The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JUNE 8, 1911. OUR BAPTIST BROTHERS

New Zealand Tablet, 8 June 1911, Page 1057

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JUNE 8, 1911. OUR BAPTIST BROTHERS

HE oldest inhabitant, interviewed by Josh Wii mi Billings, reckoned that ‘the hard-shell baptiss is \ m ry** the tuffist religion thare iz for every day wear. |] IjL He sez that one hard-shell baptiss ken tin ] more hard work on the same vittles during a hot day than 15 episkopalites.’ Nobody doubts our Baptist brethren’s capacity for hard work; \but it seems a pity that so much of it should ' gK be so very obviously misdirected. A great deal of Baptist energy has of late been devoted to attacks on the Catholic Church and the reflection will naturally have occurred to most impartial observers that if the same amount of time and energy had been directed to mending their own fences it would have yielded a very much more profitable return. * The spasm of acute Protestantism and of anti-Catholic activity which has seized the Baptist body lately has shown itself'' in the publication of a luridly-covered and luridlywritten pamphlet on ‘ Romanism ’ by a Wellington Baptist minister, and in certain utterances made at the annual meeting of the Otago and Southland Auxiliary of the Baptist Union, held at Dunedin on Saturday last. Taking the last first, we find that the concluding address at the' meeting was given by the Rev. C. Dallaston on the question ‘ Why am, I a Protestant ?’• Only one of the Dunedin papers reported the address; and from its' brief summary we gather that the speaker relied, for his historical statements, on the hopelessly and notoriously biassed Dr. Wylie. Eliminating the mere rhetoric of the address, and confining ourselves to definite statements of principle, we find that Mr. Dallaston is a Baptist (1) because he ‘ could never look with favor upon any system that would hinder the .right; of private judgment or interfere with the free circulation of the Book ’; and (2) because I he found no need for any priest to come between his soul and Jesus Christ.’ -v The Rev. Mr. Dallaston must have made a very imperfect and one-sided - study of his subject if he has not learned ,by this time both the futility, as a rule of

faith, and also the grave evil of unrestricted private judgment in the : interpretation of the Scriptures. Even", in Luther’s time its effects began to make* themselves felt. Speaking of the ,Bible Christians developed,under, his system of unrestrained private interpretation, the Reformer says: ‘This one will not hear of? baptism, that one denies the Sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day; some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that ; there are;faboutVas many sects and creeds as there are heads. No bumpkin is so rude, but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks ,himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet.’ From that day to this, the principle has operated in the direction of utterly undermining historical, dogmatic Christianity, and of putting in its place mere theory and. pious sentiment. In a remarkable article entitled ‘ Whitherward; a Question for the Higher Criticism,’ contributed to a recent Eibbert Journal, the Rev. K. C. Anderson, D.D., of Dundeea city once made memorable by the ministrations of McCheyne —maintains that the Gospel story is as much a myth or a parable as the story of the Garden of Eden; that it does not matter whether or not Jesus of Nazareth ever was conceived, born, tempted, tried,' or crucified; and that St. Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles, preached 'not Jesus of Nazareth, but the Christ who is within every man—eternal Son of God. ‘As a result of the work of the-Higher Criticism,’ says Dr. Anderson, ‘ the Four Gospels are a complete wreck as historical records. The same is substantially true of the/ Synoptics. - As authorities for a life of Jesus they are hopelessly shattered by the assaults of the Higher Criticism.’ Before the close of the sixteenth century two hundred and seventy Protestant sects were enumerated, all grounding their Varying faiths on the Bible; and the process of multiplication is still going on. In England and Wales alone, according to Whitaker, the total number of religious sects in 1897 was 293. , It may interest the Rev. C. M. Dallaston to know that, according" to the same authority, the Baptists themselves numbered 16 sects, ranging from ‘ Bunyan Baptists ’ to ‘ Seventh Day Baptists.’ To the honest and open-minded investigator; th% evidence, is overwhelming that the adoption of the Bible only—with unfettered private' interpretationas - the sole rule of faith, has resulted and still results in ever increasing disunion and disintegration.: " /V y * ; * ? ** t The Rev. Mr. Dallaston is a Protestant, also, because he ‘finds no need for any priest to come between his soul and Jesus Christ.’ If he really believes in ; that principle, how can he consistently draw his salary as a minister of religion? Every time he officiates at. public worship, every time he expounds the Scriptures to his people, every time he leads the prayers of his congregation, he ‘ comes between the. soul and Christ,’ in precisely the same sense in which the priest does. - • If Protestants carried this principle to its logical conclusion they would have no churches, no preachers, no ministers of any kind; As a matter of fact, the Quakerswith logical consistency —reject not only priesthood, but all official' ministry in the Church. Mr. Dailaston would doubtless reply that, in the exercise of his ministry, he ‘ comes between ’ the souls of his hearers and Christ only so as to help his people nearer to God. That is precisely the case with the Catholic priest. ‘ Every high priest,’ says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, ‘taken from among men, is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins who can have compassion on them that are ignorant and that err, because he himself also is compassed with infirmity.’ It is the work of the Catholic priest to carry on unceasingly the ministry of reconciliation. They are preachers of the everlastingGospel, and dispensers of its divine mysteries. They sacri-. fice, as Christ sacrificed; they continue and apply the very Sacrifice which He offered ; they bind and loose, they bless and ban, they receive confessions and give absolution for sins—all with one object, to bring and keep their people nearer God. Our Baptist brethren can take it, on the testimony of two hundred millions of people, that the ministry of the Catholic priest operates not to hinder, but to help, the union of the soul with Christ. j, ... ” *... ; . The purple pamphlet of the Wellington pulpiteer need, not detain us long. It is a reproduction of five sermons on ‘ Romanism ’; and the professed object of the preacher —a callow clergyman, with a weakness for self-advertise-ment— ‘neither to libel, nor to- flatter, but to understand.’ We can only'say that he has failed utterly to understand, and has succeeded magnificently in libelling, the Catholic faith. The publication teems with misrepresentations. The absurd calumny that Catholics speak of the Holy Father as ‘ Our Lord God the Pope ’—which was pounded into impalpable nothingness by Father Sydney Smith—is repeated as if it were unquestioned and uncontradicted gospel truth. Mr. Michael McCarthy, lecturing, as he has recently been, under the auspices of : the English Protestant Women’s Alliance, is still quoted as

himself a Catholic.’ A very old lie, about ‘indulgences •being the prize-in Church lotteries in South America, is ■repeated ,on the authority of the utterly discredited Dr. Horton. Another slander that has seen much service—that relating to the.... condemnation of Henri Lasserre’s translation of the Gospels— is also once again put into circulation. Here is the pamphlet version of the incident: In France fifty years ago a brilliant Roman Catholic journalist, Henri Lasserre . . . turned his attention to the ' Gospels, and became full of regret that the French people did; not commonly possess them in their own tongue. He cast them into radiant French, and - submitted his version to the Archbishop of Paris and to the Pope. He received from both, warm approbation, and the edition was issued with, the imprimatur of the Archbishop on its first page. One hundred thousand copies were sold in the first year. An edition do luxe was in the press, when suddenly and without explanation the Book was put .on the Index. Why? No reason was ever, given. We infer, that Rome fears the Book.’ (The italics are ours.) Those who are acquainted with both sides of this , incident know that full and adequate reason was given. It is an interesting illustration of the vitality of lies,. 1 especially of theological lies, that every one of these misstatements-has at one time or other been exposed in the columns of the N Z. Tablet, and some of them in the columns of the daily press—yet here they are; being ladled out, large as life, to the simple-minded - Baptists of Wellington city. 0 .. * _ ' The Catholic Church, with 1900 years of history and of victorious struggle behind her, can. afford to laugh at the rhetoric of pigmy pulpiteers of the kind now under notice. Like the ‘ little systems ’ which they profess, these no-Popery preachers ‘ have their day, and cease to be ’; and the Church goes serenely on in her divine mission— ‘ fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible- as an army set in array.’