Chapter I

Were I here to describe the measures adopted by the poHce in tracking criminals and bringing them to justice, the popularity of my book would no doubt be vastly greater than these pages are likely to attain. But if I turn aside to speak of police inquiries and the proceedings of our courts of justice, it will be merely in passing and by way of illustration, and to give prominence to two theses which, though of principal importance in connection with my subject, are generally ignored. For my subject is a defence of the Higher Criticism against the reproach which has fallen upon it, and an exposure of the vagaries and errors of a pseudo-Criticism which has filched a title to which it has no just claim.

It is manifestly of greater consequence that we should have wholesome unadulterated bread, than that we should know who baked it, and by whom the wheat was grown and ground. And it is incomparably more important that we should have an accurate text I of the Bible, than that we should know where, and when, and by whom the various books were written or compiled. The pure loaf — to keep up the figure — we owe to “Textual Criticism “; while “Higher Criticism” claims to enlighten us about its history. It is n PSEUDO-CRITICISM

obvious, therefore, that, by the test of practical usefulness, the Higher Criticism must be content with a secondary place.

But this is no disparagement of a system o£ study which has thrown new light upon many parts of Holy Scripture, and has brought us new proofs of its authenticity and accuracy, proofs of a kind that preceding generations knew nothing of.

And even if its legitimate results should disturb certain “orthodox traditions,” the Bible is the gainer; and those who make that a ground for refusing its help, do a great disservice to the cause of truth. The Higher Criticism is admirable in its aims, and its results should be hailed with thankfulness by every Christian.

But here we must distinguish. The records of crime would disclose many a case in which men who were honestly pursuing a legitimate calling became involved in some nefarious business of a wholly different kind, and ended by treating their nefarious and their honest pursuits as one concern. So was it with the pioneers of the Higher Criticism. In their day infidelity was rampant in Germany, and they conceived the laudable desire of winning back the educated classes to Christianity. To attain this end they consented to treat the Bible on the Dutch auction principle, lowering its claims to a level at which the Rationalists would accept it on their own terms. Miracles, of course, were jettisoned. Inspiration, which is but one sort of miracle, went overboard; and prophecy shared in the general wreck. In a word, every Divine element in the Bible was abandoned, and the critical study of “the living and eternally abiding

Word of God” degenerated into a sort of literary post-mortem upon a purely human and altogether dead book. And in the pursuit of that study, as time went on, infidels of the type of Kuenen and Wellhausen supplanted enlightened and spiritual men who reverenced the Scriptures.

Every intelligent person will recognise that this sceptical crusade against the Bible, which masquerades as “Higher Criticism,” bears no kinship with inquiries such as those to which that title properly belongs. Their aims are different; their methods are different; and their results, of course, lie wide apart. We must always distinguish, therefore, between true Criticism and its counterfeit; between the Higher Criticism and “Higher Criticism “in inverted commas. The one finds an apt illustration in the proceedings of an English court of justice; the other reminds us of a French court-martial upon a Jew accused of treason. Like most words, critic has various meanings. Etymologically and in its highest sense it signifies a judge; popularly, it stands for a hostile fault-finder. The ‘’ Critic” in inverted commas belongs to the second category.

As already indicated, the importance of ascertaining the text of Scripture is greater than that of analysing it. The latent boast in the title of Higher Criticism can therefore be justified only by the fact that not even Textual Criticism demands so wide a range and so high a development of judicial qualities.^ And yet, in

The triumph of the Westcott-Hort school of Textual criticism in the revision of the New Testament was due to either ignorance or neglect of the science of evidence. The mutilation of the Gospels by making the text agree with certhis very sphere, even the educated and cultured classes are content bhndly to accept the dicta of men who have no knowledge of the science of evidence, and most of whom are evidently destitute of the judicial faculty.

Let us take the case, for instance, of an inquiry respecting the genuineness of the books of Moses. A competent knowledge of ancient languages, and an intimate acquaintance with the results of archaeological research, might fit anyone to give valuable evidence in any such inquiry. But it would afford no guarantee whatever of fitness to adjudicate upon that evidence. It is not pretended, of course, that the study of Hebrew or of the cuneiform inscriptions disqualifies for the practical side of life. But there is not an undergraduate in any one of our universities who could not fill in half a dozen names to illustrate Matthew Arnold’s dictum, that men who “make study and learning the business of their lives” are apt, “from want of some discipline or other, to lose all balance of judgment, all common-sense.”

The value of an expert’s evidence depends not merely on his exceptional acquaintance with the subject which he has made a specialty, but also on his capacity of concentrating attention and thought upon one particular element in an inquiry. This very habit, however, makes him impatient when others insist on taking a wider view than his own, and giving due

tain of the oldest MSS. was but an example of the tendency of laymen — and here the New Testament Company were mere laymen — to disparage indirect evidence when direct evidence is available. No lawyer would accept the authority of those MSS. against the united voice of the Versions and the Fathers.

weight to considerations of a kind that he ignores. The very qualities, therefore, which constitute his value as a witness tend to unfit him for the position of a judge. Hence it is that no civilised community tolerates a tribunal of experts.

In a recent trial in London the practice of vivisection was involved. In another, patent medicines supplied the issue. If a court of experts could ever be justified, it was here. But the experts were relegated to the witness-chair, and men who had no technical knowledge of medicine in the one case, and of vivisection in the other, heard their evidence, and arrived at decisions which commanded public confidence.

All this is familiar ground to the lawyer. And if I were here to draw upon my own experience for practical illustrations of the blunders of experts, I should, as already suggested, add much to the interest of these pages. Among the *’ undiscovered murders “the enumeration of which in that category may be thus explained, would be one of the cases reckoned among the exploits of the now historic “Jack the Ripper.” The popular history of the “Whitechapel murders,” I may add, is based largely on the theories of experts. And, while the author of those crimes was horribly real, “Jack the Ripper” is a myth.

But such matters cannot fitly be discussed here. And if I mention one more case in brief detail, it is because it points so aptly the special moral which I wish to enforce.

In the South- Western Railway murder case of 1897, an elaborate chain of circumstantial evidence closed round a particular person. The only apparent flaw in it was that a principal witness wavered in his identification of the accused. But the ground of his hesitation was because the man was clean shaved, whereas the murderer wore a mustache. The witness did not know, however, that an hour before the crime was committed the man whom he singled out of a dozen paraded for inspection had entered a barber’s shop and purchased a false mustache.

That fact seemed to render a case which was already strong both complete and irresistible. But it was inseparably bound up with another fact. The distance between the barber’s shop and the railway station at which the murderer joined his victim in the train was adequate proof of an alibi which shattered the whole case against the accused. That one fact possibly saved him from the gallows.