ANOTHER RELIGIOUS WAR

Those fortunate students who are preparing for divisionals on "the Bible and Shakespeare" doubtless find themselves especially well-equipped to enter into the controversy now raging on various religious matters. The debate in New York between the Rev. Dr. Charles Francis Potter and the Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton, upon the infallibility of the Bible developed a quantity of material deserving scrutiny. Dr. Straton, who was upholding the Fundamentalist Side, lost track of just what he was trying to prove and subsequently lost the debate; but as the judges very properly observed in their announcement, the two clergymen had failed prior to the encounter to agree upon a definition of "infallibility very liberally, and relied chiefly on fulfilled prophecies and the vitality of the Bible under adverse circumstances to prove his case. Dr. Potter, on the other hand, went after specific phrases and historical facts, and showed fairly convincingly that word for word, the Bible is not always as exact and reliable as the word of God might reasonably be expected to be. More than that, he pointed out contradictions of the generally expressed spirit of the Bible in those blood curdling admonitions which have always worried the more logical harried.

It is this last demonstration that really hurts. Most people are willing to admit that the Bible is not to be taken too literally, when facts and miracles and history are concerned. But the homogeneity of spirit and unity of purpose have rarely been questioned, and these things are important. One can be a perfectly good Christian without believing that iron actually did swim, although that is more possible than some other statements, but it is difficult to reconcile the New Testament with "Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."