IT S ALL FICTION !!

[TBC: Enemies of the Scriptures are often bold enough to make authoritative
statements for which they can offer not the slightest support. This example
from 1910 shows the logical question a believer should ask.]

Bro. Mohorter, of Boston, sends me the following clipping from a recent
issue of the Boston Herald:

The Reverend. George Hodges, dean of the Episcopal Theological School in
Cambridge, Mass., preaching before University of Pennsylvania students in
Houston Hall on "The Temptation," said:

"Christ did not meet Satan in the wilderness, and there was no prodigal son. But the story of the temptation and the story of the prodigal contain the greatest truths which have everbeen told.
Fiction may be more full of truth than facts, and poetry andpictures, products of the imagination, may represent more and deeper truths than mathematical demonstrations. Records of the temptation make it sufficiently plain that what
we have here is a parable rather than a history, or a picture rather than a page from a diary. Taken literally, it never happened. Jesus and Satan never stood side by side looking down on
the temple.

The parable of the prodigal son has no fact in it from beginning to end. There was no prodigal son; there was no famine; no fatted calf; no elder brother. This was a beautiful story which
Jesus told, and he made up every word of it."
..........................................................

When a man makes an assertion the source of which is beyond the ordinary
range of human knowledge, it is always pertinent to ask him, How do you
know? When Professor Hodges said that Christ did not meet Satan, some of
those university students ought to have risen and said, "Professor, how do
you know? Have you any other source of information on the subject than the
three Gospels, which assert that he did?"
And when he said that the parable of the prodigal son has no fact in it from beginning to
end, he should have been confronted with the same question. Unless he is omniscient,
so as to know what took place two thousand years ago without the aid of evidence on
the subject, his answer would have been silence and confusion of face. But
our advanced critics are constantly assuming omniscience in regard to facts
of history which do not please them. According to the very first canon of
historical criticism, the testimony of men who were contemporaries of
asserted facts, and who had access to means of correct information, must be
accorded the highest degree of historical credibility.

But this scientific professor expected the students of Pennsylvania University to believe
him in this twentieth century concerning facts in the first, in opposition to
Matthew, Mark and Luke. Who will dare to say that he is conceited or
presumptuous?