Chapter X

In the preceding pages I have addressed my readers as a jury. And in this closing chapter I submit a final issue to their judgment. What excuse can be offered to justify sensible and thoughtful men in prostrating themselves before this fetish of the pseudo-Criticism? “The pseudo-Criticism,” I say advisedly, for this sceptical crusade has but an illegitimate kinship with true Higher Criticism — a system of Bible study to which we owe much, and which merits respect and confidence.

*’ The latest scholarship “? Surely if there be any sphere in which novelty should inspire caution, if not distrust, it is here. And yet the pseudo-Critics regard the ablest scholars, even of the last generation, much as fashionable ladies treat a last year’s bonnet. As for the Apostles, and the Fathers, and the martyrs, and “the whole company of Christian people” for eighteen centuries, even our Sunday-school children are now taught to regard them with patronising pity! And no wonder. “If they have called the Master of the House Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His household?” — considering how the Master is treated by this teaching, His servants are not likely to be held in much respect.

But, we are told, these men are earnest and devout, and they know Hebrew and Greek. The men of the now discredited Tubingen school were earnest and devout, and knew Hebrew and Greek. The men who crucified Christ knew Hebrew and Greek, and some of them at least were far more earnest and far more devout. Men like Saul of Tarsus stood higher in these respects than any of our modern Critics. Zeal and piety and scholarship afford no proof of shrewdness and wisdom even in the affairs of daily life, and they are quite compatible with ignorance and error in the sphere of spiritual truth.

But, it will be urged again, all this ignores the difficulties in the Bible, of which the Critics offer a solution. I dissociate myself from those who deny or minimise the difficulties. But the greatest difficulties are not those with which this criticism deals. The sort of difficulties to which the Critics seem to attach most importance remind us of old Fuller’s sarcasm about men who “com.plain that the room is dark when their eyes are blind.” And even these they solve at the cost of bringing down the house upon our heads. For the Christian to solve difficulties by repudiating the teaching of Christ, is like committing suicide to escape from danger.

The difficulties which most sorely try the Christian’s faith have their counterpart in the natural sphere. This fact, indeed, affords no solution of them, but it bars the argument that they disprove the Divine authorship of the Bible. God’s work in nature abounds in mysteries which perplex and baffle us; and if the .Bible be from God, we may expect to find in it mysteries as insoluble. If we could master the Bible as we master other books, it would go far to prove that it is on a level with other books. It would give proof that the God of nature is not the author of it.

The wildest superstitions of human religions present nothing so essentially incredible as Christianity. That a Jewish mechanic was the Only-begotten Son of God, and that in His death, when consigned to the gibbet as a blasphemer and disturber of the peace. He became the propitiation for the sin of the world — if this be true, any hard-headed schoolboy may be trusted to see through the elaborate web of “plausible arguments,” and assumptions, and theories, and quibbles by which the Critics avoid the obvious conclusion that the sacrifices and offerings of the Pentateuch were a Divine foreshadowing of it. But is it true? May it not be an exquisite dream of mystics, suggested by that very literature which the Critics seek to discredit?

The scepticism of book-scholars and professional ministers of religion may exhaust itself in the vagaries of the pseudo-Criticism, but with thoughtful and earnest men of the world it is here at the very foundations that faith and unbelief measure their distance. If the mysteries of the Christian faith are Divinely revealed, reason bows before the God of reason, and accepts them. But if they have no higher sanction than the Critics’ Bible, a Bible mutilated, disparaged, and discredited, then with every real thinker — with every man of common-sense, indeed — reason will assert its supremacy and refuse assent.

In view of the difficulties which confront the fearless seeker after truth, the theories of the Critics remind us of the pills to protect from earthquakes. The real Bible difficulties are akin to those which in the natural sphere make infidels of so many men of science. They bring us at times to the verge of rejecting the whole scheme of revelation, and regarding Christianity, as Harnack does, as a sublime dream, a noble system of ethics and mystical philosophy, a splendid type of Neo-Buddhism — Buddhism illumined by a personal God.

And even this is but a precarious resting-place. For it is not so clear that Matthew Arnold is wrong in maintaining that reason does not lead to belief in a personal God. Once we leave the anchorage of faith we may drift to the blind and hopeless agnosticism of Lord Tennyson’s creed: “There’s a something that watches over us; and our individuality endures: that’s my faith, and that’s all my faith.”

The public facts of the life and ministry and death of the Nazarene are as well accredited as any facts of ancient history. Statements like those of the “Encyclopaedia Biblica,” that there are but nine passages in the Gospels deserving of credence, are but the

Nineteenth Century, June, 1903 (p. 1070). The editor quotes it from an article written in the Poet Laureate’s lifetime. Numerous passages in his poems indicate a very different faith. How is the enigma to be explained? Was his agnosticism assumed to please his agnostic friends? What a contrast his words present to the testimony of that great statesman and lawyer and judge, Earl Cairns: “Every day I rise with a sweet consciousness that God loves me and cares for me. He has pardoned all my sins for Christ’s sake, and I look forward to the future with no dread.... Suppose it were possible to convince me that this was a delusion on my part ... all would be dark to me.”

betises of blind apostates. They are an insult to the intelligence of common men. But in the Christian system these facts owe all their significance to the Divine revelation that the Nazarene was the Son of God; that His death was an expiatory sacrifice for human sin; that He is now enthroned in heaven as the Saviour of men; and that He is coming again to be their Judge.

And this New Testament revelation is inextricably interwoven with the Hebrew Scriptures. If the Divine authority of the Old Testament be denied (to cite again Dean Alford’s words), Christ came to fulfil nothing, and the way is paved for the rejection of the New Testament itself: its very framework is dislocated. Its credentials are destroyed, and with them its credibility. Instead of resting on preceding revelations, of which they are the realisation and fulfilment, the mysteries of our faith are left hanging “in the air.”

Can anyone who disputes this cite the name of even one great thinker who, after giving up faith in the Bible, has maintained his belief in the Deity of Christ and the Atonement? If smaller men adhere to that belief, it is because they are either illogical or weak. When in the apostasy of Israel the Shekinah glory departed from the mercy-seat it still lingered near the shrine.^ And so it may be with these men; they still feel the power of the truth which they have lost.

With others, again, the faith which they have thus undermined is buttressed by superstition. The Bishop of Worcester is the foremost champion and exponent of this system. The Church of Rome acknowledges

Ezekiel x.

the supreme authority of Holy Scripture. But just as the interpretation of the statutes rests with the King’s Courts, and not with private citizens, so the interpretation of the Scriptures rests with the Church, and not with private Christians. This is at least coherent and logical. But this Neo-Romanism regards the Church as more and higher than “the pillar and stay of the truth.” Its function is not to interpret the Divinely inspired Scriptures, but to supply their defects. It claims to be itself the Divine oracle — a claim which even Rome would anathematize. The Gospels which tell us of the Incarnation and Atonement are marred by error, but yet we are to accept these mysteries because the Church accredits them.^

This theory I leave to the judgment of the thoughtful. My only comment on it will be, that if we must give ourselves up to be thus blindfolded and blindly led I would rather find myself in the ditch with devout men like Dr. Gore, than in the other ditch with the Rationalists.

But is it a choice of ditches? Is this what Protestantism has come to? Have we been delivered from the yoke of the priests only to be brought into bondage to the professors?

In a previous chapter I have quoted words to indicate the spirit in which the genuine truth-seeker studies nature. The true “philosopher “is ever ready to echo the exclamation which the scheme of revelation evoked from the inspired Apostle:” O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways * “Lux Mundi,” p. 340.

past finding out! “^ But a very different spirit marks the writings of the Critics. No ‘’ vision of the Infinite” checks what Pusey calls their “cold-blooded patronising ways” of dealing with the Bible. Wisdom was born with the German Rationalists of this new crusade. No suspicion that they may be mistaken seems ever to cross their minds.

This, I doubt not, will bring up the taunt that the preceding pages bespeak equal confidence. But the taunt is not a fair one. For this book is avowedly a piece of destructive criticism; nothing more. Its purpose is not to expound the Scriptures, but to expose fallacies. And surely one who is no stranger to such a task may enter on it without pretending to be a Solon.

The pseudo-Critics boast that the majority of professional scholars are upon their side. If this be so, it is only natural that men who wish to be considered scholars should fall into fine with them. But as the professors themselves have ruled out philology in dealing with questions such, e. g., as the genuineness of Daniel, they have, by their own showing, no more fitness to deal with them than a company of eminent artists or musicians. If they have any special competence for the task, it must depend on qualities which they possess in common with “men of affairs” — qualities in which “men of affairs” are more likely to excel. Respect and admiration for scholars within their proper province is compatible with distrust of them when they pass outside that province, as they do in this criticism crusade.

Romans xi. 33.

In conclusion, then, I renew my appeal to intelligent and thoughtful men to ignore the guillotine by which the pseudo-Critics and their press organs seek to kill independent inquiry. ‘’ I hold no man’s proxy,” and I expect no one to be influenced by my judgment. My appeal is that others shall look into these questions for themselves, as I have done.^

No better beginning can be made than the Daniel controversy. First, because the rejection of the book is absolutely the most “assured result of modern criticism,” and therefore we here attack the critical position at its strongest point. And secondly, because, though dull reading as formulated by the critics and the theologians, as a study in evidence it is full of interest. Others will find, as I did, that the case against the book is a strong one, and that grave difficulties attend the so-called orthodox belief, but that the difficulties which beset the “critical hypothesis” are far more serious, and that the positive case in favour of the book is unanswerable. I will only add that when the true Higher Criticism shakes itself free from its counterfeit, a solution will perhaps be found for some of the difficulties on which the Critics lay stress. For Daniel was edited by the men of the Great Synagogue after the Nehemiah revival, and the LXX. version gives proof that it had been corrupted.

INDEX

Alcaeus, the Poet, 24

Alford, Dean, 108, 109, 116

Amraphel, 75

Angels, 71

Archaeology, testimony of,

109
Arnold, Matthew, 14, 115
Astruc, Jean, 21
Athnah accent, the, 27 n.

“Babel and Bible,” 64 ^., 76,

80
Babylon, ancient, 66, 67, 68
Baur, F. C, 28
Belshazzar, 35
Bible. See Jewish Bible,

Samaritan Bible, etc.
“Bible Dictionary,” the. See

Hastings’.
“Brutus says,” etc., 29, 33, 35

Cairns, Earl, 115 n.

Canaanites, doom of the, 72

Canon, the Jewish, 18, 26,
180 n.

Canon, the, same as our Old
Testament, 26, 92, 93

Cheyne, Professor, 32, 34

Christianity, incredibility of,
114

Christ’s authority as a teacher, 94.^., 102, 104

Chronology of Old Testament, 87 n.

Church, authority of the, 116

Cicero, 61

Cosmogony, the. See Creation.

Covenant, the, 76, 77
Creation, the, 23, 40, 69
“Critic,” meaning of, 41
Criticism. See Higher,
Pseudo-, Textual, etc.

Dana, Professor, 23

Daniel, book of, 2y., 34 J”.,

118, 119 n.
David, King, 84, 85
Deity of Christ, 32, 43, 44,

114, 116
Delitzsch, Professor F., 64^^.,

80
Deuteronomy, book of, 89, 96
Difficulties in the Bible,

Dillmann, Professor, 19, 29
Driver, Professor, 19, 25, 32,

34, 35
Durham, Bishop of, 93

Eichhorn, 42

“Encyclopaedia Biblica,” 28,

32, no, 115
Exodus, book of, 24
Experts, evidence of, 15, 16

Fairbairn, Dr., 45 «.
Fall, the, 70, 71
Fatherhood of God, the, 58
Flood, the, 69

Genesis, book of, 23, 70, 75,

82, 86, 88, 91
Gladstone, Mr., 23, 73 «., loi
Greek words in Daniel, 24 J^

INDEX

Hammurabi, 75

Harnack, Dr., 27, 43 «., 46 ff.

105, 115

Hastings’ “Bible Dictionary,” 28, 32, 94, no

Hebrews, Epistle to the, 41,

77
Higher Criticism, ilff.
Huxley, Professor, 23, 42

Incarnation, the, 43

India, Higher Criticism in,

107
“Informers,” evidence of, 89
Inspiration, 42
Isaiah, 40, 91, 102

Jewish Canon. See Canon.
John, Gospel of, 52, 54, 59
Johns, Mr. C. H. W., 64 ff.
Josephus, 91
Joshua’s miracle, 51
Josiah, King, no

Kenosis, doctrine of the, 93,

95, 96, 100
Kirkpatrick, Dr. A. F., 65 n.

Law, 74. See Mosaic Code

Maccabees, book of, 26
Miracles, 12, 42, 50, 51
Missions, 82, 106, 107
Mosaic Code, the, 74, 75
Moses, books of, 14, 18, 22, 75,

102, 103, no
Murder cases, 15

Nineteenth Century Review
23, 75 «-, 115 n.

Ordination pledges, 31

Patriarchal narratives,”
the, 88, 89

Pentateuch, 18 ff., 21. See

Moses, books of.
Police cases, 11, 15
Prophecy, 40
Psalms, book of, 58
Pseudo-Criticism, 11, 13, 17,

27, 28, 29, 37, 39, 47, 78, 81,
Reformation, the, 66
Resurrection, the, 95, 97
Revelation, a primeval, 72
Revised Version of New Testament, 13 «.
Rome, Church of, 62, 99, no,

n6
Ryle, Bishop, 26 n., 27 «., 80
n., 92

Sabbath, the, 67, 68, 69

Sacrifice, 71, 72, 85, 86; heathen, 71, 72

Salmon, Dr., 106 n.

Samaritan Bible, ff

Satan, 96

Sayce, Professor, 22, 24, 109

Schechter, Dr., 26 n.

Scholarship, the Critics’ boast
of, 29, 36, 65, 106, 112, 118

Science, 23, 41, 46, 50

Septuagint Version, the, 26,

93
Smith, Professor G. A., 78 ^.
Strack, Professor H., 29

Temptation, the, 95
Tennyson, Lord, 115
Texts perverted by the Critics: Ex. vi. 3, 83; Deut. iv.
19, 72, 84; I Sam. xxvi. 19,
85; Jer. vii. 22, 85
Textual criticism, 11, 13
Transfiguration, the, 95, 96
“Tribal deity” theory, 82. 83
“Tiibingen School,” the, 28,

113 Types, the, 40 United Free Church of Scotland, 78, 79, 87, 100 n.

Wage, Dean, 20
Whately, Archbishop, 20
Winchester, Bishop of. See

Virgin Birth, the, 42, 43, 44, 48 Ryle, Bishop.

Voltaire, 40 n. Worcester, Bishop of, 116