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 ^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^ 
 
 Presented h^ro" 7H7B . VK CAr\\ <2j V O ,^ -T) . 
 
 Division 
 Section ■ 
 
11 
 
 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 REV. ROBERT F. SAMPLE, D.D. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 The Higher Criticism is the scientific method of in- 
 vestigation appHed to the Bible, deahng with its 
 language and contents. It inquires concerning the 
 authorship of the several books, the age in which they 
 were written, their genuineness and authority. Its 
 conclusions as to authorship and age rest on the gen- 
 eral style of the books, and on the use of terms which 
 are supposed to mark the several stages of Biblical 
 literature. This is the question of authenticity. 
 
 Then the truthfulness, or its opposite, of the several 
 parts of the Sacred Canon, is determined by their 
 historical accuracy, and this is ascertained l.^}- a com- 
 parison with cotemporary history, by the reasonable- 
 ness of the annals, the supposed development of 
 literature and arts and religion, thus determining 
 whether the Bible record is consistent with this intel- 
 lectual and moral evolution. In other words it is the 
 application of scientific methods to all the questions 
 involved. 
 
 Take a rapid survey of the results of the Higher 
 
Criticism as related to the authenticity of the Scrip- 
 tures. We are informed that the Hexateuch is a 
 composite work, which is referred to many sources. 
 The books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, with 
 their multiplicity of errors, belong to the same cate- 
 gory. Ezra and Nehemiah were not written by the 
 men whose names are affixed to them, but by un- 
 known and later authors. Most of the Psalms are 
 post-exilic, but it is not clearly established that David 
 wrote none of them. Solomon did not write the 
 Song of Songs. He is not the author of Ecclesiastes, 
 and wrote only a few of the Proverbs. The prophecy 
 of Isaiah was written by many authors, or it was di- 
 vided between its reputed author and a Deutero- 
 Isaiah who flourished after the Babylonian captivity. 
 Job, Ruth, Esther, and Daniel are sacred romances, 
 carrying ethical blemishes, for which the only apology 
 is that of historical errancy. The authenticity of 
 Zechariah and Micah is rejected, each of them being 
 referred to a dual authorship. Ezekiel is the author 
 of the prosaic book which bears his name. The au- 
 thenticity of nine of the so-called minor prophecies is 
 accepted. The same criticism has traversed the New 
 Testament, and has broken down all along the line. 
 
 GENESIS OF HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 The exact genesis of the Higher Criticism is not 
 definitely settled. Some refer it to Dupin, a Profes- 
 sor of the College of France, an expert in Ecclesiasti- 
 
cal history and literature, who has successors on both 
 sides the EngUsh Channel. Spinoza of Amsterdam, 
 cotemporary of Du Pin, is claimed by others as its 
 author, although he was by no means a specialist, but 
 swept a wide field of inquiry, and by his destructive 
 system came under the ban of the Church. Berkley, 
 the English Critic, eliminated some of the most ob- 
 jectionable features of Spinoza's system, and as a dis- 
 ciple of Du Pin, falls in the line of orderly succession. 
 
 Astruc introduced this criticism in the last century. 
 He dreaded the supernaturalism of the Bible, and en- 
 deavored to believe it taught natural religion only. 
 He felt that if the Bible were from God, and therefore 
 true, he could not face death with calmness, nor car- 
 ry a gleam of hope through it. This man, whose vices 
 outranked his learning, originated the distinction be- 
 tween the Jehovist and the Elohist in the Scripture, 
 and called attention to the supposed anachronisms 
 and interpolations and numerous errors in the Book 
 of Genesis. His name might properly designate that 
 criticism which, with much modification, has con- 
 tinued until the present. 
 
 Eichhorn,.who died in the early part of this century, 
 was one of the earliest, some speak of him as the fa- 
 ther, of the so-called Higher Critics. He demanded 
 for Christianity a historical basis. Like Astruc he re- 
 jected supernaturalism, as has been the tendency of 
 most of the later critics, and attempted to explain the 
 miracles of the Bible on the principles of naturalism. 
 
He referred much of the credulity of the sacred writ- 
 ers to superstition, ghostly deceptions, and Hmited 
 intellectual vision. He regarded some of the epistles 
 of the New Testament as apocryphal, and referred 
 the origin of the Gospels to the first or second cen- 
 tury after Christ,so denying their accepted authenticity 
 and weakening their authority. 
 
 Nearly half a century later the-re arose Ferdinand 
 Christian Baur, the originator of the Tubingen School, 
 who caught much of his inspiration as a scholar and 
 critic from Eichhorn, and was accounted by his con- 
 temporaries a man of exceptional gifts and attain- 
 ments. Like Eichhorn he denied miracles. Assum- 
 ing the impossibility of any departure from natural 
 law, he entered, only to vitiate, the whole field of his 
 research. He created theological . distinctions in the 
 Epistles of Paul and of Peter, which were the creation 
 of his own fertile brain, deprecated the supernatural 
 element of both, and pronounced the religious zeal of 
 great leaders of religious thought simply the fervor of 
 speculation and the pride of opinion. 
 
 Wellhausen succeeded Baur. He tells us that he 
 voluntarily left the theological faculty of Greifswald 
 because of his lack of sympathy with the belief of the 
 evangelical Church and with Protestantism. He, too, 
 denies miracles. His premise perverted all his rea- 
 soning and breaks his conclusions. He cast Genesis 
 into his editorial waste basket, as incredible history, 
 and accepted the rest of the Pentateuch as a compila- 
 
tion from many sources, as varied, but less beautiful, 
 than Joseph's coat of many colors. Having wit- 
 nessed the defeat of Baur's criticism of the New- 
 Testament, he traversed the dimmer fields of the 
 Old, where many of the figures, as he sees them, are 
 ghostly, much of the history untruthful, and the evi- 
 dences of conflict among religious factions unmistak- 
 able. Wellhausen, like Astruc and Eichhorn, will 
 have his day, and his disciples on both sides the 
 water. But like Astruc and Eichhorn, he will carry 
 his theories to the grave. "The grass withereth and 
 the flower of the grass passeth away, but the word of 
 the Lord endureth forever." 
 
 August Von Ewald, a pupil of Eichhorn, a native 
 of Gottingen, and for many years a Professor of 
 Theology in Tubingen, a prolific writer, bold contro- 
 versialist, and a drastic critic, whose good qualities 
 were as conspicuous as his moral blemishes, wrought 
 with an indomitable energy in the interests of the 
 Higher Criticism, holding the composite character of 
 the Pentateuch, extending its legislation over long 
 periods of time ; making the Psaltery the production 
 of many minds, David occupying a minor place ; set- 
 ting aside many traditions concerning the history of 
 Israel, and, in his theological teachings, as destructive 
 as he was extravagant. 
 
 It is not necessary to speak at length of later critics. 
 Goethe said, "There are many echoes; few voices." 
 There is nothing new in the criticism of Oxford and 
 
Andover. Their utterances are simply the reflection 
 of the schools of Gottingen, Tubingen and Halle. 
 The echoes may outlive the voices, but like them will 
 eventually die. The Higher Criticism with which we 
 are specially concerned, rejects some of the positions 
 of the earlier critics, but accords with them in many 
 particulars and is notably rationalistic. 
 
 Dr. Brigrgrs, of Union Seminary, denies that he ac- 
 cords with extreme rationalistic critics. He has ex- 
 pressed much sympathy with the thoroughness with 
 which Keunen and Wellhausen do their work, but 
 condemns their hostility to a divine element in the 
 Bible. He stands, as he tells us, " With Delitzsch, 
 Driver, Davidson, Cheyne, and many others of that 
 school of critics which recognizes the supernatural 
 element in Holy Scripture," and he endeavors to rec- 
 oncile the divine authority of the Bible with the re- 
 sults of modern science. Of the latter class of critics 
 Delitzsch was the most evangelical, and in his last 
 years receded from some rationalistic positions which 
 he had tentatively held. Driver may not be styled a 
 rationalist, but his system is rationalistic. His views 
 of authority, and his eschatology are not scriptural, 
 and, therefore, are not safe. 
 
 Davidson, following close after DeWette, whose 
 supernaturalism is asstheticism, mutilates the Old 
 Testament, and wholly discards or, at least reduces 
 to a minimum, the doctrines of inspiration and pro- 
 phetic foresight, in accord with a fundamental prin- 
 
ciple of the Higher Criticism. Canon Cheyne, 
 with whom Professor Brigg-s sympathizes, admitted 
 to be a vigorous thinker, and as familiar with Eccle- 
 siastical literature as he is courteous in social life, 
 makes wide departures from the long-accepted teach- 
 ing of the Christian Church, and from the most con- 
 sistent and obvious interpretation of many portions 
 of the word of God. Dr. E. D. Morris, of Lane Sem- 
 inary, having reviewed Cheyne's work on the Psalms, 
 concludes that he and his successors have left the old 
 foundations. "Giving up," he says, "inspiration and 
 supernaturalness, they must logically give up other 
 statements and theories also, and the Bible in their 
 hands and under their treatment can become none 
 other than human literature, destitute alike of devo- 
 tional trustworthiness and spiritual power." 
 
 A rationalistic tendency is evinced by nearly all 
 the higher critics of to-day, and they reflect many 
 of the opinions of earlier critics, who find few or no 
 divine elements in the Bible, and impair or reject es- 
 sential principles of the evangelical system. 
 
 PATRIARCHAL RECORDS DISCREDITED. 
 
 The Higher Criticism, as represented by Professor 
 Cheyne of Oxford, discredits the stories of the patri- 
 archal age, assuming that it was a period of illiteracy, 
 and the art of writing being unknown, records could 
 not have been contemporaneous with events. Hence 
 he concludes that the biographers of Israel's ances- 
 
tors must have lived at a time when patriarchal tra- 
 ditions were wholly unreliable. They were of such 
 value as the early myths and legends of Rome, which 
 ordinary intelligence now rejects as the rubbish of a 
 barbaric age. In the review for August, 1889, Pro- 
 fessor Cheyne uses this remarkable language : " We 
 must not permit the young people after a certain age 
 to suppose that you know, or that any one knows, or 
 that the writers of Genesis profess to know, anything 
 historically about the three supposed ancestors of the 
 Israelites, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Further on he 
 says: "I appeal to the Clergy of the national Church 
 not to assert the very opposite of critical truth; not 
 to treat Genesis as a collection of immensely ancient 
 family records, when it is nothing of the kind." At 
 all this we are amazed. Then this part of Genesis, 
 with its hints of a Messiah, and its simple yet lofty 
 faith, contemplating through the perspective glass of 
 revelation, Messiah's reign, whilst laying the founda- 
 tions of the Hebrew nation, God's chosen depositary 
 and conservator of the true religion until the Saviour's 
 advent — all this is set aside as unhistoric, mythical; 
 stories to amuse infants, not to be repeated in years 
 of discretion. 
 
 Now observe that the argument rests on the assump- 
 tion that the art of writing was unknown in the times 
 of the Patriarchs, and contemporaneous records were 
 therefore impossible. If this can be disproved, then 
 the force of the criticism is broken. Can it be dis- 
 
proved ? It has been. The very stones cry out against 
 so baseless and harmful a speculation. The Moabite 
 stone bears witness to the literary excellence of an age 
 which followed soon after that of Abraham, and it is 
 reasonable to suppose the Patriarch was familiar wuth 
 the culture of Babylonia, and, had it been necessary, 
 was able to write his own biography. In the British 
 Museum are ancient records which throw light into 
 that distant past, and Reginald Stuart Poole, who has 
 the care of the Antiquities of the Museum, says that 
 it was clearly established that writing was known in 
 and before the age of Abraham. Then, too, the stone 
 recently discovered near the Pool of Siloam, in the 
 Kedron valley, bears like testimony to this well ac- 
 credited fact. The scholarly Sayce tells us that, 
 " Long before the age of Abraham there were not 
 only libraries well stocked with books on clay and 
 papyrus, but there were numerous readers also," and 
 adds the significant reflection that: " If the Israelites 
 had been illiterate, living midway as they did between 
 Assyria and Egypt, and bordering on the highly civ- 
 ilized cities of Phoenicia, it w^ould have been nothing 
 short of a miracle. That they were not so," he adds, 
 " has now been put beyond the reach of cavil by the 
 discovery of the Siloam inscription." (Sayce on an- 
 cient monuments, pp. ;^S, 39.) 
 
 The Patriarchal records written on tablets or bricks, 
 or otherwise preserved; written in the Accadian, or 
 some other tongue which preceded the Hebrew, 
 
10 
 
 doubtless came into Abraham's hands, and were con- 
 veyed to his son; and in Hke manner the incidents of 
 his eventful life may have been recorded, preserved 
 and transmitted, until Moses received and set them 
 in the books which bear his name. 
 
 The naturalness, the consistency, and the details of 
 the narratives forbid the theory that they were writ- 
 ten by uninspired hands in an age long subsequent, 
 and are therefore unreliable. Details and their record 
 are contemporaneous. They are not knowm and 
 their record is not' attempted when centuries lie be- 
 tween an age and its written history. The minute, 
 lifelike records of Abraham's travels, home pictures, 
 scenes on the plains, among his herds, beside his 
 tree-shaded altars, and conversations with his house- 
 hold, his neighbors and heavenly visitants, all declare 
 the veracity and contemporaneous origin of the sa- 
 cred record. This was the view of Josephus, of the 
 Talmud, and of the Jews in Christ's day. To refer 
 these narratives and much of the Pentateuch, to the 
 Maccabean age, is unwarranted. The book of Eccle- 
 siasticus, though not part of the sacred canon, was 
 evidently w ritten a century before the books of the 
 Maccabees, and makes even minute mention of the 
 Patriarchs, as it does of the major and the so-called 
 minor prophets. Moreover Babylonish tablets and 
 parchments, and monuments along the Nile, now in- 
 terpreted, add their confirmation to the internal evi- 
 dence. These indisputable facts cut up by the roots 
 
11 
 
 the hypothesis of the higher critics which obscures the 
 biographies of Israel's great progenitors and puts out 
 the stars of the first magnitude which shone on the 
 plains of Mamre — stars which, marshalled by the di- 
 vine hand, wrote on the sky a prophecy of Israel's 
 greatness and of Christ's glorious coming, whose day 
 Abraham saw and was glad. 
 
 A noted English writer, referring to the external 
 proof furnished by the discoveries of the recent times, 
 insists that the evidence has all gone one way. "Pal- 
 estine explorations, the disinterring of Egyptian re- 
 mains, and the opening out of the ruinous heaps of 
 Assyria, Babylonia and Persia, have spoken with con- 
 sentient voice. They utter their joint testimony to 
 the historical character of the Hebrew writings." 
 And thus God in his providence furnishes the proofs 
 of the early origin, the Mosiac authorship, and the 
 irrefutable veracity of the Pentateuch which Christ 
 referred to the hand and age of the Hebrew lawgiver. 
 
 Further, let it be remarked that the Bible is not a 
 book of abstract discussions or statements of truth. 
 It writes the truth concretely in the life. When it 
 would teach us what God is, the object of our search 
 walks in the garden, appears in the theophany on the 
 plains of Mamre, and in the burning bush. When it 
 would teach us the value of faith, it writes the biog- 
 raphy of Abraham ; of patience. Job ; of meekness, 
 Moses ; of spotless holiness, the Son of Mary. The 
 best modern book on Christian philanthropy is the 
 
13 
 
 " Life of John Howard." The best incentive to spirtu- 
 ality in the ministry is the memoir of McCheyne. 
 The best stimulus to Christian work is found in the 
 stories of Peter Waldo, Harlan Page, and Hannah 
 More. The power and attractiveness of the Scrip- 
 tures lie largely in the personal element which is never 
 absent, and the linking of human biography with the 
 person and the throne of God. 
 
 But the so-called Higher Criticism is manifestly 
 against the Scripture, since it breaks the force and 
 authority of the Bible by discrediting much of its 
 biography, and declaring large portions of its history 
 apocryphal. It puts Job on canvas only — Jonah jri 
 a myth. The stories of the great fish, the withered 
 gourd, the doomed city, are antiquated fables. It 
 makes Daniel speak foolishness, or even questions his 
 existence 
 
 Now one does not need to be an expert Critic in 
 order to determine the value of such Criticism. With 
 the English Bible before us, comparing Scripture with 
 Scripture, accepting the testimony of the New Testa- 
 ment as to the originality and authority of the Old, 
 hearkening to the very words of Christ respecting 
 the law and the Prophets and the Psalms, and recog- 
 nizing in the Cross the interpretation and fulfillment 
 of ancient Scripture, we are prepared to form an intel- 
 ligent judgment as to the truthfulness of much the 
 Higher Criticism has taught. The humble Christian 
 who believes in the supernatural is a safer critic than 
 
13 
 
 he who pushes his rationalistic methods to the front, 
 and with his preconceptions, born of naturahsm, goes 
 to the Bible, not to inquire respecting its claims to 
 supernaturalism, the truthfulness of its history, the 
 divine origin of its prophecies, the exercise of omnip- 
 otence transcending physical law, but to eliminate 
 from the Bible whatever opposes the critic's theory, 
 and reduce Scripture to a minimum, "rather than," as 
 Keunen expresses it, "give up a dearly bought scien- 
 tific method." The Critic's assumption of sacerdotal 
 development, which is largely naturalism, leads him 
 into a labyrinth of difficulties from which there is no 
 escape but by the door of denial, and his argument 
 in the interests of negative proof drawn from the 
 silence of Scriptures, whilst the witness of Christ and 
 His apostles is refused, has constrained some devout 
 critics to halt, and then to pronounce the whole system 
 a fraud, and such a scholar as Delitzsch to say, "Now 
 I am separated from Wellhausen by an impassable 
 gulf." 
 
 The scientific method does not always prove the 
 system a science. The Higher Criticism of which 
 much good may be said, does not at this stage of de- 
 velopment, deserve the name. If disagreement 
 among its friends, assumptions largely or purely hy- 
 pothetical, and conclusions based on unreliable prem- 
 ises, are inconsistent with such a designation, then this 
 modern criticism must be denied a place among ma- 
 tured sciences, and it ill becomes its advocates to con- 
 
14 
 
 demn those who reject or hesitate to accept its find- 
 ings, or to arrogate to themselves that wisdom which 
 they claim is veiled to others by prejudice or stupidity. 
 
 VARIATIONS OP^ HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 The hypothesis of these higher critics has in many 
 instances been a variable as well as a vanishing quan- 
 tity. Respecting the Psalter, Wellhausen has repeat- 
 edly shifted his ground. At one time he claimed 
 that David wrote at least fifty psalms, and that none 
 of them were written after, and few of them so late 
 as, Nehemiah. Again he intimates a sympathy with 
 the critics who regard the larger part of the psaltry 
 Post-Exilean. It was not many years since Ewald 
 said it was preposterous to refer the Psalms to the 
 Maccabean age. Prof. Margoliouth, of Oxford, not 
 long ago delivered an address in which he pushed 
 back the Post-Exilean books of certain Higher Critics 
 to a period much earlier, and by his location of the 
 book of Ecclesiasticus, written, as he claims, in the 
 Rabbinical Hebrew of Ben-Sira, which was in use two 
 centuries earlier than is generally supposed, precedes 
 by this long period both the ancient and middle He- 
 brew, and so disarranges, all along the line, the chro- 
 nology of other critics, and relieves serious questions 
 concerning the earlier books of the Bible: The Critics 
 are not agreed among themselves. Shall the Script- 
 ure and the creeds of Christendom go down before 
 teachers so fallible as these ? Nay, verily. 
 
15 
 
 In view of the variations of the Higher Criticism, 
 one school resisting another, and both shifting their 
 grounds, yielding their positions to the force o'f irref- 
 utable logic, the consensus of Christian conscious- 
 ness and the testimony of ages chiseled in stones, we 
 do well to withhold our credence from any modern 
 critic who simply revives the ancient copy, and we 
 are bound to discourage the publication of hypoth- 
 eses which are only old enemies arrayed in new 
 clothes. 
 
 The inductive method may cloud the faith of 
 Christ's humble ones, break their comfort in trouble, 
 and obscure their hope of Heaven. It may also dis- 
 sipate thoughtfulness, engender disbelief, and shut 
 the kingdom of heaven against the unregenerate, on 
 whose souls the spirit of God is moving. When de- 
 voutly pursued it shall have reached its fulness, it 
 will sustain the Scripture, and, as it relates to a holy 
 faith, will nourish it. But we shrink from it when, 
 its findings immature, it touches the greater than 
 hemisphere of religious experience. 
 
 The appendix to an American book contains the 
 names of the Higher Critics of to-day. It is worthy 
 of notice that sixty per cent, of these are German 
 scholars, and of the remaining forty per cent, the 
 most of them, at some period, have been students in 
 the schools of Germany. It is not to be supposed 
 that we shall accept the present results of Old World 
 thought which for over a century has been marching 
 
16 
 
 and counter-marching on tlie battle grounds of the 
 Reformation. Whilst we recognize the scholarship 
 of Germany, and the general thoroughness of its in- 
 stitutions of learning, yet we do not wish to go to 
 that mystic land for our theology, nor do we propose 
 to adopt theories which have broken down the au- 
 thority of the Bible and well-nigh destroyed spir- 
 itual life in the land of Luther. The devouter 
 scholarship of Great Britain and America is a safer 
 guide to our inquiries and a better support of our 
 faith than that of Holland or Germany; the scholar- 
 ship of countries that lie under the clear shining of 
 gospel truth than of those which are obscured by the 
 clouds of unbelief and darkened by habits of life 
 which impair the human understanding and pervert 
 the judgment. 
 
 RESULTS OF HIGHER CRITICISM HOW DETERMINED. 
 
 The results of the Higher Criticism will vary with 
 the spirit in which it is pursued, and the attitude as- 
 sumed to the Scripture. Some devout and conscien- 
 tious critics, whose education and habits of thought 
 have favored conservative inquiries, find abundant 
 support of long accepted views as to the genuineness 
 and authenticity of the Scriptures. Others enter on 
 this investigation in a skeptical state of mind, taking 
 nothing for granted until it is proven, and are con- 
 trolled perhaps by a disposition to get away from 
 traditional views and do^j^iiiatic statements, and in- 
 
fluenced by the distinguished scholarship which has 
 arrayed itself against prevailing faiths. 
 
 There are other critics who come to the examina- 
 tion of the Scriptures with opinions already formed, 
 and all their findings are bent into the support of their 
 preconceptions. They burn down the barriers that 
 cross their paths, and go straight to their foregone 
 conclusions instead, as the Christian Premier of Eng- 
 land expresses it, of taking their chances of reaching 
 it by the common road of reason. It often occurs 
 that this class of critics furnish the most striking 
 examples of discarded intelligence, and most peremp- 
 torily demand submission to their unwarranted opin- 
 ions. 
 
 Then many, seeking to remove the supernatural 
 element from the Bible, and bring it down to a purely 
 human level, are embarrassed by the appearance of 
 prophecy which, if its existence is admitted, deter- 
 mines the divine origin of the Scriptures, and they 
 have introduced the post-exilian chronology of cer- 
 tain books, or some date so recent as to preclude the 
 possibility of prophecy by making the event a fact of 
 history when the books were written. It matters not 
 that this hypothesis sweeps a wide field, and robs 
 other elements of revelation of their preciousness and 
 power. Whatever crosses the track of the cherished 
 hypothesis must go down before its imperial march, 
 that the " idol of the market place " may be enthroned. 
 Some think that the age, texts, and authorship of 
 
18 
 
 books, may not be vital questions, and that we may- 
 yield them without impairing the foundations of our 
 faith. But when destructive critics, with their battle- 
 axes, smite down both prophecy and miracle, so that 
 they bear no testimony to the truth, and humble the 
 cross to the grade of human reason, we refuse to keep 
 them company. 
 
 Here let it be premised, that whilst most of the 
 Higher Critics tend to rationalism, there are others 
 who are unswerving in their belief in and support of 
 the evangelical system. The latter cannot, as terms 
 are now employed, be counted with the Higher Crit- 
 ics. They do not investigate the genuineness and 
 authenticity of the Scriptures with a view to disprove 
 either, but to present an antidote to the results of the 
 destructive methods. Hence, when we speak of the 
 Hiorher Criticism we have in mind the extreme, ra- 
 tionalistic wing, with such scholars at its head as 
 Keunen and Wellhausen, and following them, in ir- 
 regular order, such writers as Driver, Cheyne, and 
 Gore, and those who accord with them in our own 
 country. 
 
 Pursuing the inductive method, some of the Higher 
 Critics tell us that the sacerdotal laws, so conspicu- 
 ous in the intermediate books of the Pentateuch, are in 
 no sense or measure Mosaic, but were a development, 
 originating after Moses, matured after the exile, and 
 accepted as a perfect ritual less than five hundred 
 years before Christ. 
 
19 
 
 They reg-ard the lives of the Patriarchs as the drift- 
 wood of legends, rotting along the beach of tradition. 
 They tell us that much of Genesis is allegorical, Job 
 is a dream, Jonah an instructive parable, Esther a 
 romance, Samuel, Chronicles, Ezra, and Daniel unre- 
 liable history and puerile prophecy ; that the miracles 
 of the Exodus and of Canaan were the dreams of en- 
 thusiasts, or the creation of superstition, to be classed 
 with ghost stories and the tales old women tell 
 around the hearthstone on winter nights. We are 
 informed that the Tabernacle was a myth, a bridge 
 which traditionalists have built out of their own fer- 
 tile imagination, by which they thought to make 
 such a connection with the Pentateuch as would sus- 
 tain its alleged antiquity ; that much of the prophecy 
 of the Old Testament predictions has been reversed 
 by history ; and the great body of the Messianic pre- 
 dictions not only never have been, but never can be 
 fulfilled, for the reason that its own time has passed 
 forever ; and then they cross the vacuity of half a 
 century into the New Testament literature, eliminate 
 entire passages from the synoptic Gospels, question 
 or deny the authenticity of John, reject the second 
 Epistle of Peter ,or weaken its authority, and pro- 
 nounce the Apocalypse, largely at least, an unintelli- 
 gible oriental picture. 
 
 These critics are occupied with the revelations of 
 science, with comparative religions, the sacred books 
 of the Pagan world, the philosophies of the East, and 
 
20 
 
 the records of speculation, and claim to be the repre- 
 sentatives of advanced thought, slow of heart to be- 
 lieve what the prophets have written. 
 
 The Higher Criticism claims a monopoly of ideas. 
 It tells us it has crossed all the waves of tradition, es- 
 caped the rocks of dogmatism, and anchored in the 
 quiet haven of truth. But the day of delusions is not 
 past. That which resists the faith of the ages ; that 
 rejects the tried stone of inspiration ; that discredits 
 the testimony of prophets and apostles, and the Son 
 of God, has a momentum downward, and that only. 
 It may dominate a few decades; the time that ideas 
 live — that die. What we need and what what we 
 contend for to-day, are ideas born of God, written in 
 His Word, believed on by the generations, tested by 
 Christian consciousness, conquering individuals and 
 states, giving us such men as David and Isaiah, Paul 
 and John, Luther and Knox, Henry Martyn and Ad- 
 oniram Judson, and raising the nations that accept 
 them to the pinnacles of spiritual power. 
 
 That is not truth which does not enrich and elevate 
 the soul. All literature is valueless which does not 
 civilize a people, leading them up to higher thoughts 
 and grander resolves and nobler deeds ; so are all re- 
 liofious theories which do not lift men Godward and 
 heavenward, bringing them out of the mists of agnos- 
 ticism, and away from the flickering lights of ration- 
 alism, into the knowledge of the Word of God, and 
 the freedom of the truth. 
 
21 
 
 Skepticism is not an absolute, invariable evil. 
 Much depends on its subject. It is right to be skepti- 
 cal about spiritualism, hypnotism, theosophy, higher 
 criticism, and all necromancy. It is right to be skepti- 
 cal when occupied with natural sciences, and evidence 
 must be strong in order to settle our opinions respect- 
 ing natural laws and their results. Skepticism has 
 also its field in religious science. But this attitude of 
 mind may become unhealthy, and when it touches 
 questions which relate to inspiration, and to the gen- 
 uineness and authenticity of the Scriptures, it may 
 throw up barriers of prejudice, pride of intellect, 
 boast of scholarship, professional rivalry, or an am- 
 bition for notoriety, easily attained by some revolu- 
 tionary hypothesis, then skepticism may prove a se- 
 rious opponent of truth. The methods of science 
 under the control of skepticism may be made to over- 
 ride the teachings of revelation, to set aside the testi- 
 mony of universal consciousness, to destroy what fits 
 into and fills spiritual need, secures a holy quiet of 
 soul, and supports every effort to advance the good 
 of men, and the glory of God. 
 
 There are skeptical Bible critics, possessed of gen- 
 ius, culture and piety, who are so dominated by 
 habits of disbelief that they continually clash with 
 the faith of Christendom, and persist in destructive 
 speculations which threaten the very foundations of a 
 reasonable and satisfying religious belief. It is right 
 
22 
 
 to resist their methods and the conclusions to which 
 they have come. 
 
 CLAIM TO PROGRESSIVENESS. 
 
 Higher Critics of the Rationalistic School Insist on 
 an advanced theology. They would leave the dead 
 past and turn to a better future. But progress may 
 be from, and not along the line of, truth. It may be 
 shunted off on the wrong track and end in demolition. 
 It is a significant fact that great ideas have their roots 
 in the past, and whatever touches the religious life is 
 an ancient and universal conviction. The belief that 
 salvation is through sacrifice is as old as the fallen 
 race. The flash of the Cherubim's sword reveals its 
 cradle. And in all ages and in every land where the 
 light of Hebrew altars had never shone, men are bus- 
 ied with blood-shedding, putting life between their 
 conscious guilt and the offended divinities. We are 
 not ashamed to be styled traditionalists in a God- 
 given religion. 
 
 Our God, who has no past, no future, but dwells 
 in the eternal present, gave us truth in its germ at 
 the beginning, and laid Jesus down, wrapped in 
 swaddling bands, just outside the gate of Eden. The 
 growth has been that of the great original. And al- 
 though truth in our day is better known, enlarging 
 the spiritual vision, pushing on the horizon, perfect- 
 ing the soul, marshalling a sacramental host and mak- 
 ing ready for the glorious epiphany predicted by the 
 
23 
 
 first promise, the first advent and the angels' song", 
 yet Gospel truth is in its essence changeless as g«ravi- 
 tation, as old as life and love, as joy and sorrow, as 
 conscious need and the blessed hope. 
 
 It must be admitted that great changes are going 
 on in the world of theological thought. In many 
 parts of Christendom Augustine and Calvin and Ed- 
 wards and the Wesleys are losing their control over 
 the beliefs of men. Old theories are dismissed and 
 new hypotheses claim the vacant seats. Doctrines 
 that were drawn straight from the Word of God are 
 referred to superstition or mental imbecility. The 
 once-accepted facts of divine justice, a general judg- 
 ment, and eternal retribution, which sent the ministry 
 to their knees in wrestling prayer, and to their pulpits 
 with holy trembling, and made the issues of an hour 
 solemn as the eternity on whose margin it lay, are 
 giving place to another gospel, and a deceptive hope. 
 Now, in the thought of many, the love of God ex- 
 trudes his justice. The gates of life are wide as the 
 earth, and mercy announces the ultimate salvation 
 of the race. All this has been accomplished by new 
 theories of inspiration, which emasculated the old, by 
 interpretations of the Scriptures which exaggerate 
 the divine clemency, by rationalistic speculations in- 
 dependent of revelation, and by modern methods of 
 Biblical Criticism, which from the beginning have 
 tended to denial of truth, or to a corruption of it, in- 
 consistent with a holy fear, sincere repentance and a 
 
24 
 
 lifelong clinging to the person and cross of Christ. 
 We may all believe in the infinitude of God's love, 
 and we may discover in modern exegesis some help- 
 ful corrections of a too sombre faith; but God forbid 
 that we should so weaken the authority, and misin- 
 terpret the teaching, and depreciate the inspiration of 
 his word, that grace shall turn to lasciviousness, truth 
 to deception, and an ignis fatuus conduct to an end- 
 less niofht. This is an evolution which has no war- 
 rant in the Scriptures. It does not w^iden the horizon 
 of truth, but narrows it; does not quicken the con- 
 science, but stupefies it; does not build up character, 
 but prostrates it; does not lead to Christ, but away 
 from him; does not bring in a better hope and ex- 
 pand the arithmetic of Heaven, but extinguishes the 
 possibilities of salvation, and reduces to a minimum 
 the number of the redeemed. Christ announces him- 
 self the only way to God, and his test of all teaching 
 continues, " A tree is known by its fruits." 
 
 WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE BIBLE ? 
 
 Now the question is raised. What will you do with 
 your Bible ? Dr. Briggs's Inaugural tells us that tradi- 
 tionalism is doomed. Old theories are going down be- 
 fore new hypotheses, as snow-banks before an April 
 sun. What will you do ? Many of us say we will 
 keep our Bible intact. We will thrust back the axes 
 that would girdle the tree which sheltered us, and in 
 whose shadow our fathers sat. We will search, and 
 
25 
 
 believe, and, through grace, obey the Scriptures our 
 Lord accepted, and the later books his apostles wrote, 
 the only infallible guide from this world to that which 
 is to come. 
 
 Christ honored and loved the Bible of his day. It 
 is true he condemned the Jewish interpretation of the 
 law of Moses, the glosses they put on the testimony 
 of the prophets, the interlineations of tradition, and 
 the interpolations of ecclesiasticism, but he magnified 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. They were the armory 
 whence he drew the weapons with which to repel the 
 tempting Satan ; they were the word of life from 
 which he gathered refulgent rays of truth as a halo 
 of glory about his own person and mission, the pen- 
 ciled dawn of a Gospel day, and even " His beatitudes," 
 as has been well said, " were Old Testament bells 
 grouped into a sweet chime." 
 
 We are aware that some hold there were thinofs 
 concealed from Christ. It has even been profanely 
 alleged that Christ knew no more about the genuine- 
 ness and authenticity of the Old Testament than any 
 simple-minded Galilean. Some of Dr. Briggs's state- 
 ments in his Inaugural rest on this assumption. The 
 Kenosis which they contend for empties hi m of his know- 
 ledge, and he must needs grope on through shadow and 
 twilight into the full day of truth. He thought Moses 
 wrote the Pentateuch, or stood in some peculiar rela- 
 tion to it such as made it his ; he did not know. He 
 was a traditionalist, not a scholar ; an Evangelist, not 
 
26 
 
 a Professor in Gamaliel's University ; none had taught 
 him letters. Ezra equivocated and Christ was deceived. 
 
 Our Lord accepted the Canon of the Old Testa- 
 ment Scriptures as it was held in his time, as it had 
 been held in ours. He was honest but not informed. 
 Were he to appear in our day, and graduate at some 
 of our schools, he would be one of the higher critics. 
 That is not our Christ, in whom all fulness dwells. 
 He knew the Father as he knew himself. He knew 
 the hearts, read the thoughts, interpreted the lives of 
 men, was familiar with all the past and forecasted 
 all the ages to come. The testimony of Peter is 
 familiar, " Thou knowest all things," and that of Paul, 
 " In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily." 
 
 But many go with the destructive critics. Brilliant 
 intellect blinds their eyes ; scholarship commands 
 their deference ; the fear of being accounted un- 
 learned urges them on. The darkening shadow of 
 Oxford reaches across England. The church spires 
 of London are obscured by it. The new world wit- 
 nesses its approach. Shall the light of truth fade out 
 and its power become a sad recession ? 
 
 Then there are others, occupying an intermediate 
 position, who say there is some truth in the Higher 
 Criticism. Traditionalists have held errors which 
 Critics displace by their investigations. Authenticity 
 may not in every instance be clearly established. 
 Transmission has introduced a few foreign elements 
 
27 
 
 into the Bible. Hence we must shift our ground. 
 And yet we can and shall preserve the truth. 
 
 But if we yield in a few instances the claim of au- 
 thenticity, and eliminate some supposed interpola- 
 tions, and correct certain apparent mistakes in num- 
 bers and names, yet there are some things we cannot, 
 some things we will not, surrender. We cannot re- 
 move the keystone of plenary inspiration and thereby 
 destroy the whole. We cannot make the Levitical law, 
 large portions of prophecy, and most of the Psalter, 
 Post-exilic, preferring the testimony of the Higher 
 Criticism to that of the Son of God. We cannot pro- 
 nounce the lives of Patriarchs apocryphal, whole books 
 eastern allegories, long-accepted prophecies, vagaries, 
 and Christ's miracles, myths. We cannot waive su- 
 pernaturalism out of history, out of experience, out of 
 the world ; nor can we maintain it within a limited 
 area and repeatedly deny it a place in sacred records. 
 We cannot reconstruct the Kenosis, pronounce Christ 
 ignorant of essential facts, or throw the slightest 
 shadow on his veracity, either as related to the sacred 
 Canon, the office of Moses, or the truthfulness of the 
 eschatology which sets Heaven and Hell on the hor- 
 izon of an eternal future. 
 
 PERILS OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 There is evidently alarming peril in recent criticism. 
 Modern cultus carries the bacilli of a moral collapse. 
 Here cautious conservatism is better than hasty crit- 
 
28 
 
 icism, and the Bible than all uncertain hypotheses 
 combined, though they carry the stamp of acknowl- 
 edged scholarship, and names we revere and love. 
 The old London bridge is safer than the modern 
 structure that once spanned the Tay ; the plodding 
 stage-coach than the aeronaut's balloon ; the Bible 
 than any new theology, and Elisha, who left the 
 plow that he might be the Lord's prophet, is a more 
 trustworthy teacher than Kuenen or any of his dis- 
 ciples on either side the Atlantic. 
 
 All Rationalists do not deny the possibility of a 
 divine revelation, nor that such a revelation has been 
 given. But the average Rationalist, according to 
 Mansel, claims for himself and his age "the privilege 
 of accepting or rejecting any given revelation, wholly 
 or in part, according as it does or does not satisfy the 
 conditions of some higher criterion to be supplied by 
 the human consciousness." He is a higher critic. It 
 is his mission to destroy Bibliolatry; to discover mis- 
 takes in the Bible, to deprecate its prophecies, to ob- 
 scure the divine element in it, and exalt the human. 
 The tendency of Rationalism all along the past has 
 been to minimize the doctrines of revelation and sub- 
 ject them to the "Chemistry of thought." The re- 
 siduum has been a system of faith less comprehensive 
 than the Nicene formula, and even a contradiction 
 of the apostles' creed. This is human ventriloquism 
 drowning the voice of God. 
 
 The trend of thought in the present age is evidently 
 
2 'J 
 
 toward the same result. If dogmatism is in danger 
 of adding human deductions to scriptural doctrines, 
 rationalism is largely destructive and far more dan- 
 gerous. It burns down so-called barriers, and enters 
 the very citadel of truth, only to profane and over- 
 turn its altars, substituting human speculations for a 
 divine revelation. It subjects the doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity to the test of reason, or of the spirit within us; 
 to the authority enthroned in our own souls, more re- 
 liable than the authority which is outward, though it 
 be the very voice of God. It may find the word of 
 God contained in the Scriptures. And having elimi- 
 nated what it calls " degraded types," " superstitious 
 imaginings," and "oriental dreams," professes great 
 reverence for what remains, whilst the vanishing 
 quantity which is left, taken out of its proper rela- 
 tions, and reduced as to its true proportions, becomes 
 practical error, and severs the nerves of a holy faith 
 which would sit at God's feet, and with its soul vis- 
 ion contemplate eternal verities. 
 
 The Higher Criticism is only a modified rationalism, 
 and its results condemn it. Criticism has its office. 
 To deny this were folly; to reject all its results were 
 an offence to the truth. But the criticism we accept 
 and support is a reverential criticism: a criticism that 
 takes the attitude of discipleship rather than that of 
 of a judge, that admits that there are i.iysteries in 
 religion, that there are heights and depths that have 
 not been explored and will require eternity to dis- 
 
30 
 
 cover; a criticism that has excluded the Apocrypha 
 from the Canon of Holy Scripture; that has removed 
 some glosses from the legislation of the Bible; inter- 
 preted things that had been obscure; made clearer 
 what was made known in part; and helped us to 
 greater accuracy in determining the mind of the 
 Spirit. The more of such criticism we have, the bet- 
 ter. We have no fear of its conclusions. But the 
 fruits of that irreverent, self-reliant, destructive criti- 
 cism which is rationalistic, are evil only, and that con- 
 tinually. 
 
 The Evangelical Christianity of the early, church 
 was corrupted by the Ritualism of later centuries, and 
 this in its turn was succeeded by Rationalism. These 
 three have co-existed in every age. They co-exist to- 
 day. But when a rationalistic criticism has been in 
 the ascendant, evangelism has lost its power. If the 
 Oxford tracts supported Ritualism and led to Rome, 
 the Old Tubingen school broke the spiritual power of 
 England, and made necessary the evangelical White- 
 field and the Wesleys. The later Tubingen philosophy, 
 with Baur at its head, and Strauss at its feet, esmacu- 
 lated the doctrines of the Reformation on the Conti- 
 nent, and spiritual life has well-nigh departed from the 
 lands of Luther, Zwingle and Calvin. The authority of 
 the Bible is accepted by few. Evangelical religion is 
 sent to the rear. The Sabbath holds a feeble place 
 in the calendar of the year, and churches once 
 crowded with worshipers are frequented by a dispir- 
 
31 
 
 ited few. In Eisenach with its 23,000 souls, where 
 for a time we sojourned, the old Wartburg Castle in 
 which Luther translated the Bible looking down, only 
 two or three per cent, of the population ever go to 
 church, except on some national fete day, or to wit- 
 ness pompous, undevout services on Christmas or 
 Easter. It is because Evangelism in Great Britain, 
 though resisted, holds its ground against Ritualism by 
 a hard, inceasing struggle, that the Lord's day is 
 sanctified, and places of worship are filled, and God 
 is feared and loved by multitudes from the straits of 
 Dover to the Pentland Hills. But the signs of the 
 times are beginning to be ominous on that side the 
 water, as they are on ours. We have every reason to 
 fear that if the authority of the Scriptures should be 
 seriously impaired or wholly broken; if systems of 
 religion which deny an incarnated God and a 
 vicarious atonement, and a future retribution, 
 should be lifted to a level with Evangelical 
 Christianity, and if Martineau be ranked as a Chris- 
 tian, with Spurgeon, the one taking off Christ's 
 kingly crown, the other restoring it; the one tramp- 
 ling on the cross, the other bearing it aloft ; the one 
 accounting in it a symbol of shame, the other refusing 
 to glory in anything else ; the one casting out the 
 very heart of a saving faith, the other holding all 
 truth on the borders of heaven or hell, to one of which 
 all are swiftly going, then it will not be long until 
 spiritual power will depart from America, as it has 
 
32 
 
 departed from the Continent of Europe, raising- the 
 inquiry, " When the Son of man cometh shall he find 
 faith on the earth ?" Rationalistic criticism burns and 
 blasts whatever it touches. It breaks, in the regard 
 of all who accept its conclusions, faith in the truthful- 
 ness, necessity and authority of the sacred Scripture. 
 Shall we accept some new, subversive theory, and re- 
 lax our grasp on truth older than the pyramids, 
 tested and believed in by every age since Abel 
 reared his altar? Shall we surrender our position 
 on the rock of inspiration whose summit lies " be- 
 neath the storm mark of the sky and above the flood 
 mark of the deep," from which, with a joyful trust in 
 the promises it has written, and supported by the 
 hopes which it has inspired, our fathers and mothers, 
 with their hands on our heads, and benedictions on 
 their lips, went home to God, asking us to meet them 
 in heaven ? Surely we cannot commit an offence so 
 destructive to our peace and to all we have esteemed 
 above life itself. 
 
 Let us plant our faith on the Scripture, as God 
 gave it and by His watchful providence has pre- 
 served to our day, saying with Martin Luther at the 
 Diet of Worms, " Here I stand ; I can do nothing else; 
 so help me God. Amen." And may the Church of 
 Jesus Christ, moved by a regard for the truth, the 
 salvation of the lost and the comfort of saints passing 
 through tribulation, protect from stain and mutilation 
 the Bible, concerning which some one has said that it 
 
33 
 
 is " Older than the fathers, truer than tradition, more 
 learned than universities, more authoritative than 
 councils, more infallible than popes, more orthodox 
 than creeds, more powerful than ceremonies ; the 
 Omnipotent Word of God, the wonder of the world, 
 the precious boon of heaven." 
 
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