REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS 231 



we repeat the pity of it is that instead of preaching the religion of 

 infinite love, some zealous and sincere missionaries proclaim what 

 appears to us to be a sad caricature of Christianity. 



We would condemn as strongly as the author does the doctrines of 

 a material hell and the eternal condemnation of those who die without 

 faith in Christ. At the same time we feel confident that such teaching 

 is on the wane and not on the increase. In general, theology on the 

 mission field lags behind theology in the homelands, and is more con- 

 servative. We have noticed, however, a great change between the 

 way Christianity is presented now and the way it was presented thirty 

 years ago. 



The eternal duration of punishment, preached by some, does not 

 trouble the non-Christian world as much as the author supposes, for 

 the idea of eternity is inconceivable by the human mind. 



Although the author commends Mr. Smith for holding more 

 moderate views in regard to future punishment, yet at the same time 

 he is dissatisfied. He criticizes Mr. Smith for basing the belief on the 

 teaching of Scripture. He would like his correspondent to agree to 

 reject the doctrine of eternal punishment no matter what the Bible 

 may have to say on the subject. In other words he is anxious to 

 persuade Mr. Smith to reject the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of 

 the Scriptures, and not to regard the Bible as an infallible authority. 

 The author claims that the final source of authority must be the 

 enlightened moral consciousness of the race (see page 63). 



Here again we nnd much that we can endorse. According to our 

 way of thinking the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of Scripture is 

 responsible for much that has been a drag on the progress of human 

 thought, and the evolution of a higher type of religion. 



In our impatience with the doctrine, however, we do well to 

 remember that man is mentally conservative by nature, and that when 

 Protestantism revolted against the authority of the Church, it realized 

 the danger of every one setting up his own creed, and of individualism 

 running mad, and sought a new source of authority in the Scriptures. 

 Modern cristicism has, however, won. the victory. Calvinistic theology 

 based on the fall of man is doomed by the fact that we can no longer 

 regard the book of Genesis as history, and the substitutionary theory of 

 the atonement is shaken when we remember that the Priest Code of the 

 Old Testament dates back only to Post-exilic days. 



The abandonment of the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of 

 Scriptures removes a great incubus from the Church, and as George 

 Adam Smith points out makes the belief in God as Christ revealed 

 Him free from many difficulties. We do not, however, quite see the 

 need of the insistence of the author that a belief in verbal inspiration 



