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Shorter Catechism.

In submitting for consideration the following critique upon the popular faith, I would respectfully ask intelligent people to consider the question, whether the time has not arrived when the old standards of the Church call for extensive revision; whether the retention now of the "Shorter Catechism," as a synopsis of evangelical truth, in the face of the biblical criticism of the day, is calculated to promote the interests of vital godliness. I believe, not. It does not meet the times; and the object of this paper is briefly to point out in what respect, urging as an apology for so daring a reflection upon the scholarly ability and foresight of the celebrated and venerated "Assembly of Divines," that we are commanded to "Prove all things." Neither the Presbyterian, nor any other evangelical denomination of Christians has such a strong hold upon the affections, or such vital influence upon the lives, of the people that it would be wise to insist upon the perpetuation of views which roughly accord with modern thought and modern interpretation.

It may be argued, from the nature of the Catechism, with numberless proofs for its every assertion, that it should not be assailed, and that they cannot be honest Christians who would attempt it. Now, there is nothing either in the Scriptures or the writings of the fathers but is open to the strictest investigation, and the annals of our modern literature tell of thousands who have adorned the gospel and every walk of life, who in their relations with the world have proved themselves as truly Christians as the best, and yet have declared that the day is coming, and not far off, when an imperious necessity will be laid upon men to reconstruct the religion of the masses from its foundation. Multitudes there are everywhere who do not need to be told this. In every church there are many who are labouring earnestly and well to dispel the delusion that the Almighty has consecrated in its entirety any work published among men, or that any special gifts of grace are needed to enable persons of candour and education to form a sound page 4 opinion and sift the chaff from the wheat more efficiently than the church appears disposed to do. Why is it that the pulpit is losing its influence, in many cases losing its very vitality? Where is the mighty power and the abiding nature it once boasted of? Passing away because the church recognizes no faults, no mistakes, no delusions in her creed calling for correction; and even the preacher, who dares here and there to speak his honest mind, is, under the threat of persecution, deterred and compelled in the interests of his family to drag out a weary existence in the performance of duties often thoroughly distasteful to him. Supposing, some may say, there are faults in a work which is but the composition of men, would it not be better to let it quietly go, the Bible being the ultimate reference, where dubiety arises. I reply, certainly not. Its faults are of such a character, as the creed of a large section of the community, almost supplanting Scripture, it is now no longer worthy the confidence it enjoyed in less educated times in so solemn a matter as the business of the soul, and we should regard it a blessing to be delivered from it, or have it amended by a fresh interpretation of the sacred writings, assisted by all the obtainable aids of our day and generation. If, on the other hand, the church resolves on neither deliverance nor amendment, it will be another help to the Atheist and Agnostic, and will still farther lessen the hold of religion in general, and of Presbyterian ism in particular, on the minds of the people at large. To the intelligence of an educated public I make a respectful appeal, assured that all who dare to come forward to struggle for reform will earn the sympathy, the admiration, and affection of civilized men, and help to shed an undying lustre on our common faith. Why did you, the founders of the Free Church of Scotland, the noblest band of martyrs the modern world has seen so far disregard the principles for which you sacrificed so much, by carrying with you to your new field of labours the Confession of Faith of the Established Church which you had left? Why did you not shake the dust of that church and all her belongings off your feet as you withdrew in abhorrence from her precincts in 1843, and take your stand anew upon the Word of God, and it alone, as your creed?

If there is any one part more than another of the Shorter Catechism which entitles its authors to a claim on the gratitude of posterity, it is the definition, given at the beginning of this paper, of the conception of Deity. While frankly conceding that the work in question is not without its merit, it fails of its object now of advancing Christian knowledge for this simple reason : we have come to discover how very widely its evangelicism is a departure from the text of the Church—the true starting point—a correct definition of Deity; and back again to that starting point we must go, taking all bearings therefrom ere we can hope to herald the advent of the much-coveted and much-talked-of "Religion of the Future." Every religious proposition asserting God's dealings with man must square with the standard quoted, as the nearest conception we can find of the Infinite, and nothing must be advanced unless in perfect harmony therewith. Granted that no created mind can comprehend or limit the Infinite in his dealings with humanity, it is nevertheless possible to point out, with a tolerable page 5 degree of certainty, some things held as divine which are at variance with the divine character. This is my first position. The revolving changes of the universe never did call for anything which is not in the most absolute harmony with God's attributes and the everlasting laws of rectitude. Just for want of knowing this great fact and possessing a reasonable conception of Deity, all the religions of the ancients were grotesque, and all of them either died out or went on improving more and more gradually as the great truth came in view. By the evolution of things a dual conception of the universe first dawned slowly upon the mind of the Jews as a nation. Slowly, I have said, for only upon rare occasions did they rise to a conception of the Most High, and still more slowly came they to conceive of the immortality of the soul. Taken at their best, in their earlier stages, they were semi-idolaters; and, during their long night of ignorance, the light from beyond only flashed upon them at rare intervals like the flash from behind the cloud in a dark night, and they could not catch it nor appropriate it in their lives. From the earliest date we find Moses writing, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," "God said, let there be light, and there was light," and directly after the conception leaves him, he is back again to earth and the earthly, representing God walking in the Garden of Eden searching for Adam among the bushes. Even Sinai and the burning bush, with all their attendant majesty and lightenings and terrors, shook them up but for a moment; back they go directly to their assassinations, their idolatries, their golden calves, and other idols of the golden mice genus (I. Sam. vi. 4, 5, 11, 18; Deut. xxxii. 17). King David himself, although he could sing so sweetly at times of the majesty of heaven, as quickly lost the inspiration and lapsed like all before him, as his life proves; for example, beseeching and expecting God to hack up his enemies for him "whilst that I withal escape (Psalm cxli. 10), and concluding one of his sweetest songs, "Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." (Psalm cxxxvii. 9.) About the time of Isaiah the Holy Spirit began to be more frequently, vividly, and effectually manifested in the control of the nation. Judged of by life and writings, Moses' illumination in the presence of Isaiah's would be somewhat like that of a flickering taper under an occasional flash of the electric light.

Jesus Christ came to burst up all that was false in prior religions by revealing a spiritual conception of the Almighty, and an entirely new homage to him, not alone as creator, ruler, but as the Father of all. Beyond this we have little positive knowledge of the Infinite, yet negatively a great deal may be said. We assuredly know what Deity is not and cannot be, and what worship must not be. I accept the Bible in its entirety, and grant its inspiration, but I impeach the accredited interpretation. Inspiration is a word of wide significance.

My second position is, that the Bible is the work of finite agents, and that there were, are, and could be, no means of telling, of a verity, who they were. Think you is it not ridiculous to say that the untutored infantile races of men were fit to enter into the society and page 6 converse of Deity? Their gifts and graces adapting them for so distinguished a position may be gathered from their own writings. There could be no greater proof of their deplorable ignorance than the notions that got hold of them about God. Just imagine the High and the holy one who inhabiteth eternity, the creator and sustainer of this vast universe of life and being, who dwelleth in light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen nor can see, entering into negotiations with them, distinguished in the main by incessant bickerings all the way down through the ages ! It would be blasphemy were it not honest ignorance.

When the voice was heard calling from above, how did they know, the gates being ajar, that out of a multitude which no man could number of spiritual beings, just removed from earth by the thin veil of flesh, the voice they listened to was that of the Ruler of the Universe? Were they careful in all cases to ascertain the source of their inspirations and communications, what precautions did they take, and did they always correctly understand and report what was told them? These questions are of grave importance. Who, I beg to know, is referred to as undertaking the guidance of the children of Israel on their departure from Egypt (see Exodus xiii. 21-22)? "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night from before the people." Whoever Moses' Lord was, it must have been some finite being, acting doubtless from the best of motives, the narrative is proof of this. They all had evidently very hazy conceptions about the land flowing with milk and honey, and the way to it. They took over forty years to find it out, although the distance was only some 300 miles. This land, too, was promised to them before they left Egypt, and that promise was not fulfilled. Only two out of the entire number ever settled on the soil. All the others left their bones bleaching in the wilderness. There was also this promise unfulfilled and unfulfillable, viz., that for very multitude they, as a nation, would be as the dust of the earth. Are there, I ask, any traces at all in the narrative that the great exodus of people from Egypt was guided in their little journey across the desert by the self-same Power that guides all the insensate planets in their majestic march around their central suns? Here is a description of the God of Israel (Exodus xxiv. 9, 11) : "Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Habihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work." See also other graphic accounts of the God of the Hebrews in mortal, visible form, in Exodus xxxiii. 11, 22, 23, iii. 2, 6; I. Kings xxii. 19; Isaiah vi. 1, 5; Numbers xii. 5. In one of these passages God is said to have come down and stood in the door of the tabernacle, in another, "And it shall come to pass while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And I will take away my hand, and thou shall see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen." Moses, man, did the Infinite Spirit of the Universe really say so? In Numbers xiv., Moses page 7 claims to have prevented God making a very serious blunder!

Do these passages accord with the Assembly's definition? Are we to believe that he who rules the universe is the same being who gave Moses a prescription how to make pomatum and perfumery (Exodus xxx. 22, 38; Psalms cxxxiii. 2), who commanded, as matters of importance, how certain persons should cut their hair (Levit. xiv., Num. vi., Ez. v.), and that Aaron's sons should don linen breeches (Exodus xxviii. 42)?

Quoting Dr. Eadie, page 21, I would here explain, that the ignorance of the Hebrew race must have been very great, for they had not even the idea of a pair of scissors. The idea of clip did not strike them for hundreds of years after Moses; hence "they always cut their hair with a knife," sometimes in Scripture misnamed a razor. Steel is a modern article. It is hard to conceive how Samson's Missus managed, on the quiet, to crop his divot of ahead. (Judges xvi.) Dr. Eadie's cyclopcedia, appended to Henry and Scott's family Bible, confirms such a state of things so late as our Saviour's time. He says, "our ordinary table utensils were unknown among the Hebrews, hence in eating broth or milk, it was either taken with the hollow of the hand, or the bread was dipped into it. Thus the reapers of Boaz dipped their morsel in the vinegar (Ruth ii. 14), and thus our Saviour dipped the sop or morsel and gave it to the traitor, Judas (John xiii. 26)." To resume.

In Judges, ii. 1, we are distinctly told that Moses' deity was only an angel. "And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers, and I said, I will never break my covenant with you."

It would be a source of much interest to know how the Church has come to credit the Jews with having reasoned correctly in assuring themselves that the voice they heard, or inspirations they felt within them, proceeded in all cases from no other source than the Almighty. They at least had the ten commandments, if of any use, to guide them; and had they been guided thereby, particularly by the sixth, they would have done well.

Moses' ruling conception of Deity would appear to be that of such an one as himself, only vastly more powerful and terrible. "He is," says Moses, and straightway we have the God of Israel conversing with him "face to face as a man speaketh with his friend" (Genesis xxxii. 30; Exodus xxiv. 9, 11. xxxiii. 11). Now, in one sense, the conception is perfectly true, and in another sense, it is an absurdity, and unfortunately it is the absurd part of the idea, which has ever since given caste to religion. Explanation is unnecessary. By easy stages an unwarrantable use of the personal pronoun led on to many vagaries in religion, until, with the holiest and most adorable attributes of Deity were associated, upon occasions, some of the infirmities we deplore in our fellow beings (unless the words here have got biblical meanings not shown in my English dictionary)—swearing, cursing, retaliation, jealousy, wrath, fury, revenge, vengeance, repentance, grief, laughing and deriding at the heathen (Psalms ii. 4, lix. 8). References multifarious in the early history. These we know are all the operations of a finite page 8 mind, are due to things unforseen having happened, and cannot logically be said of the omniscient. As late as Isaiah's day, we find it written (xliii. 26), "Put me in remembrance," "Let us plead together," which is a plain confession that speaker and hearer were finite beings. In this paper I concede the use of the personal pronoun : it does service in theology as X does in algebra, to cover over a blank in our conceptions; both must be used if these systems are to exist at all. This brings me to