The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Arena, by Various

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Title: The Arena
Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891

Author: Various

Editor: B. O. Flower

Release Date: August 27, 2007 [EBook #22419]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ARENA.

No. XXII.

SEPTEMBER, 1891.

[Illustration: Geo. C. Lorimer. (signed "Yours' Respectfully, Geo. C.
Lorimer")]

THE NEWER HERESIES.

BY REV. GEO. C. LORIMER, D. D.

It is a good thing that the Inquisition, Star-chamber, and other
compulsory institutions of the dark past have departed from Europe,
and have never been tolerated in America. Were it not so, at the
present time there would be much excellent work for the rack, the
thumbscrew, and the faggot. Heresy is in the air, especially in the
northern latitudes of the United States. We inhale it with the morning
breezes, it stimulates us to mental activity during the noon hour, and
at times stifles us as by the sultry atmosphere of a blistering day.
Everywhere it is being discussed, and by every kind of individual,
qualified or unqualified for such high contentions. Daily journals,
hitherto never remarkable for orthodoxy, have suddenly grown anxious
as to the future of the faith; and other journals, that have always
antagonized orthodoxy, are, figuratively speaking, rubbing their hands
most gleefully and smiling through their editorial columns with a most
perceptible "I told you so"; while religious papers, representing as
they do, the conservative element in this country, are apparently
staggered at the inroads which the so-called higher criticism has made
of late. Aged people ominously shake their heads, and striplings of
the limp-back Bible type are amazed at the stir which ideas are making
in the community, and which threaten to disturb the peace and quiet of
their mediocre godliness; and pious women engaged on crazy quilts, in
the interest of noble benefactions, stop with punctured and bleeding
fingers to protest against al