A Trip Abroad / An Account of a Journey to the Earthly Canaan and the Land of the Ancient Pharaohs; To Which Are Appended a Brief Consideration of the Geography and History of Palestine, and a Chapter on Churches of Christ in Great Britain

by Don Carlos Janes

We are met in conference as subjects of the kingdom of God, as heirs of everlasting glory, having a hope greater than the world can give, and a peace that the world can neither give nor take away. To preside over such a gathering, met to consider the best means of spreading the Gospel of Christ among men, is a token of respect upon which I place a very high value. The fact that it came unexpectedly does not lessen the pleasure.

I know that you have not placed me here on account of my tact and business ability to manage this conference well. Had I possessed these qualities in a marked degree, you would no doubt have taken notice of them before this time. I know that you only wish to pay a token of respect to a plain old soldier before he lays aside his harness, and, brethren, I thank you for that.

For forty-four years I have enjoyed sweet and uninterrupted fellowship in this brotherhood. For over forty years my voice has been heard in the preaching of the Gospel of the Grace of God. For close on thirty years all my time has been given to the proclamation and defense of New Testament truth as held by us as a people. Every year has added strength to the conviction that God has led me to take my stand among the people who of all the people on the earth are making the best and most consistent effort to get back to the religion established by Christ and his apostles. I therefore bless the day that I became one of you.

Had our position been wrong, I have given myself every opportunity of knowing it. Circumstances have compelled me to examine our foundations again and again. I have been called upon to defend our faith, when attacked, times not a few. Whatever may be the effect that I have had upon others, my own confidence has been increased at every turn. To-day I am certain that if the New Testament is right, we can not be far wrong; and if the New Testament can not be trusted, there is an end to the whole matter. But the claims of Christ and the truth of the New Testament are matters upon which a doubt never rises. As years roll on, it becomes more easy to believe and harder to doubt. Knowledge, reason, and experience now supply such varied yet harmonious and converging lines of evidence that a doubt seems impossible. Difficulties we may have, and perhaps must have, as long as we live, but we can certainly rise above the fog land of doubt. Considering all this, it gives me more pleasure to preside over this gathering than over any other voluntary gathering on earth. It is a voluntary gathering. We do not profess to be here by Divine appointment. It is a meeting of heaven's freemen to consider the best means of advancing the will of God among men. While met, may we all act in a manner worthy of the great object which brings us together.

Faith, forbearance and watchfulness will be required as long as we live, if we wish to keep the unity of the faith in the bond of peace. All those who set out for a complete return to Jerusalem have not held on their way; some have gone a long way back and others are going. What has happened in other lands may happen here, unless we watch and are faithful. The more carefully we look into matters, we shall be the less inclined to move. Putting all God's arrangements faithfully and earnestly to the test, and comparing them with others, increases our faith in them. Faithfulness increases faith. This keeps growing upon you till you become certain that only God's means will accomplish God's ends. Sectarianism, tested by experience, is a failure.

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.