking men. You will get the credit of more faithfulness and more intellectuality and be standing on firmer ground if you cling to the authority and infallibility of the Scriptures.

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