ROSLYN HALL MEETING.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2627, 19 July 1871, Page 3

ROSLYN HALL MEETING.

To the Editor. Sir, —Any candid person who attended the debate between the Dunedin and Roslyn Societies on Friday last, must have felt convinced that, as between Protestant Christian disputants, the question for discussion was very ill selected. Wc have not Abi am for our Father—Jesus Christ is the sole Master and Teacher of Christians, and i is revelation alone is meant to be the rule and pattern of their lives. Speaking of the Bible, as a whole, it does contain, as I have argued, solemn, serious truths, appertaining to a future world, which fall upon our ears with the solemnity of clods falling upon a coffin, and therefore lias an undeniable ciaim upon all schools and seminaries of learning under qualified and unfettered teachers; and speaking of the Bible as the highest authority upon such subjects, Christian people instinctively think of the New Testament, and not of the Old. Distinct records they are—not, in all parts, of the same import or value, or authority, yet still inseparable, for the New is built upon the Old, and to lay aside the Old is to lay aside the whole. Mr Meers neither got nor gave justice. While, perhaps not so far wrong in principle, as regarded the passages he wanted to read, he was wrong in the method ; and he was wrong in proceeding upon the supposition that intelligent people do accredit, as inspired, every Jewish scrap and saying ; for example, in the Song of Solomon, or the pretended explanations at the tops of those and some other chapteis. A large part of the Old Testament is a historical record of a race of people who were sem -barbarians ; many of their ideas, practices, and sayings were like themselves, and it is only wasting argument to try to prove what nobody denies, that ministers of the Gospel of Christ never do preach sermons upon such texts—referred to by Mr Meers—of the Old Testament, as tell of the rude barbarity of these infant races of the world. Yet, I say, who shall be able to separate the Jewish from the Christian dispensation ? Mr Meers or no mere man need attempt it. For m-xt Friday’s meeting, I would suggest to the Societies to put the question in a more practicable form, viz., “(Should the New Testament be read in schools ?” An affirmative decision carries the Old, for both go together by necessity. The reason must be apparent. The object of the pubi c discussion is instruction—good —and. no good can result from discussing a question involving the verbatim ft lihemtim inspiration of the whole of the Old Testament, for on that point we have no prop; r inform tion. I have read the “Evidences of Christianity,” but who has been privileged to read the “ Evidences of Judaism ?” The work has not yet come from the press. I am, yours &c., William Christie, Roslyn Society.