THE “Record” of the United Free Church for November is a Special Semi-Jubilee number. It has much to say about the work of the United Free Church, but is quite silent as to the disastrous sapping movement that has been going on in that Church for years. We have already called attention to the grave injustice done to the Scriptures by Dr Moffatt’s so-called translation of the Old Testament. It goes to prove that the fears of Dr Dods and Sir William Robertson Nicoll, who themselves were not guiltless, of Dr Moffatt’s revolutionary ideas in the realm of Biblical literature were well founded. Attention has also been called to Dr James Black’s article, in which he unhesitatingly accepts Evolution, though from what he writes he appears to have the very vaguest ideas of what Evolution really is. A study of “The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature,” by Dr J. Y. Simpson, Professor of Natural Science in the New College (United Free), Edinburgh, might give him some much-needed light on the subject, while revealing to him the extraordinary drift there has been in the teaching of some of the United Free Church professors. Dr Simpson’s work is an attempt to combine Christian theism with a thorough-going evolutionary view of the universe, and is much more dangerous than Drummond’s “Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” and that it has had a wide circle of readers is evident from the fact that it is now in its third edition. Dr Simpson, in adopting the Evolution theory, rejects the doctrine of Special Creation, and puts in its place Creation by Evolution. The present order of things is due to an evolutionary process. He quotes with evident approval Origen’s view that “not then for the first time did God begin to work when He made this visible world; but as, after its destruction, there will be another world, so also we believe that others existed before the present came into being.” This view of one of the most subtle but most erratic and speculative of the early Fathers was rejected universally by the Church, and though Dr Simpson brings it forward in support of his contention that creation is not “an event at some definite point in time,” he could scarcely have been more unfortunate in his supporter. The chapter on Evolution and Evil is very unsatisfactory. This is how an Evolutionist like Dr Simpson speaks of the Fall:—”Scripture is commonly supposed to teach that mankind fell from a state of original goodness: the study of man indicates that his ‘fall’ was rather failure to become that which he ought to have become. Interference on his own part with his normal development” (pp. 291, 292). When we are told “Man has to overcome himself, to set himself free from the domination of the lower motive, to win and develop the will to do right,” we wonder what Dr Simpson means in view of certain plain declarations of Scripture as to man’s total inability to do good. What place does Evolution give to the work of the Holy Spirit? In regard to Original Sin, he says:—”So far as the doctrine of Original Sin is construed as a doctrine of Original Guilt—imputational in the Augustinian sense—it has been rejected by the developed Christian moral sense of to-day; indeed, it is a contradiction in terms. It belongs to a period in which the value of the individual was yet undeveloped” (p. 284). Yet it was with the sixth chapter of the Confession before him, and which Dr Simpson signed, that he makes the above statement. In his chapter on Evolution and Immortality, he writes:—”The whole method of Evolution seems to point in the direction of the theological doctrine of Conditional Immortality” (p. 349); a doctrine which has as its background the annihilation of the finally impenitent. His treatment of miracles (chap. xvi) and doctrine of man and the Person of Christ, are as might be expected from an Evolutionist, far from satisfactory. In Dr Simpson’s “Man and the Attainment of Immortality,” his Evolutionism is much more prominent, but as we do not wish to weary our readers with these excursions into the barren preserves of learned men, we forbear saying anything further meantime on Dr Simpson’s theological wanderings from the King’s High Way.
In the November issue of the “Record” of the United Free Church there is an article on the Pentateuch, from which we give quotations in our Notes and Comments, from which it will be seen how unhesitatingly the results of the Higher Criticism are accepted by Dr M’Fadyen. We may have something more to say on this series of articles when they are concluded. Our readers also will not have forgotten the article in our September issue by Dr Johnston criticising Dr Gray’s notorious leaflet—”How Do We Regard the Bible?” These are matters of vital importance in the religious life of the United Free Church, and are indicative of how serious the drift is towards modern unbelief. This drift began with Professor Robertson Smith, and has been gathering momentum since then. Principal Rainy gloried in getting rid of what he termed the “impractical element” in 1893, in other words, the Free Presbyterians, but these had been acting as a brake on the swiftly revolving wheels as they were spinning down the decline, but now the pace is accelerated, and no one knows what the end shall be. It is an ominous sign that while voices are raised against the proposed Union, no protest—at least in public—is made against this downward drift so menacing to the religious life of Scotland. There must be many in the United Free Church who hate such teaching. Why are they silent?