Organized Protestant Christianity today is marked by a decline in the teaching of evangelical doctrine, and a resurgence of ritualism. The breakdown of Biblical indoctrination is an outcome of the theological liberalism commonly styled "Modernism."
The reversion to ritual is a clerical effort to fill the gap created by this breakdown, but it is a deceptive and futile substitute. It is the attempt to conceal inward death by outward show. It is like putting an elaborately dressed-up corpse in the place of a living organism. Those golden calves are back again! God save us from them! It is by doctrine--by the teaching of Bible truth as the very word of God that men learn and live and nations prosper.
(J. Sidlow Baxter, "Explore the Book," vol. 4, p. 96, 1960)
[TBC: Written 48 years ago!]
The reversion to ritual is a clerical effort to fill the gap created by this breakdown, but it is a deceptive and futile substitute. It is the attempt to conceal inward death by outward show. It is like putting an elaborately dressed-up corpse in the place of a living organism. Those golden calves are back again! God save us from them! It is by doctrine--by the teaching of Bible truth as the very word of God that men learn and live and nations prosper.
(J. Sidlow Baxter, "Explore the Book," vol. 4, p. 96, 1960)
[TBC: Written 48 years ago!]
