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Briggs To Lecture

Briggs To Lecture image
Parent Issue
Day
10
Month
February
Year
1893
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The ca3e of Rev. Dr. Charles Briggs has beea the most remarkable of its kind in the history of the Presbyterian church and has attraeted the aftention of the whole religious world. On Jan 20, 1891, Dr. Briggj delivered an address upon the occasion oí his induction into the Edward Eobinson chair of Biblical theology at the Union seminary. In which he declared that there were three great fountains of divine authority- the Bible, the cburch and reason. Through anyone of these agencies a man became a Christian. Many persons hid found the divine authority through the church. Theessential thing is to find God, and if God is found without the mediation of the cburch and the Bible the church and the Bible are means, not end?; they are avenues to God, but not God. The Bible as a book is paper, print and binding and nothing more. There is nothing divine in its text, its letters, words or clauses. The divine authority is not in the style or the words, but in the conception. Men have no right to drive persons away from the Bible by the tbeory of its absolute correctness. The Bible itself nowhere makes this claim. "It has," said he, "maintained its authority with the best scholars of our time, who, with open mind, have been willing to recognize any error that rnight be painted by historical criticism, for all of these errors are in the circumstantials and noc in the essentials; they are in the human setting anc not in the precious jewel itself." Dr. Briggs set forth firmly the idea o progressive sanctification after death He held that judgment immediately after death waa a bugbear. It make death a terror to the best of men. The idea of of a magical transforination ii the dviog hour should be bíinishet from the world. It makes the experi ence of human life count as nothing "Renouncing them as hurtful, uu Christian errors," he went on, "we look with hope and joy for the continua tion of the processes of grace and th wonders of redeinption in the compan of the blessed, to which the faithful ar all hastening." Charaes were preferred against Dr. Briggs in the presbytery of New York, but the case was dismisíed npon argument of the defense by a vote 94 to 39. An appeal was taken to the geaeral assewQ'oly, and frotn there the case was remanded back to the New York presbytery for trial. It is this trial that Dr. Briggs has so recentiy been eimaged in winning every point. The Inland League have inducfid Dr. Briggs to come to Ann Arbor to lecture before them, and next Tuesday evening, Feb H, in the Presbyterianchurch, he will speak on the subject of "Works of the Imagination in the Holy Scriprure.'' Pecuniary arrangements ueoessitate would be listeners p'ocuring a season ticket to the Inland League entertainments of which some fourteen are vet to come, but the charge is only a dollar and holders of season tickets are permitted to buy oue extra admission for 75 cents.

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News