I only want to present these statements to you and ask this question: Why is this rejuvenation of the Catholic church demanded? Why this demand to forsake symbol and creed of the middle ages in order to come into harmony with modern truth as it has been developed by modern thought and science? Do not the questions pre-suppose that the church complained against is wrong in creed and doctrine and attitude towards progress? I may not go further into a discussion of this Catholic situation, because I want to call your attention to still more startling things in the Protestant world, especially in our own country.
REFORM IN PROTESTANTISM.
There has been running through the current numbers of the Cosmopolitan magazine a series of articles by Harold Bolce on the trend of university teaching in America. Some two years ago, Mr. Bolce blocked out an itinerary for himself, having no less an object than a visit to leading universities throughout the United States, with a view to becoming acquainted with the trend of university teaching, and more especially with reference to economic, social, philosophical and religious subjects. As a result of that investigation he reports his visit through four articles of this magazine. I shall call your attention to what is said simply upon the trend of religious teaching within the universities. I read the following extracts from the August number of the Cosmopolitan. The article is prefaced with a note from the editor in which he says:
"It has been shown in the series of articles beginning with 'Blasting at the Rock of Ages' that our great universities repudiate the dogma and orthodox of the established church and proclaim a new religion divested of Biblical and church creed. Why do the most profound scholars in our institutions of learning undertake this revolutionary work? What do they hope to accomplish? * * * The answer is here. The schoolmen have placed Christianity in a scholars' crucible. They are determined upon reducing sacred institutions to scientific tests. The college men approach the subject with the greatest reverence. It is false to characterize them as atheists or iconoclasts. They assert that what we need is not less of God but more of God. They prophesy the introduction into the world of a system of belief superior to the Christianity of the ages."
Such is the editorial conception of the trend of teaching in our universities, on this subject, with Mr. Bolce's articles before them. And now from the article itself. I read the following:
"Instead of living in harmony with God, the church, the colleges say, has set up a celestial czar, a conception which has been an injury to man, because it has given him a sense of weakness, inferiority and fear."
That is the arraignment of the colleges against the teachings of the churches as to their conceptions of God. Now mark you, "The colleges say that the church, through its fear of new truth, has at all times been an obstacle to progress." Is not that a remarkable thing to say of the church of Jesus Christ that in reality ought to be in the very vanguard in the pursuit of truth and in the conservation of it?
"Dr. Andrew D. White, formerly President of Cornell university, says that the church in its apprehension of the progress of learning persecuted Roger Bacon, and by so doing did more harm to Christianity and the world than has been done as a result of all the efforts of all the atheists who have ever lived."
"Professor Borden P. Bowne, of Boston university, Professor Frank Sargent Hoffman of Union College, and scores of others, say that the church is the last to come into the possession of truth; that it often lags behind, even in the matter of the progressive conscience of the time; that it has had to recede from its position in every field of science; and that it is still receding and must continue to make way for the progress of truth in spiritual matters. For many professors assert that the church, as revealed by the outcry over the disclosures of what the universities teach, is still engaged in the effort to strangle thought.
"And as the opposition to truth, as it is claimed, is still the role of religious bodies, the inescapable duty of unfettered institutions of learning is to give the world a new revelation."
Joseph Smith proclaimed that need ninety years before these professors awoke to the realization of the need of a new revelation.
But to continue: