Chapter XIV

alae poison a healthy body with the virus of a foul disease is horrible, but yet when smallpox is raging vaccination becomes a duty. And in these days when an epidemic of scepticism prevails, and no one can hear a sermon or read a book ‘without risk of infection, inoculation by a friendly hand may possiby serve to avert a malignant attack of the disease.

Let us be done with grandmotherly theology. The dark ages are past and gone. We belong to an age of enlightenment, The Twentieth Century has dawned. No Protestant, moreover, should fear free thought. To fall back upon authority and traditional beliefs is sheer apostasy from the principles of the Reformation.

Beneath appeals like these there lies a definite element of truth. And, truth or no truth, they are always popular. I am bound, moreover, in honesty to confess that personally I am pre-

185 disposed to respond-to them. Every book I have written gives proof of fearlessness in bringing critical methods to bear upon the study of Scripture. I cannot associate myself with any general campaign against criticism. My quarrel with the Higher Criticism:is not because it is criticism, but because, instead of being what it claims to be, it is criticism of a spurious type.

I have already referred to the Ptolemaic System. ‘Ptolemy the Astronomer was a ‘Higher Critic.’ The belief had long prevailed that the sun was the centre of our system; but he had no difficulty in proving that this traditional belief was untenable. Once he got men to consider the matter from their own standpoint, all could see the absurdity of supposing that the earth on which they lived and moved was flying helter-skelter round the sun. And nothing more was needed but to keep the mind occupied with the many apparent difficulties of the hypothesis he opposed, to the exclusion of all thought of the few but insurmountable difficulties of the theory he advocated. The Professors and experts were convinced, the multitude followed suit, and for more than a thousand years the puerilities of the Ptolemaic System held sway,

Cu. XIV.] THE “PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM” 187

with the sanction of infallible science and the blessing of an infallible Church.”!

Let us then turn to study the Scriptures on the “Ptolemaic System.” This kind of work is not to my liking, but I think I could do it as well as the Professors. Shutting out God, let us insist on dealing with the Bible from the purely human standpoint, and treat it as a purely human book. Were I writing a many-volumed work, I should like to go over the whole of the Old and New Testament in this way. But here I must be content to take a test case, as the lawyers would say; and I cannot do better than keep to the Gospels. And still further to limit the subject, I will confine myself to the First and the Fourth. I want to inoculate the reader with the scepticism virus.;

Apart from superstition and the thraldom of received opinions, can any honest-minded person fail to recognise that these Gospels receive their colour and mould from the idiosyncrasies of the men who wrote them? Could we not name a “Matthew” and a “John” within the circle of our own acquaintance? Matthew is a man of narrow mind and heart, who has not a thought

* Daniel in the Critics’ Den, 1902 Ed., p. 146,

Tk se ea en rrr beyond the interests of his little land and people. The very first sentence of his book gives proof of this. Azs Messiah is the son of Abraham the Arab chief, and of David the petty tribal king. The triviality of Joseph’s pedigree is his next concern. He then goes on to record the birth and (with special emphasis) the circumcision of the sacred child; and he makes occasion to bring in a story of his being hailed, even in infancy, as “King of the Jews,” and being regarded by king Herod as a rival claimant to his throne.

The preaching attributed to the Messiah is another indication of the writer’s character. We all know the sort of man who delights in the pedantry of discarding familiar expressions, and of using phrases peculiar to himself. Such a man was Matthew. Three-and-thirty times he insists on writing “kingdom of heaven,” though not one of all the other writers of the New Testament employs the expression even once. It was not that he coined it. He borrowed it from the Book of Daniel, which relates so specially to the fortunes of the Jewish nation.

Then comes ‘“‘the Sermon on the Mount,” that crux of the orthodox. People of a certain sort pretend that the world could be governed on the principles there enunciated; but they are careful

Cu. XIV.] THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 189,

not to act on them when their own interests are involved. This is followed by the record of a few extraordinary miracles; and next we come to the sending out of the disciples. And what a commission they received, if Matthew may be trusted! “Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” Jews, and none but Jews, are even to hear about the Saviour of the world! Could the wit of man frame words more inconsistent with what the rest of the New Testament declares to be the spirit and scope of Christianity! 2

But why go on? From the first chapter to the last we shall search in vain for a single sentence to raise the narrative above the plane of Jewish interests and hopes. Even the great prophecy recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter has Jerusalem for its centre. And the vision of judgment in the chapter which follows represents blessing or doom to the Gentiles according as

= Matt. x. 5, 6.

2 “If Christianity consist of the doctrines preached in the Fourth Gospel it is not too much to say that the Synoptists do not teach Christianity at all. The extraordinary phenomenon is presented of three Gospels, each professing to be complete in itself, and to convey the good tidings of salvation to man, which have actually omitted the doctrines which are the conditions of that Salvation” (Supernatural Religion, ii. 465).

they befriended or persecuted the favoured nation. And finally, even the great commission after the resurrection is represented here as addressed to Jews, charging them to baptize and teach the Gentiles.!

The change from the First Gospel to the Fourth is like emerging from a gloomy cloister to the free air of heaven and the open sunshine. The True Light was in the world — His own world, the world that He had made. ‘‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” And the secret of His coming was because God loved the world; and the purpose of it was ‘that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Wuo-SOEVER. The narrow channel of a nation’s hopes is lost in the great wide sea of Divine love. And there is life, and not judgment, for the sinner who believes. ‘For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.”

But here a doubt obtrudes itself: a cloud appears and shuts out our sunshine. If the peculiarities of the First Gospel be due to the

* This is true; but the inference here drawn from it is, I need not say, entirely false. The commission is a prophetic one. See The Buddha of Christendom, pp. 270-273. character of the writer of it, may not also the distinctive features of, the Fourth be thus accounted for. And if it be clear that both cannot be inspired, what ground is left for claiming a Divine authorship for either?

Difficulties and doubts of this kind troubled me even before I left school. But fortunately I did not then know that they were supposed to be proof of abnormal cleverness. For though in childhood I often met a pundit who, as I afterwards discovered, was one of the pioneers of Higher Criticism in this country, he never tried to corrupt the faith of the young, as so many of his successors do to-day. And had he done so he might possibly have failed to influence me; for we children were impressed not so much by his great learning as by his great silliness. So in my schoolboy days, instead of thinking I was very clever, I took for granted I was very wicked; and I generally dismissed the matter in the hope that when I became a Christian in the true and real sense, I should be able to read the Bible differently, and to understand things which then seemed to me inexplicable — a hope that was in due time realised, though not in the transcendental way that I expected.

Some people seem to enjoy parading their inner experiences. To me it is an ordeal. But I will submit to it if others can be helped thereby-In the first enthusiasm of my Christian life I gave no thought to difficulties such as these. But there are times, as every Christian knows, ‘‘when neither sun nor stars in many days appear, and no small tempest lies on us”; and at a crisis of this kind these difficulties all came back; and in the light of knowledge gained in my college days, they seemed more utterly insoluble than ever.

Men place in parallel columns the events recorded in the Evangelists’ narratives, and call this a “Harmony of the Gospels.” What I wanted was a clew to some sort of harmony in the doctrines they taught. A systematic study of them brought me no relief. I could make something of the Synoptists, as they are called; but /ohn refused to blend with Matthew. 1 turned to Commentaries and “Introductions,” and found in them almost everything except what I was in search of. If I could have satisfied myself that the Fourth Gospel was Divinely inspired, I should have been willing to throw over the other three. But proof of this was wanting. It was written long after the other Gospels, and therefore, viewed as a human document, it was less trustworthy than the rest.

Discoveries of this kind delight a Higher Critic; to me they gave only pain. Ifa man has cogent proof that his father is a rogue or his wife unfaithful, he must face the fact, and consider how to act on it. But one who would accept the proof with alacrity and pleasure is not more utterly contemptible than the man who can contemplate the collapse of faith in the Bible without distress, if not dismay. I kept my difficulties to myself, until a lecture I heard one evening in a friend’s drawing-room gave me a clew to the solution of them; and the Bible became a new book to me from that hour. At this point I will drop the personal element in my narrative, and give in another chapter the results attained. To describe the steps by which those results were reached would be, if not uninteresting, at least unprofitable.