The time was when our danger in departing from our simple plea of returning to the Bible alone lay in our being moved by clerical and sectarian influences.  To the young in particular in the present day that can hardly be called our greatest danger.  The influences at work to produce doubt in regard to the truth of the Bible were never so great as they are now.  This used to be the particular work of professed infidels; now it is more largely the work of professed Christian scholars.  If you wish to pass for a “scholar,” you must not profess to believe the Old Testament.  You must not say too much against the truth of that book, or you may be called in question, but you can go a good long way before there is much danger.

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 as Christian “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.