Article December 31, 1904 Issue

A critic says, of the race, "We were born in sin, we were...

Richard P. Verrall

Poughkeepsie (N. Y.) Courier

A critic says, of the race, "We were born in sin, we were shapen in iniquity. It is absolute folly, then, to talk of perfect deeds, perfect fulfilment of the Divine requirements as a means of salvation for any one of us, for we can do none of them, and moreover we do not attempt it." How can this most remarkable statement be reconciled to that luminous standard of Christian ethics set up by the Master in his Sermon on the Mount? Did he not plainly say to his hearers, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect"? Jesus was evidently not unmindful of the spiritual definition of man as furnished by the Hebrew Scriptures, which described him as the image and likeness of God.

We cannot agree with this critic "that modern scholars (almost all of them) are opposed to the Bible and its beautiful Plan of the Ages." On the contrary, modern scholarship has stripped the Bible of many apochryphal interpolations and textual errors, which have tended to cloud the purity of the canonical writings with the materialism of traditional theology. Such evidence of modern scholarship as the Ferrar Fenton translation and the "Modern Reader's Bible" by Richard C. Moulton, M. A., are certainly indices of a great spiritual awakening. The human race preeminently needs both the spirit and the letter of the Logos and the Gospel.

Richard P. Verrall.
Poughkeepsie (N. Y.) Courier.

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