* NOV 26 1902 *' 
 
 Section, j:xCiD 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
THE INTEGRITY OF 
 SCRIPTURE 7^ ^ 
 
 PLAIN REASONS FOR REJECTING THE 
 CRITICAL HYPOTHESIS. BY THE REV. 
 JOHN SMITH, M.A., D.D., BROUGHTON 
 PLACE CHURCH, EDINBURGH 7%P 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 1902 
 
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 BY 
 
 TURNBULL AND SPEARS, EDINBURGH 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These chapters were delivered in the form of monthly lectures 
 to the author's congregation during the winter and spring just 
 past. They are not to be considered as a discussion of criticism 
 from a purely critical standpoint, though it is believed they 
 expose the fundamental logical fallacies pervading the critical 
 method. They are an answer to a direct challenge from the 
 side of criticism, giving " plain reasons " such as might occur 
 to a minister or an educated layman why this hypothesis should 
 be rejected. It is to be hoped that they come close enough 
 to the kernel of the question to be decisive in their objections. 
 But firmly believing that this movement is even already fading 
 away, being smitten by its own excesses, the writer has sought to 
 locate it in the general stream of modern thought, and to bring 
 out the more recent points of view, both in the study of antiquity, 
 and in the philosophic recognition of the spiritual, which frown 
 on the whole speculation. 
 
 While written from month to month, amid innumerable con- 
 gregational and pubhc duties, — in a practical interest, and to meet 
 a great emergency, — these lectures are not to be regarded as a 
 hurried effort in the spirit of panic to denounce what cannot be 
 disproved. 
 
 As an outside spectator the writer has been cognisant of every 
 phase of the critical movement in Scotland. A class-fellow for 
 a single year of the late Professor Robertson Smith in Aberdeen 
 University, and brought, through possession of the same surname, 
 into daily contact with him on the same bench, the writer was 
 pre-disposed by admiration for one who was even then a great 
 scholar, to take his standpoint. William Robertson Smith went 
 forward to an early fame, which fascinated those who looked up 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 to him from lowly fields of service. Even at the beginning, 
 however, the conviction that the startling phenomenon of the 
 Higher Criticism was a new departure, from which there was 
 no safe issue but in return, took full possession of the writer's 
 mind. And as events developed, the instinctive judgment 
 became a reasoned belief. 
 
 The reader may catch here and there a tone of severity which 
 we would not have him misjudge. The writer takes a very 
 serious view of the effects upon not a few of our younger 
 ministers, upon intelligent laymen, and our people generally, of 
 destructive criticism. And he cannot hold free from blame those 
 who, however far from intending it, have used the prominent 
 position to which they have been raised by the Church, to divide 
 believers, paralyse the faith of many, and strengthen the hands of 
 our enemies, who are seeking to break down respect for revealed 
 religion in the land. Such severity is perfectly compatible with 
 an entire absence of personal feeling, yea, with true admiration 
 for many admirable qualities in those whom he opposes. 
 Nothing was further from the writer's thoughts than to under- 
 take this labour, if others more able had only stepped into the 
 breach. He looked for such until the silence grew painful and 
 ominous. 
 
 May he, with the utmost humility, affirm that he has been 
 conscious of a constraint which he dare not resist, and such a 
 comfortable presence of the enlightening Spirit as made toil 
 light. He has been much helped by his friend Rev. G. G. Moore, 
 who superintended the serial publication in a religious journal, 
 and desires to express indebtedness to those who have cheered 
 him in his solitary task by warm but discriminating sympathy. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE SEARCHING ISSUES .... i 
 
 Luke i. I : " Those things which are most surely 
 believed among us. " 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE UNBROKEN AND GROWING STRENGTH OF 
 
 THE TRADITIONAL VIEW ... 34 
 
 John X. 35 : "The Scripture cannot be broken." 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IS THE CRITICAL HYPOTHESIS VALID? CHRIST 
 
 AND CRITICISM ..... 72 
 
 John V. 39: " They are they which testify of Me." 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 109 
 
 Matt. xxi. 44: *' But on whomsoever it shall fall, it 
 will grind him to powder." 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF SCRIPTURE 
 INADEQUATE AND IMPROBABLE 
 
 Psa. cxix. 80: "Let my heart be sound in Thy 
 statutes, that I be not ashamed." 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION AT THE HANDS 
 
 OF CRITICISM . . . . 193 
 
 Rev. xix. 10: "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit 
 of prophecy." 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE TRUE ORDER AND PROGRESSION OF HEBREW 
 
 HISTORY ...... 236 
 
 Psalm xii. 6: "The words of the Lord are pure 
 words : as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified 
 seven times." 
 
 MODERN CRITICISM AND THE PREACHING OF 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT . . . . 279 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 
 
 Luke i. I : " Those^things which are most surely believed among us." 
 
 It is with no light heart, nor without serious 
 searching of mind as to our personal fitness for 
 this duty, that, for all whom we can influence, we 
 take up the challenge which has been thrown 
 down, to show cause why we should not accept 
 the conclusions of the Higher Criticism, and in- 
 corporate them, with the modifications thereby 
 incurred, in the substance of our faith. From 
 the start we make no doubt as to what the 
 answer of the Church should be. These con- 
 clusions ARE INADMISSIBLE ; inherently, because 
 of objections which may be taken to them and to 
 the considerations on which they are based. And, 
 such as they are, they conflict with the pro- 
 foundest certitudes of the faith, must inevitably 
 alter the foundations on which from the beginning 
 our holy religion has stood before the world, and, 
 consequently, so far as a theory can, must obstruct 
 her mission and abridge her influence. 
 
 Not without much careful weighing of a per- 
 plexed situation have we assumed this, to us. 
 
2 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 foreign and untried task. Vast and searching 
 though the issues may be which are involved in 
 this impending controversy (for one side having 
 settled the conclusions by which it elects to 
 stand, the controversy has only begun), we are 
 of opinion that, in fairness to all, this is no time 
 for hurried prosecutions in the courts of the 
 Church. What is called for rather is a frank 
 and free discussion in the open, until the case 
 from the side of theology and religion, which, in 
 any serious sense, is practically unwrought, be 
 as fully and unambiguously put, as is now the 
 case on the side of criticism. Partisan decisions, 
 before men fully see the length and breadth of 
 what they are committing themselves to, are 
 infinitely to be deplored. Such a situation has 
 not emerged without the permission of Eternal 
 Providence, who, through the conflicts of men, 
 has again and again carried us into possession of 
 our most precious truths. Let us then, without 
 panic, in faith and spiritua courage, apply our- 
 selves to the matters involved in this particular 
 controversy, each making bold to utter the con- 
 victions wrought in him ; and while we may have 
 to come, as I believe we shall, to sharp contrast 
 and a parting of the ways, we shall have acquitted 
 ourselves worthily in an arduous conflict. 
 
 But we have another reason for suggesting this 
 course. If the higher critics, whom the Church 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 3 
 
 has preferred to positions of trust, have lying on 
 them their own responsibility, in that they have 
 not only committed themselves to the critical 
 positions before the country (so far implicating 
 the Church, to her present distress), but taught 
 them to successive classes of students, our beloved 
 United Free Church of Scotland, in both the 
 branches of which she is now happily composed, 
 has her own burden, of which she cannot divest 
 herself. 1 For twenty years, more or less, she has 
 tacitly permitted this teaching in her colleges. 
 She forbore to repress inquiry. In other words, 
 she remained silent, in the hope that this line of 
 teaching might prove fruitful in some direction, 
 and not inconsistent with her creed. Now, then, 
 that conclusions have been reached, which, in the 
 judgment of a great number of our ministers, and 
 to the shrewd commonsense of our people, are 
 inconsistent with those views of the authority and 
 inspiration of Scripture which are central to our 
 whole system, the Church has something else to 
 do than straight away pass to judgment. We 
 should be slow to make examples of individuals 
 who have, mayhap, too sharply defined what has 
 been floating in surmise and half conviction, and 
 as a tacit working theory, in a multitude of minds. 
 
 1 We have permitted this paragraph with its special reference to 
 Scotland to remain, because it reflects more or less accurately the 
 condition of things in many other Churches. 
 
4 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 This matter cannot be fully and finally dealt with 
 until, from the side of the Church as well as from 
 the side of criticism, the real issues are thoroughly 
 worked out. Those who somewhat unseasonably 
 have been pushing the battle to the gate have 
 apparently no idea of the concern and revulsion of 
 vast numbers, who are hving in the daily fellow- 
 ship of Christ, from their conclusions. Without 
 being able to state their reasons, these people 
 stand rootedly and immovably convinced that what 
 is at stake is the reality or unreality, of what has 
 hitherto been known and believed as the revelation 
 of God. Would it not be well to take time, and 
 state plainly the true ground and rational extent 
 of that conviction ? 
 
 On the other hand, many profess, on very 
 various levels of assurance, their unconcern as to 
 the consequences of adopting the newer criticism ; 
 and yet it is perfectly plain that they have not 
 related these conclusions to the sum of their 
 Christian beliefs. This is now a great, wide- 
 ranging controversy. Few men can keep all the 
 elements of a complex problem in their minds, 
 and cast a true balance from the conflicting con- 
 siderations presented to them. One is fascinated 
 by one aspect, another by another, for the sake of 
 which they adhere to the standpoint of the general 
 theory, to find, mayhap, that they are in logical 
 consistency committed to consequences which they 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 5 
 
 abhor. Again, we affirm that we are called as 
 Christian people to a frank discussion of ^11 the 
 elements entering into this subject, theological and 
 religious, no less than literary and historical, so 
 that if come to a conflict we must, the issues may 
 be unambiguous, and combatants on either side 
 may know where they stand. 
 
 Permit one other preliminary point. Many will 
 be disposed to ask, why bring so involved and 
 difficult a question before the people? Because 
 the issue directly affects the people. The Bible 
 is the heritage of the people, the spring of their 
 personal religion, and the foundation of Christian 
 fellowship and Church authority. They may not 
 be able to follow critical processes; their judgments, 
 being untrained, may be of little worth regarding 
 the pros and cons of critical evidence. But when 
 the critics have committed themselves to a view of 
 how the Old Testament Scriptures came to be — 
 especially a hypothetical view, whose only validity 
 must lie in its answering to all the facts — the 
 common judgment can settle, yea, will have to 
 settle, whether that can be regarded as an adequate 
 or probable explanation. 
 
 And now to bring things to a point, allow us 
 without further preliminaries to raise the searching 
 issues as between the self-witness of Revelation 
 coming down to us from remote centuries, and the 
 modern critical view, which, originating in last 
 
6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 century, has risen to such a head within the last 
 twenty-five years, not only in Germany, but in 
 Britain and America. And here, of course, we 
 must follow our own method, looking first at the 
 
 SELF-WITNESS OF REVELATION, and then at THE 
 
 CRITICAL HYPOTHESIS in relation thereto. 
 
 With the critics their theory has been the first 
 consideration, the perfecting of their hypothetical 
 explanation of how Scripture was actually built 
 up. And they have not hesitated to cut and 
 carve, to excise and insert — indeed, to break 
 down and build up the existing literature in 
 harmony with their view, in a manner and to a 
 degree that have no parallel. We begin, however, 
 with the things which are most surely believed 
 among us, with the Kingdom of God as matter of 
 present experience, as built up by the action of 
 unseen forces ; and as proving through renewed 
 and sanctified characters the central force of time. 
 The literature which is matter of investigation is a 
 literature that is, in a sense, living, the soul and 
 quality of which are perpetuating themselves in a 
 spiritual kingdom. 
 
 A word is what it does. Whether we know 
 much about how it came to be written, or whether 
 we know little, any collection of words — a book, a 
 volume of Scriptures — is to be judged in respect 
 of source and quality, and illumination, and power, 
 by actual result on the lives of men. Well, in 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 7 
 
 the living kingdom of God to-day we have 
 millions in many lands and on all social levels, and 
 among them the purest characters and the most 
 active and progressive intellects, who are unanimous 
 in this, that in and through this literature they 
 have been brought into personal contact with 
 God, and that by His spirit God has come into 
 them, creating them anew, and dwelling in them. 
 In proof of this one might cite the Christian 
 creeds, which formulate the convictions of the 
 churches, but we prefer to cite the hymns which 
 utter their living faith. 
 
 Here, then, is a kingdom set up in this world, 
 of which, taken on its own unchanging testimony, 
 this is the character. It moves from within by 
 forces perpetually flowing out from the unseen, 
 each unit selected by a Divine call, renewed by 
 a Divine spirit, sustained by the interactions of a 
 Divine life. All its activities show that it leans 
 on resources from beyond, prayer imploring the 
 eternal succours, faith receiving, love making 
 return for heavenly dowers received. 
 
 The living root of this kingdom, the channel 
 through which light comes, the basis on which 
 God and man meet, is the Holy Scriptures. And 
 when we come to these, and more especially to 
 the New Testament, we find that the living source 
 wholly answers to these effects. As a radiant 
 cloud by the sun, they are interpenetrated by the 
 
8 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 consciousness that they contain and are a com- 
 munication from God to men, made in historic 
 time, having for end the setting up of a Kingdom 
 of God, in which, uniting the created into fellow- 
 ship with the uncreated, the eternal purpose of 
 God shall be completed. No proofs need to be 
 led. The fact is so palpable. Hear one word 
 of Christ: "The only begotten Son, who is in 
 the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." 
 Note how Paul, in many places of his Epistles, is 
 almost carried out of himself by the fact that the 
 mystery hid from ages is now made manifest. 
 
 But there is another consciousness penetrating 
 the New Testament Revelation — that this com- 
 munication of God does not stand alone. In 
 fragmentary words and less perfect forms, this 
 same God had in earlier ages discovered Himself, 
 establishing relations between Israel and Himself, 
 and from the nucleus of covenant promise starting 
 and controlling covenant history. The New 
 Testament is unanimous in all parts about this. 
 Paul sees in the covenant of God with Abraham 
 the pivot of the whole movement through the 
 Old and New Testaments ; and in the dispensa- 
 tion of law under Moses a necessary discipline 
 of the covenant people. And while, Hke the 
 writers of Scripture who speak of weak and 
 beggarly elements, Christ discerns what was pro- 
 visional, and, as adjusted to infantile perception. 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 9 
 
 beneath the full height and range of Revelation, 
 yet no servant of His has shown with such grand 
 decisiveness as He has done His belief that the 
 Old Testament was an integral part of God's 
 self-revelation, despite all deciduous elements, 
 inherently one and on the same plane with all 
 further developments of Revelation. "I am not 
 come to destroy, but to fulfil." "One jot or one 
 tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be 
 fulfilled."! 
 
 Inherent in Revelation then there is a self- 
 witness. The latest portion points to the be- 
 ginning; the beginning, with all that may be 
 limited and provisional, contains the germ of the 
 end. God's discovery of Himself, as we might 
 expect, is not an episode, but rooted in a vast 
 breadth of the world's life, intertwined with human 
 history, and growing from less to more, as in this 
 Divine education and discipline, man became 
 capable of receiving the full self-unveiling of God. 
 In the history of ideas we have impressive examples 
 of how from fragments of thought a great rounded 
 system like for instance that of Platonism developed, 
 filling the prospect for a while, then giving place to 
 other systems, and living on as an influence permeat- 
 ing other thought, but at last reappearing in the 
 sharpened and accentuated form of Neo-Platonism. 
 Those who study such subjects lay great stress on 
 
 1 Matthew v. 17, 18. 
 
lo THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 the continuity and coherence of ideas. The con- 
 nection which they seek to estabhsh is an inner 
 connection of thought, and they are content with 
 a slender basis of external fact. 
 
 In the Scriptures we have to do with an in- 
 ternal coherence of thought, but on a higher plane. 
 What we find in relation are creative thoughts of 
 God, or rather discoveries of His positive purposes 
 for men. In each case He meets men on their 
 level, in the line of ideas fermenting in their own 
 minds. When they have exhausted the content 
 of this creative thought, or lost by unbelief their 
 chance of realising it, again, in closest contact with 
 the actual condition of the nation, God discovers 
 Himself in a great counsel of mercy, on a totally 
 different plane, and within original horizons. And 
 anew the history moves on under the impact of 
 these great ideas, until human sin causes the nation 
 to swerve round from the line of God's will, and 
 involves in ruin the first blossoming of national Hfe 
 in God. Then there broke amid the ruins, through 
 the prophets, a richer consciousness of God, and a 
 glorious flourish of new ideals, which His truth 
 and love guaranteed. And lastly, across many 
 centuries, in a way utterly unlooked for, these 
 ideals were reahsed in Christ, and the full purpose 
 of God stood revealed. 
 
 You understand, we are simply describing the self- 
 witness of revelation as it lies in our hands, without 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES ii 
 
 settling for the present whether it is to be received 
 or not. Here was a history, not merely of ideas, 
 but of Divine creative purposes, stretching over 
 far more than a thousand years, breathing a spirit 
 in utter contrast to that of the world, and discover- 
 ing a unity of Divine design, now that we see the 
 goal, not only beyond the foresight of man, but in 
 height and range superhuman. 
 
 For eighteen hundred years the Church of God 
 has consciously lived and grown great within the 
 vast dome of this Divine purpose, discovered in 
 the Old and New Testaments thus seen to be one. 
 In another place we have said: "The Church of 
 Christ has entered once for all and irrevocably 
 into that conception of the unity of Revelation, as 
 shown by the unity of one Divine conscious pur- 
 pose passing through it. Faith having once seen 
 this can never unsee it, any more than Science, 
 having grasped the Copernican theory, can wink 
 that knowledge away." ^ As every object in nature 
 — the lichen on the wall, the pine on the hill-face 
 — lies under the eye of the sun within the dome 
 of heaven, so everything in this Book stood trans- 
 figured because of relation to God and the evolu- 
 tion of His purpose. Living within this unity of 
 Divine aim, the Church of eighteen centuries has 
 lived on this Word. Through every part God's 
 creative thought has passed into her testimony. 
 
 ^ " Permanent Message of the Exodus " (preface). 
 
12 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 She has been conscious of a spirit not of man 
 making every nook and corner hve, and bringing 
 the past in manifold application to the present. 
 And entering into the lives of each generation 
 this creative thought has produced a type of 
 character never known before, bursting all common 
 barriers of motive and aim, as a well reflects the 
 sky reflecting what of God it has received, His will 
 its law, the service of man its business, eternity its 
 
 goal. ..." 
 
 And not only did this Revelation with its all- 
 embracing conception start, but all along it has 
 been the life of the Kingdom. After ages of 
 decadence and growing corruption recurrence to 
 the Word by A.ugustine, Francis, Savonarola, 
 Luther, Knox, Wesley, brought in each case a 
 new day. The proofs of what it is are discovered 
 in the quality of its effects, written upon millions 
 of lives and their social and public activities through 
 generations. Yea, we have that within ourselves, 
 witnessed to by our inmost spirit, which argument 
 or speculation cannot touch, as to the character of 
 this Book, and the undeniable verity of that self- 
 witness written broad on every page. 
 
 Such is Revelation, realised and experienced 
 from within, in the living consciousness of millions 
 of the human race. That is fact, then, resting on 
 a breadth of foundation in spiritual experience 
 which no other fact comes near. And no other 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 13 
 
 kind of fact can invalidate that result. The spiritual 
 Revelation stands authenticated by spiritual result 
 on a range and of a kind which leaves all argu- 
 ments and discussions of the schools far behind. 
 Atheists and agnostics, like Clifford and Spencer, 
 who have not the effect may deny the cause, 
 and try to explain the universe without any room 
 or place for the spiritual. But religion is so rooted 
 in literature and life that what they expose is their 
 own bias, what they discount their halting judgment. 
 The sun does not apologise for its existence. And 
 what we have to do is not to trim and palter with 
 facts, but assert our full consciousness and put 
 forth the full energy of the spiritual, leaving the 
 facts to tell. 
 
 But coming now to the second part, if such be 
 the self-witness of Revelation, how has there grown 
 up this vast movement of criticism, and especially 
 those conclusions adverse to the historic truth of 
 large portions of Scripture, which are filling multi- 
 tudes with dismay ? More particularly, how have 
 these movements arisen within the Church, and by 
 the efforts of men who show that they have a 
 real reverence for Christ, and an appreciation of 
 spiritual truth ? To multitudes this is a baffling 
 mystery, and source of most serious concern. 
 Their very respect for these teachers on other 
 grounds, and for the position which they occupy, 
 makes them fear that there must be far more in it 
 
14 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 than they can understand, and that, at any moment, 
 a mine may explode beneath their feet involving 
 them in the ruins of faith. 
 
 Now we must begin by saying frankly that 
 there is a necessary place for criticism. Revelation, 
 if we may say so, has a body as well as a soul. It 
 grew up in time, within certain historical conditions, 
 was written by persons, situated in certain positions 
 and having undergone such and such discipline for 
 the work. And here the appeal must be to fact, 
 internal and external, everything being welcomed 
 which really throws light on the situation. Pro- 
 testantism stands on truth, and does not invoke 
 authority to crush inconvenient questionings. She 
 is willing to face investigation from whatever 
 quarter it comes. For instance, in our present 
 humble inquiry we are not inveighing against 
 criticism. Neither do we pretend that we have 
 cut-and-dry answers to all critical questions, and 
 solutions of all actual and imaginary difficulties. 
 Criticism must proceed. We lay no embargo on 
 human research. All that we affirm is, that this 
 particular theory or hypothesis as to the manner in 
 which the Old Testament Scriptures came to be 
 formed does not meet the case, is purely speculative, 
 improbable, marked by internal incoherences, and 
 therefore should be dismissed. 
 
 One further remark regarding criticism in general 
 is demanded. We have said criticism has its place ; 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 15 
 
 but that is a very limited place. As we see, in 
 relation to the New Testament, its function is, 
 from external data, to settle questions of time, 
 place, authorship — a useful and necessary, if some- 
 what limited role, lying out of the world's eye, and 
 only when a genius once in a hundred years makes 
 some notable, discovery, winning popular applause. 
 The Scriptures themselves make appeal to another 
 than the critical sense. They address that in man 
 which fronts God. By what they discover to the 
 human soul on that plane, by what they work in 
 and through human life are they to be judged. 
 For that kind of result the critic has no test which 
 the spiritual man does not equally possess. And 
 if, going beyond his province, where alone he is 
 to be listened to as an expert, he interferes with 
 the substance of revelation, presuming to dis- 
 integrate what has stood as a religious unity for 
 thousands of years, with only the light reeds of 
 his critical suppositions, he may find himself in- 
 volved in conflict with a force which, in comparison, 
 is like an avalanche to an aspen — the continuous 
 consciousness of the Christian centuries, and what 
 God has discovered of His eternal counsel to 
 millions in our own day. 
 
 We have made these remarks because we 
 believe they apply with peculiar force to the 
 movement which has coined the name " Higher 
 Criticism " to cover the wider scope which it 
 
1 6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 demands for its methods. We are quite willing 
 to give criticism all the scope which it can prove 
 itself able to occupy, with those literary, linguistic, 
 and historical tests which are its stock-in-trade. 
 But even though we are not able to follow the 
 critics in all their subtle discriminations and weigh- 
 ings of evidence, we are not bhndly to take their 
 verdict until we have seen with what presuppositions 
 they have worked, the general views to which they 
 have referred particular judgments, the standards 
 by which they have tested fact and fiction, and 
 what has been their ground conception of the 
 course that events pursued. 
 
 Now, here, we are carried into the heart of the 
 situation with which in these seven chapters we 
 have to deal. "The whirligig of time brings 
 about its revenges." Time gives all its favours to 
 the new men and the new theories. They have 
 only to come in as chartered libertines, expose 
 faults, throw new lights, disintegrate, reconstruct. 
 By-and-by the new criticism completes its scheme, 
 lays down its main position, and the stream of time 
 flows on to new shores. Already, although the 
 critics do not like to think such a thing, this higher 
 criticism belongs to the past, or at least the passing. 
 We can trace the relations of this to other theories 
 of a vanishing generation, from which we have 
 moved forward. The very grounds in current 
 speculation on which they rested have shifted, and. 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 17 
 
 within new horizons of thought and belief, are we 
 called definitely to weigh its claims. 
 
 We have all been struck with the immense 
 difference of tone between the address of the 
 President of the British Association in Glasgow 
 this year, and the flamboyant utterance of the 
 late Prof Tyndall at Belfast in 1874. The latter 
 told us with one bold sweep, that the promise and 
 potency of all existence lay latent in a fiery cloud. 
 Religion, conscience, mind, life, matter, all came 
 from that whirling orb. How different, how timid 
 and apologetic the plea of the present chosen 
 representative of British science, even for such 
 familiar pre-requisites of a material universe as 
 atoms and ether ! That is a symbol of a wide- 
 reaching change. We are not so sure of those 
 wide generalisations. We have not the same 
 delight as those men of an earlier day, in supposing 
 that, by long processes of development, we can get 
 out of the conclusion, what we did not put into 
 the premises. In biology, psychology, morals, the 
 science of religion, and in other directions the 
 school of thorough-paced material evolution has 
 received the shrewdest blows ; and to that general 
 movement of speculation this critical theory belongs 
 — with exceptions, rather apparent than real, to be 
 afterward noted. 
 
 Let us now, in the most succinct fashion, 
 describe this critical theory, confining ourselves 
 
i8 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 rather to the features which are common to the 
 school than to individual varieties of opinion. In 
 studying any movement the great thing is to find 
 the organic principle which underlies and animates 
 the whole. We shall begin, then, with the two 
 writers who gave the Higher Criticism European 
 vogue, and who, in unequal measure it is true, 
 inspired those who have imported it as a living 
 issue into the heart of British Christianity. 
 
 One cannot travel far, then, into Kuenen's 
 ''The Religion of Israel " and Wellhausen's writings 
 before finding that these critics are not engaged in 
 a purely scientific inquiry into such facts as might 
 throw light on the literary origins of Old Testament 
 Scripture. They are engaged in something much 
 more speculative and ambitious — to reconstruct, on 
 a naturalistic basis, both history and literature. 
 In other words, the books are to be stretched on 
 the Procrustes bed of a theory which, to begin 
 with, allows no direct action to the supernatural, 
 and presupposes that in Israel, religion grew up 
 from the same beginnings and through the same 
 stages as in all other nations, although reaching 
 higher than others at the goal. 
 
 Hear Kuenen, who has the merits of lucidity 
 and frankness : " The representation of Israel's 
 earliest history presented to us in the books named 
 after Moses and Joshua must be rejected as, in its 
 entirety, impossible" (p. 22, vol. i.). "The Old 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 19 
 
 Testament narratives of Israel's earliest fortunes 
 are entirely upon a par with the accounts which 
 X)Xher nations have handed down to us concerning 
 their earlier history. Their principal element is 
 legend" (p. 22). In finding out what the real 
 course of the history was he tells us that conjecture 
 or divination plays an important part. " We offer, 
 for instance, a supposition with respect to the 
 Mosaic period : on the strength of various indica- 
 tions we assume that the people of Israel and the 
 man who had delivered them out of their bondage 
 in Egypt, had reached such and such a degree of 
 religious development " (p. 26). And then, as he 
 goes on to say, he looks for confirmation of this 
 supposition to what comes after. But he con- 
 descends still further as to his method at a later 
 stage. Assuming as incontrovertible fact a theory 
 of the growth of religion which is already seri- 
 ously shaken, he says later in the same volume : 
 "To what one might call the universal, or, at 
 least, the common rule, that religion begins with 
 fetishism, then develops into polytheism, and then, 
 but not before, ascends to monotheism . . . the 
 Semites are no exception " (p. 225, vol. i.). 
 
 The teaching of Wellhausen, if somewhat 
 differently expressed, is not dissimilar. We quote his 
 article on Israel in " The Encyclopaedia Britannica " 
 as being most within reach. He, as entirely as 
 Kuenen, refuses to accept the Old Testament account 
 
20 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 of itself. " For Moses to have given the Israehtes 
 an enlightened conception of God would have been 
 to have given them a stone instead of bread." As 
 to the essential nature of God, " he allowed them 
 to continue in the same way of thinking with their 
 fathers." "We cannot treat the legislative por- 
 tions of the Pentateuch as a source from which 
 our knowledge of what Mosaism really was can be 
 derived." '' It cannot in any sense be regarded as 
 the starting-point of the subsequent development " 
 — thus denying directly the Old Testament's claim 
 for itself " The Torah — i.e. the Law, consisted 
 entirely of the oral decisions and instructions of 
 the priests." Moses was not "the promulgator 
 once for all of a national constitution," but was the 
 first "to begin the series of oral decisions which 
 were continued after him by the priests." "The 
 giving of the Law at Sinai has only a formal, not 
 to say dramatic, significance." " For the sake of 
 producing a solemn and vivid impression, that is 
 represented as having taken place in a single 
 thrilling moment which in reality occurred slowly 
 and almost unobserved." Even the Decalogue in 
 its pronounced' monotheism " could not have 
 formed the foundation of the national religion. 
 It was first developed out of the national religion 
 at the downfall of the nation, and thereupon kept 
 its hold upon the people in an artificial manner by 
 means of the idea of a covenant formed by the 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 21 
 
 God of the Universe with, in the first instance, 
 Israel alone." 
 
 Now, while we do not for a moment deny the 
 great talent and wide resources of these teachers, 
 nor of Ewald and many others who might be 
 named, yet that cannot hide from us the subjective 
 character of this criticism. Bacon in his immortal 
 maxim tells us that man can know no more than 
 what he observes. In no field of existence do we 
 find stubborn facts falling into the line of our 
 suppositions. We must conform ourselves to the 
 objective reality, and form our theory out of the 
 facts. An inquiry so surrounded by presupposi- 
 tions, and limited and deflected by private rulings 
 as to probability, is handicapped from the start. 
 A strong effort is being made to create the im- 
 pression that criticism has nothing to do with 
 theory, but in vain. Even those who stick to 
 linguistic details, start from certain premises and 
 work to certain conclusions which are those of 
 the theory. This we shall prove in the third 
 chapter. 
 
 But, someone may say, the criticism with which 
 we have to deal, while it reconstructs Old Testa- 
 ment Scripture according to the general conception 
 we have been describing, distinctly recognises a 
 profoundly religious element in the various parts. 
 Yea, in the volume which has aroused the con- 
 troversy now beginning in Scotland Professor 
 
22 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 George Adam Smith expresses his firm belief, 
 that in the rehgion of Israel as recorded in the 
 Old Testament there was an authentic revelation 
 of the One True God. And this is being quoted 
 by many as sufficient ground for reassurance, and 
 an end of all debate. So far as his theory is 
 concerned, however, it introduces a profound 
 inconsistency, and multiplies his difficulties tenfold. 
 Be it noted, like all the other critics, he rejects 
 without discussion the belief of eighteen centuries, 
 that, Hke the New Testament, the Old Testa- 
 ment dispensation begins with the revelation of 
 a Divine purpose to Israel through Moses, which 
 controls the whole subsequent development. That 
 is ruled out as not to be thought of for a moment. 
 Israel's history must have followed the same 
 general lines as those of other nations. The early 
 history is dissipated into myth or legend. The 
 stories of the Hebrew Patriarchs are effiDrts to 
 account for the geographical distribution of neigh- 
 bouring nations — there being, perhaps, a sub- 
 stratum of personal fact in the case of Abraham. 
 The historic reality of Moses is allowed, but what 
 residuum of contemporary tradition remains after 
 the disintegration of the Pentateuch is left in 
 profound uncertainty. We do not emerge on his- 
 toric ground till we reach the times of Samuel. All 
 through the centuries which followed, the Jew 
 was pretty much on a level with surrounding 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 23 
 
 nations. Even to the verge of the prophetic age, 
 his rehgion was polytheism with an opening to 
 monotheism. And then, when the Prophets had 
 heightened and widened the conception of Jehovah, 
 unknown writers — "redactors" as they are called 
 — embodying what fragments of law and tradition 
 had come down to them, produced an idealised 
 picture of their national beginnings in accordance 
 with the purer ideas of their own times, but from 
 nine to eleven hundred years later than the 
 personages and events which they describe. And 
 these, being pieced together, now constitute our 
 Pentateuch. In other words, the self-discovery 
 of God to Abraham and Moses, His miraculous 
 acts by which He witnessed to His presence. His 
 divine counsel as an articulated whole. His re- 
 lations with His people, quick, as all saints have 
 felt, with a holy, searching spirit, are the un- 
 licensed imaginations of unknown penmen, trying 
 to glorify the crude and fragmentary fact of remote 
 tradition, — as much a work of imagination as 
 Tennyson's Idylls of the King. 
 
 And when they have desecrated these books 
 containing the Mosaic revelation, and disintegrated 
 them into many fragments, in order to satisfy a so- 
 called scientific necessity that the history of Israel 
 should conform to a certain order of progression 
 which it was presumed all other nations had 
 followed ; when, after all that, it turns out that 
 
24 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 even from the fragments and through the veils of 
 reported myth and legend there breaks a spirit 
 which is not the spirit of man, and gleams of a 
 purpose higher than ever entered into human 
 thought, they turn round and say: ''Here is an 
 authentic revelation of God." 
 
 But we rejoin — this is for you a new factor. 
 If a direct personal influence of God had any place 
 in shaping Israel's history, you must allow for it. 
 That impact of the Divine must have had a con- 
 trolling influence in the process, if we are to allow 
 it in the result. You must ask, then, if you 
 would give a complete view of how the religion 
 and literature of Israel grew up : Have we any 
 independent testimony how God acts when He 
 comes into personal contact with men.'' The 
 answer is not dubious. As we see in the New 
 Testament, God comes in the glory of a complete 
 revelation which creates or controls the dispensation. 
 What, then, is the irresistible inference but that 
 God did the same in Old Testament times ? Yet 
 that is the very conception which our critic has, to 
 begin with, rejected. 
 
 This is a difl[iculty from which there is no 
 escape. The self-witness of Scripture is complete 
 on this point. Christ and Paul bear witness to 
 this as the true rationale of Old Testament his- 
 tory. And yet, at all hazards, the critics cling to 
 their theory of the natural genesis of man and his 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 25 
 
 religion, and embark on the most perilous enter- 
 prise which we can conceive, trying to imagine 
 how, according to their theory, and without miracle 
 or anything exceptional, God — the same God who 
 is now revealed in Christ — may have moved 
 silently into Hebrew life and Hterature, informing 
 legend, lurking amid the pollutions of a remanent 
 polytheism, and making the ideal pictures of late 
 unknown writers have all the effect of primitive 
 revelation. That is not science. Scientific men 
 do not advance by moving away from such facts as 
 are available, and imagining a succession of events 
 for which there is no independent support. But 
 that thought is blotted out by the sense of tower- 
 ing presumption. " Who can by searching find 
 out God ? " It is enough — more than enough for 
 man, without the aid of the Holy Ghost— even to 
 hear Him and obey. 
 
 Like the mingling of oil and water, this adding 
 of the conception of revelation to the critical re- 
 construction only introduces two insoluble elements, 
 multiplying the difficulties without adding to the 
 acceptability of the theory. For such a conception 
 of revelation cannot be brought into any real 
 relation with the Christian doctrine of revelation 
 as it has been held by all churches of the saints. 
 To show this, one incidental reference may suffice, 
 and will be all the better that Professor Smith 
 recurs to it again and again as something on which 
 
26 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 he likes to dwell. He sees the Spirit of God 
 breaking out, especially in such utterances of the 
 human spirit as Deborah's song and David's dirge 
 for Jonathan. Where he looks for God is not in 
 any creative act or word, but rising silently and 
 unnoted in a finer ethical spirit than what obtains 
 outside Israel. " These are the two most beauti- 
 ful anticipations which the Old Testament has to 
 offer of Christ's teaching : But I say, love your 
 enemies," &c.i 
 
 In comparison with these the Levitical sacrifices 
 are animal and repulsive, and lead to representa- 
 tions of Christ's death, which have the same 
 character. " It is the direst blunder which a 
 preacher may commit to dwell upon them." 2 Two 
 views of revelation lurk in these contrasted state- 
 ments. If God in very deed, according to the 
 universal Christian belief, have discovered himself 
 in a counsel of mercy, purposing to enter into 
 direct personal fellowship with men, He must 
 appoint the conditions through which we can come 
 to Him. Only He can know all that is necessary 
 that we may live with Him on His plane. He has 
 appointed these in the new covenant ; faith in 
 Christ, surrender, the reception of the Spirit, 
 obedience ; and only by observance of these con- 
 ditions can we enter into possession of eternal life. 
 
 1 Professor G. A. Smith's '< Modern Criticism," x. p. 257. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 272. 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 27 
 
 And if, by an act of historical imagination and 
 spiritual sympathy, we transported ourselves into 
 the place of the Hebrews, we should find that, 
 under the unsupportable sense of God's glory in 
 Sinai, they found the precepts of Leviticus most 
 welcome provisions by which, sin taken away, they 
 might come back into fellowship with God. That 
 is no breadth of view which sniffs at what appears 
 the coarser discipline needed in a rude time. If 
 rather, making little of surface appearances, we 
 put ourselves in the place of those multitudes 
 lately redeemed from Egypt, we should see not 
 only the most subtle correspondence in these 
 sacrifices with the sacrifice of Christ, but the pro- 
 foundest insight into the human spirit, and into the 
 conditions necessary for moral and spiritual emanci- 
 ^pation. Granted Sinai and Calvary, these pro- 
 visions of Leviticus are radiant with the wisdom 
 and glory of God. 
 
 In our view, Deborah's song and David's dirge 
 owe their ethical quality to the unique fellowship 
 with God, which in covenant history and sacrifice 
 they enjoyed. But if all that elaborated intercourse 
 of God and man, as represented in the Pentateuch, 
 is an imagination, and God only appears now and 
 again as a finer spirit in the lives of individual men, 
 we are on a totally. diflFerent level. Save for these 
 gleams brightening toward the prophetic age, there 
 is nothing in Israel's history that was not in Moab, 
 
2 8 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Ammon, Egypt, Assyria. Up through the rotting 
 compost of legend and polytheism these ethical 
 gleams arose, related to no authentic word or 
 covenant purpose of God. They are there simply 
 to be discerned by those who see them, to be 
 passed over or misrepresented by those who do 
 not, containing no harmonising view of existence, 
 that, subordinating nature to itself, discovers the 
 full purpose of God. 
 
 Now, if this ethical immanence of a spirit which, 
 since it is not of earth, is presumably of God, is 
 the form of Old Testament revelation, may it not 
 also be the true form and quality of that revealed 
 in the Gospel ? However individuals may shrink, 
 the principles of the Higher Criticism will not 
 admit evasion of that conclusion. And so you 
 have the full flowering of this movement in the 
 '' Encyclopedia Biblica." Jesus Christ is a transitory 
 gleam. In such an article as that of the late Pro- 
 fessor Bruce's, we see written out with a sad 
 courage and intellectual honesty the real issues of 
 this movement. The permanent presence of Christ 
 in history is eliminated — His pre-existence, His 
 divinity, His atoning death, resurrection and ascen- 
 sion ; and His life is summed up in a piece of plain 
 prose, which to us is the death-knell of the critical 
 movement, and would be, could we for a moment, 
 entertain it as true, more crushing than the most 
 awful human calamity. 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 29 
 
 This is the summary prefacing his article on 
 Jesus : " Jesus Christ, the author and object of 
 the Christian faith, a Jew by race, was born in 
 Palestine, towards the end of the reign of Herod 
 the Great. The home of his childhood was 
 Nazareth, a town in the lower division of the 
 province of Galilee. The family to which he 
 belonged was of humble estate. In early years 
 he worked at a handicraft. On arriving at mature 
 manhood he became a public teacher, rapidly 
 gained fame, gathered about him disciples, offended 
 the ruling classes by free criticism of the prevail- 
 ing religion, and ended a brief but extraordinary 
 career by suffering crucifixion." And, according 
 to Professor Bruce, that was all ! 
 
 It is now high time to set forth the clear and 
 inevitable issues. We have used the word " search- 
 ing " because we believe that this controversy goes 
 to the centre. As has been always the case in 
 great crises, we have many prophesying smooth 
 things, " healing the hurt of the daughter of My 
 people shghtly." ^ But we have to look facts in 
 the face. Men may make what private exceptions 
 from their own theory they please, what we have 
 to do with is this view of the formation of Scrip- 
 ture, in its principles and implications. And facing 
 that, we have no scruples in saying that if we accept 
 the conclusions of Criticism then we have no longer 
 
 1 Jeremiah viii. ii. 
 
30 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 an authoritative Revelation. Our warrant for going 
 to the whole world and offering pardon and renewal 
 and eternal life on the ground of a Divine covenant 
 promise, foreshadowed in the Old Testament and 
 revealed in the New, is taken away. What remains 
 is to assert, on the strength of our own discern- 
 ment, that we have the finest ethical efflorescence 
 in the Old Testament Scriptures and in Christ; 
 and make what headway we can. The foundation 
 on which Revelation rests, if Revelation it can now 
 be called, is entirely changed. The Bible is no 
 longer the solitary, immediate unveiling of God, 
 discovering a purpose, founding a kingdom in 
 which humanity should reach its goal, and the 
 meaning and end of all existence should stand 
 clear. Judaism and Christianity have their true 
 place among the ethnic religions, if on that level 
 they are the best. 
 
 On the other hand, if we cling to the self- 
 witness of Revelation, and the Protestant doctrine 
 of Scripture, we have against us a vast body of 
 learned opinion, not only without, but within the 
 Church. Now we, whose lives are devoted to 
 practical spiritual w^ork, think far too highly of 
 the debt we owe to experts in criticism and 
 exegesis, to make light of that opposition. Still, 
 that man is a weakling who renounces a deep, 
 abiding, well-authenticated conviction, regarding 
 what touches his inmost self, in external defer- 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES 31 
 
 ence to any array of opinion. And we have seen 
 strange things in our time. Coming back to 
 Tyndall's fiery cloud, we can remember when 
 the great guns of science were thundering on 
 the side of materiahsm. But what has happened ? 
 The men have fallen in their places, the smoke 
 has cleared away, and human personality and 
 the spiritual side of human existence have come 
 out in modern speculation as never perhaps 
 before. 
 
 But what if the facts compel us to the critical 
 position? Professor G. Adam Smith says Criti- 
 cism has won, and we have to discuss the indem- 
 nity.^ As one who stands by Revelation in its 
 completeness, witnessed to in a redeemed experi- 
 ence, we wish popularly, but we trust really and 
 honestly, to investigate the claim in six succeeding 
 chapters. Believe it, that indemnity will never be 
 paid. Proceeding in regular order, before dealing 
 with this hypothesis being thrust upon us, we 
 shall look and see whether something may not 
 still be said for Revelation's self-witness. After 
 a process of disintegration such as no literature 
 has suffered, we shall find that the strength of the 
 traditional view is unbroken, and really heightened 
 by the new light of history and science. Coming 
 to the critical hypothesis we shall then show the 
 class of arguments to which it belongs, what con- 
 
 1 <' Modern Criticism," p. 73. 
 
32 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 ditions are necessary to its validity, and how far 
 this critical hypothesis meets these. Continuing 
 our criticism, we shall bring out the objections 
 which may be taken to the disintegration of Scrip- 
 ture. In the following chapter, leaving argument 
 in detail, we shall take the Old Testament as it 
 has been reconstructed by Criticism, and show 
 that it is beset by difficulties, does not hang 
 together, lacks all probability as a spiritual 
 whole, is indeed a scheme, artificial in the 
 highest degree, with only one recommendation 
 — that it fits into a naturalistic idea of human 
 development. 
 
 But if all this be true, the question arises : How 
 have such mistaken conclusions been arrived at ? 
 Our answer is : There have been errors of method. 
 Revelation has rights as a fact in the life of the 
 world which critics have not conceded, and which 
 they must concede. And then, harking back to 
 the second chapter, we wish to show over against 
 the thoroughly lame and halting reconstruction 
 of Criticism the profound harmonies of Old 
 Testament Revelation as it lies before us in 
 Scripture, its historic reasonableness (inspiration 
 assumed), the many considerations making for 
 the authenticity of the Mosaic Revelation, the 
 profound likelihood of the further history, in 
 every phase of reaction, momentary uprise, slow 
 national ascent, on to the kingdom, the temple, 
 
THE SEARCHING ISSUES ^t^ 
 
 the blossoming of intellectual consciousness, pro- 
 phecy — the whole discovering a living national 
 growth on the plane of a special revelation of 
 God, whose glory is the sufficient proof of 
 its reality. 
 
II 
 
 THE UNBROKEN AND GROWING STRENGTH 
 OF THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 
 
 John X. 35: "The Scripture cannot be broken." 
 
 We have seen, then, the searching issues of this 
 controversy. What is at stake is the continued 
 recognition of an authoritative revelation. Mani- 
 festly that is the issue, frankly and openly raised, 
 between the Church and the acknowledged leaders 
 in criticism. But, as we have seen, it is really not 
 different with those who speak of an element of 
 religion, and even of revelation, still clinging to the 
 disintegrated documents. For revelation stands on 
 such a plane, and enters in such a manner, that, 
 even if we concede the name, the character and 
 authoritative quality are changed. 
 
 Now, what does that mean ? We have here 
 the profoundest conflict between two lines of evi- 
 dence — between that inner unity and coherence of 
 revelation, as containing an evolution of the Divine 
 purpose, believed in by the Christians of eighteen 
 centuries ; and the modern disintegration, more 
 particularly of the Old Testament, and its recon- 
 struction on critical lines, supported by a vast body 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW ^^ 
 
 of learned opinion, especially in the last generation. 
 True, these lines of evidence move on different 
 levels — the former appealing to spiritual insight, 
 and demonstrating reality by effects on the thought 
 and life and public action of men ; the latter deal- 
 ing with historical and linguistic tests, according to 
 laws of ordinary probability and common human 
 experience. 
 
 Now, the same men are seldom equally strong 
 in both these directions. And so we have a great 
 multitude, secure of their spiritual perceptions, to 
 whom practically the unity of revelation is as 
 axiomatic as the unity of consciousness. And 
 these are unable — we do not say to acquiesce in 
 the results of criticism — but even to understand on 
 what evidence or under what considerations critics 
 have been drawn to their apparently astounding 
 and incredible conclusions. 
 
 And not less one-sidedly, critics, immersed in 
 their literary and historical investigations, when 
 they come as now to somewhat generally received 
 conclusions, think, and in effect say, that taking 
 the external history of the Old Testament to be 
 what they have shown, we should without question 
 pay the indemnity. In other words we should tone 
 down our spiritual consciousness — for that is what 
 their request amounts to — divest us of beliefs 
 by which we have been nurtured, and step to the 
 lower level, the vaguer faith, the more uncertain 
 
^6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 hope of a revelation duly sterilised by critical pro- 
 cesses, and warranted by critical judgment to be 
 worthy of rational acceptance. 
 
 As Protestants we are seeking truth. Our 
 religion can only stand on foundations of truth. 
 But naturally what we on our side start from in 
 entering upon this inquiry is not the unknown, 
 which comes with strange front, but the familiar — 
 this revelation borne witness to in experience, and 
 the outward testimony of tradition on which it has 
 rested. Surely the prudent course is, before we 
 take up with a modern view, conceived by men of 
 alien race, in a far distant century, and especially a 
 hypothetical view founded on an evolutionary theory 
 utterly hostile to Hebrew thought, that we should 
 look and see whether we might not yet stand where 
 the Christian and Jewish generations have stood, 
 and find in tradition sufficient external foundation 
 for a Revelation marked by such internal excellence 
 and coherence of all the parts. 
 
 Yet we can fancy an amused smile rising on 
 many faces as they read the title of this our second 
 chapter. For, if significant, the external evidence 
 for the Old Testament is very scant; and what 
 remained seemed to have been broken into frag- 
 ments by the explosives of criticism. To look 
 abroad upon that fair territory, which appeared a 
 unity amid endless diversity — a great coherent and 
 progressive self-revelation of God — to the genera- 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 37 
 
 tions of the past, is like gazing upon a town in the 
 Riviera after an earthquake. Where was beauty 
 is desolation. The Pentateuch is disrupted into 
 many fragments, and carried down to late dates. 
 The later histories are treated after similar fashion. 
 The Psalms are dislodged, not only from individual 
 traditional connections, but from the era and the 
 surroundings in which all ancient testimony existent 
 on the subject locates the greater number. Isaiah 
 is broken up into what has been called an antho- 
 logy of collected prophetic utterances. One walks 
 with uncertainty amid the ruins, doubtful where he 
 may still plant his foot, fearful at what point some 
 new destructive critic may blow him into the air. 
 
 And yet we are prepared to say that after this 
 cataclysm the foundations of the traditional view 
 are not overthrown. We may find unbroken and 
 unbreakable pillars on which we may set it up 
 again. Yea, we shall see before we are done that 
 while the stars in their courses have been fighting 
 against the theory which we oppose, from the 
 failures of criticism, from archaeology, and from 
 the science of religion, have been coming evidences 
 confirmatory of tradition, some of remarkable per- 
 tinence and force. The poetic unity, the informing 
 creative genius of Homer, shone out more vividly 
 in his epics after the disintegrating critical attacks 
 of Wolf and his school. And so to those who do 
 not echo prevailing opinion, but aspire to judge 
 
38 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 for themselves, the Pentateuch seems now instinct 
 with a glory of revelation, a breath of holiness, 
 and (on its unprecedented level) an historical veri- 
 similitude, that speak to every spiritual sense, as 
 being no less really an unveiling of the Divine, than 
 the Acts of the Apostles or the Gospel according 
 to John. 
 
 In upholding the validity of tradition, we shall 
 confine ourselves to the Pentateuch. In every 
 sense that is the key of the position. If that can 
 be maintained as a credible and substantially con- 
 temporary record of a true revelation of God to 
 Moses, and through Moses to Israel, incorporating 
 the sacred family traditions of earlier revelations ; 
 and if, as a consequence, the whole subsequent 
 history is controlled by God's choice of Israel and 
 His revelation to Israel, then all that remains — 
 histories, psalms, prophecies fall into their places 
 according to the traditional view. Whereas, if it 
 could be proved that this Pentateuch now lying 
 in our hands is an imaginative reconstruction of 
 Hebrew history, according to the profounder ideas 
 of the prophets, incorporating, it is true, rude 
 fragments of early tradition, but worked over 
 again and again by late writers trying to glorify 
 their national beginnings, then criticism might fairly 
 claim to have won. 
 
 But further, allow us to say that what we are 
 engaged in settling is not a literary question — that 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 
 
 39 
 
 Moses was the author of every word, or almost 
 every word, in these five books. Nor even do we 
 attempt to apply the historical tests which are 
 necessary in regard to later ages, where documen- 
 tary authorities are abundant. We have not the 
 making of the problems with which we have to 
 deal. All questions of historical origin retreat into 
 mystery, and we must use such means as lie at our 
 disposal, bringing in from every quarter whatever 
 may throw light on the theme. Nor does this 
 history of the chosen people, although informed 
 by a spirit of solitary loftiness and purity, differ 
 in this respect from other histories. But there is 
 another ground that we may take, which involves 
 both the historical character and the Mosaic author- 
 ship as subordinate issues, and which has the further 
 advantage of raising the fundamental question by 
 which this whole movement will have to be judged. 
 Among the higher critics there are great diver- 
 sities of individual position, many reimporting into 
 their reconstructed Old Testament the greater 
 portion of the existing Scriptures as true for the 
 times to which they refer, others more extreme ; 
 some more conscious of an informing presence of 
 God, others tracing to political and such like 
 agencies the peculiar features of the history of 
 Israel. All of these, however, the most con- 
 servative as well as the most revolutionary, are 
 committed to this. The Pentateuch in its present 
 
40 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 form is not to be taken as a true account of a 
 Divine revelation given to Moses, formally choos- 
 ing Israel as a peculiar people, investing them with 
 laws for ends of moral and religious discipline, and 
 appointing sacrifices by which they might come 
 from every wandering back into fellowship with 
 God. What is represented as creative, and the 
 beginning of a covenant history in Holy Scripture, 
 was the gathered result and dramatic presentation 
 of a long developnient, according to the critical 
 hypothesis. 
 
 It is this central position, common to all higher 
 critics, which we contest. It is the historical 
 reahty of this revelation for which we contend. 
 Indeed, this is what gives us warrant for inter- 
 vening in this discussion at all. Pardon us repeat- 
 ing this once what in other forms we have already 
 affirmed. From without, by their external tests, 
 the critics are interfering with the unity of a 
 coherent system of thought — and a system of 
 thought on a plane far more commanding than 
 any philosophic system with which it may be 
 compared. They are destroying the record of an 
 advancing Divine purpose, intertwining itself with 
 history, appearing and re-appearing with a Divine 
 originality, but rounding in the completed result 
 to not only a unity of plan, but a glory of self- 
 revelation in Christ which has won the credence 
 and transfigured the character of nearly sixty 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 41 
 
 generations. And holding with an absolute faith 
 the unity and truth of this coherent system, no 
 wonder if, while loyal to fact and ready to follow 
 whithersoever it leads, we narrowly scrutinise every 
 critical claim. 
 
 Come, then, and, laying hold of such facts as 
 critics themselves admit, and passages of Scripture 
 whose evidence cannot be questioned, let us dis- 
 cover what supports we still possess for the 
 traditional view. And as we go forward you 
 will keep in remembrance that if the facts be 
 scant, we are dealing not with speculative reason- 
 ing, but with direct testimonies from the history 
 and literature of the chosen people. 
 
 It is admitted, then, that the Pentateuch had 
 practically come to exist in the form familiar to us 
 by the time of Ezra, after the Exile. Professor 
 Robertson Smith says : " The Pentateuch, or 
 Torah, as we now have it (for there can be no 
 doubt that the law which was in Ezra's hands 
 was practically identical with our present Hebrew 
 Pentateuch) became the religious and municipal 
 code of Israel."^ Here, then, our feet are on 
 rock of reality. In 444 B.C., the Pentateuch was 
 in existence, was recognised by the whole nation 
 as the law of God given to Moses, and as such 
 absolutely dominated the national conscience and 
 heart. It is not necessary that we should give 
 
 ^ " Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 56. 
 
42 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 quotations, as the point is not seriously contested, 
 and one has but to read Ezra and Nehemiah to 
 convince him of the fact. But, according to the 
 critical view, the Pentateuch then must have been 
 brand new. For if Deuteronomy dated back to 
 Josiah's days, and a fragment incorporated in 
 Exodus, chapters xx.-xxiii., was extant in written 
 form earlier still, the Priests' Code, embracing a 
 large portion of Exodus, and Leviticus, and the 
 greater part of Numbers, had only recently been 
 put together and incorporated with the rest. So 
 late as the Exile the clear light of history is faUing 
 around. Have we, then, any hint or suggestion 
 of these recent editings? Not only is there an 
 utter unconsciousness of this process of redaction, 
 but there is a whole set of circumstances which 
 rule the supposition out as utterly incredible. 
 
 Do not be led away by words, but pierce to the 
 facts of the situation. It is characteristic of this 
 movement, that we are asked to assent to con- 
 clusions which have immense practical conse- 
 quences, on minute points of scholarship or wide- 
 sweeping inferences from uncertain premises, 
 while the larger considerations of historical pro- 
 babihty, the true proportions of cause and effect 
 in the region of the spiritual, and such like, are 
 ignored, if they have not been overlooked. What 
 have they who deal so much in probabilities and 
 presumptions to say to this egregious stumbling- 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 43 
 
 block for the scientific understanding involved in 
 their theory ? A nation like Israel comes out of 
 a term of eclipse in the Exile, with a volume or 
 volumes of laws imbedded in history, for which 
 they have the profoundest reverence as a revela- 
 tion of God given in the dawn of their history 
 to Moses. These inspire the action of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah, and when publicly read, receive not 
 only universal assent, but stir the profoundest 
 emotions of the whole people. 
 
 And yet according to the vaunted wisdom of 
 this latest age, that legislation did not, as they 
 believed, come from God, did not belong as a 
 whole to the Mosaic age. The greater portion 
 was a concoction of the Exile, pieced together 
 from old law and consuetudinary usage, but 
 wrought up, not only with a fertile imagina- 
 tion, but with something approaching conscious 
 fabrication. 
 
 To take one instance, there was no tabernacle 
 in the wilderness. Some writer who knew about 
 the temple of Solomon conceived a rude desert 
 prototype of that sanctuary, built and furnished 
 it out of his imagination, and projected the whole 
 as fact into the times of Moses, into the centre 
 of Israel's history, and into the heart of a 
 ceremonial system which, though reported old, 
 was also in form, and largely in substance like- 
 wise, fabrication. To add to the utter unlikeli- 
 
44 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 hood and topsy-turvyness of this dream, the 
 Priests' Code in large part was a reduction to 
 prose and legislative enactment of Ezekiel's 
 imaginative picture of the temple, which all pre- 
 vious centuries regarded as a prophetic idealisation 
 of the Mosaic ritual, pointing forward to some- 
 thing which may yet be reahsed in the latter days. 
 Here, then, is what we are asked to believe, 
 that during the Exile^ — generally reported a time 
 of depression, though not without great writers 
 like Ezekiel — and while the nation were awakened 
 to profound penitence for their past — there were 
 other writers, who have left no trace, not touched 
 with the national sense of sin, with no very acute 
 feeling of moral realities, who were filled with the 
 desire at any cost to glorify the national be- 
 ginnings. These unknown writers, as we have 
 seen, did not only not hesitate to fabricate the 
 tabernacle and a complete ritual for the same, 
 but wrought them up with an archaic account 
 of a descent of God upon Sinai, which somehow 
 the Hebrews possessed in the J and E narratives 
 when they were polytheists in religion and had 
 only nature festivals for sacrifices. Dovetailing 
 these utterly incongruous materials, they presumed 
 to put words in His mouth, and to depict thrilling 
 situations in which Moses and the people appeared 
 in soul-subduing relations to Jehovah. And not 
 only did these writers, without name or position, 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 45 
 
 secure from the people such acceptance as we 
 gladly give to " Ivanhoe " for its vivid imaginative 
 pictures of a far-off time. We are asked to 
 believe that the nation took these audacious ima- 
 ginings — of which none but the coarsest natures, 
 however clever, could be capable — not only for 
 truth, but for the central reality which lies behind 
 all outward shows of the true, a revelation of God. 
 We are asked to believe that this conviction not 
 only commanded a national devotion to the law 
 unparalleled for persistence and intensity, but 
 kindled a national consciousness in Israel of being 
 the peculiar people of God, on the basis of this 
 Mosaic covenant, — which continues even to this 
 day, after a thousand vicissitudes, to bind the 
 Jews into an indestructible unity, when every 
 bond of land, community of polity, or home tie 
 has been destroyed. 
 
 It will take a thousand times the evidence 
 which critics have to bring, and evidence of a 
 different kind from any which they possess, to 
 overcome the extreme unlikelihood of that sup- 
 position. Men who live in the open air of 
 reality, grappling with hard, unyielding fact, and 
 understanding the limits of their faculties, will 
 deem it far easier of belief that, as in the New 
 Testament so in the Old, God should have given 
 a true revelation of Himself, starting, from a 
 creative beginning, the national history ; than 
 
46 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 that a series of occurrences abhorrent to the 
 spiritual judgment, offensive to the moral sense, 
 utterly unauthenticated, and violating every canon 
 of probability, should actually have taken place. 
 
 Turn from this distorted dream of a theory which 
 inverts the facts, to the sober simplicity of tradition; 
 and if the facts are few, everything is in keeping with 
 history and satisfying to the spiritual judgment. 
 
 There is one fact about the Exile beyond 
 dispute — it must have been a time of the pro- 
 foundest searching of heart. For the Jews broke 
 definitely with idolatry which, persisted in for 
 many centuries, had wrought their ruin. Now 
 began a passionate devotion to the law and an ex- 
 clusive worship of God which have not relaxed their 
 hold even to this day. What could have wrought 
 such a change? Where all the great prophets 
 had utterly failed, what secured success? Their 
 casting oif as the covenant people of God woke 
 them to covenant position and privilege. As in 
 setting the sun lights the hills above which it 
 rose, they who, with all their sins, were children 
 of the covenant, with pride of their peculiar 
 destiny ingrained in their affections and thought, 
 went back to the glory of their national beginnings. 
 The Kingdom of God has had several such moments 
 of intense consciousness when, athwart the errors 
 and misdirected activity of a thousand years, her 
 members have seen their true ideal and their 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 47 
 
 grievous sin, and have resolved at all cost to 
 recover their place, enjoy their privileges, and 
 discharge their duties. 
 
 Now we put it to the reader to judge whether 
 that is not the case here. All the intervening cen- 
 turies sink into comparative insignificance, and they 
 are back in the desert with Moses. His name is 
 mentioned oftener in these brief books of Ezra 
 and Nehemiah than in all the prophets. After 
 centuries of chastisement, in which they kept 
 closing their eyes to facts, and going on in their 
 self-willed way, they have come fully to see that 
 the creative beginnings of their nation, and all that 
 was peculiar in their destiny, lay in the Mosaic 
 age. God had spoken to them through His 
 servant, had appointed them ordinances, and 
 entered into covenant with them. The wail of 
 an infinite sadness fills the period. Read the 
 prayer of Nehemiah.^ All the people wept when 
 they heard the law. Yea, the very fervour of 
 their reverence for a consecrated past, long 
 trampled on, but now reconsecrated in their view, 
 brought a new tone and limitation into their 
 religious spirit, which distinguishes the post-exilic 
 from the pre-exilic ages. They are lovers of the 
 Book, observers of a law, zealots of a system, and 
 not so much worshippers in the liberty of glad 
 fellowship with God as the men of an earlier day. 
 
 ^ Nehemiah i. 
 
48 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 But only the profoundest sense of God, once angry 
 but now returning in favour, can explain the 
 extraordinary heights of reverence and submission 
 which they reached. All thought of further 
 developments overborne, they sought with a 
 matchless devotion to become conservers of the 
 past. 
 
 Ezra set himself to collect and edit the sacred 
 books containing the law of Jehovah. His highest 
 function was to unfold the teaching of these Divine 
 statutes. The very first task, undertaken amid 
 many difficulties, was to get back into the old 
 covenant relation by setting up the temple worship 
 according to the law of Moses. "And they set 
 the priests in their divisions, and the Levites in 
 their courses, for the service of God, which is at 
 Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses." ^ 
 
 But more striking even than that, as a token of 
 measureless devotion, occurred an act to which we 
 have discovered no parallel in history. Only a 
 moiety of the people came back from Babylon. 
 They were in a shrunken state, harassed by 
 enemies. But far more important to them than 
 any material advantage was winning again the 
 favour of God. Consider, they had been seventy 
 years, more or less, in exile. The greater number 
 would be born there. Heathen alliances would 
 have gone on unchecked, when so many of those 
 
 1 Ezra vi. i8. 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 49 
 
 who returned were found in that condition. Yet 
 at the command of Ezra — a command for which 
 he has often been blamed — priests and levites 
 and people surrendered their strange wives. Read 
 Ezra ix. and x., and if you have an eye for a 
 historic situation you will find yourself face to face 
 with a heartrending fact, which only the pro- 
 foundest reverence for God's revealed will could 
 bring within a hundred degrees of realisation. 
 
 Nor was this absolute submission a momentary 
 phase, but in substance a permanent condition. 
 Twenty years after, on Ezra's return, the people 
 desired to hear the law, to have direct knowledge 
 of the conditions of God's covenant with them ; 
 and then the whole nation made a written covenant 
 with God.i Century by century this consciousness 
 of being in covenant with God only grew. In 
 virtue of this they came with an ethical witness to 
 that old world. Because of this ethical conscious- 
 ness, with its vast horizon of spiritual beUefs, the 
 poor crushed Jew, utterly uninteresting in himself, 
 attracted the reverent interest of the Western 
 nations. The Septuagint is a wonderful tribute to 
 the respect which, on account of his religious heri- 
 tage, the Jew won from the overbearing Greeks. 
 
 In the times of Ezra and Nehemiah, then, the 
 Pentateuch was not only existent, but had gathered 
 round it an immense religious reverence, inspired 
 
 ^ Nehemiah ix. 38. 
 D 
 
so THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 to acts and sacrifices which prove past dispute 
 that these books had unquestioned claims upon 
 them as revelation. Are we to believe that a 
 shrewd people in such a crisis, when roused to 
 such unheard-of sacrifices, were the dupes of 
 unlicensed imaginations? Ay, and more, are we 
 to believe that, in the case of a nation which had 
 sunk so far, recent fabrications not only imposed 
 on them, but kindled a new constraining conscious- 
 ness of God, as in covenant relation with them, 
 which impressed heathenism, moulded the thought 
 of succeeding generations in preparation for the 
 Christ, and remains an imperishable possession of 
 the human race ? 
 
 Though that were the earliest direct reference 
 to the Pentateuch, and though we had to confess 
 that nine hundred years lay between the volume 
 in Ezra's hand and its supposed origin, we should 
 require much stronger evidence than an unproved 
 hypothesis to make away with that proof. 
 
 Let us go back now about i8o years to the 
 times of Josiah. Here we have evidence of a very 
 remarkable kind that the book of the law existed. 
 Let us take first what lies on the face of 
 the narrative. 1 The book was in the house of 
 the Lord. In the terrible reaction and de- 
 generacy of Manasseh's reign, and for how long 
 
 ^ 2 Kings xxii and xxiii. 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 51 
 
 before we do not know, it had been lost sight 
 of and forgotten. Josiah the young king is need- 
 ing all the help he can receive to cleanse the un- 
 speakable pollutions of the land. And man's ex- 
 tremity is God's opportunity. Seeming accidents 
 enter largely into the disposition of human affairs. 
 A sleepless night to Ahasuerus, and a chance read- 
 ing of his chronicles, changed the whole policy of 
 his empire towards the Jews. And Hilkiah, stir- 
 ring about, under the spell of his royal master's 
 intensity, fmds amid the archives of the temple the 
 sacred law. That is what the text says — he found. 
 He told Shaphan that he found. Shaphan told the 
 king, who instantly trembled as in the presence 
 of God. Josiah's words are most searching. ^ 
 Evidently all this was new to him. And yet 
 he cannot shake himself free from blame. He 
 should have known. But his fathers were more 
 to blame for entirely overlooking this book. He 
 also, however, is involved in the great wrath of 
 the Lord, for all these are things concerning the 
 people, and they have been neglected and set at 
 nought even to the present moment. While con- 
 vinced that these are divine testimonies, Josiah is 
 so utterly disconcerted that he would like every 
 confirmation. He sends Hilkiah and others to 
 Huldah the prophetess, who receives from Jehovah 
 a message, which is a present-day commentary on 
 
 ^ 2 Kings xxii. n-13. 
 
52 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 that page of far-oii times. God, through His 
 living messenger, confirms His ancient testimonies. 
 
 Is there not a remarkable verisimilitude in that 
 story, and do you not find in this the adequate 
 explanation of Josiah's striking, if evanescent, re- 
 formation ? 
 
 For a generation, however, this -self-consistent 
 and reasonable account has been overlaid for 
 multitudes of believing men, by a grotesque hypo- 
 thesis which will, in the end, prove nothing better 
 than a trap to catch unwary critics. They have, 
 with singular agreement, decided that this book of 
 the law contained only Deuteronomy. They find 
 traces of Deuteronomic influence in Jeremiah. 
 But manifestly that is only a proof that Deuter- 
 onomy was included, not that Exodus, Leviticus, 
 Numbers were excluded. Then embarking on the 
 sea of pure supposition, the hardier spirits will 
 have it that this book was a concoction of Hilkiah 
 or some others ; while the more reverent, to get 
 rid of the questionable semblance of forgery, carry 
 it back to Manasseh's time, and suppose that some 
 unknown person, filled with the thoughts of the 
 great prophets, drew up an ideal picture of the law 
 in the form of orations spoken by the great leader. 
 
 We say nothing of the evil seeming inseparable 
 from any form of this theory. Right through, the 
 higher criticism is a science of doubtful expedients. 
 Leaving the safe course of allowing, on the testi- 
 mony of revelation, the direct presence and order- 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW S3 
 
 ing of God, they are landed in morasses of always 
 dubious, and sometimes as here, let us say, very 
 painful suppositions. Nor can any form of the 
 theory explain the effect from such a cause. 
 
 But we go on to affirm that this is a most un- 
 fortunate hypothesis. Notice this, that, according 
 to the critics, up to Josiah's days, or a generation 
 before him, the only fragment of written law 
 which existed as we have it was Exodus xx.-xxiii. 
 Deuteronomy comes next. The Priests' Code, con- 
 taining Leviticus and large portions of Exodus and 
 Numbers, was not put together until long after, 
 in the exile. 
 
 Now, with all due respect, this placing i Deu- 
 teronomy long before the Priests' Code, looks like 
 building a house down from the chimney. Deuter- 
 onomy is in form, scope, and spirit a recapitulation. 
 Like the swell of the ocean after a mighty storm, 
 there are a fervour, an exultation of soul, a con- 
 sciousness of God, of sublime and solitary relation 
 to God, and of an established covenant with Him, 
 only explicable on the supposition of such an 
 unveiling of God as the earlier books describe. 
 Deuteronomy is great more because of what it 
 points back to than of what it expresses. 
 
 It is true that, according to critical opinion, in 
 the Jehovist and Elohist documents, united in 
 J.E. about a century before Amos, there were re- 
 markable traditions of, for instance, the plagues, 
 
54 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 the deliverance from captivity, and the Red Sea 
 crossing, though lacking as yet the elements from 
 the Priests' Code, which invest them with their 
 dignity as a supposed revelation from God and the 
 beginning of a dispensation. But this is just a 
 proof of the hopeless incongruities of the critical 
 analysis. According to the critics, at the time 
 when J.E. was put together, the Jews were poly- 
 theists, worshipping Jehovah as the Moabites wor- 
 shipped Chemosh. Their sacrifices were nature 
 festivals. How could they, upon that level of 
 close proximity to heathenism, have possessed 
 documents breathing so sublime a monotheism.'' 
 For the call of Moses at the burning bush, and 
 the profound sense of a present God in the plagues, 
 are parts of that tradition. Either the critical 
 analysis is utterly at fault (and they confess its 
 almost hopeless difficulty at this point ^) or these 
 old traditions must have been wrought up from 
 crude traditions by the later writers of the exile, 
 whose works are gathered up in the Priests' Code. 
 In which case they could not have existed in their 
 present form for the writer of Deuteronomy. 
 
 But to remove the last vestige of doubt, note 
 this further fact. The central feature in which 
 Josiah's reformation culminated was a wonderful 
 observance of the Passover. Turn to Deuter- 
 onomy xvi. I - 8, and can you conceive so con- 
 
 1 See article " Exodus," Dr Hastings' Bible Dictionary, Vol. I. p. 8o8. 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 
 
 55 
 
 densed and quiet a narrative, if it stood alone, 
 inspiring such an act ? Beyond all question Josiah 
 had the complete narrative of God's deliverance of 
 Israel from Egypt before him. His whole being 
 was aflame with the sense of God's power. What 
 might He not do for them ^ Josiah would revive 
 the great memories of that hour, and in the Pass- 
 over, the original and type of all sacrifice, bring 
 His people under the sheltering blood and into 
 covenant with Himself. 
 
 We look upon this incident, then, as another 
 unbroken foundation of the traditional view. It 
 does not formally prove the existence of a com- 
 pleted Pentateuch. But it does prove that there 
 was an ancient record in their archives which con- 
 veyed to an estranged generation, with tremendous 
 power, the sense of their being in covenant with, 
 and so under law to, God. The revival was 
 marked by no new forms, but, as in Ezra's day, by 
 stern allegiance in word and deed to an old law. 
 Reforms were carried out in the line of the law. 
 And the central memorial of the old deliverance 
 became the seal of the new reformation. What 
 could the book be but, in substance at least, the 
 Pentateuch.'* The critical hypothesis then going 
 by the board, in this leading position, the tradi- 
 tional view remains. 
 
 Let us travel back another 140 years to the 
 
S6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 times of Amos and Hosea, about 750 b.c. Judah 
 and Israel are both standing. The latter is enjoy- 
 ing a period of splendid prosperity under the 
 second Jeroboam. Here we are at the very 
 beginning of written prophecy, looking up the 
 troubled streams of the divided kingdom. Accord- 
 ing to Professor Smith, as we have just seen, to 
 the very verge of this period the religion of 
 Israel was " polytheism, with an opportunity for 
 monotheism at the heart of it." How can we 
 explain, if that be so, the sublime ethical mono- 
 theism of Amos ; the tender, holy, brooding love 
 of God in Hosea ? That is an insuperable difficulty. 
 But we defer further consideration of this point 
 till we can take the critical reconstruction as a 
 whole, and show its incurable weaknesses, not 
 only at this but many other points. 
 
 Note these facts : Both prophets, directly or by 
 implication, refer to Jerusalem as the central seat 
 of worship. Israel is in sin, having broken with 
 this central worship. There was a written law 
 which they had ignored, and the precepts in- 
 cidentally referred to are not confined to Exodus 
 xx.-xxiii., the earliest fragment, but range over all 
 the codes. The living beginnings of the nation's 
 history are traced back to Egypt, to deliverance 
 from captivity. And most vividly of all do the 
 prophets realise that, in a sense peculiar and 
 exclusive, Israel is the covenant people of God. 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW ^^ 
 
 From that far-off beginning they have been in that 
 relation under the law of Jehovah ; '' but they 
 have transgressed My covenant and trespassed 
 against My law." The standpoint of the prophets 
 is the reverse of what modern criticism avers. 
 They do not speak as to a people slowly rising 
 from polytheism to monotheism, but are roused by 
 the spectacle of long-continued national degeneracy 
 from a glorious condition of covenant fellowship 
 with God. 
 
 You simply cannot understand prophecy, unless 
 you realise the unspeakable reverence of all the 
 prophets for the entrance of God in promise and 
 condition into the dawn of their history. That 
 gives the note to their unparalleled expostulations, 
 the ethical spirit to their teaching, the pivot from 
 which, leaning on the faithfulness of God, they go 
 out to anticipate coming good. " You only have 
 I known of all the inhabitants of the earth, there- 
 fore will I punish you for all your iniquities," said 
 Amos, thrilled with the sense of his people's 
 peculiar destiny. Hosea rises higher, seeing this 
 union of Israel with God in the light of a marriage, 
 the holiest, tenderest, most exacting covenant of 
 earth; and disobedience as whoredom — the bestial 
 violation of a covenant with God as holy, tender, 
 and obligatory as the marriage covenant among 
 men. Think of the prophet himself, with bruised 
 affections, desecrated home, married to a harlot. 
 
58 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 that he might be a living parable to all the 
 people of the dishonour which God suffered at 
 their hands. 
 
 How can writings like these be made consistent 
 with the theory of a slow growth upwards on the 
 part of Israel out of conditions hardly discernible 
 from those of the people around ? 
 
 The point of this evidence is not simply that 
 there were laws, written laws, laws in such number 
 as not to be consonant with the new theory ; nor 
 yet that there had been degeneracy instead of 
 progress ; but this — even our contention — that 
 there had been a unique creative revelation, 
 ringed round by statute, controlling the whole 
 subsequent history ; if only (through their sin) 
 in the direction of affixing a special guiltiness, and 
 bringing down a certain penalty. 
 
 And now to bring our long argument to a close. 
 Look back over three great crises in the history of 
 the Hebrews — the age of Ezra, the age of Josiah, 
 the age of Amos and Hosea. Here we are on 
 unquestioned ground of history. What do we 
 find, then, in those three periods, covering more 
 than three hundred years ^ 
 
 We find, beyond question, that this history 
 cannot be brought by any twisting into natural 
 lines. You may, without evidence, turn all the 
 splendour of Exodus into legend. You may spare 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 59 
 
 no effort to reduce the history to natural measures. 
 But one thing you cannot dissipate from the living 
 consciousness of the Hebrew people : that they 
 stand in a peculiar relation to God — have stood 
 from the beginning, and that everything excep- 
 tional in their history owes origin to that fact. 
 That stands, that is justified by all known circum- 
 stances. Even though the Pentateuch had been 
 lost we should have had to suppose some such 
 specialty of cause for such an effect. And though 
 we had no further scrap of evidence — and we 
 have much, as we shall afterwards see — no un- 
 biassed literary critic, simply looking at the facts, 
 would hesitate for a moment to take the Pentateuch 
 for what it professes to be — a credible account of 
 the self-revelation of God, and the beginning of 
 the Jewish nation in covenant with Him. 
 
 That is what I mean by the unbroken strength 
 of the traditional view. It is unbroken in the 
 main piers of its strength. The considerations 
 which we have advanced are as pillars of Hercules 
 compared with the light and airy structures of 
 hypothesis, which all rest for their validity on a 
 foundation of theory as baseless as themselves. 
 
 Take two facts, of great significance, as con- 
 firmations of our position. For a hundred years, 
 in ever-increasing numbers, we have had acute 
 experts moving heaven and earth to establish 
 their hypothesis. Yet these two things are true : 
 
6o THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Outside their theory — which is on its trial, and 
 cannot yet be taken in evidence — they have not 
 found one objective fact which makes impossible 
 the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. Again, 
 outside their theory they have found no scrap of 
 independent testimony to unearth the supposed 
 redactors or compilers of the history, or to prove 
 at any single point that the stages of the critical 
 theory were the real stages at which piece by piece 
 the Pentateuch was built up. " The earth helped 
 the woman " : ^ but facts and time are not on the 
 critics' side. 
 
 Having travelled thus far, however, we wish to 
 bring in certain supports of the traditional theory 
 which come from archeology, from the very 
 failures of criticism, and from the science of 
 religions in its present stage of development. 
 These are of a very remarkable kind, and destined 
 to increase ; so that we have the fullest warrant 
 for speaking of the growing strength of the tradi- 
 tional review. Allow us to summarise evidences 
 whose true proportions and value could only be seen 
 if they were stated on a more extensive scale. 
 
 Amid the number of small circumstances which 
 have been alleged against the historical character 
 of the Pentateuch, two have seemed to us to be 
 of weight. If a history so wonderful had been 
 handed down for several generations by oral 
 
 1 Revelation xii. i6. 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 6i 
 
 tradition before being committed to writing, it 
 would be difficult to rebut the charge of exagger- 
 ation and legend creeping in. Then, also, the 
 argument so strongly put by the late Professor 
 Robertson Smith could not but impress one. If 
 Israel started, as in the Pentateuch, with a recog- 
 nised ritual system, why does that system remain 
 virtually a dead letter till after the exile ? 
 
 The former difficulty is now entirely cleared 
 away. The latter, after all, is only a difficulty, as 
 we shall see later, to a poor, external, and far too 
 limited view of Old Testament revelation. 
 
 In view of present knowledge, there is no 
 barrier whatever to accepting as historical the 
 statement in Deut. xxxi. 9 : " And Moses wrote 
 this law, and delivered it to the priests, the sons of 
 Levi " ; nor the actuality of the injunction at verse 
 II, to "read this law before all Israel in their 
 hearing" at the end of every seven years. Pro- 
 fessor Sayce says : '' The age of Moses was a 
 literary age, the lands which witnessed the Exodus 
 and the conquest of Canaan were literary lands ; 
 and literature had flourished in them for number- 
 less generations before." ^ 
 
 Of course we would like to know a great deal 
 more. In what form were these books left, in 
 what language written .? Who added the closing 
 chapter of Deuteronomy, and guarded these Scrip- 
 
 1 " Lex Mosaica," p. 17. 
 
62 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 tures from generation to generation ? Not that 
 there is no later reference to them. They were 
 there to be used by Joshua on great occasions. 
 Xhere are numerous quotations from and corres- 
 pondences with all parts of the Pentateuch in the 
 book which goes by this leader's name. So there 
 is no reason for our ignorance to ferment into 
 suspicion. On many literary and historical ques- 
 tions we have just to take what we can find, and 
 confess our ignorance where great gaps come in. 
 
 But there are positive indications which are all 
 in favour of the traditional view. Some critics 
 would disintegrate the Hebrew history utterly. 
 They will not allow the unity of the nation. 
 They suppose that the tribes came swarming over 
 Jordan at several times. Professor George Adam 
 Smith contends for the unity of the nation and the 
 single crossing. But he, in his turn, gratuitously 
 conceives of them as rude tribesmen, who might 
 have remained ignorant of writing, although it 
 was known in all the nations around. Critics are 
 very insensible to the significance of their own 
 admissions. They admit the historical reality of 
 Moses, the captivity in Egypt, the escape, and the 
 fact that Israel received at that time and from 
 that leader religious inspiration, in a vivid concep- 
 tion of God, which made them what they were ; 
 but they try to flatten this down to something 
 rude, naturalistic, fragmentary. Their anxiety is 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 6^ 
 
 to get the history into line with their view of the 
 development of religions ; and they touch the 
 spiritual, the creative element (which they halt- 
 ingly admit) in a very uncertain way, as if it were 
 an infusion or tincture which they may inject or 
 withdraw at pleasure. 
 
 If they admit, however, the least possible idea 
 of Jehovah, they are admitting a new order of 
 thought on a level far removed from all heathen 
 conceptions.' As men have tried to imagine a 
 regular advance from the not-Hving to the Hving, 
 so some would have us suppose a development 
 from animism to Jehovah ; but it is an impious 
 dream. The barriers between the not-living and 
 the living, and between matter and mind, are as 
 nothing, to the infinite gulf between the frog- 
 spawn of heathen imagination and the very earliest 
 dawning of a true thought of God. 
 
 Granted, then, such a creative thought, we are 
 bound, in view of all the fresh light thrown upon 
 that far-off age, to conceive the most fitting con- 
 ditions of its manifestation. That was not a rude 
 time, but an era of great empires, high material 
 civilisation, brisk movement, and vast political 
 complications. But along with this material 
 development there was a singular lack. In one 
 way the age of the second Rameses was like the 
 age of Tiberias : with vast material resources there 
 was an utter bankruptcy of ideals. The earlier 
 
64 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 was even more hopelessly empty of every redeem- 
 ing element than the later age. Sailing up the 
 Nile as far as Assouan, and visiting every famous 
 site, we were oppressed with the blind and blatant 
 egotism written broad in sculpture and inscription. 
 That older world was on the verge of collapse as 
 really as the Roman world of Paul and John. 
 
 If, then, as even many critics admit, there did 
 strike in a new transfiguring conception of Jehovah 
 at this time, it is far more reasonable to conceive 
 that that came on the scale and in the manner 
 taught us in the Pentateuch, with commanding 
 power and with a light and warning for Egypt and 
 surrounding nations as well as for Israel. In 
 comparison with the harmony of contemporary 
 fact subsequent tradition and Scripture, supporting 
 the truth of a great creative revelation, the 
 gratuitous assumptions of the critics deserve no 
 credence. But, further, if the narrative of Exodus 
 be restored to our belief, if God broke the power 
 of Egypt, and, setting Israel free by His wonderful 
 might, revealed Himself on Sinai, then, to keep 
 alive these transitory if overwhelming impressions, 
 there must have been a covenant to bind the 
 people to God and a law to enforce that covenant. 
 And so a new probability attaches to the belief 
 that all three codes in their order were very special 
 means devised by Moses, under the guiding of 
 God, to meet a sublime emergency. The idea 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 63 
 
 that the Pentateuchal legislation consisted of a 
 series of summaries of oral laws drawn up at 
 different dates, but in late ages, is not a success. 
 Wellhausen tried to reconstruct the steps by which 
 such laws grew and accumulated, but his views, 
 which are speculative and naturalistic, have little 
 inherent probability, and have been ably met. 
 
 The fact is, there never was such a system of 
 oral law. A critic like Schultz confesses that the 
 laws are a whole. '' Everything is of a piece, 
 from the most trifling commandment regarding 
 outward cleanliness up to the fundamental thoughts 
 of the moral law." " The whole is woven into a 
 splendid unity, into the thought that this people 
 should represent the kingdom of God on earth, 
 and realise in its national life the main features of 
 the Divine order of things." ^ And that being so, it 
 is far more reasonable to maintain that that ideal 
 unity was the immediate impress of a Divine 
 revelation, breathing through the whole a Divine 
 spirit, than to suppose it was the result of a con- 
 coction, nobody knows when, by nobody knows 
 whom, save that they must have been imaginative 
 artists working on a basis of crude traditional law. 
 
 We shall reserve what we intend to say in defence 
 of the Mosaic legislation, as against the argument 
 derived from its alleged inoperativeness, and pro- 
 ceed at once to a positive confirmation of the 
 
 1 " Old Testament Theology," vol. i. p. 138. 
 £ 
 
66 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 traditional view, the immense importance of which 
 we cannot, perhaps, at once discern. 
 
 The Higher Criticism, after saiHng the high 
 seas striking terror into peaceful souls, and 
 hesitating not to sink every barque that showed 
 fight with the shafts of contempt and the shot of 
 assertion, is finding herself in troubled waters. 
 She has been sacrificing everything to a so-called 
 science, i.e., to a theory of the growth of religion, 
 thoroughly naturalistic, which presupposed that all 
 religions, Israel's included, passed through certain 
 stages from the lowest forms up through fetishism 
 and animism to the high gods. As men grew up 
 from rude beginnings into tribes and nations, so 
 their ideas of their gods expanded likewise. This 
 theory had never been fully accepted. There 
 were facts which did not fit into the scheme. 
 Still it had the fascination of a seeming natural 
 evolution, and so won a wide popularity. Sober 
 theologians drew pictures of Divine inspiration 
 coming first through myth and legend. Even 
 before, however, the Higher Criticism has dis- 
 posed her forces and appeared to claim the 
 allegiance of the Churches, she has been deserted 
 by the science for which she has sacrificed so 
 much. At least she cannot allege to-day the 
 support of an undisputed scientific belief 
 
 There is a great array of facts to prove that at 
 one point — and that a fundamental one — anthro- 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW ^^ 
 
 pologists like Dr Tylor have not gone with the 
 evidence. The progress is not one of development 
 from lower to higher. A great number of the 
 most primitive savages retain belief in a Supreme 
 Being, and deathless, immortal Fathers in heaven. 
 "Between them and apotheosised mortal ancestors 
 there is a great gulf fixed — the river of death. "^ 
 Indeed, Andrew Lang, whom we have just been 
 quoting, says at page 2 1 1 of the same treatise : " It 
 is among the ' lowest savages ' that the Supreme 
 Beings are most regarded as eternal, moral (as the 
 morality of the tribe goes, or even on a higher 
 level), powerful." Just, however, because they 
 are good they have been neglected, and a swarm 
 of fetishistic, animistic ideas have taken their place 
 and fill the foreground of their minds. This is 
 proved, not from one tribe but from many, in 
 widely sundered parts of the world. There are 
 traces of high gods among peoples which are 
 utterly undeveloped. These lofty conceptions 
 cannot, according to the naturalistic theory, be 
 owing to advancing civilisation, for they have 
 none. Then there are other tribes in whom the 
 earlier and purer belief is almost swamped in later 
 fetishism, though traces still remain. Indeed 
 missionaries have remarked that in times of great 
 dread the most craven heathen becomes a virtual 
 monotheist. 
 
 1 "Making of Religion," p. 206, 
 
68 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 To what does all this point, then, but to a 
 theory widely different from that of our critics and 
 a host of anthropologists in our time ? With Von 
 Hartmann, De Rouge Renouf, Lang, and others we 
 come to see that fetishism and animism are processes 
 of decay. In man there is an original, indestructible 
 sense of God. According to Paul's statement, " the 
 invisible things are clearly seen, being understood 
 by the things that are made."^ The traces of a 
 primitive monotheism in China, Egypt, and else- 
 where, though they have been made light of by 
 dominant theory, are fact. Myth, legend, fetishism 
 and animism, which have been very rashly regarded 
 as the early soil of revelation, turn out to be early 
 stages of disease and degeneracy, from the clear, 
 if limited, perception of God, with which, accord- 
 ing to the evidence of science no less than 
 revelation, man began. 
 
 Now all this throws a wonderful light on the 
 problem with which we have to deal. We do not 
 know when we have been more impressed than by 
 reading in Mr Lang's ''Myth, Ritual, and Re- 
 ligion," the evidence in detail that right round 
 the world, among civilised peoples like the Greeks 
 and among the rudest tribes, these steps of de- 
 generacy have common characters — here relieved 
 by talent, there darkened by ignorance, but funda- 
 mentally similar. There is just one nation among 
 
 1 Rom. i. 20. 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 69 
 
 all peoples where the well-marked traces of this 
 degeneracy are not to be found. Critics have done 
 all they can to find them there. They have re- 
 solved, as we believe, history into myth, to bring 
 Israel into line with the universal tendency ; but 
 even with these assertions in their mouths they 
 must confess the profound separation of Israel from 
 all other nations. 
 
 What, then, is the irresistible inference but this, 
 — and so the Old Testament is placed on an ex- 
 ternal pedestal of glory which it never reached 
 before — that while in all other nations this de- 
 generacy went on, in one family God laid an 
 arrest on the downward drift, called Abraham, 
 shielded his descendants, and in due time led them 
 from captivity, under Moses, to be His covenant 
 people, with whom the one hope of man, the seed 
 of salvation for the whole race, was to be found ? 
 
 In what a commanding position does this view 
 place Israel in relation to the eight hundred millions 
 of heathen still to be brought in. Here in Israel 
 was the dawn of the Kingdom of God, the germ 
 of all to which it has developed. What could 
 make these hopes a living issue amid the degener- 
 acies of animism and the lustfulness of empire but 
 such a wonderful theophany as that of which Scrip- 
 ture speaks? To a primitive people, delivered 
 from the slavery of centuries, what could make 
 appeal, but just such outward manifestations of 
 
70 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 favour, accompanied by a moral discipline ringing 
 life round and round ; and a sacrificial system ad- 
 mitting return and restoration to God ? Amid the 
 universal trend downward of the whole world, 
 need we wonder if for long the revelation through 
 Moses was only fragmentarily realised ? One thing 
 is certain : law or no law, sacrifice or no sacrifice, 
 the Mosaic type of belief, elevation of character, 
 and moral submission to God, amid a thousand 
 failures, held their ground in the select spirits of 
 the race. They were not like other men. There 
 were none like them in that ancient world. They 
 were in a sense " all baptized unto Moses in the 
 cloud and in the sea." ^ They bear the stamp of a 
 unique destiny, and their perpetual going back to 
 realise a past ideal is proof to us that they had a 
 great creative beginning in their history such as 
 the Pentateuch describes. 
 
 Such, briefly considered, is the evidence from 
 ancient record and modern research for the tradi- 
 tional view of the Pentateuch. It may not be so 
 much as we would like, but surely it is sufficient ; 
 and tim^ has been adding to, rather than detracting 
 fr9m, its volume. 
 
 There never was a day, then, when there was 
 less need for a violent hypothesis to account for 
 the origin of Scripture. This view harmonises 
 with the faith of Christendom, the internal unity of 
 
 1 I Cor. X. 2. 
 
THE TRADITIONAL VIEW 71 
 
 Holy Scripture, its character as revelation, and its 
 place and influence in the world. We can think but 
 of one objection : it presupposes the supernatural 
 and allows of miracle. We shall now have to 
 look at the critical hypothesis which claims to 
 have ousted this, and in the next two chapters we 
 shall subject it to a necessarily brief, but honest, 
 examination. 
 
Ill 
 
 IS THE CRITICAL HYPOTHESIS VALID? 
 CHRIST AND CRITICISM 
 
 John V. 39 : " They are they which testify of Me." 
 
 We have seen that not a little can be said for the 
 traditional view on external and critical grounds. 
 Though there are gaps in the evidence, and many 
 questions to which we naturally desire answers 
 that have none forthcoming, yet if we take the 
 trend of historical testimony briefly sketched in the 
 last chapter, and compare that with the unity of 
 thought and purpose pervading the Old Testament, 
 we can have little doubt that the received view of 
 the origin of the Pentateuch is the true one. 
 Indeed, we believe that if there were nothing 
 exceptional in this literature — no miraculous 
 element, no claim to speak in the name of 
 God — the proof would not have been seriously 
 contested. 
 
 However that may be, the Church of Christ is 
 face to face with an elaborate hypothesis of the 
 origin of Scripture which not only goes away from, 
 but contradicts tradition. This hypothesis has 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM ^'t^- 
 
 been slowly elaborated by many minds, from 
 Astruc and Geddes to our own time ; and, though 
 not without violent transformations, and even 
 boxing the compass of possible solutions, it stands 
 out in certain main outlines to which, with indi- 
 vidual differences, the great body of critics give 
 adhesion. This outline we have already stated 
 more than once, and shall have to recall later in 
 this chapter. Our present business, however, is 
 to arrange the method on which we are to pro- 
 ceed. Before we attempt to draw conclusions, let 
 us rnake sure that we understand the situation. 
 Many things — assertions of critics and the vague 
 terrors of many humble believers — show that an 
 utterly confused and erroneous view of the 
 problem to be solved has taken possession of 
 men's minds. 
 
 For instance, it has got into the thoughts not 
 only of laymen, but of a great number of ministers, 
 as it is certainly the opinion of the higher critics 
 themselves, that we can only get rid of the Higher 
 Criticism by positively disproving all their posi- 
 tions, and showing the untenableness of all their 
 disintegrating processes — in a word, driving them 
 off the field. And as we hear voice answering to 
 voice over the immeasurable battlefield, and look 
 at the immense earthworks bristling with every 
 variety of ordnance brought up by learning in 
 defence of the critical position, we might think 
 
74 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 the battle as good as lost. There has hardly 
 been such a situation since Rabshakeh expounded 
 the programme of Sennacherib at the gate of 
 Jerusalem. Still, that destroying wave was arrested 
 and broken ; and when the whole world wondered 
 to see Jerusalem standing, Isaiah gave the answer : 
 "The Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of 
 His people shall trust in it.''^ 
 
 The situation is very different from what both 
 friends and foes have believed. The burden of 
 proof rests not with the Church but with criticism. 
 But more than that, the burden of proof is of a 
 very exacting and onerous kind. The Church 
 exists as a fact in this world, living by spiritual 
 energies ; and through that life flowing into her 
 from the Unseen has become the mightiest single 
 force in the world. The Scriptures, authenticated 
 as Divine by their results, have been the organ 
 through which God has spoken to successive 
 generations, the instrument by which unnumbered 
 millions have been nurtured in life eternal. And 
 as we have seen, Scripture has a self-witness not 
 only to her unity but as to the steps and order of 
 her own growth. And the Church, which has 
 been the nurse of intellectual freedom, has grown 
 up within the dome of that common consciousness 
 for eighteen hundred years. 
 
 To her, however, in these last days there has 
 
 1 Isaiah xiv. 32. 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM ys 
 
 come a challenge. The Higher Criticism has 
 declared that we cannot any longer accept the 
 self-witness of revelation as historically true. 
 Things did not turn out, we are told, as the Bible 
 describes them to have done, but in very different 
 fashion. What answer has the Church been 
 giving to that challenge ? The only right one. 
 Standing by Scripture, which she knows to be 
 informed by one spirit, and to contain one ever- 
 growing revelation of God, she is ready for what- 
 ever discovery science may bring. Truth is one, 
 and historical fact will never be found to contradict 
 spiritual reality. 
 
 The Evangelical Church then says — in counter 
 challenge — What facts have you in support of 
 your assertion ? The Higher Criticism answers : 
 We do not rely much on facts. True, there are 
 the evidences of the use of documents in Genesis 
 — a fact which impressed Astruc. There are 
 double accounts of events imbedded in the narra- 
 tives and expressions, here and there, gathered 
 with great diligence by Dr Robertson Smith, 
 which seem to be out of keeping with the 
 received views of the origin of the books of 
 Scripture. Prompted by these, and such-like diffi- 
 culties and discoveries, we have, in accordance 
 with the most recent knowledge, drawn up a 
 theory as to how Scripture may be supposed to 
 have taken origin. And it is this theoretical view, 
 
^6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 supported by such evidence as we have collected" 
 in its favour, v^hich we ask you to accept. In the 
 opinion of some of us this theory destroys the pre- 
 tensions of the Old Testament to be a revelation, 
 but many of us, though agreeing with the others, 
 can still allow an element of religion, yea, even of 
 revelation, in what remains after criticism has done 
 its work. At least, God's personal presence in 
 Israel seems to Professor George Adam Smith, 
 dispassionately judging, the most natural and 
 scientific explanation. 
 
 The challenge of the Higher Criticism therefore 
 comes in the form of a hypothesis or theory, or 
 more plainly still, supposition. Now do not mis- 
 take, as if we regarded this to be an objection. 
 Hypothesis is a recognised method of science. As 
 John Stuart Mill says : " It is allowable, useful, and 
 often e\en necessary to begin by asking ourselves 
 what cause may have produced the effect, in order 
 that we may know in what direction to look out 
 for evidence to determine whether it actually did." ^ 
 Scientific men use hypotheses continually. Often- 
 times they could not deal with the simplest facts if 
 they did not begin by conjecturing what may have 
 been the cause, and then see whether their theory 
 fits into the facts. The great astronomer Kepler 
 formed nineteen erroneous hypotheses about the 
 orbit of the planets before he hit on the true view, 
 
 ^ "System of Logic," vol. ii. j), lo. 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM ^^ 
 
 that it was an ellipse. Hypotheses are found in 
 all degrees of strength. Some have risen to the 
 dignity of demonstration, like Newton's theory of 
 the planetary motions. Some are in suspense, 
 with a larger or smaller preponderance of opinion 
 in their favour, like the theories of light. A 
 great many have been thrown aside as void 
 and vain. 
 
 This subject of what constitutes a valid hypo- 
 thesis has been thoroughly discussed by logicians. 
 They have put to themselves the question : When 
 can a hypothesis be fairly regarded as proved ? 
 And they have laid down their rules with exact- 
 ness. Those who wish to see the subject dis- 
 cussed could not do better than turn to the 
 section of Mr Stuart Mill's treatise on logic to 
 which we have referred. There is also a briefer, 
 but illuminative discussion in Lotze's " Logic." ^ 
 Allow us just one remark before stating these 
 conditions. When masters of mental science 
 deal with this subject of hypothesis, they turn 
 their thoughts to natural science, and draw their 
 illustrations from that interesting field. The 
 problems there are simpler, and the laws more 
 exact and obvious. Hypothesis in human affairs 
 has, in comparison, a far narrower range, and 
 has met with more failure than success. Wolf's 
 attempt to disintegrate Homer has not been 
 
 ^ Translated by Bosanquet, Clarendon Press. 
 
78 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 sustained. Niebuhr's theory that the old Roman 
 history was derived from popular ballads has been 
 set aside. Baur's tendency theory of a conflict 
 between Petrinism and Paulinism in the primitive 
 Church, with the inferences thence arising as to 
 the origin of Acts and the Epistles, no longer 
 commands belief. In a region so lofty, dealing 
 with a nature so complex as that of man, and 
 endowed with such undefined possibilities, we 
 cannot go very far either in conjecturing an 
 unknown past or forecasting an uncertain future. 
 Disraeli has enshrined human experience in his 
 well-known aphorism : " It is the unexpected 
 that happens." 
 
 Turn now to the conditions laid down by 
 logicians which theory or hypothesis must fulfil 
 in order to be valid. " Every hypothesis is 
 meant to be an account of a fact," a statement 
 of " the concrete causes, forces, processes out 
 of which," in this case, the Old Testament arose. 
 Now, manifestly, it must meet all the facts of 
 the case. The critical theory, for instance, must 
 account in every detail for the origin of the Old 
 Testament ; and not only how it came to be at 
 all, but how it came to have such a place and 
 hold such an influence. That then is the first 
 rule. 
 
 But that is not enough. Suppose, for instance, 
 you were seeking the explanation of some facts 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 
 
 79 
 
 whose cause was unknown, say, for example, the 
 depressing and deleterious quality of the east 
 wind. A scientist might come to you with an 
 alleged cause that seemed to account for every 
 element in the case, and you might just be on 
 the point of saying : Yes, that is the cause, 
 when another comes with a different explanation ; 
 and lo ! it also accounts for everything. What 
 are you to do in a case of that kind ^ See which 
 is best supported by observed facts. Indeed a 
 hypothesis — especially when it supposes an un- 
 known cause — cannot be regarded as proved 
 unless it find, in actual reality, independent sup- 
 port of its explanation. 
 
 But we have yet to state the highest proof 
 of the truth of a hypothesis. Let us return for 
 an example to Sir Isaac Newton's theory. He 
 sought to account for the planetary motions by the 
 principle of attraction or gravitation. When that 
 law seemed to account for everything, astronomers 
 began to reason from it deductively. They said 
 if gravitation be a reality, it will explain the 
 tides; and it did explain them. When our 
 theory becomes a key, not only to the matter 
 in hand, but to fact after fact hitherto unex- 
 plained, then we may be sure that it is a true 
 account of reality. 
 
 To many readers we are inclined to offer an 
 apology for lingering so long over what must 
 
8o THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 appear to them uninteresting matter. Perhaps, 
 however, they will take our word that this labour 
 is essential. Our soldiers in South Africa often 
 spent the whole night dragging their guns with 
 infinite labour into position on some lofty hill. 
 But next day the guns saved the situation. These 
 points which we have been laying down are not 
 our private opinion, but the accepted rules current 
 among thinking men, by which they test all 
 theories on all sorts of subjects which come up 
 for acceptance or rejection. By and by you will 
 see that the whole length and breadth of the 
 critical theory lie exposed to them. You will 
 hear their projectiles singing in the air, and see 
 them falling with destructive force on many a 
 proud structure. And then you will understand 
 why we have chosen this line of battle — because 
 it takes the enemy in front and shatters his main 
 position. There are no movements of the human 
 spirit, however mistaken in the main, that have 
 not been overruled to produce incidental benefits 
 and individual gains. With these we have nothing 
 now to do, but with the critical theory pressing 
 a destructive view of Holy Scripture on the 
 Church, whose overthrow they, if they have any 
 independent value in them, may survive. 
 
 It will now be our duty, in this and following 
 chapters, to subject this critical hypothesis to 
 those tests by which Logic affirms that the 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 81 
 
 validity of every hypothesis must be established. 
 First of all, we are extremely anxious to bring 
 out, even to those least conversant with these 
 subjects, how purely hypothetical this whole 
 critical position is. And for two reasons. 
 
 We are struck to find that many critics are 
 anxious to make it appear that they have nothing 
 to do with naturalistic assumptions, but are just 
 Bible students, discovering through their expert 
 knowledge certain results — which it is for them 
 to communicate and for us to receive. To this 
 we answer : Your particular bit of work may be 
 of the simply critical and detailed character you 
 describe, but you follow the lead and take the 
 cue of those who occupy the position we have 
 described, and are working to support their con- 
 clusions. A single cog in a wheel has simply to 
 bite at one point into the toothed wheel opposite. 
 In one sense its single duty is accurately to insert 
 itself and hold fast. But the cog is on a wheel, 
 and behind the wheel is an engine, and the whole 
 power of the engine is going through that cog to 
 move the machinery of the mill. And so each 
 private soldier at any part of the immense line of 
 the critical attack must take full responsibihty for 
 the movement into which he has volunteered. 
 
 But we have a further reason. It is very 
 difficult to get at the real position of great 
 questions by reason of the popular clamour 
 
82 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 about them. The vast reading public are ever 
 on the strain for what is new, and when a scholar 
 or a thinker tentatively propounds any theory at all 
 starthng or revolutionary, they seize upon this new 
 sensation, assume its truth, discuss its bearings, 
 press its consequences, and cause the world to 
 ring with it, before men competent to discuss the 
 subject have had time to master the facts and 
 look dispassionately on the whole case. More 
 than that, this general impression, creating 
 enthusiasm, arousing resistance, brings a partisan 
 spirit, and many side issues into the controversy, 
 which make it difficult even for competent judges 
 to see the facts as they are. 
 
 Of all this we have a remarkable example 
 here. Deferring to great names and professional 
 authority, a vast number have assumed that debate 
 is at an end, and criticism is triumphant. How 
 profoundly illogical even cultivated men may be is 
 seen in this, that they take as proved a mere 
 theory or hypothesis, or supposition, which has 
 not yet been tested. On the other hand, multi- 
 tudes who deprecate criticism are filled with un- 
 necessary fear. As there are King's Courts to 
 investigate every charge against even the meanest 
 of his subjects, so there are courts of reason which 
 the greatest array of authorities in the world cannot 
 evade. 
 
 It is a surprise, even to those who have been 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 83 
 
 conversant with this speculation for many years, 
 to find on examination nothing but suppositions ; 
 and more, how purely gratuitous many of the 
 suppositions are. Let us show this in some detail. 
 
 To begin with, it has been supposed that 
 the accounts of the creation and the flood are 
 Babylonish traditions purified, which the children 
 of Israel learned so late as the Exile, and intro- 
 duced into their Scriptures. Some, however, think 
 that these traditions may have come in through a 
 far earlier contact with Babylon, in the beginning 
 of Israel's history. That is an example of the wide- 
 ranging hypotheses characteristic of criticism. 
 
 Again, although in the histories of Egypt and 
 Babylon we find traces of masterful men, brimful 
 of great ideas, and learn that all over the East 
 there were brisk migratory movements toward 
 the West, the Higher Criticism, setting aside 
 the portraits of spiritual heroes like Abraham 
 and Jacob, which impress us as the finest flower- 
 ing of just such an era, gratuitously imagine 
 another condition of things altogether. They 
 conceive a lower civilisation, a dimmer Hght, 
 slower movements, a less tense consciousness, 
 which allowed for the growing up of vague 
 mythical elements. They take personal characters 
 which have powerfully impressed subsequent 
 generations to be legendary personifications of 
 tribes — fictitious efforts to account for the geo- 
 
84 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 graphical distribution of neighbouring nations. 
 This again is hypothesis, and hypothesis right 
 in the face of a narrative which in any case is 
 ancient, and embodies a still more ancient tradi- 
 tion, containing, too, an account more in keeping 
 with the newest unfoldings of that far-off time. 
 If Chedorlaomer and the other kings who joined 
 him in the sack of Sodom stand out in solid reality, 
 witnessed to by Scripture and the monuments, 
 surely characters which had in them the saving salt 
 of holiness and moral majesty might also persist. 
 
 Coming down to the Mosaic age, we have sup- 
 position again — an imaginary picture of a far ruder 
 condition of things than the narrative of Exodus 
 presents. The critics cannot deny a central core 
 of fact. Moses was the true founder of the nation, 
 and the real beginnings of Israel's peculiar career 
 are to be found in his age. You see at bottom 
 they cannot find any explanation but what we find. 
 But, dealing with the fact according to a priori 
 ideas of their own, they reduce the story to 
 natural proportions. In a word, they eliminate 
 the Divine creative element out of the books 
 and leave a natural residuum. Allowing for a 
 germinating conception of God coming somehow 
 into Israel, the story as reconstructed by the 
 critics is just a natural story of escape from 
 captivity, desert-wandering, and conquests; and 
 then slow growth upwards from the level of 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 85 
 
 surrounding heathenism, law accumulating, and 
 sacrifice "refining in idea, from age to age. All 
 this is pure supposition, without one vestige of 
 independent proof. 
 
 Similarly the account given of the later history, 
 e.g.^ that Solomon's temple is not an effort to 
 realise the ideal of the central sanctuary sketched 
 in the Pentateuch, but simply a royal high-place, 
 which did not antiquate the other high places, is 
 merely a bow drawn at a venture, with, of course, 
 all sorts of inferential^ evidence cleverly put to- 
 gether, but with no solid proof. 
 
 Coming to the era of the prophets and the later 
 kings, which is the constructive period according to 
 the critical theory, we have a series of unsupported 
 suppositions without a parallel in any literature, or 
 in the history of the world. First we have the 
 fragment of the book of the Covenant ^ incorporated 
 in the Jehovist and Elohist narrative — at any rate, 
 before Hosea and Amos, or it may be a century 
 earlier. Then in Manasseh's or Josiah's days, 
 before 621 B.C., Deuteronomy came into existence ; 
 and lastly, some time before the close of the Exile, 
 a large proportion of the present Pentateuch, the 
 Priests' Code, was put together and joined with 
 the other codes into a whole. These are simply 
 suppositions, founded, of course, on a great variety 
 of considerations, but, as we stated in last chapter, 
 
 ^ Exodus xx.-xxiii. 
 
86 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 uncountenanced by one shred of fact, and un- 
 supported by independent proof. 
 
 Let us pause to take in that circumstance. The 
 critics have Hved so long in the world of their own 
 theory, and have made so much of views and con- 
 siderations that really depend for their validity on 
 that theory, that they take for proof what is really 
 part of their supposition. And they imagine that 
 we are going to accept on trust this huge structure 
 of supposition, not only without evidence, but 
 despite historical improbabilities of the gravest 
 description, as we saw when dealing with the 
 ages of Josiah and Ezra in our last chapter. 
 
 But, says someone, granted that this critical 
 theory is not historically proved, that it subsists as 
 a hypothesis, still it is the hypothesis of trained 
 experts, who have a knowledge of the language 
 and a command of the sources given to few. 
 True, they are working with a Hebrew text not 
 older than the eighth or ninth century a.d., and 
 the Septuagint dating from 250 B.C., and down- 
 wards. But what triumphs have been achieved 
 by the critical acumen of scholars in other fields ! 
 And, especially when we find so many minds 
 agreeing on certain general conclusions, have we 
 not warrant for believing that there must be 
 something in what they aver ^ 
 
 Certainly let us honour authority and acquire- 
 ments, not as a substitute for proof, but as 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 87 
 
 predispbsing us favourably to consider what they 
 advance as proof. For thirty years we have given 
 such a patient hearing — we mean the Church and 
 Christian people generally — as has never before 
 been given in a similar case. And when still, 
 after thirty years, this hypothesis hangs fire, and 
 actual demonstration is as far off as ever, surely 
 we are not only free, but bound, to inquire into 
 the grounds on which this supposition is set up. 
 
 Principal Stewart, of St Andrews, in Dr 
 Hastings' " Bible Dictionary," ^ concluding strongly 
 for criticism as something which cannot be ig- 
 nored, says that the problem of the Pentateuch 
 "took a new phase when not only linguistic and 
 Hterary considerations were brought to its solution, 
 but also considerations derived from a closer 
 examination of Israel's history, and of the pro- 
 gress of its religious thought and practice." 
 When inquired into, that really means that the 
 hypothesis is founded on a hypothesis. For 
 what did this closer examination amount to? 
 Whence this fresh view of the development 
 of religious thought and practice in Israel ? 
 Principally from two theories of Wellhausen, 
 adopted by many Continental and British critics ; 
 and these in turn were founded on a rigorous 
 application of the theory of natural development. 
 
 Take, first, Wellhausen's view of the centralisa- 
 
 1 Vol. i. pp. 289, 290. 
 
88 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 tion of worship. This is his strong point, on 
 which he rests his whole theory. There is no 
 element of Divine appointment in the worship of 
 Israel. "In the early days worship arose out of 
 the midst of ordinary life." "A sacrifice was a 
 meal."i Even the great national festivals "rest 
 upon agriculture, the basis at once of religion and 
 life."2 In those days the worship of the Bamoth 
 or high places was the general custom up and 
 down the land. The Israelites learned these feasts 
 from the Canaanites, and reproduced Canaanite 
 customs, substituting Jehovah for Baal. The cen- 
 tralisation of worship was a gradual process. The 
 destruction of Samaria threw Jerusalem into relief 
 as a central sanctuary. As these festivals became 
 centralised under the influence of the prophets, 
 they lost their old associations, and became more 
 and more abstract. " And when they had lost 
 their original contents, and degenerated into mere 
 prescribed religious forms, there was nothing to 
 prevent the refilling of the empty bottles, in any 
 way accordant with the tastes of the period. "^ 
 In other words, imagination set to work, and, on 
 what Wellhausen calls "the tabula rasa of the 
 wilderness," reared the hierarchical system depicted 
 in Exodus. The book of the Covenant accord- 
 ingly belongs to the early period, when nature- 
 worship at the high places still existed. The 
 
 1 " History of Israel," p. 76. 2 ,y^^^ p. 96. s jj^^^ p jqj. 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 89 
 
 reform under Josiah, when Deuteronomy appeared, 
 marks the first stage in the spiritualisation of 
 worship ; and in the Priests' Code you have the 
 spiritualised worship fitted out with glorious 
 legendary beginnings. 
 
 Here you have got one hypothesis supporting 
 another, and both without one vestige of inde- 
 pendent proof. If we were entering here in detail 
 into the whole subject, and not furnishing a few 
 proofs of the kind of evidence on which the 
 critical hypothesis rests, we could bring many 
 objections against this theory. As a theory it 
 proves far too much, reducing the history of Israel 
 to such a natural, pagan level that it is impossible 
 to understand how she fulfilled her unique destiny, 
 or rose above the surrounding peoples. Pulverise 
 Old Testament Scripture as you please, it reflects 
 a spirit, and discovers a consciousness of God, and 
 of a national destiny indissolubly associated with 
 God, utterly opposed to this naturalism. 
 
 Then, the documents which the theory accounts 
 for do not bear out the view. Of course, it is 
 easy to prove anything when you remove from the 
 text whatever militates against your position ! If 
 the Ten Commandments, even in the most primitive 
 form, as some critics think, belong to the book of 
 the Covenant, then they represent so vivid a real- 
 isation of one God, and a worship so removed in 
 cardinal features from heathen worship, that we 
 
90 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 cannot for a moment regard this section as author- 
 ising, or even referring to, the nature-worship of 
 the high places. The very passage which is 
 quoted to justify that worship has indeed the op- 
 posite effect : " In all places where I record My 
 name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless 
 thee."i Men were not to worship at their own 
 hand. Jehovah had come into the midst of them. 
 From day to day He would record His name, ap- 
 point the place for rest, and there they should 
 worship. And so when they entered into the 
 promised land He would appoint whatever place 
 seemed good to Him for their ordinary or excep- 
 tional worship. Whatever that consorts with, 
 such a view is utterly opposed to the naturalistic 
 theory, while it is quite in line with God's appoint- 
 ment of a worship which from the beginning aimed 
 at a central sanctuary. He kept in His own hand 
 the appointment of the place where He should 
 come near and bless them. 
 
 What we have to say, however, is that this 
 theory of the centralisation of worship is a hypo- 
 thesis, possessing no vestige of argumentative 
 value, except as it fits into and explains the 
 origin of Old Testament Scripture. And more, it 
 does not stand alone. There is another explana- 
 tion which is more than a hypothesis, w^hich has 
 come down from ancient times, which is imbedded 
 
 ^Exodus XX. 24. 
 
" CHRIST AND CRITICISM 91 
 
 in Scripture, and which, without straining our 
 credulity, explains the peculiarity of Israel's 
 worship far more satisfactorily, so as to allow 
 for its unique place and influence. The discovery 
 of God at Sinai was so glorious, that the worship 
 of Israel stood on a plane of its own from the 
 beginning. While the whole nation was in Horeb 
 there could be no question of many altars. And 
 before they left that holy place, provision was 
 made in the tabernacle for a centralised worship, 
 without thought or mention of any other. Only 
 when they were about to enter into Canaan 
 was it necessary, as in Deuteronomy, to enforce 
 the doctrine of the central sanctuary, and so guard 
 them from the heathen worships of the land. 
 
 If we simply look at facts as they are before 
 us, which, taking everything into account, is 
 the more likely supposition 1. Which has the 
 fewer difliculties 1 And yet the Higher Criticism 
 goes away from the ancient, the obvious, the un- 
 forced explanation, and takes up a theory violent, 
 unsupported, improbable. 
 
 But take another of these hypothetical supports 
 for the reconstruction of the Higher Criticism. 
 Deuteronomy, we are told, must come before the 
 Priests' Code, because the Levites are predominant 
 in that book, while in Exodus, Leviticus, and 
 Numbers we have a more highly articulated wor- 
 ship, in which the priests take the principal place. 
 
92 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Here we have a simple process of natural evolu- 
 tion, boldly imposed on Scripture without a vestige 
 of proof. First comes nature-worship, with no 
 definite order; then Levitical guilds, becoming 
 a Levitical order, with special provision ; and then 
 the priests and high priest as the last stage in the 
 development. So do men embroider their vain 
 thoughts on ^he imperishable substance of Scripture! 
 
 But the wisdom of man is foolishness with God. 
 He has His own plan written indelibly on Scripture. 
 His plan was not evolution, but differentiation. 
 First the whole people were to be a nation of 
 priests ; priestly service was to be the law of their 
 life in response to God's love. Then the first- 
 born sons were specially claimed as the Lord's, 
 and an offering had to be made in Heu of their 
 service. Then the tribe of Levi did service for 
 all their brethren, and had a peculiar provision. 
 And crowning all were the priests, the sons of 
 Aaron. Instead of a poor mechanical idea of 
 natural development, you have a great Divine 
 provision, impressing upon Israel from the be- 
 ginning the unique character which she bore to 
 the end. The nation was bound to its covenant 
 God in priestly service ; every family owned a 
 priestly consecration — that was the essential nature 
 of the kingdom — while Levites and priests were 
 delegated for immediate ministries. 
 
 We might now proceed to apply to this hypo- 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 93 
 
 thesis, based on hypotheses, the scientific tests 
 which we have already mentioned. But, to give 
 the critical theory every advantage, let us look at 
 an argument which has generally been regarded 
 as sufficient to justify the critical view and put the 
 traditional out of account. 
 
 If the Pentateuchal system was complete before 
 the conquest of Palestine, how can we explain the 
 fact that it was never fully operative till the Exile ^ 
 And more than that, "if the whole legal system 
 was revealed to Israel at the very beginning of 
 its national existence," that would cramp further 
 development ; or, as Professor Robertson Smith, 
 who elaborately discusses this objection, phrases it, 
 that "strictly limits our conception of the function 
 and significance of subsequent revelation."^ 
 
 There can be no doubt, we think, that that 
 argument has done more than any other to 
 stagger Bible students, and to incline them to 
 believe that there must be something in the 
 Higher Criticism. And yet the objection derives 
 whatever strength it possesses from the same con- 
 ception of natural evolution which has already 
 been seen to be largely drawn upon, and is 
 pushed home in oblivion of facts of immense 
 significance and importance. 
 
 Of course, in the case of tribes growing up in 
 ordinary conditions, institutions are slowly formed, 
 
 1 '< Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 214. 
 
94 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 react on the nation as they take shape, and so 
 reach full development, becoming the mould in 
 which future ages are formed. 
 
 But suppose that we have here an entirely 
 different set of circumstances. We saw in the 
 last chapter how, in the ages far removed, of 
 Ezra, Josiah, and Amos, the Jew looked back to 
 a solitary national beginning in covenant with 
 God. Suppose then that God did come forth in 
 glorious self-revelation, bound the people in 
 covenant with Himself, and surrounded them with 
 a law impinging on every side of their individual 
 and common life. That was a movement not on 
 the natural plane of self-interest, but in the region 
 of faith and moral submission. It was of the 
 nature of an appeal to faculties half dormant in 
 the bondsmen of Egypt, asleep in all other nations. 
 If we might speak as men, it was an experiment 
 of a redemptive and educational kind. It was, 
 too, a conditional covenant, based on faith and 
 submission on the part of the people. The rules 
 and penalties were all fixed in view of what was 
 fitting and proprirtionate, as between a covenant 
 people and their. God. 
 
 Let faith go, however, let submission be inter- 
 rupted, and violation of the law would be the first 
 effect among those who had sunk down to the 
 natural level again. The whole system had 
 validity to moral vision illumined by the sense of 
 
^CHRIST AND CRITICISM 95 
 
 God, and to that alone. When the people, then, 
 sank to the level on which we find them at the 
 opening of the book of Judges, need we wonder 
 to find the Levitical system in abeyance? They 
 had forfeited the very conditions amid which it 
 might have been observed. The children of 
 Benjamin might have had Jerusalem in the 
 Conquest, but dwelt with the Jebusites,^ forfeit- 
 ing a great opportunity at the dawn of their 
 history. 
 
 Then, lest we judge Israel too hardly, let us 
 remember that she stood alone in the earth on 
 this upward groove. All other nations were 
 burying their primitive sense of God in myth, 
 fetishism, and animism. Now this, at least, must 
 be said — and, all things considered, it is a great 
 deal. While there might be wild plunges into 
 idolatry on the part of the chosen people, with 
 the example of a whole world before them, they 
 did not make their bed in idolatry. They clung 
 to rudiments and fragments of the Mosaic system 
 — to sacrifice, to Shiloh-worship, to the ark of the 
 Covenant. 
 
 You see, too, from the men and women which- 
 the system produced, not only a new sense of 
 God, of His help and scrutiny, but of sin, and of 
 a need of holiness in approaching Him. The 
 fragments — even if all that we read about was 
 
 1 Judges i. zi. 
 
g6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 all that was, and that is by no means certain — 
 had the soul of the Mosaic system in them, and 
 produced men and women of a type to be found 
 nowhere else in the world. 
 
 And when power came to Israel, what do we 
 behold ? After centuries we find a recurrence to 
 type — David within his own time, and then 
 Solomon, as an act of homage to God, resolving 
 to rear a temple on the general lines of the 
 tabernacle. 
 
 Is not that a living history ? Have we not here 
 religion as a vital force, working not mechanically 
 but centrally ? And if what we see be only an 
 imperfect aspiration and adumbration, is it not all 
 the more likely to be real, coming from imperfect 
 men ? 
 
 Compare this pulsating story, with the lights 
 and shadows of a real, if an exceptional life, 
 playing over all, with the machine-made theory 
 of the critics, and you can have little difficulty as 
 to which you should accept. 
 
 There is nothing, therefore, which with any 
 approach to truth can be called a necessity for 
 'this theory. Come, then, and let us apply the 
 scientific tests which logicians have laid down as 
 the necessary conditions of a valid hypothesis. 
 Can the critical theory meet them ? At no single 
 point. As we have seen again and again, it is 
 not consistent with itself. The difficulties which 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 97 
 
 we pointed out in last chapter are real difficulties. 
 Moreover, how can we have beginnings so crudely 
 naturalistic issuing in a religion so separate from 
 all naturalism as that of the prophets, in vivid 
 contact with God ? 
 
 But we saw that when we are trying to dis- 
 cover a cause, and especially when there are two 
 or more rival hypotheses set up to explain the 
 phenomenon, it is not enough that any one of 
 them seems to account for all the facts. Real 
 proof must be brought in to bear out the theory. 
 Have we such proof in favour of the critical 
 theory ? It is a hypothesis based on hypotheses, 
 and there are really no independent facts to be 
 adduced in support. 
 
 But perhaps it is a tour de force of genius 
 which gives the most reasonable explanation of 
 Old Testament religion and the formation of the 
 Scriptures. While it does not conform to rule, it 
 may nevertheless hit the nail on the head. Now 
 manifestly it is for the Christian Church, and more 
 widely the Christian people, to speak. The former 
 treasures in her creeds the living findings of all the 
 centuries ; the latter are receiving into themselves 
 daily the power of religion, and living by her light. 
 After all, the proper quality of a religion is to be 
 discovered from within by the man who experiences 
 it, and by the generations of men who have written 
 out their experiences in life and literature. 
 
98 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Suppose, then, the Church questioning this new 
 hypothesis : On what ground do you claim that 
 we shall accept this view of the rise and develop- 
 ment of Old Testament literature ? Not only do 
 you go wide from, but you trample upon, tradition. 
 You have no foundations of fact upon which to 
 base your leading positions. The answer to that 
 question would be : The sovereign worth of this 
 theory is that it reduces the history of Israel to 
 natural proportions, and brings it within the lines 
 of a natural development. The exceptional and 
 miraculous are removed from the history. We 
 look upon the history of Israel as a slow normal 
 growth, not, as tradition regards it, on a plane of 
 its own, moving under the impact of a creative 
 divine revelation, and within the lines of a covenant 
 fellowship. 
 
 But, says the Church, speaking in all her creeds, 
 these things are no recommendations to us. And 
 the great mass of living souls in fellowship with 
 God through the Spirit support the testimony of 
 the ages. The spiritual stands on foundations of 
 its own as truly as the material, and is authen- 
 ticated by results as fully as any kingdom of 
 nature. We need no mediation of human wisdom, 
 to shore up and buttress the kingdom of God in 
 the souls of men. She stands in Divine power, 
 and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. 
 Now the keystone of the spiritual is the direct 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 99 
 
 self-revelation of God. Thus does it begin in 
 every living soul " When it pleased God to reveal 
 His Son in me," said Paul. ''We have heard 
 Him ourselves, and know" — so spake the simple 
 Samaritans from the depths of personal conviction. 
 And more, in every soul this self-discovery of God 
 starts and controls the whole life-progress. 
 
 But to advance. We have in Christianity an 
 historical instance of a Divine beginning — a creative 
 revelation in Christ, the sum of which abides in the 
 Gospels and Epistles — that has controlled the 
 Christian centuries, and, exhaustless as at the 
 beginning, has fed and animated and guided the 
 generations of the redeemed to the present hour. 
 What you dismiss as an inadmissible exception is 
 the method of God in the sphere of the spiritual 
 and of revelation. Since the Old Testament is 
 one with the New, an integral part of one great 
 progressive revelation, the presumption is very 
 strong that God would use an analogous method 
 in the Old Testament to what He has done in the 
 New. And on that ground alone the traditional 
 view has immensely the advantage. 
 
 That such is the answer of the past — the 
 Christian consciousness of all the ages — there can 
 be no doubt. And while Christ lives and the 
 Spirit works in men, that will continue to be the 
 answer of the generations to come. 
 
 And so the disguise is oiF, and the new criticism 
 
loo THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 is found to be one with the old rationalism — an 
 attempt to deny, or to limit unwarrantably, the 
 full claim of revelation to be a self-unveiling of 
 God, in a glorious purpose of grace, not subject 
 to nature, but coming in as a higher force into the 
 realm of nature to liberate from slavery, and to 
 throw light upon all subordinate kingdoms of 
 nature, from the standpoint of the spiritual, which 
 is the central truth and reality of the universe. 
 
 How do you dispose of an invalid hypothesis ? 
 Simply throw it away. Being merely a supposition 
 it is worth nothing, save as it is accepted univer- 
 sally to be the only adequate explanation of the 
 fact being inquired into. But you say : Is all 
 this enormous labour to go for nothing .^^ Being 
 called into existence to support one view of the 
 origin of Scripture, the toilsome researches fall 
 with the hypothesis which they were invoked to 
 maintain. If there are individual results which 
 have any worth independent of the theory, they 
 will assert themselves in due time. But as the 
 labour in making a flying machine converges on its 
 ability to fly, the whole is lost when experience 
 shows it cannot fly. The Ptolemaic theory of 
 astronomy had a great system of epicycles and 
 eccentrics to account for the motions of the planets, 
 supposing the earth to be the centre ; but when 
 Copernicus showed the sun to be the centre, all 
 this theoretical structure w,ent by the board. 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM loi 
 
 In our humble judgment there is no evading the 
 conclusion at which we have arrived. This move- 
 ment has failed, and, having failed, it should be set 
 aside. A hypothesis is a temporary expedient in 
 absence of direct proof, and if, after due investiga- 
 tion, it lack confirmation or be proved invalid, it 
 should decently die. 
 
 Before closing this chapter, however, we wish 
 to enforce our conclusion of the inadmissible 
 character of this hypothesis by adducing the 
 testimony of Christ. Surely if anyone has a 
 right to speak of the old Testament Scriptures 
 it is He. He was an ardent student of them. 
 He saw everything pointing forward from the 
 beginning to His own work and sacrifice. 
 Abraham beheld His day. The Scriptures 
 testified of Him. He had weighed every such 
 word as a counsel of God, so that to the men 
 on the way to Emmaus, beginning at Moses and 
 all the prophets. He could point out and interpret 
 the things concerning Himself. Surely all that, 
 added to His Jewish birth and His living on the soil 
 of Palestine while the Jews were a nation, gave 
 Him some advantages for understanding how the 
 Scriptures came to be. He was no traditionalist. 
 He lost His life setting at nought Jewish prejudice 
 and wounding Jewish superstition. With great 
 boldness He discovered the Hmitations of Old 
 Testament revelation. 
 
102 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 And yet criticism has the hardihood — and 
 thereby discovers plainly the direction in which 
 it goes — to rule out the testimony of Christ as 
 of no weight on this subject. There is no vagrant 
 critic, albeit his words show conclusively a flagrant 
 non-receptivity for the spirit of our religion, 
 whose theories, if they have any show of learning 
 with them, are not patiently discussed ; but He 
 who saw with unerring eye into the future as into 
 the past, and laid down the lines of a Kingdom 
 which is absorbing all other kingdoms, is set aside! 
 The Lord of glory, entitled to call all men and 
 nations to the obedience of faith, yet He is the 
 inferior of multitudes, who, in far more difficult 
 circumstances, being Gentiles, and removed two 
 thousand years even from the day of Christ, 
 reconstruct the Old Testament with admirable 
 ease, discover the work of different hands in the 
 compass of a single verse, resurrect J. and E. and 
 D. and F\ and P^. 
 
 *' And twenty more such names and men as these, 
 Which never were, and no man ever saw." 
 
 But Others affirm that Jesus accommodated 
 Himself to the men of his own time. They had 
 certain views of the origin and authorship of 
 Scripture, hallowed by tradition, and it was no 
 use, in seeking to confer a spiritual blessing, to 
 rouse their suspicion or awaken their animosity. 
 
 To that we could assent if Christ had been 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 103 
 
 simply silent — avoiding reference to author or 
 age. But, -so far from being silent, He is re- 
 markably explicit. He commits Himself to the 
 historicity of Abraham, not only to his personal 
 reality, but to his covenant place. What the Jews 
 read in their synagogues at that day was the 
 Pentateuch as we have it, regarded with a peculiar 
 reverence as the most sacred part of Holy Scripture. 
 When the Law was spoken of, every Jew under- 
 stood that to be meant ; yet Jesus called that Law 
 the Law of Moses.^ Appealing to the Jews as to 
 their own disloyalty, Jesus said, " Did not Moses 
 give you the law ^ " ^ He quotes from Exodus, 
 Leviticus, Deuteronomy, passages which he calls 
 commandments of Moses. ^ He spoke, too, of the 
 writings of Moses, and declared — yea, made it a 
 part of an argument for His Messiahship — that 
 Moses wrote of him.^ 
 
 Here we have not accommodation but specific 
 assertion of the truth of the traditional view. 
 Not only did Christ not offend Jewish opinion : 
 He had made up His own mind, and expressed 
 His own opinion. And so the prevailing critical 
 view is, that Jesus did not know, being in these 
 matters Hmited by the knowledge of His time. 
 
 Before considering this view, however, we must 
 turn aside to a diversion from the general critical 
 
 ^ Luke xxiv. 44. 2 John vii. 19. 
 
 ^ Mark vii. 10 ; Matthew viii. 4; xix. 7. •* John v. 46, 47. 
 
104 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 explanation, made by Professor George Adam 
 Smith. He tries to win a dubious advantage by 
 making out Christ to be the first critic. One 
 wonders if he has really broken with the ordinary 
 critical opinion, which insists on the limitations of 
 Christ's human knowledge, or has simply taken up 
 this as an argument fitted to captivate the uncritical 
 lay mind. But, taking the view for what it is 
 worth, his argument recoils with crushing effect 
 on its author. As we have already said, Christ is 
 bold in His exposure of the limitations of Old 
 Testament revelation. He assumes an authority 
 over it, widening the narrow and positive commands 
 of the Old Covenant, and carrying them down to 
 their full meaning and real root in the law of love 
 which He was the first clearly to reveal. But if 
 Christ was a critic — a true critic — when He dis- 
 covered the deciduous elements, not only in 
 tradition but in the Old Testament, must He not 
 have been equally a critic in His positive view? 
 Christ then, beyond all question, teaches this : 
 that, with whatever temporary accommodations to 
 an infantile stage of moral development, the law 
 contained the norm, the essential principle of the 
 Divine unveiling, having significance, ay, imperish- 
 able validity, for all time. With all His pruning. 
 He came not to destroy but to fulfil. ^ Yea, in the 
 very perishable elements there were principles of 
 
 ^ Matthew v. 17. 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 105 
 
 perennial value. Progress was not away from the ful- 
 ness of the old law, but in the direction of a still fuller 
 interpretation of all which its precepts truly meant. 
 And so He could say : " One jot or one tittle shall 
 in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." 
 
 But more than that, Jesus recognised that from 
 the earliest beginnings God foreshadowed the 
 end. In His dealings with Abraham there were 
 great outlines of covenant fellowship and pardon 
 through sacrifice. The patriarch saw in germ all 
 that Christ was to stand for in life and in death. 
 From Moses onwards the Scriptures were full of 
 things concerning Himself. In other words, there 
 was in His view the unity of a great plan pervading 
 Scripture which must have been foreseen from the 
 beginning. He who formed the vital cell must 
 have foreseen all to which that cell could develop. 
 And He who laid down the first lines of promise 
 must have known (so numerous are the corre- 
 spondences) all into which they would grow in the 
 fulness of time. That is the unforced significance 
 of the conclusions drawn by this "first of critics," 
 the Son of God ; and they run directly counter to 
 the fundamental positions of the Higher Criticism. 
 
 But the greater number of critics have deemed 
 it safer to take another line. They have held it 
 wrong to consider Christ as a final authority on 
 Old Testament criticism. He everywhere took 
 the Old Testament as He found it, and His beliefs 
 
io6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 were the ones current at that time. And Canon 
 Gore (now Bishop of Worcester) instances His 
 use of Jonah's resurrection, and the flood, and His 
 ascription of Psalm ex. to David, as illustrations of 
 the way in which He echoed prevailing opinion. In 
 order to harmonise this with the Church's belief 
 in Christ as the Son of God and Saviour of the 
 world, he and many others bring in the doctrine of 
 the Kenosis — that Christ emptied Himself, coming 
 to be in the likeness of men. To quote Bishop 
 Gore: ''He, the very God, habitually spoke in 
 His incarnate life on earth under the limitations 
 of a properly human consciousness."^ 
 
 This introduces a very difficult subject, which 
 we cannot attempt to cover in these few closing 
 words. Of course there must have been a marvel- 
 lous self-limitation in the Incarnation, before the 
 Divine nature could live and work within the 
 human. But the point is, was there more than 
 self-abnegation ; was there a putting away, a 
 privation of an essential attribute of Deity, like 
 omniscience ? The proofs on which those who hold 
 this rely do not seem to bear out their contention. 
 Certainly if Christ spoke and thought within a 
 human consciousness, and by means of human 
 words, there was at the same time a wonderful 
 extension of human powers. In numerous minute 
 traits He showed His superiority to ordinary 
 
 ^ See Gore's <' Bampton Lecture," pp. 195-199. 
 
CHRIST AND CRITICISM 107 
 
 human limitations. Consider, too, His knowledge 
 of the future. Here the limits which environ us 
 are strait and absolute. He saw the future un- 
 erringly. He knew not only the fact, but the 
 entire course of His sufferings, and their issue in 
 resurrection. Then what a limitless insight into 
 the unique character, and course, and world-issues, 
 of His Kingdom ! Take those seven parables of 
 the Kingdom narrated by Matthew.^ Note His 
 clear consciousness of the hostility which He would 
 provoke — sending not peace, but a sword — His 
 vision of evil dogging the good, His perception 
 of the suffering state through which the Church, 
 growing stronger by trial, would enter more fully 
 into hberty and power. His world-commission to 
 His disciples, the assurance of His continual 
 presence with His own. If the whole future of 
 the Kingdom lay clear to Him, surely He must 
 have had exceptional insight into the past of that 
 Kingdom, of which He was sum and goal. 
 
 Yet critics deny Him the insight which they 
 arrogate to themselves. In bringing up such 
 minute points as those which we have mentioned, 
 critics are playing with the question. The point 
 is : Did Jesus fundamentally misconceive the char- 
 acter of the Old Testament.^ Did He take for 
 a creative revelation what was a slow and ordinary 
 human growth ? Did He take for prophetic insight 
 
 ^ Matthew xiii. 
 
io8 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 of the patriarch Abraham, words which some 
 imaginative writer put into the mouth of a geo- 
 graphic m3^th whom he first made a historical 
 character ? Did He take, for authoritative laws 
 given by God to Moses, late codifications of Jewish 
 common law wrought up with audacious fictions ? 
 Did that idea of a Divine norm in the law which 
 would yet receive an ideal fulfilment, and that 
 other of a Scripture governed in all its parts by a 
 foreseeing mind, and pointing in all parts to Him- 
 self — did all that only live as a dream and illusion 
 in His own mind ? 
 
 If these things were so, if all that is involved in 
 these admissions were true — if we could for a 
 moment believe them true — then what disparage- 
 ment would fall on the judgment and insight of 
 the Son of God ! If He blundered regarding the 
 preparatory dispensation — our pen trembles to write 
 the words — may He not have misjudged regarding 
 the platform on which He Himself stood ? 
 
 Until these matters are cleared, we need not 
 enter into discussion of those points as to the 
 authorship of Psalm ex., and Christ's references 
 to Jonah and the Flood. These questions enter 
 into central matters affecting His own mission, 
 and are testing to moral judgment and intellectual 
 discernment. And when they are fairly faced, 
 the light and easy dismissal of the testimony of 
 Christ will no longer be possible. 
 
IV 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE DISINTEGRATING 
 PROCESS 
 
 Matt xxi. 44 : '-'But on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him 
 to powder." 
 
 We reached an important point at the close of 
 last chapter. We saw that the Higher Criticism 
 is a hypothesis based upon hypotheses, without 
 external justification, and in face of other and 
 more reasonable explanations ; that it does not at 
 any point meet the tests which logicians have set 
 up to prove the validity of hypotheses ; and, 
 therefore, that being only a theory or supposition 
 in absence of direct proof — devised in the hope 
 of its meeting all the facts of the case — and 
 having failed as such, it should be set aside. 
 
 But we can fancy the critics putting in a caveat 
 against our dismissal of the case at this point. 
 Tabling Dr Driver's ''Introduction to the Old Testa- 
 ment," or the analyses of the books in recent 
 Encyclopasdias, or the Polychrome Bible, as far 
 as published, they say: This is our proof; we 
 have disintegrated and reconstructed the Old 
 Testament on critical lines. Professor George 
 Adam Smith speaks of this as " one of the most 
 
 109 
 
no THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 thorough intellectual processes of our time." 
 Referring on a previous page to " the industrious 
 research " and " unsparing criticism " brought to 
 bear on the several books of the Old Testament, 
 he goes on to say : '' For over a century, every 
 relevant science, every temper of faith, and, one 
 might add, almost every school of philosophy, have 
 shot across this narrow field their opposing lights : 
 under which there has been an expenditure of 
 individual labour and ingenuity greater than has 
 been devoted to any other literature of the ancient 
 world, or to any other period in the history of 
 religion." 1 
 
 We do not wonder that there should be jealousy 
 of the results of such enormous labour. And we 
 hope that we shall never be left to ourselves to 
 speak or write with any other feeling than that of 
 respect for high character, extensive erudition, 
 patient research, and an honest pursuit of truth, 
 whatever our opinion of the results may be. On 
 the other hand, the critics must not for a moment 
 suppose that we are to accept blindly what they 
 give. There is a tone manifest in their references 
 to the common Christian judgment, which, in the 
 interests of truth, not to speak of good feeling, 
 cannot too strongly be reprobated. What the 
 Christian people shall say, what the Christian 
 Churches shall judge, is discounted for them 
 
 1 " Modern Criticism," p. 2. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 1 1 1 
 
 beforehand, by those whose work has to be 
 pronounced upon, with a scarcely veiled contempt. 
 
 In a sentence of his recent volume which is most 
 likely of all to live, Professor G. Adam Smith 
 allows to the Church of Christ with whom abides 
 His Spirit, no liberty of judgment, but only the 
 forced payment of the critically fixed indemnity. 
 Again, when he has eliminated from the history 
 of the patriarchs everything beyond the smallest 
 "substratum of actual personal history," he flouts 
 the conscience of myriads of believing men, to 
 whom such statements raise many difficult ques- 
 tions not easy of solution, with light queries like 
 these: "But who wants to be sure of more? 
 Who needs to be sure of more ? " Canon 
 Cheyne, too, is prone to lecture us on what "con- 
 servatives want, or ought to want." 
 
 In all this, there is a misunderstanding of their 
 position. The critics are the plaintiffs, not the 
 judges ; and they must learn to respect the bar at 
 which they plead. Now that their case is drawn 
 up and stated, there is legitimate and large room 
 for full practical consideration, not merely of their 
 theory and its self-consistency, but of how it 
 stands related to ordinary probabihty, the laws of 
 evidence, and the character of the religion whose 
 origins they would explain. 
 
 As litigants call counsel, let us go back to the 
 logicians whom we have employed to state the 
 
112 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 conditions of a valid hypothesis. Lotze^ utters 
 these weighty words : " Every hypothesis is meant 
 to be an account of a fact, and is no mere figure 
 of thought or means of envisaging the object. A 
 person who sets up an hypothesis beheves he has 
 extended the series of real facts." 
 
 Now what is the position of these higher critics ? 
 They have set up a theory, the main outUnes of 
 which we gave in last chapter. Denying the self- 
 witness of revelation, that the history of the Jewish 
 people started from a creative beginning which 
 controlled the whole subsequent development, they 
 have reconstructed the history so as to show a 
 slow natural evolution. And now in support of 
 this hypothesis they have broken up Scripture into 
 what they regard as its constituent elements. In 
 the Pentateuch they have relegated their three 
 codes, The Book of the Covenant, Deuteronomy, 
 and the Priests' Code, to what they think their 
 proper places in the history. They have broken 
 up the narrative portions into Jehovist, Elohist, 
 and combinations of these. 
 
 All this, in the language of Lotze, however, is 
 a mere figuring of their thought, a means of en- 
 visaging or making visible their hypothesis. It 
 so happens that they have been working in an era 
 of antiquity, in which there are few external facts 
 to disturb them, and with the utmost boldness they 
 
 1 « Logic," p. 350. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 113 
 
 have disrupted and rearranged Scripture so as to 
 fall in with their view of its origin and develop- 
 ment. Not content with one rearrangement they 
 have made changes so sweeping and reversals so 
 violent as to show, that not external facts, but 
 subjective considerations of harmony with their 
 theory have guided them. 
 
 Now let no one suppose that in saying this we 
 impute insincerity or a playing with facts to these 
 critics. Holding their theory to be the true ex- 
 planation of the origin of Scripture, they doubtless 
 hold themselves justified in grouping Scripture in 
 support of their view. As we shall see, there 
 may be in the text some things which give colour 
 to their contentions. Further, we must credit them 
 with the hope, that out of all this disintegration 
 they will evolve a more consistent, truthful and 
 harmonious account of the origin of Scripture. 
 
 But does not that make plain to every candid 
 mind that a great work has to be done after the 
 theory has left the critics' hands, before there can 
 be any question oi its being received by the 
 Church and formulated in her creeds ^ Hypothesis 
 is one thing ; proven verity is another. And there 
 is often a great gulf between them. No one 
 denies the critics the advantages of their expert 
 knowledge. Even they will be constrained to 
 admit that never before in regard to a controversy 
 so fundamental have the innovators been allowed 
 
114 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 so free a hand within the bosom of the Church, 
 and for the most part in places of authority. But 
 while they have — through their hfe-devotion to 
 this calling — a mastery of the text, of all available 
 facts to illustrate it, and of the endless variety of 
 cultured opinion thereanent, there are many others 
 who have qualifications of various kinds fitting 
 them to make important contributions to a full and 
 fair settlement. 
 
 The point for the Church is not, does the 
 hypothesis hang together, but, does it in all parts 
 express the actual, solid, concrete fact ? Have we 
 reason to believe that the sacred literature of the 
 Hebrews did grow up in this fashion ? Taking 
 human nature as it must have subsisted in all ages, 
 the common human conditions within which men 
 live, the serious problems that face them, and the 
 duties that are thrown upon them, can the sup- 
 position be regarded as conclusive which teaches 
 that this literature of the Hebrews, marked by 
 a unique spiritual unity, • and an unapproached 
 ethical spirit, is in origin a mosaic of innumer- 
 able bits, pieced together by imaginative artists, 
 eager to pass them off for something other than 
 they are ? 
 
 Now, on this question of fact there are great 
 numbers whose judgment is better worth having 
 than that of the critics — men of science who 
 understand what is meant by a scientific proof. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 115 
 
 advocates and judges who have had experience of 
 the difficulties and complications of human testi- 
 mony, shrewd observers who, in many walks of 
 study and government, of commerce and industry, 
 deal at first hands with facts — the hard realities of 
 physical nature and human nature. These men 
 have come to understand the limits of human 
 faculty, and believing that they are in the midst 
 of a system of things which they only partially 
 understand, they more and more mistrust brilliant 
 theories based on but a section of the facts, and 
 are content to work to a practical solution, not 
 mayhap eliminating every difficulty, or reaching the 
 height of omniscience, but sufficient, and such as 
 all the facts fairly interpreted support. 
 
 We wish to show, then, how this analysis of 
 Scripture strikes the average cultured man who, 
 endowed with a disciplined intellect, has been 
 dealing with problems of fact, evidence, and 
 human nature, in some one of the many avenues 
 open to investigation and action. 
 
 And, First^ there is a widespread conviction 
 among cultivated men that in this analysis of 
 Scripture, the critics are, with the materials at 
 their disposal, attempting the impossible. 
 
 Let us briefly state their justification for this 
 view. Even when dealing with the work of 
 different hands in a contemporary document, 
 skilled critics have found the task far from easy. 
 
ii6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Who of those who have broken up the Pentateuch 
 into so many documents have attempted to separate 
 Erckmann from Chatrian, or Besant from Rice, in 
 the two series of fiction produced by those literary 
 pairs ? This frequently uttered challenge is per- 
 fectly fair and to the point. 
 
 Then to what extremes have ingenious writers 
 gone in finding strains of one writer in another; 
 discrediting, for instance, Milton, who has taken 
 his place with the immortals, because of his large 
 indebtedness to Du Bartas, ascribing the plays 
 of Shakespeare to Bacon, and so forth. We 
 are here on difficult ground, where learning has 
 often proved mere lumber, where critical faculty 
 has gone astray, and fine literary taste been at 
 fault. 
 
 But those natural difficulties are vastly increased 
 when you take into account the exceptional con- 
 ditions of the Old Testament problem. 
 
 We have referred to the materials at the critics' 
 disposal. The pointed Hebrew text in the hands 
 of Hebrew scholars dates back to the eighth 
 century, or thereby, of our era. Earlier than 
 that there are several translations of more or 
 less value; and preceding these the Septuagint, 
 begun in the first half of the third century B.C., 
 and finished probably about 130 B.C. These are 
 the documents. We have also in the book called 
 by his name, some knowledge of Ezra's Pentateuch. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 117 
 
 Critics believe that the Samaritan Pentateuch came 
 into possession of that people about the same time. 
 But beyond these we have nothing. 
 
 In English literature we have numerous external 
 standards of comparison. The age of Chaucer, 
 " the spacious times of great Elizabeth," the 
 period of Dryden and Pope, and the Victorian 
 era, are all well-defined epochs of literary activity, 
 with marked qualities of their own. So that if 
 any hitherto unknown poem turned up, almost 
 certainly it could be relegated, if not to an 
 individual author, to its own time. 
 
 There are, however, no external standards out- 
 side the sacred writings by which to judge of 
 their date and authorship. Everywhere is one 
 blank. Here you have the singular phenomenon 
 of a people unmarked otherwise by literary faculty, 
 constructive talent, or creative genius, yea, with 
 significant lacks in their nature in all these direc- 
 tions, producing the most magnificent literary 
 monument of antiquity. We possess this literature 
 in the original language of the people, not as 
 Ezra left it, but as 'it came from the hands of 
 Jewish scholars far down the Christian centuries. 
 What critics attempt is, disregarding tradition, by 
 such light as they can gather from a text which 
 they believe to have been put together in an 
 utterly unhistorical order, to assign each fragment 
 its place, and to separate parts of one story, and 
 
ii8 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 even limbs of one sentence, and put between them 
 gulfs of hundreds of years. 
 
 That may be all very easy and necessary from 
 the point of view of envisaging the thought of the 
 critics. But when we come to the further point, 
 whether all this is matter of fact, whether this 
 history, which is not only one body but breathes 
 one spirit, is really made up of an elaborate mosaic 
 glued together by imagined history and an after- 
 wards imposed theory ; when we ask ourselves 
 whether the critics of this late age have the data 
 for such an analysis, we must be allowed to say 
 that we have the gravest doubt. The very 
 historical vacuum in which the critics have 
 laboured, making it easy for them to analyse 
 Scripture and reconstruct it on the lines of their 
 theory, becomes a profound disadvantage when we 
 come to canvass the matter of fact. 
 
 In last chapter we saw that the critical theory is 
 a hypothesis based on hypotheses, and now we 
 see that it is supported by an unchecked hypo- 
 thetical analysis of Scripture. They do not get 
 down to the bottom of uncontested reality at any 
 one point. And we are not going to take guesses 
 raised to the third power for reahties. 
 
 But we have not yet seen all the elements of 
 difficulty making, in our judgment, the critical 
 analysis of Scripture an impossible task. 
 
 Literary analysis means the delicate operation of 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 119 
 
 separating the work of two or more writers from 
 the apparent unity of a single treatise. And its 
 weapons are literary — a keen eye for usage, a 
 feehng for style, a delicate perception of those 
 subtle touches of individuality which give flavour 
 and quality to literary composition. Within the 
 most favourable conditions, with many standards 
 of comparison, the process is somewhat uncertain. 
 Critical judgments are proverbially variable. The 
 possession of this gift, too, by no means implies 
 the possession of other gifts — the just apprecia- 
 tion of historical evidence, of the true inwardness 
 of historical periods, and so forth. Yet all these, 
 and much more than these — the possession of 
 virtual omniscience — are calmly assumed in the 
 literary analysis of the Old Testament. And 
 remember this is the critics' sheet-anchor. When, 
 as in last chapter, we pointed out that the con- 
 clusions of criticism were a hypothesis based on 
 hypotheses, they speak of this critical analysis of 
 Scripture as the demonstration of its truth. 
 
 Turn, then, to the Pentateuch, to which we 
 have been confining ourselves in order to keep 
 our examination within measure. Here we have 
 a work of very various contents, but pervaded by 
 the sense of an all-embracing unity. That sense 
 of oneness commanded the fullest conviction of 
 more than two thousand years. When we 
 examine that unity we find that what links cosmo- 
 
f2o THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 gonies, genealogies, biographies, theophanies, 
 miracles, statutes, ritual, into one whole is, that 
 they all form part of one Divine plan, in the con- 
 sciousness of one of the greatest men the world 
 has ever seen, Moses. These lived as the con- 
 stituents of one great movement, in the most 
 regal intellect of the ancient world. He saw them 
 as such, he wrote them out as such. And till 
 Christ came, this story was the most uplifting 
 moral force in the world. 
 
 That is a unity of a unique description, very 
 difficult to conceive, even more difficult to sustain, 
 but difficult most of all to regard as merely feigned 
 or imagined. The man who would feign could 
 not touch the heights of moral grandeur, much less 
 create the impression of holiness. The reverent 
 soul, who could enter into such a splendour of 
 conception, and into such a glory of Divine purpose, 
 would never feign. 
 
 Remember, too, we are on ground of history. 
 Seti I. and Rameses II., contemporaries of Moses, 
 are as historical as Cromwell or Napoleon. And 
 ages before them we have in Thothmes III. and 
 Queen Hatasu personalities that have left unmis- 
 takable mark on the annals of time. It is even 
 part of the critical c^se that Moses was historical, 
 and that there is bed-rock of fact in the super- 
 structure of this narrative. There is perfect 
 unanimity that the beginnings of Israel lay here. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 121 
 
 See the critics setting forth, then, on their work 
 of analysis. At first they began very tentatively. 
 Astruc pointed out, and laid great stress on, 
 the Jehovist and Elohist documents in Genesis. 
 But even those who contend most strictly for the 
 integrity and inspiration of the Pentateuch are 
 not concerned in the slightest degree to maintain 
 that Moses, in relating former unveilings of God 
 down to the last and most complete revelation 
 made to himself, did not use old and to some 
 extent varying traditions, whose joinings are still 
 apparent. 
 
 Criticism has now travelled far beyond those 
 tentative beginnings. Not only has it cut up the 
 narrative into sections, but it assigns to each frag- 
 ment its age. We are not dealing with strictly 
 creative literature, such as poetry or philosophy, 
 in which individual qualities tell, but with plain 
 narrative, artless and unlaboured in structure, re- 
 flecting outward events like a pellucid stream. 
 Yet they profess to find not only twin streams 
 of narrative, but junctions and redactions of the 
 same, and large and important additions incor- 
 porated in a much later age. 
 
 For instance, in the story of the Flood you have 
 passages belonging to J., which is assigned to a 
 comparatively early period of the history, being 
 incorporated with E.; and these, as a joint narrative 
 with the Book of the Covenant, mayhap a century 
 
122 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 before the time of Amos. And side by side with 
 these passages you have long sections relegated to 
 the Priests' Code, which was put together late in 
 the Exile. When we ask for the grounds of this 
 literary analysis, they are not forthcoming. We 
 are told that this analysis is one of the most 
 thorough intellectual processes of the age. Modern 
 critics stand upon it, as maintaining and justifying 
 their theory. But very much of it is in the air. 
 We have no independent knowledge of the literary 
 tendencies and attainments of the century preced- 
 ing Amos, to give us any justification for saying that 
 J. E. is a product of that time. Between that 
 period and the days of Moses we have not an 
 external fact to point out when either stream of 
 tradition, J. or E., might have been composed. 
 And when they dismiss the idea that the Pentateuch 
 was virtually written in the Mosaic age, there is no 
 standard by which to judge how much may have 
 belonged to the original tradition. 
 
 When we really try to get to the bottom of 
 this disintegration, we find that the chief divisions 
 in this narrative are not due to literary analysis at 
 all. Some sections of this Flood-narrative display 
 a richer consciousness of God, and a far outlook 
 upon the future. Now that is a marked charac- 
 teristic of the prophets. Therefore, they reason, 
 these sections belong to the late prophetic age. 
 But that is begging the whole question. How do 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 
 
 123 
 
 they know but that (as Revelation itself declares) 
 an hour of such terror was not a season of Divine 
 opportunity in which God threw light on the far 
 future ? They answer : Our theory presupposes 
 a slow, natural development. But this literary 
 analysis was to be the chief support of your theory ; 
 yet you are depending on your theory for one 
 main branch of your analysis. 
 
 Here you can see at a glance the thoroughly 
 vicious intellectual method of the Higher Criticism. 
 The critics set up a theory of the slow development 
 of Jewish religion. They support that by Well- 
 hausen's hypotheses of the slow growth upwards 
 from nature feasts of the Old Testament sacrifices, 
 and of the gradual development of the priesthood. 
 And then, with much blowing of trumpets, they 
 declare that this theory stands on a literary analysis, 
 which is in part purely speculative, and in large 
 part depends for its conclusions on the theory 
 which it pretends to support. We set out to 
 show good grounds for believing that such an 
 analysis was impossible. We have gone much 
 further, and exposed a spurious method, false to 
 every law of evidence, which deserves repro- 
 bation. 
 
 Secondly. Consider the complex and elusive 
 character of this analysis. Such is our deliberate 
 view of the nature of this disintegration. To put 
 the matter on the lowest ground, we have here no 
 
124 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 manner of security that we have got out to the 
 real facts, and to the actual manner in which the 
 Pentateuch was built up. The theory of the 
 critics is envisaged — that is all. 
 
 The same conclusion is borne out by another 
 line of remark. Life is an earnest business. Now 
 and again we have instances of human eccentricity, 
 but human life is not spent in making and unravel- 
 ling puzzles. The exigencies of being keep men 
 close to reality. The law of parsimony holds 
 here. It is quite possible that in the documents 
 of a nation, which had lived to purpose in the 
 world, there might be works of composite author- 
 ship. And if analysts succeeded in dissecting them 
 so that they stood out distinct compositions, by 
 internal qualities and marks of time, then we might 
 accept them, all the more readily if their separa- 
 tion made the literature as a whole harmonious. 
 But if separation lead to more separation, if in 
 every separate section men see new sub-divisions, 
 and if even these do not suffice, but we must 
 bring in theories of further editing and misplacing 
 and transposing to account for what we find ; and 
 if, still further, this elaborate analysis in one part 
 produces, not the harmony of the whole, but 
 greater excesses of critical analysis in other parts, 
 what would the average common sense of the 
 world say ? They would declare that the critics 
 were hunting false analogies, misreading the signifi- 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 125 
 
 cance of apparent resemblances and discrepancies, 
 and had blundered. 
 
 That is the precise situation in which we find 
 ourselves here. There is an apparent agreement 
 on certain main narratives — the Jehovist, the 
 Elohist (united into J. E.), the Book of th^ Cove- 
 nant, the Deuteronomist, and the Priests' Code. 
 But when we look more narrowly, there is not one 
 of these that is not more or less composite. 
 Take the early narratives J. and E., and according 
 to Professor G. F. Moore, a writer of repute,^ 
 behind these there was a common stock from which 
 they both drew. Professor Adam Smith thinks 
 these writers are linguistically hardly to be dis- 
 tinguished. Professor Moore marks a difference 
 of individuality and of religious standpoint, which 
 he must have discerned through their words. 
 Then these are united by the redactor, who seems 
 to have used great liberty, sometimes quoting 
 directly, sometimes closely interweaving so as to 
 baffle analysis, sometimes adding matter of his 
 own, harmonising his authors, and emphasising the 
 religious motives of the history. And with the 
 accomphshed result in their hand in the Hebrew 
 text of the eighth century a.d., they can separate 
 all these hands, one under another, through all 
 the blurring of one another's work of which these 
 writers were admittedly guilty ! 
 
 1 See " Encyclopsedia Biblica," pp. 1674-5. 
 
126 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 But then in Genesis and Exodus all these were 
 united with the Book of the Covenant and the 
 Priests' Code. The Book of the Covenant is 
 composite ; the Priests' Code with which the 
 whole was finally joined in the later centuries of 
 the national history is so composite, that Professor 
 Moore says^: ''It (the Priests' Code) is rather 
 to be compared to a stratum, the deposit of a 
 considerable period, in which distinct layers are 
 to be seen." To ascertain all this the analysts 
 have just the text to which we have referred. In 
 this way they may make their theory visible to their 
 own minds, but where they are ever to get 
 evidence of its actual reality passes our thought. 
 The very complexity of the analysis lowers the 
 probability, and strengthens the supposition that 
 what they discern are not the sutures or joinings 
 of different documents, but varying phases of a 
 coherent history. 
 
 Still we are far from having seen the com- 
 plexities of this analysis. In a plain narrative of 
 any degree of fulness it would be a comparatively 
 easy thing to separate two stories, each somewhat 
 full, with a certain mental or moral colour of its 
 own. For instance, Mr Froude gives a very full 
 account of the great controversy which arose 
 between Henry VIII. and the Pope and the 
 Emperor about the former's divorce from Queen 
 
 1 '' Encyclopaedia Biblica," p. 1449. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 127 
 
 Catherine. It would not be difficult to piece out 
 of that two narratives — one with an English, the 
 other with a Papal bias — both fairly complete, 
 and each with as good a title to be called a 
 separate document as J. and E. in Exodus. 
 
 Where we would expect this analysis to help 
 us would be in the miraculous or supernatural 
 occurrences. If they had been artificially put 
 together — crude elements of fact helped out by 
 audacious fiction — it might have been possible to 
 separate the archaic foundations of the story from 
 the enlarged interpretations of the prophetic spirit. 
 Yet just here they most conclusively fail. In the 
 article ^'Exodus," in Dr Hastings' "Dictionary of 
 the Bible," we find this statement regarding the 
 Sinai section from cap. xix. to cap. xl. : " It is 
 generally agreed that the sources are much dis- 
 located, and that the material has been repeatedly 
 revised by successive editors and compilers. Most 
 editors abandon the attempt to carry through a 
 systematic analysis or reconstruction. The system 
 adopted here for the J. E. portions is that of Bacon, 
 and its resort to the hypothesis of wholesale 
 transpositions can only be justified by the hope- 
 lessness of less drastic methods and the compara- 
 tive harmony and order which it introduces."^ 
 
 Now, let us pause for a moment and look at 
 the situation. Here is a book — the Pentateuch 
 
 1 Vol. i. pp. 808-9. 
 
128 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 — which has come down from a remote past, as 
 an inspired composition, the work of Moses. 
 Josephus^ says: ''It becomes natural to all Jews 
 immediately and from their very birth, to esteem 
 these books to contain divine doctrines, and, if 
 occasion be, willingly to die for them. And of 
 them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws 
 and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his 
 death." The same belief, written broad and deep 
 on the New Testament, has held ground in the 
 Christian Church, almost without debate, until the 
 nineteenth century. During this last period have 
 risen up the critical theory and (whether as cause 
 or effect we shall not inquire) this critical 
 analysis. Both are speculative adventures, to be 
 considered only in so far as they can make their 
 position good. "When, then, attempting a task 
 begirt with such enormous difficulties and uncer- 
 tainties as we have seen, they meet with such 
 indifferent success, hardly to be distinguished from 
 failure, at the testing places, what must be the 
 common-sense judgment of men ^ Not only have 
 critics not come within sight of any proof on 
 which a Church could take action, but there is a 
 very strong probability that the critics have been 
 mistaken, that any traces of separate documents 
 are very much slighter than the critics have sup- 
 posed, and that these disintegrating processes are 
 
 1 "Against Apion," i. ch. 8. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 129 
 
 carried far in excess of the actual facts of the 
 case. 
 
 Third^ the lack of internal witness to this 
 analysis. — What we mean is that there is not 
 such a commanding number or quality of difficulties 
 in the text as to necessitate this disintegration. 
 
 Before dealing with this point, however, we 
 may touch on a difficulty which may have suggested 
 itself to calm and dispassionate minds. They may 
 think that, having respect to the numbers of 
 acknowledged scholars who have been engaged in 
 this analysis, and the acceptance which their work 
 has received, that it argues presumption to express 
 the doubts, and the more than doubts, which we 
 have uttered regarding this analysis. " What," 
 we can fancy someone saying, " do you mean to 
 assert that these fine minds devoted to such studies 
 and with the latest knowledge at command, have 
 made distinctions which had no existence, separated 
 
 without any justification J. and E., and D. and P. 
 
 that these streams of tradition, simpler and more 
 elaborate, more primitive and later, have nothing 
 corresponding to them in the text of the Penta- 
 teuch ? " 
 
 To this we must answer that no one can doubt 
 the earnest purpose or the intellectual honesty 
 with which this analysis has been carried on. 
 But there is an explanation which at once accounts 
 for those diversities in the narrative which sug- 
 
130 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 gested the analysis, and nevertheless points steadily 
 to our conclusions. 
 
 The error lies behind the literature, in the 
 fundamental view taken of the history which it 
 narrates. Every great movement which strikes 
 into the centre of human interests starts activities 
 in a vast variety of directions. Take the Refor- 
 mation, like Mosaism in this, that it sprang from 
 the wing-stroke of a mighty spirit. As historians 
 teach us, that remarkable movement sent a new 
 impulse into every avenue of European life. And 
 so Mosaism was in even grander measure a creative 
 beginning, a birthday of the human spirit, and as 
 such lifted the whole nation to a new plane. 
 Everything had to be arranged from that new 
 covenant centre — laws of civil rule, immediate 
 ordinances of worship, general lines of principle 
 which might later be carried into specific detail ; 
 then the elaborate ritual system of approach to 
 God ; and then wide outlooks on the future in the 
 spirit of the covenant relation. This central creative 
 influence makes itself felt at all these points, work- 
 ing swiftly and thoroughly under the influence of 
 these Divine energies. History recognises creative, 
 quietly progressive, and reactionary eras. And 
 Scripture teaches that with the Lord — in the 
 Divine administration — one day is as a thousand 
 years, and a thousand years as one day. 
 
 The differences in the narratives, which have 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 131 
 
 been regarded as signs of divergent authorship, are 
 facets or aspects of a many-sided Divine fact, Hving 
 varieties of view and expression and prevaiHng 
 interest, as under the povt^er of God this great 
 leader turned from side to side — to the religious 
 or to the civic bearings, to the immediate or remote 
 issues of this Divine revelation. And the diver- 
 gences in the lav^^s are not the result of wide 
 separation in time, but the natural outcome of the 
 immediate necessities of this creative age in relation 
 to the dispensation which it began. According to 
 this view the Pentateuch is the starting-point of 
 the chosen people, fully equipped in vision of God, 
 statute, and prophetic outlook, for a career in 
 covenant relation with God from generation to 
 generation. 
 
 In many other nations, however, the order has 
 been different. Nations like Rome, which have 
 risen to great power, have had small beginnings. 
 And later generations, elated with their supremacy, 
 have been tempted to glorify the crude fact of 
 these beginnings with positive legend and pictur- 
 esque detail. Where the Higher Critics, in our 
 judgment, have gone astray is, in supposing, against 
 tradition and the strongest internal evidence, that, 
 with whatever differences, Jewish sacred history 
 followed the same course of natural development ; 
 and in applying methods, suitable enough in deal- 
 ing with common human fact and growth of legend, 
 
132 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 to a totally different situation, the incoming of a 
 true revelation of God, and its creative influence 
 on the life and institutions of the people. What 
 the critics imagine to be the documents of different 
 authors and successive redactors, imaginatively 
 realising an ideal past, are really the actual many- 
 sided outcome of a wonderful discovery of God to 
 men. This gave them that solitary elevating 
 power which made Jewish history stand alone in 
 the world. While ideal reconstructions, such as 
 the critics suppose, are a form of intellectual 
 amusement to cultivated minds, which have never 
 deceived for long human judgment, or made a 
 single contribution to the moral advance of mankind. 
 
 But we must now turn to another point of some 
 importance. After dealing at such length with 
 this literary analysis, one is apt to receive a severe 
 shock in coming across the statement in Professor 
 G. A. Smith's volume,^ that the criticism of the 
 Old Testament is mainly historical. He still 
 further defines his meaning at page ^^^ where, 
 after referring to the double accounts of Creation 
 and the Flood, he adds : " It is on the presence of 
 many such doublets in the Hexateuch and his- 
 torical books that the modern criticism of the Old 
 Testament is based." After studying such books 
 as Driver's " Introduction " and the elaborate 
 
 1 '< Modern Criticism, &c.," p. 46. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 133 
 
 articles in the " Dictionary of the Bible " and in 
 the '^ Encyclopaedia Biblica," where, with infinite 
 labour, documents are separated on account of 
 style, spirit, scope, and such like considerations, 
 one marvels at such a statement. Leaving that 
 alone, however, let us look at the facts which are 
 relied on as sufficient to justify the wholesale 
 disintegration of Scripture. 
 
 We are expressly told that they are the doublets 
 or double accounts of the same event in Scripture. 
 Let us look at them. 
 
 The first is the two accounts in Genesis of the 
 Creation. But it is the very contention of those 
 who uphold the historic unity of the Pentateuch, 
 that in an age of revelation, looking back from the 
 mountain-top of fellowship with God, Moses com- 
 posed the earlier history, using such traditional 
 accounts, oral and written, as existed, but seeing 
 their divine meaning, and the drift of purpose 
 running through them, in the light of present 
 facts and experiences. 
 
 Examine another instance, as proof of the light 
 grounds on which the most sweeping inferences 
 are made to rest, and by which the most revolu- 
 tionary proposals are justified. Take a well-known 
 double account. In Genesis xxviii. 10-22 we read 
 that, when on his way to Laban, the fugitive Jacob, 
 after the vision of the angels, called the name of 
 the place Bethel; while in Genesis xxxv. 9-15 we 
 
134 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 are told that he named it Bethel many years after, 
 when he had returned from his servitude under 
 Laban. Have not those who seriously press this, 
 from Hupfeld downwards, imagination enough to 
 put themselves in Jacob's place ? What did the 
 first naming mean ? Jacob was a solitary wanderer, 
 coming ere nightfall, leaving on the morrow "with 
 his staff to pass over Jordan." He had no power 
 to fix the name for the community. It was his 
 name, for a sign between God and him, until he 
 should return. When he came back Jacob showed 
 a strong reluctance to return to Bethel until God, 
 by the memory of his former experiences, and 
 using the name which was entwined with these, 
 urged him to return. Then ensued a series of 
 observances which can only be fully understood in 
 the light of the earlier narrative in chapter xxviii. 
 Jacob was now the head of a clan. He said unto 
 his household and all that were with him : " Let 
 us arise, and go up to Bethel." He was going to 
 bring them into the covenant relation in which, 
 hitherto, he had as an individual stood. So, though 
 they would know his story and the name which he 
 had given to the place, he solemnly built an altar 
 and said : This shall now be for my people as for 
 myself, Beth-el, the house of God. Yea, he added 
 another El, El Beth-el, as if to bring in the idea of 
 God, in His house, entering into covenant with 
 them. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 135 
 
 And then came the further blessing.^ In fulfil- 
 ment of the first promise, made so long ago, God 
 returns and renews the covenant. This was the 
 crowning moment of Jacob's life. The covenant 
 made with Abraham was to stand irreversibly in 
 him. The period of probation was at an end, the 
 period of acceptance as covenant heir had come. 
 With this was entwined the change of name to 
 Israel, first intimated at Peniel. And at the close 
 Jacob repeats the rite with which the covenant 
 was first made, adding a drink offering, and con- 
 firming the name in undying association with God's 
 covenant promise. If we are to leave any religious 
 meaning in the narrative at all, there could not be 
 a more consistent or impressive account. 
 
 There are several other so-called doublets of 
 less importance even than this, such as the double 
 narratives of the overthrow of Jericho and of the 
 siege of Ai. But we come to one which was 
 dwelt on by the late Professor Robertson Smith, 
 and bulked largely in the beginnings of this con- 
 troversy in our land. Turn to the wonderful 
 story of David and Goliath in i Samuel xvii. 
 The diflficulty is David's double appearance at the 
 court of Saul. According to that remarkable 
 scholar the whole matter was susceptible of easy 
 and complete explanation. The Septuagint omits 
 verses 12-31 in chapter xvii., and from the fifty- 
 
 ^ XXXV. 11-15. 
 
136 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 fifth verse on to the fifth verse of next chapter, 
 making the account free from difficulty. In other 
 words, there were two accounts mixed up in our 
 Bibles quite contradictory. According to the one, 
 David was an armour-bearer at the court of Saul, 
 who went out to the conflict with Goliath. Accord- 
 ing to the other, David had never been at court 
 at all until, a shepherd lad, he was sent with 
 provisions to his brothers, and burst into fame by 
 his offer to fight the Philistine. 
 
 Now, if all that had been true, it would have 
 proved a great deal — that there were conflicting 
 narratives of the same incident, and unskilful 
 redaction of these into one. But in the very 
 account of the young unknown shepherd, who had 
 never been at court, there is the express statement 
 that he returned from Saul to feed his father's 
 sheep.i And, strangely enough, while the critics 
 cling to the two narratives, they differ widely from 
 Professor Robertson Smith's view. Dr Driver 
 admits that the difficulties are not all removed, 
 and is doubtful whether the Septuagint is to be 
 preferred to the Hebrew ; and Wellhausen and 
 Kuenen think that the omissions were consciously 
 made in the Greek to get rid of apparent difficulties. 
 
 Such are some of the difficulties which surround 
 what appeared for long one of the plainest in- 
 stances of different documents with the joinings 
 
 1 Verse 15. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 137 
 
 perfectly apparent. After all, the seeming dis- 
 crepancies are capable of genuine reconciliation. 
 These books are not mere annals of external facts, 
 but histories with the profoundest spiritual side, in 
 which the unchanging laws of fellowship with God 
 are laid bare to a spiritual eye with extraordinary 
 power. 
 
 Take the story as it stands, and nothing could 
 be more in keeping. A youth, well grown, on 
 whom the seal of God as future king rested, went 
 as harper to the troubled king. Taken from his 
 sheep, with the litheness of the boy and the great 
 limbs of raw and unformed manhood, he is made 
 a personal attendant on Saul. What a stir the 
 invitation would send into that house ! Was not 
 this God's way to fulfil His promise of the crown ? 
 So might the father, so might David think. Royal 
 favour is fickle, however, and David returns to his 
 sheep — not the first nor the last to learn in bitter 
 experience that we cannot anticipate what God 
 will do. He has not much pleasure at home. 
 Spiteful at David's choice and promotion to court, 
 his brothers are jealous. They start for the war 
 with Goliath, while David, despite his undoubted 
 prowess, is left out of all. 
 
 Nothing truer was ever drawn. No man who 
 has done wonderful things for God ever lacked 
 such bitter disillusions. He must come to lean 
 solely on God. Then, by a simple circumstance 
 
138 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 not of his seeking, he is brought at once into the 
 arena of conflict and victory. That has rung true 
 to myriads of heroic hves in all the centuries. As 
 to his not being recognised, he was just at that 
 time of life when young men change most. '' Thou 
 art but a youth," said Saul to David before the 
 conflict. He was still in the dawn of manhood, 
 so that on his former residence juvenile traits may 
 have still clung to him. All this, however, is not 
 required. No wonder Saul, distraught and self- 
 absorbed, did not discover, in the man aflame with 
 a great resolve, his submissive boy harper, or the 
 handy armour-bearer. David stood braced up that 
 morning for Jehovah's service. He owed nothing 
 to the king, he owed nothing, but for grudges and 
 ill-will, to his brethren. He had leaned upon God, 
 and by His own wonderful working God brought 
 forth His righteousness as light and His judgment 
 as the noonday. When you have such flawless 
 spiritual coherence, why rob a story of the finest 
 qualities by the very tame method of sawing it 
 in two? 
 
 If these, and such as these so-called double 
 accounts are the foundations on which criticism 
 rests, they must be regarded as slender indeed. 
 
 And now we must very rapidly summarise our 
 remaining objections. Though very important 
 they are capable of being stated in a few words. 
 
 And Fourth^ as heightening the improbability, 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 139 
 
 these disintegrations, numerous, complicated, and 
 highly uncertain, lead to further disintegration. 
 
 According to confident statements these dis- 
 integrations were to work into a complete and 
 highly superior harmony. But, as a matter of 
 fact, disintegration is going from bad to worse. 
 We have had many evidences already how far 
 from completeness, and even from certitude, the 
 analysis is, and we might multiply such con 
 fessions. 
 
 But there is one recent instance so outstanding 
 that it may serve for proof Canon Cheyne is 
 generally regarded as one of the foremost British 
 critics, bolder than some, less hampered by fear of 
 consequences, not afraid to follow his arguments 
 to conclusions from which others would stop short, 
 but admired by all and supported in his latest ven- 
 ture, the " Encyclopaedia Biblica," by leading repre- 
 sentatives of criticism, more conservative and more 
 pronounced. 
 
 In that " Encyclopaedia Biblica " this brilliant, 
 restless, versatile spirit returns to his oft-trodden 
 subject of Isaiah. And he has produced a docu- 
 ment of immense importance in this connection. 
 Granted that he is in advance of the great majority 
 of critics, he shows the unmistakable trend of 
 critical opinions. In that article he institutes a 
 comparison between the earlier and the later schools 
 of criticism, taking Kuenen for his chief exponent 
 
I40 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 of the former. The difference between the two 
 is that the latter is infinitely more destructive, re- 
 gardless of tradition, rash in suggestion — reducing 
 Isaiah to a mass of broken fragments. Referring 
 to chapters i.-xxxix., of whose Isaianic authorship 
 in the main most critics were wont to be assured, 
 he says: "It is too bold to maintain that we still 
 have any collection of Isaianic prophecies which 
 in its present form goes back to the period of that 
 prophet." The second division is also highly com- 
 posite, containing songs inserted in the prophetic 
 writings, a prophetic imitation of these songs, a large 
 section ^ containing no works of the second Isaiah : 
 the whole being a collection of fragments, edited 
 and re-edited, and not put together till about 250 
 B.C. ; the final redaction which made the entire 
 book one occurring shortly after. 
 
 One cannot but remember the strong assertions 
 made in former years, to the effect that if the 
 prophets were made the real beginners of the 
 Jewish religion, and the early history considered, 
 in its present form at least, a late composition 
 under prophetic influence, everything would fall 
 into line. But the actual result is disastrously 
 different, and shows that the critics have been 
 going on wrong lines, and have been dealing with 
 a literature which eludes their analysis, being too 
 vast for their grasp. ''Whosoever falls on this 
 
 1 Chaps. Ivi.-lxvi. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 141 
 
 stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it shall 
 fall it will grind him to powder." 
 
 Fifth. — This whole process of analysis lacks 
 external testimony. We have seen in part 
 how the Old Testament has been broken up to 
 envisage or shadow forth the critical theory of the 
 origin of Scripture. Now for all this we have not 
 a vestige of external testimony. All tradition is 
 sternly opposed. One of the insuperable objec- 
 tions which the critics have to get over, and which 
 they have not touched, is to explain how, against 
 all the facts of the case, the impression of unity 
 and the sense of sacred authoritativeness were 
 formed. How did the Jews, shortly after the 
 Pentateuch was put together in the exile, receive 
 it as a revelation from God at the hands of 
 Moses ? 
 
 Nor have we any independent example of 
 joinings of documents and editings or redactions, 
 such as the critical theory so extensively employs. 
 The only attempt to furnish such independent 
 proof which we have come across was that made 
 by Professor Robertson Smith, through a com- 
 parison of the Septuagint and the Hebrew text. 
 He pointed to the fact that the earlier Greek text 
 of the Septuagint was briefer, more concise, want- 
 ing many clauses to be found in the Hebrew ; and 
 he chose a long section in Jeremiah xxxii. in proof 
 of this. Here, we were told^ was the process of 
 
142 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 redaction going on. But in the selected passage 
 we have no junction of documents, but simply a 
 fuller narrative in the Hebrew than in the Greek. 
 Who was more likely to preserve the text with 
 literal accuracy — the Jews, who believed in the 
 writings as a revelation of God, or the Greek 
 translator, who was introducing the Scriptures as 
 literature, not as a revelation, to a strange people ? 
 Most naturally would the latter use liberties with 
 his text, omitting and abbreviating the less interest- 
 ing portions of his original. Speaking of Jeremiah, 
 too, a great scholar, himself a higher critic, affirms 
 that " there can no longer be any doubt that the 
 form of the text yielded by the Greek translator 
 is a mutilated and corrupted one, which arose out 
 of the text preserved to us in the Hebrew, and at 
 a much later time." ^ And so the last semblance of 
 external testimony goes. 
 
 Thus, then, as fairly and candidly as possible, 
 have we put the main facts about this analysis 
 before the ju^y of average men, who have to ask, 
 not, How does this consort with the theory? but 
 another, and far more important question, Has 
 this any claim to be considered fact? Take this 
 literature of the Old Testament as it lies in our 
 hands, and as it has influenced the Jewish people 
 and all the Christian centuries. Professor Mar- 
 
 1 Graf, quoted in "Lex Mosaica," p. 221, n. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 143 
 
 goliouth says : " After having once taken its place 
 at the head of the Hterature of the world, it has 
 no intention of quitting that post." Consider the 
 matter how you will, we are dealing with a unique 
 fact in the history of the world. As the writer 
 just quoted remarks, the lost literatures which 
 have recently been coming to light " rarely have 
 any value of their own. Egypt and Assyria have 
 produced monuments which were long lost, but now 
 are found and deciphered. Who reads them except 
 out of mere curiosity, or to aid him in some other 
 study ? Indian literature is now as easy of access as 
 Greek. But who cares for it ? " And yet here we 
 have not a great people like any of those whom we 
 have mentioned, but "a nation which," as one who 
 should know them well says, " of its own self could 
 do nothing for science or philosophy, which could not 
 observe and could not experiment, which could not 
 compile a grammar nor invent a metre ";^ and they 
 produce this literature — a Hving whole, a supreme 
 literary creation, animated by an ethical spirit and 
 world-view which has moulded, and still moves the 
 world. 
 
 How can you explain such a fact ? What the 
 greatest and most ingenious nations of the earth 
 in the glory of their power failed to accomplish, 
 how did the Jews achieve? Was it by such a 
 process of inversion as that which the higher 
 
 1 Prof. Margoliouth's " Lines of Defence," pp. 245, 246 
 
144 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 criticism sets forth, by tesselated work of pieced- 
 together prophecies, by crude traditions of history 
 and law, the former wrought up with imaginative 
 details and miraculous accretions ; the latter altered, 
 elevated in tone, informed with a prophetic spirit, 
 and projected with the setting of pictorial narrative 
 into a heroic past ? By no ingenuity can that be 
 made in the slightest degree likely. Not only is 
 such a supposition in defiance of all natural proba- 
 bility, the moral sense rejects the whole hypothesis 
 as in flagrant violation of the plainest canons of 
 moral judgment by which, even in this imperfect 
 world, action has been guided and opinion has been 
 sustained. The words of Christ cannot be shaken : 
 "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of 
 thistles ? " Could a revelation which has searched 
 generations of men with the fire of God, and has 
 exposed and still exposes every form of unrighteous- 
 ness, be itself a sham, pervaded by a self-witness 
 which is a lie, built of legend, fancy, tradition, by 
 art and man's device ^ 
 
 The very statement of such suppositions is their 
 overthrow. By no possibility could the critics' 
 theory and analysis be the true explanation. The 
 result could not even be ascribed to the greatest 
 constructive genius. God has lived and moved in 
 this history, as Revelation itself witnesses. God 
 has guided the people in a way which wit of man 
 could not preconceive ; and He has animated the 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 145 
 
 penmen to preserve for all ages in an inspired 
 record the story of what He has done. 
 
 That this will be the conclusion of the Church 
 we feel to be as certain as that this frame of things 
 shall come to an end. And so, instead of being 
 reduced to a lower plane, the Bible shall stand 
 forth in more distinctive glory above all other 
 literature, and command a deepened reverence as 
 the inspired record of a Divine purpose. This 
 book has had a very remarkable history. In the 
 earher Testament coming down to us from the 
 Jews, and borne witness to as inspired by Christ 
 and His apostles ; in the New Testament coming 
 together out of an enormous literature, and estab- 
 lishing a claim to being a Divine Word, by inherent 
 purity, internal harmony, and its flawless appeal 
 to the divine life which Christ had awakened — 
 this Bible has advanced, century by century, to 
 place and influence in individual experience and 
 in the Church. The Spirit of God guiding the 
 Church, according to the promise of Christ, into 
 the truth, has discovered to us afresh, age by age, 
 the value, the resources, the quahty of this Divine 
 Word. 
 
 One has only to study the history of the Church 
 to find examples of this growing appreciation. 
 When that great Bible student, Origen, was sore 
 pressed by the critics of that early day— Ebionite, 
 Gnostic and Greek, — secure in his perception of 
 
146 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 the spiritual unity of the Scripture, he rashly gave 
 up the natural sense of many passages. He con- 
 fessed that they contained natural and moral 
 impossibilities only to be interpreted in the 
 allegorical sense. Looking back, we can see that 
 there were many explanations, denied to him, 
 which the enlarging experience of after-times 
 would bring with it, and that things which he 
 made difficulties have become glories. Yet if he 
 admits many things — as impossibilities, trivialities, 
 ineptitudes — which we cannot allow, the spiritual 
 worth of Scripture ravished his soul. " The letter 
 is the external garb, often sordid and torn ; but 
 the King's daughter is all glorious within." ^ Even 
 the great Augustine said that he believed the Bible 
 on the authority of the Church. Magnificently 
 although he entered into and opened out some 
 leading principles, he did not discern the full 
 content of Scripture, nor that divine harmony of 
 revealed truth in which, like a star, or rather a 
 great constellation, she shines above all human 
 authority, incontestably divine. 
 
 Then ensued a long period of partial obscuration, 
 when through the activity of reason on the one 
 hand and tradition on the other, the Scriptures for 
 centuries were thrown into the background. The 
 Reformation was one consequence of their redis- 
 covery, and all the currents of influence which 
 
 1 Biggs' " Christian Platonists of Alexandria," pp. 137, 138. 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 147 
 
 made that movement a well-head of new life, not 
 only to the Protestant, but also by reaction to the 
 Catholic nations, and to great new free-born nations 
 that have since sprung into being, flowed from 
 renewed contact of heart and head with the living 
 Word of God. For the first time the Word of 
 God rose to its true place as the supreme standard, 
 the source of public instruction, the cherished 
 treasury of spiritual teaching and inspiration to the 
 great masses of the people. Translated into the 
 languages of the Western European nations, it has 
 now been diffused in hundreds of different tongues 
 and dialects among countless millions all over 
 the earth. 
 
 Thus far, however, each new victory, while 
 lifting peoples to a loftier platform of individual 
 and social existence, opened up new avenues of 
 conflict. From subjection to the tyranny of Roman 
 authority, a growing number went to the opposite 
 extreme of liberty. Leaving the standpoint of 
 the Reformation, which was that, quite apart 
 from the authority of the Church, the individual 
 soul had the liberty and the power of coming 
 immediately to God, they construed this into 
 something very different — the right and power 
 of dealing with the problem of existence for 
 themselves. Christianity was regarded as a repro- 
 duction of natural religion, and great efforts 
 were put forth to break down miracles and 
 
148 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 prophecy as the evidences of a supernatural 
 revelation. 
 
 That deistic controversy was silenced by superior 
 argument, and still more by the resurgence of 
 the spiritual as a great vital force. The blood- 
 less reasonings yielded to current facts of re- 
 newal, moral transfiguration, spiritual joy. The 
 waves of spiritual revival raising the national 
 temperature, swept the new generation within 
 the spell of wider ethical obligations and world- 
 wide missionary horizons. From another point, 
 however, men returned in the last century 
 to the unsolved problem. Granted that the old 
 deistic position was too narrow, and that the 
 spiritual is a factor in the life of man, may not 
 the whole movement embracing Judaism and 
 Christianity be explained on the lines of natural 
 development ? 
 
 We have been following in these four chapters, 
 and must still follow in those that remain, the 
 most elaborate effort ever made to eliminate 
 miracle and the direct action of supernatural 
 forces from the Old Testament. The effort has 
 in a sense been well meant, to save the Bible by 
 reducing it in the main within hues of natural 
 evolution. But we have seen how, tried by the 
 average cultured judgment of men, it has broken 
 down. There are no materials in this theory for 
 any consistent view of Scripture, on critical lines, 
 
THE DISINTEGRATING PROCESS 149 
 
 which a Christian Church could put before her 
 beheving people. Yea, it is impossible that they 
 should ever gain a verdict from the common sense 
 of mankind. This Book, which they presumed 
 to disintegrate into innumerable fragments, has 
 broken them. What they have conclusively 
 proved is that, whatever be the truth of the case, 
 they cannot be right. " On whomsoever it shall 
 fall, it will grind him to powder." 
 
 Indeed, while the Bible has been suffering such 
 indignities, believing men, convinced beyond all 
 doubt of its indestructible unity and authentic 
 self-witness, have been coming to see that the 
 solution of present difficulties lies in rising to a 
 higher view of it than the Church has ever held. 
 Round the brows of that Old Testament is 
 gathering a new glory, as we behold in the 
 Mosaic revelation the one historical arrest, in a 
 universal human declension from a purer to a 
 more degraded faith — an arrest made by God in 
 one nation and among one people, an arrest by 
 which He lifted them out of their own dreams into 
 a real fellowship with Himself. Thus He started a 
 covenant history, which prepared the way for that 
 fuller revelation by which the whole world shall 
 be brought to Christ's feet. 
 
 Anthropology, the science of religion, and 
 whatever we have come to know of the history 
 of primitive peoples, combine to throw that 
 
150 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Mosaic revelation, with the whole subsequent 
 development, into more magnificent relief, into 
 solitary majesty among all the movements of 
 the ancient world. And all these heated con- 
 troversies will pass, like a morning cloud, as 
 mere human misjudgments of a fact which 
 is Divine ! 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF SCRIP- 
 TURE INADEQUATE AND IMPROBABLE 
 
 Psa. cxix. 80: " Let my heart be sound in Thy statutes, that I be 
 not ashamed." 
 
 We have given at some length our reasons for 
 dissatisfaction with both the critical hypothesis 
 and the analysis and disintegration of Scripture on 
 which it is professedly based. We now proceed 
 on another line, and complete our demonstration 
 by approaching the subject from another point of 
 view. However they have come, whether legiti- 
 mately or illegitimately, the critical processes are 
 with us. Here is their reconstructed Old Testa- 
 ment, lucidly presented to us with every advantage 
 of learning and expository talent, and supported 
 by a great array of authorities. 
 
 Have we in this critical reconstruction, so novel, 
 so destructive, and in such startling revolt from 
 tradition, an adequate explanation of the origins 
 and development of this great literature ? 
 
 At this point we must take everything in and 
 about these Scriptures into account, for everything 
 
 151 
 
152 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 which has come out of them in respect of spirit 
 and result must have had place in their production. 
 
 We are face to face, then, with a great and 
 difficult problem. Thank God, we have come out 
 of the Babylonish captivity of Agnosticism. No 
 thinker who would command wide acceptance can 
 affi)rd to treat the spiritual as mere illusion. The 
 reality of the spiritual as a social force, as an 
 element of human experience and a reigning 
 quality of human character, is beyond dispute. 
 Through recent controversies we are rising to a 
 juster conception of the spiritual as an original 
 and distinct — indeed, the supreme — endowment 
 of man. As by the senses we can go out and 
 take cognizance of an external world, so in the 
 spiritual region we can take cognizance of God as 
 Supreme Governor to be obeyed and Father to be 
 loved. 
 
 We have thus referred to an unmistakable trend 
 in current thought, because it imposes upon us 
 special obligations. 
 
 The great defect of this whole movement consists 
 in this, that it has taken far more account of a 
 so-called natural development than of the distinctive 
 workings of spiritual law, spiritual probabilities, 
 and sequences, and harmonies. 
 
 But these cannot be overlooked. The spiritual 
 is a kingdom standing on foundations of fact as 
 much as any other kingdom, supported by dis- 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 153 
 
 tinctive manifestations and results. As much as 
 the vegetable or animal kingdom, or, to come 
 closer, as much as the physical or intellectual 
 sphere in man, this kingdom or sphere has its own 
 order of facts, its own processes and tests, and 
 reaches out to its own ends ; and whatever else a 
 theory of Scripture must meet, since it purports 
 to be a message from God to the spiritual part of 
 man, it must meet these. 
 
 The Bible is far more than the greatest literary 
 monument of the ancient world. Not only does 
 it live — in a sense which is true of no other 
 literature — as a moulding force on the institutions 
 of this modern era, not only has it an unexhausted, 
 and apparently imperishable, message for human 
 beings both in public and private relations ; it 
 carries with it a more august distinction. Professor 
 G. A. Smith says, regarding the Old Testament: 
 "Above all, He (Christ) fed His own soul with 
 its contents, and in the great crises of His life 
 sustained Himself upon it as upon the living and 
 sovereign Word of God."^ 
 
 Now since that is so, would it not be unpar- 
 donable to investigate the sources of Scripture — 
 whatever attention may be needed for the human 
 side — without reflecting that God must have been 
 at work in these from the beginning ; without 
 going further and asking whether we have any 
 
 ^ "Modern Criticism, etc.," p. ii. 
 
154 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 other independent evidence as to how God acts in 
 coming into relation with man, and what course 
 His other revelation of Himself has pursued ? Yet 
 this necessary department of their critical inquiry 
 our critics have left practically unwrought ! 
 
 Allow one more preliminary consideration. 
 There is a powerful and persistent tendency 
 among thinkers in all fields, which is a great 
 puzzle to plain people who live close to the facts 
 of life and accept them in their multiplicity, and 
 that is, the tendency to carry back all forms of life 
 and force to one root principle. Now with this 
 we have no quarrel if men keep true to all the 
 facts of experience. We believe that there is one 
 root for all existence — matter, life, mind — in the 
 Will of God. But what we have to point out is, 
 that there is a strong temptation to thinkers to 
 leave out one or more classes of facts, in order to 
 reach all the sooner to their root principle. And 
 so a thousand times the world has heard the shouts 
 of victory over readings of the riddle of existence 
 which in less than a generation became effete. 
 
 We have, therefore, to be on our guard, even 
 with the wisest, when they bring some new ex- 
 planation, which is going to account for everything 
 far. more completely than any previous view. Does 
 it account for everything ? If it sets some things 
 in fresh light, may not other and more important 
 matters be slurred over ? And may not the fresh 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 155 
 
 light be fragmentary and superficial, springing from 
 comparison of things that differ — merely the move- 
 ment of the kaleidoscope, not an alteration of the 
 facts ? 
 
 We have taken occasion to compare the views 
 of many distinguished men on what they claim 
 to have been achieved through this critical re- 
 construction, and we have been struck, amid all 
 differences of individual view, with the common 
 assumption which underlies them, and the common 
 point of view. 
 
 Let us put first the loftiest expression of this 
 claim by a man in the first rank, not of critics, but 
 of theologians, Principal Fairbairn, of Oxford. In 
 his great work, "Christ in Modern Theology," ^ 
 he says : " Criticism has, by bringing the Sacred 
 Books into relation with sacred history, done 
 something to restore them to their real and living 
 significance. By binding the Book and the people 
 together, and then connecting both wath the pro- 
 vidential order of the world, it has given us back 
 the idea of God who lives in history through His 
 people, and a people who live for Him through 
 His Word." 
 
 Professor Curtis, after mentioning what he 
 regards as the permanent elements of the Old 
 Testament, goes on to affirm that, '' Modern criti- 
 cism has not impaired these permanent elements. 
 
 1 p. 508. 
 
156 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Their authority, which is that of truth, still re- 
 mains, and the Old Testament has been transmuted 
 from a mechanical record of doctrines, and of forced 
 Divine manifestations, into a book of genuine his- 
 torical life, an epic of salvation, showing the living 
 process of God's revelation through Israel." ^ 
 
 With reference to the results of critical recon- 
 struction, the late Professor Robertson Smith, in 
 the opening lecture of his " Old Testament in the 
 Jewish Church," 2 says: "The language of these 
 words (of Scripture) is so clear that no readjust- 
 ment of their historical setting can conceivably 
 change the substance of them. Historical study 
 may throw a new light on the circumstances in 
 which they were first heard or written; but the 
 plain, central, heartfelt truths that speak for them- 
 selves, and rest on their own indefeasible worth, 
 will assuredly remain to us. No amount of change 
 in the background of a picture can make white 
 black or black white, though by restoring the 
 right background where it has been destroyed, the 
 harmony and balance of the whole composition 
 may be immeasurably improved." 
 
 These are the weightiest statements which we 
 could find in regard to the benefits of this critical 
 reconstruction of Scripture. Yet with all respect for 
 these notable names we have no option but to join 
 issue with them. Indeed, taken together, they 
 
 ^ Hastings' '< Bible Dictionary," p. 604. 2 p^ 28. 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 157 
 
 contain among them the chief grounds of our 
 objections. 
 
 To begin with the second. Professor Curtis 
 institutes a contrast between "genuine historical 
 life" and '' forced Divine manifestations." Evi- 
 dently, according to him, we can only have history 
 when men are left to develop slowly within natural 
 conditions and by infinitesimal stages, as among 
 other nations. 
 
 Here is the naturalistic assumption of which we 
 spoke. To bring in a direct Word and purpose 
 of God, raising the level of the national life and 
 controlling its subsequent movements, is equivalent, 
 in his view, to the destruction of a genuine 
 historical life ! 
 
 Did he forget, when making such a statement, 
 that we had an example of just such a special 
 spiritually-controlled development .^^ In Christ we 
 have a Divine manifestation which he would be 
 very far from calling "forced"; and associated 
 with this creative revelation of God we have a 
 great sum of doctrine which an unbelieving critic 
 might term, in Professor Curtis's words, "a 
 mechanical record of doctrines." These started 
 a new progress on a loftier spiritual plane. But 
 so far from annihilating " genuine historical Hfe," 
 Christianity is the great creator of history. 
 
 These are the words of Professor Flint, quoted 
 from his "Philosophy of History," recast and pub- 
 
158 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 lished in 1893: "Christianity by creating the 
 Church enormously enlarged and enriched history. 
 ... It added immensely to the contents of 
 history, and radically changed men's conception 
 of its nature. It at once caused political history 
 to be seen to be only a part of history, and carried 
 even into the popular mind the conviction — of 
 which hardly a trace is to be found in the classical 
 historian — that all history must move towards 
 some general human end, some Divine goal." ^ 
 
 History, then, is not inseparably associated with 
 a natural development, but woke to fulness of life 
 when made conscious of a positive, creative, Divine 
 purpose, working to foreseen ends through all 
 human affairs. We intend devoting a whole 
 chapter — the last — to show that if we accept the 
 self-witness of revelation, and receive the Penta- 
 teuch as the genuine account of a true Divine 
 unveiling, we have a history of a most remarkable 
 kind, true to universal spiritual fact and law, dis- 
 covering, despite all failure and error on the part 
 of man, an education of the human spirit for the 
 full revelation of God which was yet to come. 
 We shall come to regard it as the most remarkable 
 human document, next to that New Testament 
 with which it stands imperishably joined, worthy 
 indeed, because of one informing Divine Spirit, to 
 be called, in Professor Curtis's words, " an epic of 
 
 1 p. 62. 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 159 
 
 salvation, showing the living process of God's 
 revelation through Israel." 
 
 But there is a further criticism, more central 
 and searching. This American writer instances 
 the Old Testament's doctrine of God, its view 
 of man's experiential relation to God, and its 
 being a book of hope, as the three permanent 
 elements of the Old Testament. He adds : 
 "Their authority, which is that of truth, still 
 remains." Yes, they will stand for what they 
 are worth among the spiritual findings of the 
 race. But that was not the authority of Scrip- 
 ture as Jesus, as Paul, as the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews conceived it, and as has 
 been held by all the Christian centuries, and is 
 still held in every creed of Christendom. For 
 them, God had revealed a Divine purpose of 
 grace, chosen a peculiar people, for the educa- 
 tion of their moral life engirt them with a system 
 of law, and so started a covenant history. Now, 
 on the critical supposition, that does not remain. 
 In other words, what of all is most precious — the 
 character of this book as an authoritative revela- 
 tion of God, verified in experience and proved 
 in result — disappears. Here is the finished pro- 
 duct of nineteenth-century critical science : a re- 
 constructed Old Testament. But whatever virtue 
 may be in the fragments, the breath of creative 
 Divine purpose that made them one — without 
 
i6o THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 any ambiguity, an express revelation from the 
 unseen God — that has vanished ! 
 
 Now let us return to the remarks of Principal 
 Fairbairn. Despite the tone of finality and all- 
 spanning comprehension in his words, they do 
 not bear very close examination. He says that 
 criticism has brought " the sacred books into 
 relation with sacred history." Evidently, then, 
 they were not in relation before. The sacred 
 books misrepresented the real course of sacred 
 history. But as the only knowledge that Prin- 
 cipal Fairbairn, or the critics, can have of the 
 sacred history is derived from the sacred books, 
 we would like to know how they have discovered 
 all this. Manifestly, that can only be from a 
 subjective judgment of what is probable and what 
 improbable, what early and what late. And those 
 judgments must spring from a theory in their own 
 minds regarding human progress — what he calls 
 " the providential order of the world." 
 
 Here the self-witness of Revelation, the idea of 
 progress from a Divine creative beginning, is ruled 
 out as absolutely as by the extremest critic ; 
 although how this can be done by a Christian 
 theologian who has before his eyes an equivalent 
 fact, in a Christian revelation starting and con- 
 trolling a Christian era, passes our conception. 
 
 But there is room for even more drastic criti- 
 cism. This judgment on a side issue in his volume 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION i6i 
 
 coincides with a main contention in the constructive 
 part, which many of his readers felt to be de- 
 fective, if not wrong. And it may be interesting 
 to notice in the case of so keen and honest a 
 mind, how a view of doctrine affects our behef 
 in criticism, and our judgment about criticism 
 alters the accents in our theology. 
 
 Principal Fairbairn is one of those who would 
 remove redemption from the centre of the evan- 
 gelical scheme — not, of course, ignoring it, but 
 declining to give it the central and regulative place.^ 
 The great inspired writer who does unfold the 
 Christian providential order of the world — the 
 apostle Paul — as manifestly, yea, with a force 
 which transcends all comparison, does put re- 
 demption in the very core of revelation. Sin has 
 frustrated the Divine purpose in creation, and 
 with ineffable ingenuity and grace, God has, in 
 removing by atonement the barrier of sin, so 
 revealed Himself in His essential attributes of 
 love and holiness, as to reach out in Christ to 
 the triumph and fulfilment of His eternal design. 
 Now such a view of the providential order of 
 the world does demand a specific form of revela- 
 tion. God must come forth to those who are 
 more or less consciously estranged ; He must 
 
 1 <<We cannot accept Luther's dictum that justification by faith is 
 the article of a standing or falling Church." "Christ in Modern 
 Theology," p. 650. 
 
 L 
 
i62 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 appoint the conditions on which He will deal 
 with man. The whole initiative must come from 
 Him, in some purpose of grace furnished from 
 first to last out of the Divine wisdom and love. 
 And human history is the movement forward 
 from the Divine impact, in response, submission, 
 kindling of new aims and activities, new sym- 
 pathies and aspirations, — in all the efflorescence 
 of ideals and sacrifices which has ever blossomed 
 from human nature fertilised by contact with God. 
 
 Such was the form of revelation in the New 
 Testament ; such, in the very nature of things 
 (if the Bible view of man be right), must have 
 been its form under the old economy. And just 
 because this notable writer does not allow in his 
 system for the central redemptive note of Scrip- 
 ture, is he led away to another idea of the provi- 
 dential order of the world as that of a normal 
 growth upward, God gradually dawning on the 
 consciousness of men, and what we regard as 
 the Word of God gradually taking shape in 
 human thought in tentative efforts to realise 
 the Divine, in myth, in statute, in imaginative 
 reproductions of crude natural fact, in predictive 
 moral judgment, and so forth. 
 
 That is not an alternative view, but, in our 
 judgment, an elimination of the creative element, 
 and a reduction of the Bible from the solitary 
 plane on which it has stood, to proximity with, 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 163 
 
 if in acknowledged superiority to, the ethnic 
 scriptures of India and China. 
 
 Referring now to the words of Professor 
 Robertson Smith, do we not see beyond dispute 
 that in this Higher Criticism there is more than 
 " adjustment of historic setting " ? There is a 
 changed conception of man as the subject of 
 grace, and of God's aim and manner of dealing 
 in revelation. " The plain, central, heartfelt 
 truths " may be there, to stand for what ethical 
 validity may be in them. But where now is 
 the authoritative revelation in which God makes 
 definite promises to men, and pledges His Divine 
 faithfulness to fulfil them ? 
 
 The critical reconstruction of Scripture, then, 
 is inadequate. Thus pulled down and built up, 
 the Old Testament is a book out of which the 
 very soul of revelation has gone. Surely it is 
 quite too late at the dawn of the twentieth 
 century, after this Book has differentiated itself 
 from all other sacred books, by manifesting the 
 effects and putting forth the power of a Divine 
 revelation, speculatively to assert that all the time 
 the Book has been standing on a far lower level 
 than we believed ! Here, indeed, improbabihty 
 attaches to the new theories rather than to the old 
 beliefs. " For by their fruits ye shall know them." 
 
 Having rebutted the claims advanced for this 
 reconstruction, let us now point out directly, that 
 
1 64 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 the reconstruction is inadequate and improbable — 
 first, from the critics' own chosen ground of natural 
 development ; and, secondly, from the ground which 
 the Old Testament self-evidently occupies of being 
 a direct revelation. 
 
 I. From their own ground of natural develop- 
 ment we wish to show that, if all the facts are 
 taken into account, the reconstruction by the critics 
 is inadequate and improbable. 
 
 In the opinions we have just quoted, and in 
 the outstanding features of the criticism which in 
 former chapters we described, we have seen that 
 the leading aim of the critics was to bring Bible 
 history into line with ^ what they regard as the 
 natural course of human development. They have 
 throughout paid infinitely more attention to har- 
 mony with scientific theories of progress than to 
 congruity with spiritual fact. Yet we are bold to 
 afiirm that on their chosen ground they have not 
 succeeded. Their reconstruction is thoroughly out 
 of keeping with facts that are to be found in the 
 history of the nations around. It is not our inten- 
 tion to take sides with either the progression theory 
 or the degeneration theory of human advancement. 
 With the majority of anthropologists the critics 
 assume the former, and for our purpose we are quite 
 prepared to take their ground. The reader will 
 remember how Professor G. A. Smith traced back 
 Israel's beginning to mythical origins in the patri- 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 165 
 
 archs, and how Wellhausen derived the sacrificial 
 system of Israel from nature festivals. In other 
 words, the Jewish people, in their religion and 
 culture, moved up through the same gradual 
 stages as other nations. Therefore (without any- 
 ground of fact, but simply to conform to their 
 theory) the Decalogue, the Levitical legislation, 
 and all the more developed conceptions of Israel's 
 early history, are brought down to late dates. 
 
 But all this is done in oblivion of certain un- 
 contested facts, which are quite independent of 
 any theory, and of immense moment. Here we do 
 not refer to the undoubted fact that if there are 
 certain fixed stages of human development, along 
 which all nations progress, they have moved at 
 very unequal rates. Some have remained on the 
 primitive savage level to this hour ; others cul- 
 minated rapidly in early ages and have disappeared, 
 or been stationary since ; while all down the cen- 
 turies we have had blossomings from the barbarian 
 stage into temporary or permanent grades of civili- 
 sation. The facts are too various on the arena of 
 human civilisation to admit of the wide and sweep- 
 ing inferences drawn by the critics. 
 
 But we wish to advance to an important point 
 beyond this. Judging simply by the circumstances 
 lying before us in the field of history, and quite 
 apart from any religious theory, we find a whole 
 order of facts pointing to the apparent destination 
 
1 66 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 of particular peoples to specific place and influence 
 in certain ages of the world. Explain this how 
 we may, the fact is indisputable. The progress 
 of the human race has not been by a certain, 
 even, continuous progression, simultaneous over the 
 whole area, from age to age. From the dawn of 
 history there have always been typical and re- 
 presentative nations culminating with remarkable 
 celerity into certain forms of civilisation, and 
 stamping their mould on surrounding peoples. 
 
 In other words — and we ask the reader to 
 observe the importance of the assertion — among 
 the great nations of antiquity we find, on the 
 natural level, the same law of selection and special 
 blossoming of gift and power, and controlling 
 influence on after ages, which mark Israel in the 
 Mosaic age, on the grander spiritual level. 
 Hence, the course of Israel's history from a 
 creative beginning in the Mosaic age, so far 
 from being in violent opposition to what we 
 find among other nations, is powerfully supported 
 by outstanding — yea, the central and character- 
 istic — facts in the lives of other nations. And, 
 if that be true, the assumption on which the critical 
 movement rests is shaken to its foundations. 
 
 Let us turn first to Egypt. Have we in this 
 nation the regulation, slow, development up from 
 savagery ? 
 
 The oldest civihsation in the world is among 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 167 
 
 the most developed. Brugsch Bey says ^ : "The 
 scientific students of our day who trace back the 
 history of mankind to the times when the races 
 of men lived in the condition of savages, have 
 arranged in order the three ages of stone, of 
 bronze, of iron, in order to fill up by this regular 
 series the void which exists in all the records of 
 history." ''Up to this time, at least, Egypt 
 throws scorn upon these assumed periods." At 
 the earliest dawn of historic time we find a kingdom 
 thoroughly organised for war and peace, furnished 
 with not only the rude necessities but the elegances 
 and luxuries, the pleasures and the pomp of life. 
 From that furthest -oif age have come down the 
 most astonishing fruits of the Egyptian genius — 
 the vast design and the astonishing execution of 
 the pyramids. And with that exhibition of un- 
 matched strength you have the striking realism of 
 those works of art which are to be found in the 
 Gizeh Museum, near Cairo, and those most deli- 
 cate pictures of current life in the morning of the 
 world to be found in the Tomb of Ti. 
 
 Now, here we have in the dawn of Egyptian 
 history, what may be truly called its creative age, 
 when all the characteristic qualities which were 
 afterwards to distinguish this nation blossomed out 
 in unrivalled intensity, and with a spontaneousness 
 and grace of movement utterly wanting in later 
 
 ^ "The History of Egypt," vol. i. p. 25. 
 
1 68 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 centuries. They never returned to the grandeur 
 and beauty of these earliest attainments. To those 
 who look upon the pyramids, in photographs and 
 paintings, they may seem featureless bulks beside 
 our cathedrals and palaces. But when, standing 
 on the tawny sand under the blue cope of heaven, 
 we look round upon their enormous mass, reducing 
 to nothingness every other monumental work of 
 man, we feel how great in all the attributes of 
 natural energy must that primitive people have 
 been. Adjusted perfectly to the cardinal points, 
 covering thirteen acres, the great pyramid rises to 
 the perpendicular height of 450 feet, and when per- 
 fectly covered with mirror-faces of polished granite 
 must have shone in greatly heightened magnificence. 
 
 Then, whereas the later art is stiflT and formal, 
 laden with religious symbolism, and marked by 
 hardly a trace of human feeling or an illumining 
 touch of genius, in wood-carving, in paintings of 
 animals, in such statues as the Sheikh-el-Beled and 
 the Kneeling Scribe, these early ages show works 
 of art vividly realistic and of imperishable interest. 
 
 When we turn to the religious history the 
 reason is apparent. As M. de Rouge says : 
 " More than five thousand years since, in the 
 valley of the Nile, the hymn began to the unity of 
 God and the immortality of the soul. These are 
 the primitive notions enchased like indestructible 
 diamonds in the midst of mythological " additions 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 169 
 
 which obscured the original worship. Mythology 
 is not seen to be a normal stage of human develop- 
 ment, but a disease of thought, which, terribly 
 aggravated by the downward development of art, 
 caused the Power "who was not graven on stone," 
 ^' whose abode was unknown," to be practically for- 
 gotten at the magnificent temples of later dynasties 
 in favour of quite other and lower deities.^ 
 
 Now, if all this be true — and there is no gain- 
 saying it — what are we to conclude about this iron 
 theory of human progression, to which, by the 
 most violent means, the course of Israel's history 
 has been compelled to be conformed ? 
 
 It is as thoroughly set at nought by the history 
 of Egypt as by the history of Israel. Of course, 
 the history of Egypt, except for the evident 
 tradition of a great God, is on the natural level. 
 Everything was wrought on the natural level, by 
 energy of arm and power of mind and will. But 
 on that level they had an end to serve in the 
 providential order of the world. And so far from 
 growing up through recognisable stages to civilisa- 
 tion, they started with the loftiest conception of 
 God and the grandest liberty of self-expression, 
 stiffening into form and symbol as the centuries 
 went by. 
 
 Now if such was the course of things in Egypt 
 — if this, one of the great empires of civilisation, 
 
 " Renoufs Hibbert Lectures," pp. 91, 252. 
 
lyo THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 was trained for supremacy and leadership along 
 this line, starting, so far as one can see, with such 
 a magnificence of aim and energy, what impro- 
 babihty can there be, even in view of the general 
 laws of human progress, that Israel, who was 
 reserved for a far grander function, should 
 have had, in the dawn of her history, a 
 creative era, with still more striking features, 
 corresponding to her more remarkable destiny ? 
 This iron necessity, therefore, for conforming to 
 natural law — or call it the providential order of 
 the world — which has been lying in the back- 
 ground of the critics' minds through all their 
 destructive work, is a delusion. The same 
 reasoning that sends down to a late age the 
 larger conceptions of the Hebrew spirit would go 
 to prove that the richest outcomes of Egyptian 
 art, and the vastest and most daring architectural 
 achievements, would come last. But facts, in the 
 latter case, show the contrary. 
 
 Turn now to another case. We remember how 
 slow, according to the critical theory, must have 
 been the growth of the spiritual. David cannot 
 be credited with any song more developed in this 
 direction than the dirges for Saul and Abner. Still 
 polytheists, we are told, David and his people were 
 far from the full monotheistic stage. This is held 
 to be necessary in the nature of things, because of 
 the average condition of development in that time. 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 171 
 
 In this the critics contradict ascertained historic 
 fact, and libel human nature. They never seem 
 to take in, that what is beyond question true in 
 later eras may have been true in earlier, that in 
 human nature there were the elements of a violent 
 conflict — possibilities of rising high as well as fall- 
 ing low. What men often sunk to, they without 
 evidence made the normal level at which they stood. 
 
 Of the real blunder into which the critics have 
 thus fallen there is forthcoming unmistakable proof. 
 Long before the days of David, in times preceding 
 the age of Moses, a people known as the Accadians 
 lived among the mountains to the east of the 
 Euphrates. They had a gloomy and even terrible 
 religion, and revolting incantations to lay the forces 
 of evil. Some have thought they were Turanians, 
 barbarian outsiders diverse from the Semitic and 
 Western peoples ; but others are of opinion that 
 there must have been in them a large infusion of 
 Semitic blood. Indeed, it has been supposed that 
 when Abraham left his country and kindred he 
 came out from this nation. 
 
 The remarkable fact regarding this people is, 
 that, at times, elect souls were able to rise above 
 these dark, brooding fears to a vision of a good 
 Being, who, for the moment, fills the soul as alone 
 and supreme. But, more remarkable than this 
 vision of a great, good, holy, tender Being, is the 
 developed character of the worshipper's relation to 
 
172 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Him. There breathes through many a strain an 
 almost Christian sense of sin. There is a closeness 
 of approach, a tenderness of appeal, a warmth of 
 confiding, most touching to behold. Take this 
 address to God : — 
 
 " In heaven who is great ? Thou alone art great. 
 
 On earth who is great ? Thou only. 
 
 When Thy voice soundeth in heaven, the gods fall prostrate. 
 
 When Thy voice soundeth on earth, the spirits kiss the dust. 
 
 Thou, Thy words who can resist ? 
 Who can rival them ? 
 
 Among the gods, Thy brothers, Thou hast no equal. 
 
 God my Creator, may He stand by my side ! 
 
 Keep Thou the door of my lips. 
 
 Guard Thou my hands, O Lord of Light. 
 
 O Lord, who trusteth in Thee do Thou benefit his soul." ^ 
 
 Out in the dark of heathenism, falling prostrate 
 under terrors, these Accadians ever and anon rose 
 to such clear, steady visions of God. In these 
 and similar words we have a "clear and authentic 
 insight into the first manifestation of the religious 
 instinct in man."^ "This strange and primitive 
 religion . . . claims with the Egyptian and the 
 Chinese the distinction of being one of the oldest on 
 earth, and in all probability was older than both."^ 
 
 If in those remote ages of the world, among a 
 people held down by a dark and awful worship of 
 
 1 Ancient Tablet of Babylon quoted in Brace's "The Unknown 
 God." 
 
 " Ragozin's " Chaldea," p. 149. 3 jj^ ^Iq 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 173 
 
 spirits, there were such possibihties of ascent, and 
 clear vision, and lofty aspiration, as we have in 
 these records, found at Nineveh, what vestige of 
 validity can be alleged in favour of those reason- 
 ings which declare that it is impossible such a 
 psalm as the fifty-first could have been composed 
 by David? Israel holds a place, describe it how 
 you may, separate and distinct from all other 
 nations. The late Bishop Westcott says,^ " that 
 in no case is the revelation or authoritative rule 
 given in the ethnic books, represented as embodied 
 and wrought out step by step in the life of a 
 people." But in the Old Testament we have 
 alone in the world, the history of a divine purpose 
 wrought out in successive ages, with all the vision 
 and impulse consequent upon such a divine mani- 
 festation. Of such a solitary experience we might 
 expect unique outcomes ; and we therefore regard 
 as entirely without historical justification the reason- 
 ing by which some (not all) relegate the Decalogue 
 to a late age, and count it indisputable, despite the 
 testimony of Jesus, that the iioth Psalm could not 
 have been written by the son of Jesse. 
 
 Allow me one further illustration to make evident 
 that the real course of development among the 
 nations of the earth has not been that unbroken, 
 equal progress upward from savagery which theor- 
 ists depict. Not only in the earliest, but in later 
 
 ^ " Cambridge Companion to the Bible," p. 20. 
 
174 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 ages we have extraordinary new beginnings of the 
 human spirit, in which the past is left behind, and 
 a people goes forward within new horizons, be- 
 comes animated by entirely different conceptions of 
 life and endeavour, and reaches the most perfect 
 expression of its genius in its first literary blossom. 
 Professor Jebb, in his " Growth and Influence 
 of Classic Greek Poetry," very vividly describes, 
 over against the stereotyped civilisations and fossil- 
 ised faiths of the East, the entrance of the Greek 
 spirit in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The litera- 
 ture of Europe begins with them, and in them at 
 a step the Greek tongue finds perfect imaginative 
 expression. Here we observe a type of excel- 
 lence suddenly emerging, and in its beginnings 
 revealing its regnant qualities and reaching its 
 crown. As we read these poems, breathing the 
 joy of nature, the artist's sense of beauty, the 
 quick objective perception, the singer's mastery of 
 phrase ; as we look upon the Greek sculptures, 
 models for all time, and the consummate grace ot 
 ornament, for instance, on the shattered structure 
 of the Erechtheion, we become convinced that here 
 again, in the onward course of the nations, was a 
 distinct endowment. There is upon all — epic, 
 statue, architecture, tragedy, philosophy — the hall- 
 mark of one characteristic human type, the mani- 
 festation of a singular outburst, in many related 
 forms, of human genius. The blossoming was 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 175 
 
 brief, and the world has been copying the wonders 
 of that creative era ever since. 
 
 Suppose the critics were to attempt their cum- 
 brous destructive methods upon Grecian literature 
 and art. Assuming a regular development upward 
 from the savage — although they have here what 
 is not to be found in Israel, a lusty growth of 
 myth and legend — they would have to turn that 
 literature topsy turvey likewise. And when they 
 had done, they would not have been able to 
 account for one characteristic element of Greek 
 civilisation. Here, again, we have, on the broad 
 field of history, providential destination to a par- 
 ticular human service, accompanied by a remark- 
 able endowment, of a nation which rose up in 
 creative energy to run through its day of oppor- 
 tunity in the eye of the world. 
 
 The grievous blunder of the critics lay in failing 
 to realise that in connection with Israel we have — 
 whatever more — at least a providential move- 
 ment of that kind, as in Egypt, as in Greece, 
 owing every characteristic quality to the creative 
 endowment from which the whole started. It was 
 not to be wondered at that in the dark and cloudy 
 day of Deism, Scripture history should have been 
 brought down by every critical art to the level of 
 the common and the unclean; that, later, Well- 
 hausen and Stade should reduce the history of 
 Israel to pure naturalism. But it will never cease 
 
176 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 to be matter of wonder that such a number of 
 scholarly men, sensitive to the spiritual, forward to 
 recognise some at least of the higher forces which 
 mould the world, should have failed to allow for 
 these providential destinations of particular nations 
 to some form of light or leading, and frankly to 
 recognise that in this rank Israel was far and away 
 the first. Everything points to such a creative 
 beginning as that which the Pentateuch describes, 
 followed by a history under the spell of that in- 
 fluence. All originalities of architecture and art 
 and literature, typical of the ethnic developments, 
 are nothing to the unapproached originality of the 
 character of Jehovah, and the glory of His revealed 
 purpose. 
 
 And yet, under the spell of a passing theory of 
 natural evolution, they turn to the miserable task 
 — doomed to failure from the beginning — of ex- 
 plaining the rise of unspeakably the most original 
 conception of the ancient world, by myth and 
 piecings of old traditions, and imaginative colour- 
 ings. If we take account of Israel's supreme place 
 and influence, such an idea is utterly inadequate, and, 
 in view of what has taken place among other leading 
 nations on a lower level, is also utterly improbable. 
 
 2. But come now to the ground taken by the 
 Old Testament as being a true revelation of God 
 and a preparation for the Christian revelation. 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 177 
 
 We shall see that in this higher view the critical 
 reconstruction halts at all points. In this connec- 
 tion we have nothing to do with the unbelieving 
 critic, who expressly labours to reduce the history 
 of Israel to a purely natural level. We have no 
 controversy with him since we have no common 
 ground. The actual outcomes in human history of 
 Jewish and Christian revelation are sufficient to 
 convince every open mind that such inquirers have 
 simply left out of account the most characteristic 
 elements of their study. 
 
 But this is by no means the position of the 
 great majority of British critics and their sup- 
 porters. Professor Robertson Smith ^ says: "The 
 Bible does speak to the heart of man in words 
 that can only come from God." Again: "The 
 Bible sets forth the personal converse of God 
 with man. ... He spake not only through them 
 but to them and in them." And so he contends 
 there is a human as well as a Divine element in 
 Scripture. But he goes on to say : ^ " All that 
 earthly study and research can do for the reader 
 of Scripture is to put him in the position of the 
 man to whose heart God first spoke. It is only 
 the Spirit of God who can make the Word a 
 living word to our hearts, as it was a living word 
 to him who first received it." In a quotation 
 already made, Principal Fairbairn contends that 
 
 1 old Testament, p. 28. '^ Ibid. p. 20. 
 
 M 
 
178 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 "criticism has given us back the idea of God, who 
 lives in history through His people, and a people 
 who live for Him through His Word." 
 
 We have to do then, admittedly, with a revela- 
 tion, and an integral part of the revelation of 
 God. But if that be so, why do not these critics 
 accept the self-witness of revelation, and receive 
 the Old Testament supported by the New as it 
 stands ? 
 
 Professor G. A. Smith ^ alleges the moral difE- 
 culties of Scripture as a reason. ''The theory of 
 the equal and lasting divinity of the Jewish Scrip- 
 tures has been fertile in casuistry, bigotry, and 
 cruel oppression of every kind." "The refusal to 
 see any development either from the ethnic reli- 
 gions to the religion of Israel, or any development 
 within the religion of Israel itself . . . has had a 
 disastrous influence upon the religious thought and 
 action of our time." ^ 
 
 And Bishop Gore, in his famous contribution to 
 "Lux Mundi,"3 advocating an imperfect tentative 
 revelation (if it can be called such) rising slowly 
 from the pagan level to something better, says: 
 "It is of the essence of the New Testament as 
 the religion of the incarnation to be final and 
 catholic. On the other hand, it is of the essence 
 of the Old Testament to be imperfect, because it 
 
 1 "Modern Criticism," pp. 23-28. 
 - " Modern Criticism," pp. 25, 26. s p_ ^29. 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 179 
 
 represents a gradual process of education by which 
 man was lifted out of depths of sin and ignorance." 
 Later on, in the same essay, having allowed for 
 idealising elements, as also primitive myths, he 
 guards us from perilous inferences in these words : 
 " The reason of course is obvious enough, why 
 what can be admitted in the Old Testament, could 
 not without results disastrous to the Christian 
 creed be admitted in the New." 
 
 Putting aside, then, the view which the Pen- 
 tateuch gives of the way in which God discovered 
 Himself to Israel, these believing critics have 
 formed another idea of how God may have come 
 into the life of this people. Without apparently 
 any sense of presumption, as if they were dealing 
 with something well within their powers, they 
 have taken God into their own hands, and have 
 imagined a slow development up from the ethnic 
 level. At every stage they have judged as to 
 what might reasonably be considered possible to 
 God the Revealer and man the subject of revela- 
 tion. Allowance is made for large infusions of 
 mythical and legendary elements, under cover of 
 which the miraculous may be eliminated, and 
 those darker and cruder elements need trouble us 
 no more. What we have believed to be a divine 
 Revelation, with a history controlled and led on by 
 Him with whom Israel had entered into relation, 
 turns out to be the natural history of the slow 
 
i8o THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 growth of the moral idea in Israel. The higher 
 conception of the divine choice and world-destiny 
 of Israel, was an after-reflection, from the great 
 days of the prophets, when they stood so high in 
 moral respects above the nations of the earth. 
 
 As we have hinted, this was a presumptuous 
 and even perilous experiment. We have seen, in 
 referring to the Accadians, how far out the critics 
 were in their judgments of what was possible to 
 men in early times. 
 
 But how can we judge as to what may be pos- 
 sible to God? If He has indeed spoken, let us 
 bow. Indeed, in after ages the wonder of wonders 
 regarding this whole movement will be that so 
 many Christian men were implicated in such a 
 speculation. It is against the express testimony 
 of Scripture. It defiantly contradicts the view of 
 the Old Testament taken by the New. It has no 
 analogy in any other field of God's working. It 
 is full of internal incongruities and — perhaps the 
 severest charge which may be made — it alters the 
 very idea and ground of revelation as characteristic 
 of both Testaments. 
 
 After what we have said about the self-witness 
 of revelation, and the testimony of Christ to the 
 Old Testament, in the first and third chapters re- 
 spectively, we are under no necessity of adducing 
 further proof as to the first two points — except, 
 mayhap, to say that the testimony of the Master 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION i8i 
 
 is supported throughout the New Testament, 
 especially by Paul. A man of surpassing genius, 
 trained amid the dry-as-dust traditions of the Rab- 
 binical schools, knowing the latter as few have done, 
 he was carried by the power of the Spirit, in the 
 light of fulfilment, into an understanding of the 
 Bible's scope, and every stage of God's advancing 
 purposes. And without a moment's questioning 
 he goes back to the covenant of God with 
 Abraham, and the revelation to Moses, as the 
 pivots of the Old Testament. Conscious purpose on 
 the part of God, made known in the beginning, ful- 
 filled in Christ, animates Scripture from end to end. 
 
 In that character Scripture has achieved those 
 wonderful victories which have created Christen- 
 dom. It does indeed seem strange to be told now 
 that, as regards the Old Testament, these have 
 been achieved under a mistake. 
 
 But, further, we have no real analogy in any 
 other field of God's working. Notice, we have here 
 a singular effect not to be found in all the other 
 nations of antiquity — a positive, historical revela- 
 tion, entering into the life of a nation, and working 
 upward from age to age. To bring this revelation 
 into harmony with heathen rehgions, to imagine a 
 steady progression from the heathen up to the 
 Jewish level, is to fatally undervalue the funda- 
 mental diflference between Jewish and heathen 
 conceptions. . 
 
1 82 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 We have already traced the historical connection 
 between the critical theory and material evolution. 
 And this vital mistake is analogous to what took 
 place at the borders of dead matter and life. 
 Thorough-paced partisans would have it that life 
 was evolved from dead matter. Processes like 
 crystallisation, discovering the resources of the 
 material, were pointed to as justification of the 
 belief. Clever definitions were drawn up that 
 left out the characteristic elements which had to 
 be explained. At last, however, the unbridged 
 and unbridgable gulf between the living and not- 
 living has been acknowledged. Life is an endow- 
 ment, and it is " the same from the lowest animal 
 inhabiting a stagnant pool up to the glorious 
 mechanism of the human form." 
 
 No one will for a moment deny that the teach- 
 ing of Jesus, the evangelical scheme of Paul, the 
 revelation of Calvary, stand at an infinite remove 
 from all the imaginations of heathenism. Every 
 one who has any title to the name Christian 
 will admit that they are revelations from God. 
 But we assert that in essence the characteristic 
 quality in those fully developed revelations, which 
 marks them as from God, is to be found in the 
 promises of God to Abraham and in the calling of 
 Moses. Like the barrier between the living and 
 the not-living, yea, broader far, is the barrier 
 between these counsels of eternity and the yearn- 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 183 
 
 ings and vaticinations of the heathen human heart. 
 As life has its own laws different from those of 
 the not-living, the analogies of heathen religions 
 do not obtain here. We are driven forward to 
 the only real analogy in the Christian religion, 
 and are led to ask this question : How did God 
 proceed in revealing Himself through Christ? 
 Because, whatever the differences between tem- 
 porary and final, early and late, the provisional and 
 the complete, there must be some fundamental 
 correspondence in His methods. 
 
 But further, this critical reconstruction is full of 
 internal incongruities. The anxiety of the critics 
 has been to bring the history into line with a 
 normal human development. They have not in 
 anything like the same degree aimed at spiritual 
 probability or congruity. The recklessness with 
 which they have adopted theories of literary per- 
 sonation and imaginative additions, and editings 
 and re-editings without end, is sufficient to show 
 how little they were deterred by any felt presence 
 of God in the narrative. From this spiritual side, 
 to the inquirer asking how the Old Testament 
 exerted the influence of a revelation and prepared 
 for the complete revelation in Christ, there are in 
 the new theory, and the re-casting of Scripture in 
 harmony with it, difficulties rising even to moral 
 and spiritual impossibilities. 
 
 We can only choose two or three of these as 
 
1 84 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 samples. All are agreed that Moses was the true 
 founder of Israel. He had attained that conception 
 of Jehovah which grew into the purer faith of later 
 times. But how, when all other extant religions 
 were becoming fossilised and stereotyped, did he 
 leap up into living converse with the spiritual ^ 
 That is the wonder, the original fact in Israel, 
 which the critics pass over unexplained. 
 
 But again, and in an opposite direction, how can 
 they account for Jehovah living in Moses and his 
 people without imposing His will in some form, 
 or calling them into some distinctive walk? Yet, 
 according to their theory. He did not. The only 
 laws which Moses gave were what the critics 
 regard as the common law decisions summarised 
 in Exod. xx.-xxiii. Even when they entered the 
 promised land their sacrifices were nature festivals, 
 and they worshipped at the common high places 
 without any sense of rebuke. Jahveh was their 
 deity, as Chemosh was the god of the Moabites. 
 Yea, we are told that, down to the dawn of 
 written prophecy, the religion of Israel was poly- 
 theism, with an opening toward monotheism ! 
 
 Now that is an utterly incongruous picture, 
 drawn by men who have never seriously tried to 
 adjust their scheme of development to spiritual 
 necessities. If Israel abode so long on that natural 
 level, they were heathens outright. If one spark 
 of the true Jehovah burned in Moses and Israel, 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 185 
 
 such quiescence was impossible. Think of Jehovah 
 and idols dwelling calmly generation by generation in 
 Jewish hearts ! Think of Israel, unrebuked, offer- 
 ing their sacrifices to Jehovah on high places where 
 offerings reeked to heathen gods ! The whole is 
 a gratuitous imagination, yea, an utter desecration 
 of the central age of Hebrew history. In deference 
 to mere theory, the critics have conjured up scenes 
 and experiences which are entirely out of touch 
 with the reigning spirit of the Old Testament. 
 
 We are quite sure that when Jehovah came into 
 Israel He was a separating force — not merely re- 
 vealing His glory, but binding the Jews to Himself. 
 The ends of His self-discovery would demand their 
 being walled off from surrounding peoples, that 
 His influence might not be dissipated and lost. 
 Grant that, and we can explain all that we find in 
 these records. Even the most terrible passages 
 do not make sceptics of us. We can quite under- 
 stand how, despite divine love, men may disobey 
 God, and, disobeying, go out in awful rebellion. 
 We realise that, since He cannot give them up, 
 God must come down to where men are, and, 
 working on their darkened minds, use them on 
 their level, so far as they can be used. Ehud's 
 was not a refined achievement, but in an age of 
 lawlessness it made for righteousness in the main. 
 And so for those whom He called to service, 
 Jehovah had often terrible work. 
 
1 86 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 The true justification of such circumstances lies 
 in the time, and the end. Were they the best 
 practically, reaching beyond themselves and serving 
 the good of the world ? Because we believe that 
 these are associated with, and an integral part of, 
 the inspired revelation of God's purpose to man, we 
 are not to make them the rule of our practice to- 
 day. The circumstances, whether in God's people 
 or in their enemies, do not exist to-day. The 
 revelation of God is a historic progressive revela- 
 tion. We have been taught by love the duty of 
 love. Renewed and living in the Spirit, we have 
 a power for that higher life. But, to change some- 
 what the lines of Longfellow : — 
 
 " Those heights by Christians reached and kept, 
 Were not attained by sudden flight." 
 
 Step by step, under the guidance and help ot 
 God, men were lifted from the primitive ground of 
 selfishness toward this spirit. The first struggles 
 of the dawning sense of right with craven fear and 
 passion were very tentative, and not unstained by 
 defect ; but they marked the dawn of God within 
 a rude life. We have but little sympathy with 
 the modern exquisites who scorned the ladder by 
 which through the ages men have risen to where 
 they now stand, and who cannot discern the ethical 
 motive, and the continued worth for man, of such 
 fierce loyalties and pitiless allegiances to right. 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 187 
 
 All that presents no insuperable stumbling-block 
 to us. But what awakens in us feelings of moral 
 pain which we cannot describe, is to see men after 
 their own fancy draw a portrait of a crude, colour- 
 less, unethical, or faintly ethical Jehovah, who did 
 not invest His people with a holy separating medium, 
 but left them to live on the natural level, pretty 
 much as they listed. What fills one with trembling 
 is to see that lifeless simulacrum set up in place 
 of the Great and Terrible One of Sinai, whom 
 no one could see and live. 
 
 How men are befooled by their own imagina- 
 tions ! This theory tacitly assumes that Jehovah 
 developed. That shows their light hold of spiritual 
 fact. But what developed was the capacity of 
 Israel to receive the vision of God. Jehovah 
 remains the same, yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 
 The God and Father of Christ was He who, under 
 veils of symbol and material glory, spoke to Moses. 
 How, then, for a moment could He be held to be 
 such as the Higher Criticism imagines ^ From the 
 spiritual side, the ineptitude of the whole con- 
 ception, the pitiful way in which it collapses so 
 soon as examined, prevents us from saying what 
 we feel about this Dasdalus-like venture into regions 
 beyond human reach. 
 
 Following downwards the history, we find 
 after this long era, — barely distinguishable from 
 heathenism, — the prophetic age. In the traditional 
 
i88 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 view, there had been the leavening influence of 
 the Mosaic revelation, despite frequent backsliding, 
 on the national life. Typical characters had been 
 growing up in Israel, marked by broad wisdom 
 and elevated spirit. The joy of spiritual worship 
 had been bursting forth in sanctuary songs. 
 Shrewd maxims or proverbs, instinct with an 
 ethical life, passed from lip to lip. Burning 
 utterances of great prophets unwritten, but living 
 through their verve and beauty, became a national 
 possession. The nation had been growing in 
 appreciation of literary form, and in the delight of 
 eloquent self-expression. And on that under- 
 standing, with that preparation, prophecy, though 
 remarkable, was not an inexplicable phenomenon. 
 
 But on the critics' supposition, frankly, it is 
 inexplicable. Indeed, we should not strain the 
 facts if we said — impossible ! We remember 
 what we said of the sudden outburst of the Greek 
 genius into perfect form in the Iliad. We count 
 it a hazardous experiment arbitrarily to determine 
 what is possible or impossible to the genius of a 
 people rising from the trammels of the past. If 
 the prophetic books were simply new buds of 
 genius from the rude stock of Israel, we should 
 just have to accept them, and put another wonder 
 to the account of the human spirit. 
 
 But the more we study them we see that they 
 mark a new departure, because they are a return 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 189 
 
 to an old ideal. Their roots are in the 
 past. They pre-suppose a unique call and 
 choice of God — an exceptional culture as of the 
 vine, a union with God so sacred and intimate 
 as that of marriage, marking Israel in contra- 
 distinction to other nations. The Jews were on 
 a pedestal apart from all other peoples, and their 
 present condition was not their misfortune, but 
 their backsliding and whoredom. 
 
 But there is another note in the prophets, 
 without which we cannot enter into the very- 
 genius of prophecy. All this was done for Israel, 
 not on account of any goodness in Israel, but 
 because God had a purpose to serve for the world. 
 
 Here, then, were the very gist and pivot of 
 prophecy. The prophets were not mere pub- 
 licists. They did not merely as ethical teachers 
 deduce from their own perception of the immensely 
 superior moral and spiritual ideals of Israel, their 
 own private conviction of the necessary triumph of 
 Israel over heathen beliefs. They did not merely 
 get spiritual help to draw wider and surer con- 
 clusions from purely ethical grounds. No wonder, 
 if such be the prevailing views, that candid thinkers 
 are disposed to limit the range of prophecy in every 
 way until these books are as much broken up by the 
 critics as the five books of Moses themselves. 
 
 Prophecy stood on the covenant of God with 
 His ancient people. Sovereignly He had called 
 
190 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 them into their solitary place of privilege for a 
 great purpose, affecting not only Israel but the 
 entire future of the race. Granted, then, that 
 Israel may have to undergo punishment, is the 
 purpose of God to fail? Would He not be con- 
 sistent with Himself, and carry out in some form 
 His great designs ? And so the central figure of 
 prophecy is not Israel or Israel's consciousness of a 
 unique destiny, but God, coming in to restore the 
 tabernacle of David, to betroth Himself anew to 
 corrupt Israel ; by the Virgin's Son, the Wonder- 
 ful, the Counsellor, the Servant of Jehovah, 
 accomplishing His great design, setting up a 
 covenant of mercy and life, so that redemption 
 may be in His grace and power. 
 
 Now, if that be so, prophecy must have had 
 just such a creative past as the Pentateuch 
 describes, for otherwise the central burden and 
 movement of the prophecies are taken away. 
 And prophecy is — not a mere blossoming of 
 Israel's ethical genius, but something far loftier — 
 a movement of God's Spirit on select moral leaders 
 of the race, by whom, standing as they did on 
 God's past covenant of promise and His present 
 judgments. He was able to flash for all time the 
 imperishable principles of His government, and to 
 hold forth, in the nearer, or further, or most 
 distant future, the ultimate triumph of His promise, 
 spoken in far past time. 
 
THE CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 191 
 
 Now, if that be the true view and compass 
 of prophecy, how could it be preceded by an 
 era of virtual naturalism ? And more, how could 
 it be followed, as in the critical theory it is 
 followed, by such a combination of old documents 
 — J E, worked up with the Priest's Code and 
 Deuteronomy — into a literary whole? Surely 
 that would be a paltry result of the unrivalled 
 moral intensity of the prophets — the deliberate 
 attempt to put another construction on their 
 records than that which they really bore, turning 
 the natural into the supernatural, a normal 
 moral growth into a creative revelation originat- 
 ing a covenant history ! As prophecy could never 
 have taken origin from the one, it could not 
 have produced the spurious growth of the other. 
 With these burning prophecies discovering the 
 counsel of the Eternal, how could a thing ot 
 shreds and patches like the Pentateuch, according 
 to the critical view, be at once accepted and held 
 by the Jews as unspeakably the most sacred of 
 their sacred books ? The more one enters into 
 the innate character of the records, the more do 
 the inadequacy and improbability of the critical 
 view appear. 
 
 Well may we pray with the Psalmist " Let my 
 heart be sound in Thy statutes that I be not 
 ashamed." This is what comes of the attempt to 
 shape God's revelation. The critics want to make 
 
192 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 religion the crown of the natural, but with God it 
 is the entrance of the supernatural. They want 
 to portray a slow emergence of an immanent God, 
 man shaping Him to his own thought in ever- 
 growing consciousness, his own mind being, in a 
 sense, the creator or producer of the ever-expand- 
 ing idea. But in the counsel of God, revelation 
 stands on a totally different plane. It is the 
 supernatural discovery of God to beings whom He 
 has made capable of knowing Him, but who are 
 estranged. In this case the whole movement 
 must come from His side — His the covenant 
 purpose, the way of approach, the provision for 
 all need : theirs submission, and through sub- 
 mission, growth up in the knowledge and love 
 of God. Thus it is in the New Testament, thus 
 and no other in the Old. Our friends need to 
 travel much further than they dream ere they 
 can succeed. Not only must they win the verdict 
 of men : they must change the gracious covenant 
 purpose of the Most High. 
 
VI 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION AT THE 
 HANDS OF CRITICISM 
 
 Psalm xii. 6 : " The words of the Lord are pure words : as silver tried 
 in a furnace of earth, purified seven times." 
 
 We are now drawing our inquiry to a practical 
 and positive conclusion. At the outset we raised 
 the fundamental issue between the self-witness of 
 revelation and the critical view. In the former we 
 have an authoritative revelation coming from God 
 to man, the creative foundation of religious fellow- 
 ship, and a covenant history. In the latter— if 
 there be any acknowledgment of God at all — there 
 is a slow, tentative uprise and immanence of God 
 as an ethical force within human wills — a history 
 full of myth, legend, and conscious or half-conscious 
 fabrication, but reaching certain lofty moral ideals 
 at last. 
 
 Having thus stated the searching issues, by way 
 of obviating the necessity for this theory, we 
 pointed out the unbroken and growing strength of 
 the traditional view. Coming to the critical hypo- 
 thesis, we brought it to a scientific test, and found 
 that at no point did it comply with the conditions 
 
194 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 which logicians have laid down as necessary to a 
 scientific proof. In the following chapter we dealt 
 with the critical analysis of Scripture, which has 
 been looked upon as a chief foundation of the 
 theory ; and we found that it was highly pro- 
 blematical, and depended in part on the theory 
 which it was brought in to establish. Then leaving 
 argument in detail and taking the theory as a whole, 
 we showed that its reconstruction of Scripture was 
 inadequate and improbable. 
 
 And so we are now face to face with a double 
 question: (i) How has so much of the talent and 
 learning of this generation drifted into a blind 
 alley, from which there is no safe issue but return ^ 
 In other words, what errors of method have there 
 been, what oversights in investigation, what mis- 
 takes in inference and argument from a defective 
 induction of facts ? And (2) that being ascertained, 
 what considerations are necessary to be kept in view 
 for the time to come ? What rules should guide 
 a sound criticism of Holy Scripture ? These two 
 fundamental questions will embrace all the points 
 of the present chapter. 
 
 I 
 
 In taking up the former of these two questions 
 it will be wise to relate this particular critical 
 movement to the great curve of tendency reaching 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 195 
 
 downward from the Reformation, of which it is 
 the negative conclusion. 
 
 We have reached now the reductio ad ahsurdum 
 of a course which has been pursued for centuries. 
 We cannot get any farther along this hne. Re- 
 tracing our steps, and realising afresh the inex- 
 tinguishable and solitary Divine element in 
 Scripture, we shall have to set out, and with 
 much greater care, and minds free from naturalistic 
 bias, restate the relation of the human element in 
 Scripture to the Divine, so as to leave the true 
 revelation of God undimmed and unabridged. 
 Nothing happens by chance. All things serve a 
 Divine end. Through this very controversy, and 
 taught by its errors and excesses, we shall yet 
 possess a doctrine of Holy Scripture, more exactly 
 and completely true, than the Church has ever 
 possessed. 
 
 It will be necessary then to take a brief and 
 fragmentary historical survey of the course of 
 thought in relation to Holy Scripture within the 
 period specified. Of vast importance for our 
 subject will be found a clear and discriminating 
 view of the Reformation standpoint. In that great 
 spiritual upheaval the Reformers, though aroused 
 to an intense interest in the Word of God, had no 
 leisure for exact literary and historical inquiry. 
 Wakened from the dead, lifted into new life, 
 fertilised in every organ, and guided to new 
 
196 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 departures along every avenue of the soul, they 
 conceived of the book from their experience of its 
 unapproached spirit and results. They struck on 
 the central and characteristic quality of Scripture, 
 its self-evident Divine origin, and left the human 
 aspect and relations largely out of view. In this 
 they laid hold of by far the most important truth 
 — a truth from which, amid all changes and convul- 
 sions, the living Church has not declined. 
 
 We must go very much farther, however, 
 if we are to enter into the true Reformation 
 conviction. To understand how they could make 
 Scripture the authoritative rule of faith to which 
 the private judgment must bow, we have to under- 
 stand how the conviction came to them — the 
 origin, the force, the scope of the testimony that 
 Scripture was of God. That was no passing 
 phase of dogmatism, and did not arise from the 
 exigencies of their position, but sprang from what 
 was most central and imperishable in their im- 
 mediate fellowship with God. Perhaps the most 
 deeply experienced of us, in this later day, may 
 have something to learn from these masters in 
 Israel, as they speak of the testimonium Spiritus 
 Sancti (the witness of the Holy Spirit) to the 
 living Word of God. 
 
 Take this passage from Calvin's '^ Institutes " : ^ 
 " Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who 
 
 1 Bk. i., c. vii. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 197 
 
 are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce 
 implicitly in Scripture, that Scripture, carrying its 
 own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit 
 to proofs and arguments, but owes the full con- 
 viction with which we ought to receive it to the 
 testimony of the Spirit. Enlightened by Him we 
 no longer believe, either on our own judgment or 
 that of others, that the Scriptures are from God ; 
 but in a way superior to human judgment feel per- 
 fectly assured — as much so as if we beheld the 
 divine image visibly impressed on it — that it came 
 to us by the instrumentality of men from the very 
 mouth of God. We ask not for proofs or pro- 
 babilities on which to rest our judgment, but we 
 subject our intellect and judgment to it as too 
 transcendent for us to estimate. This, however, 
 we do, . . . because we have a thorough con- 
 viction that in holding it we hold unassailable 
 truth, not like miserable men whose minds are 
 enslaved by superstition, but because we feel a 
 divine energy living and breathing in it — an energy 
 by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, 
 willingly indeed and knowingly, but more vividly 
 and effectually than could be done by human will 
 and knowledge." 
 
 Never, perhaps, in human language has been 
 written out more fully and discriminatingly, what 
 every true believer has felt, and been convinced 
 of, and acted upon, in relation to Holy Scripture. 
 
198 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 We receive the Bible on the evidence of our 
 own spiritual sense, and with such a fulness of 
 illumination by the Spirit that we accept it as 
 demonstrably from God. This is no mystic 
 dream, for we are renewed within through the 
 reception of the truth, and since we have thus 
 experienced a saving change which brings us into 
 fellowship with God, this book is henceforth to us 
 the voice of God. As Dorner^ says: "The 
 believing man is the organ which the Holy Scrip- 
 tures create for themselves in order to expound 
 themselves through the same." 
 
 Substantially, and from the spiritual standpoint, 
 that was and is the truth. All who deny, or do 
 not sufficiently allow for this unique fact, simply 
 dash themselves against a rock of spiritual con- 
 viction and experience, which they cannot injure 
 since it is rooted in the unseen, and which will 
 break into harmless spray the billows of their 
 arguments. 
 
 After the Reformation, however, this view was 
 pushed to an extreme, even to the entire ignoring 
 of the other aspects of Revelation — that it came 
 through human agents, at specific times, in a certain 
 gradation or progress of truth, suited to the imme- 
 diate circumstances and the expanding faculties of 
 man. But in the subsidence of the spiritual fervour 
 and vision of the early reforming days, the cool, 
 
 ^ " Protestant Theology," vol. i. p. 242. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 199 
 
 critical mood which took account of these rose into 
 the ascendant. Now let it be said frankly that 
 these difficulties were inevitable ; this side had to 
 be taken account of. God could only be served 
 by the full truth, on the Divine side and on the 
 human. Authority could not be brought in to 
 silence inconvenient questionings. And when we 
 are dealing with matters of fact, and date, and 
 authorship, nothing will suffice but genuine re- 
 search and the sifted truth. 
 
 Thus far we go the whole length with those 
 who stand for independent critical research. If 
 we have got a document whose age and authorship 
 it is our duty to discover, we must attend solely to 
 the facts, external and internal, which may help 
 to a solution. Let the facts be got at, and bias 
 or authority set aside. 
 
 But still, critics are only to be listened to in 
 so far as fairly and adequately they interpret 
 facts. There is nothing in them, or about them, 
 which qualifies them to lay down, before they 
 begin, what sort of facts they are going to find. 
 Yet under the specious appearance of impartiality 
 this is what they have done. 
 
 (i) To show this, let us take an instance from 
 the seventeenth century, and another from our own 
 time. 
 
 Grotius, the great Dutch jurist and theologian, 
 went upon this principle, that the Bible should 
 
loo THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 be interpreted on the same rules of criticism which 
 men use in the study of all other ancient writings. 
 To this the redoubtable Warburton rejoined : 
 "Nothing could be more reasonable than his 
 principle ; but unluckily he deceived himself in 
 the application of it. . . . He went on this 
 reasonable ground, that the prophecies should be 
 interpreted like all other ancient writings ; and 
 on examining their authority he found them to 
 be truly divine. When he had gone thus far, 
 he then preposterously went back again, and 
 commented as if they were confessed to be merely 
 human." ^ 
 
 This shrewd criticism rings on the centre. By 
 all means let students be left free to deal with 
 each writing according to the evidence external 
 and internal, taking everytliing into account which 
 may fairly determine their judgment. But when 
 they come upon a collection of writings mani- 
 festly unique, animated by a spirit quite excep- 
 tional, moving on a method and plane of its own 
 — does not this rule require that they take this 
 book also, and deal with it according to the exist- 
 ing evidence ? If not, they are guilty of the trans- 
 gression of their own rule. 
 
 The only legitimate meaning of the canon 
 " that the Bible should be interpreted like all 
 other ancient writings " is, that it should be sub- 
 
 1 See for quotations, Hannah's " Bampton Lecture," 1863, p. 241. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 201 
 
 jected to the same scientific tests as other writings, 
 the book being taken as it stands and judged by 
 the light it brings. A true critic of Virgil's ^neid 
 sinks into the heart of that great poem, catches 
 from within the strains of influence, literary, his- 
 torical, contemporary, which guided his thoughts, 
 and impressed their mould upon this crowning ex- 
 pression of his genius, accumulates every fragment 
 of material likely to throw light upon the author, 
 his times, training, and so forth, and so sets him 
 in his true place. But suppose the critics started 
 in another fashion, and set up other Latin writers 
 as a standard by which to test the ^neid, fixed 
 upon certain things which we must not expect in 
 such a poet at such a time, and treated as inter- 
 polations whatever passages rose above all existing 
 models, would they ever be likely to arrive at any 
 conclusions worth listening to regarding Virgil or 
 his poem ? Yet that is the very malpractice of 
 which the higher critics are guilty, and in an ex- 
 traordinary degree, against the Old Testament. 
 
 The critics have misunderstood their own canon, 
 or rather — for that is doing them too much honour 
 — they have strained and perverted it to a false 
 issue. The world has accepted the principle in 
 one sense ; they have used it for another and very 
 different end. What we have all assented to in 
 this canon is, that the claim made for Scripture of 
 being an inspired revelation shall not be allowed 
 
202 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 to bar unfettered inquiry into the dates, author- 
 ship, and so forth of the documents. 
 
 But what they have read into it is, that the laws 
 and methods which we have found at work in 
 other ancient writings must be made regulative 
 in judging of the growth of the Scriptures ; that 
 they must be reduced to the same level, and treated 
 as on a footing with these writings, all exceptional 
 qualities in the Scriptures being dealt with after 
 heathen analogies, and reduced to what critics have 
 come to regard as natural proportions. 
 
 Now, beyond all dispute, this is a flagrant 
 begging of the question. What warrant have 
 they to fix the limits of the real and the pro- 
 bable within certain narrow bounds, and simply 
 rule out all that lies beyond as unreal ? Their 
 critical equipment gives them no such title, even 
 if they had fully and fairly appHed their law. 
 This is an a priori assumption, which vitiates 
 their conclusions. What they must do, if their 
 word is to be taken, is to indulge in no assump- 
 tions, to be loyal to fact wherever they find it, 
 to take up every document in the conditions within 
 which it has arisen, patiently to weigh every ex- 
 ceptional element in the light of all the circum- 
 stances out of which it has come, and of the 
 end at which it aims, and, free of the binding 
 chains of theory, follow reality wherever it leads. 
 
 Here the critics are far behind intellectual 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 203 
 
 workers in other fields. Historians used to write 
 history after this fashion : with their narrow sec- 
 tarian views of the course of human progress they 
 arrogated all good to their own party, and could 
 find only the most crooked and corrupt motives 
 for those who were opposed. How different, how- 
 ever, is the course to-day, even with writers who 
 have strong convictions. They are marked not 
 only by the sense of fairness, but by a high resolve 
 to bring out every angle and aspect of the fact, to 
 interpret, from within, the standpoints of the com- 
 batants, and to move on to a conclusion after every 
 point of view has been fairly put, and each interest 
 has been adequately represented. Indeed, truth 
 demands nothing less. The partisan spirit of the 
 higher criticism; the steady refusal to allow for 
 facts of immense import in determining even the 
 external history of Scripture writings ; the over- 
 riding of obvious spiritual laws by heathen 
 analogies and judgments of probability and im- 
 probability ; the unwillingness to look at the bare 
 possibility of the ancient writings which they 
 make the standard being a record of an unnatural 
 condition, in which noble human faculties were 
 making an ineffectual struggle against corruption 
 and decay, and that the true order of human 
 progress was emerging in the Scriptures them- 
 selves — these outstanding characteristics show 
 how prejudiced, how one-sided, and therefore 
 
204 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 how radically inconclusive this whole critical 
 method has been. 
 
 But, it may be asked, how can we act otherwise 
 if the plea of revelation and inspiration is not to 
 be allowed in bar of evidence? Our answer is 
 definite and unmistakable. These pleas are not to be 
 allowed as hindering inquiry, but it is by no means 
 implied that in order to be strictly impartial we 
 must go away from the outstanding facts and 
 characteristic qualities of Scripture, and not give 
 full weight to such circumstances as their peculiar 
 spirit, their internal unity, and their actual 
 influence on the world. To judge them in studied 
 oblivion of all these, by heathen analogies and the 
 supposed course of ethnic development, is not 
 justice but one-sidedness. Critics must take ac- 
 count of facts ; must give a full and dispassionate 
 interpretatibn of all the facts as they stand, in so 
 far as these can be supposed to influence in any 
 way the growth of the related literature. Though 
 we set aside, for purposes of critical inquiry, the 
 pleas of revelation and inspiration as barring re- 
 search, we do not set aside the objective facts 
 written plainly on the history of the world, which 
 give warrant and justification for these pleas. 
 How in the name of reason are you going to 
 explain the origin of a literature by going away 
 from all that is most characteristic in that 
 literature ? 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 205 
 
 Perhaps we have laboured this point with 
 sufficient fulness ; but we must remember that 
 from the days of Grotius to those of Kuenen 
 and Wellhausen this defective canon of criticism 
 has been the source of a critical treatment of 
 (especially) Old Testament Scripture, which, more 
 guarded and limited to begin with, has reached its 
 natural goal in the revolutionary theories of the 
 higher criticism. If we are not to have a recur- 
 rence of such naturalistic conclusions we must make 
 a stand for a better critical method, without bias 
 and exclusive assumptions, not arbitrarily shaping 
 the facts which afterwards it seeks to explain, but 
 receiving them as they come in the course of pro- 
 vidence, and dealing with them as they stand. 
 
 To show how completely contrary to reality 
 this method of criticism is, let us enter on a larger 
 and more general view. Let us come away from 
 the special theological domain and look at critical 
 methods in the light of the actual progress of the 
 world in ancient and modern times. 
 
 It is not customary to explain the conquering 
 by the superseded force. Yet that is what the 
 critics have done. They join hands with those 
 anthropologists who on natural lines describe 
 how, from the most rudimentary beginnings, 
 men grew up through various stages of clari- 
 fying superstition to the loftier religions and 
 civilisations of the ancient world. With good 
 
2o6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 scientific warrant, as we have already shown, we 
 refuse to accept that view of ancient development. 
 But, at any rate, that old world ended in irredeem- 
 able collapse. Despite the periods of ascent under 
 the spell of great religious leaders, in such nations 
 as Greece and Rome, India and China, the traces 
 of degeneracy over wide areas and through long 
 centuries are unmistakable. What arrested that 
 collapse, and breathed into corrupt peoples life 
 from the dead, and built up the modern world on 
 new ethical foundations, was the spiritual force 
 which entered the world in Judaism when it had 
 reached full expression in Christianity. Yet while 
 they are compelled to admit a new and control- 
 ling effect in history, they cannot away with the 
 idea^that there may have entered into history a new 
 and proportionate cause. They must explain the 
 new overcoming element by the old forces and 
 analogies of the superseded faiths ! Yes, even 
 although they are compelled to admit, as many 
 critics are, that there is a spirit in the Bible which 
 is not of earth, they must perforce tie up the living 
 spirit of God to the lines of progress in heathen- 
 dom, and refuse to entertain the idea that He may 
 have moved out to the redemption of man on a 
 path of His own. 
 
 Nor does this fact stand alone. During the 
 nineteen centuries, despite recession and decays, 
 Scripture has been moving the western nations to 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 207 
 
 platforms and ideals of which the old world never 
 dreamed; and for a century past, crowning the 
 progress of the early centuries, Scripture, in the 
 hands of her children, has been carrying to the 
 moribund nations of paganism that truth which is 
 proving, on a world-wide scale, to be the agent of 
 individual and national resurrection. Yet, although 
 from an entirely original standpoint, the religion 
 of the Bible is emancipating the world from the 
 bondage of corruption, criticism refuses to believe 
 that it may have come into the world to effect this 
 all-transforming end. It must be a development 
 out of the same natural conditions with the nations 
 it has redeemed, any difference between it and 
 them (which only some of the critics allowj lying 
 in a furtive infusion of the spiritual into select 
 human minds at later stages ! 
 
 Let the critics say what they please, the 
 theory does not account for the facts. What 
 Judaism and Christianity have effected in the 
 world demands a different explanation of their 
 origins. In the seclusion of their studies, remote 
 from the fierce conflicts in which the destinies 
 of men, upward and downward, are being fixed, 
 the critics put all this treasure of fact aside. 
 They confound these incontestable realities with 
 theological assumptions, and what they slightingly 
 call the ecclesiastical view; and, treating the 
 letter of Scripture as a subject for anatomy, 
 
2o8 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 they cut and carve, set up their analogies and 
 homologies with the exhumed skeletons of primi- 
 tive beliefs, in utter disregard of even such com- 
 manding effects as we have described. Such 
 inquiries may have an academic interest, and 
 satisfy a vain curiosity, but as a solid contribu- 
 tion to knowledge, which aspires to guide action 
 and form the basis of an organised society, they 
 are weighed in the balances and found wanting. 
 
 (2) Now let us take an exposition of the 
 critical method from our own time. And we 
 go to one of the strongest minds which have 
 been engaged in critical research, a man of 
 enormous resource, and with a keen sense of 
 the spiritual element in Holy Scripture. The 
 late Professor Robertson Smith ^ writes : 
 
 "We have got to go back step by step, and 
 retrace the history of the sacred volume up to 
 the first origin of each separate writing which it 
 contains. ... It is not needful in starting to 
 lay down any fixed rules of procedure. The 
 ordinary laws of evidence and good sense must 
 be our guides. And these we must apply to the 
 Bible just as we should do to any other ancient 
 book. This is the only principle we have to lay 
 down. And it is plainly a just principle. For 
 the transmission of the Bible is not due to a 
 continued miracle, but to a watchful Providence 
 
 1 "The Old Testament, etc.," pp. 25, 26. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 209 
 
 ruling the ordinary means by which ancient 
 books have all been handed down." 
 
 To these words in themselves we have little 
 objection; but we have a very great objection to 
 the way in which they have been applied. The 
 writer whom we have just quoted is among the 
 frankest in recognising an element of revelation 
 in Scripture. But this canon is generally in- 
 terpreted to mean that faith in the Bible, as 
 being a writing of more than natural force and 
 influence, must be kept in a water-tight compart- 
 ment, jealously excluded from the least contact 
 with criticism. Yea, that is only half the truth. 
 The critical position is much more one-sided 
 than we have described. Not only do the critics 
 refuse to entertain the idea that the exceptional 
 contents of Scripture might have had some con- 
 trolling influence on the dates and manner of 
 production of the sacred books, but they calmly 
 assume that mainly such motives as obtain among 
 men and in ordinary history could have actuated 
 the writers. 
 
 Reasonings like these are very common. The 
 oldest tradition of the Pentateuch is found in the 
 J and E narratives — so we are told ; and one sure 
 proof that J belonged to the southern portion of 
 the kingdom is that in the story of Joseph, while 
 E makes Reuben the good brother, J from local 
 jealousy makes Judah to occupy that place ! The 
 
2IO THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 legends of Abraham and Isaac — the heroes of the 
 southern saga — are given more fully in J than in 
 E, since the former belongs to the south ; and in 
 the E portion of the narrative, patriotism makes 
 the writer change the patriarch's habitat from 
 Hebron to Beersheba, '-a sanctuary much fre- 
 quented by pilgrims from the northern kingdom." 
 And this was the level of motive and consideration 
 on which writers moved, who have commanded 
 the attention and educated the higher life of 
 mankind ! ^ 
 
 Through their refusal to recognise the play of 
 higher motives and considerations which might 
 surely have risen in connection with so lofty a 
 writing, critics are driven to far more dubious 
 expedients. Since, in their mistaken adhesion 
 to a biassed theory, they will not receive the 
 self-witness of revelation that in Mosaism we 
 have a true delineation of a creative divine be- 
 ginning, to support their naturalistic view they 
 have to bring in the hypothesis of personation 
 and conscious fabrication. 
 
 Now, all the reasoning in the world cannot 
 make that to be other than of ill-savour. And 
 most of all it is an abhorrent suggestion when 
 used by those who believe that there is a real 
 element of revelation in the Old Testament. 
 
 It was lawful for the writer of Deuteronomy, 
 
 1 For points in this paragraph see '' Encyclopsdia Biblica," p. 1074. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 211 
 
 for instance, to personate Moses in an ideal en- 
 largement and recasting of the law, to invest it 
 with a vast amount of personal reminiscence and 
 historic detail so as to create the impression of 
 a contemporary writing, and to give the whole 
 forth as his. God was to be glorified, and the 
 religion which was to save men from all sin and 
 bind the soul to the absolute True was to be 
 served, by schemes such as these ! And, worse 
 in a sense than these, after the prophets had 
 raised to an unexampled height for that day the 
 moral level, it was seemingly lawful to exalt the 
 national beginnings by representing as a creative 
 revelation given by God from Sinai, what was 
 really the slow and natural growth of centuries. 
 That is simply the reductio ad absurdum of a 
 vicious method. The sane conclusion is that the 
 critics have not examined all the facts, and that 
 the supposititious causes, which they gratuitously 
 allege, could never have produced the books 
 themselves, or the unbroken unity in which they 
 cohere. You cannot get at the real origin of 
 the several books composing a literature without 
 taking some account of their contents, quality, 
 and aim; without considering how these may 
 have moulded their recipients, and set new cur- 
 rents, active and reactive, in movement through 
 their history. In the passage from which we 
 have already quoted, Professor Robertson Smith 
 
212 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 says: '^ Every fact is welcome, whether it come 
 from Jewish tradition or from a comparison of 
 old MSS. and versions, or from an examination 
 of the several books with one another, and of 
 each book in its own inner structure." And 
 that is true not only of the body but of the 
 soul of the book. 
 
 May there not have risen out of this literature 
 a sense of the Divine, a transfiguring faith, which 
 would make men insensible to petty local jealousies 
 in striving to commit to writing the footprints of 
 God in their history ; which would make them 
 incapable of putting words into His mouth, and 
 presuming to eke out His dread self-manifestation 
 with fanciful additions .^^ Must you not make 
 allowance for these moral and spiritual effects in 
 trying to account for the origins and succession 
 of this literature ^ 
 
 Again, if there be such a breath of holiness in 
 this book, would not that provoke reaction among 
 some of the people ? And so you might have side 
 by side in a generation, ay, in the same individuals, 
 lofty spiritual aptitudes and wild reversions to 
 barbarism and lust. If you did not take that into 
 account you might go utterly wrong, concluding 
 that the men capable of the barbarity could not 
 belong to the same time as those who showed the 
 spiritual insight, that the man who killed Uriah 
 could not be the singer of the sweetest psalms. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 213 
 
 Have we not said enough to show, or at least to 
 suggest, how disregard of the soul of the literature 
 might occasion critics drawing the most erroneous 
 inferences and laying down the most mistaken 
 conclusions ? But we must go further. Recall 
 Professor Robertson Smith's assertion: *'The 
 Bible does speak to the heart of man in words 
 that can only come from God." But does not 
 that introduce a new factor? May not God 
 have a method of discovering Himself all His 
 own ? And if that be possible, you must con- 
 sider that possibility. If you find this to be 
 true, and you want your criticism to account for 
 all the facts of the case, you must reckon with 
 this fact likewise. 
 
 "Ah, but," you say, "we were to deal with 
 the Scriptures in the same way as with all other 
 ancient writings." Of course, we rejoin, to begin 
 with, giving the one no advantage over the other. 
 But if, as you pursue your inquiries, you find that 
 there are exceptional elements in Scripture, are 
 you not to say honestly out what you find? Are 
 you not to deal with the exceptional elements as 
 they present themselves, according to all the facts, 
 judging righteous judgment ? Is criticism simply 
 to be paralysed before facts that cannot be 
 ignored? And since it has been living so long 
 within the strait limits of the natural, is it to 
 be allowed to disintegrate the Old Testament 
 
214 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 in the vain attempt to get it within the limits of the 
 natural ? Rather let them refuse to set any arbi- 
 trary limit to the realm of fact, and step up into 
 the higher world of ethical and spiritual forces into 
 which Scripture leads. 
 
 In the bright work of a recent naturalist we read 
 a story of a menagerie tiger, which rises to the 
 memory in this connection. By an accident his 
 cage was broken into fragments, and he was set 
 free. His first impulse, translated instantly into 
 act, was to leap out into liberty. But in his 
 long confinement liberty had become so foreign 
 to him that he leaped back, and sat crouching 
 among the ruins. We have in these last genera- 
 tions been suffering the reality of the spiritual 
 to be circumscribed, by strait theories of physical 
 law and mechanical evolution. And so many 
 Christians prefer to crouch amid the ruins of a 
 disintegrated revelation, rather than dare the open, 
 in loyalty to every side of their natures, and in 
 the resolute endeavour to search every avenue 
 and aspect of truth. 
 
 II 
 
 We have thus seen the defects of method 
 which have marked the investigation of the Higher 
 Criticism. And now we come to a much more 
 difficult task, which in the very nature of things 
 can only, to begin with, be very imperfectly accom- 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 215 
 
 plished. In our first chapter we affirmed that there 
 was a legitimate place for criticism, and that, even 
 when this hypothesis was swept away, criticism 
 must proceed. One main lesson, then, to be 
 learned from this controversy is to eliminate error 
 from critical methods, and in the light of experi- 
 ence to draw out and lay down certain rules 
 which must be observed in all thorough critical 
 investigation of Scripture. 
 
 True, there are some lessons which lie on the 
 surface, and which may immediately be drawn. 
 Most new sciences, which afterwards have risen 
 to great place, have had to profit by mistakes. 
 Astronomy went far beyond its proper sphere 
 into the illusory quests of astrology. Chemistry 
 set out on many a fruitless errand after the 
 philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. The 
 dawn of geology was marked by the fierce con- 
 flicts of extreme theories. And so the revival of 
 Hebrew studies, which the last generation has 
 witnessed, and the attempt by critical methods 
 to break into and lay bare the sealed centuries 
 of antiquity, have been marked by a boldness 
 of theory which the sober judgment of the 
 world will not support, and by audacities of 
 method which have gone as widely aside from 
 the realm of fact, as the calculations of the 
 astrologer and the labours of the alchemist. 
 Criticism is coming to see the folly of tying 
 
2i6 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 itself to any exclusive theory of human life 
 and progress. Existing to discover not the 
 loftier truth of faith, but the lower truth of 
 fact, it should be simply loyal to the facts 
 which lie outside its own special sphere. The 
 weapons of criticism being merely external tests, 
 researches, accumulations of illustrative material, 
 her one function is to arrive, from without, 
 at an adequate judgment of date, author- 
 ship, circumstances, aim, and end. Even when 
 criticism considers the contents and spirit of the 
 writings, it is only to find a clue to the time 
 when they might have been written, affinities 
 which may throw light on authorship, and the 
 associations amid which the writings may have 
 sprung. It is for Christians generally, and for 
 trained Bible students in especial, to approach 
 revelation from the central standpoint, and by 
 the Spirit enter into their spiritual compre- 
 hension. This is the only plane on which their 
 contents can be discovered to the soul, and from 
 which they can put their power forth on the 
 individual and on society. 
 
 As the Bible student recognises the place of 
 the critic, the critic must respect the spiritual 
 findings of innumerable saints, martyrs, confessors, 
 thinkers, who in the power of the truth have set 
 up a world-wide kingdom, and who, despite all 
 diversities, have been one in Christ Jesus. This 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 217 
 
 is what Scripture has wrought out to in the course 
 of the world, in the histories of nations, and in 
 Hves innumerable. Surely these facts are to enter 
 into the critic's reckoning. He has no right to 
 alter these, to suppose them other than they have 
 discovered themselves to be, to imagine a course 
 of events leading up to a view of revelation funda- 
 mentally different from that which revelation itself 
 expresses. That is not scientific criticism, but 
 disloyalty to the realities of the situation, and 
 speculation in face of the facts. 
 
 All that is abundantly plain, and has been fre- 
 quently pointed out in the course of this discussion. 
 But when we come to map out in detail a true 
 and adequate method which will satisfy every 
 claim of criticism to thoroughness and independ- 
 ence, and yet not slur over and leave out of 
 account all the claims of Scripture to full and fair 
 consideration as a wholly exceptional spiritual force, 
 we can only hope to lay down a first tentative set 
 of rules, which will require to be altered and im- 
 proved by subsequent discussion. 
 
 (i) Every writing should be accepted provision- 
 ally as it stands, and studied from its own view- 
 point, and in the light of its own accompanying 
 traditions. Conjecture should only be resorted to 
 when all reasonable probability is set at defiance, 
 and when it supplies the explanation which satisfies 
 every requirement of fact and judgment. 
 
2i8 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 If one reads the opening pages of, say, Kuenen's 
 "History of Israel" and then takes note of the 
 sentiments and practice of leading historians, he 
 will be constrained to the coriclusion that conjec- 
 ture has been employed to a wholly unlawful 
 extent in the higher criticism. Froude says, 
 "Conjecture is of little value in history"; while 
 it has been the critic's chief weapon. 
 
 We therefore judge that literary documents are 
 to be accepted as they stand, and in the setting 
 within which they are found ; at least, until every 
 possibility of a rational explanation has been ex- 
 hausted. 
 
 Now, in the present case this has not been done. 
 Men have hurried to conjecture, have heaped 
 together all sorts of surface analogies and corre- 
 spondences, without exhausting the facts of Scrip- 
 ture. Admitted that we have here very exceptional 
 elements — miracle, direct communications of God, 
 prophecy, a wonderful interrelation of parts — and 
 even though some of these seem to have analogy 
 with the legendary elements of other histories, 
 the duty of criticism is without prejudice to 
 examine the facts before arriving at any conclusion. 
 The vice of so-called scientific inquiry lies in the 
 sudden leaping to general conclusions through a 
 rash use of inference and hypothesis. So Huxley 
 tried to explain life by delusive analogies that left 
 out the material point. So did the Frenchman 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 219 
 
 set up an illusory comparison between the liver 
 secreting bile and the brain secreting thought. 
 So did Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill 
 confound moral distinctions with a totally diiFerent 
 principle of action, utility. The manifoldness of 
 existence is in constant danger from speculators, 
 who, to bring the universe within their theory, 
 leave out incongruous facts. 
 
 To come back to our case. Granted the excep- 
 tional elements, should not these be fairly and 
 without prejudice considered by the hght they 
 bring? Before we resort to any hypothesis about 
 the Old Testament, should we not note the facts? 
 There are many circumstances about this Book 
 which ought to give us pause. Recall the state- 
 ment of Josephus, quoted in an earHer chapter, 
 in which he says that the attachment of the Jews 
 to their literature was on a very different plane 
 from that of the Greeks to theirs. Regarding 
 them as Divine, they feared to alter them in any 
 way. Frequently they '^ endured racks and deaths 
 of all kinds upon the theatres " rather than say 
 one word against their laws and the records that 
 contained them. 
 
 Then we have the remarkable tribute paid to 
 the literature of an obscure Asiatic people by the 
 most cultured nation of antiquity in the production 
 of the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. 
 But there are facts of far deeper significance than 
 
220 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 these — the passionate devotion of a nation to the 
 Old Testament, and most of all to the Pentateuch, 
 as a revelation of God ; and in this the very soul 
 of their separation from all other nations ; the 
 spring of a tenacious valour at times, as under the 
 Maccabees, one of the wonders of the world ; and 
 the fertiliser not only of intense personal piety but 
 of spiritual thought, which led them to clearer 
 definition and fuller expression of many truths 
 lying less clearly defined in Holy Scripture. We 
 have seen already how the age of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah received the Pentateuch with unspeak- 
 able reverence and submission as the very voice 
 of God. Those are phenomena worthy of atten- 
 tion. 
 
 And when we take, say, the Pentateuch from 
 the hands of Ezra, we find everything in keeping 
 with these effects. We find a history of a crea- 
 tive Divine purpose working itself by successive 
 steps from Abraham to Moses into the life of the 
 Jewish nation — a kind of fact to which, as the 
 late Bishop Westcott told us, there is no parallel 
 among heathen nations. And, wonderful to tell, 
 through a strangely chequered and very dis- 
 appointing after history, that Divine purpose goes 
 on — not merely to repeat itself, but to reappear 
 in strikingly original forms and in more articulate 
 expression in far separated ages. These are facts 
 surely very pertinent to the task of forming a 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 221 
 
 judgment regarding these writings — unprecedented 
 and unparalleled facts, unlike anything else to be 
 found in the world. 
 
 And now, looking down the stream, there is 
 another fact which throws even these into the 
 shade. Old Testament Scripture ceases, many- 
 think nowadays, not with Malachi, but with such 
 books as Ecclesiastes and Daniel. Still, across an 
 eventful gap, the spirit of the old religion reasserts 
 itself; ay, and much more than that, all the threads 
 of purpose in the Old Testament Scriptures are 
 gathered up and find their ideal fulfilment in a 
 series of historic events, reaching their crown in the 
 death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Are events like these to be left out of account 
 in estimating the Hterature which contains them? 
 Surely the exceptional facts point to exceptional 
 causes being at work. And if criticism satisfies 
 itself with these is it not bound to speak out its 
 honest mind ? Think of critics going away from 
 all that, refusing to make allowance for such 
 incontestable truths, and bringing analogies from 
 a totally different condition of things, that of a 
 decadent heathenism, to serve as a Procrustes' 
 bed on which Scripture must be forcibly dis- 
 jointed. Henceforth, before there can be any 
 question of conjecture and imaginative reconstruc- 
 tion, criticism must show that it has exhausted 
 every possible solution of the facts as they stand. 
 
222 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 (2) In connection with Scripture, then, there 
 are exceptional elements of a very remarkable 
 kind, and we must be ready to take account of 
 any new forces which may have come into in- 
 dividual character as helping in part to account 
 for the origins of Scripture. 
 
 This is a point of much greater importance than 
 may at first sight appear. Scripture is suffering 
 from presumptions underlying modern discussion, 
 which are not fair to the matter in hand, and 
 which leave out of view most important elements 
 necessary to a just conclusion. A process of 
 minimising marks this movement, which is not 
 scientific rigour, but betrays a lack of broad im- 
 partiality in weighing all the points in the case, 
 and an eagerness to make for the negative and 
 lowest possible solution. 
 
 For instance, we hear it said, whatever the 
 story of creation may be, it is not history. There- 
 fore, what can it be but legend? And when 
 other accounts are found, such as the Chaldsean, 
 what can the Bible account be but a copy of 
 this ? Yea, rioting in the furthest possibilities of 
 negative suggestion, critics throw out the mere 
 guess, that this story, placed in the forefront of 
 our sacred books, may have come in so late as the 
 Exile. Is that a kind of intellectual process which 
 a disciplined judgment can receive with respect? 
 It deserves no respect, being only bold guessing 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 223 
 
 in a negative interest. They have not taken full 
 account of all the documents. Genesis is a 
 document as truly as that exhumed in 1875 by 
 the late George Smith. Because it has been in 
 the hands of. civilised people for far more than 
 two, possibly three thousand years, it is not the 
 less, but rather the more, to be considered. The 
 account is inherently more worthy of respect than 
 any other. Free from every mythical element 
 disfiguring the various accounts, it stands a most 
 worthy and noble beginning of a revelation which 
 still commands the submission of the most advanced 
 peoples. 
 
 We have here, also, some light as to when 
 and how this narrative was written down for 
 posterity. In the Mosaic Age, during a period 
 of profound religious upheaval, after God had 
 come forth into a positive historical relation to 
 His people, and they had been brought into 
 covenant relation with Him, Moses, with the 
 instinct of a great prophet, evidently felt that 
 since this movement must have a meaning and 
 influence upon all the future, it would be necessary 
 to relate it to God's discoveries of Himself which 
 had gone before. Here we see how religion lifts 
 him above all ordinary motives of the annalist, 
 and bring in new forces, purifying and controlling 
 his whole activity. He is discovering the doings of 
 the holy, eternal One. He is unravelling a Divine 
 
2 24 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 thought, only to be served by the sifted truth, and 
 in nowise by the imaginations of men. He has got" 
 a clue, also, to the meaning of time, as the unfold- 
 ing of a purpose of education and redemption. And 
 more, he abases himself, that in his continual sub- 
 mission God may guide him into the truth. 
 
 Even as parts of a critical equipment for getting 
 at the kind of truth he was seeking, were not these 
 forces valuable ? We see him travelling up the 
 stream of time, through the ever receding tradi- 
 tions of his people, back to Jacob, Isaac, Abraham ; 
 and at every backward step the movements of God 
 in preparation stand out in original Divine reality. 
 Then, with the master thought before him that 
 God was moving on to a world-end, he relates 
 the history of his own people to the larger world 
 by tracing the genealogy of Abraham to Shem. 
 But even here he does not stop. These first 
 eleven chapters of Genesis are the most wonderful 
 historic writing in the world. Through the line 
 of Shem he reaches out within wider horizons 
 still to the well-heads of the three chief branches 
 of the human race, in Shem, Ham, and Japhet. 
 God had said to him, " All the earth is Mine." 
 What had been happening at Sinai had signifi- 
 cance for all mankind, and it was for him to bring 
 them into relation. 
 
 Up till now we can easily conceive Moses to 
 have been guided by tradition, the inner meaning 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 225 
 
 and fulness of which were opened up by God. 
 But even here his adventurous spirit does not resi. 
 Crossing the gulf of the flood, he travels back 
 through silent generations which may have left 
 some traces in the huge masses of Cyclopean 
 architecture htre and there, and in the remains 
 of prehistoric museums. 
 
 But it may be said, who of us can be sure 
 that he is on historic ground here? May he 
 not have swept together loose and vague tradi- 
 tions, holding for facts what were fancies, and 
 not discriminating realities from dreams ? How 
 can we attach importance to writings that can have 
 little or nothing to show for their historic worth ^ 
 
 At this point we wish to call attention to a great 
 wonder. Archaeology has discovered in the tradi- 
 tions of all primitive peoples ihe most ample proof 
 that Moses is on the line of actuality, or at least 
 what primitive peoples received as actual, back to 
 the creation. Allow me to quote from a writer 
 of repute, Ebrard : ^ ^'The most diverse peoples, 
 sprung from the most diverse stems, have the 
 remembrance of one common primitive history of 
 their common ancestors, and this common ground 
 in their reminiscences extends down exactly to the 
 building of the tower and the confusion of lan- 
 guages, and no further." And more in detail: 
 
 1 "Christian Apologetics," vol. iii. pp. 319-321, Clark's Theological 
 Library. 
 
2 26 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 " To all parts of the earth they took the remem- 
 brance of one invisible God, who in the beginning 
 had revealed Himself visibly to man ; of a sin 
 committed by the first parents, begun by the wife 
 in her eating of forbidden fruit under the influence 
 of a tempter, who for the most part appears in 
 connection with a serpent ; of the entrance of 
 death as consequence and punishment of this sin ; 
 of a brother's murder; of three brothers who dis- 
 covered the arts, namely, the working of metals ; 
 of a race of mighty men or giants who rebelled 
 against God; of a flood that covered the highest 
 mountains, in which all men but one family 
 perished ; of a mountain on whose top this family 
 landed ; of birds which the father of this family 
 sent forth ; of a rainbow which stood in some rela- 
 tion to their deliverance ; of the three sons of this 
 man as ancestors of the various peoples ; of a new 
 rebellion against God, when men sought to rear a 
 building which should reach to heaven ; of a fire 
 from heaven which destroyed this building, con- 
 fused the languages, and scattered the races of 
 mankind over the face of the earth." 
 
 But, in addition to facts like these, which are 
 surely remarkable, we have in the Babylonish crea- 
 tion epic " remarkable parallels to the first Biblical 
 cosmogony." The higher critic who uses these 
 words admits '' that it might be possible to explain 
 the Babylonian myth as a development of the 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 227 
 
 simpler and purer tradition contained in the Bible," 
 although he cannot accept this, mainly because he 
 has accepted the view that the Bible account was 
 drawn up in the Exile. ^ Having been delivered 
 from submission to the critical theory in previous 
 chapters, we take the writer's words as briefly 
 establishing the essential concord of the account 
 in Genesis with other ancient traditions. 
 
 And now to draw our conclusion, and from this 
 estabhsh the reasonableness, and indeed necessity, 
 of our second rule. Is it not most remarkable how 
 from every corner of the earth there have turned 
 up a multitude of independent witnesses that 
 Moses is on the trunk line of universal human 
 tradition ? But there is something far more remark- 
 able than that. In all these other peoples those 
 primitive traditions subsisted as mere recollections, 
 more or less fading, modified by tricks of memory 
 and the iridescence of imagination, and having 
 no relation to the present and the future. But in 
 one nation, and one writing, not only do they 
 appear in a purer form, but they stand out in a 
 visible and definite relation to God, as the first 
 steps in and toward His divine purpose, on a level 
 with, and related to, all that is to follow. 
 
 Of course, if men will abide on the level of 
 naturalism, and refuse to take account of these 
 outstanding facts — if everything must be ex- 
 
 ' Hastings' " Bible Dictionary," Art. Cosmogony^ vol. i. 505. 
 
228 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 plained on purely natural grounds by ordinary 
 means — they must be left to blunder on with their 
 utterly inconsistent supposition, that Israel borrowed 
 from Babylon, yet so wonderfully improved on 
 Babylon. But why shut out those higher ele- 
 ments — that Moses had, in the great movement 
 culminating at Sinai, caught a ghmpse of the 
 Divine purpose, and so entered into the meaning 
 of '' the dark backward abyss of time " in relation 
 thereto ; and that he was able, not only to remove 
 the imaginative and retain the actual in old tradi- 
 tions, but to bring out their essential Divine signi- 
 ficance in relation to all that was to come ? That 
 is what has actually been done, as even critics con- 
 fess. Why do they refuse, then, to face the whole 
 problem ; to entertain the supposition that excep- 
 tional effects may have had very distinguishing 
 causes ; and to study without prejudice every new 
 element of consecrated character and spiritual 
 illumination which may have entered into so un- 
 exampled a result ? 
 
 And now I must state and illustrate much more 
 briefly the next three rules. 
 
 (3) Where elements are found in a Hterature, 
 which are fitted to exert, and have actually exerted, 
 a highly special influence, these may have had the 
 effect of rapidly ripening the human spirit in 
 certain directions, and starting new and early 
 literary developments. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 229 
 
 Nothing is more certain, to a thoughful reader 
 perusing works of modern criticism, than that 
 judgments are passed on dates, and circumstances, 
 and authorship of works, on imperfect and even 
 erroneous canons. Thus, Wellhausen, who regards 
 the Psaker as the hymn-book of the Congregation 
 of the Second Temple, goes on to say: "The 
 question is not whether it contains any post-exilic 
 psalms, but whether it contains any pre-exilic 
 psalms." And Professor Cheyne, in his Bampton 
 Lecture on "The Origin and Religious Contents 
 of the Psalter," has maintained that ''the whole 
 Psalter, with the possible exception of parts of 
 Psalm xviii., is exilic, belonging mainly to the 
 Persian and Greek period, and containing a con- 
 siderable number of Maccabsean Psalms."^ 
 
 The clue to such extreme opinions of Canon 
 Cheyne is given in the very title of his volume. 
 The origin and contents of the Psalter are con- 
 sidered "in the light of Old Testament criticism 
 and the history of Religions." Subjective ideas 
 of a natural development, and comparison of the 
 progress of thought and belief in heathen nations, 
 are allowed positively to determine the dates of 
 Hebrew Psalms. But it is matter of common 
 notoriety that epoch-making movements exert the 
 most powerful quickening influence on the hterary 
 
 1 For references and summary, see Kirkpatrick, -'The Book of 
 Psalms," xxxvii., xxxviii. 
 
230 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 activities of their time. That great era in Euro- 
 pean history of which the origin of printing, the 
 discoveries of Columbus, the revival of learning, 
 and, crowning all, the Reformation, were chief 
 factors, set in motion in many directions new 
 trends of intellectual activity. Rapidly struck out 
 in the heat and fervour of a great inspiration, 
 principles, ideals, views of human rights and duty 
 were in short space produced, that have governed 
 Europe and America ever since. 
 
 Could men have been brought into fellowship 
 with God at Sinai, could they have realised His 
 continuous presence in their history, and His 
 wonderful deliverance for them, without that 
 reacting on their life, and on their thought and 
 feeling? Is it at all unbelievable that such 
 exceptional influences would originate literary 
 works out of the common ? Is it difficult to 
 imagine that David, that great chief, though 
 marked by many rude traits of his time, might 
 be caught up into flights of song, realising God's 
 distinguishing goodness to Jesse's shepherd son, 
 and the far-reaching purpose which He had in 
 view in raising him to the throne ? What hap- 
 pened in other nations may be helpful, but is not 
 authoritative. The facts which we accumulated in 
 Chapter V. about the Accadian Psalms, and the 
 outburst of Homeric song at the dawn of the 
 Greek history, show that there is no room for 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 
 
 231 
 
 dogmatism. Account must be taken of all these 
 special circumstances in Israel's history, and if they 
 reasonably explain the existence of earlier and 
 striking outbursts of song, that should be decisive, 
 despite what obtained elsewhere. 
 
 Let us pause on this point a moment further. 
 The origins of Israel were so peculiar, brought 
 Israel into so special a relation to God, that they 
 have produced a literature wholly unexampled 
 in the heathen world. Where have you any 
 writings like those of the Hebrew prophets ? 
 These sprang in unexampled splendour from 
 the vision and faith of Israel under Divine 
 guidance. 
 
 Again, where else is a literary phenomenon to be 
 found like that of " Job," in which we have a soul 
 wresthng with the problem of right in relation to 
 God, which was only effectually raised in Israel, 
 and reaching out to a vision of the Divine — not 
 only holding to His due, but putting Himself in 
 the place of the creature to fulfil and help — surely 
 a vivid anticipation of Messiah, and of the full 
 revelation in Christ.'^ 
 
 If monuments so solitary and wonderful sprang 
 from the Jewish spirit, who shall refuse to allow 
 to the Hebrew lyrical genius, in touch with God, 
 much more than was possible to heathen singers ? 
 They did not need Persian prompting to express 
 their belief in immortality I Such a conviction lies 
 
232 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 implicit in real contact, such as Moses and David 
 enjoyed, with God. 
 
 But, (4) with such a Divine Creative movement 
 as that ^vhich started Israel's history, allowance 
 must be made for very powerful reactions and 
 reversions from time to time. 
 
 This indicates another frequent source of error 
 in the higher criticism. One great reason why 
 critics will not accept the Mosaic economy as it 
 stands is because when they come down to after- 
 times they find the people rude, half savage, with 
 an undeveloped worship, and the ideals and 
 even practice of Sinai almost sunk out of sight. 
 And so they imagine a slow natural development 
 up from heathenism — from nature-festivals and a 
 religion hardly to be distinguished from the sur- 
 rounding tribal cults. 
 
 This speculation suits the natural temper of our 
 time ; but such a view is inadequate and un- 
 scientific. A religion which sprang from the 
 ground keeps to the ground. If there be nothing 
 save the earthly and natural in, nothing save that 
 can come out. But when you look at Jewish 
 naturalism, so-called, you find in the deepest 
 descent that "a spark disturbs the clod." Events 
 happen that have no correspondence in heathenism. 
 Men and women arise — Ehud, and Deborah, and 
 Barak, and Gideon — who display devotion to God 
 unquenched in Israel, and rally the nation to 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 233 
 
 Jehovah. Even when very imperfect, the men 
 are after the type of former heroes of faith. 
 Then the drift is not in the main to degeneracy. 
 Samuel comes forth an ideal character and leads 
 Israel upwards. No, no ! This is not a story of 
 natural development up from Paganism, but the 
 story of reaction from, and then restoration to, a 
 great creative beginning which lay behind. The 
 history cannot be understood on any other footing 
 than that. We cannot leave the spiritual con- 
 stituents out, if we v/ould understand this history 
 and its expression in literature. We must enter 
 into the actions and reactions, the lofty possibilities, 
 the disastrous declensions, of a nation standing in 
 a solitary relation to God from the beginning, that 
 it might be an example to the world. 
 
 And now, (5) the origins are fairly to be judged 
 in the light of effects and outcomes. 
 
 Remember that we are dealing here from begin- 
 ning to end with the conscious experiences of men. 
 And we lay down as an all-inclusive rule that we 
 may provisionally take for granted that, however 
 obscure the origins of a religion may be, we may 
 judge of their quality by that to which they work 
 out. 
 
 In saying this we are simply affirming that all 
 growths are true to their kinds. You cannot 
 gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles. If 
 a movement is founded in selfishness, under every 
 
234 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 disguise the selfish base will appear. Now, here 
 the unbeheving critics are perfectly consistent. 
 The outcome — Christianity — is in their view a 
 natural growth, and they may consistently hold 
 that the origins in Judaism are natural. The 
 inconsistency lies with those who hold the Divine 
 origin and revealed character of Christianity, and 
 who would yet trace back Judaism to a slow 
 natural growth up from the ground of ordinary 
 heathen worship. But in this there is a great 
 deal of intellectual confusion. Natural religion 
 (beyond the instinctive sense of Deity with which 
 there is evidence that all religions began) is a 
 projection of man's own mind, an attempt to 
 shadow forth dim and perverted instincts. Myth- 
 ology is a disease of thought. Writers go on the 
 assumption of Jehovah being a tribal God, as if 
 He grew ; whereas what developed was only man's 
 knowledge of Him. There is do gradual transition 
 from these dreams of alien and self-centred man 
 to the veritable Divine, coming down into human 
 life with His own holy will, setting at nought the 
 thoughts of man, leaving no place for them, seeking 
 to lift man to converse, and to fill him with His 
 Spirit. The idea of a slow development up from 
 one level to the other is an absurdity. Whenever 
 God came, under whatever primitive forms. He 
 came from His own Divine centre, distinct, divine, 
 individual, to put an end to the false dreams of 
 
THE RIGHTS OF REVELATION 235 
 
 man. Therefore the fair and proper assumption 
 on which to go, till facts disprove it, is that if 
 there be a real revelation from God in the cul- 
 mination, Christianity, religion will have been on 
 that level from the beginning in Judaism. 
 
 Of course, these five rules are mere tentative 
 sketches of canons such as we are assured dis- 
 passionate critics must lay down, if they are to 
 arrive at the exact truth regarding such a literature 
 as that of the Old Testament. They may be 
 imperfectly drawn, unwisely expressed, defective 
 possibly, or possibly redundant ; still, they are a 
 beginning. Criticism when dealing with Scripture 
 is not engaged in an academic question, but in a 
 study which affects very powerfully sacred human 
 interests. It should not toy with such problems 
 in absence of the main factors making for a con- 
 clusion. What we want is truth, fact, reahty in 
 relation to the external history of this literature, 
 whose contents have brought life to the world ; 
 and it is our interest, as practical men, to see that 
 no orders of fact are left out of view which can 
 contribute to a rational and truly reliable con- 
 clusion. 
 
VII 
 
 THE TRUE ORDER AND PROGRESSION 
 OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 Rev. xix. lo : " The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." 
 
 With profound gratitude to God we- put our 
 hands to the last chapter of this volume, which 
 has been prepared, from month to month, under 
 an accumulation of other cares even more than 
 ordinarily burdensome. We have been discussing 
 in these past chapters an artificial order imposed 
 upon Old Testament Scripture, whose inadequacy 
 has been exposed at many points, and whose 
 foreignness to the spirit of revelation has abund- 
 antly appeared. Now, by way of conclusion, we 
 desire briefly to discover and unfold the true 
 order lying imbedded in the Old Testament, and 
 the principle of progression as discovered in the 
 relation of the several books. 
 
 Of course, this can only be done by way of 
 suggestion, and by inference from the distinctive 
 doctrine of revelation which we have enunciated 
 in these chapters. Taking into account the spiritual 
 side of revelation in the way we suggested in last 
 
 chapter, sound and accurate critics must yet deal 
 
 236 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 237 
 
 with each part in detail, fixing, so far as possible, 
 the date, authorship, etc., of each psalm and book 
 and, it may be, fragment. We purpose showing, 
 in stay of judgment, and as indicating the reversals, 
 of the critical view, which are sure to ensue when 
 the present hypothesis is set aside, how much may 
 be said in general terms for the Biblical order as 
 it at present stands, and especially what a profound 
 continuity marks that progression of life, institu- 
 tion, literature, represented in the Old Testament 
 as it has come down supported by tradition from 
 pre-Christian times. 
 
 There is one thing about the higher criticism 
 which we thoroughly appreciate — the attempt to 
 introduce the scientific spirit, the attempt to vindi- 
 cate its view of Scripture, at the broad bar of 
 history and the world's judgment. We believe 
 that we have in Scripture the truth about God, 
 the absolute fundamental truth, of which all other 
 truths, physical, biological, intellectual, moral, are 
 aspects or subordinate manifestations. Therefore, 
 whether dealing externally with the text, or in- 
 ternally with the truth, we ought to present it 
 as that which has affinity with all the thinkings 
 of man, and can vindicate itself at the bar of 
 universal reason. 
 
 But in doing this we are not to make light of 
 the spiritual, in order to give first place and full 
 scope to the natural. The spiritual stands on its 
 
238 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 own feet, is a constituent of experience, as much 
 as the material, and must be studied by the laws 
 which it discovers, and in the light which it brings. 
 In the moral, which is a schoolmaster to bring men 
 to God, in the universal, inextinguishable sense of 
 God, we see that there is a whole side of man 
 which fronts God and which thirsts for communion 
 with Him. And more, in coming into conscious 
 life through Christ, the spiritual has exerted such 
 influence upon individual character and social and 
 pubhc movements that it can neither be discounted 
 nor dismissed. We need not fear to assert for 
 the spiritual, aad for God's discovery of Himself 
 to man's spirit, all which they can rightfully claim. 
 That is not sectarianism, but going for the whole 
 truth. If men will ignore one side of experience 
 and all that belongs to it, if they will insist on 
 explaining the whole by the half, they must be 
 left to be confronted by their insoluble enigmas 
 and impaled on their flagrant inconsistencies. 
 
 Because we insist, however, that the unique 
 element in Scripture is to be fully and fairly 
 allowed for, we by no means admit that we are 
 shutting up the Church to a forced and unnatural 
 view. Rather do we confidently affirm that not 
 until we take full account of all the facts pertain- 
 ing to Old Testament literature, can we discern 
 the original and highly characteristic development 
 from within of a living revelation. Every order 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 239 
 
 of facts has a development characteristic of itself. 
 First come the mechanical processes of dead matter. 
 Then we have development on a new plane, in 
 plants and animals, from a life centre, and by laws 
 peculiar to organic beings. Although there have 
 been loud boasts to that effect, there is no resolv- 
 ing the higher kind of development into the lower. 
 Then, across a still wider gulf, you have develop- 
 ment of sensation and intelligence on a plane so 
 manifestly distinct, and by processes so irremov- 
 ably separate from the material, that Herbert 
 Spencer frankly admits that the causes by which 
 physical processes like motion and light are 
 changed into the mental experience of sound and 
 visions are " mysteries which it is not possible 
 to fathom."^ 
 
 Now, just as among evolutionists in the field of 
 natural science a strong effort has been made to 
 reduce all existence to an affair of mechanics, so 
 critics have begun by endeavouring to reduce the 
 Old Testament to a level and a kind of develop- 
 ment lower than that to which it belongs. There- 
 fore, to all the assertions made by eminent men 
 (some of which we quoted in Chapter V.), that 
 theirs is the view which presents the natural 
 development of Israel, we say: — By no means; 
 yours is an alien theory forced from without on an 
 order of facts belonging to a wholly different level 
 
 ^ " First Principles," p. 217. 
 
240 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 than that from which you reason, and animated by- 
 principles and forces in the boldest contrast to 
 those which you gratuitously assume. 
 
 The whole false progress comes from confound- 
 ing things that differ. We believe that, clearer 
 or more obscure, there is a witness of God in 
 every man, and such revelation in nature that the 
 invisible things of God from the creation of the 
 world, even His eternal power and Godhead, are 
 clearly seen, being understood by the things that 
 are made.^ So from time to time, even amid the 
 dark of heathenism, great souls have reached out 
 to fragmentary views and ideals that had a certain 
 moral uplifting for longer or shorter periods. All 
 these, however, whatever their arresting power 
 for a season, have not hindered the collapse of 
 ancient and modern heathenism. What we have 
 in Scripture, even in the Old Testament, given " at 
 sundry times and in divers manners," is on a totally 
 different plane. 
 
 As life came in, to make a new world of veget- 
 able and animal existences and activities, in the 
 silent spaces of dead matter ; as a self-conscious 
 mind awoke in man, and through intelligence got 
 dominion over the creatures, that he might turn 
 the properties of nature to ends of physical, intel- 
 lectual, moral, and spiritual culture ; so, crowning 
 all, God who is a Spirit comes in to make Himself 
 
 1 Romans i. 20, 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 241 
 
 known to the intelligences whom He has made, 
 and to draw them into free, conscious, loving sub- 
 mission to Himself. 
 
 That is the self-witness of Scripture in the Old 
 Testament, as in the New. It never moves from 
 that ground of a self-revelation of God, demanding 
 obedience as the condition of all fellowship and 
 happiness. It speaks from a plane of its own con- 
 sistently from beginning to end, and it brings to 
 light the peculiar facts in human life to which it 
 makes appeal Is not that a suflSciently notable 
 fact to take account of, that from the beginning of 
 recorded history to the first, and possibly the second, 
 century of the Christian era, writings should 
 appear at irregular periods, and in widely sundered 
 ages, which, amid varieties of form and innumer- 
 able minor diversities, are all written from one 
 standpoint (and that alone in the world) of an 
 actual and glorious revelation by God to Israel.'* 
 And have we not an advance even upon that 
 notable fact in this, that when brought together 
 by other men in a late age they cohered, not 
 merely in a unity, but in the progression of a 
 Divine purpose, from age to age ? 
 
 From all that we find in lower fields then, we 
 should expect that in a revelation occupying so 
 exceptional and exalted a standpoint we should 
 have a principle of development from within, quite 
 characteristic and peculiar to itself. And, as 
 
242 THE INTEGRITY OK SCRIPTURE 
 
 throughout this chapter we shall be cartful to 
 show, this is really the case. 
 
 In last chapter we tried to realise Moses work- 
 ing back from the standpoint of Sinai -into the 
 earlier history, and lifting into light the prior 
 steps of God's manifestation. We saw what a 
 wonderful fragment of history that is, and how 
 fully the earliest portions, which might seem 
 farthest removed from actual proof, are supported 
 by documents recently discovered, and by universal 
 traditions of the human race. 
 
 But there was one prime portion of this nar- 
 rative which we did not touch, and which is simply 
 of immense importance for the position which we 
 have^taken up. We ask you to look at the place 
 given to the story of the Fall. In our judgment 
 that is conclusive as to the Old Testament's being 
 a revelation moving out from a Divine centre 
 having to do with man's relation to the living God 
 even from the beginning. Evolution which has 
 to do with matter and force can have no cog- 
 nisance of such an event — ^the withdrawal of a 
 free, self-conscious spirit from the living God. 
 The nearest it can reach is in its doctrines of 
 degeneration and reversion to type. The universal 
 traditions of the race have their stories manifold 
 of the Fall, jumbled up with the other stories in 
 one undistinguished mass. 
 
 But look at the place which the narrative of 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 
 
 M3 
 
 the Fall has in the Book of Genesis. It is the 
 pivot of the history of humanity. Does not this 
 show that in the dawn of human history there was 
 the most vivid sense of man's relation to God, and 
 of God's very positive and declared revelation to 
 man ? Does not the writer, whom we may fairly 
 take to be Moses, since the critical hypothesis is 
 for us discredited, discover the keenest appreciation 
 of these facts ? Men were not, as the development 
 theory would have it, rising through the rudest 
 types of savage belief, but, as the earliest writings 
 of China and India, Babylon and Egypt, show, 
 were nearer the truth of God than later ages. 
 And in this writing, which on every ground takes 
 supremacy of all these, we go further and see the 
 whole history of man hingeing on his relation to 
 the living God, and passing under shadow and 
 eclipse through disobedience. That is the majestic 
 level of this revelation at the start, and it moves 
 on that level to the end. It is a book which at 
 no point touches the mere level of human dis- 
 quisitions. It is occupied in describing the activity 
 of God in relation to that Fall, in order to the 
 uprise in Christ, with the related human history 
 of faith and unbelief, of action and reaction. 
 Where were the eyes of the critics, where were 
 their hearts, when they presumed to hack and hew 
 this living Divine whole into fragments that might 
 be pieced into a poor story of natural evolution ? 
 
244 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 That is the plane of Scripture. It pursues the 
 history of man at this level. It looks at every 
 fact in this one steady light. Circumstances are 
 of prime moment in its view which are of no 
 importance from the standpoint of secular history, 
 while vast areas of secular history are passed by 
 without a murmur. Geologists tell us of the 
 traces of a great deluge; they appreciate a 
 physical fact. But in the view of Scripture it 
 has a separate meaning — the salvation of the race 
 at the cost of a generation ; the blotting out of 
 those who, despite their mighty physical energies, 
 had forfeited life by having died to the one 
 meaning and end of life ; and the preservation of 
 one family in whom the lamp of godly fear burned. 
 Not only did holiness and unspeakable reverence 
 for the Divine reign in those who could thus con- 
 ceive of temporary or recent history, but the 
 ageless Spirit of Him with whom they dwelt must 
 have been moving upon their spirits, stirring 
 instinctive convictions the full scope of which they 
 could not discern, waking thoughts greater than 
 they knew. 
 
 Let men not theorise about revelation and bring 
 all sorts of outside learning to the Book from 
 which to fashion forth an artificial theory : let 
 them read, let the Word sink into their minds, 
 let the breath of God in the whole impregnate 
 their spirits; and then, when they let their in- 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 245 
 
 most natures utter what they have felt, however 
 they may express themselves, their judgments 
 cannot be far from what we have described. 
 Upon every portion of these Scriptures there are 
 the hall-mark and the signature of God. 
 
 And as we go on, the signs increase. In God's 
 advancing purpose, great catastrophes are storms 
 which clear the air and usher in the possibility of 
 better things. Now we want you to note one of 
 the wider correspondences of revelation. 
 
 As every great architect has his traits recurring 
 in the most unexpected places, reappearing at this 
 and that far-sundered point of his structure, so 
 with the Great Architect. How silently life moved 
 in on the inorganic world ! By what slow and 
 tentative eiforts mind rose up and began the sub- 
 duing of the forces of nature, which has gone to 
 such lengths to-day ! Remember also, to rise into 
 a very different sphere, how, when in the dense 
 forest of the pre-Christian world only tokens were 
 heard of rotting and decay, the angel of the Lord 
 appeared to Zacharias about the time of the evening 
 sacrifice — the first velvet footfall of the new era of 
 redemption. 
 
 In strictest consonance with all this, the note 
 of a new beginning broke upon Abram in Haran. 
 In proceeding along this line, we are perfectly con- 
 scious of what many will say. They have been going 
 on the huge, unjustifiable assumption that only hard 
 
246 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 * material facts and forces can be counted scientific. 
 But that is becoming out-of-date. The spiritual 
 is real — there is no getting rid of that. As truly 
 as there is a region of man which fronts the 
 external world, viz., the five senses, there is 
 another region which fronts God, which can enter 
 into converse with God, derive personal qualities 
 therefrom which can nowhere else be found, and 
 produce social and political effects on the world 
 indisputable. We are not going to allow this 
 presumption any more. Of course, we are not 
 going to take every vagrant dream or outflow of 
 feeling as a manifestation of the spiritual. We 
 must have tests for spiritual as for physical facts. 
 But when these are applied, the workings of 
 spiritual laws and forces are to be allowed for 
 like any other. 
 
 To return. In strict consonance with the 
 Divine method in all other cases, the note of a 
 new beginning broke upon Abram at Haran : 
 ^' Get thee out of thy country ... to a land that 
 I will show thee." The higher criticism is a de- 
 stroyer of personalities. They have pulverised the 
 most outstanding individualities of sacred history. 
 He in whose hands our hopes are, however, loves 
 the individual, selects the individual, plants His 
 seed-thought slowly to germinate in a human 
 nature, amid the actions and reactions of a great 
 soul, fosters and directs the dawning resolve, until 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 247 
 
 the solitary becomes the man of destiny, and the 
 world rings with his name. 
 
 In form even, the story of Abram has the 
 stamp of truth. Thus by movements on the 
 minds of individuals has God inaugurated all 
 great spiritual beginnings. And the contents 
 confirm the impression. This is not the kind of 
 story that a poet or novelist, working up a myth 
 into a personal history, could ever have written. 
 What we have shown to be the distinguishing 
 spirit of Scripture permeates warp and woof. 
 Every incident save a few human reactions moves 
 out from the centre of the Divine Will, and is 
 touched by the ordering Spirit of God in every 
 line. This is a story which has awakened a 
 response in spiritual natures in every generation 
 since, and which by accuracy and depth of insight 
 has instructed innumerable millions from age to 
 age. Spiritual mtthods are discovered there, laws 
 and processes of the life with God are outlined 
 in that old story, rooted to begin with in a material 
 promise, but widening and heightening under 
 Divine discipline, till at last around the altar of 
 sacrifice something of God's purpose in Christ 
 glimmered before the patriarch in that far-off time. 
 
 This, it would seem, is the kind of story which 
 any vagrant imagination could put together out of 
 facts and myths ! It v/ill be to the undying dis- 
 credit of the higher criticism that ever it could 
 
248 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 have thought so. Critics have taken a totally- 
 inadequate view of the distinguishing glory of the 
 spiritual. Because, when God has made Himself 
 known in His Son, the spiritual can work power- 
 fully in very common persons, ambitious scholars 
 thirsting for reputation look down upon it as 
 ordinary and undistinguished, whose existence in 
 any age may be supposed without explanation, 
 or denied without questioning, whenever it suits 
 an intellectual theory. But they are on far holier 
 ground than they know. The spiritual, as we 
 have it in Scripture, has never dawned in any 
 heart save by the direct action of God. The very 
 existence of the spiritual as a force in human Kfe, 
 is an indication that God has come into contact 
 with humanity in some declaration of His will, 
 and that that life has responded to the will of 
 God. The story of Abraham — and the same is 
 true of the other patriarchs — is on the very level 
 which we have found to mark out revelation from 
 the beginning. 
 
 II. Thus we have pointed out the distinguishing 
 level and quality of revelation. Let us now point 
 out its law of progress. 
 
 Having in the course of these chapters moved 
 around and constantly returned to the Mosaic 
 Age and the creative beginning associated there- 
 with, we shall assume what has already been laid 
 down, and go on to show, in contrast to the 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 249 
 
 artificial hypothesis which we have dismissed, 
 the true principle of progression manifest in the 
 history of Israel. So far from being mechani- 
 cal, so far from yielding to the superior merit of 
 the critical hypothesis, to everyone who has any 
 spiritual perception it is immeasurably superior, 
 introducing no unknown and highly doubtful ele- 
 ments, true to spiritual law and individual experi- 
 ence, and such as has appealed even to the common 
 conscience in all ages. 
 
 The shadow of the Fall Hes along Old Testa- 
 ment Scripture. God is coming forth to deal in 
 His own love and grace with His people. He 
 sovereignly chose them. He admitted them into 
 covenant with Himself. This was of sheer love 
 and grace, despite their unworthiness. And having 
 bound them by love, and thrilled them by over- 
 whelming manifestations of Himself, He sought at 
 Sinai to place them under a discipline by which 
 they might be brought into fellowship. Now, 
 after the efforts of a hundred years to break up 
 the legislation of the Pentateuchal books, and 
 represent it as a late collection of oral laws, we 
 wish to utter what is not a mere private opinion, 
 but the settled conviction of a great host, that the 
 unity of this legislation and its immediate relation 
 to the theophany at Sinai, as the occasion of its 
 promulgation, are more than ever apparent. 
 
 Take the hving centre of that legislation in the 
 
2SO THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Decalogue. As the rays falling on and reflected 
 from the earth are to the sun, being emanations 
 and expressions of the central orb, the Decalogue 
 is the impact and application to human relations 
 of this holy, searching, loving revelation. Every 
 word goes like a divine throb into the heart of 
 the then existing situation. So far from belonging, 
 as Wellhausen thinks, to a later age, the Com- 
 mandments never could have been uttered with a 
 tithe of their appropriateness at any other time. 
 Think of the Jewish people come out of Egypt 
 from the polytheism and military absolutism of 
 that land, their fetters broken, and standing in 
 God's free air under the mountain peaks of Sinai. 
 The first word is a ring fence round the covenant 
 nation: "Thou shalt have no other gods before 
 Me." The second word reaches further, and 
 separates the very soul of heathen worship from 
 that of the only True. The heathen gods were 
 projections of the Egyptians' own minds, which 
 they tried to image forth in their own fashion. 
 But the Great Jehovah had come forth to them to 
 reveal Himself to and in them. So all imagin- 
 ings of their own were to be far removed : " Thou 
 shalt not make unto thee any graven image " — 
 think of the cat-gods, the hawk-gods, the bull- 
 gods — " or any likeness of any thing that is in 
 heaven above, or in the earth beneath." 
 
 Need we go further to show how occasion and 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 251 
 
 law fit into each other ? But let us run rapidly 
 through them. The gods which men make they 
 can abuse. Travellers in Egypt can discern that 
 the gods are pale shadows beside the human 
 personalities. But the living Eternal One had 
 come forth to Israel, had chosen them for Him- 
 self, and unspeakable reverence must fill their 
 souls : " Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah 
 thy God in vain." 
 
 But not now for the first time had this holy, 
 solitary Lord God been manifested. He had given 
 man the Sabbath at creation, and it had lived as 
 a tradition among themselves. Coming now into 
 clearer and more positive relations, He re-affirms 
 this old ordinance, and gives it a place among the 
 conditions of His covenant with them : " Remember 
 the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Does not the 
 reader feel, as we go on, that the horizons of Sinai 
 are round these transactions ? 
 
 Higher laws and relations do not supersede 
 lower; they exalt them, and surround them with 
 new sanctions. The race was rooted in a family, 
 the kingdom sprang from a family, and for the 
 kingdom's sake the special sanctions of God sur- 
 rounded the family : '' Honour thy father and thy 
 mother, that thy days may be long in the land 
 which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 
 Then, since they were sons of the kingdom, Hfe 
 was doubly precious : " Thou shalt not kill." 
 
252 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Next in sacredness to life was life's central 
 relation : "Thou shalt not commit adultery." 
 
 Then only was account taken of man's posses- 
 sions. As necessary for the fulfilling of God's 
 will they were to be regarded as sacred: "Thou 
 shalt not steal." 
 
 But in a chosen people, witnesses for God before 
 the world, there was something else of great 
 preciousness — their good name. The sanction of 
 God went round that also: "Thou shalt not bear 
 false witness against they neighbour." 
 
 And now, crowning all, comes a command truly 
 remarkable. We cannot conceive of its being 
 placed in the Decalogue except on the under- 
 standing of their being under an overwhelming 
 sense of God as at Sinai. They were His, to 
 stand in their lot and to live their lives in relation 
 to Him. They must not go hankering after things 
 which He had not appointed them, for that would 
 mean the annihilation of the covenant so far as 
 they were concerned : "Thou shalt not covet." 
 
 Surely the relations between the creative move- 
 ment and these creative words are very close. 
 But it may be well to travel further, and show 
 in relation to the legislation of Leviticus how it 
 also fits in to the revelation of Sinai. According 
 to the critical view, this book as it stands is a late 
 product of the period ushering in and including 
 the Exile. A series of sacrifices and ritual obser- 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 253 
 
 varices which had gradually grown up in Israel are 
 gathered up, wrought into a system, and informed 
 with a loftier ethical spirit. 
 
 But the more we examine the book, in detail 
 and in the whole, the more impossible seems this 
 solution. Every fragment is permeated by a spirit 
 wholly separate and distinct from rituals framed 
 by priestly schools. The book is on a different 
 plane. There is an awful sense of God, and of 
 the reality of sin. Even the priests who stood 
 between men and God had themselves to be pre- 
 pared for office by sin-offering and burnt-offering. 
 Each individual sacrifice in its place, and the whole 
 system of sacrifice crowned by the great Day of 
 Atonement, betray such a sense of the holiness of 
 Jehovah and of the need of complete separation 
 from sin as could never have sprung up in the 
 practice of a heathen people, or have been put 
 together by human genius, however great, im- 
 pelled by mere patriot instinct to glorify the 
 beginnings of his race. 
 
 This book stands on the same superhuman level 
 as the story of the Fall, and indeed the previous 
 books. We are not on the heathen level of 
 imagined Deities, and man-devised ritual. God 
 Himself has at last come forth to bring estranged 
 man into relation to Himself. And in this book 
 we have the sacrificial and ritual discipline through 
 which Israel, despite unworthiness, might come 
 
254 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 into and maintain covenant relations with the living 
 God. This is not the work even of Moses, but 
 of God. In those long communions on Sinai, he 
 entered into the Divine thought, and brought 
 down a book level to the simple and barbarous 
 conditions of the people, but instinct with a Divine 
 presence which none but God could impart. 
 
 When we study this book from the standpoint 
 of Sinai, and consider it as imposed upon a people 
 in the first stages of moral and spiritual education, 
 we are moved to say, '' How dreadful is this 
 place ! This is none other but the house of God, 
 and this is the gate of heaven."^ The covenant 
 which God made with Israel at Sinai breathes 
 through the book. These are the sacrifices by 
 which they may come into His presence. Thus 
 may they live acceptably before Him. In the 
 first sixteen chapters we read how Israel may 
 enter into fellowship. That this was designed 
 to be very real and thorough, we learn on every 
 page. The tracking of sin into every secret 
 crevice, discovered in the first seven chapters, 
 shows that in all ages God has been ever the 
 same. In that early day, and under a system 
 of symbols. He desired truth in the inward part 
 even as in the full light of the Gospel of Christ. 
 Then all approach was to be through a way of 
 His own appointment, by those whom He had 
 
 1 Genesis xxviii. 17. 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 255 
 
 chosen and set apart as He ordained. To enjoy 
 this they must be clean in their eating, in their 
 family life, in the congregation, because God had 
 chosen them for Himself And lest even with all 
 this holy separating discipline, uncleanness might 
 remain, on the great Day of Atonement the high 
 priest offered sacrifice for himself and all the people. 
 
 Who could have conceived a scheme like that, 
 fitting in on the one hand to the Bible view of 
 man's fall, and on the other to that perfect 
 teaching regarding sin and its sacrifice to be 
 found in the New Testament ? 
 
 And the same deep sense of this being the 
 thought and appointment of God pervades the 
 second part. True, it descends into many 
 apparently trivial and even repulsive details. 
 Manifestly, the people being dealt with are 
 rude, primitive, impulsive sons of nature, lacking 
 the smoothing influences of town or civilised life. 
 Yet, as we read commands about killing oxen, 
 and gleaning vineyards, and bearing grudges, and 
 seeking after wizards, our spirits are touched with 
 an exceeding reverence. If on the one hand 
 God stoops to every minute condition of their 
 lives, it is to show that within these they must 
 live as unto Him. " Ye shall do My judgments 
 and keep Mine ordinances, to walk therein: I 
 am the Lord your God."^ "Ye shall be holy 
 
 ^ Leviticus xviii. 4. 
 
256 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 unto Me : for I the Lord am holy, and have 
 severed you from other people, that ye should 
 be Mine."i 
 
 In this spirit does the second part deal with 
 personal holiness, holiness in the family, in social 
 relations, in the priesthood, in the feasts, in the 
 use of the land; the blessings following thereon, 
 and the law regarding vows beyond legal require- 
 ment. If a book could testify to the conditions 
 within which it arose and the historic source of 
 its inspiration, this book in every detail and 
 general structure testifies to such a day of Divine 
 revelation as Exodus describes. The theophany 
 on Sinai justifies the legislation ; the legislation 
 supports the creative character of the Mosaic 
 dispensation. These correspondences are so in- 
 ward and far-reaching, and speak so profoundly 
 to what is deepest and most unchanging in man, 
 that they are not so easily set aside. What are 
 the alleged discrepancies between Deuteronomy 
 and the legislation in the earlier books, which 
 are superficial and only assume importance from 
 the critical view, to those central and all-embracing 
 correspondences which, like the advancing arms 
 of an iron bridge, meet on a far loftier than 
 natural level — the very level which revelation 
 maintains from the outset till now.^* 
 
 III. The law of progress in revelation, then, is 
 
 1 Judges XX. 26. 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 257 
 
 is a national movement forward from a Divine 
 beginning. Jehovah sovereignly brings Israel 
 into friendship with Himself, discovers a gracious 
 purpose in relation to the nation, and invests 
 them with a moral and sacrificial discipline by 
 which they may fulfil His purpose. From this 
 creative centre begins a covenant history, in 
 constant contact with God; unless in so far as 
 they sin His grace and favour away, when they 
 sink to the natural level and display the reactions 
 of the flesh. 
 
 Now, if the reader reflects, he will see that 
 with such exceptional conditions we cannot have 
 an ordinary natural development. But we have a 
 development so original, characteristic, and typical 
 of all progress in the sphere of the spiritual, that 
 it stands forth real, incontestable fact in the 
 vividness of its own presentation. Not a man 
 in Israel would have dared, not the greatest 
 genius the world has ever known would have 
 had the ethical insight, to conceive the hghts 
 and shadows of this onward progress. This is 
 the finger of God, the searching of the Divine 
 Spirit, the work of Him Whose name is '*! am 
 that I am," who was discovering in all His actions 
 to His people, what He is in Himself. 
 
 Let us move on these lines of advance as rapidly 
 as possible. The reader will have noticed that 
 we have never once employed the term Hexateuch. 
 
258 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 That is a modern coinage, unsupported by tradition, 
 and with only a theoretical justification. The 
 grouping handed down from antiquity is not 
 six-fold but five-fold, — the Pentateuch, — while 
 " Joshua " is joined to the books that follow ; 
 and if one can only get delivered from the 
 glamour of the critical movement, this arrange- 
 ment will seem self-evident. The Pentateuch is 
 the narrative of the Divine self-communication, 
 where with a God-like breadth, against the back- 
 ground of earlier Divine manifestations, the lines 
 are laid of a whole economy or dispensation. 
 This Divine programme needs no other fence than 
 its own sublimity. ''Joshua" is an effect, a detail, 
 the story of the Old Testament Bayard, " without 
 fear and without reproach," securing the fulfilment 
 of one covenant promise. The inspiration of the 
 book, called by his name, is the covenant history 
 which went before. It is so interlocked with the 
 Pentateuch, refers so continually to Moses, his 
 personality, his commands, and ordinances, contains 
 allusions so unmistakable to all parts of the legisla- 
 tion, recites in such detail the earlier history, 
 renews so impressively the covenant with God in 
 the passover at the Jordan valley, and in the 
 reading and recording of the law at Shechem, that 
 you can only get rid of the testimony to the 
 preceding books by pulverising them both. 
 
 If we take the Pentateuch in its true character 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 259 
 
 one could not conceive a more fitting sequel than 
 this book of Joshua. Signs of reversion are not 
 wanting. Joshua's ominous fears of what the 
 future may bring are significant of what he has 
 seen in the people's spirit and temper. They are 
 held in check, however, by a blameless personality, 
 in whom were perpetuated much of the vision, 
 faith, and self-sacrifice of Moses, and, with warlike 
 gifts of his own, superb loyalty to his master's 
 ideals. The stirring work of conquest, too, 
 especially when informed by the lofty consecra- 
 tion of their leader and the powerful presence of 
 God, had a lifting and sustaining influence of 
 its own. That vanished, however, they fell back 
 into heathen practices and forsook the Lord God 
 of their fathers. And in that wild reversion to 
 idolatry in which they served Baalim and Ashtaroth, 
 the whole moral and ceremonial system of Sinai, 
 which only had meaning and validity for those 
 who realised their covenant with God, sank for a 
 time out of sight. 
 
 We cannot follow the critics into all their 
 misconceptions here. They cannot away with 
 the idea that this was a fall from a loftier height. 
 No, this was the real savage condition from which 
 Israel slowly emerged. We frankly admit that at 
 this period there seemed at times little to choose be- 
 tween Israel and surrounding nations. The critical 
 theory certainly explains the barbarism and the 
 
26o THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 savagery. But that does not amount to much. As 
 men are in this world, it is the easiest of all easy- 
 things for a people to run down hill. Every age 
 to our own has had proof, sad enough, of reversion 
 to brutality — horrid cruelty. The difficult things 
 to account for are the steps upward from that 
 degenerate condition. These never come of 
 themselves, without an adequate lifting force. 
 Now here the critical theory entirely fails. If 
 Israel was on the level of surrounding heathen 
 nations, whence came the regenerative forces 
 unknown among all other peoples? These are 
 the features to be explained. Whence the 
 /stirrings of an exceptional reverence for the 
 unseen God? Whence the mighty uprising of 
 faith in His presence and power, — men and 
 women like Gideon and Deborah attaining to 
 a moral stature unknown outside of Israel, and 
 akin to that of Moses, Joshua, and the patriarchs 
 of old? How happened it that the multitudes 
 who had sunk back to heathen levels recollected 
 themselves, and rose up into some measure of 
 vision, faith, and power, which made them re- 
 sistless over those who had crushed them, while 
 the spell of their leader continued ? 
 
 There is no explanation save one — their 
 peculiar past. They had inherited traditions ; 
 they, as their fathers, had gone through ex- 
 periences which, whether individually they heard 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 261 
 
 or forebore, had burned into their souls. They 
 could not divest themselves of their unique 
 destiny or of their covenant relations and promise. 
 What if it was of God, to permit the covenant 
 transaction of Sinai to get overlaid and buried 
 almost out of sight, by the temporary resurgence 
 of every instinct and tendency of depraved human 
 nature, to 1^ it be seen that everything was to be 
 of Him, and nothing at all of man ? That they 
 should fall back to half-heathen conceptions of 
 worship is not wonderful. But the wonderful cir- 
 cumstances, needing exceptional causes to account 
 for them, were these, that life and faith and the 
 power of recuperation survived, that by successive 
 steps the people reasserted their faith in God, that 
 out of utter eclipse the consciousness of being the 
 covenant people of God grew up spontaneously 
 in Israel, and that they moved on by slow stages 
 to the realisation, step by step, of the covenant 
 nation, the theocratic king, and finally the divinely- 
 appointed worship. 
 
 Compared with such a history as that, so real, 
 so level to human experience, so instinct with 
 the frailty and sin of men, and the overcoming 
 grace of God, all the criticisms of our opponents 
 are external and poor. Their theory of history 
 is mechanical in the highest degree. When 
 institutions are set up they should, irrespective 
 of circumstances, start right away. Critics do not 
 
262 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 take account of the outstanding facts, the uni- 
 versal heathen environment in other nations, the 
 magnificence of God's claim, the height of His 
 requirements, the possibiUties of reaction pro- 
 portionate to that height. Why, the very cir- 
 cumstances to which they point, as proof posi- 
 tive of the impossibility of the traditional view, 
 are the chief signs that the historical books from 
 Joshua to Samuel are on the same spiritual level 
 with the earlier books, and are inspired with the 
 same superhuman aim and breath of revelation. 
 Man has fallen and God has discovered Himself, 
 that from all wandering He might bring the people 
 back to Himself. That man in his rebellion 
 should make havoc of God's gracious provisions is 
 nothing wonderful. But that, despite all, God 
 should root Himself in His fickle people, and lead 
 them on so far to the realisation of His ideal, 
 that is the marvel which makes this Book in every 
 part, histories no less than prophecies, stand alone 
 in the world. 
 
 IV. We come now to a most significant section, 
 the frustration of the simply national ideal. True, 
 to those like ourselves who can look back on this 
 era from the standpoint of the completed history, 
 it is possible to discern beneath the surface of 
 very real present failure, in the disruption of the 
 kingdom and consequent decay, the setting of a 
 great new current of Divine purpose, which none 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 263 
 
 of those who lived through the era could discern. 
 Just as through the bare branches of the trees 
 in winter we can catch far glimpses that were hid 
 all summer through by the leafy screen, so in the 
 withering and breaking up of the first partial 
 fulfilment of promise in the Davidic kingdom can 
 we see new reaches of Divine design. Failure 
 and disintegration are the occasions of bringing 
 into view an ineffably larger hope, in which God 
 is seen sublimely working on the lines which He 
 had laid down from the beginning. 
 
 It will be quite impossible to follow the history 
 of rupture and collapse, till Israel is carried captive, 
 and then at long last, Judah is crushed, her people 
 deported, her temple destroyed. And in pursuing 
 details we might lose the principle of progression. 
 All through this era of disintegration and decay 
 the purpose of God was going on, because we 
 find not only select souls, but the people to whom 
 they spoke, re-emerging in the prophetic era on a 
 loftier plane of vision. 
 
 We select then one episode, the life of Solomon, 
 in whom the nation reached its crown, and by 
 whom it was led down towards rupture and subse- 
 quent ruin. Here we shall see, on a great scale, 
 how God's purpose goes on through ages of decay, 
 as through ages of fulfilment, despite failure and 
 relapse, as well as through faith and sacrifice, 
 how His thoughts are orbing, some glimpses of 
 
264 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 His will are entering into human minds amid con- 
 flicts and baffling mysteries, no less than in the 
 sunshine of His love. In all, He is above those 
 vi^ith whom He fulfils His designs, working to 
 ends of which they little dream. 
 
 As we have already hinted, the higher criticism 
 has been a ruthless wrecker of the outstanding 
 personalities of Israel, by whose distinctive im- 
 press Scripture has chiefly lived in the thought 
 and reverence of the great masses of men. Abra- 
 ham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Daniel 
 — these have a more commanding place among the 
 worthies of the human race than any classical 
 heroes. Yet all of them have been either dis- 
 solved into myths, or so shrunken and diminished 
 as to be indiscernible. Of none of them is this 
 truer than of the magnificent personality of 
 Solomon. By his errors no less than by his 
 excellencies, as summing up the past and pre- 
 paring for the disintegration of the future, he 
 occupies a place of singular interest in the evolu- 
 tion of God's purpose as we have it in, the Old 
 Testament. In opening this, however slightly, 
 we shall see the immeasurable superiority, in in- 
 sight, originality of conception, and truth to fact, 
 of the traditional to the critical view. 
 
 Of such an era as that stretching from Sinai to 
 Zion, from Moses to David, with its immense 
 crises, dark and bright, subjecting to the severest 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 265 
 
 strain every passion and aspiration of the soul, 
 there must have been further literary expression 
 than the song of Deborah and the dirges for Saul 
 and Abner. The fact that there were these raises 
 the strongest presumption that there were more. 
 And, the critical hypothesis discredited, there is 
 no reason why we should not accept the testimony 
 of tradition with regard to the existence of Davidic 
 psalms. Sages too fertilised in spirit by the moral 
 discipline of law and sacrifice would be striking 
 out in proverb or aphorism their judgments of 
 conduct and maxims of prudence. Stirred in their 
 whole being, — intellect as well as heart, — Jothams 
 would be finding delight in imaginative creation, 
 and huge Samsons in intellectual puzzles. In a 
 word, as in every instance known to us through 
 succeeding ages, religious upheaval has been fol- 
 lowed by intellectual illumination, so must it have 
 been away back at the beginning in Israel. 
 
 And thus the fitting culmination and crown of 
 this age was a many-sided genius like Solomon, 
 gathering up and bringing to full utterance, all the 
 strivings in the nation through the past, crystallis- 
 ing their ethical wisdom, the lyrical joy of faith, 
 delight in the work of God's hands ; and able to 
 express, too, in organisation and edifices their 
 utmost* ideas of a theocratic kingdom. 
 
 But in this imperfect state of being, to have 
 realised an ideal means readiness to go beyond it. 
 
266 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 And even through his failures and errors Solomon 
 helped towards that. With all his magnificent 
 qualities, Solomon was not a hero of faith like 
 David. He asked God for the gift of wisdom 
 that he might rightly administer the kingdom. 
 But when, later, God demanded from him full 
 surrender, to be His hand and instrument as David 
 was,^ Solomon was dumb. He would not "walk 
 before God " to do according to all His commands, 
 but must guide so far his own course. His large- 
 ness of sympathy brought him into affinity with 
 the heathen nations, his breadth of wisdom, dis- 
 cerning "the soul of good in things evil," led him 
 to join heathen worships to the worship of God. 
 And so he went plunging down, as so many 
 brilliant intellects have done, which have refused 
 submission to God. As soon as the breath was 
 out of his body the kingdom was broken in twain, 
 and in both the down grade began. 
 
 Will it be counted unpardonable if, without 
 presuming to forestall sound criticism, we suggest 
 that very much more has to be said for the tradi- 
 tional view of the books associated with Solomon's 
 name, than has for many years been allowed ? We 
 have no right to assert, but any one may put in a 
 caveat in arrest of judgment. Under the fascina- 
 tion of a baseless theory, it has seemed a wise 
 thing to carry down a book like Ecclesiastes to a 
 
 1 See I Kings ix. 4. 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY ^6^ 
 
 date when similar speculations were known outside ; 
 to allow in the Song of Solomon nothing but what 
 appears on the surface, and account it a story or 
 drama of natural love; and to describe the 
 Proverbs as a collection gradually formed and 
 issued late. The conception of a natural develop- 
 ment in Israel, not fundamentally dissimilar from 
 that of other nations, has been a determining 
 element in all these conclusions. 
 
 If we accept the self-witness of revelation, how- 
 ever, if we grant the true order and progression 
 to be as we have described — inward, spiritual, 
 dynamical, according to the guiding of a Divine 
 hand — a new set of considerations comes into play. 
 We recover these books in whole or in part for 
 the illustration of this sublime personality, and, 
 more, as having their place in the unfolding of 
 God's purpose in revelation. The effect is like 
 what happens to an architect, when, removing a 
 coat of whitewash, — he recovers an ancient fresco, 
 some portrait of Dante, some masterpiece of Giotto 
 or Orcagna. What are the surface theorisings of 
 the critics to the lighting up of the sombre tragedy 
 of an imperial soul, like that of Solomon, held but 
 wandering, marvellously responsive to the spiritual 
 while succumbing to the flesh, never cast off but 
 permitted, on account of disobedience, to sail round 
 every dark coast of doubt and despair ? 
 
 Without denying that there may be other collec- 
 
268 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 tions in Proverbs, we must not overlook one of 
 the most significant writings of Scripture — the 
 portraiture of Wisdom. Here we have the Hebrew 
 genius arrived at the stage of self-reflection, realis- 
 ing what the presence of a covenant God in Israel 
 meant. And everything seems to suit Solomon — 
 the wide horizon, including nature and human 
 life, the importance given to knowledge, and even 
 the partial detachment of his life, illumined by- 
 God, yet not fully surrendered to Him. To his 
 imperial nature, in calm survey, the peculiar near- 
 ness of God to His people, with the quickened 
 sense of life and duty springing therefrom, seems 
 to blend with and interpret God's universal govern- 
 ment. The soul of things, the informing wisdom 
 animating all, seems to stand forth less like an 
 attribute than like a person with whom Jehovah 
 held converse. The thought of God in revelation 
 is opening out toward the larger conception, 
 Trinity in unity, that was to come. Jehovah is 
 becoming self-revealed in His own work. 
 
 Surely we have here a proof of a superhuman 
 overruling mind in Scripture — God moving forward 
 through long centuries, not only in the evolution 
 of His purpose of grace, but in the broadening 
 vision of Himself caught by select spirits of the race. 
 
 If you allow me to pause and step aside for a 
 moment from the course of my exposition, this 
 enriched vision of God on the intellectual side is 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 269 
 
 balanced by another in the region of personal 
 spiritual experience. The book of Job is no 
 clever speculation, but an inseparable part of the 
 Old Testament revelation, and the profoundest 
 reflective utterance of the Hebrew spirit in covenant 
 with God. Moses taught that obedience would 
 be crowned with God's favour. The narrow 
 particularistic Jewish spirit inferred therefrom, 
 that misfortune and suffering implied the anger 
 of God, and therefore the ill-desert of the sufferer. 
 This typical Greatheart — for that a personal ex- 
 perience underlies this book is beyond question — 
 warring with an inadequate view, rose not by 
 argument but by the waves of an anguished spirit 
 to a finer and broader vision. After falterings 
 and fears he comes to see God, not only as One 
 who stood for His own sovereign claim, but as 
 having by Him one who would put Himself in the 
 place of the creature, say everything for him that 
 could be said, so that even the greatest sufferer 
 could rest in confidence that right would be done. 
 Is not this a living literature, moving on under the 
 influence of unparalleled forces — the Self-dis- 
 coveries of God, the soaring faith and vision of 
 holy men? 
 
 To return, however, to those books which 
 cluster around Solomon^s name. The Song of 
 Solomon is, we are convinced, even yet an un- 
 solved enigma. Certainly the naturalistic interpre- 
 
270 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 tations have not met the facts of the case. There 
 is a blending of opposites which they cannot 
 account for, the language and images of undiluted 
 passion, and yet with these, stainless purity. The 
 ancient instinct was right : we have got some ideal 
 element here. 
 
 Many years ago, in reading the Vita Nuova of 
 Dante, and entering into the moving expressions 
 of an ideal passion, the thought flashed on our 
 mind that here lay some clue to the origin of the 
 Song. Solomon lived in a love-laden Oriental 
 atmosphere. He had drunk to the full all that 
 the pagan East had to give in this form of ravish- 
 ment. Sated and self-reproachful, one can fancy 
 him turning back with a great leap of revived love, 
 from the neighbouring empires with whose heathen 
 fashions he dallied, to austere Judah and Israel, 
 rude and simple compared with these — black but 
 comely. The purer breath of their faith and 
 devotion braces him. At their heart there is a 
 tenser love, a loftier passion. Their great past, 
 and the quenchless love of the Holy One for His 
 chosen, come back — the heroic days when people 
 and Lord were knit into one. Here were embrace- 
 ments, passion, the gloating of loving eyes, the 
 endearments of speech which did not enervate but 
 brace, cast down but build up. And so we have 
 on the basis of past history, and rising out of a 
 real situation in the Hfe of Solomon, the song of 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 271 
 
 Messiah and His beloved, which Bernard, and 
 Rutherford, and the saints of all past ages believed 
 it to be. 
 
 Sadly enough, however, that was but the fleet- 
 ing inspiration of a day, and Solomon went plung- 
 ing down into those excesses which, in the language 
 of Burns, "harden a' within, and petrify the feel- 
 ing." And so, love gone, passion dead, disillusion 
 come, and faith, if not dead, in eclipse, Solomon 
 entered into the wilderness of desertion and doubt, 
 to look at the black mysteries of a life without 
 God. Depend upon it, Ecclesiastes is no regular 
 treatise — the work of a professed penman — but a 
 human document, the soundings of a distraught 
 soul — working up at last to a dim, hard faith as 
 such an one might reach. Held of God in all his 
 wanderings, never forsaken while putting the 
 darkest meanings on life, he is seen reaching out 
 amid the ashes of disillusion and the gloom of 
 doubt to new accentuations of truth — the strait 
 conditions of providence environing all life, man's 
 superiority to his environment ; '' He hath set 
 eternity in their heart," so that gleams of the 
 illimitable mingle with all their seeing, and they 
 cannot rest in the present ; the wistful confidence 
 in immortality, the certainty of personal judgment. 
 Out of the gloom these lamps of light break, 
 living and new, for Israel from the fiery discipline 
 of God. 
 
272 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 Go back to the beginning, behold the course of 
 this unapproachable literature. On how lofty a 
 plane it moves from first to last, what a holy 
 searching spirit breathes through every Divine 
 communication. And despite frailities and sins 
 innumerable how wonderfully has the holy seed 
 become the substance of a new covenant life, 
 rising into manifold expressions of the soul, 
 varied and sublime, as those which we have de- 
 scribed ! What human mind could have conceived 
 such a literature? What imagination could have 
 produced either the individual parts or the ideal 
 combination of them? When taken in the full 
 sense of its own contents the book is self-evidently 
 from Him — through whatever instruments — from 
 Him whose entrance into human history for pardon 
 and salvation it so wonderfully describes. 
 
 One would desire to stop at this point, and 
 resume in another chapter our exposition of the 
 true order and progression of Hebrew history. 
 But on many grounds we are compelled to gather 
 up into a few closing sentences what remains of 
 that survey. 
 
 If j^such has been the previous course of Old 
 Testament revelations, if there has been so mani- 
 fold an outblossoming of Hebrew thought and 
 feeling under the discipline of God, we behold 
 the adequate preparation for the extraordinary 
 and unparalleled development of prophecy. The 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 2 
 
 7J 
 
 passion for their history, the power of song, the 
 play of imagination, the plumbings of ethical and 
 spiritual thought, the conflict with mysteries, 
 manifest in preceding writers, had supplied and 
 braced the Hebrew spirit even for so great a 
 task. 
 
 We feel too — all the more vividly because of 
 the inadequate explanation of criticism — that the 
 tremendous contrasts supplied by this mighty 
 presence of God with His own, and yet the 
 fearful ever-deepening declensions of Judah and 
 Israel, supplied the situation out of which pro- 
 phecy arose. 
 
 V. Let us look then at The Prophetic Renas- 
 cence. That there was an uprise at all from such 
 a total collapse, shows that God had taken the 
 grasp of His people which the earlier Scriptures 
 describe. We are still on the same plane of man 
 fallen, and God coming in with a purpose of de- 
 liverance. What strikes us in all these prophets 
 is an over-mastering sense of God, which reduces 
 every other fact, even the great world-empires 
 rising upon their view, into insignificance. On 
 the level of common human history there has 
 never been anything like this. Then, pervading 
 their teaching is the intense measureless convic- 
 tion of God's having come into special relation to 
 Israel, having chosen them for Himself, and given 
 them a promise of world dominion. All this is 
 
i^\ THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 realised in faith as the purpose of God going out 
 and covering all time. Such is the vast plane on 
 which they move. 
 
 True, they were preachers of righteousness in 
 their own day. But they searched into Israel's 
 sins and read off the unerring moral judgments 
 following on these, because they stood ever at 
 God's standpoint, and looked at everything in the 
 line of His purpose. 
 
 But however priceless and imperishable this 
 ethical side may be, where God discovers for all 
 time the unerring balances in which He tries 
 nations, the most characteristic elements are the 
 wonderful overflowings of love and grace, which 
 could only have come from the heart of the 
 eternal counsel, through these men wholly sur- 
 rendered to His will. This is the side least looked 
 at meantime; but beyond question prophecy cul- 
 minates in these, and they burst to atoms the 
 strait limits which moderns allow to the range of 
 prophetic prevision. When God makes a man 
 the channel of His eternal counsel. He speaks 
 words which, of course, have a meaning and a 
 reason to the man who utters them, but which 
 also contain implications and expansions of signifi- 
 cance which only after-ages, coming into the 
 inheritance of the promise, can discern. 
 
 How those words of God to Moses have gone 
 on enlarging their meaning, rising to loftier planes 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 275 
 
 of significance as the ages have rolled on — '^Ye 
 shall be a peculiar treasure to Me above all 
 people, for all the earth is Mine."^ These are 
 the limitless horizons of prophecy. Only God 
 can in the issue interpret fully what God has said. 
 Let us not then presumptuously close the door, 
 limiting Him who has broken all limits in carrying 
 out His purpose of grace. Even to-day when we 
 recognise the wonderful fulfilment of many pro- 
 phetic words, we feel that the sketch of the 
 eternal purpose outlined in prophetic words is 
 only imperfectly filled in. 
 
 Their vision reaches forth to the furthest age. 
 Amos sees after long ages of ruin and failure the 
 tabernacle of David set up. Hosea, who so vividly 
 realised Israel's whoredom and rejection, beholds 
 her betrothed again in perfect renewal of love. 
 Joel sees the kingdom widening to the bounds of 
 the world, quickened and united to God by the 
 fulness of the Spirit. Isaiah beholds the virgin's 
 Son, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Servant 
 of Jehovah, the suffering Messiah, who should 
 not fail until He had set judgment in the earth.^ 
 Jeremiah, and still more Ezekiel, portray the new 
 covenant of- cleansing and renewal, in which the 
 people shall realise at last their ideal, and the dry 
 bones shall live. And Daniel, living amid heathen 
 empires, sees the coming of the Son of Man, and 
 
 1 Exodus xix. 5. 
 
276 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 the founding of the Divine kingdom, in relation to 
 the vast processions of the pagan empires: and, 
 in his illumined judgment of the rapid course of 
 these decaying force-empires, is led out to hint a 
 time for the great consummation. 
 
 All these are fragments. One utters one 
 thought and dies; another, in a different age, 
 vouchsafes his glimpse and disappears. Not only 
 is there no collusion, or even consultation, but 
 these prophets were separated by broad barriers 
 of age and conditions. Yet they resolve into so 
 vast, many-sided, and harmonious a unity of 
 Divine purpose. 
 
 Looking backwards, this historical miracle — for 
 it is nothing less — is seen to be the marvellous, 
 but wholly undreamt-of, expansion and realisation 
 of that purpose of God which had been at work 
 from Eden and Sinai, and all through the centuries 
 since ; Divine love coming in through the very- 
 sins and rebellion of His people, and leading out 
 to the full disclosure of His vast purpose of 
 grace. 
 
 And if there be such correspondences looking 
 up the stream of time, what shall we say when, 
 from the standpoint of prophecy we look forward 
 to the fulfilment in Christ? All questions of 
 human powers of forecast, and such like, are here 
 swept aside. We are in presence of powers that 
 are Divine. Coming forth from the unseen, moving 
 
PROGRESSION OF HEBREW HISTORY 277 
 
 on his filial plane in utter originality of method 
 and teaching especially as He proceeds to the 
 fulfilment of His mission in death, resurrection, 
 ascension, and indwelling, does our Lord discover, 
 not after an earthly fashion, but in a manner lofty 
 beyond expression, the most subtle and detailed 
 correspondences of principle and provision with 
 the whole course of past revelation. 
 
 These are realities, written so broad on the 
 page of history that while they may be neglected 
 they cannot be set aside. Such harmonies of plan 
 did not arise by chance, such progressions of a 
 positive purpose through the ages must have had 
 a cause; and in the very nature of things there 
 could have been no cause but the living God. 
 No mind but His could have seen from beginning 
 to end, could have impressed the spirit of the end 
 on the very beginning, conld have moved on the 
 theatre of nations working out His designs ; could, 
 despite unbelief and self-will, have drawn human 
 spirits to receive and reach out to express His 
 thoughts, across the breadth of centuries and 
 amid the rise and fall of empires ; could have 
 brought out these correspondences, like signs in 
 heaven, to show that the Most High had been 
 moving among the kingdoms of men. Nothing 
 can explain such a unity of Scripture, such an 
 order of parts and progression of events, rising 
 to such a culmination, but one informing Divine 
 
278 THE INTEGRITY OF SCRIPTURE 
 
 presence, carrying out from beginning to end a 
 creative purpose of His own. " It is He that sitteth 
 on the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants 
 thereof are as grasshoppers." 
 
 If in any degree we have confirmed this faith 
 in any soul, brought even a few from questioning 
 to conviction, from theories of man to the vision 
 of God, we shall count the labour of these past 
 months, and the anxieties and difficulties attending 
 all controversy, well repaid. May God of His 
 great goodness forgive the faults and the failings 
 of this weak endeavour, and accept this humble 
 service of love and loyalty to His own most holy 
 Name ! 
 
"MODERN CRITICISM AND THE PREACHING 
 OF THE OLD TESTAMENT" 
 
 We have been asked, as a minister of religion, to express our 
 conviction as to the bearing of the Higher Criticism on the preach- 
 ing of the Old Testament.! This we do reluctantly, yet with- 
 out any faltering of conviction. We believe that Dr George 
 Adam Smith, and those whom he represents, are forcing upon 
 the British Churches the gravest issue that any of them has had 
 to face in living memory. Indeed, we might go further than 
 that without exaggeration. 
 
 The thing which has astonished us most in his bright and 
 clever book is what we have failed to find there, any discussion, 
 or even mention, of the bearing of this criticism on the Pro- 
 testant doctrine of the authority of Scripture. That lay abrupt 
 and inevitable in his way. For the question is not whether out 
 of this reconstructed Old Testament we can get materials for 
 sermons. As authorised teachers of the Churches, we believe 
 that we have a revelation from God of His sovereign purpose 
 of mercy to mankind. In this modern day, jealous to irra- 
 tionality of every assertion of authority, we assert this stupendous 
 claim, commanding all men everywhere to repent. And that 
 claim has been vindicated on two grounds : the ceaseless creation 
 of living Christians, and the broad base in history on which 
 revelation rests. Whatever undermines that historic base, then, 
 weakens revelation, and takes something from the authority with 
 which we can speak in the name of God to men. 
 
 The question is, then. Does criticism sustain, or does it in any 
 measure break down, the unity and authority of revelation ? In 
 our view, it disintegrates the Old Testament, and to some extent 
 affects the credit of the New. Surely in a religious or philo- 
 
 1 Reprinted from the British Weeklt/, March 7, 1901. 
 
 279 
 
28o APPENDIX 
 
 sophic system, inherent testimony to its genesis and scope is of 
 great value. Well, the man whom we account the greatest 
 religious genius that the world has ever seen, the Apostle Paul, 
 found it necessary to discover the relation of the earlier revela- 
 tion, to that whose spiritual content, in so far as it affected the 
 individual and the Church, he was honoured of God to unfold 
 for all time. He lived nearly two thousand years nearer than we 
 to the revelation whose history he explored. He was a son of 
 that Jewish Church. He stood in the living currents of an as 
 yet unextinguished nationality. He took time to cut his way 
 through the dead deposits of tradition, and if he had not what 
 Professor Smith calls " the finer instruments of criticism," he 
 had what is of infinitely more value in seeking back to the roots 
 of a living religious system, he had an intellectual genius that no 
 show or seeming could elude, a sanctity that burned its way 
 through human dreams into the revealed presence of God. 
 
 He there found the motive powers of Old Testament revela- 
 tion, in the promise of God to Abraham, and His covenant with 
 the people through Moses. ^ The whole upward movement 
 started from these head-centres. Even the prophets, though 
 they registered a significant advance, were less absolutely 
 creative. They moved between the foci of promise in the 
 far past, and fulfilment in the future. Now in this there is a 
 judgment of the course which revelation pursued, embedded in 
 the heart of the New Testament. And it is to be noticed that 
 these are the parts of the Old Testament which criticism pul- 
 verises. Professor Smith tells us that there is a reaction of late 
 in favour of admitting the personality of Abraham. But these 
 old stories are late "efforts to account for the geographical dis- 
 tribution of neighbouring nations," with mayhap " a substratum 
 of actual personal history." And then with a strange vivacity 
 he adds, " But who wants to be sure of more ? Who needs to 
 be sure of more ? " There is a character in French history who 
 will live by a phrase. He precipitated the Franco-German 
 1 Galatians iii. 
 
APPENDIX 281 
 
 War " with a light heart." No one appreciates more than we 
 do the eager alert intellect and beautiful Christian spirit, in many 
 directions, of Professor Smith. We would not injure him with a 
 harsh thought, but he is dealing with a problem some aspects of 
 which he does not consider, and with interests the most sacred 
 in the world. His criticism may or may not be well founded, 
 but it strikes at the unity of revelation, it annihilates the first 
 creative step in that revelation, and discredits the judgment of 
 Paul, which was that of all the Apostles and their Lord. And 
 that makes all the difference in the world to a preacher of the 
 Evangel of Christ. 
 
 But we recall the fact that Professor Smith allows a certain 
 element of revelation in the Old Testament. He can only 
 explain what he finds in the Old Testament on the supposition 
 that "there was an authentic revelation of the one true God." 
 That sounds decidedly comforting, but when we take pains to 
 see what is meant our difficulties by no means disappear. An 
 authentic revelation, how can that be ? Moses, indeed, is con- 
 ceded to have been a real person. His time was in some sort 
 creative. But where is the valid authoritative discovery by 
 God of Himself? We are told that we are not on historic 
 ground here. We do not know that one divine utterance is 
 genuine. Dr Smith confesses that the proof is most difficult. 
 The most which he can say is that a personal influence of God 
 on the history "is its most natural and scientific explanation." 
 
 That may be revelation, but not on the Christian or Jewish 
 (as we have hitherto believed), but on a lower level — not God 
 discovering Himself in a creative word, calling men into a new 
 experience, starting a great historical progress ; but rather like 
 the dimmer vision caught in the mysteries of heathen faiths. 
 And the whole treatment of revelation is on that line. " Israel 
 looked to Jahweh as Moab looked to Chemosh," and, more 
 remarkable still, the religion of Israel remained "before the age 
 of the great prophets, not only similar to, but in all respects 
 above mentioned identical with, the general Semitic religion. 
 
282 APPENDIX 
 
 which was not a monotheism, but a polytheism, with an oppor- 
 tunity for monotheism at the heart of it." 
 
 That is a picture of the elusive, uncertain character of this 
 whole theoretical reconstruction. The only justification of it 
 would be that the religious sense should at once recognise this 
 as self-evidently the divinely original method of God's un- 
 veiling. The only thing, however, which it does satisfy is 
 a current view of the growth and progress of religions. To 
 the religious sense it betrays at once its external and artificial 
 origin, while it leaves the genesis of the prophetic age a greater 
 mystery than ever. 
 
 The truth is, the whole hypothesis is naturalistic. It grew 
 up on that soil. And the attempt to introduce a duly toned- 
 down and graduated presence and entrance of God into a 
 naturalistic scheme is beyond the wit of man. God makes 
 an absolute beginning. He starts on His own plane. He 
 lifts to new levels and propels on new Hnes. And any created 
 substitute for Him is a Dagon that may stand till the Ark 
 of God come in, till a closer, more vivid sense of the presence 
 of God fill a people, when, behold, it falls on its face — head 
 and arms broken, and only the stump left of him. 
 
 But what if we have no option ? That is Professor Smith's 
 thought. He says that criticism has won as against the tra- 
 ditional view, and that it only remains to discuss the indemnity. 
 We marvelled at that. But the situation is very different. 
 A generation of Christian scholars, setting aside tradition, have 
 presented a view of the origin of Hebrew religion, and have 
 sustained that view by most burdensome processes of disin- 
 tegration and reconstitution. After oscillations enough they 
 have approximated to an- agreement. And Professor Smith 
 presents their case for recognition in the teaching of the 
 Church. But stating a case is not settling a case. And we 
 do not generally allow the men who make the difficulty to 
 fix the indemnity. They have brought out their theory from 
 the cloister, and subjected it to the judgment of the Church. 
 
APPENDIX 283 
 
 It must bear to be looked at from every side and in varied 
 lights. Especially are there two tests that will have to be 
 applied. First, is this scientifically sound ? Secondly, is it 
 adequate as an account of the origin and inner development 
 of the revelation process that culminated in Christ ? So far 
 as affects the testimony of the Church to the world, the 
 Arian controversy was not more vital, and certainly it was 
 not so complex. 
 
 How long did that controversy sway to and fro ? To what 
 heights did the Arian power rise ? It is with no light heart, 
 we note the hold these views have in the Churches. It may 
 be that the conflict of several generations will be needed. And 
 we have no hope or desire save for the truth, the sifted truth. 
 But there is much, and there will be more, to be said about 
 the scientific soundness of this theory. The hypothesis is far 
 and away the most violent that has ever been employed to 
 reconstruct the history and literature of a people. If its work- 
 ing out be elaborate, its foundations are highly speculative. 
 What archaeology has done is to take away the justification 
 for such an extreme theory, and to increase the verisimilitude 
 of the traditional belief. In anthropology, too, and the science 
 of religion, there are recent views very illuminative on the 
 place of ancient Israel. 
 
 We would like to go back to what Professor Smith truly 
 says at page 5. "The New Testament Scriptures were 
 selected and defined no man exactly knows how, except that 
 it was the Church herself that did the Work." Ay, and to 
 the consecrated people of Christ constituting His living Church 
 this must go. They live with God: God works through 
 them. Revelation is to them the ultimate reality, but a reality 
 whose laws, and properties, and sequences they know. And 
 if this theory does not commend itself to them as a vital 
 discovery from within, of the way by which God has come 
 into the knowledge of His creatures, then, with all its great 
 names, it will have to go into the limbo of forgotten things. 
 
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