Under the heading, "Canon Hensen's Warning," the Independent of April 28 had an editorial in which it discussed the question, "What will be left of Christianity if everything about Christ in the Apostles' Creed is given up--as, it appears to us, Canon Hensen gives it up--except that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried?" The answer is, "Nothing but his teaching." The virgin birth goes; the miracles of healing become nothing more than what faith-healers do to-day; Lazarus and Jairus' daughter were not raised from the dead; Jesus was crucified and did not rise on the third day, nor did he ascend into heaven in the sight of the wondering throng of his disciples. Farther on the editor again answers: "There would be left the teachings of Christ, his development of morals and religion, even though stripped of supernatural authority." He seems to think that with this much left we could get along very well; for his concluding remark is this: "For the substance of Christianity is, after all, the teachings of Christ, not the accounts that have come to us from an uncritical age of his personal life and death."

      The editor admits, however, that "much of the proof, if not the assurance, of a future life, would be lost;" [474] "the element of fear of the consequences of sin in another life would largely be removed;" and "the danger would be the loss of public morality when its spiritual sanctions were lost."

      It is very strange to hear this editor say that in the case supposed the teachings of Jesus would be left to us, and that these, and not anything about his personal life and death, are the substance of Christianity. Would his teaching about the future of saints and the future of sinners be left after taking away the miraculous evidences of his power to speak with the certainty of knowledge on these subjects? Would his predictions of his own death, and his statements of the design of it, be left to us? Would his affirmations about his relation to God and to men be left to us? Would we still have the ordinances of the church, all of which depend on his divine authority for their existence and their perpetuity? Would we have left the assurances which he gave that he would hear and answer prayer, and rule over heaven and earth for the good of his church? Would we have left anything that he taught with satisfactory evidence that he really taught it, and that he taught as one having authority? Would we, in reality, have anything left but a dead Christ? Would we not be compelled to stand forever at his tomb with Mary Magdalene crying, "They have taken away our Lord, and we know not where they have laid him"? The man who can give the answer given by the Independent, has in his conception of Christianity no redemption from sin through the blood of the everlasting covenant; and without this there is no "substance" at all in Christianity; it is as unsubstantial as the fabric of a dream. We shall not allow Canon Hensen, nor all the hosts of infidelity combined, to take from us a single item of the history contained in [475] our four Gospels. On the contrary, we are rapidly losing, and will continue to lose, respect for a church that permits infidels like him to hold its high offices and fatten on its rich salaries.

[SEBC 474-476]