About Dr. Briggs Ann Heresy

Rev. J. M. GelstOD, Sunday evening, discussed the action of the Presbyterian General %ssembly with regard to Dr. Briggs. Personally he was not satisfied with the decisión, for the reason that he did not think Briggs guilty of beresy. Suspicion, however, rested upon the professor of being an ad7ocate of Germán rationalism, aschool which undermines the authority of the Bible and scoffs at miracles. The significance of the assembly's decisión is that the Presbyterian church will not tolérate any teacher in its schools who denies that the Bible is the word of God. ' The decisión is significant, in the second place, because it emph&sizes the fact that churches are responsible to God i f they allow error to he taught. A church must have the right of selfprotection. At the same time the minister or teacher is independent. He can preach what he pleases, provided he does not deny the divinity of Christ or the infallibility of the Bible. In the third place, the present controversy shows the need of a new definition of hereey. In the New Testament a heretic is one who is continually stirring up dissensions in the church - not always one who teaches false doctrine. The speaker hoped that future controversy in the church would be without rancor. Controversy itself is not an evil; it is like a storm which plows up the deep only to cleanse it. He hoped that some time all Christian men would unite on essentials and disregard their petty difterences. Mr. Gelston defined the two kinds ot higher criticism: First, Germán rationalism, or that which tears the Bible all to pieces and tells you to take as much or little as you please; second, evangelical criticism, or that which, from a rigid examination, proves from the historie data tbat the Bible is none other than the word of God. It is the latter kind of criticism which Dr. Brigg3 employs.