Then here is another gentleman, Mr. Ryder, the Rev. Mr. Ryder, and he
says that Calvinism is rejected by a majority of Christendom. He is
mistaken. There is what they call the Evangelical Alliance. They met
in this country in 1875 or 1876, and there were present representatives
of all the evangelical churches in the world, and they adopted a creed,
and that creed is that man is totally depraved. That creed is that
there is an eternal, universal Hell, and that every man that does not
believe in a certain way is bound to be damned forever, and that there
is only one way to be saved, and that is by faith, and by faith alone;
and they would not allow anybody to be represented there that did not
believe that, and they would not allow a Unitarian there, and would not
have allowed Dr. Ryder there, because he takes away from the Christian
world the consolation naturally arising from the belief in Hell.
Dr. Ryder is mistaken. All the orthodox religion of the day is
Calvinism. It believes in the fall of man. It believes in the
atonement. It believes in the eternity of Hell, and it believes in
salvation by faith; that is to say, by credulity.
That is what they believe, and he is mistaken; and I want to tell Dr.
Kyder today, if there is a God, and He wrote the Old Testament, there
is a Hell. The God that wrote the Old Testament will have a Hell. And
I want to tell Dr. Ryder another thing, that the Bible teaches an
eternity of punishment. I want to tell him that the Bible upholds the
doctrine of Hell. I want to tell Him that if there is no Hell,
somebody ought to have said so, and Jesus Christ should not have said:
"I will at the last day say: 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'" If there was
not such a place, Christ would not have said: "Depart from me, ye
cursed, and these shall go hence into everlasting fire." And if you,
Dr. Ryder, are depending for salvation on the God that wrote the Old
Testament, you will inevitably be eternally damned.
There is no hope for you. It is just as bad to deny Hell as it is to
deny Heaven. It is just as much blasphemy to deny the devil as to deny
God, according to the orthodox creed. He admits that the Jews were
polygamists, but, he says, how was it they finally quit it? I can tell
you--the soil was so poor they couldn't afford it. Prof. Swing says
the Bible is a poem, Dr. Ryder says it is a picture. The Garden of
Eden is pictorial; a pictorial snake and a pictorial woman, I suppose,
and a pictorial man, and maybe it was a pictorial sin. And only a
pictorial atonement.