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 BX 908i .L7 1890 
 Martin, Donald J. 
 Dods and his critics 
 
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 Price One Penny 
 
 i DoDS AND HIS Critics 
 
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 THE TOWN-CLERK OF EPHESUS 
 
 ' Ye Ought to Do Nothing Rashly."-Acts xix. 36 
 
 'JVttbi alteram partem, 
 
 Second Gdiihom. 
 
 DINGWALL : 
 
 LEWIS MUNRO. ROSS-SHIBE JOURNAL OFFICE 
 
NOTE. 
 
 A SECOND edition of my little pamphlet being asked 
 for, I embrace the opportunity thus given for a word 
 or two of explanation, I am not a man of war, I hate 
 it in all its forms. But at times it would seem 
 imperative, and so not only justifiable, but unavoidable. 
 Sense of wrong to self or others sometimes forces even 
 the man of peace to take up the weapons of war. From 
 the first I saw I had to make up my mind upon the points 
 in question, as that mind might soon be asked. Carefully 
 and, I hope, prayerfully, I set myself, as best I could, to 
 this task, till I came at last to pretty definite conclusions. 
 These were forced from me first before my Presbytery, 
 and then before my office-bearers, and, finally, the Con- 
 ference convinced me that to keep silence would be 
 wrong to myself and possibly to others, and so I came to 
 give wing to my convictions. 
 
 I may explain further that the sense of wrong being 
 done to Dr Dods alone impelled me, as I have but the 
 slightest personal acquaintance with him. 
 
 The adoption of a nom de plume was for two reasons : 
 (1) That my personality might not prejudice any force 
 of truth there might be in my pamphlet : (2) I thought 
 that the no7)i de phime carried in itself a lesson that 
 friends might well take to heart, who to my mind were 
 making a great cry without much reason. I may also add 
 that the veil that covered my identity was really so very 
 thin that parties desirous of so doing could have no 
 difficulty in tracing the author. If I had wished to 
 conceal my identity effectually I would certainly not 
 have given the many clues I have, some of them very 
 plain. As the partial concealment will by this time have 
 worked its ends it may now finally take end. 
 
 DONALD J. MARTIN. 
 
 FiiEE English Manse, Stornoway, 
 March, 1890, 
 
DODS AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM. 
 
 THE time seems to have come when those who differ 
 from their friends in the Highlands upon the Dods 
 Question must speak out. Ease and expediency 
 would counsel silence, but truth and fairness demand 
 speech. The case appears to the writer to be one of mis- 
 interpretation, misrepresentation, and wrong. Dods is 
 first misinterpreted — a meaning is put upon his words he 
 never intended, then he is saddled with this misinterpre- 
 tation. He is represented as saying either what he never 
 said, or said not in the sense in which the words are 
 taken, and then, of course, follows wrong, not intentional, 
 we firmly believe, but yet really to him, to the Church 
 that has installed him and still retains him as one of her 
 professors, and, worst of all, to truth itself That some 
 of his words present a surface difficulty there is no use in 
 denying, but that is the more reason why they should be 
 subjected to the same calm, clear, considerate thought 
 that first gave them being and form. None of Dr Dods's 
 thoughts are surface, though his language is clear as a 
 crystal rill ; and this, taken along with Dr Dods's known 
 candour and honesty, should have made men pause ere 
 they rashly rushed to the conclusion that Dr Dods used 
 his words to preach down truths that he had solemnly 
 subscribed himself to defend. Surely such a charge of 
 dishonesty implied in the charge of a departure, not per- 
 sonally, but in public utterance — for we quite agree with 
 
his opponents in saying that it is his public utterances, 
 not his personal or private beliefs we have to do with — 
 from the Standards he had subscribed, should have made 
 friends pause and question themselves as to whether 
 after all they were not taking up the Professor in a wrong 
 sense — in a sense foreign to his real meaning and teach- 
 ing. This, we fear, many have not done. Just because 
 Dr Dods's words are always the product of well-balanced 
 thought, on that very account his writings, instead of 
 having been taken up in a surface sense, should have 
 been first sifted, weighed, viewed all round, taken in 
 connection with the context of his discourse, the current 
 of the thought of the audience he was addressing, and the 
 current of his own thought at the time. But how very 
 little of this kind of treatment have they got. Hence 
 most, if not all, of the resolvings and pleadings have 
 been upon a false issue altogether. Resolutions have 
 been passed in defence of the doctrines of grace, which 
 Dr Dods himself would have heartily signed or seconded, 
 and speeches have been made in defence of the Bible with 
 glorious panegyrics upon it to which Dr Dods would have 
 rapped his approval — only minus the style. Would you 
 believe — well I am anticipating. The writer was, as others, 
 invited to the Conference. He refused for two reasons : 
 first, after looking into Dr Dods's books and utterances 
 he could find no difference between him and the members 
 of the Conference as to belief or doctrine — the only 
 difference he could find was that of charity, or mode of 
 dealing with men in difficulty ; and secondly even upon 
 the supposition that Dr Dods was unsound, he could not 
 agree with the mode of procedure— that of secret conclave, 
 much less that of excited public meeting. This last 
 mode seemed to him the most objectionable of all, and 
 he could be no party to dragging such sacred subjects 
 as our Lord's Divinity through the mire of an excited 
 public meeting. One friend, in urging him to go, sent 
 him, by way of inducement, copies of the proposed 
 Resolutions, asking, among other things, if he could 
 not agree to the first at least. In reply he said he 
 would heartily do so if he saw the necessity for any 
 such Confession or Resolution, but that, for his part, 
 he did not, and suggested to his friend that a short 
 
cut both to him and to the Conference out of their 
 difficulties would be to send a copy of the Resolution 
 to Dr Dods himself, and ask him if he could not and 
 would not heartily sign it. This, of course, would have 
 been to prick a hole in the whole agitation, and the 
 writer has not heard that his advice was taken. One 
 cannot help thinking but that such would have been 
 not only the fair thing to Dr Dods before passing the 
 Second Resolution, but also the Scriptural way of going 
 about the matter, according to the Master's own direction 
 in such cases (Matt, xviii. 15). Indeed, he has not 
 learned that any of the Professor's accusers have taken 
 this course. And the Professor's own attempts at carry- 
 ing out this rule do not seem to have received a very 
 gracious response, if a certain correspondence in the 
 Scotsman is to be taken as evidence. However that 
 may be, the writer himself, on thinking matters over, 
 for his own guidance and that of others, and, generally, 
 for clearing up the case, sent the Resolution to the 
 Professor asking him if he could so heartily sign it. We 
 here reproduce it, and the Professor's reply, and we 
 calmly await the verdict of the public both on the Reso- 
 lutionists and on him. 
 
 Resolution, 
 
 "We, ministers and office-bearers of the Free Church 
 of Scotland belonging to the Northern Synods, in this 
 Conference assembled, rejoice in the testimony borne by 
 the Westminister Standards to the Divine Authority of 
 the Holy Scriptures, and to the other fundamental doc- 
 trines of the Gospel, and are agreed that it is our duty 
 to unite and assist one another in endeavoui'ing, in our 
 place and callings, to promote the maintenance and 
 defence of evangelical truth according to the said West- 
 minister Standards." 
 
 Dr Dods's Reply. 
 
 " 23 Gt. King Street, Edinburgh, 11^/i Dec, 1889.— 
 Mr dear Sir, — The Resolution of which you send me a 
 copy I can heartily subscribe. I have quite recently 
 again signed the Confession itself, and it seems to me 
 
monstrous that I should be charged with holding such 
 views as are ascribed to me ; and how any man who has 
 read what I have written can suppose I deny the doctrines 
 of grace, or ' the essential doctrines on which these are 
 founded ' I do not comprehend. — Yours sincerely, 
 
 "Marcus Dods." 
 
 Having said so much, let us now enquire how Dr 
 Dods's words have come to be so misunderstood, as 
 plainly they have, and what is the real import of them. 
 Now we have already said a little of the how ; but we 
 may add a little more. Our thoughts on the how of 
 the misconstruction may be summarised, thus : (1) 
 They have been taken superficially, without friends 
 waiting to search into any other deeper meaning than 
 the surface one. (2) They have been taken out of 
 connection, either with the immediate context or the 
 whole discourse of which they form a part, and often 
 a very small part indeed. He is often made " an 
 offender for a word" (Is. xxix. 21). (3) The Doctor's 
 whole view-point and train of thought are entirely 
 overlooked. These things will come out as we proceed 
 to try and find out the real import of Dods's words. 
 
 And here we may begin with the passage that has 
 given most offence, caused most misunderstanding, and 
 given rise to most perplexity. It is the now famous 
 utterance, that " we must not too hastily conclude that 
 even a belief in Christ's divinity is essential to the true 
 Christian " (St. Giles's Sermon, p. 8). Now, as an 
 instance, to begin with, of the confusion of thought with 
 which this whole subject has been approached, I may 
 quote Mr Macaskill's description of this sentence, in his 
 speech at Dingwall Presbytery, in giving in the report 
 of the Committee, as " Dr Dods's statement as to the 
 person of our Lord " (Report of Committee of F.C. 
 Presbytery of Dingwall, p. 9). The same thing is done 
 in the body of the Report (p. 1 7), where this sentence 
 is given under the heading of views as to " Third : — 
 The Person of Christ." Now, on the face of it, it is not a 
 statement about the Person or the Divinity of our Lord at 
 all, but about certain men and their attitude towards 
 
His Divinity and Person. In fact, in the very statement 
 the divinity of Christ is assumed — assumed as the thing 
 not believed in by some. It is of those some that Dods 
 makes the statement, not of Christ. Now, this may 
 seem a slight mistake, but to me it seems to contain the 
 germ of the whole agitation against Dods. Dods is by 
 many in the Highlands considered to be unsound on the 
 doctrine of the Divinity, the Person of our Lord, and 
 we believe that, unintentionally we heartily believe on 
 Mr Macaskill's part, but yet all the same really, this 
 statement and classification of his of Dr Dods's views as 
 being concerning the Person of our Lord, circulated, as 
 those have been, broadcast over the Highlands, have 
 done much in misrepresenting Dr Dods and his views. 
 Mr Macaskill's statement of the case is, at its best, 
 careless : it has, we believe, given rise to much mis- 
 apprehension. Dods's views, whatever they are, are not 
 views about the Person of Christ. 
 
 But, granting this, one will say, is not the statement 
 taken, as it really is, one about unbelievers in the 
 Divinity of our Lord, to say the least of it, strange and 
 misleading, if not absolutely unscriptural 1 To come 
 to the point at once, does not the Scripture distinctly 
 say, " He that believeth not the Son, shall not see life, 
 but the wrath of God abideth on him " (John iii. 36) 1 
 True. But if you will only examine Dr Dods's state- 
 ment, even by itself, but much more taken with its 
 following context — the whole paragraph on belief and 
 faith — you will find that, so far from being contradictory, 
 it is only really affirmative of that grand, but solemn 
 truth. Take the statement first by itself. What are 
 Dods's words 1 "A belief in Chi'ist's divinity." Now, 
 notice here two things : — first, that he uses the words 
 " belief in," viz., intellectual assent, not "faith on," viz., 
 heart tmst ; and " divinity," evidently in the sense of a 
 doctrine, and not " Person," which would be the 
 corresponding object to Jaith. The whole alarm and 
 agitation have arisen from interpreting Dods's statement 
 as if it were equivalent to his saying that " faith " in 
 Christ's person is not essential to the true Christian ; 
 a statement which Dr Dods has never made, but to 
 
8 
 
 which this much-alarming sentence is almost a contra- 
 diction — at least a counter statement. We have, in 
 other words, in this sentence the distinction one hears 
 again and again, and from none oftener than from my 
 Highland brethren that are so doubtful of Dods — 
 between mere assent and consent — between believing 
 about, and believing or resting on — the one a mere act 
 of the head — the second the whole attitude of the heart 
 and soul. And this view of the passage is confirmed 
 most emphatically as we read on. " Reunion to God," 
 he tells us, " depends so much more upon the conscience 
 and on the heart than on mental enlightenment, that I 
 would hope that the faith, small even as a grain of 
 mustard seed, will yet grow up to a sound and healthy 
 plant." 
 
 Note several things here. Faith, in Dr Dods's view, 
 is not a mere intellectual assent, but a thing of the 
 heart that secures our re-union to God. Then note 
 well what we already anticipated, the contrast, not only 
 between head and heart, but between belief and faith. 
 This unbeliever in the divinity of Christ has Jaith on 
 Him, though small even as a grain of mustard seed. 
 Then, in further corroboration of this, he speaks twice 
 over of '' making Christ 'practically our God, by looking 
 to Him for spiritual life, and by giving ourselves to Him 
 as our absolute Lord." Here we see another distinction 
 clearly kept before him by Dods, but lost sight of, we 
 fear, by many in judging of him and others, viz., that 
 our Lord's person, metaphydcally considered, and the 
 same considered practically, are different. All that 
 Dods's statement amounts to is this, that a man may 
 have metafihysical diflculties concerning the constitution 
 of our Lord's Person, and yet may, in j^ractice, be found 
 subjecting both heart and life to Him ; and that in that 
 case we have no right to deny to him the name, seeing he 
 has the reality. And thus we find that this paragraph, 
 which is one, not on the person of Christ, hut on the 
 naticre of the faith that unites to Him, closes with a 
 contrast, clear and sharp and striljing, between the man 
 that does not say in so many words that he believes in 
 Christ's Divinity, but yet practically trusts and follows 
 
Him, and the man who in words professes to believe in 
 His Divinity, and yet in heart and life practically denies 
 Him. And this is teaching for which a man in our 
 Church is to be libelled 1 Is it not the very teaching of 
 our. Lord in the Sermon on the Mount ? '•' Not every 
 one that saiih unto me Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the 
 will of my Father which is in heaven shall enter into 
 the kingdom of God." Is it possible that for teaching 
 the very same truth, in almost the very same words, one 
 of our ministers and professors must be first suspected, 
 and then suspended and suppressed ? 
 
 And this leads us further into something like a true 
 grasp of Dods's whole view-point in this sermon. AVant 
 of clearly getting at this has given rise to no small mis- 
 interpretation. He is answering the question, not 
 " What is a Free Churchman V or, for that matter of it, 
 a Churchman of any kind, but " What is a Christian 1" 
 — a very different question, indeed. If he had been 
 answering the first he would, no doubt, have been 
 definite, and deservedly narrow : could not have been too 
 much so, perhaps — as things go now-a-days — but that 
 was not the task he set himself, but to answer the 
 question " What is a Christian ?' Now, to answer such a 
 question he was bound to drop all accessories whatsoever, 
 and to answer, not so as to satisfy Churchmen or Free 
 Churchmen, but truth ; he was bound in the interests of 
 truth and Christianity itself, which is highest truth or 
 nothing, to give a description of a Christian that could 
 stand for his portrait in any Church or society what- 
 soever, one to be tried, not by the special standard of any 
 particular section or sect, but by some universal touch- 
 stone. He was thus bound to answer the question both 
 practically and broadly. And he has done so. And it 
 seems to me that the longer we study that sermon the 
 more we shall be thankful that there is one in our midst, 
 who with strong and intense beliefs of his own can yet 
 handle with sympathetic touch the doubts and difl&cul- 
 ties of others. His practical aim we have seen in his 
 treatment of faith. In his nest objected-to paragraph 
 we see in his catholic breadth of treament, viz., that which 
 deals with the divergent views about the Atonement. 
 
10 
 
 Now, let us keep clearly in view what it is that Dods 
 has ia view. He is not in the passage giving a state- 
 ment of doctrine, either his own, or that of any Church, 
 he is simply trying to get at an answer to the question — 
 What is a Christian ? Surely there is no one in his 
 senses that would answer that a Christian is one who 
 holds a particular view of the atonement. Dods wants 
 to get at, and he does get at, what underlies all forms of 
 Christian belief, viz., Christian character. Are our 
 friends prepared to deny the name and character of 
 Christian to those that hold a view of the atonement di- 
 vergent from the Confession, and it may be, divergent 
 from the Word of God, and yet in affection, and character, 
 and soul attitude to God and man are in all essentials 
 Christians, lovers of God and Christ, and man, humble, 
 and loving, and holy, and good 1 It has been alleged by 
 Mr Macaskill, in his Report p. 16, that the alternative 
 view of the atonement that Dr Dods gives is the 
 " Moral," or Socinian. Now, on examination, we will 
 find it is no such thing. It is rather the Row or 
 Maurician theory — that of Dr Macleod Campbell, of Row. 
 If we read it carefully, as given by Dr Dods, you will see 
 that so far from Socinian is it that it actually implies 
 and necessitates the Divine Person of our Lord, which 
 no mere moral or Socinian theory can ever postulate, but 
 must exclude. It in fact approaches the view given in a 
 recent book on the atonement by Dr Simon, of the Con- 
 gregational Hall, Edinburgh (Redemption of Man. T. & 
 T. Clark), of which one critic says that " Dr Simon is 
 fully entitled to claim for this view that it destroys the 
 raison detrt of the dissent from Catholic doctrine, 
 known as the 'moral' theories of the atonement." Let 
 us look at Dods's statement a moment, and I think 
 this will become clear. " They consider Christ's life 
 and death to be a manifestation or expression of His 
 redeeming love, and that Christ came to the world to 
 reveal God's love, and, by dying, shoio that there ivas no 
 bound to that love, and that it gave all that could be given." 
 Is that a " moral " theory 1 Is it not one of ' redeeming 
 love 1 " Could a mere man, which is the Socinian view 
 of Christ's person, " by dying show that there was no 
 bound to that love ? " If Christ were not in this theory 
 
11 
 
 the Son of God how could it be held by this theory " that 
 God's love gave, all that could he given ?" This second 
 view of Dods, whosoever's it may be, is certainly death 
 to the mere " moral " or " Socinian " view. Are, we 
 again ask, his opponents and critics prepared to give the 
 negative to his conclusion that " in point of fact both 
 theories of the atonement produce good Christians f 
 They may not agree with the views — Dods did not say 
 he does — they may think them contrary to the Confes- 
 sion's doctrine — Dods does not say whether or not, for it 
 was not to the point — but are they prepared to deny the 
 name and character of Christians to those that so differ 
 from them? They may, if they like, deny them the 
 name of sound or orthodox theologians, or theologians at 
 all (they do not pretend to be, many of them), but are 
 they prepared to deny them the Christian name and char- 
 acter ] If not, then they and Dods are one ; if they do, 
 then where is their charity, and where their ground in 
 facts 1 Take the case of Dr Macleod Campbell, of Row. 
 As is well known, the Church of Scotland of his day 
 found no place for him within the ranks of her accredi- 
 ted ministers, thrust him out as unsound, and yet never 
 was there a whisper from the bitterest of his opponents 
 calling in question his personal piety and real Christi- 
 anity. Because both of them were too apparent, too 
 real. The writer knew him intimately in the days long 
 gone by. His house was his second home. He was the 
 first that ever personally dealt with the writer about his 
 soul, when he was still a schoolboy. Never to his dying 
 day will he forget the quiet sick room, the loving hand 
 laid upon his head, and gentle words of Christ and God, 
 the soul and heaven. And in college days, it was he 
 again that sought to lead the opening mind of the 
 student still Godward with a touch and tact all his own. 
 Who that ever came in contact with that gentle person- 
 ality, however much he may dissent from his theological 
 views, as dissent this writer does, ever deny to Dr John 
 Macleod Campbell, of Row, the name and character of a 
 good Christian 1 And that is Dr Dods's whole point — 
 that Christianity does not consist in particular views, but 
 in character and attitude of soul to God and man. Is 
 this heretical or even dangerous? Will his critics 
 
maintaia the contrarryl Will they deny the fact with 
 which he sums up the paragraph " that both views make 
 good Christians?" If they do they have the whole 
 Christian world and conscience, and I suspect, also the 
 Word of God against them. The question is not, " Dost 
 thou believe this or that theory of the Atonement?" 
 But " Dost thou believe on the Son of God ?" To believe 
 the first may make or unmake one a theologian, but to 
 believe on the second will make one a son of God — a 
 Christian. 
 
 And this practical aim of Dr Dods leads us on to the 
 understanding of a phrase of his that has also been 
 objected to as seemingly giving the Word of God a sort 
 of secondary place. " The Bible is the most powerful 
 agent, next to the lives of Christian people, in the pro- 
 pagation of our religion" (St, Giles's Sermon, p. 11). 
 Now what is this, looked at calmly, but a commonplace 
 of preaching] Are not the lives of professing Christians 
 the grand hindrance at home and abroad to the progress 
 of Christianity"? Ask our missionaries what is the grand 
 obstacle in the way of the heathen accepting Christ's 
 teaching. Their answer will, I fear, be always the same 
 — the lives of our countrymen, so-called Christians, Is 
 it not a common saying that the Christian is the uncon- 
 verted man's Bible 1 Does not Paul say to the Corin- 
 thians — " Ye are the epistle of Christ," " known and read 
 of all men » (2 Cor, iii. 2, 3) 1 
 
 Dr Dods's chapters on the Resurrection, in his Com- 
 mentary on 1st Corinthians, are really a magnificent cumu- 
 lative argument on behalf of that central fact of our 
 faith. And yet even here he has been misunderstood, 
 Mr Macaskill's extracts in his Report give a very good 
 specimen of the way in which, by omitting Dr Dods's 
 own position and positive beliefs, his statement of his 
 opponents' views are taken as his own, and his charitable 
 judgment of the men holding these views, is taken as at 
 least a half approval or condoning of them. While refusing 
 to ban the holders, he most emphatically and with keen 
 logic, refutes their views. What earthly good it would do to 
 condemn the men, in addition to condemning their views, 
 
13 
 
 one cannot see. If Dr Dods's critics think that such 
 personal banning would serve the ends of establishing 
 Christian truth, they are welcome to their view : but 
 surely Dr Dods may be allowed to choose what he 
 thinks the more excellent way, of dealing gently with 
 the men while dealing incisively with their theories, 
 without being exposed to the charge of abandoning 
 the Christian standpoint, and being charged personally 
 with heresy. He wants to win to truth, not by the 
 weapons of declamation and excommunication, but by 
 those of reason and love. " The servant of the Lord 
 must not strive, but be gentle towards oil men, apt to 
 teach, forbearing, in vieekness instructing those that 
 oppose themselves, if peradventure they should come 
 to the knowledge of the truth." All the difference 
 between Dods and his critics is that he believes in 
 carrying out the above injunctions in all controversies, 
 even with those that oppose themselves to the grand 
 truth of the Resurrection. He believes, and perhaps 
 rightly, that much harm has been done to the truth 
 by the opposite course. He refuses to be anything else, 
 even when arguing with and refuting the veriest sceptics, 
 than candid, calm, and charitable, and he perhaps reads 
 his critics a well-needed lesson in this. It surely is a 
 new thing in our day when a man exposes himself to 
 libel on this account. That is the forefront of his offence. 
 
 Another subject on which there has been a great out- 
 cry against Dods is that of his views upon the Bible. 
 These have been spoken about and against as if they 
 amounted to a denial of the Divine Authority and In- 
 fallibility of Holy Scripture. This again arises from a 
 wholesale misunderstanding of Dods's position. Dods is 
 pre-eminently an apologist. He addresses himself, not, 
 like the most of ordinary preachers, to the Jaitk, but to 
 the unhelief of the day. This alone give a character to 
 his most extraordinary utterances, such as the St. Giles's 
 Sermon, the Pan-Presbyterian Address, the Resurrection 
 chapters in Corinthians, &c., that the ordinary preacher 
 or reader may not quite be able to understand. It is one 
 thing to address, as is usually done, audiences that be- 
 lieve without question, in historical Christianity, and 
 
u 
 
 to address oneself to an audience composed of those 
 who either positively do not, or, at any rate, have doubts 
 about it. All the preacher in the first case has to do 
 is to press home truth already believed— to enforce 
 positions already granted. But with the latter it is far 
 otherwise. He has, as the other has not, to consider a 
 great many moods and tenses of prejudice, or conviction, 
 or feeling, all not in fixvour of, but adverse to both his 
 beliefs and himself as the exponent and the practical 
 embodiment of them. Now it seems to me that the 
 very first requisite for this last preacher is that he be 
 left with a free hand to adopt his own methods, and 
 that he be not at every single point subjected to the 
 adverse criticism, or the still more hampering suspicion 
 of the first brother, whose work is of an altogether 
 different kind. Till this fact is recognised we shall have 
 no peace in our Church, nor can we come near under- 
 standing such a man as Dr Dods. His heart is sore, 
 bleeding for the scepticism of the day. In the high 
 places of the field, in his contact with the thought and 
 literature of the day, he is brought face to face with it. 
 He cannot shirk it or his duty with regard to it. Surely 
 the least he might expect from his Church he has served 
 so long, is that she in all her borders would credit him 
 with loyalty to her Standards, love to her truth, and 
 fidelity to her faith, even when called in the defence of 
 this last to speak calmly, not cui*tly, charitably not cyni- 
 cally, of the views and character of those that diff'er 
 from him and her, and yet whom he would, if he could, 
 joyfully win to her Standard. He has not got that credit, 
 I fear — in some quarters at least. Whether he will get it 
 by the Church as a whole remains to be seen. But if 
 not, you may write Ichabod upon her walls. The sooner 
 the Church awakens to the fact that there is a section, 
 at least, within her fighting, not for new truth but 
 simply for Christian liberty, the better — that there are 
 men determined to fight for this at all hazards : liberty 
 for others, if not for themselves, as Christian men and 
 believers holding the Head, to use all the weapons of 
 known truth, to employ all the modes of Christian de- 
 fence, and to fight along the whole line of critical and 
 apologetic enquiry and method, in the defence of the 
 
15 
 
 Christian faith, without being subjected to suspicion, or 
 saddled with a libel, or shackled by the views of So-and-so. 
 
 We are just as attached as our friends to essential 
 truth and the evangelical faith ; but we claim more 
 liberty, and we intend to fight for it. We love our 
 friends, we love their system of truth : it is our own : 
 but we do not love their suspicions and their narrow- 
 ness : the longer we look at these the less we love them. 
 If this liberty be not got in the Free Church, then we 
 must get it elsewhere. Our hearts will be sore the day 
 we leave her. She is our spiritual mother, the Church 
 of our fathers, where we and they both worshipped, and 
 heard the glad old story that has made all things new 
 — for them and us, — but if she seek to strangle enquiry 
 and hamper apologetic, then we and she must part, 
 sadly, but surely. We shall seek a Church, not less 
 sound in essentials, it is hoped, but less suspicious of 
 her sons. 
 
 But to return to our point. Dr Dods is essentially 
 apologetic. He is constantly addressing unbelievers, 
 He has thus come to feel the absolute necessity of 
 dealing, not in theoiies first, but in facts. He is face to 
 face with the critical spirit and the scientific method, 
 and unless he address himself to the first, and adopt 
 the second, his efforts are likely to prove failures — would 
 make grand popular sermons, but would effect nothing 
 in the direction aimed at. Dods has thus been led to 
 ask himself, what effect has the a 2>riori method of 
 stating inspiration and presenting the authority and 
 infallibility (verbal) of the Bible had upon the sceptical 
 mind. The answer has been forced upon him, by due 
 experience no doubt, that it has had the effect, not of 
 removing but rather of fostering or confirming scepticism. 
 He has thus been led to form his theory of inspiration 
 on scientific lines, viz., by first gathering and marshalling 
 the facts, and then forming the theory from a considera- 
 tion of these, and not by the old method of first formu- 
 lating, your theory and then getting your f;\cts some way 
 or other to square with it. The Bible itself, Dr Dods 
 says, is its own witness, its own authority, and the facts 
 
16 
 
 which itself presents to us must formulate for us the theory 
 of inspiration. He thus distinguishes between facts 
 and the method of their transmission — Revelation has to 
 do with the first : Inspiration concerns the second. 
 Revelation sees things — truths. Inspiration sends the 
 same. Now, naturally, in the interests of the/arfs and 
 truths of God's Word, Dods lays more stress upon the 
 facts and the truths themselves than upon the method of 
 transmission. He thinks that to begin by postulating 
 that the method of conveyance is absolutely correct, and 
 so to postulate it, as Mr Macaskill does in his Inverness 
 speech, as to maintain that if you find one smallest 
 mistake in this record you vitiate the whole of its 
 evidence, is to do two things. (1.) To play into the 
 enemies' hands and to give to the enemies and deniers of 
 Bible fact and doctrine just the very weapon they 
 want. They at once set to pick holes here and there in 
 the record, discrepancies and misstatements, kc, and 
 then they turn round and say, Now there is your infallible 
 record — look at it — what is it worth : if it cannot be 
 depended on for small things, how can it be depended on 
 for great? (2.) To go against the law of evidence 
 itself. You must first get your facts, then form your 
 theoi-y. The a jjriori method he condemns. And he has 
 a right to be heard calmly. His method is (1.) To begin 
 with the facts. He says to the sceptic : My religion is a 
 religion founded on facts. The Bible is the record of 
 these facts. It is, firstly, a book histoHcally true. The 
 matter of its absolute literal accuracy Qf detail is a mere 
 secondary matter, important indeed in its place, but not 
 first. Its sicbstantial accuracy is the main point. On 
 that I stand, and safely. Bring down the Bible, if you 
 like, to the level of an ordinary history. As that, to be 
 nothing higher, we say it is true, real history. It 
 witnesses to the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ, to the descent of the Spirit, (fee. You may pick 
 holes in the form of the record, you may find discrepancies 
 or even misstatements in some of its parts, but its 
 testimony, as a whole, is invincible. (2.) Then, as to the 
 theory of inspiration, he would form this also on the 
 scientific method — he would have the Bible speak for 
 itself. Now, in all this, Dods's whole attitude and aim are 
 
17 
 
 defensive, not destructive — constructive, conservative. It 
 is sad that men cannot see this. He leaves the Bible 
 practically to the believing man what it ever was and 
 shall be, " the only rule of faith and practice." It is 
 hard for Dods whilst he is thus labouring for the conser- 
 vation of theBible, as such, to thebelieving and Bible-loving 
 man, that he should be by many of these same Bible-loving 
 men, thought of, spoken of, and ti-eated as if he were 
 seeking to rob them of it. It is this that makes one so 
 sad. It is this that so stirs one's spirit to its very 
 depths. To see men you cannot but love — love them 
 the more, the more you know them — love just because 
 they so love their God, and their Saviour, and their 
 Bible with such an absorbing intensity, speaking of an- 
 other man that you love, and love, too, just because he 
 loves that Bible, and is doing all he can to defend it and 
 its truths, is what pains one so much. And surely in 
 this connection the writer cannot deprecate too strongly 
 the words of Mr Macaskill in his speech : words that 
 institute a comparison as unwarrantable as one is sure it 
 will be obnoxious to the speaker himself on reflection, 
 when he says — " They know their Bible — aye, much 
 better than many of the critics — for it is the daily food 
 of their souls, their daily companion and counsellor." No 
 one that knows Dr Dods, that has read or heard his 
 expositions, consulted his devotional manuals, sat under 
 his prayers, but must feel how very inapplicable such a 
 comparison is to Dr Dods, what an utterly false idea 
 it gives of the man and his attitude toward the Word 
 of God. It is to him the " daily food of his soul," his 
 " daily companion and counsellor." The old stoi-y of 
 Lewellyn, the Welsh hunter, and his hound, be it fable 
 or truth, might well read us Celts a lesson against rash 
 and hasty conclusions and their results. Lewellyn left 
 his hound to guard the cradle of his sleeping boy. Re- 
 turning, he found the cradle overturned, and his hound 
 lying beside it, with his mouth all bloody. With one 
 sweep of his claymore he struck dead the supposed de- 
 stroyer of his child. Next moment he heard a cry from 
 beneath the overturned cradle. He turned it up, and lo ! 
 his smiling babe unhurt, and lying beside it a monstrous 
 wolf stark dead, worried to death by the faithful hound. 
 
18 
 
 The rash Celt had, in his Celtic fury, slain the one 
 defender of his child. We fear that our Celtic brethren, 
 so fondly right in their affection for the Bible, and yet 
 so rashly wrong in their eager attempts to come at Dods 
 with their ecclesiastic claymore, may imitate this mistake. 
 Their mistake may succeed. They may expel Dods ; 
 but, if they do, they may discover, when too late, that 
 they have actually slain the man that was doing his very 
 best to save for them and himself what they both love 
 best — their Bible and their creed. Judging by appear- 
 ances, mistaking an upturned theory of inspiration for a 
 destroyed Bible, they may, in their rashness, strike at 
 the very watcher who has actually rescued it and its 
 truths from the jaws of the wolf of scepticism. 
 
 And this brings us back to the point from which we 
 started, viz., that the only difference between Dr Dods 
 and his critics was one of charity — one of method of 
 dealing with sceptics. We might add that in his 
 methods he is nearer the old Protestant type than they. 
 You find in their writings and speakings a constant 
 appeal to authority; whereas Dods would make the 
 Bible and the Confession their own interpreters. The 
 first Reformers were very chaiy of any authority other 
 than the Word of God itself. Their very theory of 
 inspiration they, like Dods, formed from the Bible facts. 
 Any one, for instance, familiar with the commentaries 
 of Calvin will be at once struck by the utterly un- 
 hampered way in which he approaches points of criticism 
 and Biblical research. Luther did the same. They 
 neither knew nor owned any other authority than the 
 Bible, as it interpreted itself to the individual conscience 
 of the Spirit-taught man. The same might be said of 
 our Westminster divines, and their Confession. They 
 were far wider and more liberal in their iutei-pretation 
 of what views were, and were not, included under that 
 Confession, than our friends. The Confession, like the 
 Bible, must be its own interpreter. And it rests with 
 the Church, not with individual members or a conclave 
 of them, to say what views ore, and what views are not, 
 to be included under it. For instance, Dr Dods has 
 hurled at his head Dr So and So's, or Mr So and So'a 
 
19 
 
 interpretation of that Confession ; as if Dr Dods had 
 not his own right to interpret that standard, as well as 
 they, and was quite as competent to. On Dr Dods's 
 words, when he says, " I say plainly that if I supposed 
 the Confession to mean what Dr Hodge says it means, 
 I could not accept it," Mr Macaskill comments thus, 
 (Report p. 6), — " That is what Dr Dods himself says. 
 Now, the view held and ably expounded by Dr Hodge 
 is the view propounded by Chalmers, Cunningham, 
 Bannerman, Candlish, and still held by the Free 
 Church, and vmst always he held as long as her Confession 
 remains as it is. But Dr Dods honourably tells us he 
 cannot accept the Confession on that ground. And, 
 therefore, in accepting it the other day in Edinburgh, he 
 must have done so, not as hitherto understood by his 
 Church. To maintain, therefore, that all is safe, because 
 Dr Dods the other day accepted our Confession of Faith 
 as his Confession of Faith, and signed our Formula, is 
 mere nonsense. Dr Dods puts his own interpretation on 
 our Confession and Formula, and so receives them, but 
 certainly not as hitherto understood hy this Church. If Dr 
 Dods and his followers are allowed thus to be a law to 
 themselves, and put any interpretation on the Confession 
 of Faith they please, let the Church say so ; but let us 
 not be guilty of the hypocrisy of saying, all is right 
 because they sign the Confession of Faith, when we know 
 they do not do so, do not profess to do so, in the sense in 
 which the Church has hitherto j)rofessed to hold them.'* 
 Now this is to my mind the most extraordinary comment. 
 To begin with — Was Dr Hodge a Free Churchman 1 
 When and where did the Free Church, as a Church, 
 in any foi-m or shape, adopt the interpretation or views 
 of Dr Chalmers, Cunningham, Bannerman, Candlish, 
 as binding the Free Church and her office-bearers % 
 All these worthy men expounded and interpreted the 
 Confession of Faith, and, perhaps, formulated their own 
 theory of Inspiration, but when did the Free Church 
 ever bind herself, or her office-bearers, to these men's 
 views, or, indeed, to any one view or theory of In- 
 spiration ? And they would have been the very last men 
 themselves to have asked it. Why, this is, on the 
 face of it, to introduce a new term of subscription, 
 
20 
 
 to meet which we must have a rider added to the 
 Formula, viz., " according to the interpretation of, or 
 according to the views of, Dr Hodge — or Dr Mactavish — 
 or Mr Macaskill." It is just as one suspected. With 
 such viev/s of what subscription means of course there 
 can be no satisfying of such men. There must be 
 the rider to satisfy, viz., that the subscriber takes the 
 Confession according to thei7' view : for it amounts to that. 
 It is they that have made the demand, not the worthy 
 men whose names they invoke. Invoking of the dead — 
 calUng up of the shades of the Prophets is an old story, 
 as old as the day of Endor, with sometimes just as 
 awkward results as then : — that the recallers call up 
 more than they bargained for. Dr Dods's letter at the 
 beginning of this pamphlet will not satisfy them either, 
 on the same ground, for there should properly have been 
 a rider to that Resolution too, viz., " as interpreted by 
 Mr Macaskill and Dr Mactavish." One thing we are quite 
 sure of, that if ever the Free Church does formulate a 
 theory of Inspii'ation — a thing she has not done — it will 
 not he that either of Dr Mactavish or of Mr Macaskill as 
 sketched in their Inverness speeches, for a more crude, 
 cast-iron theory was never broached by sane men. If 
 Mr Macaskill thinks his theory of Inspiration was ever 
 that of the Free Church worthies he mentions, he is most 
 mightily mistaken. They never broached such, far less 
 thrust it upon others. But Mr Macaskill, and the friends 
 of the Music Hall, would do both. Mr Macaskill may 
 not modify his views, but I hope he will his language, if 
 ever he takes pen or speech again. His anger may be 
 hot, and his contempt mighty, but, surely, that is no 
 justification of such expressions as the " boundless con- 
 ceit of the whole thing," " the arrogance of this mutual 
 admiration club of Scotch second-rate rationalists," " the 
 rubbish heap of their critical jargon." These are em- 
 bellishments of Celtic oratory that might well be missing 
 from any future utterances. They are, we know, only 
 sparks from the heat-white iron of Celtic intensity and 
 integrity : for no one will deny these to the minister of 
 Dingwall. But why all this fire and fury 1 We have no 
 hesitancy in saying, as we think, that it is from beginning 
 to end a case of misunderstanding, giving rise to minis- 
 
21 
 
 terpretation, and hence to all this intensity. The zeal is, 
 and must be, commendable, but the issues are mistaken. 
 Dods is sound to the core, and if only let be will prove a 
 tower of strength, not only to our Church, but to the 
 whole cause of Christian truth. He is a real Defender of 
 the Faith. He should, as such, get the whole and hearty 
 support of our Free Church, north and south. We hope 
 our friends will soon see that. 
 
 One word more on some of the critics of the Press, and 
 we are done. The Scotsman, of course, enjoys the fun, 
 and acts the message-boy part : hisses on the combatants. 
 He stirs up now one side, now the other, and the more 
 fast and furious the fun gets the more he enjoys it. It 
 is joy to his heart and marrow to his bones to see a row 
 in the Free Church. He would enjoy nothing so much 
 as seeing the whole thing go up in a blaze, or explode 
 into fragments. Dods does not please him. He will 
 not just at his bidding hurl the infallible Bible after the 
 infallible Pope. Macaskill does not please him. They 
 are old enemies. It suits him best to play the message- 
 boy or the incendiary. He'll hound on the combatants. 
 He'll put the match to the tinder. One is more sur- 
 prised at the mistakes of such a journal as our Conner, 
 usually very clear-headed and fair in such cases. It is 
 only another illustration of the confusion into which 
 seemingly clear and candid minds get about this busi- 
 ness. It illustrates admirably what we have already 
 said about misunderstanding, arising from want of tho- 
 roughly getting at Dr Dods's meaning and view-point 
 and pondering carefully every single statement, nay, 
 almost word, of his. In its leading article of December 
 13, on the Conference, it says: — "They (the people) 
 have awakened to the consciousness that the teaching 
 given by some of their accredited doctors of divinity 
 is radically different from that which formerly prevailed 
 in the Free Church." Again it says : — " It is quite 
 clear that if the Confession of Faith is regai'ded as the 
 standard, the critics of Dr Dods are sounder in the feith 
 than he." Now, I would like to know what grounds our 
 friend has for these statements : that the teaching given 
 by some of their accredited doctors of divinity is radically 
 
diftereut from tliat whicli formerly prevailed in the Free 
 Church 1 aud that the critics of Dr Dods are on Confes- 
 sional grounds sounder than he. I know the people 
 think so, many of them because they are told so by their 
 accredited doctors of divinity, but what foundation have 
 such statements and surmises in /act ? If it is quite 
 clear to the editor of the Courier, it is not quite clear to 
 the writer of this pamphlet, but the reverse is, else he, 
 for one, would not have taken pen. If the Courier 
 makes assumptions, and jumjjs to rash conclusions, and 
 makes such rash statements, no wonder at others'? The 
 effect of not weighing each word of Dr Dods, and of a 
 change of term, however slight, and the consequent mis- 
 interpretation of the Dr's meaning, is seen in another 
 sentence in which it is said of Dods : — " He will not say 
 that faith in the Divinity of Christ is essential to a true 
 Christian." Now, I beg to say that Dods never said any 
 such thing. The whole meaning of the utterance is 
 changed by the substitution of '\faith" for "belief," 
 which latter is the word used by Dods. As we have 
 already tried to shew, Dods distinguishes between 
 belief and faith, meaning by the first a mere intellectual 
 assent, by the latter a heart acceptance ; and in the 
 paragraph, as a whole he makes it evident that the case he 
 has before him is that of one with intellectual difficulties 
 about the divinity of Christ, metaphysically viewed, but 
 having heart acceptance of him in the way of "practi- 
 cally/ " accepting Him as his God, by looking to Him for 
 spiritual life, and "by giving" himself "to Him as His 
 absolute Lord." A similar misunderstanding of Dods's 
 attitude is seen in another sentence further down. 
 " Again, on the Resurrection of our Lord, he refuses to 
 condemn some German theory which is manifestly 
 heterodox, and yet, in the same chapter, he builds up a 
 powerful argument in favour of the Resurrection." Now, 
 the writer has evidently failed to get at Dr Dods's 
 method in dealing with sceptics, especially those looking 
 towards orthodoxy, and consequently, can get no explana- 
 tion of what he calls his duality. This explanation is the 
 Dr's extreme charity and gentleness. If our friend 
 would just read on he would find that Dr Dods does 
 condemn the theory, and that in the most effective way : 
 
23 
 
 that of showing its unreasonableness and unlikelihood in 
 face of contradictory facts. He distinctly, though 
 calmly, disproves it. But he does not condemn the mem 
 holding it : and that is the sum and substance of his 
 divergence from his Highland critics, and the clue to his 
 whole position. And two things must be proved before 
 he can be moved from that position : (1.) that such a 
 position or attitude is heretical or contrary to our Con- 
 fessional Standards, and (2.) that it is injurious to the 
 truth proved and defended, and promotive of scepticism. 
 Dr Dods evidently believes that he can best maintain 
 the truth, and win men to it, by (1.) holding it himself, 
 (2.) proving it in the face of adverse criticism, and (3.) 
 dealing gently, charitably, sympathetically, with those 
 who differ from it and him. That is his position, that is 
 the whole front of his offending, and that the fruitful 
 source of all the misunderstanding of him and his 
 writings, and consequent misrepresentation and ferment. 
 
 The writer is now done, and he closes by saying, that 
 three reasons, and three alone, induced him to take up 
 pen : (1.) brotherly considerations — the desire to vindicate 
 as far as he could, the character and teachings of one he 
 thought to be misunderstood and misrepresented (unin- 
 tentionally) ; (2.) personal considerations — to make clear 
 his own convictions, and justify his own conduct in the 
 matter, and (3.) public considerations — viz., those of the 
 cause of Christ, of the Church, and of truth at large. If 
 he hurt the feelings of any, he is sorry. It is not his 
 intention, though as a Celt, deeply stirred, he may be 
 found to speak strongly or even sharply. His hope is 
 that, like him whose official title he has borrowed as a 
 nom de phmie, he may have been able to persuade his 
 friends that they ought " to be quiet," and, above all, 
 
 DO NOTHING RASHLY; 
 
PHOTOMOUNT 
 PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
 ManufaclureJ hy 
 
 GAYLORD BROS. Inc. 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 Stockton, Calif.