“MODERN CRITICISM’

Southland Times, Issue 20417, 21 February 1928, Page 8

“MODERN CRITICISM’

LECTURE BY REV. SALE-HARRISON. The Rev. Sale-Harrison continued his series of lectures in the Victoria Hall last night before a large attendance. The subject was “Modern Criticism.” The speaker emphasised the fact that the doctrine of “Premillennialism” had kept him from yielding to modernist teaching some years ago. A modern critic could not hold premillennialism, and vice versa. Men were saying that doctrines needed to be recast; but had sin changed? Had the heart of man become any whiter? The world was not getting better according to criminal statistics. There was a great temptation to delight in scientific attainments. The stories of the Bible were called fables, and were severely questioned. This attitude was exactly predicted in the scripture. A statement of the modern critical position was read before a modernist convention in Chicago recently and received the cordial assent of the meeting. It was found to have been taken verbatim from the writing of an avowed atheist. The difficulty really was that the natural man could not understand spiritual things. Man was willing to have Heaven, but would not accept the truth of hell, declared the speaker. Both were equally fact. There was no such thing as soul sleep or annihilation. It was true that there were stupendous difficulties. The only way to secure solution was to accept Christ as Saviour. The modernist did not like the “fall” and believed in a man falling upward. Let that doctrine be applied in slum work. It would fail utterly. Criminals knew quite well there was no divine spark in them. They needed the help of the Christ of the Bible and this had been proved in countless cases The attempts of the evolutionists to account for man’s origin w’ere ridiculous in the extreme. An evolutionist could not be a true Christian as he would have to sur render the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. The greatest authorities in the realms of geology, archaeology and scriptive language had shown themselves on the side of the Bible. There never was a time when compromise was so disastrous. The lecturer concluded by an earnest appeal for a definite attitude on the side of the Bible. The concluding address will be on “Nebuchadnezzar’s Image” and “The Revival of the Roman Empire” and Mr. Harrison will endeavour to explain the relationship of the League of Nations to the Scripture.