Bishop Anderson Preaches on God's Revelation

Nebraska, 1910

"Higher Criticism" O.K'd

Following is the account of a sermon taken from an article on an assembly in Lincoln, Nebraska, August 1910. Some of the details, as to who exactly Bishop Anderson was, his first name, etc., are not given.

"You preachers who have been ranting about higher criticism have got to quit and inform yourself of what higher criticism stands for," was the assertion with which Bishop Anderson startled some of his more orthodox hearers in the sermon of the morning. "Bishop Bashford said on Sunday that he wanted the ministers to cease denouncing the law of evolution," the speaker continued, "and I want to say the same thing to apply to higher criticism. I think it is time for those who have blazed away at higher criticism to stop and find out what higher criticism stands for. It is absolutely foolish for anyone to wax excited or get worried over Biblical scholarship. No one need be alarmed over the investigations being made which are called 'higher criticism.' If there is a preacher here who has been tearing loose in his pulpit on this I wish he would come up here and inform us what it is he has been assailing. Criticism is not unfriendly, it is constructive. It is merely a study of the Bible as a collection of books to ascertain the authorship and the date of writing. I don't want my Bible exempt from the severest intellectual investigation applied to other works. The word of God is not harmed but helped thereby. It stands forever and its value is better discovered when it is subjected to the most exacting tests."

After the assertions made by Bishop Bashford on evolution on Sunday, many who do not believe in the new true religion, severely criticized him. Bishop Anderson also did not escape the contradiction of some or his audience who talked his utterances over after the service this morning.

Recites from Hebrew Poet

The theme of the bishop's sermon was "Books Which God Writes." As a text he recited the rapturous outburst of the Hebrew poet, beginning: "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork." He took the psalm, verse by verse, and drew his applications from the individual sentences contained therein. The three books in which God has written His revelation, according to the preacher, are, first, the book of nature; second, the Bible, and third, the book of life and the spiritual consciousness of man.

"When Beethoven began to write music," Bishop Anderson continued, "he found it impossible to express all effects and meanings in the selections he composed for the piano. Later, he composed orchestra music adapted for a large variety of instruments and was able to secure the interpretation desired. So God did not confine himself in His revelation to a written work, but indelibly and unmistakably wrote in the book of nature. In former times it was thought that matter is evil and that the world belonged to the devil. I assert that this is the best possible world God could have made. It is a superb expression of His attributes.

Creator Greatest Artist

"God is not separated from the universe by law. He is law and permeates all the mechanism which we designate by the name, law. Kant said: 'I am amazed at the starry heavens above and the moral law within.' God is a great artist and has created in the universe a masterpiece.

"When Robert Louis Stevenson landed at Samoa, he saw a Scotchman standing on the shore, hat in hand evidently in the act of worship. It was an early hour of morning and the great author was curious but did not wish to disturb the devotions of the man. Later he became intimately acquainted with the man and asked him in regard to the circumstances in which he had first seen him. The Scotchman replied: 'Every morning at sunrise, I go out into he open to see the beautiful universe awake and I feel exalted and worship the magnificence of nature.' God has written a part of his truth in nature.

"Another book of God," said the bishop, "is the Bible. It is necessary to express secret and subtle thought that could not be expressed in the book of nature.

"The third book of God to which I would allude is the book of human life and the testimony of the Most High written in the hearts of men. Men can read this revelation if they make their hearts pure and thereby clarify their spiritual vision.

"Some men who can't run a two by four store," said the speaker, "find fault with the world and would like to instruct the Lord on how to run his business, Earth is crammed with heaven and good things and the gloomy pessimist who cannot discover them is to be pitied."

—Lincoln Evening News, Lincoln, NE, Aug. 10, 1910, p. 8.