A HERESY HUNT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15823, 23 July 1913, Page 5

A HERESY HUNT

METHODIST "PROFESSOR'S YIEWS. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright, LONDON, July 22. (Received July 23, at 0.30 a.m.) Something in the nature of .a heresy hunt occupied the Wesleyan Conference over the Rev. George Jackson's appointment as tutor of pastoral theology at Didsburv College. In 1905 Mr Jackson, as bead of the Methodist College in Toronto, became embroiled in a controversy with the older school of thought, and his appointment to Didsbury College was questioned on the ground that his views on the Old Testament were contrary to Methodist teaching.

Mr Jackson enunciated hie views in the course of lectures in 1909, when he expressed his disbelief that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, that the book of Genesis was a trustworthy account of the beginning of human life and civilisation, or that the book of Jonah was a sober record of plain fact. 1 1

Dr C'oley moved that in view of the unrest caused by the lectures the appointment at Didsbury College be reconsidered. He said that while Mr Jackson was no believer in what was called the new theology, he appeared to hold that a minister should go as far as the Rev. R. J. Campbell or further without being amenable to any ecclesiastical tribunal.

Mr Jackson, in defence, said that however it might be with some of the older men in the ministry, nine tenths of the younger men found little that was new and nothing that was disturbing in his lectures.

The conference, with seven dissentients, carried an amendment that it saw no reason to interfere with the appointment.