Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 092:368 (Oct 1935)
Article: The Three Great Silences of Modern Thought and the Voice of God -A Sample Broadcast
Author: Erling C. Olsen

BSac 92:368 (Oct 35) p. 450

The Three Great Silences of Modern Thought and the Voice of God
-A Sample Broadcast

Erling C. Olsen

Wilbur M. Smith

Midweek Forum Hour, Station WMAC, New York,
in Association with Stations in Five Other Easern Seaboard Cities.
Conducted By
Erling C. Olsen, Executive Vice President, The Fitch Investors Service, New York.
Participant
Wilbur M. Smith, D.D., Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Coatesville, Pa.

Mr. Olsen: Some years ago Mr. H. G. Wells dropped a bombshell, as it were, into the English world by vigorously asserting that what we needed was a new Bible. His then startling suggestions have practically been forgotten, but the idea that, in these days of great scientific advancement and historical investigation, our Bible has become antiquated, and that the great problems of life must find their solution in non-Biblical spheres, has taken strong hold of thousands of our college graduates. What I should like you to show in the few moments at your disposal this evening, Dr. Smith, is that the three greatest questions of men’s minds are, confessedly, unanswerable by modern science and philosophy, and that only in the Word of God do we find a clear solution for the three great problems they suggest. The three inescapable questions of every intelligent man’s mind are these: Whence came the universe in which we live; where may a man find deliverance from himself, and cleansing from his sins; and what does the future hold for us? These questions involve the past, the present, and the future

BSac 92:368 (Oct 35) p. 451

-origin, conduct, and destiny. Dr. Smith, what have you to suggest?

Dr. Smith: First, in regard to the origin of our universe and of life. That great biologist, the late Professor J. Arthur Thompson, regius professor of Natural History in the University of Aberdeen, and one of the most prolific and dependable scientific writers of this generation, said in the first volume of his The Outline of Science: “When we speak the language of science, we cannot say ‘in the beginning,’ for we do not know and cannot think of any condition of things that would not arise from something that went before. If we say, as was said long ago, ‘In the beginning was Mind,’ we may be expressing or trying to express a great truth, but we have gone BEYOND SCIENCE.” Thomas Henry Huxley years ago confessed: “Of the causes that have led to the origination of living matter it may be said that we know nothing.” Sir Oliver Lodge, years later, stated: “Ultimate origins are inscrutable. Let us admit, as scientific men, that of real origin, even of the simplest thing, we know nothing, not even of a pebble.�...