# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

8 Proceedings of the nineteenth convention

[the apple of the globe] that they can speak so boldly of this cross-section, of what is in the earth, and of the hundreds of thousands and millions of years that must have passed before the globe became what it now is? This I do know: when recently the dreadful volcanic eruptions took place on Martinique and the neighboring islands, other volcanoes too, some of them long extinct and inactive, in Alaska and in the Mediterranean, began, as the telegraph reported, to smoke and steam. That must surely have its connection deep, deep in the bowels of the earth, as deep as no one has yet penetrated and probably no one ever will, and that reminded me of what I know from Scripture, that God has prepared the earth for destruction, namely for destruction and for ruin by fire.

The Christian asks further: Scripture is supposed to stand in contradiction to the moral law of a refined ethics? As long as, under the bright splendor of this moral law, which is supposed to be nobler than that of Scripture, so many cashiers disappear to Canada, so many widows and orphans get nothing from the lodges, so full of love, because the father in his last illness really did not think of paying the dues that had fallen due; as long as it counts as the highest wisdom of life either to add one house to another and to draw one field to another until there is no room left, or to make thousands upon thousands of workers with their families dependent on the caprice of a few; as long as it does not count as something punishable to tear the sword out of the hand of the authorities and to roast slowly at the stake or on the pyre the Negro [Neger] wrested from them, guilty or not, confessing or not, so long I prefer to stay with the less refined ethics of the Bible.

As has been said, a Christian, when he reflects on what he has in his Holy Scripture, stands firm even if perhaps an objection to the Bible and Christianity should come his way which he cannot at once refute as eloquently as it was made.

But what gives a Christian more trouble, inwardly too, is the objection: Holy Scripture contradicts itself.

Some Historical Remarks on the Church's Apologetic Activity Precisely in Face of This Reproach.

People who are Christians, or at least want to be, but do not read Holy Scripture themselves, of course feel nothing of what the true Christian feels when, in the midst of reading Holy Scripture, it sometimes seems to him as if this did not agree, as if there were contradictions there. In the Roman Church the laity do not read the Bible, the priests only little. The Roman Church knows that its laity could not read Scripture without gradually recognizing the hundredfold deception practiced on their souls. For that reason it takes away the