New Method to Keep Hold of the Young.
The Churches have tried one device after another to keep hold of the young, and whenever one device has failed they resort to another. The latest move in this direction is to make use of the film. The Rev. George W. MacArthur outlined a programme with this end in view at a meeting of the Glasgow branch of the Scottish Churches’ Film Guild recently. Their policy for next winter, he said, was to open one or other of the city cinemas at 8 o’clock, thus avoiding competing with any of the churches. At these meetings they would offer a programme of a religious nature—a religious film service—that would be useful and profitable for those who came. “We will try to provide something for the thousands of young people who walk our streets of Glasgow on Sunday evenings, and who will not go to church in any case, but who, being accustomed to going into a cinema, may possibly turn in there if we can provide something attractive enough for them.” If Mr MacArthur and those who agree with him are under the delusion that this device will achieve the end they have in view, they must be blind to the failures that have already strewn the path of those who made use of worldly means for religious purposes. It may have a measure of success for a time, but the young will wish something more exciting, and if things go on as they are going they will get it in the “Sunday” cinemas. The above movement is helping them to be film-minded.
The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature.
The above is the misleading title, of a beautifully printed volume which has been exposed for sale on railway station bookstalls and elsewhere. The title is misleading, because the volume contains only part of the Bible. Also because portions of the Apocrypha are included without any explicit statement that they are not part of the Bible or that they lack the quality and authority attaching to the God-breathed writings. Not only is the title of the book misleading. Not only are the Biblical portions of the volume made to appear as though they were on the same level as the Apocrypha. The book carries depreciatory notes on certain books of the Bible, such as cannot but shock every reader to whom the Bible is the Word of God. The Editor says, for example: “In following the epic history of the Jews through the first sixteen books of the Old Testament, the reader is hopelessly thrown off his course by the legal codes, the census reports and genealogies, the beautiful but totally out-of-place fiction of Ruth, the double narrative of the same events in Kings and Chronicles. He then comes upon another piece of prose fiction in Esther, the poetic drama of Job, the lyrical anthology of the Psalms, the collection of folk Proverbs, the philosophical treatise of Ecclesiastes, and the secular love poetry of the Song of Songs—nearly all of this section being the product of a late highly self-conscious period; after which, without warning, he is whirled back four hundred years to the early group of the Prophets who made their appearance once before in the Book of Kings.”—Bible League Quarterly (April-June).