To the Euitor of the "Nonrn-Citiwa Datty News. Sit,—Mr.'G. P, Bostick asks some questions which he would like some Modernist to answer.—Without claiming to be either a Modernist oF 'a Fundamentalist, but a cross between the two, may I still be permitted to attempt an answer to hi questions, my only excuse being that in our generation there is an increasing number of people who think along the Li Mr. Bostick man myself, but I think mission-ought' to be, do or be done With such a preface, quite frequently obviously superfluous, the intensely religious man and the religion he holds dearer than life are freely criticized. Why, at such times, is common sense Inid aside? What would any of us say of a man who stated his conviction that operas and concerts should be ubo~ lished by act of Parliament, because he had never heard anything in music but a foolish noise.
Has the man devoid of artistic perception a right to say, "Tam not a painter myself but I think Art Galleries are an insult to man's intelligence, for one picture is as ood as another, ete." Who would put any value on such a remark! Hence a missionary can take with th proverbial grain of salt the sins of those in whom the xefous sense is dull.
St. Paul's statement in 2 Corinthians LI. 12. is an incontrovertible fact, proved by every attempt to ye it. He says: "The na-I man reeeiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them." We accept this assertion of our conspicuous foolish This may suggest the criticism again referred to in your recent Bible with any authority in its dee-lorations and teachings? If we have such a book, whence came it My answer would be that we do Testaments—the Whence have such a book, the old and New
came it? From the hearts of men, illuminated by the light of God. And in proportion as the heart of a prophet or apostle was so illuminate ed, was his message divine; inspiration is not something absolute, but exists in degrees. We can speak of lone prophet being more inspired than another, and his message bearing more the stamp of divine wisdom than another's merely because we know that all human beings equal in any of their faculties, and that they may not all be equal in their sensitiveness to divine inspiration is at least reasonable. But what is inspiration? Is it held by the Fundamentalists that God dictated the Bible word for word? Is not inspiration rather the communism Letween the divine spirit in man and vine over-soul that we call If it be so, then Mr. Bostick's other question—whether the Bible divinely inspired or man-made—is easily answered, for then we sce that the the Bible fs both divinely inspired and man-made, a possibility that seems to have occurred to neither the Fundamentalists nor, the Moder-rusts. The Bible is the result of interaction between the human and the divine spirit, and in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.