Chapter IV

Have always felt that the death of

Charles II. left a stain upon the fair fame of England. No, I do not mean Charles I.; neither would I endorse the words of Junius that ‘he ought to have died upon the same scaffold.” For that Whitehall execution is a matter as to. which opinions may differ. But that the nation that beheaded his father and deposed his brother should have permitted him, after such a reign, to die in his Palace as King of England — this is. a fact which in my humble judgment is discreditable to the English people.

Even during that infamous reign there were multitudes of people who believed in the virtue of women. But no person of culture — no one who was abreast of the times, or who understood: the trend of contemporary thought — acknowledged a traditional belief of that kind. And

“Society” tacitly ignored it. In fact it came to 36

Cu, IV.] FAITH AND MORALS 37

be looked upon as proof of narrow-mindedness or boorishness. The profession of morality became unfashionable. The standard of morality was ‘gone.

The analogy between faith and morals is close and real. And the decline of morality in the Restoration period is finding its counterpart in the sphere of faith to-day. We have come within sight of an apostasy unparalleled in the history of Christendom. Every attack which open infidelity has ever launched against the Bible is now being repeated by men ‘‘ who profess and call. themselves Christians,” and who claim to be the apostles of a new movement in defence of the citadel of Christian truth. And just as vice became fashionable in the days of Charles II., so, as Professor Cheyne naively owns, this system of attacking truth in the interests of truth has become “fashionable” in Britain to-day. The appearance of his Lucyclopedia has checked the movement for the moment: but the scare thus caused will soon subside. It has fluttered the lesser lights of the Higher Criticism, who have been serving’ as acolytes in the worship of this new goddess of Reason. For they are not clear-headed enough to see that Professor Cheyne has only pressed their own principles to legitimate conclusions. Without help from France, Charles II. could not so easily have overcome what he deemed English prudery; and so here, foreign critics have been called in to force the pace with their British brethren. The French women were more “advanced” than the English; that was all. And this is precisely what is said about the Encyclopedia writers as compared with ordinary British critics.

The late Professor Robertson Smith is appealed to on every hand in proof that there is nothing in the Higher Criticism to injure or alarm a Christian. By far the most interesting personality among contemporary critics, his apologia, published soon after he was deprived of his Chair in Aberdeen, was marked by the glow of real spirituality. Evangelical fervour, too, characterised the man. As honest and upright as he was amiable and attractive, he seemed at that time to be a martyr to the cause of truth. It is this very element, however, that makes his case such a warning.

‘“Thanks to the cold sluggishness of our national character,” well - seasoned “society ladies” may possibly have spent a dozen years at the court of Charles without becoming much worse than when they entered it. But no

Cu. IV.] ROBERTSON SMITH’S APOSTASY 39

pure woman in the gush and glow of life could pass through such an ordeal without sinking to the level of those by whom she was surrounded. And no man of Robertson Smith’s temperament could allow his mind year after year to be saturated with German infidelity, and yet end where he began. His Old Testament in the Jewtsh Church discloses what he was in 1881: the Eucyclopedia Bibtica shows what he became. For by him it was that this sad book “was originated.” Heit was “who requested Professor Cheyne to take up the work as showing his own ‘uncompromisingly progressive spirit.’”!

People are led to suppose that the Higher Criticism is the outcome of an honest inquiry after truth. But the history of the movement as written by the critics themselves explodes such a delusion.2 Of Eichhorn, “the founder of modern Old Testament criticism,” Professor Cheyne writes that “it was his hope to contribute to the winning back of the educated classes to religion.” And to attain this end he set himself to eliminate from the Bible everything to which the rationalists took exception. “Religion” is

* The Times, April 11, 1902. 2 In proof of my words I need but appeal to Professor Cheyne’s Founders of Old Testament Criticism.

fair ground for compromise; but Christianity is not a religion but a faith; and faith, like morality, admits of no compromise.

Men like Matthew Arnold may create a mythical “Jesus” out of materials supplied by an expurgated edition of the Gospels, from which everything distasteful to their fastidious scepticism has been eliminated. And they may make this “Jesus” the Buddha of an ideal religion which will please every one except the sinner who is conscious of his need of a Divine Saviour. But all this is treason to the Christ of God; and the Christian who sets himself to ‘‘huckster”! the truth in this way, either sinks to the level of the rationalist, or leads others down to that abyss. This may take two generations to accomplish. Eichhorn’s greatest pupil, Ewald, was as devout as himself, but his criticisms were more searching. Ewald’s greatest pupil, Wellhausen, became a mere rationalist; and, as Professor Cheyne justly says, he only applied Ewald’s principles more consistently.?

* 2 Cor. ii.17. The primary meaning of the word translated “to corrupt” is “to huckster,” and the whole passage indicates that it is in this sense the apostle uses it. Eichhorn treated the Bible on the principle of a “Dutch auction”; he adapted his wares to the market, huckstering the Scriptures to suit the rationalists,

* Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 107.

Cu. IV.] PROFESSOR CHEYNE’S POSITION 4!

Professor Cheyne himself is the English Wellhausen.! He is our only critic of eminence who is clear-sighted enough to see the end of the road on which he is travelling, or courageous enough to follow it. In his judgment, expressed of course in veiled language and with perfect courtesy, other critics, such for example as his distinguished colleague at Oxford, are the timid advocates of an impossible compromise. Professor Driver’s “sympathy with old-fashioned readers” has led him, he says, “to forget the claims of criticism.”2 It is this “spirit of compromise” 3 that Professor Cheyne “chiefly dreads.” And the compromise he deprecates is not Eichhorn’s compromise with rationalists, but the tendency of the English critics to pander to the weakness of those who revere the Bible and believe in the Divinity of Christ. We have already seen how summarily he rejects the foundations of Christianity, and we need not be surprised at his assertion that by no one “has it yet been made probable that there was a historical individual among the ancestors of the

* Only in the sense here indicated. For unlike Wellhausen, Professor Cheyne is always reverent in tone, and he is one of the fairest of the critics.

2 Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 366. 3 Ibid., p. 247.

Israelites called Abram.”! The existence of Abraham is not even probable. The sceptic would say it is not “certain,” and thus leave an opening for discussion; but on both vital and incidental questions Professor Cheyne has the courage of his convictions, and boldly takes the unassailable ground of open infidelity.

Here I would wish to expose another popular blunder. The idea prevails that the Higher Criticism is the special preserve of Hebrew scholars. Now this is undoubtedly true of the sort of study for which Eichhorn coined the title, namely, a critical examination of the text of a book with a view to analysing its contents. But any one can see that there is no connection whatsoever between an inquiry of that kind and the rejection of the supernatural element in the Bible in order to propitiate the Rationalists. We must

* Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 239.

? Infidelity is a strong term, but not too strong. In an article in The Nineteenth Century for January, 1902, Professor Cheyne says that Abraham was a “lunar hero.” Having regard to our Lord’s references to the Patriarch, this is shockingly profane; and having regard to the recent discoveries of archzology, it is on other grounds extraordinary. Professor Cheyne would possibly deny that ke says this, But he says that Winckler, the German, says it; and he repeats it with approval, calling it “A turning-point in Old Testament study,” and commending it to the attention of English scholars. I never knew a receiver of stolen goods who did not resent being called a thief!

Cu. IV.] THE MOSAIC ERA LITERARY 43

avoid the stupid pedantry of explaining a phrase by its origin and not by its use. The Higher Criticism at once degenerated into what it is to-day — a sceptical crusade against the Bible, tending to lower it to the level of a purely human book. Here, however, the pioneers of criticism compare favourably with their successors. They had the excuse of the ignorance which then prevailed about Old Testament times. The attack on the Pentateuch, for example, was based on the assumption that the Mosaic Era was a barbarous age. It seemed an anachronism to suppose that such a literature could have existed at such a time. But this, as Professor Sayce will tell us, was ‘a baseless assumption due to the ignorance of the critic.”! Referring to the work of ‘the excavator and the decipherer” in Eastern lands, the same writer goes on to say, ‘‘ Discovery has followed there upon discovery, each more marvellous than the last, and a lost world of culture and civilisation has been brought to light.... We can follow the daily life of the Egyptian 3,000 years ago more minutely than the daily life of a medieval Englishman;... and study the letters of Canaanites who lived before

t Lex Mosaica, p. 7.

the birth of Moses.” And again, ‘In the century before the Exodus, Palestine was a land of books and schools.”!

But though the only reasonable foundation of the attack on the Pentateuch has thus been destroyed, the critics go on repeating the statements made in ignorance of all this by their great predecessors. Or if they try to shore up their crumbling edifice, it is by the abuse of a few isolated texts which are pressed remorselessly into the service.?

Let this fact, then, be kept prominently in view, that a knowledge of Hebrew has nothing whatever to do with the question of the authenticity of the books of Moses. And speaking generally, philology has only an incidental importance in the whole Higher Criticism controversy. If, for example, Professor Driver declares that “the Hebrew of Daniel is that of a much later age than the sixth century B.c.,” he is answered by Professor Cheyne, who, though a more uncompromising critic, is a safer guide on matters of this kind. We may therefore dismiss the Hebraists altogether from this part of the inquiry.

And even in relation to questions which

* Lex Mosaica, p. 9.? See Appendix, Note I.

Cu. IV.]| THE SECOND ISAIAH THEORY 45.

specially concern them, the function of the experts is merely to prepare the proofs. The decision should rest with those who have practical experience in dealing with evidence. To allow the critics to adjudicate upon the evidence they have themselves prepared would be quite as stupid and as dangerous as to permit the police to try the prisoners whose cases they bring into. court. And yet this is, speaking generally, the attitude maintained by educated Englishmen towards every question raised in this controversy. It is intellectually as deplorable as that of the Irish Roman Catholic peasant who grovels before his priest and takes the law from his mouth. Take for example the Isaiah controversy. The critical attack upon Daniel not only destroys one of the great Messianic prophecies, and impairs the authority of the New Testament, but impugns the teaching of the Lord Himself. But this “second Isaiah” hypothesis involves no element of this. kind. The question therefore is open to discussion, and the Christian may consider it on its. merits. The reasons urged in favour of it are undoubtedly striking and important. They are, first, certain literary differences which mark the various sections of the Book; and secondly, the definiteness of the references to the exile and the return, contained in the latter portion of it. No one will dispute, however, that were it not for this second consideration the question would not be pressed; for in a writer so “versatile” as Isaiah,! a change of style is by no means extraordinary. And the critics do not deny that God might have inspired Isaiah to utter all these prophecies.

In a recent sensational murder trial, it was suggested that the real delinquent was a stranger who resembled the accused. The suggestion was a reasonable one, and its acceptance would have explained certain difficulties in the case for the prosecution. But an experienced judge and a sensible jury wanted to know where this stranger had come from, and what became of him. And so here. We want to know something about this Isaiah II.2

If it were possible to hold that the “second Isaiah” was the real Isaiah, this difficulty might perhaps be ignored. For the author of the open-

* “A writer so versatile and dramatic.” Professor G. A. Smith’s Isaiah,

* J fear I shall be deemed ignorant for speaking of two Isaiahs. I really forget how many of them are reckoned by some of the critics — sixteen, I think. But in these pages I wish to deal seriously with the criticisms of sober scholars, and to ignore the vagaries of faddists,

Cu. IV.] SECOND ISAIAHS 47

ing prophecies of the Book — those scathing denunciations of the religion of the people — may well have been hated and persecuted; and it is conceivable that his very name should have been erased from the popular annals. But the last twenty-seven chapters are altogether unique, not merely by reason of their unequalled brilliancy and power, but also because they are such ‘“‘comfortable words” as never before or since were heard in Israel. A prophet raised up in the dark days of the exile to deliver such messages of hope and joy would have become immortal. He would have been the idol of the whole nation, the most famous and popular personage of his time. But if we are to accept the theory of the critics, he appeared and vanished again, like a morning mist, without leaving even the vaguest tradition of his name, his personality, or his career. And this, remember, in the exilic or post-exilic period, that is to say wethin historic times.

And when we are told that there were several “second Isaiahs,” a galaxy of the most brilliant prophetic stars that ever shone in the national firmament of Israel, the suggestion becomes so utterly preposterous that if the case could be brought before any serious judicial tribunal it would be “laughed out of court.”

But as usual with experts, the critics look only at one side of the question. And while experience refuses to sanction an hypothesis so wild as that which they propose, it warns us authoritatively that in common with all experts they are exceptionally liable to err.,

In his estory of the Criminal Law, Sir James Fitzjames Stephens places on record the matured judgment of the Judicial Bench that no kind of evidence needs more the test of cross-examination than that of experts. In no other sphere save that of religious controversy would sensible people accept the dicta of experts until they had been thus tested; and yet the history of the Higher Criticism movement gives abundant proof that no class of expert is more untrustworthy than the critic.

What about Schleiermacher, and Baur, and Strauss, and their several schools? Who now defends their conclusions? The New Testament fared worse at their hands than does the Old Testament to-day at the hands of their successors. And yet the lucubrations of those brilliant scholars and critics are now put aside as “an episode” even by such an arch-heretic as Professor Harnack of Berlin. ‘There was a time” (he writes) “the general public indeed have not got beyond

Cu. IV.] VAGARIES OF CRITICISM 49

it — in which the oldest Christian literature, including the New Testament, was looked upon as a tissue of deceptions and forgeries. That time is passed. For science it was an episode in which it learned much, and after which it has much to forget.... The oldest literature of the Church in all main points and in most details, from the point of view of literary criticism, is genuine and trustworthy.”!

What guarantee have we, then, that the vagaries of present-day criticism about the Books of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms, will not be dismissed as lightly by the Higher Critics of the future? Iam not referring here to the puerilities of “the Polychrome Bible” — such puerilities offend the common sense of all intelligent people. What I have in view is such theories, for example, as that the dispensation of the prophets preceded the dispensation of the law — a very slight acquaintance with the general scheme of revelation will save us from any error of the kind; or to take another case, that prophetic writings which deal with the events of the captivity must be assigned to the captivity era. This theory

: He adds: “In the whole New Testament there is in all probability only a single writing which can be looked upon as pseudonymous in the strictest sense of the word — 1i.¢., 2 Peter.”

5 originated with the sceptics, and it is a necessary part of the rationalistic crusade against the supernatural element in Scripture. But it is adopted by critics of a different school, who defend it on the ground that to suppose a prophet to become “immersed in the future would be not only without parallel in the Old Testament, it would be contrary to the nature of prophecy.”!

Now this is a question as to which we need no help from the philologist. Any Christian who has made a life study of the Bible is as competent to form an opinion upon it as the ablest Hebraist in Christendom. And most of us would insist that this theory is utterly opposed to fact. If the 64th chapter of Isaiah was necessarily written after the captivity, the 53rd chapter was necessarily written after the crucifixion. And so also with the Messianic Psalms, and numberless passages in the minor prophets. Professor Driver tells us that “the prophet never abandons his own historical position.” And therefore he calls the prophecies of Isaiah “discourses.” In other words, the prophecies came by the will of man. But no prophecy of the Scripture is of this character. ‘‘ For no prophecy ever came by the

* Professor Driver’s Introduction, p. 224.

Cu. IV.| THE PROPHETS SPOKE FROM GOD s

will of man; but men-spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost” — borne along as a storm-caught ship is driven before the wind.!

* 2 Peteri.21. The word “moved” is literally carried along: see its use in Acts xxvii. 15, 17 (driven). ‘The whole passage is of great importance in this connection — “No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.” *The word rendered “interpretation” occurs here only. The verb is used in the LXX. (Gen. xli. 12) as the translation of the Hebrew pathar, to open unfold, disclose. And the word here rendered “private” occurs 113 times in the New Testament, but nowhere else is it so translated. It is rendered “his own” 77 times. And the word “Cis” is not the verb fo be, but to come into existence, to come to be, What the passage declares, therefore, is that no prophecy ever originated with the prophet’s own unfolding (or sending forth). It speaks, not of the interpretation of the prophecies, but of their origin and source, and thus disposes of the theories of the critics. (See Dr. Bullinger’s Figures of Speech used in the Bible,

p- 130.)