The New Hebrew Professor in the New College, Edinburgh.
The December Expositor contains the inaugural lecture of the new Hebrew Professor in the New College, Edinburgh. Dr. A. C. Welch’s lecture will be read with mixed feelings by many of his higher critical brethren. He questions the infallibility of the Wellhausen position. Recent damaging criticism appears gradually to be making itself felt in the higher critical camp, and Dr. Welch has to recognise this. Still, he is not willing to give up Wellhausenism. “The scheme, in its broad features, still holds the field,” he says, “and even many of its detailed results are proved.” One cannot help expressing a feeling of regret that the new professor did not speak out strongly in condemnation of theories that have done so much to undermine the authority of the Old Testament Scriptures. It would appear that many of the leading teachers in the United Free Church are wedded to these theories, and are quite unconcerned as to the disastrous consequences of their teaching.
Testimony to the Historical Accuracy of Luke.
The Cincinnati Herald and Presbyter gives a brief account of an address delivered by Sir W. M. Ramsay, the distinguished archaeologist, whose labours in Asia Minor has done so much to extend our knowledge of certain events connected with the history of the apostolic period. Sir William said that only last summer he was able to show, by his discoveries at Antioch in Pisidia, that Cyrenius (Quirinius) was governor of Syria at the time Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The other statements in the first three verses of the second chapter of Luke that used to be sneered at by the critics, have all been proven beyond a doubt. The deeper he goes in his researches the more he is sure that the Bible is accurate in the details of its history.
Greetings to Rome by Episcopal Convention in United States.
The Protestant Observer calls attention to the remarkable tendency Rome-wards evinced by what is known as the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. An agitation has been going on in this body for some years with a view to get the name “Protestant” removed from its title. Recently, at a general convention, its representatives sent the following telegram to Cardinal O’Connell of the Roman Catholic Church:—”The General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church sends greetings and asks the guidance of God and the Holy Ghost in your efforts to spread the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Cardinal sent a reply telegram—”I am deeply touched by the cordial message of the General Convention, and beg to express my heartfelt desire for the speedy union of all God’s Churches under the universal rule of our Lord Jesus Christ.” How deplorable to think that any professedly Protestant convention should be left to such a blind, apostate action! A Romish Cardinal spreading the true Gospel of Christ! The idea is utterly erroneous. Rome’s gospel is salvation by works—a gospel of soul-deception and soul-destruction—which is under the divine curse. The Protestant Episcopal Church of America has evidently fallen under the power of “strong delusion to believe a lie,” when she can bid God-speed to an outstanding emissary of the Man of Sin.
“Spain’s National Disgrace.”
Such is the title of an article in a Spanish paper. The reference is to the ignorance and illiteracy that obtain in the ancient kingdom. It is stated that “out of a total population of some 19,000,000 that Spain possesses, 12,000,000 can neither read nor write. . . . There are in Spain 30,000 rural villages without schools of any kind. . . . Seventy-six per cent. of the children in Spain are illiterate, and this is especially noticeable in the capital.” The Roman Church is evidently responsible for this dense widespread ignorance. In Spain she has reigned supremely for many centuries, and by her fruits she is known. In the presence of such facts as these we stand aghast at the blind infatuation of intelligent people who call themselves Protestants, and at the same time regard the Popish Church as a harmless institution—as, indeed, anything else than one of the greatest enemies of mankind.