George Washington Flowers 
 Memorial Collection 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ESTABLISHED BY THE 
 FAMILY OF 
 COLONEL FLOWERS 
 
ANTI-CHRISTIAN 
 SOCIOLOGY 
 
 AS TAUGHT IN 
 
 The Journal of Social Forces 
 
 PRESENTING 
 
 A Question For North Carolina 
 Christians 
 
 >i BY REV. WILLIAM P. McCORKLE 
 
 (Revised Edition) 
 
 ''Our great commonwealth is the child of Christianity; 
 it may with equal truth be asserted that modern civiliza- 
 tion sprang into life with our religion; and faith in its 
 principles is the life-bo'at on which humanity has at divers 
 times escaped the most threatening perils. ' ' — Bancroft. 
 
 BURLINGTON, N. C. 
 
 Published For The Author By >: 
 
 [♦I 
 
 A. D. PATE & CO., Printers 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The writer some months ago called attention to the 
 agnostic and materialistic positions assumed by two 
 northern writers in their papers published in the January 
 number of the Journal of Social Forces. The "Jour^"^3.r' is 
 a sociological magazine published under the auspices of the 
 Xfniversity of North Carolina. Protests against the purvey- 
 ing of such anti-christian sentiment in university publica- 
 tions were elicited from two associations of ministers of all 
 denominations, and from two Presbyteries of the Synod of 
 North Carolina. Further, in an article in the Charlotte Sun- 
 day Observer, he reviewed the paper of Judge R. W. Win- 
 ston, which appeared in the November (1924) number of the 
 magazine, and was entitled, ''The Noose of Darwin and the 
 Neck of Orthodoxy." He brought out two facts — that Judge 
 Winston declared in sympathy with Ingersoll, that "ortho- 
 doxy must accept evolution or else plant itself upon the 
 miraculous, the impossible," and that science had left of the 
 whole Bible only ''the four gospels and the epistles of Paul," 
 — all the rest, the Judge would have us understand, having 
 "been finally and hopelessly discredited. A synopsis of the 
 Judge's article will accompany this pamphlet. 
 
 The writer is a friend of the University. As a North 
 Carolinian by adoption, having spent some twenty-six years 
 of his ministry in this State; as one whose home is in 
 North Carolina ; and above all, as a believer in the 
 Christian revelation, he is interested in all that concerns our 
 great State. He is proud of our great University — of its 
 high standing, of its honorable record, of its phenomenal 
 growth, of its past and potential usefulness, and of the high 
 personal character of its faculty. He believes that the 
 highest interests of the University will be conserved and 
 promoted by such united and determined action on the part 
 of its faculty, alumni and trustees, and by the people of the 
 State, as shall make it certain that the University shall stand 
 true for all time to the Christian religion. He does not be- 
 lieve that anything could be more harmful to the University, 
 
either as to its esprit du corps or as to its reputation among 
 Christian people within and without our State, than the 
 policy heretofore pursued by the editors of the Journal of 
 Social Forces — that of permitting their magazine to be used 
 by others as a medium for the dissemination of anti-chris- 
 tian, agnostic, materialistic and socialistic views. 
 
 This is no question of "academic freedom," much less of 
 "freedom of conscience." Gentlemen unconnected with the 
 University have an unquestioned right to publish anything 
 they please, provided only it does not violate the laws of the 
 State and of the nation. But from its beginning the Uni- 
 versity of North Carolina has stood for the Christian religion 
 — not for any particular sect or faction of Christians, but for 
 the Christian religion in its broad, inclusive aspect, as im- 
 plying faith in God, faith in the Bible as a divine revelation, 
 and faith in Jesus Christ as the Divine Savior of the world. 
 In the infancy of the institution a, professor was discharged 
 because, being a disciple of Thomas Paine, he went so far 
 as to advocate the views of Paine and to deny the divine- 
 authority of the moral law as revealed in the Scriptures. 
 vShould a professor in any of our State schools announce 
 himself an agnostic, and claim the right to advocate agnos- 
 ticism in public address or through the public prints, it is 
 probable that as a matter of course, the trustees of that 
 school would now proceed as the Trustees of the University 
 did more than a hundred years ago. Believing that the 
 welfare of the State and of the University was bound up 
 in the stand they should take in behalf of the Bible, and of 
 the morality which inculcates, they dismissed the infidel 
 professor. 
 
 Editors are responsible for the policy and tone of their 
 publications. If any article slandering a citizen of North 
 Carolina should appear in a University publication, even if 
 v/ritten by some one not connected with the University, the 
 editors would be held responsible under the law for publish- 
 ing the slander, as the slanderer would be held responsible 
 for writing and printing it. "Qui facit per alium facit per se." 
 When, therefore, any journal published by the University, 
 and edited by professors or students, gives currency to at- 
 tacks oh the Christian religion, arguments against the 
 
 2 
 
Christian revelation, against the sanctity of the moral law 
 revealed in the Scriptures, against the immortality of the 
 soul, etc., such a ])olicy ought to be condemned alike by the 
 faculty and alumni of the University, by the trustees, and 
 by the Christian public, and such practice should be stopped 
 by the proper authorities. 
 
 Professors in our State schools are under solemn obliga- 
 tion to keep faith with the Christian public whose employees 
 they are. Ours is a Christian commonwealth. Our Uni- 
 versity is a Christian institution. Further, if there be a 
 division among Christians — as, for instance, between 
 ''modernists" and ''fundamentalists" — the University must 
 stand for Christianity without allowing itself to become em- 
 broiled in a factional ccnitest between two Christian parties. 
 Just as in politics the University has no policy save to stand 
 for honesty and patriotism, so in its religious policy, it 
 seems to me, the University should stand for Bible Chris- 
 tianity in its historic sense, without lending its influence 
 to the aid of a faction or a sect. And if it should oppose 
 anything, publicly and officially, alike in the public utter- 
 ances of its faculty and in the publications issued under its 
 imprimatur, it ought to stand outright for Christianity as 
 against infidelity in all its forms. 
 
 Wm. P. McCorkle. 
 
 Burlington, N. C. 
 
 3 
 
ANTI-CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY 
 
 I.— AN AMBITIOUS SCIENCE 
 
 Sociology is the science of human society. Hence it 
 embraces all that history which has to do with the orig'in 
 and development of social customs, of moral ideas, and of 
 government. Since religion is among those ^'social forces" 
 v/hich have had much to do in the past, and will have much 
 to do in the future with the development of human society, 
 it becomes in part the province of sociology (?) to study 
 the origins of religious doctrines and practices, as bearing 
 upon the history of society, and as explaining much that 
 exists today. It is of prime importance, therefore, that the 
 aproach to the study of religion from the sociological point 
 of view should be sympathetic, and if the teacher and 
 authors of text-books are Christians, there will be no 
 attempt to discredit and set aside the Christian revelation in 
 the name of science. If the subject is approached in a 
 skeptical, unfriendly spirit, as regards Christianity, the pro- 
 fessor of sociology becomes, ipso facto, an apostle of unbe- 
 lief, the class in sociology a school of infidelity, and the 
 text-books and periodicals used as auxiliary to the course 
 the seed and stimuli of Ingersollism. 
 
 The Christian revelation assumes the existence of God 
 as the necessary basis of all being. Its first announcement 
 is the fact of the creation of the universe by God Himself. 
 The religion of Christ founds upon the truth of this fact. 
 Further, it declares the fact of a divine revelation in the 
 infancy of the human race, and a progressive revelation 
 through prophets during the ages afterward, until that 
 revelation culminated in the birth, character, life, teachings, 
 miracles, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. In 
 His life, miracles, sayings, death and resurrection, the apos- 
 tles found their gospel. It was none other than the gospel 
 of Jesus. They added no new doctrines to those which He 
 proclaimed, required no faith or obedience which He had 
 not declared obligatory upon His disciples. It behooves 
 the Christian teacher of sociology, therefore, to let these 
 facts have full force and bearing in his entire course of in- 
 
 4 
 
struction as to the origins of the Christian religion. An 
 attitude of skepticism or of indifference here, cannot fail to 
 be injurious in the highest degree to the Christian faith and 
 character of his students. 
 
 There is a method of teaching the doctrine of evolution 
 that does not involve necessarily a denial of the above-named 
 Christian verities. The book of Genesis does not tell us 
 how man was made. No church and no State can under- 
 take to give a final and authoritative interpretation of the 
 story of Eden. There is abundant room for differences of 
 opinion among the most devout Christians, and the writer 
 dares not deny to his brethren the right of free interpreta- 
 tion which he claims for himself. But all Christians who 
 accept that story a«^ a part of the Word of God, revealed to 
 teach us 'Vhat man is to believe concerning God and what 
 duties God requires of man," are agreed that here we have 
 an inspired account of the first things in human history — 
 the first man and the first woman, the first marriage, the 
 first home, the first revelation of God and of duty, the first 
 manifestation of the devil, the first temptation, the first sin 
 and the consequent fall of the race, the first shame, the first 
 clothing, the first promise of redemption, the first judgment 
 upon man for sin. These are facts unquestionably revealed, 
 apart from all questions as to the rhetoric of the sacred text. 
 Here are facts which the prying research of science cannot 
 disprove, a record which may not be dismissed as a mere 
 childish legend. Here begins that "testimony of Jesus," 
 which is ''the spirit of prophecy." To dismiss it as a base- 
 less myth, is to assail the very foundation of the faith. To 
 deny the agency of an immanent and personal God in crea- 
 tion and in the development of man and of society, is frank- 
 ly to deny the whole truth of Christianity. 
 
 These considerations prepare us for the definition and 
 statements following, which show the nature of sociology 
 as conceived by the writers quoted, and the very broad and 
 ambitious program which Darwinian sociologists are at- 
 tempting to carry out. We find the following statements 
 in the May (1925) number of the Journal of Social Forces: 
 
 I. Page 607-8. Sociology defined. ''An attempt to 
 account for the origin, growth, structure and activities of 
 
 5 
 
society, by the operation of physical, vital and psychical 
 causes working together in a process of evolution." This 
 definition is agnostic. It leaves God out of ''the process." 
 
 2. The place and function of sociology in education in- 
 dicated. Page 609. "The study of the group will yet 
 revolutionize the whole art of education." Sociology "is 
 related to educational organization and administration in the 
 most intimate way . . the guide and foundation of each." 
 Hence it must seek to control educational objectives. Page 
 610: "Sociology, as the scientific study of society, its forces 
 and potentialities, is the only science to which the educator 
 may reasonably look for a social ideal which is not a mere 
 dream, but possible of realization." This intimates 
 that the Christian ideal of society is "a mere dream," and 
 impossible of realization. Sociology must be relied on to 
 furnish a better ideal than can be found in the Scriptures. 
 Still further, sociology must determine school curricula and 
 pave the way for the re-organization of society on a scien- 
 tific basis. P. 611 : "The first requirement in the construc- 
 tion of an educational curriculum is a sociological one, a 
 scientific conception of what society may and ought to be." 
 . . "Sociology may render still another important service 
 by showing not only what knowledge is of most worth, but 
 the order in which such knowledge is most easily presented. 
 . . Sociology, . . along with biology and psychology, 
 is really the foundation of educational method." . . "Dis- 
 cipline is chiefly concerned with selective and repetitive 
 processes . . it inheres in curricular and extra-curricu- 
 lar activities. The relation of sociology to discipline, then, 
 is exactly the same as with respect to th other aspects of 
 education." 
 
 In a word, then, sociology proposes to furnish mankind 
 with a new social ideal, and to control the education of our 
 youth so as to pave the way for a scientific re-organization 
 of society. That other sociologists agree with the writer 
 above quoted, will appear in the follow^ing pages. 
 
 6 
 
II.— RELIGION AS VIEWED BY DARWINIAN 
 
 SOCIOLOGISTS 
 
 The following expressions, let it be noted, are from 
 Northern writers, contributors — some of them "contributing 
 editors" — on the corps of the Journal of Social Forces. While 
 no professor of the University of North Carolina has given 
 utterance to such views, as far as this writer is aware, the 
 propriety of publishing such matter in a magazine issued 
 under the auspices of our University may weW be ques- 
 tioned. The injection of such wholesale doubts as to the 
 truth of Christianity into the minds of students of sociology 
 in our own State and elsewhere can hardly be a matter of 
 indifference to any earnest Christian. Our boys and girls 
 will come in contact with infidelity soon enough, when they 
 leave school and go out to their life-struggle in the world. 
 Ought it not to be our object to make their education pre- 
 pare them not only for useful citizenship, but for "giving 
 a reason for the hope that is in them,'' and to qualify them 
 to witness for the truth as it is in Jesus? "Forewarned is 
 forearmed." Religion has its place in education. But to 
 pour infidel notions into the receptive minds of young men 
 and women in the name of science is a crime against im- 
 mortal souls. 
 
 In the review section of the Journal of Social Forces for 
 May, 1925, I find the folowing propositions and intimations' 
 
 1. Orthodoxy of any type is distasteful to **the strictly 
 scientific mind." Dr. F. H. Hankins, a corresponding edi- 
 tor, writes (P. 748) reviewing "Christianity and Modern 
 Thought" by Gabriel : — "The 'modern thought' of the title 
 is that brand of modern thought which is acceptable to an 
 advanced orthodoxy .... this will not suit the natives 
 of the palmetto groves or the short grass prairies .... 
 it will not suit the strictly scientific mind either." 
 
 2. "Creationism," together with the immanence and 
 personality of God, all discarded. "Prof. Lull in 'Evolution- 
 ism and Religion' discards the doctrine of creationism as 
 out of harmony with, the universality of cause and effect as 
 pointed out by science, but falls back on the assumption of 
 
 7 
 
an immanent God. Only the will to believe can be satisfied 
 with such an easy evasion of the really important question, 
 'But is this God a personal spirit to which one can have re- 
 course in time of need?' " 
 
 Here the writer intimates his own unbelief by putting 
 it in an interrogatory form. One seems to hear the echo of 
 the devil's question in Eden — "Hath God said?" 
 
 3. Faith in immortality waived aside as not incentive 
 
 to right living. P. 748. Criticising Dean Sperry's argument 
 that the fact of immortality is essential to give meaning to 
 this life, and quoting his words, ''The alternative to sucTi 
 projection of the immediate experience into the future is 
 sheer irrationality," Hankins remarks, dryly. 
 
 "That is one way of looking at the matter, A large number 
 of the best minds mankind has yet produced have found this life, 
 understood in relation to nature, full of meaning and beauty in itself. 
 But one can only express a view-point and let it go at that. . . . 
 This book is too much concerned with theology to have any meaniDg- 
 except for those already imbued with the faith." 
 
 Here is an echo of Hume's sneers at "the grace of faith/*' 
 
 4. UnbeHef in supernatural intimated. P. 748. "Dean 
 Matthews defines religion as the 'complex of those social 
 acts by which a group undertakes to ward off the anger and 
 gain the help of those superhuman and not understood ele- 
 ments upon which it depends.' " This appears he adds, to 
 be "an acceptable definition, although one notes in passing- 
 the ambiguity which lurks in the word 'superhuman.' If 
 by this is meant the natural forces which at any time are be- 
 yond human control, one has a naturalistic conception of 
 religion ; but if there is meant spiritual or transcendental 
 powers, then one has quite a different thing, the implication 
 of supernatural deities conceived as furnishing the basis for 
 religious beliefs and acts." Here "naturalistic" means ma- 
 terialistic and such a view precludes any faith in supernat- 
 ural beings. This is made sufficiently plain by the writer 
 on the next page. 
 
 5. Sociologists not interested in "assumption of a p>er- 
 sonal God." P. 749. "If the sociologist is right in viewing 
 religion as a purely natural social phenomenon understand- 
 
 8 
 
-able in its entirety through individual and group psychology, 
 then he can have little interest in the query .... 'Is the 
 religious view of life, that is, the assumption of a personal 
 God, consistent with modern science?' " Note here the sig- 
 nificance of the term ''assumption of a personal God." Ma- 
 terialistic science which is the basis of Darwinian sociology, 
 knows nothing of a personal God. It views religion "as a 
 purely natural social phenomenon," to be explained by "in- 
 dividual and group psychology," refusing to acknowledge 
 the presence and agency of a Divine Spirit. Were one to 
 admit that God has anything to do with religious experience, 
 it w^ould not, of course, be "purely' natural." "Science" can 
 not admit the presence and activity of a personal God ! 
 
 Dr. Hankins repeats the same intimation in discussing 
 Dean Matthews' assertion that religion can be put to the 
 ^experimental test. "What one misses here" says Hankins, 
 "is any attempt at a natural science explanation of such ex- 
 periences." Natural science must explain it all. There 
 must be no admission of any divine revelation or supernat- 
 ural agency ! 
 
 6. P. 749. Religious experience ridiculed, and an ar- 
 gument against Christianity urged. "If they (religious ex- 
 periences) are to be considered adequate to establish the 
 existence of the supernatural powers believed in, then the 
 world is full of spirits, ghosts, demons, angels, gods and 
 devils, all capable of producing genuine bona fide religious 
 thrills, quality and quantity dependent upon the size of the 
 deity and the depth of the faith of the believer." What 
 strength of logic and what delicious scientific humor ! As- 
 suming that all religious experience is simply a matter of 
 "thrill," whether among Christians or heathen, the writer 
 attempts to refute Christianity by the method of reductio 
 ad absurdum. Heathen experiences produce "genuine bona 
 fide religious thrills" (?) as well as Christian experiences; 
 therefore science can put no confidence in any ! 
 
 7. The question of immortality pronounced a matter of 
 indifference to the scientific mind, and then sneered at. 
 
 P. 749. "Canon Barnes and Principal Galloway 
 
 unite in saying that 'if we restrict ourselves to what science 
 and metaphysics can tell us, the problem of life after death 
 
 9 
 
is likely to end in a note of uncertainty/ But the former 
 joins with Rudolph Eucken in holding . . . that if the 
 universe be conceived as rational, then the destruction of 
 the human personality after death would be irrational. The 
 indif¥erent mind cannot follow such reasoning, and must 
 feel that the good professors are merely whistling to keep up 
 their courage." Which means that Christian apologetes of 
 that type are sadly in the dark and very much frightened by 
 scientific opposition ! To the same effect is our reviewer's 
 criticism of Macintyre's argument for immortality that 
 one may accept the doctrine that physical man evolved from 
 the brutes, but his evolution is now continuing on the 
 psychic plane so that man is becoming more and more spir- 
 itually-minded with the passing of generations. "This," he 
 says, "is pretty hard on our billions of forebears, but if the 
 process succeeds in supplying our descendants with genuine 
 spiritual souls, metaphysically integrated, but physically 
 non-existent, we need not be overcritical." This is a sneer 
 at the doctrine that man may acquire, or has acquired an im- 
 n^ortal soul, even when urged on evolutionary grounds. 
 
 8. A Materialistic argument against immortality. 
 
 P. 750. In a nutshell this argument is this : 
 
 Nature furnishes no instance of life continuing" after 
 death. Life is known only in connection with organic 
 structures ; is, in fact, only the functioning of such struc- 
 tures, disappearing inevitably with their serious alteration 
 or destruction. The only immortality known to science is 
 the continuance of life through reproduction of cells, — the 
 physical continuity of the stream of life. Mind is unknown 
 and unthinkable in realistic terms apart from nerve struc- 
 ture. When that is destroyed ,there is and can be, no mind. 
 Finally, physical research has failed to produce a single case 
 of spirit manifestation. 
 
 All which intimates that the only possibility of im- 
 mortality that man may know is such immortality as is 
 implied in the continuance of individual life through one's 
 offspring. No personal immortality can be admitted by 
 this Darwinian sociologist. 
 
 10 
 
9- The possibility of divine revelation denied. Pro- 
 ceeding, the writer asserts that "there are no means where- 
 by pure and genuine spirit can make itself manifest to man." 
 That is, a Divine Spirit could not if He would reveal Him- 
 self to man. 
 
 10. Faith in personal immortality of the soul is sur- 
 rendered with increasing knowledge. ''Souls become more 
 and more shadowy with the growth of knowledge and so- 
 phistication until in a strictly scientific view, they disap- 
 pear altogether in a sort of universal energy, an impersonal 
 Nirvana, where personality and identity are both lost at 
 once." Further, Dr. Hankins approves Prof. Tsanofif's po- 
 sitions as ''quite in harmony with the finest scientific and 
 philosophical tradition." Why? "He recognizes that the 
 crude popular conceptions of a biological or psychological 
 existence of the identical and identifiable person in saecula 
 saeculorum, in some material or thinly material form are 
 no longer w^orth arguing." Bating what the reviewer says 
 as to the "material or thinly material form" of souls depart- 
 ed as we conceive them, the "crude popular conceptions" of 
 immortal spirits are simply the teachings of the Scriptures 
 and of Christ on that subject. But it is not "worth argu- 
 ing." Science has now, finally and forever, settled the 
 question for all intelligent persons ! 
 
 Again : Referring to Tsanofif's argument that the 
 striving for moral perfection which man alone manifests, is 
 at once evidence of the unity and uniqueness of the human 
 personality, and hence its claim to immortality, our reviewer 
 says : "Tsanofif admits that this conclusion rests on hope 
 and an act of faith and hence he will not expect to convince 
 the scientific." Bearing in mind the assertion of Barnes 
 ii! the January number, that Christianity has retarded the 
 progress of the race, we would judge that it is a settled con- 
 viction with such men that the Christian religion in all its 
 items of faith is irrational and unscientific, and that the 
 sooner it is laughed out of the world as a mere congeries of 
 superstitions, the better it wiU be for the progress of science, 
 and of mankind through the advance of science. That gen- 
 eral abandonment of Christianity by the people would great- 
 
 II 
 
ly increase the vogue and popularity of evolutionary sociol- 
 ogy, is beyond question. 
 
 11. Faith in immortality is opposed to a really intelli- 
 gent mode of living. P. 751. Proceeding, Hankins says, 
 ''The belief in a future life, is not essential to give meaning 
 to this one. There is, in fact, a direct antithesis between 
 the two lives. The less the one this side the grave means, 
 the more the one on the other side is glorified. But when 
 this life becomes filled with vivid reality, the other loses 
 interest. It is safe to say that a really intelligent mode of 
 living here and now is not affected in the slightest degree 
 by any belief concerning the hereafter." Which intimates 
 plainly that the people who are superstitious enough to sing 
 
 "A charge to keep I have, 
 
 A God to glorify, 
 A never-dying soul to save 
 
 And fit it for the sky" 
 
 are not really intelligent! 
 
 12. An intimation of atheism. P. 751. Pronouncing 
 Prof. Selbie's "Psychology of Religion" "a welcome addition 
 t(^ the literature of religious psychology," our reviewer crit- 
 icises the author for rejecting "the psycho-analytic interpre- 
 tation of many religious phenomena. Thus when Jung 
 declares that the idea of God is merely an infantile projection 
 from our consciousness and thus denies the existence of God, 
 Prof. Selbie replies that the existence of God is definitely 
 proven to the religious person by his own experience, his 
 consciousness of contact and communion with him. But 
 this is an exceedingly naive reply." Which is to say, stupid ! 
 Proceeding, our reviewer says, "On this ground the exis- 
 tence of every god, devil and ghost ever believed in by prim- 
 itive man would be proven, for they all made themselves 
 clear to the consciousness of the individual believer. There 
 is in fact in Prof. Selbie's own volume abundant material 
 for the interpretation of the whole religious experiences 
 in terms of individual and social psychology without any 
 resort to supernatural influences." 
 
 The next volume reviewed is one of which "much the 
 same may be said." It is the volume of Dean Matthews, 
 
 12 
 
of King's College, London, on ''The Psychological Approach 
 tc Religion." 
 
 ''In a clear and candid manner he discusses the psychology of 
 belief in God, conversion and immortality. He states all the common 
 sense arguments and some of the scientific ones, only to reject them 
 on the grcund that these matters are in the last analysis metaphysical 
 in nature and therefore psychology cannot have the final voice. He 
 admits that psychology points to the dependence of the soul on the 
 body and this makes the assumption of the separate existence of the 
 soul precarious; but he takes some comfort in the assumption of the 
 interaction of mind and body which psychology cannot at least wholly 
 disprove; and this gives some ground for the hope that the soul is 
 capable of a free and independent existence. In a word he admits 
 that science furnishes scant basis for the belief in immortality and 
 therefore he thinks it wise to take refuge in metaphysics where each 
 may indulge his own fancies without fear of being embarrased by 
 facts. " 
 
 Aside from showing the weakness of the ''Modernist" 
 apologetic, this criticism shows how a true Darwinian hes- 
 itates to accept any proofs of God, or of immortality. Dean 
 Matthews finds "some ground" for his faith ; takes "some 
 comfort" in an assumption; and at last takes refuge in 
 metaphysics where one cannot be embarrassed by facts! 
 Science furnishes scant basis for any faith in immortality ! 
 
 Note here also another expression of contempt for meta- 
 physics. The psychology of which author and reviewer 
 both speak is the new Spencerian psychology which is ma- 
 terialistic throughout, and is based on evolutionary assump- 
 tions. Materialistic and agnostic science does not and can 
 not admit the existence of a soul in man, considered as an 
 intellectual, moral and spiritual entity, separable from "so- 
 matic energy." 
 
 13. If man can be shown to be immortal, the same ar- 
 guments will prove the immortality of animals of "many 
 sorts from insects up." P. 752, review of "Passing of 
 Phantoms" by Patten. 
 
 "He not only argues for the existence of mind throughout living 
 things, but advances a quantity of evidence for the evolution of mind 
 from plant to man, and of morals from mo'st rudimentary beginnings 
 to the highly complicated human systems. Human consciousness can 
 not be set apart from the rest of nature as something of a special sort. 
 . . . Substantially all the arguments for human immortality must 
 apply also to animals o"f many sorts from insects up. There is no 
 escape from this except in assumptions which make man a special 
 
 13 
 
creation, assumptious from which the belief in human immortality 
 cannot be deduced. This, is, of course, a question begging solution. ' ' 
 
 14. Non-Superstitious Man will not trouble himself 
 about God or Immortality. Proceeding* Dr. Hankins says: 
 
 ''Consciousness is an attribute of highly complex nervous struc- 
 tures, as strength is the functioning of living muscular tissues. But 
 if" — as the writer strongly intimates is the case — "the soul be not 
 immortal, what of moral values and the meaning of life? Patten 
 finds such values and meaning inherent in the processes and values of 
 life itself. Indeed he concludes that the Non-Superstitious Man who 
 is evolving in our scientific age can find in these processes 'funda- 
 mental rules of morality apart from imaginative conception of the 
 supernatural. ' This is sufficiently obvious to those who have sufficient 
 mental freedom to see it; to others it will be meaningless." 
 
 Here the title of the book reviewed shows its material- 
 istic nature and its anti-Christian animus, and the reviewer 
 endorses Mr. Patten emphatically, with a sneer at the men- 
 tal slavery of those who do not agree that the supernatural 
 is only an "imaginative conception." 
 
 15. God and immortality find no support in science. 
 
 P. 752. ''One expects from Bertrand Russell a viewpoint 
 thoroughly in harmony with the logic of modern science. 
 'What I Believe' is not only written from such a viewpoint, 
 but is one of the clearest, most readable and most construc- 
 tive utterances which has come from Russell for a long 
 time." Why such unstinted praise? Perhaps the next 
 sentence will explain the approbation of the agnostic re- 
 viewer. *'At the very outset he rejects both God and im- 
 mortality as finding no support in science. Moreover he 
 finds that neither is essential to religion because neither is 
 found in Buddhism. In view of the fact that thinking and 
 personality are based on brain structure and functions, he 
 finds it inconceivable that these activities should persist 
 after death. He finds that religion is based on an original 
 fear of nature ; but all fear is bad and therefore" — 
 
 16. "Religion has stultified the human mind, and hin- 
 dered the development of the human personality." . . 
 
 Further, says our reviewer, with cordial approval, "he finds 
 that traditional morality is too largely compounded of su- 
 perstitious mandates from the gods. They therefore un- 
 
 14 
 
necessarily restrain individuals and produce a warping of 
 personalities and a cultivation of mutual misunderstandings 
 and hatreds which fill the world with suspicions and terrors." 
 
 Christianity is responsible for hatreds etc. ! It. will 
 never do' to tell our young students of sociology that God 
 gave the ten commandments to Moses to be made known to 
 Israel. Such superstitious mandates of the gods "warp 
 the human personality !" No skeptic or atheist was ever 
 satisfied with the ten commandments. As some old divine 
 said, ''A bad heart is the greatest of all arguments against 
 the Bible." 
 
 17. Authority of conscience derided. ''Conscience is 
 a most fallacious guide, since it consists of vague reminis- 
 cences of precepts heard in early youth, so that it is never 
 wiser than its possessor's nurse or mother." Which implies 
 that God did not reveal any moral law, and conscience is not 
 a faculty of moral judgment divinely implanted in man, 
 which witnesses to the authority and righteousness of His 
 law ! 
 
 18. Religion unnecessary for the right ordering of 
 one's life. "To live a good life in the fullest sense, a man 
 must have a good education, friends, love, children if he de- 
 sires them," (not necessarily a wife, of course, since God 
 never revealed any law for our guidance in such matters), 
 ^'a sufficient income to keep him from want and grave anx- 
 iety, good health, and work which is not uninteresting. All 
 these things in varying degree depend upon the community, 
 and are helped or hindered by political events. The good 
 life must be lived in a good society, and is not fully possible 
 otherwise." 
 
 This is the highest ideal materialism offers. David 
 Livingstone, Henry Martyn, Adoniram Judson, and all the 
 liost of Christian missionaries, not to speak of prophets and 
 saints and martyrs, all failed to live "the good life," and as 
 man is not immortal, according to the author and reviewer, 
 they missed all the good that was possible to them. It is 
 n^ere folly even to desire to join "the choir invisible, whose 
 music is the gladness of the world," and in order to this deny 
 
 15 
 
one's self. There is no living the good life unless you have- 
 a "good time." 
 
 Proceeding, our reviewer says, with relish, ''Instead, 
 then of the mixture of preaching and bribery which is at the 
 basis of present moral training, Russell would substitute an> 
 active cultivation of helpfulness and courage on the basis of 
 a scientific knowledge of individual' and social psychology.. 
 He would organize society and tradition so as to combat- 
 fear, — fear both of the living and the dead." Fear of the 
 living would include the living God if there be one. Tradition, 
 is to be "organized," which is euphemism for getting rid of 
 the religion of the Bible. Rid men of the idea that "the fear 
 of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge 
 of the Holy One is understanding." Why? He gives the 
 scientific reason: "Through science it should be possible 
 in the coming generation to enable the vast majority of 
 people to live the good life through . . . knowledge, 
 self-control and that benevolent understanding which pro- 
 duces harmony among men." 
 
 19. Science alone can furnish moral guidance for man- 
 kind. P. 753. "Russell . . . implies more than once 
 that there is no basis for ethical codes except individual or 
 human desires. . , . There is in fact an objective test 
 of moral codes and precepts, because in the long run those- 
 individuals, families and societies which achieve healths- 
 vigor and intelligent command over the essential conditions 
 of life persist. Science alone can point the way to such an 
 ethical code." Here is another implication that God never 
 did reveal any moral law for man to obey. This squares- 
 with the proposition made by Dr. Barnes in the January- 
 number of the Journal of Social Forces, that a committee of 
 scientific experts be appointed to compile such a code. It 
 will be a substitute for the ten commandments and for the 
 Sermon on the Mount, especially in those portions in which 
 the Master alludes to lying, fornication and adultery. Such 
 commandments "cramp the human personality." 
 
 20. Affirms that historic Christianity is itself a pla- 
 giarism and the historic existence of Jesus doubtful. Re- 
 viewing Churchward's "Origin and Evolution of Religion/' 
 
 16 
 
Prof. Hankins criticises the author for his failure to give 
 proofs of his many assertions, yet shows decided relish for 
 his outspoken infidelity. While he ridicules the author's 
 reasons for believing that man has a soul (P. 756) he lets it 
 appear that he is impressed with Churchward's attempt to 
 show that Christianity copied from ancient Egyptian heath- 
 enism. "Every student of religious phenomena will wish 
 to read it," he says. Proceeding, he gives the parallel which 
 Churchward claims to have established between Horus and 
 Jesus, extending from pre-existence and divinity to annun- 
 ciation, miraculous conception, birth and adoration, miracles, 
 says, sacrificial death, and resurrection. Our reviewer 
 concludes with a hint that possibly Jesus never lived, and 
 that in any event the doctrines of Christianity are without 
 divine sanction. "Whether the author is correct in deny- 
 ing the historic existence of Jesus (P. 756) he has made it 
 plain that no such existence was necessary to the develop- 
 ment of such a body of religious doctrines as centered about 
 him." Which is to say, that in any event, Christianity is 
 without divine authority. Further, says our reviewer, 
 "When one realizes the ease of myth manufacture and 
 transference, that the first mention of Jesus is in Paul's 
 epistle to the Thessalonians about twenty years after the 
 crucifixion is supposed (sic) to have occurred, and that the 
 only mention of him as an assumed (sic) historical character 
 is in the sacred writings themselves," — which, as we have 
 seen, is not a thing which appeals at all to the "strictly 
 scientific mind," — "and that the Savior God was an ancient 
 and wide-spread feature of religious tradition . . . one 
 realizes that Christian doctrine and practice are at least a 
 compound of many older religious elements." 
 
 21. Encourages opposition to prohibition. I pass over 
 the first review article of Dr. Parshley on "Some Aspects of 
 Sin," with its decidedly socialistic flavor, which is common 
 to all the Northern and Western writers who favor the 
 Journal of Social Forces with their essays, pausing only to 
 quote his remark (757) in regard to prohibition, referring 
 tc the measures of repeal urged by the author: "Apparently 
 he has never heard of lapsed legislation." This intimates 
 that eventually prohibition will simply be abandoned with- 
 out further legislation, the law becoming a dead letter. 
 
 17 
 
22. Masturbation advised. Reviewing **Sex and 
 Life" by Dr. W. F. Robie, which he commends as showing 
 
 great deal of good sense and good science . . . " he 
 tacitly endorses Dr. Robie's approval of ''auto-erotism" — in 
 plain English, self-abuse — as "providentially available faute 
 de mieux." Here a commendation of a beastly and destruc- 
 tive vice is given without dissent. Can anybody tell why? 
 
 ^3- Opposition to any form of Christianity expressed. 
 I^P- 759 seq. Dr. J. S. Bixler's paper, "Some Aspects 
 of Modernism" is valuable, as showing the futility of^he 
 modernist apologetic as against the oppositions of Darwin- 
 ism. Reviewing Dr. Fosdick's "Modern Uses of the Bble" 
 and Dean Matthews' "Faith of Modernism" he remarks that 
 "it seems hardly possible that a fair-minded person could 
 read either book and remain a fundamentalist." Will he 
 then become a modernist? No. 
 
 * ' The canons of reasonableness and abiding human value which 
 these writers have set up might point the way to freedom not ooily 
 from the limitations of fundamentalism, but from those of Christian- 
 ity itself in its historical and particularistic aspect. Dr. Fosdick's 
 position seems especially ambiguous on this point. The Bible is held 
 up because it is the repository of truths that are eternal. But no 
 hint is given of the eternal truths which are found outside the Bible. 
 The writer gives the impression of being able to find value only in 
 that which is both abiding and Biblical. . . But it may be quer- 
 ied whether the weakest place in the modernist position is not this 
 tendency to cling to a particularistic view when the criteria by which 
 the view is reached are universal. The same problem recurs in the 
 chapters on Jesus. We must adore him, says Dr. Fo'sdick, because 
 H(! brings a life-bringing experience of the divine. But is this ex- 
 perience one that can be called life-bringing because through some 
 higher authority of its own it transcends and supercedes our human 
 categories [modes of thought], or is it because it harmoniously fits 
 and effectively responds to the reason and conscience which are our 
 mental and moral equipment as human beings? If the former, why 
 make permanence and pertinence to human need the criteria? If the 
 latter, why look to Jesus alone for an experience that is life-bring- 
 ing?" 
 
 Let Modernists handle this dilemma as best they can. 
 It holds no terrors for any man who believes with all his 
 heart that "there is no other name given under heaven 
 whereby we may be saved but the name of Jesus." 
 
 24. The religion of the future will be a hodge-podge of 
 
 18 
 
all religions, past and present, and Christianity will be su- 
 perceded. Our reviewer goes on to say : 
 
 "Dean Matthews would probably reply that it is only in the 
 Christian community that we find the religious experience which truly 
 satisfies. But a large part of the race has found satisfaction in oth- 
 er groups (sociological for religious or other communities), and the 
 Christian community has its debit and credit account. Although 
 syncretistic and eclectic movements have not succeeded in the past, 
 it seems probable! that the religion of the future will be eclectic at 
 least in being untrammeled by the limitations of any one historic 
 movement, and free to adopt whatever of value it can find in any 
 faith." 
 
 Whatever it may be, the religion of the future cannot be 
 Christianity ! 
 
 25. Teachers and parents urged to educate children not 
 to believe in the supernatural and the miraculous. 
 
 Dr. Bixler commends Prof. Streibert's book, ''Youth and 
 the Bible" as "definite and compelling." P. 768. Why? 
 **As a college teacher of the Bible she has found her w^ork 
 hampered by the crude notions of Biblical material and out- 
 moded conceptions of religion which the students have 
 brought to the class-room." There must be a change, he 
 insists, in the methods of primary religious education. ''From 
 the beginning the child must learn to expect to find in the 
 Bble the evidence of its authors' frailty. He must also 
 learn not to associate religion with the miraculous and su- 
 pernatural. God is immanent in nature and in man. He 
 is revealed most adequately in the least limited forms of life. 
 Religion is the attitude of conscious co-operation with the 
 morally achieving spirit of the universe." He approves the 
 author^s suggestion that "antiquated sections" of the Bible 
 "be treated frankly and explained for what they are worth." 
 Accepted, that is, like the testimony of a doubtful witness ! 
 And when did the Word of God become "outmoded" and 
 antiquated? Some of us have been simple enough to be- 
 lieve that "the Word of the Lord endureth forever." Were 
 we mistaken? . . . "The problems of the New Testa- 
 ment, especially those attending the stories of the infancy 
 and resurrection, are faced unflinchingly." Which means 
 that the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus 
 are rejected by this college Bible teacher, Prof. Streibert, as 
 a matter of course, as also by the reviewer. 
 
 19 
 
26. Religious experience pronounced infantile. Prof. 
 Kimball Young gives us "A Realistic Approach to the Na- 
 ture of Religion." Pp. 762-766. It gives us a vivid appre- 
 ciation of the scientific attitude of Darwinian sociologists 
 toward the phenomena of religious experience. Their ap- 
 proach is "realistic," which is to say, materialistic. Review- 
 ing Everett Dean Martin's book, ''The Mystery of Religion" 
 and Elizabeth Goldsmith's "Life Symbols as Related to Sex 
 S3^mbolism," Prof. Young approves the statements of Mar- 
 tin that "for the believer the religious thrill is something 
 vital, alive and gripping. The religious experience, more- 
 over, is projected outward from the individual's mind in the 
 form of symbols." That is, God has nothing to do with it. 
 It is all from within ! "Since the roots of this experience 
 lie in infantile wishes, the symbolism [which means concep- 
 tions of gods, devils, etc.] partakes of the nature of the 
 childish psyche, rather than of the objective matter-of-fact- 
 ness of adulthood." 
 
 27. All religion breeds a selfish, hateful and persecut- 
 ing spirit. "Connected, too, with compulsive behavior [all 
 religious beliefs and practices, understand, being forced on 
 one through "group psychology,"] is often a decided sense 
 of inferiority. This gives rise in religious experience to in- 
 tense humility toward objects of worship, a belief in future 
 compensations" — here the writer quotes 'Blessed are the 
 m.eek: for they shall inherit the earth' — "On the other hand 
 this same sense of inferiority gives rise to intense cruelty 
 and fanaticism toward those who oppose one's religious 
 conceptions." 
 
 28. Science unalterably opposed to all religion. "Not 
 only is religion symbolic, [which, as we saw, means here 
 imaginative altogether], it is also fundamentally teleologic- 
 al. It can not escape being so. Just as science today 
 rather prides itself on being non-teleological, a religion 
 v.'hich does not touch ultimate purposes would be as absurd 
 as it would be futile." Science prides itself on being "non- 
 teleological"— that is, refusing to believe that there is a di- 
 vine purpose in anything. 
 
 29. All the truth that there is in religion lies in the sat- 
 isfactions which it affords to believers. "The truth of re- 
 
 20 
 
ligion [the author reiterates, we are told, but evidently the 
 reviewer approves the idea] is not the external objectivity 
 of religious traditions, but lies within the satisfactions which 
 the personality finds in religious practices and sentiments. 
 As he remarks, the truth of Christianity, as religious truth, 
 might conceivably remain unaltered, even though no .such 
 person as Jesus could be found in history." Which is to say, 
 a ''true" religion is independent of historic Christianity. 
 
 30. A sociological definition and explanation of religion 
 which makes it contemptible. Religion, we are told, ''is our 
 symbolic expression of our wish that the universe were run 
 in our interest." It "furnishes a means whereby the normal 
 person can symbolically recover much of the lost egotism 
 of childhood in socially acceptable ways. The neurotic, on 
 the other hand, has flight from reality into illness for much 
 the same purpose." Religion, then, is "flight from reality." 
 
 What the religious interest strives to do is to' preserve intact an 
 infantile image of the ideal father, perfect and *'pure" and sinless, 
 and at the same time render this image tolerant and ''forgiving" of 
 the existence in the believer of the very ''sinful nature" in himself 
 whch his infantile egotism struck out of the image of the perfect one. 
 Hence, psychologically speaking, reconciliation with the father means 
 reconciliation o'f our infantile jealousy with the fact of our own ma- 
 turity. 
 
 Further, religion is altogether a product of "group psy- 
 chology." Says our reviewer, giving with approval the 
 views of the author reviewed : 
 
 The insistence on religious practices by members of the com- 
 munity is accomplished by all the techniques of control: taboo, pun- 
 ishment, repressive measures generally. The enemies of the religious 
 dogmas of the group are hated, shunned and feared, while the adher- 
 ents, the members of the community, are "the saved," the "holy" 
 OTies, the "good" people. Here on a wider canvass are found once 
 more the ambivalent attitudes of love and hatred which we saw in 
 the individual's response to the "good Father" image, G-od, and the 
 "bad father" image, the Devil. 
 
 Here is scientific scorn for the very ideas of goodness, 
 of holiness, and of salvation, and a slander of Christianity, 
 the religion of love. Also, note the atheistic implications. 
 God and the devil are merely images, which means imagina- 
 tions. The reviewer makes this plain as he proceeds. 
 
 Religious ceremonialism is 'non-adaptive.' The rites and ges- 
 tures fulfill the essential function by giving the believen release from 
 
 21 
 
feeling of sin [that, from a scientific stand-point, is all there is in it] 
 and unworthiness because he has done the "rig-ht" thing, just as the 
 compulsive [i. e., the insane man, who is the victim of a ''religious 
 complex"] frees himself from his fears and conflicts by his private 
 ceremonies. Thus baptism, re-birth from water, is directly related 
 to the neurotic compulsive bathing, hand-washing and thei like, which 
 we know, is, in turn, associated with unconscious mechanisms of wish 
 to return to the mother and to be' re-born. Likewise initiatory and 
 purificatory rites set the faithful at rest with themselves and with 
 their projection of themselves — their God." 
 
 This is atheism. God is simply our projection of our- 
 selves — our imagination of a god framed upon ourselves 
 as a model. 
 
 Here is scientific contempt for the ideas of the new 
 birth, baptism, prayer, and even of God. But this is not 
 all. 
 
 "The function of religion isi thus to assist the ego to 'stand this 
 universe' by re-weaving it into pleasant dream-like patterns. 
 
 The most effective change in the future, for the author, is the 
 self-conscious acknowledgement of our conflicts, the abolishment of the 
 infantilisms of the past religions [Christianity is here viewed as past!] 
 and the conscious driections to "the reassembling one's personality 
 picture so as to make it an effective instrument of orientation." 
 
 I quote two of Dr. Young's criticisms. In the first, he 
 intimates that the religion of Jesus is a plagiarism from old- 
 er systems. 
 
 ' ' The author does not draw on primitive religions. . . Yet 
 there is a mass of material on the psychology of the birth of the hero 
 and semi-deity from the virgin, and on the psychology- of myth-mak- 
 ing, and the exposure of the infantilisms in early religious cosmogonies 
 which could have been presented. . . The statement that the 
 ceremonials of the neurotic, from whom the author draws the religious 
 rituals, are non-adaptive, is misleading. The ceremonials are adap- 
 tive, without them the personality would go completely to pieces. 
 They may not be socially efiicient, but certainly they have a survival 
 function in the neurotic, and especially in the mildly psychopathic 
 personages. So, too, I think we may say that the ceremonies of 
 religion serve a definite purpose in giving expression to infantile 
 attitudes in socially acceptable manners. In this sensei they are not 
 completely foolish and valueless." 
 
 The author thought them so, but the scientific reviewer 
 contends that they are good for childish folks, for hysterical 
 women and "mildly psycopathic" men. Is it wonderful 
 that the reviewer is delighted with Martin's "exposure of • 
 the roots of religious experience?" 
 
 22 
 
3T. Finally, Christianity is passing, but may or may 
 not give way to something better. — ''The future religions 
 will grow out of the matrix of the general culture, as will ' 
 future art." 
 
 The final overthrow of Christianity is hypothetically 
 predicted. P. 765. "The author asks, 'Are A\e facing a 
 Revival of Religion?'" This does not mean a religious 
 revival, as Glenn Frank intimated in his address at Chapel 
 Hill. Our reviewer proceeds to intimate the author's 
 answer to that question. 
 
 Whether we have a genuine improvement in the forms of religious 
 expression, or whether we slip into emotionally retrograde religious 
 expression, depends, thinks the author, 'upon the kind of people 
 whose spiritual dilemmas are to become the prevailing standards o'f 
 value.' The influence of democratic mediocrity may make for a less 
 worthy type of religious development. The rise of the proletariat to 
 power may bring with it considerable upsetting of the older religious 
 forms. It may be that the revolt of labor, a revolt, not so much 
 against capitalism as against the mechanical existence imposed on 
 Jabor by modern industrialism, may bring in its turn a new religious 
 escape [mark that: all sorts of religion are but escapes from reality; 
 sensible people can get along very well wthout them, thinks the au- 
 thor and reviewer alike!] from the standardized, mechanical world." 
 Then quotes the author: It is possible therefore that a mass return 
 to religion as a form of escape from the present civilization may take 
 the form of a revolution in which the unconscious motive, instead of 
 assuming traditional religious symbols, would clothe itself in the 
 scientific jargon of contemporary economics. 
 
 Which means that the Christian religion is now about 
 dead, and the coming "revival of religion" — the term does 
 not imply a Christian revival — may be an up-springing of 
 organized socialism, which makes its politics its only 
 religion. 
 
 III. A SINGULAR SANDWICH 
 
 The foregoing intimations of Darwinian sociologists 
 follow by some fifty pages a paper by Dr. William Louis 
 Poteat, President of Wake Forest College. It is the second 
 of the lectures delivered to the students of our State Uni- 
 versity by him as McNair lecturer during the last session. 
 Apart from its apologetic feature as a defense of the Chris- 
 tian religion against the materialistic science of our day, its 
 
 23 
 
chief feature is contempt for his brethren who are fund- 
 amentalists. He quotes as applicable to their attitude the 
 bitter words of Erasmus spoken of the opponents of human- 
 ism: "By identifying- the new learning with heresy you 
 make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance." He charges 
 fundamentalists with teaching a system of metaphysics in 
 their evangelistic work, and thereby driving away from the 
 church all who do not understand our metaphysics. He 
 says: 
 
 In Christianity God and the enveloping spirit world are medi- 
 ated to our apprehension by Christ, and toi be Christian is to respond 
 in love and loyalty to the appeal of Christ. With this deep and in- 
 scrutable experience the rationalism of orthodoxy has been very free 
 and very sure. You must do sa and so, and you must accept this and 
 that intellectual proposition; you must understand the metaphysic 
 of "the plan," or you cannot become a Christian. What may be call- 
 ed the psychologj' of conversion is "explained" at such length that 
 the plain man, who is little interested in metaphysics, is the more 
 confounded, because he perceives no change of personal attitude to 
 Christ, even though he gives genuine assent to th proposition. In- 
 action follows confusion, and Christian interest perishes in the bag 
 of speculation. 
 
 In making such statements before a large body of 
 young men, Dr. Poteat has done a grave injury to many of 
 his Christian brethren. It is not true that all funda- 
 mentalists are ignorant, as he has intimated, nor that all who 
 are "orthodox" are such stupid literalists in their interpreta- 
 tions of Scripture as he has sought to make it appear. Con- 
 tempt for conservative Christian thought is not a Christian 
 temper, and young men imbued with it are not at all likely 
 to be attracted toward a profession of faith in Christ. Some 
 of us have made it our business for fifty years to keep our- 
 selves acquainted with the discoveries of science, and to 
 know the trend of scientific thought in regard to religion. 
 And as to requiring people to accept our metaphysics be- 
 fore we consent to allow them to count themselves Chris- 
 tians, I have never known any evangelist of any denomina.*- 
 tion who mixed metaphysics with the gospel, demanding 
 that his hearers "accept this and that intellectual proposi- 
 tion." With one accord they have preached "repentance 
 toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." I 
 cannot recall one, from Dwight L. Moody to M. F. Harn, 
 v/ho set forth any metaphysic of "the plan." Much as Dr. 
 
 24 
 
Poteat seems to despise the word, there is a "plan" of sal- 
 vation, and it is God's plan, and not man's. Our busines is 
 to proclaim it, preaching "the Word," teaching the people 
 out of the Scriptures, as the Master did and as His apostles 
 did. 
 
 But the significant thing which stands out in the very 
 number which contains Dr. Poteat's elegant but somewhat 
 mixed and dubious apologetic — mixed and dubious because 
 he seems quite as much concerned to rouse feelings of con- 
 tempt tow^ard fundamentalists as to inculcate faith in the 
 Savior, — is this : That while our learned friend fills some 
 nine pages with his effort to show that evolutionism is in 
 harmony with the Christian faith, some seventeen pa^es of 
 the same magazine are filled by writers — Messrs. Hankins, 
 Parshley, Kimball Young, and Bixler — who, as I have 
 shown above by abundant citations, strive to argue against 
 the existence and personality of God, against the immortal- 
 ity of the soul, against the supernatural alike in the origin 
 of the moral law and in religious experience, and against 
 historic Christianity, even to the extent of casting doubt 
 upon the historicity of the gospel account of Jesus and the 
 originality of the Christian message. All this in the name 
 of evolutionary science ! More than that, one of these 
 gentlemen expressly approves the "finding" of Bertrand 
 Russell that religion — religion, that is, of every type — ^has 
 stultified the human mind and hindered the development of 
 the human personality, and that "traditional morality" — 
 which means the Christian code of morals — "is too largely 
 compounded of superstitious mandates of the God," and 
 the opinion of Patten that the "Non-Superstitious Man, who 
 is now evolving in our scientific age," will find in the "pro- 
 cesses and values of life itself" and "apart from imaginative 
 conception of the supernatural" abundant moral guidance 
 — "fundamental rules of morality." In a word, religion is 
 a thing that makes men fools, and as if to cap the climax. 
 Howard Madison Parshley quotes without dissent or pro- 
 test a certain writer's approval of a secret vice, which has 
 helped to fill our asylums for the insane, and has beyond 
 question caused the wreck of many a promising career. 
 
 What a religio-scientific sandwich we have here! It is 
 
 25 
 
a slice of "modernist" religious apologetics, placed between 
 one thin and three very thick slices of scientific infidelity. 
 
 The thin slice is found in Dr. L. L, Bernard's article 
 in which he declares that the Greek philosophers drove "the 
 gods" out of the universe, that Christianity is doomed, and 
 that science can not recognize any divine or supernatural 
 purpose in nature, or in social development, etc., etc. 
 
 Dr. Poteat is a good and able man, but he is in bad 
 company. 
 
 IV. A QUESTION FOR NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 CHRISTIANS 
 
 In the foregoing pages I have shown the patent enmity 
 toward Christianity displayed by sundry contributors to 
 the ''Jour^^l o^* Social Forces." I have demonstrated that 
 the type of sociology taught by such men is not only anti- 
 Christian but anti-religious. While the March number of 
 the Journal is not quite as noticeable for its spirit of opposi- 
 tion to Christianity as the two previous numbers, the 
 articles of Drs. Bernard and Barnes, not to speak of others, 
 show the same animus. Bernard tells us in the March num- 
 ber, page 538, of our growing emancipation, from ''tradi- 
 tional repressions and controls," and adds : "We have freed 
 ourselves in a measure from the tyranny of spirit worship. 
 If now we can escape from the idols of the crowd, we may 
 begin to be free and may realize something- of the exhilara- 
 tion of spirit in creative moral relations, which Bateson 
 claims is the mental realm of the uninhibited genius." One 
 of the idols of the crowd to which he refers is, undoubtedly, 
 our respect for Christian morality. Mating at will, with- 
 out regard to "superstitious mandates of the Gods" would 
 be a "creative moral relation," in the opinion of such 
 sociologists as Bernard and Barnes. "Spirit worship" in- 
 cludes, in sociological terminology, the worship of Him of 
 whom Jesus said, "God is a Spirit, and they that w^orship 
 Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Russell 
 
 26 
 
Gordon Smith, of Columbia University, reviewing- Miss 
 Follett's book on ''Creative Experience," says: 
 
 Suppose one grants that here we have the true scientific ex- 
 position of the behavior process, and then looks at the daily activities 
 of human beings, at tlie interweaving and integrating of their desires. 
 Do we find what Miss Follett 's impassioned prose has led us to ex- 
 pect? We do not. We find what Sumner called the masses and what 
 Mr. Mencken refers to somewhat more euphemistically as the boobery, 
 engrossed in the activities of eating, sleeping, excreting, reproducing, 
 boot-legging, cross-word puzzling, and dying, in ways more or less 
 predetermined by the cultural crazy quilt in which they becamei en- 
 tangled by the bloody accident of birth." Page 541. 
 
 Here is a distinct, if not very elegant, intimation that 
 there is no God and no divine providence. The masses are 
 involved in a "cultural crazy quilt," and birth is ''a bloody 
 accident." 
 
 In my citations from the May number above given I 
 have but mentioned Dr. Bernard, But in that number, on 
 page 619, he tells us that **in the nineteenth century the last 
 great stand of both theology and metaphysics was in a joint 
 defense against the aggressions of the new physical and 
 biological sciences ... A somewhat similar, though 
 separate and weaker, defense is now being made in the 
 fields of the mental and social sciences under the name of 
 Fundamentalism." This -intimates quite distinctly that 
 ''science" has defeated Christianity, and admits that science 
 was the aggressor. Also, that not even the zeal and ability 
 of the Fundamentalists can save it from final repudiation 
 by all intelligent men. "Theology" means Christian the- 
 ology. Its last great stand was made in the last century. 
 What is being done now by Christian apologetes is weak 
 and ineffective. Christianity is doomed to become extinct 
 as the dodo! Again, he tells us, (page 622) that "evolution 
 in the abstract and as an objective concept of continuity 
 knows nothing of progress or will or purpose or any other 
 anthropocentric concepts or points of view. To assume 
 such a standpoint of interpretation is to read into the pro- 
 cesses themselves personality or objective and self-existent 
 principles and thus reduce them to the categories of the- 
 ological or metaphysical dogmas or doctrines." Scientific 
 sociology must not admit of any self-existent prin- 
 ciple. It must have nothing to do wnth either theology or 
 
 27 
 
metaphysics. Both of these sciences — pseudo-sciences they 
 are, in the opinion of such men — affirm that there is a self- 
 existent Being, Who is usually spoken of as God. But 
 scientific sociology will have nothing to do with this "dog- 
 ma.'' I could multiply citations, but these must suffice. 
 
 Thus we find that in a magazine issued under the 
 auspices of the University of North Carolina, currency is 
 given to the views of men who despise the very words 
 "orthodoxy," ''theology," "metaphysics," and "dogma." By 
 "metaphysics," as we have said, they mean that view of 
 mental science which regards the soul as a spiritual entity, 
 distinct and separable from the body. By ''dogma" they 
 m.ean any doctrine which the church considers settled by 
 the Word of God. Divine revelation, the divinity of Christ, 
 the virgin birth of the Savior, the resurrection of Christ and 
 of mankind at the end of the age — these and other Chris- 
 tian doctrines are "dogmas," or theological "concepts" with 
 which science will have nothing to do. These gentlemen 
 propose to re-organize society on the basis of a new code 
 of morals to be provided by science, and in order to this 
 they propose to emancipate the race from all "fear of the 
 living or the dead." We are informed that the "Non- 
 Superstitious Man who is now evolving" will need no re- 
 ligion, and that the only people who do need one are 
 "neurotic and mildly psycopathic persons," — weak-minded, 
 half crazy people. 
 
 In view of these facts, I submit this question to the 
 trustees and faculty, and alumni of the University, and to 
 the people of the State of North Carolina : Should not the 
 faculty and trustees of our University prevent the purvey- 
 ing of such bald infidelity in a publication issued under the 
 auspices and edited by profesors of the institution? Shall 
 we consent to allow the prestige of our University to be 
 employed in the popularization of agnosticism and material- 
 ism? 
 
 I have written no word in criticism of the University. 
 What I have condemned is the policy of the editors of the 
 Journal of Social Forces, which, as a prominent minister 
 writes me, "is an insult to the intelligence and to the moral 
 
 28 
 
and religious convictions of our people." Already they 
 have purveyed to their thousands of readers in four suc- 
 cessive numbers articles that have assailed the fundamental 
 verities of the Christian faith. During the same period 
 they gave space to but one article favoring Christianity — 
 Dr. Poteat's. The continuance of such a policy will not 
 fail to injure greatly the University itself as wtW as the 
 cause of evangelical Christianity. Well is it to count the 
 search for truth the great object of the University, but when 
 this search proceeds upon the assumption that nothing in 
 the sphere of religion is settled — that Christianity itself is 
 to be considered a mere temporary system, w^hich, in the 
 process of ''evolution" is to give way to a better religion 
 or to none at all as the high priests of Holy Science shall 
 determine — then, in the name of my Lord, I protest against 
 such prostitution of the agencies, the prestige and the im- 
 primatur of an institution which, for more than a century- 
 and-a-quarter, has been standing for the religion and the 
 morality of the Bible. 
 
 ADDENDUM 
 
 I. THE REAL CHINAMAN IN OUR MIDST, AND 
 HIS AMAZING DISCOVERY 
 
 Under the above title the writer published in the Char- 
 lotte Observer a partial review of an article by Judge R. W. 
 Winston, published with editorial commendation in the No- 
 vember (1924) number of the Journal of Social Forces. The 
 following is a synopsis of Judge Winston's paper: 
 
 Fifty years ago when sea and rocks were only partially 
 explored and yet enough had been uncovered to disprove 
 our childhood myths, the age of the world, the creation of 
 Adam and Eve, Noah's Flood and the like . . . this ques- 
 tion was addressed by Robert Ingersoll to William E. Glad- 
 stone : '*How can the neck of orthodoxy escape the noose 
 of Darwin?" . . . Theology and tradition have fared 
 badly since Darwin and others began to lay bare the secrets 
 
 29 
 
of nature; but religion, the right relation of man to God, is, 
 I submit, more firmly fixed than ever. The array of evi- 
 dence . . . established the theory of evolution as firmly 
 as the theory of gravitation. Christians should investigate 
 so stubborn a fact before wagering their al on its falsity. 
 It really confirms one's faith in God. 
 
 Darwin did not. deal with the origin of life, but wath the 
 origin of species. Prevailing opinion today is that we do 
 not know anything about the origin of life. The confidence 
 of those who believe that the life-process is material, and 
 that the spiritual is a myth — ^that there is no First Cause — • 
 seems to have passed away. Darwin made use of God as 
 the Creator of life. After that one divine event God ap- 
 parently disappeared from the earth and its affairs and has 
 not since re-appeared. Biology to some extent confirms 
 the faith of the Christian idealist that God is in the very 
 atom, since biologists declare that "even the amoeba is no 
 fool." LaPlace thought the hypothesis of God was not 
 necessary. Prof. Conklin found greater evidences of the 
 omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience of an Infinite 
 Being in evolution than in creation itself. Darwin himself 
 did not believe in blind chance. Darwin's view was not in 
 disharmony with the God of Jesus. 
 
 Scientists admit that the missing links are still missing. 
 Yet ''how ennobling the concept of evolution: the atom; 
 the indwelling spirit; the struggle; the ascending scale; 
 millions upon millions of intervening years ; man and his 
 plaything world ; death another name for life; back again 
 to God." Galileo, Bacon, Franklin, Newton, all denounced 
 because of their discoveries. Anaesthetics opposed. Geology 
 pronounced "a dark art, dangerous," etc. Christians have 
 forsaken the Bible Sabbath, yet in North Carolina a boy 
 may be put in jail for caddying on the first day of the week. 
 Contest today is between religion of authority and religion 
 of reason and science. Thousands of pious persons, mostl}^ 
 women, would in a church of authority attain perfect emo- 
 tional equilibrium. As things are they are not at peace. 
 "Old-time religion, the revival, outpourings of the Holy 
 Spirit, Pentecostal days are gone — and the saints are not 
 happy." Scientific thought once displaced by bigotry and 
 
 30 
 
superstition — now both natural and spiritual processes are 
 understood as growth. Orthodoxy must accept evolution 
 oi else plant itself upon the miraculous, the impossible. 
 
 What has science left? God, the Jesus of John; the 
 four gospels and the epistles of Paul ; the life-process, our- 
 selves being of the process; the fruits of Christian idealism 
 — truth,, goodness, beauty ; and the hope of a life to come. 
 Under this banner all nations may enlist in a search for 
 truth. Teachers assure us that the Far East is awake to a 
 larger Christianity; that synthesizing our best and their 
 best, appealing to Japanese and Chinese in a spirit of sym- 
 pathy, is better than the old way — pity and condescension, 
 
 I do believe in God, that he 
 
 Made heaven and earth, and you and me; 
 
 Nay, I believe in all the host 
 
 Of Gods from Jesus down to' Joss, 
 
 But honor best and reverence most 
 
 That guileless God Who bore the cross. 
 
 May we not thank Darwin for a theory of life which 
 has broadened and humanized knowledge and dignified the 
 concept of God? 
 
 Remarking on the above, I called attention to the fact 
 that a Chinaman sees no inconsistency in professing any 
 number of contradictory religions. The poetical creed of 
 Judge Winston seems to mark him as ''the Mongol in our 
 midst," for this is precisely what he has done, proposing to 
 accept ''all the Gods from Jesus down to Joss." 
 
 And what a discovery he has made! Science has junk- 
 ed the whole Bible except the four gospels and the epistles 
 of Paul, and has cut the miracles out of these. And this 
 information comes to us in a scientific magazine under the 
 imprimatur of our great University. Can it be true in- 
 formation ? 
 
 II. "THE CREED AND PROGRAM OF 
 
 MODERN SOCIOLOGY" 
 
 Under this caption I published citations from the articles 
 of Drs. Bernard and Barnes in the January number of the 
 Journal of Social Forces. My paper appeared in the Biblical 
 Recorder, the Presbyterian Standard and the Charlotte 
 
 31 
 
Sunday Observer. It brought out the following- points, all 
 being attested by abundant citations : 
 
 I. The Creed of a Modem Sociologist 
 
 1. All go'ds and devils were the creations of the human imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 2. There never has been any divine revelation of God's will to 
 man, and never will be. 
 
 3. No extant moral code, not even that derived from the Bible, 
 possesses divine authority. Jesus was merely a religious reformer. 
 
 4. The Christian's hope of heaven is based on a myth, ''the 
 myth of reinstatement." 
 
 5. The fall of mankind was mythical — ''the myth of regression." 
 
 6. Conscience is nothing more than, the product of group opinion. 
 
 7. Christianity errs as to the basic purpose of moral conduct. 
 
 8. Current Christian and Jewish teaching as to purity and 
 modesty is all wrong. "Our sex mores go back to primitive mystic- 
 ism and superstition," and to the Jewish mores, where there was 
 developed that pernicious concept, "naked and ashamed." 
 
 9. Christianity has degraded woman, assigned her a lower posi- 
 tion than she occupied in pagan Greece, and has retarded human 
 progress. 
 
 10. The world today has no true code of morals and must look 
 to science alone to supply one. 
 
 II. The Program of Modern Sociology 
 
 1. To provide the world with a scientific code of morals, 
 
 2. To assure the world that the acceptance of such a scientific 
 code of conduct) would not endanger any man's spiritual prospects, or 
 "prevent his rapid and successful translation to the empyrean area." 
 
 3. To convince the world that "Super-hygiene" is a sufficient 
 savior and go'd. 
 
 4. If the ideals of Jesus are allowed any place in the new code, 
 it will not be because they are considered as in any sense "the pro- 
 duct of special and unique revelation." 
 
 5. The new code must allow larger liberty of moral action to 
 men of genius. 
 
 6. The new code will correct the low ideals of current Christian 
 teaching. 
 
 7. The new code will supercede all moral teaching by the church. 
 
 8. The new code will be tentative and will be continually re- 
 vised as science may point the way. 
 
 9. The new code will restore to mankind the ideals of Greek 
 paganism. ' ' With the possible exception of the teachings of Con- 
 fucius," the ancient Greeks had the best ideals man has yet known. 
 
 From all which it appears that sociology of the Darwinian type 
 proposes to overthrow the Church of Christ and Christian civilization, 
 introduce "pluralism" by law, introduce the methods of scientific 
 stock-breeding for the improvement of the human breed, do away with 
 prohibition altogether, and bring back into the world all "the glory 
 that was Greece." 
 
 NOTE — It is due the faculty of the University of North Carolina 
 to say that the Dr. Bernard quoted above is professor in the Uni- 
 versity of Minnesota, and that Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes is professor 
 in Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 
 
 32 
 
RELATIVE TO ORDERS 
 
 The first thousand copies of this pamphlet were pub- 
 lished by the author and distributed gratuitously. Orders 
 are coming" in, and I am encouraged to print a second edi- 
 tion, trusting that persons anxious to know the truth in the 
 matter complained of will be willing to pay the cost of pub- 
 lication and postage, etc. Hence the price is 25 cents the 
 copy. Five copies or more, 20 cents each postpaid. Address 
 orders and remittances to 
 
 REV. Wm. P. McCORKLE, 
 
 Burlington, N. C. 
 
51. c. 204 Z99M v.l 372436 
 Nos. I-IS 
 
 IMI.- Religious Paaiphlets 
 
 CALL NUMBER 
 
 Vol. 
 
 
 
 Date (for periodical) 
 
 
 
 Copy No. 
 
 
 N.C. 204 Z99M v.l 37345 
 
 "OS. 1-18