THE BIBLE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 



49 



narrowness of visage as any experienced barrister will tell you. 

 I quite agree that it is most unwise to trust to their conclusions 

 blindly. 



Miss Maynard is certainly on solid ground when she tells ub 

 that no arguments and no learning will convince and convert an 

 unbeliever as according to the Scripture which she quotes. The 

 natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God : for they 

 are foolishness unto him (1 Cor. II. 14, p. 35). She is also right 

 in saying that the attack in warfare is more successful than the 

 defence — for that, I suppose, is the meaning (p. 36), of her Scottish 

 parson's remark about the military and naval defence. As she 

 rightly says, the facts of conversion, of lives changed from dark- 

 ness to light, from misery and selfishness to happiness and love, 

 are the " evidences for the truth of the word of God which can 

 never be disputed or gainsaid" (p. 37). 



Mr. Theodoee Roberts felt they were all greatly indebted to 

 Miss Maynard for her very interesting paper, with which he was 

 in substantial agreement. As regards the creation, he was in agree- 

 ment with the paper and not with the Chairman. He believed that 

 each of the days in Genesis I. was intended to represent a period 

 of time during which God acted in a particular way, like the 

 millennial day of Christ's reign. Seeing that the sun and moon 

 were not brought in until the fourth day, he could not conceive 

 how the earlier days could possibly represent periods of twenty- 

 four hours each. He was anxious that it should be made very 

 clear that the truth of Christianity did not depend upon the dis- 

 proof of evolution or whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch or not. 

 For him the Resurrection of our Lord was the one sufficient proof 

 of the truth of the Christian revelation. As regards the Higher 

 Critics, he considered their theories as the result of isolated study 

 in a closet, and thus lacking in the common sense which rubbing 

 shoulders with their fellow men would have produced. Pie pointed 

 out that the naturalness of the story of Joseph and his brethren 

 disproved the finely spun theories of the critics as to its origin in 

 Babylonian myths. 



Mr. T. a. Gillespie said : I am very glad to express my sincere 

 appreciation of the most interesting paper which has been read 

 to us. It brings to my mind the expressive way in which our late 

 and esteemed member, Professor Langhorne Orchard, referred to 

 the critic of Scripture, and in passing I feel constrained to say 

 how much he will be missed at our meetings ; for his marked 

 humility of spirit and keen spiritual perception was certainly a 

 treasure ; the Society is the poorer to-day by his home call. He 

 said any person who attempts to criticise the Bible must be the 

 possessor of three qualifications, viz., (1) a reverent spirit, (2) an 

 unbiased mind, (3) an adequate scholarship — yea, and a fourth 



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