In the August number of last year's Help and Food we gave an account of the doctrinal conflict in the Baptist Body in Convention at Indianapolis, Ind., between the so-called "Fundamentalists -' and "Modernists." These last, still professing Christianity (falsely, indeed), reject all its fundamental doctrines, as the virgin birth of our Lord, His vicarious death in atonement for sin, His bodily resurrection and ascension to heaven, and His coming again in judgment upon the ungodly. All the miracles recorded in the Bible, therefore, are also denied. It has been well said that Modernism goes full well with Tom Payne's "Age of Reason."

Yet, with Modernism preponderant at the Baptist Convention last year, an open division between the Fundamentalists and Modernists was cleverly averted by the proposition that "The New Testament is the all-sufficient ground of faith and practice, and that we need no other," to which it was agreed-and this after the Modernists had openly rejected its cardinal truths, as embodied in the New Hampshire Confession of Faith, which hitherto had been owned by the Baptist churches!

It was predicted then, that as Modernism is rampant in all the large Protestant denominations, the same conflict, with probable cleavage, would result at their great conventions. The large North Presbyterian body has just passed through this test in their General Assembly, convened in Indianapolis, Ind., as the Baptists a year before. Alas, it was the clergy that chiefly supported Modernism as expressed in Dr. Fosdick's sermon of a year ago in the New York Presbyterian Church, "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?"-in which rationalism, smoothly and cleverly expressed, is made to supplant faith in the whole foundation of Christianity.

The Presbytery of Philadelphia, alarmed by the Rationalistic preaching, unchecked in the New York Presbytery, which represents about 170 congregations, desired the N. Y. Presbytery last year to take notice of and examine the unfaithful teaching among them. Little notice being taken of this by the N. Y. Presbytery, it was carried to the General Assembly this year. A committee of the General Assembly before whom this appeal came for examination, was not disposed to take it up however; and recommended that it be left with the N. Y. Presbytery, only one out of the members of the committee dissenting from this. A vote, however, was taken on this matter by the Assembly, and the Committee's recommendation was over-ruled by a majority of 80 votes in about 800 clergyman and elders composing the Assembly. Thus it was decided:

"That the anti-Fosdick resolution of the Assembly be sent to the session of First Presbyterian Church of New York, and that their reply to the Assembly [when it assembles again] be drafted only after lengthy consideration, and that the overture from Harlem, New York, Church on the same subject, which has been under discussion by the committee, be withdrawn by that church."

"It was generally believed among the presbyters," says a correspondent, "that yesterday's action virtually disposes of the ecclesiastical onslaught against Dr. Fosdick, and that when the committee reports again it will merely announce that after due inquiry it has found that the preaching in the First Church conforms to the Westminster Confession (!)."

Thus, after all, the slender victory of the Fundamentalists in the Presbyterian General Assembly of this year may yet (and probably will) be frittered away when it shall again assemble.
Meanwhile the N. Y. Presbytery, in general, is reported as a bold supporter of Modernism. The following extract, and many others, show this:

"I charge the Assembly," said Dr. Clarke, of the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, "with having wrought a grave and fearful injury to the Church it was supposed to bless. Without any authority whatsoever, and in distinct defiance of the basic principles of our Church, it has served an impertinent and arrogant notice that there is no room in the Presbyterian ministry for the progressive mind.

"Let there be no mistake about the significance of the action of the General Assembly. It undertook to say certain things must not be tolerated in the preaching from the pulpits of the denomination. It voted that it was essential and necessary for a Presbyterian minister to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, in the virgin birth of Jesus, in a particular theory of the death of Christ on the cross, in the physical resurrection of our Lord, and in the veracity and genuineness of the miracles attributed to Jesus.

"In all frankness I do not believe one of those five points." (S. S. TIMES.)

A Unitarian preacher in his discourse commented upon the Presbyterian General Assembly at Indianapolis and the Modernists as follows:

"While we believe Mr. Bryan is wandering in the biological darkness of pre-Darwinian days, we also believe he is right in recognizing that a belief in evolution attacks orthodox Christianity at a vital center. The one foundation of the orthodox church is a belief in the fall of man necessitating an atonement through the sacrificial death of Christ. Remove that foundation and the whole edifice crumbles. The distinction between the orthodox church and the Unitarian begins with our belief in the rise of man. Thus, man is rising from lowly beginnings and is marching upward. To us evolution is as much of a demonstrated fact as the sphericity of the earth."

If Modernists but honorably withdrew from the professedly orthodox Christian bodies to which they pledged their allegiance in entering them, one might respect them while deploring their defection from what they once professed. But, no!-they persist in remaining attached to the body they have betrayed, and still call themselves by the precious name of Christ while they deny all that makes Him the true Christ of Scripture-the Christ of God-whom the Gospels declare. A deluded man may be pitied, but a deliberate betrayer can only be scorned, whatever his haughty and false profession may be.

"Caesar's friends? or friends of Jesus?
Solemn question for today! Friends of Caesar!
Friends of Jesus!
Take your sides, without delay-
Friends of Caesar! Friends of Jesus!
Stand revealed-your choice declare,
Who in truth two masters pleases?
Who may rival banners bear?"
"He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me . . . and he that taketh not his cross and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me"-Matt. 10:37, 38.