06.0.2. Publisher's Note

Publisher’s Note The chapters in this book originally appeared in serial form in a religious newspaper. The fol­lowing taken from the announcement of that paper will explain sufficiently how it came into existence as well as its aim or purport: In an address delivered before a recent conven­tion of the American Bible League, the Rev. James A. Worden, D.D., LL.D., superintendent of the Sabbath-school and missionary work of the Presby­terian Church in the United States, laid great em­phasis upon the pressing need of a Bible Primer or Primer of the Faith that would give in simple words the reply to the assaults of the critics upon the Bible. He said,

I may be regarded as represent­ing, in a sense, the Bible students of this country. Let me tell you there are 1,200,000 Bible teachers in this country, and among them the best equipped, intelligent, practical Christians. They are firm be­lievers in the inspiration of the Word, despite all that has been written, despite all that has been said for the last twenty-five years. They stand by your side, 1,200,000 strong, convinced, by the self-con­vincing power of the Bible and by the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, that this is a supernatural, divine revelation, and that it is infallibly recorded in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

What can you do for them? These people have their troubles; these teachers hear this criticism made upon the Pentateuch and upon the history in the Bible and upon Isaiah, and they do not know how to answer it.

Now, we want Primers. Get the names of the hundred thousand superintendents of our Sabbath Schools. Send to them your plans. Tell them that you mean to resist the assaults made upon the Scriptures, with which they have some little trouble; and you will find they will respond. Of course there has not been a single allegation made by these destructive critics that has not been an­swered a hundred times. They are well known to you and to me. They are well known in the circles of theologically trained men. We have no doubts about them; but the answers have never been cir­culated; they have never been published or printed in elementary form so that our Sabbath School teachers and superintendents could have them in form easily understood so as to satisfy their minds.”

There could be no question about the choice of the man for the work. No one in the country fitted it so well as Dr. James M. Gray. His qualifications for just this work are excep­tional. Besides teaching the Bible in great popular Bible classes, and in lessons distributed throughout the United States and Canada through the medium of our columns, he has been an instructor in differ­ent seminaries and Bible institutes in Biblical in­troduction. He is now the Dean of the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, the parent, and still by far the largest of all institutes in this country, if not in the world. For several years all his work has been among young people, from whom he has re­ceived the heartiest response and most grateful appreciation given in recent years to any Bible teacher.