The Bible Go 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
PROFESSOR NEWTON WRAY 
 
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 Some plain words about Higher Criticism 
 
 BY 
 NEWTON WRAY, A. B.. D. D. . 
 
 Professor of Theology, Bible History and Ethics. 
 
 Author of Church Finance, a Twentieth Century 
 
 Message to the Churches; The Lodge, a Counterfeit; 
 
 Holiness and the Greek Tongue. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN WITNESS CO. 
 CHICAGO .... ILLINOIS 
 

 Copyright, 1916 
 
 BY 
 
 The Christian Witness Co. 
 
 JUN 29l9i6 
 
 ©CI.A431669 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 I. A Portentous Situation. Old and new methods 
 of attack upon Revelation. How the way is pre- 
 pared for the popular acceptance of the higher 
 critical theories. Critical concessions 13 
 
 II. The Perversion of Sunday School Literature 
 to the Service of Higher Criticism. An insidious 
 propaganda. The "development" theory. The 
 critical animus. Supposed proof of post-Mosaic 
 authorship. Difficulties. Archaeology. Dr. 
 Kuyper 25 
 
 III. Hostility to Revelation. Reason for the zeal of 
 critics. False conception of the literature of the 
 Bible. Proof of hostility. Supernatural inspira- 
 tion denied. New Testament refutation. Hotbeds 
 of the critical propaganda. Example. Forsyth. 
 Christ assailed. Bearing of critical view of O. T. 
 narratives on the New. Torrey on Smith 45 
 
 IV. Requisites for the Quest of Truth. Reply to 
 Shailer Mathews. Primary elements. Sincerity. 
 Moller. Wiener's charge. Incident in proof 61 
 
 V. Requisites, Continued — Objectivism, and General 
 Culture. Subjectivism. Scriptures not allowed 
 to speak for themselves. Application to secular 
 literature. Prof. Mead's refutation. Goethe's 
 Faust. Lowell and Macaulay. Importance of 
 general culture 73 
 
 VI. Requisites, Continued — Higher Criticism Exposed 
 in the Light of Common Sense. The Bible and 
 a square deal. Bible demands unique treatmert. 
 Fatal lack in the critics. Ignorance of the rudi- 
 ments of Christ. Clarke's "use" (or abuse) of 
 the Scriptures 87 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Pag* 
 VII. Requisites, Continued — More Common Sense. 
 Lay sense against the critics. Argument from 
 probability. Incredible situations. Wellhausen's 
 venture. History falsified. Priority of priestly 
 legislation. Argument from non-observance of 
 law 99 
 
 VIII. Requisites, Continued — Common Sense Again. 
 Can there be honest forgeries? Implications. 
 Test of this tree. Problems of the hour and an 
 emasculate Bible. New Testament without an 
 explanation. Spiritual decline. Social demorali- 
 zation. Remedy 117 
 
 IX. Ethical Perversions of Higher Criticism. Loss 
 of the ethical sense. Perversion of the conscience. 
 Liberty of thought confounded with indifference 
 to contract. Treason to Christ. The Church's 
 duty. Critical admissions 136 
 
 X. Fruit of Higher Criticism and the New Theol- 
 ogy. Critical propaganda working death. The 
 Church on the sociological switch. Statistics. 
 Low views and loose conduct. Loss of reverence. 
 A barren ministry. The evil in mission lands 146 
 
 XI. "Back to Christ." A false watchword. The 
 obligation involved. Pauline theology fully estab- 
 lished 157 
 
 XII. Darkening Counsel by Words Without Knowl- 
 edge. Lyman Abbott's editorial on the Virgin 
 Birth. Reply. Defence of New Testament record. 
 Prof. Orr's argument 163 
 
 XIII. A Disparaged Christ: His Person. The map of 
 revelation. Necessity of a true Christology. How 
 Christ is disparaged. Effect of such teaching 181 
 
 XIV. A Disparaged Christ: His Atonement. How the 
 denial of His deity affects His death. What fixes 
 the meaning of this fact. Problem of sin. Justice 
 and conscience. Not an example but a Saviour. 
 How His sufferings possess infinite value, ,..,,,. 189 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Paff* 
 XV. A Disparaged Christ: His Power. A serious 
 reflection on the character and work of Christ. 
 Holiness not an arbitrary requirement. The par- 
 don aspect of Christianity not its convincing 
 credential 201 
 
 XVI. A Disparaged Christ: His Authority. The de- 
 cisive point. Jesus on trial. The fallible Christ 
 of higher criticism. The Kenosis. The seal of 
 truth. Daniel. Jonah. Anti-Christ the end of 
 such treatment of Christ. 209 
 
 XVII. The Indispensable Christ. How thoughtful scep- 
 tics have been disillusioned. Prof. Romane's con- 
 version. Scientists. A voice from the land of 
 rationalism. Other examples 231 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 A half century ago infidels sat in the back room 
 of bar-rooms, cursing the Bible and blaspheming 
 the Christ, over bottles of whiskey and mugs of 
 beer. The coarseness and profanity of their atti- 
 tude toward all things sacred, largely neutralized 
 the danger of their teaching and influence. They 
 were looked upon by thoughtful people as the 
 enemies of everything that contributed to the up- 
 lift and betterment of society. 
 
 During the last few decades infidelity has 
 changed its tactics, and undertakes to be con- 
 ciliatory in its attitude toward the Bible and the 
 Church of Christ. It no longer proposes a frontal 
 attack upon the Word of God, but undertakes to 
 make its home within the Church, and, while 
 posing as friendly to the truth, to undermine the 
 foundations of faith. 
 
 The most dangerous enemies to the Church of 
 Christ and that evangelical faith which saves the 
 souls of men, are to be found today in colleges and 
 universities supposed to be Christian institutions, 
 and worse still, not a few unbelievers whose 
 teachings are not so brutal and blasphemous as 
 
 3 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 that of Voltaire and Tom Paine, but are just as 
 fatal to those who follow them, are found in our 
 pulpits. In view of this condition of things, which 
 has led to the deceiving and hurt of a great num- 
 ber of people, the present volume is most oppor- 
 tune. The author, Rev. Newton Wray, is thor- 
 oughly qualified for the task which he has 
 undertaken. The following pages will reveal the 
 fact that he has been a close student of the best 
 critics of the Old and New Testaments, and has 
 been able to enumerate a large number of devout 
 and scholarly men, who after the most diligent 
 research, are rooted and grounded in their faith 
 in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 Many of the destructive critics write as if they 
 had sources of information, or opportunities for 
 research exclusively their own. They also write 
 as if all scholars were in harmony with their 
 theories of unbelief. In considering the destruc- 
 tive critics, it is well for us to remember that 
 spiritual things are spiritually discerned; that 
 mere human intellect, befogged and blinded, with 
 carnality, cannot discern, understand or interpret 
 the things of God. Professor Wray has great ad- 
 vantage in this particular ; he has not only enjoyed 
 the privileges of the schools, and the advantages 
 of years of careful and discriminating research, 
 but he is also a devout and earnest Christian, 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 enjoying* that peculiar influence and illumination 
 of the Holy Spirit which gives help and wisdom 
 in the understanding of inspired truth, which 
 cannot be obtained elsewhere. 
 
 We most heartily commend this book to Chris- 
 tians and thoughtful persons everywhere. We 
 feel sure that its careful perusal will stimulate the 
 faith and the better equip all believers to defend 
 themselves successfully against the theories and 
 fallacies of modern destructive criticism. 
 
 Rev. H. C. Morrison, D. D., 
 President of Asbury College. 
 
SUMMARY OF HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 1. "Disputing the Mosaic origin and authen- 
 ticity of the Pentateuch. 
 
 2. Advancing the Post-exile theory of the 
 Levitical system. 
 
 3. Discrediting the Historical narrative and 
 inventing the mythical theory. 
 
 4. Questioning the existence of any properly 
 predictive element. 
 
 5. Advocating rationalistic views of Old 
 Testament inspiration. 
 
 6. Attacking the authenticity and authority of 
 the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 7. Denying New Testament unity of doctrine, 
 and favoring schools, such as Pauline, Petrine, 
 Johannean. 
 
 8. Modifying the previous views of the office 
 and objects of Scripture. 
 
 9. Advancing the Kenosis theory of the self 
 emptying of Christ ; and hence 
 
 10. Impugning His omniscience, infallibility 
 and essential Deity. 
 
n. Doubting if not denying his miraculous 
 incarnation and resurrection. 
 
 12. Eliminating all that is distinctly super- 
 natural in prophecy and miracle. 
 
 Thus step by step criticism has advanced from 
 the outposts to the very centre of the Christian 
 system, as though satanic malice were behind the 
 whole movement, deliberately planning to wreck 
 all faith of disciples in the Bible as a Divine book, 
 and the final arbiter of truth and duty." — 
 Dr. A. T. Piers on. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Some months ago the author of this volume 
 discussed certain aspects of higher criticism in 
 the periodical of which he was associate editor. 
 Yielding to the request of friends who desired to 
 see the discussion in a form suitable for wider 
 circulation, he has consented to the publication 
 of the original papers with such additional matter 
 as might enhance the value of the publication. 
 
 That such a discussion is vital to the Christian 
 :taith goes without saying. If our religion is 
 founded upon a fallible Bible, we have nothing 
 more than a human system of ethics. That which 
 gives vitality and power to Christian ethics is the 
 supernatural life which inheres only in a super- 
 natural revelation. "The words that I speak unto 
 you, they are spirit and they are life." Our "faith 
 cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of 
 God." But if the Sacred Record be historically 
 disputable, and the Word of God be not divinely 
 inspired, there is nothing to create and sustain a 
 saving faith. Hence the necessity of heeding the 
 apostolic injunction to "contend earnestly for the 
 
 9 
 
10 Must the Bible Go 
 
 faith which was once for all delivered unto the 
 saints." 
 
 It may be said, it is enough to preach the Gos- 
 pel ; get people saved and they will not be troubled 
 with modern forms of unbelief. That is true. 
 But people will get saved only by a miraculous 
 religion and this will not survive the critical proc- 
 esses that question the validity of the Record and 
 raise up a generation of higher critics in the 
 Church. I am reminded of an old farmer's state- 
 ment when told how to protect his fruit trees 
 from rabbits. He said he had always found an 
 excellent way to protect them was to "kill off the 
 rabbits." It would avail nothing to have sound 
 trees and condition a healthy flow of sap, if 
 the rabbits barked them. Higher criticism de- 
 stroys the bark through which the sap of Chris- 
 tianity flows. 
 
 I feel how incomplete and inadequate to the 
 situation is this presentation of the subject; but it 
 is hoped some suggestions have been offered 
 that will convince readers of the import- 
 ance of the issues at stake and of the need of 
 the Church being awakened to what is going on 
 under the name of scholarship in some of her in- 
 
Must the Bible Go 11 
 
 stitutions and pulpits. I cannot but regret the 
 conspiracy of silence or lack of moral courage on 
 the part of the editors of leading church papers 
 who witness these assaults upon the integrity of 
 the Holy Scriptures without a word of protest. 
 
 The author has been gratified by the assurance 
 of brethren in the ministry that his effort has been 
 helpful. One minister wrote : "I have been hav- 
 ing glorious success in revival meetings and as- 
 cribe much to the help I have obtained from your 
 able defence of the old faith." It is hoped that 
 in this form it will accomplish further good. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Taylor University, January, 1916, 
 
13 MVWS THB BlBLB Qo 
 
 "There is no reason to believe that the Teutonic 
 rebellion of this century against the Divine truths 
 entrusted to the Semites will ultimately meet with 
 more success than the Celtic insurrection of the 
 preceding age. Both have been sustained by the 
 highest intellectual gifts that human nature has 
 ever displayed ; but when the tumult subsides the 
 Divine truths are found to be not less prevalent 
 than before, and simply because they are Divine. 
 Man brings to the study of the oracles more learn- 
 ing and more criticism than of yore ; and it is well 
 that it should be so. The documents will yet bear 
 a greater amount both of erudition and exami- 
 nation than they have received, but the Word of 
 God is eternal, and will survive the spheres." 
 — Lord Beaconsfield. 
 
 "The supreme danger of the Christian religion 
 comes not from outside, but from within. No 
 attack of a merely unimaginative materialism 
 could so undermine and totter this heavenly edi- 
 fice as the inclination of those inside to sponge 
 away from its interior walls the ancient testimony 
 of a divine origin." — Harold Begbie. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 A PORTENTOUS SITUATION. 
 
 There was never a time when the encroach- 
 ments of unbelief upon the domain of faith called 
 for more serious attention than now. There have 
 been times when unbelief was undisguised, when 
 its attacks were coarse and brutal and those who 
 were "set for the defence and confirmation of the 
 truth" were forearmed by the very method of 
 attack. Under such conditions, the foes of Bible 
 truth could secure no solid advantage. The cit- 
 adel of faith remained unshaken because its de- 
 fenders recognized the character of these foes and 
 repulsed them with the weapons of inspiration. 
 The strength of its position lay in the fact that 
 the common mind was uncorrupted by error in 
 the guise of truth and was therefore strong in the 
 consciousness of a supernatural Faith, while the 
 unholy distinction of opposing that Faith belonged 
 to a few open enemies of the Cross. 
 
 The situation has completely changed. The 
 evil that threatens the life of the Church is not, 
 
 13 
 
14 Must the Bible Go 
 
 as aforetime, the bold, dastardly denial of Revela- 
 tion but the subtle teaching that professes to be 
 evangelical, yet, on the ground of harmonizing the 
 Bible with modern thought, reconstructs it upon 
 principles and by methods that take away an infalli- 
 ble guide and leaves us a religion of uncertainty. It 
 is the tentative, homeopathic way in which higher 
 critical suggestions are introduced into Sunday 
 School literature or passed on by the concessions 
 of the pulpit and the religious press, thus grad- 
 ually weakening the conviction that the Scriptures 
 are reliable and preparing the Church to modify 
 its views regarding them. It is, in short, not the 
 open repudiation of the doctrine that the Scrip- 
 tures are inspired and constitute a revelation 
 from God, attested by miracle, but the adoption 
 and plausible setting forth by professed evan- 
 gelicals, of views that logically tend to such a 
 repudiation, which forms the gravest peril to the 
 existence of a vital, powerful faith. It is the 
 silent, steady intrusion of these views into the lit- 
 erature and teaching of the church through which 
 they filter down into the common mind, dimming 
 its vision of the spiritual and eternal, and threat- 
 ening the extinction of a miracle-working religion 
 
Must the Bible Go 15 
 
 in the church, that calls for vigorous, concerted 
 resistance on the part of those who would have the 
 church maintain its character as a Divine institu- 
 tion resting on a Supernatural Book and invested 
 with superhuman power, instead of lapsing into 
 the state of a mere human organization with 
 Christian form and social functions. 
 
 As an instance of how the way is prepared for 
 the acceptance of the higher critical theories con- 
 cerning the Bible, take the assumption that the 
 world's scholarship advocates these theories. If 
 this were so, it would not be conclusive of their 
 truth. It was Cicero who said that no theory is 
 too absurd for some philosophers to support. The 
 world by wisdom knew not God, and it is no more 
 competent from the intellectual view-point to de- 
 cide how He would reveal Himself to men. It is 
 possible, therefore, that scholars reasoning from 
 false premises, or partial premises, might reach 
 an erroneous conclusion as to the form of a reve- 
 lation, and the error would be none the less error, 
 though it would be more potent for evil, because 
 of unanimity of opinion. 
 
 But it is not true that the only scholarship de- 
 serving the name supports the hypotheses of 
 
16 Must the Bible Go 
 
 higher criticism. There are a few men in great 
 repute as scholars who advocate them ; and they 
 are, with scarcely an exception, prejudiced against, 
 if not bitterly hostile to, the claim of the Holy 
 Scripture to be the product of Divine inspiration. 
 There are a great many weak imitators of the few 
 referred to — mere echoes of stronger voices, now 
 filling the Church with their empty and misleading 
 reverberations. Of this sort we may mention 
 the case of the Rev. Dr. Geo. P. Mains, one of 
 the publishing agents of the Methodist Episco- 
 pal Church who uses his official position to pro- 
 pagate higher criticism throughout the Church 
 by means of a volume of which he is the author 
 and the Methodist Book Concern, the publishers. 
 In this volume occur the assertions, "It is clear, 
 say our modern authorities, that he (Moses) could 
 not have been the author of this book (Deuter- 
 onomy). For reasons equally convincing, it is 
 evident that the book must be the product of a 
 period or periods far later than that of Moses." 
 Observe the echo-like character of these asser- 
 tions (indicated by my italic type) which are 
 calculated to produce the impression that nothing 
 
Must the Bible Go 17 
 
 convincing can be said on the other side of this 
 question. For calm, self-assuring dogmatism, for 
 unblushing self-conceit, this assumption is without 
 a parallel. By claiming everything, the higher 
 critics evidently expect to save something. But 
 the game will not succeed, except with those who 
 are influenced by the shadow of a name and receive 
 assumption as argument. How do Dr. Mains' as- 
 sertions, which are common with higher critics, 
 sound in the presence of such scholars as the 
 Scotch giant, Prof. James Orr, whose book, The 
 Problem of the Old Testament, conclusively re- 
 futes the critics ; Prof. James Robertson of whose 
 work, The 'Religion of Israel, the German Dillman 
 said that it hits the nail on the head, and which is 
 valuable for its constructive character ; Prof. Wil- 
 liam Henry Green, one of the most learned schol- 
 ars America ever produced, whose books The 
 Unity of Genesis, and The Higher Criticism of the 
 Pentateuch meet and answer the critics at every 
 turn ; Prof. Willis Beecher whose Reasonable Bib- 
 lical Criticism is an example of its own title as well 
 as an exposure of the unreasonable criticism we 
 deplore. Space will not permit mention of all who 
 have fully disproved the radical critical contention. 
 
18 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Special mention must be made of Wiener, the able, 
 scholarly Jew of London, England, whose pub- 
 lished works and articles occasionally appearing 
 in the Bibliotheca Sacra Quarterly, make mince- 
 meat of higher criticism, leaving nothing solid or 
 substantial in its arguments. The appearance of 
 this champion of Moses and the Prophets has smit- 
 ten the critics with confusion. With him agree 
 Troelstra, the Dutch successor of Kuenen at Ley- 
 den, Dahse of Germany, and others. The work of 
 these scholars has put a new phase on Old Tes- 
 tament criticism and compelled the admission 
 from certain critics that it has cast a cloud of un- 
 certainty over their hypothesis. Has Dr. Mains 
 ever heard of them ? 
 
 In the Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1914, 
 Dahse, writing on "Is the Documentary Theory 
 Tenable ?" refers to three important admissions. 
 He says : "In Germany, in England and America, 
 leading members of the prevailing school have 
 either abandoned important positions held by the 
 higher critics or adopted the methods of the tex- 
 tual critics." It was by these methods that Wiener 
 
Must the Bible Go 19 
 
 and Dahse showed the untenableness of the Docu- 
 mentary Theory. 
 
 The first admission cited is by Hugo Gressman. 
 Dahse says : "In Germany Hugo Gressman has 
 published his work 'Mose und seine Zeit.' Accord- 
 ing to this Moses is the founder of the Israelitish 
 religion; out of the organic development of his 
 work sprung the works of the great prophets ; they 
 are heirs of Moses, without whom they could not 
 have accomplished what they did ; the Red Sea in- 
 cident is an historical event which was an occular 
 demonstration to the Israelites of the absolute su- 
 premacy of Jahweh over the gods of the Egyp- 
 tians. The religion of Jahweh, which Moses in- 
 troduced, is a thoroughly moral religion. Through 
 the services of Moses the sphere of justice was for 
 the first time embodied in the domain of religion 
 on Israelitish soil, thus creating the firm founda- 
 tion for the future nature of the state. The stories 
 of Genesis emanate, in their original form, from 
 pre-Mosaic times; those of the books of Exodus, 
 Leviticus, and Numbers, extend in their oldest 
 parts in the time of Moses ; indeed they rare, per- 
 haps, in part, still older. Concerning the Deca- 
 logue, Gressman not only considers a Mosaic con- 
 
20 Must the Bible Go 
 
 ception of it possible, but even asserts that the 
 Decalogue of Exodus XX was the catechism of 
 the Hebrews in Mosaic times." Gressman is also 
 shown to admit the force of the textual argument 
 against the Documentary Theory. 
 
 The second admission cited by Dahse is by Dr. 
 S. Skinner, an advanced higher critic, whose long 
 discussion of Dahse's book in the Expositor 
 "shows that nevertheless it has gradually become 
 clear to the representatives of higher criticism 
 that they must, nolens volens, right themselves in 
 regard to the materials for textual criticism of- 
 fered by Mr. H. M. Wiener, myself, and others." 
 Dr. Skinner "finds himself compelled to empha- 
 size the fact that he is 'far from thinking that the 
 last word has been said about the problem of the 
 LXX and its bearing on the history of the Hebrew 
 text. Dahse's work has made it impossible for 
 critics to treat that problem lightly, and has set a 
 high standard of accuracy and thoroughness to 
 those who shall attempt it ;' 'that confidence in the 
 results of critical analysis must be seriously 
 shaken ;' and 'we must frankly acknowledge that 
 the trustworthiness of the Hebrew text in its 
 
Must the Bible Go 21 
 
 transmission of the divine names calls for more 
 thorough investigation than it has yet received at 
 the hands of critical scholars/ " 
 
 The third admission is that of Professor Julius 
 A. Bewer, who, in his article, "The Composition 
 of the Judges, Chaps. 17, 18," published in the 
 American Journal of Semitic Languages (July, 
 1913), "employs in reference to the book of 
 Judges, the same rules which the textual critics 
 would like to see employed with regard to the 
 Pentateuch. There he states : 'Now it may be set 
 down as a working principle of literary criticism, 
 or, if not as a principle, at least as a reasonable de- 
 mand, that the theory of a compilation of two 
 parallel versions in a given story should be re- 
 sorted to only when the other theory fails which 
 tries to overcome the difficulties by means of text- 
 ual criticism, by the discovery and excision of 
 glosses and interpolations, and by the emendation 
 of corruptions, and when there are clear and con- 
 vincing evidences of two originally distinct 
 versions/ " The conclusion reached from dealing 
 with this portion of scripture according to the 
 principle stated, is : "Through the severest process 
 of literary criticism these chapters have come, 
 
22 Must the Bible Go 
 
 various critical theories have proved inadequate, 
 and now at the end of the process we may con- 
 fidently regard them as a unity." 
 
 Well does Dahse say, regarding Prof. Bewer's 
 reasoning: "Would not the same investigator 
 arrive at the same conclusions if he investigated 
 the Pentateuch in the same manner, just as inde- 
 pendently and without prejudice ? At any rate, he 
 has, with this extremely praiseworthy article on 
 The Composition of Judges, chaps. 17, 18/ made 
 from within the first breach in the fortress of 
 higher criticism." 
 
 The decline of the speculative Old Testament 
 criticism in Europe is apparent to unprejudiced 
 observers. Professor Orr told the author several 
 years ago that a strong reaction against the higher 
 criticism was under way. Eerdmans, a pupil of 
 Kuenen, in the preface to his Die Komposition der 
 Genesis, writes: "I renounce the Graf-Kuenen- 
 Wellhausen school and altogether oppose the so- 
 called Newer Documentary Hypothesis." And 
 Moller, at one time an adherent of Wellhausen, 
 says: "After my studies which reach back over 
 
Must the Bible Go 23 
 
 more than a decade, I am strongly of the im- 
 pression that it is more correct to inquire what 
 single passages are not from Moses than to give 
 back to him a broken fragment here and there/' 
 
M Musi the Bible Go 
 
 "It is surprising that the modern critics should 
 not realize that the theory they are asserting is 
 absolutely destructive of the whole Jewish re- 
 ligion. . . . The critical hypothesis, as it at pres- 
 ent stands, assumes that the Jewish national con- 
 sciousness was deliberately and successfully falsi- 
 fied, and that what the Jews have always believed 
 to be the beginning of their religious life was 
 really the end of it. I believe that this is both 
 incredible and impossible." — Dean of Canterbury 
 (Dr. Wace). 
 
 "A revelation of God that contains all kinds 
 of error is an absurdity." — Prof. Bettex, The 
 Bible, God's Word. 
 
 "The more I investigate Semitic antiquity, the 
 more I am impressed with the utter baselessness 
 of the view of Wellhausen." — (Fr. Hommel). 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PERVERSION OF SUNDAY SCHOOL 
 
 LITERATURE TO THE SERVICE 
 
 OF HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 I have referred to the subtle manner in which 
 the advocates of higher criticism are seeking to 
 inculcate and spread throughout the church its 
 radical theories, and adduced the assumption that 
 "modern authorities'' have established the truth 
 of these theories, thus virtually stigmatizing the 
 contrary or traditional view as a mark of ignor- 
 ance or of inability to reason correctly in a discus- 
 sion of this kind. If we questioned the sincerity 
 of the assumption, we should use the language of 
 the day and call it a "bluff;" but we make no such 
 charge and content ourselves with the statement 
 that men who make this claim think the new views 
 should be taught and prepare the way for a hear- 
 ing by creating the impression that the best 
 scholarship is on that side of the question. We feel 
 that this claim, though made in good faith by 
 some, is unfair to the opposing view and absolutely 
 
 25 
 
26 Must the Bible Go 
 
 groundless, and I mentioned certain names that 
 stand for the high water-mark of scholarship in 
 support of the conservative position. This list 
 could have been extended had it been considered 
 necessary. 
 
 I now direct attention to how the Sunday 
 Schools are being doped with the poison of higher 
 criticism. When Prof. George Adam Smith was 
 in this country he said in a minister's meeting: 
 "Well, now, we have learned how to preach from 
 the pulpit according to the new criticism ; we must 
 wait for some genius to arise to teach us how to 
 impart it to the children." I do not know of any 
 genius who has arisen to the task, but a number 
 of editors and writers of Sunday School lesson 
 helps have undertaken to supply this deficiency. 
 In some instances the method of doing this is very 
 cautious and guarded, the most plausible state- 
 ments making the new viewpoint appear entirely 
 reasonable, while the logical end of the teaching 
 does not appear. An article in the Sunday School 
 Journal discussing the Divine Human Character 
 of the Bible and Moses and the Pentateuch will 
 illustrate this remark. Speaking of the forma- 
 tion of a national literature from popular beliefs 
 
Must the Bible Go 27 
 
 and traditions, the writer says : "To this rule of 
 gradual development the literature of the Hebrew 
 people, preserved for us in the Old Testament, 
 while in a very definite and exalted sense inspired 
 of God, will be found to form no exception." 
 
 The theory of "gradual development" is a 
 favorite one with higher critics, but as under- 
 stood by the founders and leading exponents of 
 the system it does not consist with a just and 
 adequate interpretation of the Scriptures as the 
 inspired and authoritative revelation of God. 
 As Professor Orr says: "The guiding idea of 
 the critical school is no longer revelation, but 
 evolution." Development in the sense of a pro- 
 gressive revelation is true to fact, for God 
 revealed Himself with ever-increasing clear- 
 ness from Moses to the prophets, until, with His 
 manifestation in the flesh, was poured forth the 
 fulness of grace and truth. But this is very 
 different from the theory that denies to the Scrip- 
 tures the unique distinction they claim for them- 
 selves as a system of revealed truth with a histori- 
 cal setting framed by special supernatural inter- 
 positions. The animus of higher criticism is 
 positively anti-supernatural. It reduces the his- 
 
28 Must the Bible Go 
 
 tory of Israel to the level of a development from 
 mythical fancies and crude attempts to solve the 
 mystery of existence and does not hesitate to char- 
 acterize the Old Testament narrative as mislead- 
 ing and so jumbled as to need entire reconstruc- 
 tion. Witness the following declaration from 
 Prof. Cornill's "Prophets of Israel:" 'The Israel- 
 itish narrative, as it lies before us in the books of 
 the Old Testament gives a thoroughly one-sided, 
 and, in many respects, incorrect, picture of the pro- 
 fane history, and on the other hand an absolutely 
 false representation of the religious history of the 
 people, and has thus made the discovery of the 
 truth well-nigh impossible." Observe, to repro- 
 duce Prof. Willis J. Beecher's comment on this 
 statement, "Dr. Cornill does not say that the Old 
 Testament writers may here and there have in- 
 advertently made a mistake or that there may be 
 elements of fiction or of figure of speech in the 
 Scriptures, which men have mistaken for literal 
 fact. What he says is that the secular history is 
 exceedingly untrustworthy, while the religious 
 history is utterly false." 
 
 Such is the position of men who sound the key- 
 note for the whole orchestra of higher criticism; 
 
Must the Bible Go 29 
 
 and I charge that articles like the one under re- 
 view exert an unwholesome influence in training 
 people to join in the chorus. When the writer 
 says of Moses, 'To him must be traced the origin 
 and formulation of many customs and institutions 
 from which the later national system of worship 
 and ritual developed," he encourages belief in the 
 critical reconstruction of the narrative which Prof. 
 Cornill declares is wholly unreliable, a reconstruc- 
 tion which implies, if it does not positively state, 
 that "the national system of worship and ritual" is 
 an invention of later times imposed on the credu- 
 lity of people who revered the memory of Moses. 
 To say nothing of the inconsistency of such an 
 idea with a true definition of development, it is 
 destructive of confidence in the trustworthiness of 
 the Bible narratives. "These teach Abraham was 
 a monotheist ; that he became possessed with the 
 idea that he and his descendants were to be 
 Jehovah's own people, chosen that all mankind 
 might be blessed in them ; that Moses gave form to 
 the institutions of the Abrahamic people, including 
 civil laws and the ten commandments and an elab- 
 orate ritual ; that God trained them afterward for 
 centuries, giving them a succession of prophets to 
 
30 Must the Bible Go 
 
 interpret to them His dealings ; that as a part of 
 their training He scattered them among the 
 nations ; that the great movement culminated and 
 took a new departure in Jesus. One who substi- 
 tutes for this an outline which is inconsistent with 
 it at every point should be honest enough not to 
 claim that he accepts the Scriptures as truthful/' 
 —(Prof. Willis J. Beecher.) 
 
 Dr. John Lord has truly remarked: "It fol- 
 lows necessarily (from a denial that the Mo- 
 saic code and the various deliverances of the 
 Israelites were due to the direct agency of Je- 
 hovah) that all the miracles by which the divine 
 legation of Moses is supported and credited, have 
 no firm foundation, and a belief in them is super- 
 stitious — as indeed it is in all other miracles re- 
 corded in the Scriptures, since they rest on testi- 
 mony no more firmly believed than that believed 
 by Christ and the apostles respecting Moses. 
 Sweep away his authority as an inspiration, and 
 you undermine the whole authority of the Bible; 
 you bring it down to the level of all other books; 
 you make it valuable only as a thesaurus of in- 
 teresting stories and impressive moral truths, 
 which we accept as we do all other kinds of 
 
Must the Bible Go 31 
 
 knowledge, leaving us free to reject what we can- 
 not understand or appreciate, or even what we 
 dislike." — Jewish Heroes and Prophets. 
 
 Observe how this Sunday School writer seeks to 
 cloud the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. 
 He refers to the fact that Moses is spoken of in the 
 third person. This is not conclusive of another 
 hand in the composition of these writings, since 
 the habit of concealing their identity is common 
 with the sacred historians. 
 
 In point of fact Moses often spoke in the first 
 person, as when he remonstrated with the people 
 for their murmuring (Ex. 16:8) and when he re- 
 hearsed the law in the plain of Moab. The very 
 book (Deuteronomy) which is with the critics 
 "the firm foundation on which they build their 
 superstructure/' is almost wholly in the first per- 
 son, as naturally it should be. In other books, 
 where God Himself gives the Law and prescribes 
 the ritual, Moses might well refer to himself in the 
 third person. "All through the story," says Prof. 
 W. H. Griffith Thomas, "God comes first with 
 Aaron as the spokesman, Jethro as the adviser, 
 and Joshua as the military leader ; the humility of 
 
32 Must the Bible Go 
 
 the record concerning Moses is essentially true to 
 life." 
 
 Expressions and statements are mentioned as 
 "clearly belonging to a later period than do the 
 events which they describe." Thus the statement 
 in Gen. 12:6 and 13:7 that "the Canaanite was 
 then in the land," "could be made only in retro- 
 spect by an author writing at a time when the 
 Canaanites were no longer in possession." Another 
 explanation is possible. It was doubtless the de- 
 sign of the writer of that passage to show that 
 the Canaanite was "then in the land" as well as 
 now; that the settlement of Canaan by these na- 
 tions took place before Abraham's migration. 
 
 Gen. 36:31 is cited as an instance of a writer 
 speaking of a time long past when he says : "And 
 these are the kings that reigned in the land of 
 Edom, before there reigned any king over the chil- 
 dren of Israel." The implication is not necessary. 
 Kings, according to promise were to descend from 
 Abraham and Sarah and Israel, and are, in Deu- 
 teronomy, anticipated (Gen. 17:6, 16; 35:11. 
 Deut. 17:14, 15; 28:16). "If the author was a 
 contemporary of Moses he would be interested in 
 the fact that the fulfilling of this part of the 
 
Must the Bible Go 33 
 
 promise had already begun in the Edomite 
 branch of Abraham's family, although it had not 
 yet begun in the Israelite branch; and he would 
 use language accordingly/ ' 
 
 The expressions "beyond the Jordan" (Deut. 
 3:20, 25) and "as Israel did unto the land of his 
 possession which Jehovah gave unto them,' , 
 (Deut. 2:12) are also taken to mean that the 
 writer's time and place were in Palestine, after its 
 occupation by the Israelites. This position can be 
 maintained only upon the ground that these chap- 
 ters which form part of the discourse of Moses to 
 Israel were rank forgeries. The first is the lan- 
 guage of one east of the river who beseeches the 
 Lord to permit him to cross over to the land "be- 
 yond Jordan," i. e., to the west of it, and therefore 
 reveals the folly of the critic rather than the inac- 
 curacy of the record. Moses begins his personal 
 address at the 6th verse of chapter 1 of Deuter- 
 onomy. Verses 1-5 are introductory and may 
 have been added by Moses himself before he de- 
 livered the completed work to the custody of the 
 Levites, as stated in Chap. 31 :24~26. Possibly he 
 rehearsed the matter orally and afterwards com- 
 mitted the whole to writing with this brief intro- 
 
34 Must the Bible Go 
 
 duction in the third person — a thing not unknown 
 in our own day where a writer modestly prepares 
 the way for a quotation from himself. In that 
 case, the phrase "on this side Jordan" (Rev. Ver. 
 — "beyond Jordan" verse 5), would accord with 
 the purpose of the book as a document of re- 
 ligious instruction and reminiscence for the people 
 after their settlement in the land. To those who 
 insist upon a later hand for such statements we 
 commend' Prof. Beecher's remark below. 
 
 With respect to the other passage, it was per- 
 fectly correct for Moses to compare the conquest 
 which the children of Esau had made of the land 
 they then dwelt in with the conquest which Israel 
 had completed before this statement was made. 
 See Deut. 3 :8-i8 : "the Lord your God hath given 
 you this land to possess it." And this was part of 
 the covenant territory (Gen. 15:18). 
 
 This Sunday School writer is no more fortunate 
 in his claim that the documentary hypothesis of 
 the critics "clears up many incidental difficulties, 
 such as the interchange of names in referring to 
 the same places or persons;" e. g., Horeb and 
 Sinai, where the Commandments were given; 
 Jethro and Reuel, two names for Moses' father-in- 
 
Must the Bible Go 35 
 
 law; Jehovah and Elohim (translated, Lord and 
 God), to designate the Divine Being. This is a 
 sample of the puerility of the critics who cannot 
 imagine a reason why the same writer should use 
 such names interchangeably. Perhaps they might 
 think of a Westerner speaking of Mt. Tacoma at 
 one time and Mt. Rainier (the same mountain) at 
 another time. "Parallel and variant accounts of 
 the same event," continues this writer, "such as 
 occur in the Creation, Flood, and Joseph narra- 
 tives are likewise accounted for by this interpreta- 
 tion of the Bible record." That there are such 
 accounts is an assumption and not an incontrovert- 
 ible fact. The reasoning by which it is sought to 
 establish the documentary hypothesis is saturated 
 with subjectivism, superficial, and conclusive only 
 to those who take their cue from the enemies of 
 Revelation. The incapability of such men treating 
 the Scriptures fairly will be noticed later. 
 
 Other examples of isolated sentences might have 
 been adduced by the writer in question, but they 
 need not be referred to a later person than some 
 contemporary of Moses, and they certainly do not 
 warrant the radical and in some respects absurd 
 hypothesis of higher criticism. The premise is too 
 
38 Must the Bible Go 
 
 slight to support so huge a conclusion. In the last 
 chapter of Deuteronomy it is said, "There hath 
 not arisen a prophet since Israel like unto Moses. ,, 
 No long interval of time may have occurred before 
 the addition of this statement which was of the 
 nature of an appendix to the writing of Moses. 
 Says Prof. Beecher : "Forty years after the death 
 of Abraham Lincoln people were already saying 
 that we have not since had an American statesman 
 like him'. Less than forty years after the death of 
 Henry Ward Beecher and John B. Gough men 
 were saying that there have arisen since no Eng- 
 lish-speaking orators like them." Such instances, 
 Prof. Beecher thinks, may be referred to the life 
 time of Phinehas, grandnephew of Moses, who 
 was associated with him in public affairs. "Men 
 of the age of Phinehas may well have been the 
 literary executors of Moses." 
 
 That there are difficulties in the Scriptures as 
 they have come down to us none deny. But the 
 right attitude is not that of one who seeks to ac- 
 count for them by a reasoning that substitutes 
 difficulty for absurdity and loads the Scriptures 
 down with the suspicion of dishonesty, but that 
 of him who waits for light, meantime believing in 
 
Must the Bible Go 37 
 
 the trustworthiness of the record and doubting 
 not, if light should come, the difficulty would 
 vanish. Whenever light has come, it has always 
 confirmed the old, never the new view. It is 
 undeniable that every archaeological discovery has 
 vindicated the sacred writings, as traditionally 
 received, and compelled the critics to revise their 
 propositions. 
 
 1 Wherever archaeology has been able to test the 
 negative conclusions of criticism/' says Prof. A. 
 H. Sayce, in his Monument Facts and Higher 
 Critical Fancies, "they have dissolved like a bubble 
 into the air." This able scholar cites the original 
 critical contention that the fourteenth chapter of 
 Genesis was unhistorical. Some years later the 
 critics were silent about this contention. "In the 
 interval the excavator and archaeologist have been 
 hard at work regardless of the most certainly as- 
 certained results of criticism, and the ancient 
 world of Western Asia has risen again from the 
 grave of centuries. A history which had seemed 
 lost forever has been recovered for us, and we can 
 now handle and read the very letters which passed 
 between the contemporaries of Abraham." And 
 that history confirms the accuracy of the writer of 
 
38 Must the Bible Go 
 
 that chapter of Genesis, "even the proper names 
 having been handed down in the scriptural narra- 
 tive with but little alteration/' The name Amra- 
 phel was none other than that of the king who 
 codified the Babylonian law, being identical with 
 Khammu — or Ammu-rapi ilu, the Babylonian for 
 Khammu-rapi the god. Ilu is the same as the 
 Hebrew el for God. This king, "like others of his 
 dynasty, claimed divine honors and was addressed 
 by his subjects as a god." 
 
 Among other instances of the triumph of archae- 
 ology, Sayce mentions the two which were once 
 fundamental to the critical theory. "That Baby- 
 lonian law should have been already codified in 
 the age of Abraham deprives the critical theory 
 which makes the Mosaic law posterior to 
 the Prophets of one of its two main sup- 
 ports. The theory was based on two denials — that 
 writing was used for literary purposes in the time 
 of Moses, and that a legal code was possible before 
 the period of the Jewish kings. The discovery of 
 the Tel-el-Amarna tablets disproved the first as- 
 sumption ; the discovery of the code of Khammu- 
 rapi has disproved the second. Centuries before 
 Moses, law had been already codified, and the 
 
Must the Bible Go 39 
 
 Semitic populations had long been familiar with 
 
 the conception of a code Not only could the 
 
 Hebrew leader have compiled a code of laws, we 
 now see that it would have been incredible had he 
 not done so." 
 
 Sir William Robertson Nicoll, reviewing a book 
 written on the critical side, makes the striking re- 
 mark: "The significant fact is that the great first- 
 hand archaeologists, as a rule, do not trust the 
 higher criticism. This means a great deal more 
 than can be put on paper to account for their doubt. 
 It means that they are living in an atmosphere 
 where arguments that flourish outside do not 
 thrive." 
 
 When, therefore, we are asked to exchange the 
 traditional for the higher critical view and are ex- 
 pected to sanction the inculcation of its principles 
 in the minds of the young, we reply in the noble 
 language of Dr. Kuyper, the great Dutch scholar 
 and theologian: 
 
 "If, then, after all legitimate examination and 
 explanation there still remain (in the text) seem- 
 ing inexplicables, cruces interpretum, before 
 which not I— for that implies nothing — but all 
 confessing theologians stand, even then I do not 
 
40 Must the Bible Go 
 
 hesitate a moment to say it in the hearing of the 
 whole scientific world, that facing the choice be- 
 tween leaving this question unanswered, and with 
 the simple-minded people of God confessing my 
 ignorance, or with the learned ethical brethren 
 from scientific logicalness rejecting the infallibility 
 of Scripture, I firmly choose the first, and with my 
 whole soul shrink back from the last. 
 
 "For to say with Rothe and his followers that 
 there are myths of Scripture ; the creation narra- 
 tive a pious phantasy ; phantasy likewise the nar- 
 rative of the fall ; the prophecies are products of a 
 higher-tensioned spiritual life; the testimonies 
 borne by Christ and his apostles concerning the 
 old covenant are devoid of normative power ; that 
 the apostolic representations of the truth are 
 equally little normative ; even the image of Christ 
 which they outline and paint is not fixed reliably; 
 and then solemnly to declare that the whole Scrip- 
 ture, from Gen. i :i to Rv. 22:21, is the Word of 
 God, is more than I can do ; it is too bold for me ; it 
 looks wonderfully much like a protestatio actui 
 contraria, which I hear of but of which I have no 
 understanding. And when, moreover, I observe 
 that in the circles of these 'faithful' ones the mod- 
 
Must the Bible Go 41 
 
 ernizing vivisectors are widely known, and that, 
 on the other hand, the orthodox champions of in- 
 spiration — such as Gaussen not only, but also such 
 men as Hodge and Philippi; yea, even Beck and 
 Mehring — are scarcely known at all, then, in all 
 seriousness, I am filled with apprehension for the 
 future. Then I seem to hear the rushing waters ; 
 and I feel the 'zeal of God' come over me which 
 compels me to reject a Word of God/ so-called, 
 which is fallible, as a contradictio in terminis, 
 which exchanges fixedness of principle for half 
 measures, and which, while ever going backward 
 toward Christ, constantly separates itself but 
 further from the 'Christ according to the 
 Scripture/ 
 
 "And should anyone still answer that, judging 
 as I do, I, myself, am not justified, since I acknowl- 
 edge errors, if not in the autographs, at least in 
 the texts at our service ; then let me remove this 
 latent objection by this other question ; whether, if 
 you held in your hand a cup of pure gold, but whose 
 edge is slightly damaged, and I held in my hand an 
 entirely perfect cup of gold which is not real, you 
 would say, It is all the same to me ; I will cheer- 
 
42 Must the Bible Go 
 
 fully take your imitation for my gold cup*?" — 
 Bibliotheca Sacra. 
 
 Let him who will take the imitation and get 
 what satisfaction he can out of it ; we shall not re- 
 linquish the genuine cup, even though its edge 
 seems to be slightly damaged, and we object to the 
 substitution being made for those who are not 
 prepared to speak for themselves. I charge that 
 so-called Evangelicals who have become obsessed 
 with the subjectivism of the Graflf-Wellhausen 
 school of criticism would get people to exchange 
 their golden treasure of sacred truth for the coun- 
 terfeit product of this school, and I do not intend 
 to remain silent while this attempt is being made. 
 
44 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "The critics object to the Biblical theory that 
 relies so much on the supernatural ; the character- 
 istic feature of their own is the unnatural. The 
 Biblical theory says there was a course of history 
 quite unprecedented, or certainly most extraordi- 
 nary; the modern theory says that the history 
 was nothing remarkable, but there was quite an 
 unprecedented mode of imagining and writing it. 
 There have to be postulated miracles of a literary 
 and psychological kind, which contradict sound 
 reason and experience as much as any of the 
 physical miracles of the Old Testament transcend 
 them." — Prof. James Robertson, Early Religion 
 of Israel 
 
 "The proton pseudos (first lie), historically 
 considered, of Graf, Kuenen, and all their fol- 
 lowers, consists in this : that they make use of the 
 variety of material afforded them for positively 
 constructing a history of ancient Israel, only to 
 destroy the possibility of such a history. This 
 they appear to do, not so much because of the dis- 
 crepancies which exist in the materials, as because 
 of their predetermination to reject as untrust- 
 worthy all the materials which partake largely of 
 the Hebrew belief in the supernatural." — Ladd. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 HOSTILITY TO REVELATION. 
 
 The subjective explanation for the modern criti- 
 cal views is hostility to supernaturalism. There is 
 an irrepressible prejudice against the very concep- 
 tion of a revelation with miraculous attestations. 
 To quote Professor Sayce: "The presence of a 
 miracle is of itself accounted a sufficient reason 
 for suspecting the truth of a story, or at all events 
 the credibility of its witnesses. If there was no 
 record of miracles in the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, it may be questioned whether so much zeal 
 would have been displayed in endeavoring to 
 throw doubt on the authenticity of their contents. 
 We find no such display of critical energy in the 
 case of the Mohammedan Koran." 
 
 The fundamental conception of the critics (by 
 whom I mean not those who claim to be evangeli- 
 cal, but the originators of the school to which the 
 former have become such blind devotees) is that 
 the literature of the Bible, like any other literature, 
 is only a natural development with no higher in- 
 
 45 
 
46 Must the Bible Go 
 
 spiration than human genius and no supernatural 
 attestation. Of course, coming to the Bible with 
 this bias, they could not treat the Bible fairly. It 
 has not been allowed to speak for itself. The 
 prejudice of the critic has been read into it, in the 
 work of re-construction. Its most distinctive ele- 
 ment — the supernatural — was eliminated to begin 
 with, or relegated to the region of myth and alle- 
 gory. How was it possible under these circum- 
 stances to deal justly with the narratives? 
 Prophecy as well as history has suffered mutila- 
 tion by this subjective, irrational method. Since 
 true prediction is a miracle, it is denied, in the 
 unique sense the Scriptures claim for it, and re- 
 solved into a flight of genius. Hence the novel 
 theory held concerning some of the prophetical 
 books. They must be assigned to a later date and 
 thus accounted for by the principle, Vaticinia post 
 eventum. 
 
 A few quotations from leading critics will show 
 that the charge of hostility to a Divine Revelation 
 is true. According to Delitzsch, the two foregone 
 conclusions of the higher criticism are "There is 
 no true prophecy" and "There is no true miracle." 
 Eichhorn, originator of the expression Higher 
 
Must the Bible Go 47 
 
 Criticism, declared: "Miracles do not happen, 
 They have never happened. We cannot accept 
 any book as even historically true which contains 
 narratives of alleged miraculous events." Dr. 
 Milton S. Terry echoes the infidel strain : "Critical 
 studies have dispelled the notion, once quite preva- 
 lent, that the prophecies of the 1 d Testament and 
 the New Testament Apocalypse ^re history writ- 
 ten beforehand." Renan declared, "The exclusion 
 of the supernatural is the first postulate of higher 
 criticism. " Kuenen claimed, "We have nothing 
 to do with inspiration." What Knobel and Nol- 
 deke say of Isaiah's prediction of Israel's deliver- 
 ance from captivity contains the critical reason for 
 re-dating the prophetical writings and claiming 
 for them another authorship. "A prophecy," they 
 assert, "in which Cyrus is called by his name is not 
 naturally the work of Isaiah who could not know 
 in advance either the exile of the people to Babylon 
 or the deliverance from that exile by Cyrus." 
 
 Thus the supernatural inspiration by which the 
 prophets foretold far distant future events is ar- 
 bitrarily set aside as a peculiarity of the Bible, and 
 their foresight becomes simply the knowledge of 
 contemporary events. Dr. Driver holds that "no 
 
48 Must the Bible Go 
 
 intelligible purpose would be subserved by Isaiah's 
 announcing to the generation of Hezekiah an oc- 
 currence lying nearly 200 years in the future and 
 having no bearing on contemporary interests." 
 Here we have a bald assumption (it is nothing 
 more) that the prophet always speaks with refer- 
 ence to contemporary interests and that prophecies 
 concerning future events would have been unin- 
 telligible to his contemporaries. Not much in 
 advance of this assumption is Prof. George Adam 
 Smith's idea of inspiration: "Isaiah prophesied 
 and predicted all he did from loyalty to two simple 
 truths, which he tells us he received from God 
 Himself ; that sin must be punished and that the 
 people of God must be saved. This simple faith, 
 acting along with a wonderful knowledge of 
 human affairs, constituted inspiration for Isaiah." 
 That is to say, Isaiah was inspired in no other 
 sense than Shakespeare or any other genius was 
 inspired. Contrast with this the apostle's defini- 
 tion of inspiration and see how much respect these 
 critics have for New Testament authority. 
 "Knowing this first that no prophecy of the Scrip- 
 ture is of any private interpretation (Greek — 
 Comes to be of the prophet's own motion or inven- 
 
Must the Bible Go 49 
 
 Hon ) . For the prophecy came not in old time ( Gr . 
 at any time) by the will of man" — by his "faith, 
 knowledge of human nature and ceaseless vigil- 
 ance of affairs" according to Prof. Smith — "but 
 holy men of God spake as they were moved (Gr. 
 borne along) by the Holy Ghost." (2 Pet. 1 120- 
 21.) Here is a Power out of and above them- 
 selves that seizes them and carries them along in 
 the stream of its will. Thus prophecy is not the 
 product of their own thought and knowledge, but 
 a direct revelation to their minds. Indeed, they 
 did not always understand the meaning of their 
 own predictions, but "searched what or what man- 
 ner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them 
 did signify, when it testified beforehand, etc." 
 ( 1 Peter 1 : 1 1 . ) The same apostle declares "unto 
 whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves" 
 — as Driver contends, having to do with contem- 
 porary interests — "but unto us they did minister 
 the things" of their prophecies, that is, not unto 
 themselves or contemporaries but unto future gen- 
 erations did their prophecies pertain. 
 
 How superior to the view of Smith and Driver 
 is that of Professor Orr, who says: 
 
50 Must the 'Bible Go 
 
 "The genuine prophet is conscious of being laid 
 hold of by the Spirit of God as other men are not ; 
 of receiving a message from Jehovah which he 
 knows is not the product of his own thoughts, but 
 recognizes as God's word coming to him, which is 
 imparted to him with perfect clearness and over- 
 powering certainty ; and which brings with it the 
 call and constraint to deliver it to those for whom 
 it is meant/' — The Problem of the Old Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 Now all these critical contentions regarding 
 Divine inspiration and revelation are identical 
 with the denials of Thomas Paine whose argu- 
 ments are the stock in trade of certain profes- 
 sors and writers occupying positions of honor 
 and influence in the church. And the portentous 
 feature of the present situation is not that pro- 
 nounced enemies of a supernatural revelation like 
 Paine and the whole school of German and Eng- 
 lish rationalism hold and teach such views, but 
 that theological seminaries and editorial sanctums 
 of evangelical churches are hotbeds for the propa- 
 gation of theories sprung from the soil of rank un- 
 belief. The anomaly is that of professed believers 
 in the inspired, authoritative character of the 
 Scriptures adopting and teaching theories which 
 
Must the Bible Go 51 
 
 destroy that character and wreck the faith of 
 churches, whose activities are reduced to the plane 
 of pure naturalism. 
 
 That this is no random assertion may be seen 
 from the tendency to reduce the miracles of the 
 New Testament to mere natural phenomena or to 
 attribute them to the disposition to magnify the 
 marvelous — in other words, to deny the integrity 
 of the record and say the thing never happened. 
 For want of space I must confine myself to a single 
 quotation from the Graded Series of Sunday 
 School Lessons issued by Charles Scribner's Sons, 
 and said to "embody the results of the latest 
 scholarship." 
 
 "It is easy to see," runs this "latest scholar- 
 ship," "that the age that produced the Gospels 
 would not be anxious for scientific accounts of the 
 deeds of Jesus, but that it would expect of Him 
 exactly the acts that are attributed to Him. It is 
 possible, therefore, that some events, like the 
 restoration of the Centurion's servant, were simple 
 coincidences ; that others, like the apparent walk- 
 ing of Jesus on the water, were natural deeds 
 
52 Must the Bible Go 
 
 which the darkness and confusion caused to be 
 misunderstood; that others, like the turning of 
 water into wine, were really parables that became 
 in course of time changed into miracles. As nearly 
 all the miracles not of healing had their prototypes 
 in the Old Testament many of them at least were 
 attributed to Jesus because men expected such 
 deeds from their Messiah, and finally became con- 
 vinced that he must have performed them." Of 
 the same' tenor is the expression of doubt whether 
 Jairus' daughter "was really dead, or only in a 
 swoon, or state of coma." 
 
 To borrow a phrase, "it is easy to see" what kind 
 of Gospel we would have received had the scien- 
 tific methods of the "latest scholarship" been em- 
 ployed to produce it. Instead of the simple, faith- 
 ful narratives that give us an account of a Divine 
 Saviour, who made the living God real to the con- 
 sciousness of men, we should have had a falsified 
 history with no evidence that God had come down 
 to men in the revelation of His power and grace. 
 
 Dr. Forsyth writing on "The Preacher and His 
 Charter," in his work Positive Preaching and the 
 Modern Mind, says : "The Gospels are homiletical 
 
Must the Bible Go 53 
 
 biography, not psychological ; they are compiled on 
 evangelical rather than critical principles. The 
 stories told are but a trifling selection, not chosen 
 to cast light on the motives of a deep and complex 
 character, but selected entirely from a single 
 point of view — that of the crucified, risen, exalted 
 preached Saviour." He quotes herewith Julicher 
 as saying: "The first Church troubled about the 
 real Jesus only in so far as suited the Jesus living 
 for their faith. . . . Had Mark attempted or 
 achieved such a model biography of Jesus as his- 
 torical science demands, his work would have been 
 useless for religion. ,, 
 
 That the age which produced the Gospels was 
 not anxious for scientific accounts was the surest 
 safeguard from error, because it assured to us a 
 record of events by unsophisticated eye witnesses 
 who were honest enough to tell what they saw 
 without attempting to explain it away. That such 
 an age expected of Jesus exactly the deeds attrib- 
 uted to Him, shows they had a truer notion of 
 the Old Testament than the modern critics have. 
 It was their proof of his Messianic claims — a 
 proof that the critics would have utterly destroyed 
 
54 Must the Bible Go 
 
 by their rationalizing methods, leaving the world 
 in darkness and sin. 
 
 There is no half-way house where the mind can 
 rest in this conflict between the traditional and 
 the higher critical view of the Bible. The New 
 Testament must share the fate of the Old, and 
 Christ goes down with the Prophets. If there is 
 no supernatural inspiration in the Old Testament, 
 there can be no authority in the New. They stand 
 or fall together. And this is the only consistent, 
 logical view to take. Certainly it is not so repre- 
 hensible as the attitude of professed faith in the 
 divine inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, 
 while the heart is with the critics who deny these 
 things. To pretend to believe in the authority of 
 Christ, while holding that the modern scholar is 
 more competent than he to. decide who wrote the 
 Scriptures is like the treachery of Joab who said to 
 Amasa, "Art thou in health, my brother?" and 
 then smote him with his sword in the fifth rib. 
 How can they say, "Lord, to whom shall we go? 
 thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe 
 and are sure that thou art Christ the Son of the 
 living God," and then declare he was mistaken 
 when he taught there was a flood in the days of 
 
Must the Bible Go 55 
 
 Noah and that the state of the world at his com- 
 ing again would be as it was then? Dr. Mains 
 quotes approvingly Dr. Driver's statement : "We 
 are forced, consequently, to the conclusion that the 
 flood as described by the biblical writers is unhis- 
 torical." 
 
 Thus these blind followers of the blind seek to 
 enlighten the church without the Lamp of Life, for 
 they have rejected His authority. To account for 
 Christ's "false teachings ,, (?) by the theory that 
 He and the Apostles "held the current Jewish no- 
 tions respecting the Old Testament," contradicts 
 the facts. He was in advance of His age and re- 
 peatedly opposed these notions, boldly charging 
 His contemporaries with ignorance of the Scrip- 
 tures. "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures 
 nor the power of God." His originality and inde- 
 pendence of men prove the absurdity of this 
 theory, and establish also the contemporary view 
 of the Old Testament. The men of that age were 
 far better judges of their sacred writings than 
 these belated critics, who care no more for the 
 integrity of the New Testament than they do for 
 that of the Old. Dr. Howard Osgood well said : 
 
 "If any one will collect all the myths said to be 
 
56 Must the Bible Go 
 
 in the Old Testament, and compare what is said 
 of these passages in the New Testament, he will 
 soon find that to believe them myths he must make 
 the whole New Testament a far worse myth, for 
 it stamps these so-called myths as truth and builds 
 its superstructure on them. If, as we are told, 
 Christ and the New Testament did not know the 
 truth as to facts in human history on earth, then 
 they were still more ignorant of all things in the 
 future, and no sane man would believe them. To 
 this entire rejection of Christ as to His character 
 and His teachings does the belief in myths in the 
 Old Testament or in the New surely lead. ,, 
 
 To which may be added the significant remark 
 of Sir J. W. Dawson, in an able article on the 
 Deluge: "Christianity founds itself, its founder 
 himself being witness, on the early chapters of 
 Genesis, as history and prophecy, and the treat- 
 ment which these ancient and inspired records 
 have met with in modern times at the hands of 
 destructive criticism is doing its worst in aid of 
 the anti-Christian tendencies of our times. ,, 
 
 And nothing in the entire realm of thinking can 
 equal the moral blindness, the ethical misconcep- 
 tion and perversity of a profession of faith in the 
 
Must the Bible Go 57 
 
 authoritative character of Christ and the New 
 Testament while questioning their competency to 
 speak the truth concerning the Old Testament. 
 We endorse the characterization of Dr. Torrey 
 who replied as follows to a personal question : 
 
 "Brethren, I do not like to answer personal 
 questions, but since this has been asked, let me say 
 right here that I met Prof. George Adam Smith 
 personally, and had a personal talk with him on 
 this very question. Prof. Smith was in Northfield, 
 and, by invitation, I met him at Mr. Moody's 
 house. 
 
 " Trof. Smith/ I said, 'you teach that the noth 
 Psalm is not Messianic, and that it was not written 
 by David ; that it refers to a brother of Jonathan 
 Maccabeus, and is not by David at all, but by 
 some unknown man of that period. If that be 
 true, one of two things must also be true — it is 
 certain, either that Jesus Christ knew it was not 
 by David, and did not refer to Himself, in which 
 case, in building an argument for His Divinity 
 upon it, He deliberately pulled the wool over the 
 eyes of those to whom He spoke, or else He did 
 not know it, in which case He built an argument 
 for His Divinity upon a mistake. In either case, 
 
58 Must the Bible Go 
 
 what are you going to do with the Divinity of 
 Christ ?' 
 
 " 1 do not build my faith in His Divinity on the 
 noth Psalm/ he replied. 
 
 " 'Neither do 1/ I said, 'but, having found out 
 that He is Divine, I must maintain that He knows 
 what He is talking about when He built an argu- 
 ment for His Divinity on this noth Psalm/ 
 
 "Professor Smith undermined faith in the his- 
 toricity of the story of Abraham and other Old 
 Testament stories, and yet, gentlemen, he went 
 into the pulpit on the Sunday morning before the 
 conversation I referred to at Northfield Church, 
 and preached on Gideon without breathing a sus- 
 picion that it was not history. You, gentlemen, 
 may call that 'Reverent Higher Criticism/ I call 
 it dishonesty. I do not care whether it is George 
 Adam Smith, or who it is — it is dishonesty/' 
 
 Yet this is the man who is invited to lecture in 
 denominational schools and whose books are cir- 
 culated by the denominational publishing houses 
 of this country! 
 
 I will now state why a good man of ordinary in- 
 telligence is competent to decide the main points 
 
Must the Bible Go 59 
 
 at issue in this discussion and shall give some of 
 the results already apparent of the work of higher 
 critics. 
 
60 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "Even Nature hides her treasures from the 
 trifler." 
 
 "We all know the sort of morbidly active- 
 brained child who will pull a valuable watch to 
 pieces, and then tell us with a smile that there was 
 nothing in it but wheels and things. He has his 
 counterpart in the foreign infidel type of scholar, 
 who, albeit as ignorant of man and his needs as a 
 monk, and as ignorant of God and His ways as a 
 monkey,. sets himself with a light heart to tear 
 the Bible to pieces. If the Bible must be given up, 
 it is a disaster unparalleled in the history of 
 Christendom/' — Sir Robert Anderson. 
 
 "The Bible, while it encourages all manner of 
 investigation, insists upon a right method and 
 spirit in the conduct of investigation. He who 
 does not conduct his Bible study in such spirit, 
 forfeits all blessing in that study, and, as has been 
 intimated, may incur the judgment of God in the 
 infliction of judicial blindness; and the ultimate 
 effect of judicial blindness in the teacher is wide- 
 spread disaster to those who follow his pernicious 
 ways, as has been already seen in many cases in 
 the Church of Christ."— Arthur T. Pierson, The 
 Bible and Spiritual Criticism. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
 TRUTH— SINCERITY 
 
 A consideration of the qualifications needed for 
 the quest of truth will deal a blow to the dog- 
 matic claims of higher criticism and bring out the 
 inadequacy of mere book learning to determine the 
 main issues of this question. It is the boast of 
 certain critics that their school of thought alone 
 is competent to arrive at a rational solution of the 
 Biblical problem. As an instance of this style of 
 assertion, note the following statements of Prof. 
 Shailer Mathews, taken from an article on Amer- 
 ican Protestantism in the Constructive Quarterly. 
 Having attributed the "gratifying progress" of 
 the higher critical and evolutionary views to "the 
 entrance into church life of young men and women 
 who have been trained in the modern scientific 
 point of view, and the historico-critical treatment 
 of the Bible," he says: 
 
 "True, the task of theological reconstruction is 
 but begun. The majority of Protestants in Amer- 
 ica are still Hebraic in their world-view and mon- 
 
 61 
 
62 Must the Bible Go 
 
 archists in their theology. The best theological 
 schools are undoubtedly in advance of the large 
 element of our church membership which is un- 
 trained to think in other than inherited words and 
 concepts. It will take at least another ten years 
 to bring our business men to see that they know 
 less about theology than do properly trained min- 
 isters." 
 
 It would not be difficult to show the error in 
 these statements — their misconception of the 
 teaching of Scripture, their false boast of the 
 superiority of radical scholarship. The Hebraic 
 viewpoint, not the Pharisaical perversion, but the 
 outlook of prophets and apostles, will persist 
 despite critical animadversion, and theological 
 monarchism will continue to be the persuasion of 
 all who pray "Thy Kingdom come," and "wait 
 for His Son from Heaven." 
 
 I call special attention to the last sentence, be- 
 cause of its unfavorable comparison of "our busi- 
 ness men," with "properly trained ministers." If 
 those men were to study twenty years and be as 
 poorly qualified to reason on this question as most 
 of the modern critics, the church would be doubly 
 afflicted. Some of them know more of real Biblical 
 
Must the Bible Go 63 
 
 theology than half of their critics whose "scien- 
 tific" training has unfitted them to deal sensibly 
 with the word of God. 
 
 This brings me to the point suggested by the 
 topic now to be considered — indispensable ele- 
 ments in the quest for truth. The quotation just 
 given implies that technical learning is the one 
 essential to a correct understanding of the Biblical 
 problem. We do not doubt its importance and its 
 place in this discussion ; but we insist that the pri- 
 mary place belongs to elements without which 
 such learning is worthless and worse than worth- 
 less. For this, unbalanced by certain intellectual 
 and moral qualities, may prove a snare to the in- 
 vestigator, leading to misrepresentation of facts 
 and false generalizations. 
 
 The first of these requisites is sincerity. I do 
 not shrink from this test for the conservative 
 position. I believe in comparing views that error 
 may be detected and truth established. But I 
 think there is reason to doubt the sincerity of the 
 principal exponents of higher criticism. Exam- 
 ples are not wanting of aversion to an examina- 
 tion of conservative arguments, and, worse still, 
 of refusing to modify views that are shown to be 
 
64 Must the Bible Go 
 
 erroneous. Wilhelm Moller whose Historical and 
 Critical Considerations against the Graf-Well- 
 hausen Hypothesis have been translated and pub- 
 lished in English under the title "Are the Critics 
 Right?" says that at one time he was "immovably 
 convinced of the irrefutable correctness of that 
 hypothesis so long as he allowed it alone to have 
 an effect upon him," and "that little encourage- 
 ment is given to students of the Old Testament 
 even to take in their hand for once a book of a dif- 
 ferent school. I myself," he goes on, "have been in 
 several cases advised against it by professors. 
 Now it cannot for a moment be doubted that it is 
 utterly unscientific to seek to know one's opponent 
 from polemical writings only." 
 
 His deliverance from the Graf-Wellhausen 
 snare is told as follows : "But after my attention 
 was once directed to its weaknesses (first by 
 Kohler in Erlangen) after I had studied with 
 some thoroughness the scientific literature on the 
 other side, this hypothesis seemed to me more and 
 more monstrous. By discussions on the subject 
 in the Theological Societies at Erlangen and 
 Halle, in the Tholuck Institute at Halle, and in 
 the Theological Seminary at Wittenberg, as well 
 
Must the Bible Go 65 
 
 as by frequent conversations with friends and ac- 
 quaintances, my own view was confirmed and 
 elucidated, so that I hope that the change which 
 took place in my case may and will be effected 
 in others also." 
 
 The result of Mr. Moller's studies has been the 
 production of a work ("Are the Critics Right?") 
 which utterly refutes the hypothesis he once thor- 
 oughly believed. 
 
 This able scholar closes his work with the fol- 
 lowing conclusions against the higher critical 
 mode of treating the philosophy of religion : 
 
 "i. It is in opposition to the Old Testament, 
 which everywhere proclaims a Divine revelation. 
 It is thoroughly unhistorical, in so far as it uses 
 the sources otherwise than they admit of, and yet 
 turns them to advantage so far as they agree 
 with it. 
 
 "2. It is at present carried out quite inconsist- 
 ently in the Old Testament; for the different re- 
 ligious conceptions of the particular laws, even 
 according to criticism, correspond in their origin 
 not to the spirit of the people, but always to the 
 ideal of the individuals only. The people as a 
 whole are still almost as immature as before. 
 
66 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "3. It must, to be consistent, seek to under- 
 stand the revelation in Christ as a natural develop- 
 ment also. 
 
 "4. It must regard a perfecting of religious 
 ideas beyond Christ as not only possible, but 
 necessary. 
 
 "Moreover, it is not the case, even according to 
 the Biblical view, that the complete revelation was 
 made at the beginning. It is, rather, prepared 
 for by the early revelation and by the leading of 
 the patriarchs. Notwithstanding the revelation, 
 a progress in revelation takes place within the Old 
 Testament (see especially the ethical deepening 
 through the prophets and their Messianic pro- 
 phecies). Finally, the New Testament is self-evi- 
 dently a vast advance upon the Old. 
 
 "But if we believe that the essential elements of 
 the Old Testament revelation were actually in 
 existence at the time of Moses, we see above all in 
 the further course of Israelitish history a develop- 
 ment in understanding of the revelation and in 
 agreement with it." 
 
 More recently he has published a book with the 
 German title Wider den Bann der Quellenscheid- 
 ung. Anleitung zu einer neuen Erfassung des 
 
Must the Bible Go 67 
 
 Pentateuch — Problems. Of its "most excellent 
 discussion of the use of doublets as a means of es- 
 tablishing the documentary theory/' Mr. Wiener 
 remarks : "What an admirable thing it would be 
 if anybody could induce some of our poor higher 
 critical theorists really to master and grapple with 
 this part of M oiler's work!" 
 
 Now this case of Moller's is adduced to show 
 the insincerity of critics whose obsession with 
 their preconceived theory and the arguments by 
 which they deem it established makes them indis- 
 posed to consider opposing arguments and incap- 
 able of arriving at sound conclusions. What con- 
 fidence can be placed in the intellectual and moral 
 leadership of men who advise against taking in 
 hand a book of a different school? 
 
 Moreover, as Mr. Wiener, already referred to, 
 one of the ablest scholars that ever appeared in 
 defence of the conservative position, has proved 
 to the hilt, such men have evinced a disregard for 
 the elementary principles of fair dealing with the 
 public, misrepresenting facts and persisting in the 
 publication of views that have been shown to be 
 untenable, thus deceiving the public by concealing 
 the strength of the conservative position and the 
 
68 Must the Bible Go 
 
 weakness of their own. A striking instance of 
 this indifference to the moral requirements of 
 critical investigations is made known in a cor- 
 respondence between Mr. Wiener and Drs. Driver 
 and Briggs, editors of the International Critical 
 Commentary. This correspondence, relating to 
 Dr. Skinner's Commentary on Genesis, and origi- 
 nally published in the Bibliotheca Sacra Quarterly, 
 may now be seen in Mr. Wiener's latest book — 
 Pentateuchal Studies, published by the Bibliotheca 
 Sacra Co., Oberlin, Ohio. Mr. Wiener lays stress 
 on the following points : " ( i ) For a century and a 
 half the critics followed Astruc's clue practically 
 without textual investigation; (2) When recent 
 textual researches had rendered their position in- 
 secure, Dr. Skinner deliberately misrepresented 
 the facts in an attempt to bolster up the documen- 
 tary theory; (3) When the attention of the gen- 
 eral editors was drawn to this, they took no steps 
 to undeceive the public, which had been deceived 
 under the cover and sanction of their names, and 
 put forward the contentions contained in the joint 
 letters/' In a subsequent correspondence with 
 Dr. Gordon of the Presbyterian College, Mon- 
 treal, who undertook to defend Dr. Skinner, Mr. 
 
Must the Bible Go 69 
 
 Wiener justifies his course in the following indict- 
 ment against the Wellhausen critics : 
 
 "I find that the Wellhausen theories are sup- 
 ported by a large number of professors in various 
 parts of the world, who have enormous power 
 by virtue of their positions, the numbers of their 
 supporters and the extent to which they and their 
 supporters control the general and technical press. 
 The power is used with the utmost unscrupulous- 
 ness to prevent any opponent of theirs from get- 
 ting a fair hearing and to induce their pupils and 
 the general public to believe that their theories are 
 unchallengeably true. There are many ways of 
 being dishonest and as a general rule the Wellhau- 
 sen critics use more caution than Dr. Skinner has 
 done ; but with a few striking exceptions they fall 
 as far short of the standards of conduct observed 
 by honorable laymen as does Dr. Skinner himself. 
 As a result, I have been driven to adopt the course 
 that I have followed in this instance to expose the 
 methods by which the Wellhausen theory is main- 
 tained. If Dr. Gordon or any other critic finds 
 this plain statement of fact unpalatable, the rem- 
 edy for this state of affairs lies in his own hands. 
 Let him take the works of the conservative writers 
 
70 Must the Bible Go 
 
 and tackle them honestly, grappling with each 
 point in turn, refuting it or admitting its validity 
 publicly. Then and only then will he have the 
 right to pronounce our opinion as to who is or is 
 not 'simple, sincere and absolutely candid/ " 
 
 That these are not random statements may be 
 seen from an incident told by Eduard Hertlein in 
 an essay on "Liberal Theology and Science" pub- 
 lished in Die Tat as a sort of counter-reply to 
 Julicher's polemical essay on "The Placing of a 
 Prussian Theological Seminary Under Guardian- 
 ship." He exposes the falsity of the theory that 
 liberalism stands for freedom of research and fair 
 play. He says : 
 
 "Some years ago I wrote an article on the 12th 
 chapter of Revelation. In it I showed that it was 
 not at all necessary to see in this fragment a 
 heathen myth; rather that one was only on the 
 right track when one regarded it as an allegorical 
 report concerning a persecution of the Christians. 
 . . . From this point of view the theory that 
 this old Christian document, glorifying a super- 
 natural and not merely human Christ, was excep- 
 tional among contemporary documents, threat- 
 ened to fall away. I placed my MSS. at the dis- 
 
Must the Bible Go 71 
 
 posal of one after another of the theological re- 
 views which are generally supposed to serve the 
 'free' theology. Among the reasons for refusing 
 to publish it, perhaps the most interesting was that 
 the publishers did not wish to lose subscribers. It 
 was probably also the most honest. But the others 
 also gave me clearly to understand how difficult 
 it is to publish anything in a scientific organ of the 
 'free' theology which goes against the current of 
 the ordinary highly questionable (critical) 
 methods." 
 
72 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "In his History of the Criminal Law, Sir James 
 Fitz james Stephens places on record the matured 
 judgment of the Judicial Bench that no kind of 
 evidence needs more the test of cross-examination 
 than that of experts. In no other sphere save that 
 of religious controversy would sensible people ac- 
 cept the dicta of experts until they had been thus 
 tested; and yet the history of the higher 
 criticismumovement gives abundant proof that no 
 class of experts is more untrustworthy than the 
 critic." — Sir Robert Anderson, The Bible and 
 Modern Criticism. 
 
 "At the bar we sometimes find a man's logic 
 swamped by his learning; and so it is in theology. ,, 
 — Lord Hatherly (Lord Chancellor of England) 
 in a letter to the Bishop of Durham. 
 
 "How can any man who cannot distinguish be- 
 tween a stone and a house, because he has first 
 fuddled himself by calling both 'sanctuaries/ 
 claim to speak with authority on complicated 
 questions of historical development, or pretend to 
 possess any insight into the meaning and work- 
 ing of institutions ?" — Wiener, The Origin of the 
 Pentateuch, 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
 
 TRUTH, CONTINUED— OBJECTIVISM 
 
 AND GENERAL CULTURE 
 
 I mentioned Sincerity as the first requisite to 
 the attainment of truth. No man can be trusted 
 in a quest of this kind, unless his desire for truth 
 be the controlling motive of the quest. If this de- 
 sire be colored by the personal element of devotion 
 to one's theory, by the disposition to make that 
 theory itself the criterion of truth and personal 
 satisfaction the end of its establishment, the mind 
 will become opaque to the light. There will be no 
 light to give out, for none can be received. Sin- 
 cerity alone will furnish a transparent medium for 
 the light of truth. This cannot exist where mixed 
 motives prevail. The instances cited were intend- 
 ed to prove this. We cannot characterize as sin- 
 cere a man who contends for a theory against 
 facts; who clings to preconceived notions in the 
 face of proof presented by his opponents and even 
 refuses to consider such proof. 
 
 73 
 
74 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Cognate with this quality of sincerity is what I 
 may call, for want of a better phrase, the objective 
 disposition — the disposition to objectify the con- 
 sciousness and consider the case from the view- 
 point of the time, place and person whose history 
 is in discussion. To present themes of the past, 
 one must project himself among the people and 
 scenes of the past. The realist is the true artist. 
 "Paint ;me as I am, warts and all!" said Cromwell 
 to the painter before whom he sat for a picture. 
 An artist who designed to paint a Dutchman 
 would not use an American for his model. Dur- 
 ing his student days the writer would occasionally 
 visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New 
 York City. He recalls how amused he was at the 
 anachronism of a painting of the Crucifixion. The 
 artist was evidently a Dutchman, for his figures 
 were Dutch; there was not a Jewish or Roman 
 physiognomy on the canvas. There stood near 
 the cross a typical Dutchman with medieval sword 
 hanging by his side. The whole scene was sub- 
 jective, and betrayed the artist's inability to ob- 
 jectify the scene and paint a real Jewish-Roman 
 picture. 
 
Must the Bible Go 75 
 
 Not unlike this is the subjectivity of German 
 and English rationalists who conceiving a theory 
 of development for the history of Israel ignore 
 Hebrew idioms and make the ancient Israelite 
 talk and act like a modern Teuton. These men do 
 not go to the Bible for a hypothesis ; they take one 
 to the Bible which is then expected to conform to 
 it. One does not need to be a scholar, to see the 
 absurdity of this. The subjective reasoning of 
 the critics has nothing in common with the object- 
 ive facts of Scripture, which have again and again 
 proved to be the facts of archaeology. This 
 reasoning, however dignified by a show of learn- 
 ing, is no better than that of the colored preacher 
 who had evolved a critical theory of his own con- 
 cerning the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israel- 
 ites. He said the Red Sea had frozen over, and 
 the Israelites crossed easily, but the Egyptians 
 assaying to do so with their heavy chariots, broke 
 through the ice and were drowned. One of his 
 hearers objected that geography showed this took 
 place in the tropics, and how could ice form in the 
 tropics? The old darky was ready w r ith his sub- 
 jectivism. "Pse glad you axed dat question, caze 
 it gibs me a chance to explain. You see dat war a 
 
76 Must the Bible Go 
 
 great while ago before dey had any geog'aphy, 
 and before dare war any tropics." 
 
 So, as already stated, the critics originally de- 
 clared the Pentateuch could not have been written 
 by Moses, because that was a great while ago, 
 before they had any writing and before there was 
 any code of law; and they were no more correct 
 than the colored preacher. 
 
 We may well adopt the language of the learned 
 Jewish scholar of London, before mentioned, re- 
 specting a critical position he had demolished: 
 "We can only express the hope that a time may 
 come when some sympathy with the Hebrew 
 genius and its methods of expression may be 
 deemed an indispensable precondition of the 
 task of producing a commentary on a Hebrew 
 book." And Prof. Sayce strikingly remarks: 
 "A document written in accordance with the 
 critical requirements of a German professor can 
 never have come to us from the ancient East." 
 
 The fatal objection to higher criticism is that it 
 will not allow the Scriptures to speak for them- 
 selves. These are treated, to quote Prof. Orr, "like 
 criminal suspects, whose every word is to be 
 doubted unless hostile cross-examination fails to 
 
Must the Bible Go 77 
 
 shake it or independent confirmation of it can be 
 produced. Like other witnesses the Bible writers 
 are entitled to be heard with prima facia presump- 
 tion of their honesty." No better answer to this 
 subjective treatment of the Scriptures has been 
 made than Prof. James Robertson's statement 
 concerning the methods generally employed by 
 those who advocate a very late date of large parts 
 of the Pentateuch. These methods, he says, "are 
 open to the objections, that they underrate the 
 literary attainments and religious standing of 
 earlier times, or undervalue the insight and guid- 
 ance possessed by the sacred writers, or even do 
 violence to the documents, by attributing to the 
 authors a mode of writing history which seems 
 artificial, and inconsistent with the manifest hon- 
 esty and simplicity of purpose which they dis- 
 play." (The Old Testament and Its Contents.) 
 What Lessing says of the New Testament 
 will apply with equal force to the Old Testa- 
 ment: "If now Livy and Dionysius and Poly- 
 bius and Tacitus are treated so frankly and 
 nobly that we do not put them to the rack for 
 every syllable, why not also Matthew and Mark 
 and Luke and John." The "why not" is too much 
 
78 Must the Bible Go 
 
 for the higher critics. Their ingenuity is a source 
 of amusement rather than instruction to sensible 
 people. When Wilfred Ward showed Huxley 
 several different accounts of the Metaphysical 
 Society and its doings, and pointed out a number 
 of discrepancies between the accounts, the latter 
 said, "Don't find any more or the German critics 
 will prove that the Society never existed. ,, There 
 is scarcely a notable piece of writing in existence 
 which could not by the method of higher criticism 
 be resolved into divers independent fragments. It 
 has been tried on an ode of Burns. He wrote the 
 ode in April, 1786, and the incidents are known; 
 but the application of certain canons of criticism 
 disprove the facts and demand three men to do 
 the work. 
 
 (Cited by Dr. Herbert W. Magoun in an able 
 article — A Layman's View of the Critical History 
 — in Bibliotheca Sacra for January, 1913. Refer- 
 ence is also made to the manner in which a bril- 
 liant author touches "at every turn the weak spots 
 of Homeric criticism." "By applying the methods 
 of Robert, Bethe, Leaf, and Murray to poetry he 
 has written himself, he shows that it is the work 
 of many men in many ages.") 
 
Must the Bible Go 79 
 
 Prof. Mead, of Hartford, to expose the absurd- 
 ity of subjective criticism, proved that the Epistle 
 to the Romans consisted of several independent 
 documents. The critics have carried the method 
 so far that single sentences are cut to pieces and 
 the fragments assigned to different authors. No 
 man with ordinary good sense believes that this is 
 anything but pure imagination. 
 
 The remark of Matthew Arnold is an apt de- 
 scription of the unreliability of such misnamed 
 scholarship : "After all," he says, "shut a number 
 of men up to make study and learning the business 
 of their lives, and how many of them for want of 
 some discipline or other, seem to lose all balance 
 of judgment, all common sense." 
 
 Diversities of style and seeming contradictions 
 are a large part of the stock in trade handled by 
 the critics. Yet Dr. Heinrici, quoted by Professor 
 Green, calls attention to Scherer's ingenious 
 analysis of the Prologue of Faust in his Goethe 
 Studies, as an instance of how precarious is the 
 subjective method of determining the question of 
 the authorship of a composition. Scherer pro- 
 posed to explain the diversities of style and inner 
 contradictions from "differences in the time of 
 
80 Must the Bible Go 
 
 composition and subsequent combination. And 
 now the oldest manuscript of Faust has been pub- 
 lished by Erich Schmidt, which proves that it was 
 the 'young Goethe' who wrote the prologue at 
 one effort essentially as it now stands. It is the 
 same 'young Goethe' who speaks both in the fer- 
 ment of youth and in a disillusioned old age." 
 
 Would the critics fare any better than Scherer 
 did with his analysis of Goethe's Prologue, if the 
 original manuscripts of these writings should 
 turn up ? As it is, the reason of the case is against 
 them. The following additional examples are in 
 point : 
 
 "No critic who might be given a complete set of 
 the works of James Russell Lowell, all unknown 
 to him, could consistently declare the Bigelow 
 Papers and The Vision of Sir Launfal were writ- 
 ten by the same man. But we know they were. 
 Or if we took a historic drama of Shakespeare, 
 where we know Beaumont entered into composite 
 authorship with the great dramatist, what critic 
 would confidently attempt the task of declaring 
 the separate writings of each? Mr. Gladstone's 
 literary style at eighty was quite different from 
 that which marked his writings at thirty. Criti- 
 
Must the Bible Go 81 
 
 cism would hesitate that, according to its prin- 
 ciples, one man had written both products from 
 his pen." — Dr. Howard Agnew Johnston, Bible 
 Criticism and the Average Man. 
 
 "Let the Indian Penal Code which was drafted 
 by Macaulay be contrasted with the speeches and 
 ballads of the same writer and similar divergen- 
 cies of vocabulary and rhythm will at once be- 
 come apparent. If it be urged that Macaulay 
 came after a period of long literary development, 
 I answer (i) that it is impossible to lay down 
 narrow rules which no genius can transcend, and 
 (2) that no man, however gifted, could have writ- 
 ten "dooms" and speeches in the same vocabulary 
 and rhythm and made a success of both. A man 
 of genius who found himself confronted with such 
 very different tasks could not avoid creating the 
 means of executing them. In a word, I conceive 
 that in each case the style was merely a tool 
 forged by Moses for the accomplishment of his 
 purpose." — Wiener, The Origin of the Penta- 
 teuch. 
 
 Another requisite to the attainment of truth, 
 especially in a matter of this kind, is General Cul- 
 ture. I may illustrate by an incident I once read 
 
82 Must the Bible Go 
 
 about. A French farmer was standing in an art 
 gallery before a painting of a bridleless horse that 
 was foaming at the mouth. The artist whose 
 painting it was being near and observing the 
 farmer laugh, came up and asked him what he was 
 laughing at. He replied, "At the fool who made 
 that picture." "Why," exclaimed the artist, "it 
 is the greatest success of the season ; everybody is 
 talking about it." The farmer simply said, "Any 
 fool ought to know that a horse does not foam at 
 the mouth unless he has a bit in it." It is said the 
 artist immediately had the picture taken down. 
 
 That painter, like the higher critic, had a great 
 deal of technical knowledge and could paint, which 
 the farmer could not do, but the latter had a kind 
 of knowledge which the artist needed to avoid 
 making "a fool of himself" when he set about 
 painting a horse. He pursued the subjective 
 method of the critics — conceiving nothing to be 
 something and then publishing it as a fact. The 
 statement of Prof. Willis J. Beecher will sufficient- 
 ly emphasize the importance of this qualification 
 for Bible study and criticism : 
 
 "It would be difficult to imagine anything more 
 mischievous than this notion that experts in 
 
Must the Bible Go 83 
 
 scholarship are the only persons qualified to pass 
 on biblical problems. Into these problems enter 
 questions that depend on one's knowledge of 
 Hebrew or Syriac, or of Oriental antiquities ; but 
 into them also enter even more importantly ques- 
 tions of ordinary living, questions of sentiment, 
 all sorts of questions of human experience. A 
 learned man who lacks religious sympathy, and 
 lacks shrewdness and experiences in human living 
 is less well equipped for Bible study than the un- 
 learned person who has these qualifications." 
 
 The Saturday Evening Post relates an incident 
 concerning Senator William P. Frye, of Maine, 
 and Agassiz the scientist, which shows the irre- 
 sistible force of fact when weighed against theory. 
 On one occasion the Senator, after returning from 
 his summer outing to the Penobscot woods of 
 Maine, met the celebrated naturalist to whom he 
 described his experience. "Among the triumphs," 
 he said, "was the capture of a speckled trout that 
 weighed fully eight pounds." Dr. Agassiz smiled 
 and said: "Reserve that for the credulous and con- 
 vivial circles of the rod and reel celebrants, but 
 spare the feelings of a sober scientist/' 
 
84 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "This is not a campaign whopper I'm telling; I 
 weighed that trout carefully, and it was an eight 
 pounder/' 
 
 "My dear Mr. Frye," remonstrated Agassiz, 
 "permit me to inform you that sahalinus fonti- 
 nalis never attains that extraordinary weight. 
 The creature you caught could not have been a 
 speckled trout. All the authorities on ichthyology 
 would disprove your claim." 
 
 "All that I can say to that," replied Senator 
 Frye, "is that there are, then, bigger fish in Maine 
 than are dreamed of in your noble science." As 
 they parted, the Senator added : "If you will estab- 
 lish a summer school somewhere under the 
 shadows of Mount Katahdin, I'll wager that it 
 will not be long before you will have occasion to 
 alter your text-books." 
 
 The next season found the Maine statesman at 
 his usual avocation in the Maine woods. One day 
 he caught a speckled trout that weighed nine 
 pounds. He packed it in ice and sent it to his 
 friend Agassiz. A few days later he went to the 
 station where he received his mail and telegrams. 
 One of the latter was a message from the great 
 
Must the Bible Go 85 
 
 scientist, which read: "The science of a lifetime 
 kicked to death by a fact. Agassiz." 
 The application to the critics is evident. 
 
86 Must the Bible Go 
 
 'The procedure of the critics in treating the 
 sources so arbitrarily, and at the same time want- 
 ing to draw a faithful historical picture, is a con- 
 tradictio in adjecto and forfeits a priori every pre- 
 tence to credibility." — Moller, Are the Critics 
 Right? p. 146. 
 
 "The ark sometimes fell into the hands of the 
 Philistines, but the Philistines could not do any- 
 thing with the ark of God. It was of no use to 
 them. Sooner or later they must hand it back to 
 Israel. The interpretation of Scripture will re- 
 ceive no benefit or light worth speaking of, but 
 from the Church of Jesus Christ herself. . . . 
 The real light on the Scripture can only proceed 
 from those who, by the selfsame Holy Ghost 
 which breathed the Scriptures, have been taught 
 to believe the things that are contained in the 
 Scriptures/' — Adolph Saphir, The Divine Unity 
 of Scripture. 
 
 "It is ignorance of Christ which turns the 
 Scriptures into a dark, inexplicable riddle. ,, — 
 Birks's Modern Rationalism, 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
 TRUTH (CONTINUED)— HIGHER CRITI- 
 CISM EXPOSED IN THE LIGHT OF 
 COMMON SENSE 
 
 From what has already been advanced, it is 
 evident that higher critics are not as competent to 
 deal with this question as men whose judgment is 
 balanced by qualities lacking in the former. If 
 there were nothing but plain common sense to 
 guide deliberation, it would be sufficient to con- 
 demn the absurd and wicked assumptions of 
 higher criticism and utterly to wipe out its con- 
 clusions. Of this quality in relation to the subject 
 I wish now to speak. 
 
 First, then, in opposition to the spirit and rea- 
 soning of higher criticism, common sense dictates 
 that the Bible should have a square deal — that it 
 should be allowed to speak for itself. The critics 
 as a class are too busy trying to establish a con- 
 jectural hypothesis to think with candor upon the 
 words of Scripture. "The entrance of Thy words 
 
 87 
 
88 Must the Bible Go 
 
 giveth light." But light is for the eye, whose 
 power of vision depends on freedom from the 
 morbific influence of prepossession. The first con- 
 dition of moral perception is a mind divested of 
 prejudice, openness to light. To such a mind the 
 Scriptures will demonstrate their harmony and 
 truthfulness. The experience of Dr. Howard 
 Kelly of Johns Hopkins University, is a striking 
 illustration of the fact stated. This eminent physi- 
 cian and scientist writes : "I have within the last 
 twenty years of my life come out of uncertainty 
 and doubt into faith which is an absolute dominat- 
 ing conviction of the truth and about which I 
 have not the shadow of doubt." Once profoundly 
 disturbed about the traditional faith and flounder- 
 ing in the bog of higher criticism, he got out by 
 this means: "One day it occurred to me to see 
 what the Book had to say for itself/' The result 
 was, he firmly believed the Bible to be the inspired 
 word of God, and that Jesus Christ is the Divine 
 Saviour of the world. How reasonable the 
 method, how simple the process of reaching cer- 
 tainty concerning the Scriptures, and how glo- 
 rious the personal consequence ! 
 
Must the Bible Go 89 
 
 Allied with this thought is the proposition that 
 common sense affirms it is unfair to treat the 
 Bible, as in no sense different from other litera- 
 ture. The Bible claims to be the product not of 
 human sagacity and foresight, but of Divine in- 
 spiration, and to be, therefore, a supernatural 
 revelation which was miraculously attested. As 
 such it is entitled to a chance to vindicate itself 
 not only by such principles of ratiocination as ap- 
 ply to it in common with other literature, but also 
 by those peculiar marks and accompaniments 
 which pertain alone to a Divine revelation. 
 
 Hence to bring to the study of the Scriptures 
 the settled notion that "there is no true prophecy/' 
 and "no true miracle," is to prejudge the case and 
 rule oneself out of court as incompetent to proceed 
 with the work of investigation. This is exactly 
 what the originators of higher criticism have 
 done, and if professed evangelicals who have 
 joined this school still assert allegiance to a Divine 
 revelation, they do so inconsistently with the fun- 
 damental arguments of the school; they do, in 
 fact, cast away the substance of inspiration and 
 substitute the kernel of rationalistic criticism, re- 
 taining only the shell of orthodoxy. 
 
90 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Two things are observable of these followers of 
 Wellhausen & Co. — they ignore not merely the 
 governing purpose of the sacred writer, but the 
 promised agency of the Divine Spirit in the pro- 
 duction of his work, and they take no account of 
 the spiritual character of the Scriptures. They 
 treat the Scriptures as uninspired, in the peculiar 
 sense asserted therein, and as secular — in a word, 
 as distinctly human writings with all the limita- 
 tions of such writings and none of the safeguards 
 assured by divine agency. The New as well as 
 the Old Testament suffers by this emasculation. 
 The apostles are turned against Christ, and Christ 
 Himself is robbed of authority. It means nothing 
 that Christ declared His apostles should be guided 
 into all truth by the Holy Spirit, if their writings 
 contradict His teachings or are not in the highest 
 sense authoritative. Nothing? It wipes out the 
 idea of inspiration and leaves us without a revela- 
 tion. 
 
 The low, secular notion concerning the Scrip- 
 tures, conceived by the critics, is a flagrant cause 
 of false reasoning and renders impossible a cor- 
 rect understanding of these writings. We meet 
 this wrong conception and erroneous reasoning at 
 
Must the Bible Go 91 
 
 every turn. Two examples will sufficiently em- 
 phasize one of the serious deficiencies of higher 
 criticism. Reference has been made to the inter- 
 changeable use of certain names. By this it is not 
 implied that such a use of names was arbitrary. 
 Higher critics make the mention of such names 
 the basis of their documentary theory, but com- 
 mon sense finds in the spiritual character of the 
 Scriptures a convincing reason why the same 
 writer should employ different terms and phrases 
 in his treatment of a subject. The names which 
 designate the Divine Being — Elohim (God) and 
 Jehovah (Lord) — are in point. The former is 
 His creative name, the name which describes His 
 original relation to the work of creation while 
 the latter sets forth His personal unfolding to 
 that work, His covenant, redemptive character. 
 Hence, the inspired author of Genesis would use 
 Elohim only in the first chapter, but would need, 
 in subsequent chapters, another designation also, 
 because he was to bring out additional aspects of 
 the Divine character. 
 
 The other example, to be adduced as evincing 
 the want of discernment on the part of these 
 critics, is the account of certain features of the 
 
92 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Tabernacle. Wellhausen, notwithstanding ex- 
 press statements in Maccabees that the golden 
 altar and golden table were both carried away 
 by Antiochus Epiphanes and renewed at the feast 
 of dedication, questions the existence of an altar 
 of incense, even in the second temple, the chief 
 ground of his denial being the fact that in 
 Exodus the command for the making of the 
 altar of r incense does not appear where we 
 might expect it, in chapters 25-29, but at the 
 commencement of chapter 30. The explana- 
 tion for this order is Divine and cannot be seen 
 by those who find only a human development 
 with no typical or prophetic outlook in the Leviti- 
 cal Economy. The altar of incense represented 
 the priestly ministration of worship which could 
 take place only after the events symbolized by the 
 other parts of the tabernacle; hence this altar 
 could be made only after the other pieces of fur- 
 niture. The entire tabernacle teaches the Divine 
 process of man's recovery from sin to God, 
 through incarnation and atonement, the Lord 
 God coming out of His holy place (where the Ark 
 of the Covenant with its mediating mercy seat 
 lay hid) through the outer sanctuary (where the 
 
Must the Bible Go 93 
 
 golden candlestick and table of shewbread stood 
 for the "Light of the World" and the "Bread of 
 Life," the essential nature of the incarnate God) 
 to the meeting place between the sinner and God, 
 at the brazen altar (typifying the Cross) where 
 the sin-bearer dies and the ground of reconcilia- 
 tion is effected. On this ground the high priest 
 (who typifies Jesus Christ) can institute worship 
 in His church (altar of incense) and shed light by 
 His Spirit (candlestick) and become food (shew- 
 bread) to believers. Christ could not enter upon 
 His priestly ministry till He had made an atone- 
 ment for sin, but as He had no sin to be washed 
 away Himself, the laver of regeneration does not 
 appear in the order of the typical system till after 
 the altar of incense. So believers are reconciled 
 at the cross before they can truly worship ; but as 
 they have sin to be cleansed away as well as sins 
 to be forgiven, they must be regenerated as well 
 as reconciled; hence the placing of the laver for 
 the priesthood of believers after the high priest 
 has made atonement and passed within the vail to 
 appear in the presence of God for us. 
 
 Sir Robert Anderson has truly said: "Not a 
 single student of prophecy can be found in the 
 
94 Must the Bible Go 
 
 ranks of the critics; not a single individual who 
 understands the Pentateuch as 'the word of the 
 beginning of Christ/ In other words, the critics 
 know nothing of typology of Scripture. And 
 therefore they are ignorant of the language in 
 which Christian doctrine is taught in the New 
 Testament. " 
 
 All this glorious, symbolical teaching is nothing 
 to them ; and theological professors and Christian 
 ministers who adopt their premises and promul- 
 gate their conclusions stultify their profession 
 and betray the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. Their 
 protestations of loyalty to the truth are vain. 
 They must be judged by the logical and practical 
 results of their alliance with the deniers of the 
 faith. Dr. Clarke, whose lectures on the Use of 
 the Scriptures might more appropriately be de- 
 scribed as the abuse of the Scriptures, is a con- 
 spicuous example of men who sit in the chairs of 
 Christian institutions and play into the hands of 
 outspoken enemies of a Divine Revelation. In 
 this book Dr. Clarke asserts, "We have no histor- 
 ical narrative of the beginning of sin, and theology 
 receives from the Scriptures no record of that be- 
 ginning/' and goes on to reject the entire sacri- 
 
Must the Bible Go 95 
 
 ficial system of the Old Testament as having no 
 relevancy to New Testament teaching and no 
 bearing on Christian theology. 
 
 Even He who "spake as never man spake" is 
 not spared from this wholesale repudiation of 
 Scripture narratives. The position is taken that 
 Christ taught ignorantly concerning His literal, 
 personal return to the earth ; that His "foresight" 
 was "limited," and that "the advent hope ex- 
 pressed in genuine words of Jesus" has "no place 
 at all in the gift and revelation of Christ, and 
 therefore our principle requires us to drop it and 
 all that belongs to it out of our Christian theolo- 
 gy." This is the sum of his reasoning: "Visible 
 advent, simultaneous resurrection, assemblage of 
 all men for judgment, millennial reign of Christ 
 on earth, — all is Jewish survival, historically dis- 
 credited by the work of Christ Himself ; it is a re- 
 mainder from pre-Christian life and hope, demon- 
 strated to be non-Christian by the different course 
 of Christian history; wherefore it forms no part 
 of Christian theology." 
 
 Thus this man, miscalled Christian teacher, 
 takes his place with "the scoffers in the last days, 
 saying, where is the promise of His coming, for 
 
96 Must the Bible Go 
 
 since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as 
 they were from the beginning of the creation." 
 Dr. Clarke changes the apostle's phraseology a 
 bit, but his denial is identical with that of infidel 
 scoffers ; the promise of Christ's coming has been 
 discredited by the course of history ! But the last 
 word of history has not been written yet, and Dr. 
 Clarke and his kind will one day realize the truth 
 of the solemn declaration: "Heaven and earth 
 shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
 away." As an attempt to be irenical, to make the 
 new theology popular, this book of Dr. Clarke's is 
 of a piece with the worst anti-Christian writing of 
 the times and forms a scandalous mess of assump- 
 tion and superficial reasoning. Infinitely superior 
 to this "darkening of counsel by words without 
 knowledge" is the strong, common sense view of 
 old Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. In his dis- 
 course on the Freeness of the Gospel he says : 
 
 "It is impossible to look into the Bible with the 
 most ordinary attention without feeling that we 
 have got into a moral atmosphere quite different 
 from that which we breathe in the world and in 
 the world's literature. In the Bible God is pre- 
 sented as doing everything and as being the cause 
 
Must the Bible Go 97 
 
 and end of everything; and man appears only as 
 he stands related to God, either as a revolted 
 creature or as the subject of Divine grace. 
 Whereas in the world, and in the books which 
 contain the history of the world, according to its 
 own judgment, man appears to be everything and 
 there is as little reference to God as if there were 
 no such being in the universe. ,, 
 
 Common sense recognizes this difference and 
 exalts the Word of God. The crime of higher 
 criticism is that it eliminates God from the Bible 
 and exalts the critic. 
 
98 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "Wellhausen, whom others have followed, pro- 
 fesses (Prolegomena, p. 14) to have learned from 
 Vatke 'the most and the best' ; but the latter ar- 
 rived at his construction of history not by un- 
 prejudiced historical investigation, but from his 
 purely dogmatic preconceptions on the philosophy 
 of religion." — Moller, Are the Critics Right? 
 
 P. 213. . 
 
 "In Wellhausen's review of the history, he has 
 much to say of the gradual rise of feasts from the 
 presentation of first-fruits, and of their annual 
 observance at neighborhood sanctuaries, and the 
 growth of larger sanctuaries towards the close of 
 the period of the Judges. . . . But the whole 
 thing is spun out of his own brain. It is as purely 
 fictitious as any astronomical map would be of 
 the other side of the moon."— Prof. W. H. Green. 
 
 "The fact remains that other branches of the 
 Semitic family ran into mythology, while the He- 
 brew race alone was preserved from it." — Profes- 
 sor James Robertson, Early Religion of Israel 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
 TRUTH (CONTINUED)— HIGHER CRITI- 
 CISM EXPOSED IN THE LIGHT OF 
 COMMON SENSE 
 
 Common sense while recognising the difference 
 between the Bible and the world's literature is 
 quick to perceive the absurdity of the reasoning of 
 higher critics when tried upon the latter. Ex- 
 amples were cited to show how the documentary 
 hypothesis of the critics is demolished by the ap- 
 plication of its principles to a writing known to be 
 the work of a single hand. The fact that it is pos- 
 sible by this method to make such a writing con- 
 sist of the work of several authors utterly dis- 
 credits that hypothesis and confirms the strong 
 evidence supporting the Biblical position. The 
 self-assurance of higher critics is their most 
 notable characteristic. When they are through 
 with the Bible, it is more wonderful than Joseph's 
 coat. They resolve writings that possess many 
 marks of unity into a patch-work of numerous 
 
 99 
 
100 Must the Bible Go 
 
 authors — even reducing sentences into fragments 
 with manifold origin — and proclaim their product 
 true history. We suggest they try their skill on 
 some piece of literature that is the joint work of 
 two or more hands, and point out the parts com- 
 posed by each hand. Not one of them would 
 assume to dogmatize concerning the Besant and 
 Rice novels as they do about the Pentateuch and 
 other portions of the Old Testament. Here is fic- 
 tion whose dual authorship they cannot detect. 
 Yet they are cock-sure that the Pentateuch is the 
 work of many authors and editors and that the 
 various fragments must be assigned to this, that, 
 and the other unknown person, designated sym- 
 bolically as J, E, JE, D, JED, J-i, J-2, J-3, etc., 
 P-i, P-2, P-3, etc., R, R-i, R-2, R-3, etc., etc., 
 with, no limit set to this addition. Common sense 
 is indispensable to a sane, sober criticism and is 
 one of the strongest guarantees of the triumph of 
 conservative Biblical scholarship. 
 
 G. K. Chesterton, the acute English novelist, 
 essayist, critic and philosopher attacks the higher 
 critics in a leading magazine under the sarcastic 
 caption of "High-Brows and Humbugs/' and 
 with merciless logic lays bare their "quackery." 
 
Must the Bible Go 101 
 
 He declares that the spirit of higher criticism "is, 
 in its collective quality, a spirit of hypocrisy and 
 impudence. Its principle is to demand for inde- 
 cision the most abject worship that was ever of- 
 fered to certitude." He hits the homage paid to 
 higher critics in this fashion: "Those who sit at 
 the feet of the higher critics in literature use the 
 language of liberty because it is almost imposed 
 on them by law ; but their true atmosphere is not 
 liberty or even of the search after truth. They do 
 not believe by choice. They doubt by authority." 
 Mr. Chesterton's argument embraces an analysis 
 of "a learned and skeptical article" on the story of 
 Lady Godiva which, he says, "contains every one 
 of the vanities, stupidities and falsehoods with 
 which I am taxing what is called the higher 
 criticism." 
 
 Another example of good lay sense is the fol- 
 lowing Canadian newspaper's reply to a destruc- 
 tive critic and university professor : — 
 
 "One of the constant sources of amusement to 
 every journalist is furnished by the mistakes of 
 the critics who think they can pick out the work of 
 the various writers on a newspaper. Unless there 
 is some special circumstance to guide them, they 
 
102 Must the Bible Go 
 
 are apt to be astray three times out of four. With 
 these examples of the fallibility of literary criti- 
 cism, the average journalist will not be disposed 
 to 'take much stock' in the claim of the higher 
 critics to be able to carve up the books of the Old 
 Testament among a number of mythical authors 
 and collaborators, claiming that this chapter of 
 Genesis was from one source and that from 
 another, - that this portion of Isaiah is by one 
 author and that by some other, as Dr. George 
 Coulson Workman asserts they can do, in a series 
 of articles which he is writing for the "Canadian 
 Magazine.' While our critics cannot determine 
 the authorship of much current literature, while 
 they cannot decide who wrote the letters of Junius, 
 or whether or not Shakespeare or Bacon wrote 
 the famous plays, though they have abundance of 
 circumstantial evidence to work upon, they are 
 asking too much when they expect the world to 
 give up the traditional view of the Scriptures and 
 accept their fantastic and far-fetched theories. 
 Let the critics show that they can solve some of 
 the literary mysteries of the present or the imme- 
 diate past before they undertake to dogmatize as 
 
Must the Bible Go 103 
 
 to the composition of books written thousands of 
 years ago." 
 
 Common sense notes the strength of the argu- 
 ment from PROBABILITY in favor of the con- 
 servative position. So strong is this argument 
 that it amounts to a moral certainty against the 
 subjective theorizing of higher criticism, stamp- 
 ing the conclusions of this school as incredible. It 
 is not probable that the Hebrews whose lofty 
 monotheistic faith distinguished them from all 
 other nations, borrowed from the Babylonians the 
 matter contained in the early narratives of Gene- 
 sis. It seems to be a settled policy of higher critics 
 when any ground for comparison arises between 
 Hebrew literature and tradition and those of other 
 nations, to hold that the Hebrews were the bor- 
 rowers. This is incredible for the reason stated. 
 Well may we ask with Prof. James Robertson: 
 "Why should we not admit a common primeval 
 tradition, when it is thus attested by independent 
 witnesses? Nay, seeing that the Hebrew tradi- 
 tion, at the very earliest point at which we can 
 seize it, is purer and loftier than any other, why 
 should it be at all incredible that in that race, from 
 pre-Abrahamic times and in the lands from which 
 
104 Must the Bible Go 
 
 the faith of Abraham was disseminated, there 
 were found purer conceptions of God and deeper 
 intuitions into His character and operations than 
 we find elsewhere — glimmerings of a purer faith 
 which had elsewhere become obscured by poly- 
 theistic notions and practices ? Do not the results 
 of the study of comparative religion tend to show 
 that even polytheism is an aberration from a 
 simpler conception, and that the lowest forms of 
 nature — religion point to a belief in a Being whose 
 character always transcends the forms in which 
 the untutored mind tries to represent Him, and 
 is not summed up in all their attempts to give it 
 expression? That being so, why should it be a 
 thing incredible that in one quarter, a quarter 
 which in the clear light of history is found to stand 
 sharply defined from its surroundings, the souls 
 of the best should have kept themselves above 
 these degradations, and nursed within themselves 
 the higher, purer, more primary conception ; and 
 that this should have taken shape in the faith of 
 Abraham, or if we state it otherwise, formed the 
 basis on which the purer faith of Abraham was 
 reared? This will not seem incredible to any who 
 believe that there is one God and that He has been 
 
Must the Bible Go 105 
 
 the same from the beginning.' ' {Early Religion 
 of Israel ) The same writer observes, in his text- 
 book, The Old Testament and Its Contents: "If 
 the Hebrew writers have thus preserved so pure 
 an account of the manner in which God formed 
 the material world, we may give all the more 
 credence to them when they speak of God's deal- 
 ings with man in history, which is their main 
 theme. ,, 
 
 And if it be credible that this pure and lofty 
 tradition passed on with other remains of the 
 primeval revelation to the time of Moses what 
 could be more probable than that this man, whose 
 wisdom, learning, and force of character preemi- 
 nently fitted him to be both lawgiver and historian, 
 should be selected by Almighty God to make a 
 record of the facts known and revealed to him? 
 Certainly no one in any subsequent age was better 
 prepared or a more likely instrument for this 
 great work than he. 
 
 The probability of such a selection is enhanced 
 to the point of certainty by the "psychological and 
 historical incredibilities" with which the critical 
 theory is loaded. These are too numerous for 
 mention here. We are asked to believe, for ex- 
 
106 Must the Bible Go 
 
 ample, that the entire wilderness legislation with 
 portable tabernacle and practices was the fabrica- 
 tion of a time and place wherein it would be im- 
 possible of realization; that a work assumed to 
 have originated in the age of Josiah with a view 
 to effect the centralization of worship, omitted all 
 mention of Jerusalem and features of the temple 
 service introduced by David; and that — many 
 other incredibilities which refute the theory and 
 establish the Mosaic authorship of the Penta- 
 teuch. 
 
 Prof. Green has put some of these incredible 
 situations so well that we quote : "Laws are never 
 issued to regulate a state of things which has 
 passed away ages before and can by no possibility 
 be revived. What are we to think, then, of a hy- 
 pothesis which assigns the code of Deuteronomy 
 to the reign of Josiah, or shortly before it, when 
 its injunction to exterminate the Canaanites and 
 the Amalekites, who had long since disappeared, 
 would be as utterly out of date as a law in New 
 Jersey at the present time offering a bounty for 
 killing wolves and bears or royal proclamation 
 in Great Britain ordering the expulsion of the 
 Danes? A law contemplating foreign conquests 
 
Must the Bible Go 107 
 
 would have been absurd when the urgent question 
 was whether Judah could maintain its own exist- 
 ence againt the encroachments of Babylon and 
 Egypt. A law discriminating against Ammon 
 and Moab, in favor of Edom had its warrant in 
 the Mosaic period, but not in the time of the later 
 kings. Jeremiah discriminates precisely the other 
 way, promising a future restoration to Moab and 
 Ammon which he denies to Edom who is also to 
 Joel, Obadiah, and Isaiah the representative foe 
 
 of God's people The allusions to Egypt 
 
 imply familiarity with and recent residence in that 
 
 land And how can a code belong to 
 
 the time of Josiah, which, while it contemplates 
 the possible selection of a king in the future no- 
 where implies an actual regal government, but 
 vests the supreme central authority in a judge and 
 the priesthood, which lays special stress on the re- 
 quirements that the king must be a native and not 
 a foreigner, when the undisputed line of succes- 
 sion had for ages been fixed in the family of 
 David, and that he must not 'cause the people to 
 return to Egypt' as they seemed ready to do on 
 every grievance in the days of Moses, but which 
 
108 Must the Bible Go 
 
 no one ever dreamed of doing after they were 
 fairly established in Canaan ?" 
 
 But the critics must somehow explain the bare- 
 faced forgeries, and this is Wellhausen's venture: 
 
 "One can characterize the entire Priestly Code 
 as the wilderness legislation, inasmuch as it ab- 
 stracts from the natural conditions and motives 
 of the actual life of the people in the land of 
 Canaan, and rears the hierocracy on the tabula 
 rasa of the wilderness, the negation of nature, by 
 means of the bald statutes of arbitrary abso- 
 lutism.^ 
 
 Now this is not history; it is -fiction, unmixed 
 with suggestions of reality, such as invested 
 Scott's historical romances with the shadow of 
 credibility. This is to abolish history and substi- 
 tute conjecture for fact. It is, moreover, to re- 
 quire us to believe that the time of Israel's 
 decadence and corruption was the most auspicious 
 time to originate an extensive religious code, for 
 which there is no parallel in the history of man- 
 kind. On the contrary, every example of national 
 and religious growth and decay disproves the sup- 
 position. 
 
Must the Bible Go 109 
 
 "If the great events of the Exodus, the conquest 
 of Canaan, and in general the experiences which 
 had made them a nation did not impress the na- 
 tional consciousness when it was plastic and fresh, 
 are we to suppose that, for the first time when for- 
 eign nations were about to sweep them away, they 
 began to read into their worship and ceremonial a 
 meaning which had not occurred to them for cen- 
 turies ? If at a time when Hosea and Amos were 
 reminding them of the days of the youth of the 
 nation, and thus appealing to the strongest motives 
 that could influence them — if at such a time there 
 were many feasts and imposing rituals, are we to 
 suppose that not once in all these was there a com- 
 memoration of the founding of the nation, and of 
 the achievement of the nation's success ? No doubt 
 the feasts, at such times as those of Hosea and 
 Amos, would be overlaid with superstitious ob- 
 servances. But that is not the point. Because the 
 modern Greeks at Jerusalem make Easter a time 
 of riot, are we to conclude that Easter does not 
 commemorate the resurrection? What country 
 has not at one time or another, thus buried its 
 holiest associations under carnal and sensuous 
 forms ? All this does not suffice to show that the 
 
110 Must the Bible Go 
 
 better meaning does not underlie the institution ; 
 much less that a better meaning is merely an after- 
 thought, read into an empty form, just because it 
 is empty. Forms are never empty in the strict 
 sense. They are full of something. The corrupt 
 must be purged out before the clean can be poured 
 in ; and we can find no time in Israel's history at 
 which a tabula rasa was formed, and history made 
 out of nothing." (Prof. Robertson's Early Re- 
 ligion of Israel) 
 
 The same learned author, in this masterpiece 
 of reasoning, convicts the critics of falsifying his- 
 tory in the following cogent manner : — 
 
 "The men who moulded the history of Israel 
 were the men who had most to do with the pro- 
 duction and preservation of the national litera- 
 ture. We know what sort of men they were. But 
 on the modern theory, the greatest characters in 
 Israel's history, instead of being spontaneous 
 actors in a great life drama, are merely posturing 
 and acting a part on a stage. What they give us 
 as history is merely their fond idea of what his- 
 tory should have been ; in many cases it is not even 
 
Must the Bible Go 111 
 
 so much, but pure invention to give a show of an- 
 tiquity to what had to be accounted for and mag- 
 nified in their own day. History was never made 
 in this way. Men that make history such as 
 Israel's history was, are intent on great purposes, 
 moved by noble ends ; but what we are asked to 
 contemplate at the great crises and turning-points 
 is a set of men thinking how they will elaborate 
 a scheme of history. Fictions become the greatest 
 facts, and the French critic has carried out the 
 theory to its true conclusion when he ascribes the 
 great bulk of the Hebrew literature to the free 
 creation of a school of theologians after the 
 exile." 
 
 Common sense holds it is incredible that pro- 
 phetic teaching should precede the priestly legis- 
 lation. The natural order is always the reverse 
 of this. Principles of law and religion are first 
 laid down and then arise those whose duty it is to 
 expound and apply those principles. The prophets 
 were reformers, not originators. When the na- 
 tional conscience became lax and religious wor- 
 ship degenerated into formalism or idolatry, the 
 
112 Must the Bible Go 
 
 prophets denounced, not the national ordinances 
 of religion, but their perversion, and emphasized 
 the spirit of worship as that which made the form 
 acceptable. To quote Dr. Adolph Saphir : 
 
 "But what had the judges and the prophets to 
 do but to refer back again to that perfect revela- 
 tion which God had given to them, in Moses? 
 And if it had not been for that revelation through 
 Moses, and for a written record of that revelation 
 which was acknowledged to be authentic, Samuel 
 and all the prophets would have been utterly help- 
 less and without strength, in the face of an idola- 
 trous and sinful nation. . . . Their watchword 
 was 'Repentance/ 'Seek ye out the old paths/ 
 'Remember the law which my servant Moses 
 gave unto you on Mount Horeb/ " 
 
 The critical contention that the priestly legis- 
 lation followed the work of the prophets con- 
 tradicts the insistence with which they point 
 to a better sacrifice and a better cleansing for 
 heart and conscience than the blood of bulls and 
 goats. If they continually looked beyond the Le- 
 vitical sacrifices to something which these sacri- 
 fices foreshadowed, how can they be placed before 
 the sacrificial system ? They were the true expos- 
 
Must the Bible Go 113 
 
 itors of the system, unfolding its typical nature 
 and announcing its spiritual destination. 
 
 There is one argument so void of respectability 
 that we almost feel like apologizing for its repro- 
 duction here. Yet it is worth while to expose the 
 straits to which the critics are driven to make out 
 a case. The argument is that which arises against 
 the genuineness of certain writings from their 
 violation or non-observance. Universal history 
 could be falsified by this reasoning. A noted in- 
 stance of its shallowness occurs in the case of the 
 laws and institutions of Charlemagne, which had 
 disappeared before the close of the century in 
 which he died. "Those who have studied the 
 charters, laws, and chronicles of the later Car- 
 lovingian Princes most diligently are unanimous 
 in declaring that they indicate either an absolute 
 ignorance or an entire forgetfulness of the legis- 
 lation of Charlemagne." The remarkable case of 
 the loss and finding of the original manuscript of 
 Luther's lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, is 
 also in point. All Europe had been ransacked to 
 locate it. From one library after another, says 
 Professor Johann Ficker of the University of 
 
114 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Strasburg, who conducted the search, the royal 
 library at Berlin included, came the report that 
 no trace of it was to be found. Yet several years 
 later he was astonished to be informed that the 
 manuscript whose existence in answer to his 
 written inquiries, had been specifically denied 
 (and for a copy of which he had made three trips 
 to Rome) was in the Berlin library, in a show 
 case! 
 
 Does this bear any likeness to the finding of 
 the Book of the Law in the Temple during the 
 reign of Josiah, which the critics would have us 
 believe is a forgery, though it purports to be the 
 work of Moses and with a wilderness framework 
 of legislation out of date and place in that late 
 age? 
 
 If the argument from the non-observance or 
 violation of law is valid against its existence, the 
 work of the Protestant Reformer can be shown to 
 be a fabrication upon a hypothetical doctrine, and 
 the writings of Paul share with those of Moses 
 the stigma of lying imposture. 
 
 These are specimens of the learned nonsense by 
 which it is sought to make an end of the Bible as 
 
Must the Bible Go 115 
 
 an authoritative revelation of God, in the interests 
 of sheer naturalism. They could be multiplied, 
 but no purpose would be served by the act. 
 
116 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "If lying and deception have a share every time 
 that new forces arise in the development, it is 
 only a well-meant self-deception to believe that 
 we can hold to a revelation along with this ; this 
 self-deception must, however, be the more unhesi- 
 tatingly exposed the more dangerous it is, and 
 the more, under its protection, the foundation on 
 which we stand is undermined." — Moller, Are 
 the Critics Right? 
 
 "I am struck with the absence of any sign of an 
 experience distinctively Christian in many of 
 those who discuss the sanctuaries of the Christian 
 faith. . . . Some of these scholars, to judge 
 from their writings alone, do not seem even so 
 much as to have heard of a Holy Ghost. And 
 they have a fatal dread of pietism and methodism, 
 and most forms of intensely personal evangelical 
 faith. They are, like Haeckel, in their own way, 
 the victims of an intellectualism which means 
 spiritual atrophy to Christianity at last." — For- 
 syth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. 
 195. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 REQUISITES FOR THE QUEST OF 
 TRUTH (CONTINUED)— HIGHER CRITI- 
 CISM EXPOSED IN THE LIGHT OF 
 COMMON SENSE 
 
 Common Sense affirms that the Bible writers 
 were honest men and that their writings are free 
 from make-believe. THE CRITICAL THEORY 
 HOLDS THERE CAN BE HONEST FOR- 
 GERIES ! The Deuteronomic and Priestly writ- 
 ings were fabricated "in the interest of a religious 
 propaganda/' The view is not that these writ- 
 ings contain inadvertencies, unintentional mis- 
 takes, or that they "are avowedly religious fiction, 
 parables, stories framed for religious teaching, 
 and so understood from the first," but that "the 
 D. and P. writers deliberately published what pur- 
 ported to be history," when in fact "this alleged 
 history was largely invented for the purpose of 
 making it appear, falsely,, that certain religious 
 ideas and practices of their own invention had 
 existed from ancient times, and had been handed 
 117 
 
118 Must the Bible Go 
 
 down to them;" that they "deliberately promul- 
 gated an untrue history of the religion of Israel, 
 with the intention of having it accepted as true." 
 "One has got to choose," forcibly remarks Prof. 
 Willis J. Beecher, whose statement of the modern 
 view we have quoted, "between this and the opin- 
 ion that the Scriptures are truthful; he cannot 
 hold both." 
 
 Protest as they may, those who accept the 
 contentions of Wellhausen, Driver & Co., nul- 
 lify their profession of faith in the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, and make the eternal Spirit a 
 party to the most stupendous fraud in the history 
 of the world. It is the habit of such writers to 
 talk of different standards of literary honesty in 
 those days. It is sufficient to reply that men like 
 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ezra and Zachariah 
 who lived when these Old Testament frauds are 
 said to have been perpetrated were "as capable of 
 distinguishing between truth and falsehood, as 
 conscious of the sin of deceit, as jealous for the 
 honor of God, as incapable of employing lying lips 
 or a lying pen in the service of Jehovah as any of 
 our critics today." Equally strong words are 
 needed to characterize that strange perversion of 
 
Must the Bible Go 119 
 
 reason and conscience that leads a man to write, as 
 does the author of "Inspiration and the Bible," 
 that tho' certain Epistles should be forgeries, they 
 have "an intrinsic value" that they "remain a 
 possession for the church, a light and an instruc- 
 tion, a revelation tho' the writer should be some 
 unknown disciple of the great apostle, who wrote 
 as he was moved by the Holy Ghost but preferred 
 to write under the name of his Master rather than 
 obtruding his own personality" To the exclama- 
 tion of the astonished Bible reader that "this 
 questioning of Pauline authorship would repre- 
 sent the letters as forgeries and impostures," he 
 says: "The answer of that difficulty is to be 
 found in the better knowledge of the literary 
 practice of the Ancient World. It is perfectly 
 certain that a disciple of St. Paul, anxious to com- 
 municate his Master's teaching to the churches 
 would not hesitate to veil his own hand under the 
 form of a letter from his Master ; what we should 
 call 'forgery' he would call modesty." 
 
 Now, to say nothing of the difficulty of getting 
 churches that were familiar with Pauline Epistles 
 to receive as genuine an imposture, it is not "per- 
 fectly certain" that a disciple of Paul or any other 
 
120 Must the Bible Go 
 
 person with a conscience enlightened and purified 
 by the Spirit of God, would forge a writing and 
 call it "modesty." It is morally inconceivable 
 that there should have been a different standard 
 of ethics in the apostolic or post-apostolic church 
 when the Holy Spirit manifested the presence and 
 power of God in such intensity and illumination, 
 than in the modern church when Christian min- 
 isters and teachers can calmly write such a libel 
 against Him. The case of Ananias and Sapphira 
 shows how far from moving men to write a lie 
 was the Spirit of truth and holiness. The balance 
 is in favor of the early church. The claim of Dr. 
 Horton and the rest of the school is utterly erro- 
 neous and preposterous, and would leave us no 
 ethical standard whatever. For if the New Tes- 
 tament cannot furnish us such a standard, we 
 would look in vain for one. How portentous to 
 the church and religious life of the future is such 
 a perversion of New Testament ethics, it is not 
 difficult to see. We denounce such teaching as 
 Satanic and destructive of the very foundations 
 of faith, and we refuse to have fellowship with 
 those who lend themselves to its propagation. 
 These remarks demand increased emphasis 
 
Must the Bible Go 121 
 
 when applied to our Lord's positive declarations 
 concerning those books of the Old Testament 
 which the critics assert are forgeries. It is one of 
 the surest marks of moral eclipse when men pro- 
 fess faith in the Son of God and yet make Him 
 perpetuate, what on their theory is a fraud. As 
 Bishop Copleston, late Metropolitan of India, 
 said : "It is hardly possible to imagine any accu- 
 mulation of probabilities of the lower kind which 
 would not be brushed away in a moment by the 
 improbability that Almighty God should have 
 used a conscious literary forgery for the purpose 
 for which He has used the book of Deuteronomy." 
 
 Finally, common sense judges the modern view 
 by its fruits which are plainly evil. It rejects this 
 pretentious reasoning of the critics because it 
 destroys evangelical faith and divests the church 
 of real spiritual power. 
 
 Every age has its own needs and demands a 
 message suited to the hour. But the same mes- 
 sage may be required again and again, for there 
 is often a recrudescence of error. This fact makes 
 the Bible perennially fresh. The polemics of Paul 
 and John are as vital and applicable today as 
 when they were delivered against the legalists 
 
122 Must the Bible Go 
 
 and Gnostics of the ist century. It is sometimes 
 said by way of apology for the critical assaults on 
 the integrity of the Holy Scriptures that changed 
 conditions call for a re-statement of the truth. 
 But it is the truth, not its semblance or substitute, 
 that must be stated again. Truth never changes ; 
 but error assumes new guises and is to be met not 
 by some new theory about the truth, but by the 
 naked reality. 
 
 It is the failure to insist upon this fact and the 
 folly of compromising the claims of truth, that 
 frequently accounts for "changed conditions." 
 There would be no occasion for the feverish haste 
 observed in some institutions to adjust views con- 
 cerning the Bible to the conclusions of a ration- 
 alistic criticism, if those who are set for the 
 defense and confirmation of the truth would keep 
 the faith and refuse to surrender the principle of 
 inspiration or to soften its claims. The Bible 
 would vindicate itself as the directing power of 
 every epoch and the solution of every problem. 
 I have a conviction that the overmastering ques- 
 tion in our day is not social, but biblical; not 
 whether they are social exigencies, but whether 
 there will soon be anything to meet them. 
 
Must the Bible Go 123 
 
 Dr. Forsyth, in the work above mentioned, thus 
 speaks in the chapter on 'The Preacher and the 
 Age:" "I say that in the present state of the 
 Church, and certainly for the sake of the pulpit, 
 its ministers, and its future, theology is a greater 
 need than philanthropy. Because men do not 
 know where they are. They are only steering by 
 dead reckoning — when anything may happen. 
 But theology is 'taking the sun/ And it is won- 
 derful — it is dangerous — how few of our officers 
 can use the sextant for themselves. Yet what is 
 the use of captains who are more at home enter- 
 taining the passengers than navigating the ship. 
 The theology of the Bible is but the moral ade- 
 quacy and virility of the word of the Cross and 
 the thews of a powerful Gospel. A theology 
 chiefly curious or speculative, a secondary the- 
 ology, may be left to the leisure of the schools; 
 but a theology of experienced Grace, primary 
 theology, is of the essence of the Gospel. And it 
 is not merely of the bene esse, it is of the esse of 
 the Church." 
 
 To think the problems of the hour can be 
 solved by an emasculated Bible is the madness of 
 casting away the sheet anchor in the midst of a 
 
124 MubT the Bible Go 
 
 storm. One of the most solemn reminders of this 
 fact is the sad confession of Dr. Marcus Dods, a 
 distinguished Scotch critic, whose experience il- 
 lustrates the disintegrating effect of this system 
 of thought. 
 
 Among the published letters are found these 
 expressions : "I am a backslider. I used to enjoy 
 prayer, but for years I have found myself dumb. 
 Of course one can always make a prayer, but 
 prayer in the sense of asking for things has not 
 been in my case a proved force. I pray now not 
 because my own experience gives me any en- 
 couragement, but because of Christ's example 
 and command. I wish I could live as a spectator 
 through the next generation to see what they are 
 going to make of things. There will be a grand 
 turnup in matters theological, and the churches 
 won't know themselves fifty years hence. It is 
 to be hoped some little rag of faith may be left 
 when all is done. For my own part I am some- 
 times entirely under water and see no sky at all." 
 
 This confirms our thought regarding the 
 question of the hour. Can we cope with the com- 
 plicated situation of modern social life if we sub- 
 stitute for an infallible, authoritative revelation a 
 
Must the Bible Go 125 
 
 mere patchwork of men's devising with scarcely 
 "a rag of faith left," and with nothing at all to 
 make the dull conscience of the age respond to 
 higher issues ? There is coming on a generation 
 of preachers and thinkers to whom the inspiration 
 of Isaiah and of Paul is not different from that 
 of any great genius; who regard the Bible as 
 part of the world's literature, nothing more, and 
 who are uncertain about the great facts of sin and 
 redemption and the miraculous elements these in- 
 volve; mere negative characters confronted by 
 positive problems and without a vital, saving mes- 
 sage for a perishing world. Any one can see that 
 if there has been no moral fall, no spiritual ruin 
 as the Scriptures teach, there is no demand for the 
 miraculous system of the New Testament, no 
 basis for the virgin birth of Christ, no such mean- 
 ing to sin as would necessitate the principle and 
 fact of expiation, as the atonement has been 
 understood by the profoundest thinkers of the 
 past. The integrity of the New Testament is 
 bound up with the historical character of the Old 
 Testament, especially with those very portions 
 which the critics declare are derived from "the 
 raw material of myth and legend" (Prof. Geo. 
 
126 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Adam Smith). Any reverent mind can see that 
 the Bible is a vast remedial scheme for an awful 
 catastrophe in the life of man ; that the early chap- 
 ters of Genesis contain the only consistent, reli- 
 able account of that catastrophe; and that 
 throughout the Bible there runs a great purpose 
 in the call and separation of individuals, in the 
 organization of a nation with certain religious 
 rites and phenomena, and through that nation 
 the coming of an unparalleled character with a 
 teaching and a mission positively declared to be 
 the answer to what is recorded as fact in the Pen- 
 tateuch. Now if the evolutionary hypothesis of 
 the critics be true; if there has been no fall of 
 man, but on the contrary a gradual development 
 from a state of animalism, and if the religious 
 history of Israel has been simply a human rather 
 than a supernatural development, what becomes 
 of the entire New Testament claim ? Can Chris- 
 tianity as set before us in the Gospels and Epistles 
 rest upon fiction ? Can the solemn mystery of the 
 Cross have an adequate explanation in the alle- 
 gorizing fancy of uninspired men who dealt in 
 myths and legends ? The whole New Testament 
 is resolved into a series of pictures, 
 
Must the Bible Go 127 
 
 "As idle as a painted ship 
 Upon a painted ocean." 
 
 And those self-styled evangelicals who deny 
 with the critics the historical character of the 
 Genesis narratives, are self-stultified when they 
 profess belief in the fact of redemption as taught 
 in the New Testament. They only are consistent 
 who go with the radicals all the way and reject 
 in toto the doctrine of inspiration and the facts of 
 man's creation in holiness and subsequent fall 
 into sin and ruin. 
 
 This is why Socinianism is taking possession 
 of many whose church connection involves an 
 obligation i?o maintain doctrines they no longer 
 unhesitatingly accept. And this is why, if the 
 remark of Dr. Bitting, Baptist pastor in St. Louis, 
 be true, "there will never be another Ingersoll on 
 the lecture platform. ,, Certainly not, when his 
 place is taken by men who occupy the pulpits of 
 the land. Certainly not, while Theological Semi- 
 naries reek with the refuse of German rational- 
 ism. But what will the church do in the end 
 thereof? The harvest of such sowing will not 
 fully come in the generation of the sower. Teach- 
 
128 Must the Bible Go 
 
 ers whose habits of religion were formed under 
 special evangelical influence may continue to 
 practice the virtues of faith in spite of logical 
 inconsistency, when students receiving from them 
 their doctrinal bias will go on to the logical end 
 of such teaching. And the radicalism of the stu- 
 dents will become the standard of the masses. 
 Phillips Brooks in his "Lectures on Preaching" 
 observes:, "There is nothing stranger than to 
 watch how the intelligent speculations of the 
 learned become the vague prejudices of the vul- 
 gar. You can shut up nothing within the 
 scholars study door. For good or for mischief 
 all that the wise are thinking becomes in some 
 form or other the basis upon which the ignorant 
 live." 
 
 People will not care for the Bible if it is no 
 more than a human book. As the New York 
 Sun put it: "The Bishops and other clergy who 
 are undertaking to reconcile the destruction of 
 the infallibility of the Bible with the dogma and 
 doctrine of their theology have entered upon an 
 impossible task. They scuttle the ship, yet expect 
 the crew to continue confident in its seaworthi- 
 ness." 
 
Must the Bible Go 129 
 
 No wonder so many refuse to come aboard the 
 ship, and the manning of the vessel is becoming 
 problematical. A dearth of Protestant ministers 
 in Germany, the home of higher criticism, is re- 
 ported. The Alte Glaube of Leipzig, said to be 
 the ablest of the orthodox church papers, thus 
 speaks of the situation in that land : 
 
 "It is not many years since the graduates of the 
 Protestant theological faculties were compelled 
 to beg for positions in the state churches, and 
 often these young men were forced to wait as 
 long as a dozen years before they could receive 
 an appointment. Now all this is changed. The 
 congregations are begging for pastors and 
 preachers, the theological auditoriums are de- 
 serted and empty benches are the rule. For this 
 condition the radical theology is chiefly to blame. 
 In recent years the radicals have gained the 
 upper hand in practically every theological fac- 
 ulty. It is reliably reported that among all the 
 theological teachers of Protestant Germany there 
 is only one who believes in the verbal inspiration 
 of the Scriptures. ****** Every- 
 where do we find the fundamentals and essentials 
 of the Christian religion denied — the Trinity, the 
 
130 Must the Bible Go 
 
 divinity of Christ, the work of atonement. The 
 religious geschichtliche school, now in control, 
 seeks to explain Christianity as the product of the 
 religious factors and forces that prevailed in the 
 Graeco-Roman and the Jewish world at the time 
 of the New Testament, and thus to eliminate the 
 idea of revelation. Professor Kruger, the church 
 historian of Giessen, recently declared that it was 
 the duty of the theological teacher to "endanger 
 the souls" of his students. The fact of the matter 
 is that he and his kind have made it impossible 
 for earnest young men to study theology, for they 
 are taught to deny and to reject the very truths 
 on which the church is based and for which it 
 must stand or fall. Many a young man has gone 
 to the university earnest in the faith and anxious 
 to serve the church, and has been shipwrecked by 
 what he learned at the feet of savants in these 
 institutions. It is a significant fact that the fa- 
 mous philanthropist, Pastor von Bodelschwingh, 
 has established at Bielefeld a special school of 
 theology for those candidates whose faith has 
 been undermined in the universities. Modern 
 radical theology, as enthroned at the universities, 
 is the chief cause of the danger that is threaten- 
 
Must the Bible Go 131 
 
 ing the very existence of the church in the land 
 of Luther." 
 
 This dearth is beginning to manifest itself in 
 other Protestant countries. The result is inevi- 
 table where higher criticism is fostered by pulpit 
 and seminary. Why should young men wish to 
 enter the ministry, when they will have nothing 
 but negations to preach? And why indeed can 
 they be expected, under the circumstances, to 
 show any interest in this calling? 
 
 The decline of church membership is the cor- 
 relate of ministerial decline. As Prof. Sayce is 
 reported to have said: "The higher criticism 
 saves no souls." Churches infected with this un- 
 belief may be social clubs, but their mission as 
 soul savers is gone; and if a man is fortunate 
 enough to hear an evangelist whose preaching 
 and faith brings him to Christ, there is little help 
 for his spiritual life in one of these churches. 
 Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman says he received a letter 
 from a minister who asked him to send them an 
 evangelist, adding: "He must be an evangelist 
 on the old line, believing in the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures and the atonement of Christ. I am 
 not able to accept these truths fully myself, and 
 
132 Must the Bible Go 
 
 therefore I am not a soul winner. Every man 
 that has joined my church for five years has come 
 under the influence of such an evangelist pastor 
 as I now want you to send me." What a confes- 
 sion ! 
 
 But the destruction of faith and loss of spiritual 
 power are not the final consequences of this mod- 
 ern teaching. With the moral imperative sup- 
 plied by an infallible Bible, gone, a reign of law- 
 lessness ensues. How else account for the in- 
 crease of crime and social disorder ? A German 
 student of these problems said: "Germany is 
 now reaping the harvest of advanced thought: 
 the prisons are full" And one of the eminent 
 and devout statesmen of America, a justice of 
 the, Supreme Court of the U. S., addressing a 
 company of preachers, said : "You ministers are 
 making a fatal mistake in not holding forth before 
 men as prominently as the previous generation 
 did, the retributive justice of God. You are 
 fallen into a sentimental style of rhapsodizing 
 over the love of God and you are not appealing 
 to that fear of future punishment which your 
 Lord and Master made such a prominent element 
 in His preaching. And we are seeing the effects 
 
Must the Bible Go 133 
 
 of it in the widespread demoralization of private 
 virtue and corruption of the public conscience 
 throughout the land." 
 
 To meet this situation the ministry and church, 
 instead of casting off the devices of higher criti- 
 cism and returning to the source of wisdom and 
 power, keep adding wheels and cogs to the church 
 machinery and work the social idea more strenu- 
 ously. Vain substitution! Nothing but faith in 
 a book that brings to us the final, authoritative 
 word as to sin and redemption can clothe the 
 church with the power of rebuke and conviction 
 and fill men with the spirit of self-sacrifice. In 
 the language of a French pastor who writes of 
 why the ministry is insufficiently recruited: 
 "Here is my conclusion. When one amuses one- 
 self by clipping the wings of a bird, flight soon 
 becomes impossible to it. Thanks to the discus- 
 sion, to the negations which are everywhere ped- 
 dled about, our christian wings have been cut. 
 Give again to our young people, the families of 
 our Evangelical Churches, the wings of a vital 
 faith in the redeeming Lord, and then the holy 
 enthusiasm for Him and His great cause will 
 bring back the days of the past" 
 
134 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "Even if it were demonstrated to a certainty 
 that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, that would not 
 make the critical school a whit more ready to ac- 
 cept its statements. The course of New Testa- 
 ment criticism furnishes an illustration of what is 
 possible in a case like this. Though the Gospels 
 are proved to be of so early a date that the writers 
 could have had knowledge of the things they pro- 
 fess to relate, the modern advanced critics of the 
 New Testament do not feel themselves bound on 
 that account to receive the books as historical. 
 They have to make allowance for the bias of the 
 writer even when the writer is a contemporary; 
 and if he relates events which they consider can- 
 not have occurred, his account is rejected as in- 
 credible." — Prof. James Robertson, D. D., The 
 Early Religion of Israel. 
 
 "In no other sphere would men listen to what 
 passes for proof when Scripture is assailed. In no 
 other sphere would such trifling as this be tol- 
 erated. If only these men could be "got into 
 court/' and be subjected to cross-examination 
 they would lose not only their case but their rep- 
 utation !"— Sir Robert Anderson, K. C. B.,LL.D. 
 (a learned Att'y at Law, London, England). 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE ETHICAL PERVERSIONS OF 
 HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 One of the deplorable accompaniments of 
 higher criticism is the loss of the ethical sense. 
 What else can account for the amazing belief that 
 the forgery of a document, the appropriation of 
 another man's name to float one's ideas, was per- 
 fectly allowable and in accord with divine prin- 
 ciples of inspiration and teaching? The founders 
 and leaders of this school of unbelief are con- 
 sistent at least in their bold contention for this 
 asserted practice of Biblical writers; for they 
 deny there is any revelation or inspiration in the 
 Scriptures, and they utterly reject miracles. Yet 
 even apart from the question of revelation and 
 inspiration no honest man would accept this view 
 of getting one's writing before the public, or, in 
 other words, call a forgery an honest piece of 
 business. If he were a fool, incapable of making 
 moral distinctions, he might call black white and 
 good evil ; in that case, however, the term honesty 
 
 135 
 
136 Must the Bible Go 
 
 as well as intelligence would be inapplicable, since 
 reason and morality go together. We do not 
 predicate honesty or dishonesty of brutes, idiots 
 and babies. While, therefore, we may say the 
 original framers and propagators of the forgery 
 theory are consistent with their rejection of the 
 traditional view that the Scriptures were super- 
 naturally inspired, it is nevertheless impossible to 
 harmonize that theory with sound ethics, for the 
 reason that the writings forged are not repre- 
 sented or meant to be understood as fiction en- 
 forcing truth, but as the veritable work of the 
 men whose names they bear. They were, in fact, 
 on the theory stated, intended to deceive people. 
 So one of the greatest of these original critics 
 said, in reference to the inconsistency of accept- 
 ing his hypothesis and claiming at the same time 
 to believe in the supernatural origin of the Scrip- 
 tures : "I have proved the Old Testament to be 
 a fraud, but never dreamt as these Scotch fellows 
 do, of making God a party to the fraud." 
 
 And here is the tragedy of this critical propa- 
 ganda. It is- when men professing to be evan- 
 gelical, to believe in the Scriptures as divinely 
 inspired and to respect the authority of Christ 
 
Must the Bible Go 137 
 
 and His apostles, accept and teach a theory de- 
 structive of these facts, that the perversion of the 
 ethical sense is painfully apparent to all who be- 
 lieve that God is not the Author of sin and cannot 
 be a party to fraud of any kind. It is another 
 illustration of the fact to which history has borne 
 witness so many times, that error blinds the judg- 
 ment and reduces men to a state of moral obtuse- 
 ness in which they are incapable of seeing things 
 in their right relations. 
 
 This perversion of the conscience is seen in the 
 declaration, which is repeated with much em- 
 phasis, that scholars agree as to the correctness 
 of the Wellhausen theory, while facts to the con- 
 trary are concealed. It is false that scholars 
 agree, as claimed, that there are none, competent 
 to speak on this question, who hold the traditional 
 view of the Bible. The fact is the critical hypoth- 
 esis is rapidly falling into disrepute in countries 
 where it once held sway and scholars are throw- 
 ing off the incubus, while many of the ablest 
 thinkers in other lands have never "bowed the 
 knee to Baal." It is concealment of this fact, or 
 unsupported assumption to the contrary, that 
 makes the agents of this propaganda morally un- 
 
138 Must the Bible Go 
 
 sound and scripturally unsafe. A writer in the 
 London Churchman, giving a summary of the 
 "Recent Continental Criticism of the Higher 
 Criticism" describes "the boycott of books and 
 studies hostile to Wellhausenism which has left 
 opinion in England and America so largely in the 
 dark, as to the real situation abroad." An able 
 German scholar, Moller, in the preface to his un- 
 answerable work "Are the Critics Right?" de- 
 clares that when he was himself a believer in the 
 Wellhausen theory, students were urged not to 
 read arguments against the theory, and that his 
 return to sanity on this question was due to 
 throwing off the yoke of subserviency to the 
 higher critics and of becoming fair to their oppo- 
 nents. When he gave candid consideration to 
 arguments for the conservative view, and pur- 
 sued his studies along lines that opened to him, 
 he became convinced of the correctness of this 
 view. This case is cited to show the want of fair- 
 ness in the teaching of higher criticism, and such 
 a want betrays the loss or perversion of the eth- 
 ical sense. 
 
Must the Bible Go 139 
 
 A still more lamentable illustration of this loss 
 is the conduct of men who have accepted the con- 
 clusions of higher criticism and yet continue to 
 enjoy the honors and emoluments of positions in 
 churches whose doctrines they are pledged to 
 maintain. From these positions of ease and com- 
 fort, they assault "the faith of our fathers" and 
 seek to turn over the Church to the enemies of 
 Revelation. If they were honest they would 
 abandon the evangelical entrenchments and fight 
 "in the open" against what they no longer be- 
 lieve. As the Watchman reports, the Bishops of 
 Derby and Ossory in England have stated the 
 matter clearly in answering some who protested 
 against the dropping of a clergyman because he 
 did not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. They 
 say it is not a matter of liberty but of honesty. 
 "It is a transparent fallacy to confound liberty of 
 thought with indifference to contract." A man 
 who no longer receives the Scriptures at their 
 face value, as the Church demands, but reduces 
 them to a heap of fragments with their spiritual 
 unity and supernatural authority destroyed, and 
 who in this work of destruction sets aside the 
 positive statements of the Lord Jesus Christ as 
 
140 Must the Bible Go 
 
 having no value whatever in weighing the con- 
 clusions above mentioned — such a man has no 
 right to be in the evangelical camp. To tolerate 
 him is treason to Christ. A church that harbors 
 him has lost something more than its first love. 
 Its conscience is gone! He who "holdeth the 
 seven stars in His right hand and walketh in the 
 midst of the seven golden candlesticks/' would 
 never say to it, "I know thy works and thy toil 
 and patience and that thou canst not bear them 
 who are evil and thou hast tried them who call 
 themselves apostles and they are not, and hast 
 found them liars." 
 
 In view of all the facts the words of Dr. Jay 
 Benson Hamilton are none too strong : 
 
 "The issue is clearly drawn between the pseudo 
 scholars who have betrayed their trust and the 
 young ministers whom they have deceived, on the 
 one side, and the teachers and workers in the 
 Sunday schools and the average church members 
 and the great body of the ministry upon the other. 
 The latter instead of surrendering and consent- 
 ing to the discrediting of the Book and the de- 
 struction of the Church have a much easier and 
 simpler thing to do. Dismiss those who have 
 
Must the Bible Go 141 
 
 proven themselves untrue to their ordination 
 vows and find new teachers who are pious enough 
 to abstain from perjury. The young ministers 
 will outgrow their child's disease of doubt and be 
 saved to the Church if they are worth saving." 
 
 Note : My attention has been called to an arti- 
 cle which appeared in the Expositor for Decem- 
 ber, 1913, by Professor Adam C. Welsh, on 
 "The Present Position of Old Testament Criti- 
 cism." In that article the following explanation 
 is made of how the Wellhausen theory came to be 
 so successful and so widely accepted: 
 
 "The Wellhausen theory was framed under the 
 influence of certain dominant conceptions as to 
 the origin and growth of religion which were 
 then current. In part it owed its success to the 
 simple fact that it thus fell in with the Zeitgeist. 
 Evolution was in the air, and the theory seemed 
 to apply evolution to the development of the He- 
 brew religion. But evolution with laws borrowed 
 from the physical order is apt to blunder badly 
 when it is applied to religion at all, and especially 
 to blunder when it is applied to the Hebrew re- 
 ligion which gives so large a space to prophecy." 
 
 Let the reader reflect upon the following state- 
 ments made by Professor Welsh, himself a critic, 
 and observe how they confirm everything I have 
 said about the arbitrary and unfair treatment of 
 
142 Must the Bible Go 
 
 the Scriptures by the critics. (The italics are 
 mine.) 
 
 "The theory submitted the prophets to a 
 scheme of evolution which had not been patient 
 enough to learn the laws of development of re- 
 ligion from religion itself. As a result, certain 
 elements in their teaching were ignored, other 
 elements were ruled out." 
 
 "The theory could find no room in its view of 
 how religion develops from such a factor, and 
 so, sometimes with an uneasy conscience, that 
 factor in the Hebrew faith was ignored" 
 
 "When the prophets declared, as they do with 
 one voice, that they said these things in virtue of 
 a deeper knowledge of God and His will, their 
 testimony was ignored. They were either deceiv- 
 ing themselves or saying things which they really 
 did not quite mean" 
 
 "There were passages in the prophets in which 
 these spoke of the day of the Lord, as implying 
 an intervention direct and immediate to set up a 
 new order in the world which was under their 
 God's power. These also were inconvenient to 
 the theory. . . . All such sayings which im- 
 plied a relation between God and a world must 
 be late. But the passages also offended because 
 men had formed the prophets in their own like- 
 ness. Believing themselves in a long slow proc- 
 ess, they believed that the prophets must have 
 
Must the Bible Go 143 
 
 held the same thing. That God should intervene 
 directly meant a break in the chain of evolution." 
 
 "Hence the passages which implied a different 
 view were watered down or explained away. 
 . . . So there came to be common a violent 
 and often painfully arbitrary treatment of the 
 text of the prophets. They were cut to pieces and 
 assigned to many dates." 
 
 "I think it is no exaggeration to say that the 
 result has been to cast a very strong suspicion, in 
 calmer minds, on the worth of the whole critical 
 movement" 
 
 And he adds that "through the later work of 
 the Wellhausen school of criticism the distinctive 
 character of the Hebrew religion seemed to be in 
 danger of disappearing altogether." 
 
144 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Speaking of the reported decline in Church 
 membership in England, Dr. Forsyth says that 
 the real cause is the decay "in personal religion 
 of a positive and experienced kind, and often in 
 the pulpit;" and that "decay in membership of the 
 Church is due to decay of membership in Christ. 
 Even among those who remain in active member- 
 ship of our Churches, the type of religion has 
 changed, the sense of sin can hardly be appealed 
 to by preachers now, and to preach grace is in 
 many (even orthodox) quarters regarded as 
 theological obsession, and the wrong language 
 for the hour, while justification by faith is prac- 
 tically obsolete. ,, — The Cruciality of the Cross. 
 
 Dr. Denney, perhaps the greatest theologian 
 in Scotland, said at the memorable Edinburgh 
 Missionary Conference, that the United Free 
 Church had increased its membership only by one 
 person for every two congregations in five years, 
 and continued: "The number of candidates for 
 the ministry is much smaller at the present time 
 than it was a good many years ago ; it is hardly 
 a sufficient number to keep up the staff at home, 
 to say nothing of supplying men abroad. Men are 
 not coming forward as ministers, nor coming for- 
 ward as missionaries, because they are not coming 
 forward into the membership of the Church at all. 
 Something must happen to the Church at home if 
 it is going even to look at the work that has been 
 put upon it by the Conference." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 FRUIT OF HIGHER CRITICISM AND 
 THE NEW THEOLOGY 
 
 The reader's attention has already been di- 
 rected to the spiritual decline which follows the 
 inculcation of advanced critical and theological 
 views as proof of their falsity. The infinite 
 author of truth will not put His seal upon error 
 and continue to pour spiritual blessings upon 
 churches that hold low views of inspiration and 
 weaken the authority of the Holy Scriptures. It 
 is becoming more and more evident, whatever 
 denials are put forth by those interested in propa- 
 gating the assumptions of higher criticism, that 
 the propaganda is working spiritual death in Pro- 
 testant Christendom. Loss of converting power 
 and the failure to maintain a high type of Chris- 
 tian life in churches is excused or explained by 
 changed conditions and the new emphasis upon 
 the "social mission of the Church ;" as if the 
 Church had any mission apart from the salvation 
 of men from their sins and their sanctification to 
 the welfare of others ! Sociology would be a poor 
 
 145 
 
146 Must the Bible Go 
 
 substitute for salvation and if the Church forfeits 
 her spiritual power by leaving the main track for 
 the sociological switch, what is there to distin- 
 guish her from a mere humanitarian society, oc- 
 cupied with the superficial aspects of life? It is 
 well to pass helpful laws and to seek to better 
 the environment of people, but unless deep, under- 
 lying causes are reached and the hearts of men 
 are turned to God, old effects will reappear and 
 the social problem remain to perplex alike Church 
 and State. Social service must be the handmaid 
 of the people's religion and not their religion 
 itself. But the deplorable effect of stressing the 
 social idea to the neglect of the deep spiritual 
 necessities of men, is to create a false conception 
 of the Gospel and to put the Church out of com- 
 mission as a divine, soul-saving institution. And 
 this insistence of the exponents of higher criti- 
 cism upon the call of the Church to engage in 
 social service, is but a veiled apology for the loss 
 of supernatural, converting power in the Church 
 and a virtual confession that the Holy Spirit will 
 not honor their radical views concerning the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
Must the Bible Go 147 
 
 The truth is, the only call which the Church 
 has is to evangelize the world ; to get men saved 
 from sin and filled with the Spirit of God ; for this 
 involves and assures the exemplification of the 
 Christ-life in devotement to human welfare. That 
 the Church is not fully realizing this call is ap- 
 parent from the decline of church membership 
 that is reported in various places as well as from 
 the decrease of vital piety among church mem- 
 bers. The latest religious statistics from Eng- 
 land show that the Baptist and Congregational 
 churches have had a year of decline and that their 
 membership and the children of their Sunday 
 Schools are less by many thousands than a year 
 ago. A similar condition exists in other Prot- 
 estant bodies. Even worse is the situation re- 
 ported from Germany, whence higher criticism 
 has spread over the world. A German corre- 
 spondent writes to the Christian World as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "The number of university students attending 
 divinity classes continues to dwindle rapidly. In 
 several universities the number is less than half 
 what it was twenty years ago, and in all the Prot- 
 estant universities the shrinkage is so manifest 
 
148 Must the Bible Go 
 
 as to cause grave fears for the immediate future. 
 The other day a South German journal declared 
 that should this shrinkage continue at the same 
 rate for another five years there will not be a 
 solitary theological student left in any Protestant 
 university in Germany. There are entire districts 
 already where it is found next to impossible to 
 find young men for ordination. Despite all our 
 advance ,in art and in the so-called graces of civil- 
 ization, our family life is becoming more raw 
 and immature. The old affections which once 
 characterized our race are rapidly disappearing, 
 and instead we have parents who have no con- 
 ception of their duty as moral guides, and chil- 
 dren who resent all discipline, all parental control 
 and who are taught by example to be self- 
 indulgent and to follow pleasure and gain as the 
 aim and object of life. Our homes, as moral and 
 religious training centres, are disappearing." 
 
 This is the inevitable result of such treatment 
 as the Bible has received at the hands of the 
 critics. Low ethical views and loose conduct 
 prevail when false theories concerning the Holy 
 Scriptures spread from Church schools among 
 the people. The fear of the Lord disappears with 
 
Must the Bible Go 149 
 
 reverence for His Word and the operation of the 
 Holy Spirit ceases when the product of His in- 
 spiration is reduced to the level of mere human 
 literature. Professor W. H. Griffith Thomas says 
 that the well-known English writer, now Sir W. 
 Robertson Nicoll, was walking with Wellhausen 
 in the streets of Greifswald, and ventured to ask 
 him whether, if his views were accepted, the Bible 
 could retain its place in the estimation of the 
 common people. "I cannot see how that is pos- 
 sible," was the sad reply. 
 
 Dr. Samuel J. Andrews says: "No building 
 can long stand when the foundation is under- 
 mined ; the first rude shock makes it fall. Many, 
 indeed, may continue to profess great reverence 
 for the Scriptures, as did the Jews of the Lord's 
 day, and study them much, simply because they 
 interpret in the spirit of the time, and find in them 
 what they wish to find. And we have reason to 
 believe that there are many who, like Mr. M. 
 Arnold, sing the praises of the Bible long after 
 it has ceased to have for them any authority, or 
 any theological value." — Christianity and Anti- 
 Christianity in Their Final Conflict. 
 
150 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Hence, the barrenness of a ministry pitched to 
 that note. "The Word of God is quick and pow- 
 erful and sharper than any two-edged sword," 
 but if something be substituted for it, there will 
 be no conviction of sin and no real conversions. 
 A paper on "Present Phases of Evangelism/' was 
 read by an orthodox minister before a Ministerial 
 Association. In the discussion that followed, a 
 prominent pastor said, in substance: 
 
 "In the theological seminary I espoused the 
 higher criticism, and came out an ardent advocate 
 of the New Theology. My ministry was barren ; 
 no souls were saved, and I found my church dying 
 by inches on my hands. I discovered what the 
 matter was: it was in my own preaching. The 
 New Theology, for edifying and saving results, 
 is not preachable. I confess to you that I have 
 abandoned it and have gone back to the old- 
 fashioned, conservative theology, and God is now 
 blessing my ministry." 
 
 His was not the only testimony reported of that 
 sort. 
 
 The evil has invaded mission lands and the 
 Church that should be "terrible as an army with 
 banners," as she confronts the heathen world, 
 
Must the Bible Go 151 
 
 finds herself discounted by the negations of 
 higher criticism. A Moslem paper, the Review 
 of Religions, said: "Thus has the Bible been 
 swept away as a straw before the mighty current 
 of modern criticism, and such was the fate it de- 
 served. It is not the unmixed Word of God, it is 
 not unerring. Such is the modern Christian 
 faith, and we are glad to see that even the Chris- 
 tian missionaries have recognized the truth of 
 those views." 
 
 Another Moslem, well acquainted with Euro- 
 pean thought, is represented by Professor Hart- 
 man, a German Statesman, long a resident in 
 Mohammedan lands, as saying: 
 
 "Why should there be disseminated among us 
 religious documents the genuineness of which is 
 in part contested, the meaning of which is in very 
 many instances uncertain, and which in general 
 Church use are treated as purely human produc- 
 tions that, even as far as Christian countries are 
 concerned, have merely the value of a historically 
 evolved fact?" 
 
 A letter written by two Japanese Christians of 
 many years standing, to a magazine in that 
 
152 Must the Bible Go 
 
 country, contains the following confession of the 
 ripe fruit of higher criticism: 
 
 "A generation ago we were taught by the early 
 missionaries to believe the Bible to be verbally 
 inspired from Genesis to Revelation ; we now hold 
 it to be full of errors. We reject the greater part 
 of Paul's teaching ; we no longer believe in Virgin 
 Birth or Everlasting Punishment for unbelievers, 
 nor that ,God can forgive sins only through the 
 mediation and suffering of Christ : — this, a mere 
 Paulinism, is no longer tenable. Many who, 30 
 or 40 years ago, became Christians, have ceased 
 to be Christians for these reasons, and there are 
 more who have left the Church than now belong 
 to it." 
 
 A missionary in Japan writes : 
 
 "My own observation is that the Catechist who 
 accepts the results of higher criticism is of no use 
 as an evangelist. He is sure of nothing, and only 
 feebly exhorts people to get better and be better ; 
 he makes no converts. Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo 
 are the most deeply affected of any part of Japan 
 by the higher criticism." 
 
 A desire to restate Christianity was evinced by 
 the Japanese clergy and catechists at Kiuskiu in a 
 
Must the Bible Go 153 
 
 letter to the C M. S. Missionary Conference 
 there in 1907. The letter said: 
 
 "Up-to-date learning shows us that Evolution 
 was the mode of origin of things, not Creation, 
 and that the Bible is scientifically wrong and full 
 of error. It added that Genesis was a myth, writ- 
 ten long after the events occurred ; the New Tes- 
 tament facts were discredited, miracles a mistake, 
 and there was no real basis for many doctrines 
 taught by the Church." 
 
 The C. M. S. Missionary Conference, held in 
 Lower Bengal in 1906, reported that higher 
 critical views had "begun to trouble the minds of 
 Indian Christians. Among non-Christians also 
 the advance of the Kingdom of Christ is likely 
 to receive a serious shock if a suggestion comes 
 with any authority from a Christian source that 
 our Sacred Records are not true." 
 
 These examples could be augmented. The poi- 
 son has been carried into every land. The native 
 mind is quick to turn the assumptions of modern 
 criticism against the missionary who stands by 
 the Supernatural Book and the missionary who 
 accepts the assumptions betrays his trust and con- 
 firms the heathen distrust of the Bible. Such is 
 
154 Must the Bible Go 
 
 the heavy handicap with which the Great Com- 
 mission to evangelize the nations has been loaded 
 by pretended Christian teachers of western lands. 
 As stated by the late George Ensor, the first 
 C. M. S. missionary to Japan : 
 
 "Christian people will never put themselves 
 long about to preach and teach out of a discredited 
 Bible. If the Bible be untrustworthy, we will 
 not exert ourselves to send it to the Confucianist 
 or to the Mohammedan. Both will logically 
 affirm that, if our Bible be untrue, they don't care 
 to exchange theirs for ours. If our teachings be 
 subject to a Bible test for its truth, and the test 
 itself has proved unreliable, we find ourselves be- 
 fore the Confucianist and the Mohammedan in 
 the most illogical, the most hopeless and the most 
 helpless plight. ,, 
 
 Well says the Rev. Dr. W. St. Clair Tisdall, 
 from whose article on "The Bearing of the De- 
 structive Criticism of the Bible on Missionary 
 Work," these citations are made: "We cannot 
 expect true Christians — the only people who ever 
 have supported Christian missionary work — to 
 deny themselves in order to give money to propa- 
 gate ideas which are contrary to the teachings 
 
Must the Bible Go 155 
 
 of the Bible, and are dishonoring to the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and are ineffective for men's salva- 
 tion." 
 
 Whether at home or abroad higher criticism 
 is the foe to evangelism, the paralysis of Chris- 
 tian faith, and the damnation of lost men. "Every 
 plant," said our Lord, "which My heavenly 
 Father hath not planted shall be rooted up." We 
 know, therefore, the doom that awaits this 
 strange plant transplanted by the enemies of 
 revelation into the visible Church and now as- 
 siduously cultivated by men who wear the livery 
 of orthodoxy while they scatter its poisonous 
 fruit. 
 
156 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "There is a most shallow view, constantly pro- 
 pounded now-a-days, when people say that they 
 would rather listen to what Christ says in the 
 Gospels than to what is written in the Epistles of 
 the Apostles. The Holy Ghost alone could bring 
 to the remembrance of the Apostles all things 
 that Christ had spoken; . . . Christ told 
 them everything in germ, although in Jerusalem, 
 and afterwards all was more fully revealed.' ' 
 
 "When Jesus appeared to him, then Saul of 
 Tarsus not merely saw Jesus, but he saw also 
 Moses. He understood then what was the real 
 glory of Moses — to lead us to the Saviour. . . . 
 It was the sign of a sincere Israelite who loved 
 the law of Moses, that being convinced of his 
 guilt and of the weakness of the flesh, he longed 
 after the Messiah, and after the promise of the 
 Father, the Holy Ghost; and it is a sign of our 
 sincerity, who profess to have received Jesus and 
 the Holy Ghost, that we delight ourselves in the 
 law, and that the righteousness of the law is ful- 
 filled in us who walk not after the flesh but after 
 the Spirit." — Adolph Saphir, The Divine Unity 
 of Scripture, pp. 113, 303. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 "BACK TO CHRIST" 
 
 Nothing is easier than to repeat some senti- 
 ment whose form of expression has come to be 
 regarded as a criterion of truth, and yet nothing 
 may more completely befog the truth and blind 
 men to the reality it is intended to disclose. The 
 most striking watchword may become the super- 
 ficial cry of those who seek to escape the responsi- 
 bility imposed by unwelcome truth. Sometimes, 
 as in the instance of the new theological demand, 
 "back to Christ," the wish to maintain opinions 
 or justify actions in conflict with apostolic inter- 
 pretation of Christianity, gives birth to the cry. 
 
 It would be well for those who assume this posi- 
 tion to reflect on the logical bearing of the posi- 
 tion on the authority of Christ. He declared, 
 "Heaven and earth shall pass away but my word 
 shall not pass away." "Back to Christ," there- 
 fore, involves the obligation to abide by whatever 
 He said concerning Himself, the accuracy of the 
 Scriptures, and the inspiration of the Apostles. 
 
 157 
 
158 Must the Bible Go 
 
 What he affirmed in regard to the authorship of 
 certain writings, must be received by all who 
 repair to Him for counsel, the modern scholar to 
 the contrary notwithstanding. When, to give 
 another example, he proclaims that his Second 
 coming is literal and personal, the critic who says 
 "back to Christ" and then proceeds to reduce this 
 proclamation to a figure of speech and to spir- 
 itualize everything, or to deny that He has said 
 it, evidences his lack of consistency or his aver- 
 sion to the truth. 
 
 Once more: When Christ taught that the 
 Apostles as His witnesses would be exempt from 
 error by the Spirit of truth, we are bound to ac- 
 cept their interpretation of His teaching and their 
 exposition of the principles of His religion. He 
 declared that they should be "guided into all 
 truth." Therefore, the Epistles are as much in- 
 spired as the Gospels, and the theology of Paul 
 is the theology of Christ. The going away of 
 Christ was for the instalment of the apostles in 
 His place to give the Church and the world an 
 inspired and authoritative explanation of the 
 principles He taught and died to establish. He 
 declared the moral necessity for this in such state- 
 
Must the Bible Go 159 
 
 ments as these: "It is expedient for you that I 
 go away; for if I not go away, the Comforter 
 will not come unto you/' "I have yet many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is 
 come, He, shall guide you into all truth ; for He 
 shall not speak from Himself, but what things 
 soever He shall hear, these shall He speak, and 
 He shall declare unto you the things that are to 
 come. He shall glorify me ; for He shall take of 
 mine and shall declare it unto you." He spoke 
 of the purpose of His advent into the world and 
 of His death. His Apostles have given the true 
 meaning of that death. Hence, while the Gospels 
 contain the facts of His life and death, the Epis- 
 tles give us the divine explanation of those facts. 
 He enunciated principles ; they explained and ap- 
 plied those principles. To talk of accepting the 
 teaching of Christ, while rejecting that of the 
 Apostles is as though one said I believe in the 
 principles of Christianity but not in their mean- 
 ing. This is not to get back to Christ ; it is to get 
 away from Him. 
 
 The chief point of attack is the Pauline the- 
 ology, especially the doctrines of sin and atone- 
 
160 Must the Bible Go 
 
 ment. The cry of "Back to Christ" is merely the 
 method of evincing hostility to those doctrines 
 and the revolt of natural heart against God. It 
 is one with rejecting the deity of Christ. 
 
 These fundamentals stand or fall together, and 
 since it was given to Paul to make this fact clear, 
 he is the object of bitterest critical assault. 
 
 As to the result of such ill-balanced study of 
 the New Testament, I cannot do better than quote 
 the words of Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall regard- 
 ing the insistence upon the first three Gospels 
 alone rather than including the Epistles as well, 
 and dwelling upon the historical Christ to the 
 exclusion of the Redeemer. He says: 
 
 "The effects of this are already appearing in 
 the impoverished religious values of the sermons 
 produced by the younger generation of preachers, 
 and the deplorable decline of spiritual life and 
 knowledge in many churches. Results open to 
 observation show that the movement to simplify 
 the Christian essence by discarding the theology 
 of St. Paul easily carries the teaching of the 
 Christian pulpit to a position where, for those 
 who submit to that teaching, the characteristic 
 experiences of the Christian life become practi- 
 
Must the Bible Go 161 
 
 cally impossible. The Christian sense of sin; 
 Christian penitence at the foot of the cross ; Chris- 
 tian faith in an atoning Saviour ; Christian peace 
 with God through the mediation of Jesus Christ ; 
 — these and other experiences, which were the 
 very life of apostles and of apostolic souls, fade 
 from the view of the ministry, have no meaning 
 for the younger generation." 
 
 To this forcible statement I should like to add 
 the language of Dr. J. H. Jowett, discussing 
 Paul's conception of the Lord Jesus Christ : 
 
 "My brethren, the Jesus of the new theology 
 is a Jesus I can admire, is a Jesus I can respect; 
 a Jesus in whose presence I can take off my hat. 
 But He is not a Jesus before whom I can go on 
 my knees and worship. The Jesus of the new 
 theology is the last link of that chain, and not 
 the first. He is empty and impoverished of divin- 
 ity, and I cannot kneel in His presence and say, 
 'My Lord and My God/ " 
 
162 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "So far as I can see the arguments used in the 
 one field, of the critical treatment of the Old 
 Testament may be employed equally well in the 
 other (the New Testament), and the Gospel his- 
 tory be critically reconstructed out of the tenden- 
 cies and views of the second century, just as the 
 account of the pre-prophetic religion given by the 
 Hebrew writers is made the result of the projec- 
 tion backward of later ideas." — Prof. James Rob- 
 ertson, Early Religion of Israel 
 
 "It does not appear possible to account for the 
 rise and course of apostolic Christianity except 
 by the recognition of the supernatural facts and 
 forces to which the books themselves testify. 
 The frank acknowledgment of the supernatural, 
 together with the perception of the no less truly 
 genetic way in which the original faith in Jesus 
 as Messiah was unfolded and extended, would 
 seem to be required of the historian who wishes 
 to be faithful to his sources of information and 
 to present apostolic Christianity as it was." — Dr. 
 Purves. 
 
 'The great bulk of the opposition to the virgin 
 birth comes from those who do not recognize a 
 supernatural element in Christ's life at all."— 
 Professor Qrr. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DARKENING COUNSEL BY WORDS 
 WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE 
 
 "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words 
 without knowledge ?" Lyman Abbott, editor of 
 the Outlook, whose theological vagaries and fal- 
 lacious reasoning concerning the Scriptures make 
 it unwise and unsafe to commend his publication. 
 An example of Dr. Abbott's shallow unbelief is 
 the editorial on the action of the New York Pres- 
 bytery in licensing to preach four young men who 
 admitted they could not credit "the Virgin Birth 
 of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Referring to that action, the Outlook says 
 (italic type ours) : "We hope that this may be 
 taken to indicate a tendency in the Church not to 
 attach a greater importance to the doctrine of the 
 Virgin Birth than the Bible attaches to it/' It 
 indicates a tendency, no doubt; signs of it are 
 appearing here and there; but to speak of "not 
 attaching greater importance to the doctrine of 
 the Virgin Birth than the Bible attaches to it," 
 
 163 
 
164 Must the Bible Go 
 
 is a covert assault on the integrity of the Scrip- 
 ture narratives as is evident by a further refer- 
 ence to the Virgin Birth as "a disputed event in 
 remote history." 
 
 Here, then, is the animus of the Outlook's edi- 
 torial — a denial that the record of this event is 
 trustworthy, though two of the Gospels contain 
 it and there is no more reason to doubt it than 
 other things which the Gospels set forth as the 
 evidences and credentials of the unique character 
 and claims of Jesus Christ. The mystery of this 
 incarnate personality is an offence to the carnal 
 reason and must be got rid of by attacking the 
 trustworthiness of Bible history. And this is the 
 process by which higher criticism has unitari- 
 anized the Scriptures and given us, instead of 
 deity incarnate, a sort of "divinity" that is "com- 
 mon to all men." Well may it be said, "They have 
 taken away my Lord." 
 
 The Outlook continues: "To license a theo- 
 logical student is to declare that he is fitted to be 
 a preacher of the Gospel. It is certain that a man 
 may be fitted to be a preacher of the Gospel who 
 never refers in his sermons to the Virgin Birth. 
 The Apostles were great preachers and they 
 
Must the Bible Go 165 
 
 never referred to the Virgin Birth. Jesus Christ 
 is the ideal preacher of Christian history, and He 
 never referred to the Virgin Birth. We wonder 
 how many who read this article ever heard any 
 preacher refer in his sermons to the Virgin Birth. 
 
 "It is clearly not necessary to preach on the 
 Virgin Birth in order to preach effectively." 
 
 As a specimen of irrelevant and superficial rea- 
 soning we do not remember ever to have seen this 
 equaled. Christ and His apostles never referred 
 in their preaching to the Virgin Birth ; therefore 
 a man who denies this event may be fit to preach 
 the Gospel ! No ! If Christ never referred to this 
 mystery, the reverent mind would accept the 
 omission as one of those silences for which no 
 explanation was vouchsafed. We may, however, 
 affirm that He would not speak of it to His ene- 
 mies, who would only mock at such a revelation. 
 See for reason Matt. 7:6. Holy mysteries were 
 not for unbelievers. May not this also answer 
 the question why did not the apostles speak of it 
 in their preaching, if indeed they never did so? 
 "I have many things to say unto you," said Jesus, 
 even to His disciples, before the Spirit came, "but 
 ye cannot bear them now." The Pharisees re- 
 
166 Must the Bible Go 
 
 jected His claim to equality, with God, because 
 they believed him to be the natural son of Joseph. 
 Compare Matthew 13:54-55 with John 5:17-18 
 and John 10:33. He, however, never disavowed 
 the understanding they had of His statements 
 concerning His relation to the infinite Father, but 
 went on to vindicate His claim to equal honors 
 with God. The Gospel of John was written for 
 the Church to confirm faith in the Deity of Christ. 
 So clear is this that critics have tried hard to dis- 
 credit its historical character. But it stands an 
 irrefutable witness to the Godhead of Christ. 
 
 How does Dr. Abbott know that the apostles 
 never referred to this doctrine in their preaching, 
 seeing he lives nineteen hundred years after 
 them? Their writings prove that they believed 
 and taught it. No other interpretation can be 
 put upon John's declaration that the eternal Word 
 became flesh and tabernacled among men, and 
 upon his polemic against the Gnostics who denied 
 the incarnation of Deity in Jesus Christ. See 1 
 John 1:1-2, 4:1-3 and 5:20; also 2 John 9-1 1; 
 which must be considered with the Gospel of 
 John. So with the Pauline writings which con- 
 tain allusions to the Virgin Birth, since by this 
 
Must the Bible Go 167 
 
 happening alone can content be put into his doc- 
 trine of the incarnation. Rom. 9:5; Phil. 2:5-8; 
 1 Tim. 3:16; Titus 2:10, 13. 
 
 "As regards the writings of St. Paul, ,, says 
 Prof. Henry Cowan of Aberdeen, Scotland, "if 
 his silence as to the virgin birth be an argument 
 against the credibility, we must reject all the rec- 
 ords of Christ healing disease; for not one cure 
 is referred to in any Pauline letter. The nature 
 of St. Paul's epistles did not demand any express 
 reference to the Virgin Birth. His teaching is 
 based mainly on our Lord's death and resurrec- 
 tion. Still, as in the case of St. John, there is a 
 latent hint of a superhuman entrance into the 
 world/' 
 
 And Dr. Weiss, the famous Berlin professor, 
 holds that a new creative act of God, a cancelling 
 of the natural continuity is "an almost indis- 
 pensable consequence of St. Paul's theology." — 
 (Bibl. Theologie des N. T.) 
 
 The writings of the Apostles imply a strong 
 probability that in their oral ministry they re- 
 ferred to the mystery of the incarnation. But if 
 they did not do so, their writings prove their faith 
 in the mystery and it is faith that makes the true 
 
168 Must the Bible Go 
 
 preacher. Big preachers may deny the atone- 
 ment as some do, but they are not "effective 
 preachers." The effective preacher is he who 
 preaches the Gospel "with the Holy Ghost sent 
 down from heaven" and the Holy Ghost will 
 never attend a ministry that doubts or denies a 
 doctrine and a fact plainly revealed in the Scrip- 
 tures and vital to the atonement. It is wide of 
 the mark to say, it is not necessary to preach on 
 the Virgin Birth to preach effectively. It is the 
 want of faith in this truth that evinces unfitness 
 to preach and precludes the manifestation of the 
 Holy Spirit who alone is the guarantee of spir- 
 itual results. Moreover, so long as reverent faith 
 exists in this doctrine, there is no need to refer to 
 it specifically, if the atonement made possible by 
 the fact be faithfully preached. But let it be 
 called in question and men of faith will emphasize 
 it, as did the apostles when it was attacked by the 
 Gnostics. 
 
 Again : "A recent writer has pointed out the 
 undoubted fact that the Virgin Birth is not the 
 cause of Christ's divinity. It is only an evidence 
 for His divinity. One may believe in the divinity 
 and not believe in that special evidence. 
 
Must the Bible Go 169 
 
 "The divinity of Christ is a spiritual truth. It 
 does not depend upon a physiological fact." 
 
 These are astonishing statements and reveal a 
 pitiable blindness to the merits of the case. If 
 Dr. Abbott means by "divinity" something more 
 than a divine humanity, which the new theology 
 affirms of all men, the physiological fact is essen- 
 tial to its manifestation in the world and its avail- 
 ability for the redemption of the world. How is 
 it possible to believe in the divinity (Deity) of 
 Christ as portrayed in the New Testament and 
 reject the very means by which that Deity became 
 a manifested fact on earth? "One may believe 
 in the divinity and not believe in that special evi- 
 dence" !! This is nonsense, if it refer to the 
 Christ that "came into the world to save sinners." 
 We recognize no other Divinity than that which 
 was corporealized and dwelt among men, who 
 "beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begot- 
 ten of the Father, full of grace and truth." 
 
 Finally: "Jesus Christ has Himself pointed 
 out the twofold evidence on which He would have 
 His Church base its faith in His divinity: 'Be- 
 lieve me that I am in the Father and the Father 
 
170 Must the Bible Go 
 
 in me; or else believe me for the very work's 
 sake/ 
 
 "The first evidence for his divinity is his char- 
 acter. 
 
 "The second evidence is the history of Chris- 
 tianity — that is, the history of what has been his 
 influence on the life of the world. 
 
 "Whenever the Church substitutes for this two- 
 fold argument, based on a disputed event in re- 
 mote history, it weakens the faith it wishes to 
 establish. ,, 
 
 We can only add to what has already been said 
 that the twofold evidence adduced implies and 
 necessitates the Virgin Birth. No such character 
 and no such influence is possible on the natural 
 generation theory. 
 
 Says Professor Orr: "Can we, in the estab- 
 lishing of such a new creative beginning — in the 
 origination of One who, while holding of human- 
 ity is yet outside the chain of its heredities and 
 liabilities — think of a spiritual miracle which has 
 not also its physical side? I contend that we 
 cannot. ... In no case in the world's his- 
 tory has natural generation issued in a being who 
 is sinless, not to say superhuman. But here in 
 
Must the Bible Go 171 
 
 Jesus is One who, as we have seen, is not only 
 sinless and archetypal, but has in Him all the 
 potencies of Godhead. Is it not reasonable to ex- 
 pect that His manner of entering the world will 
 be also different from that of others?" — (The 
 [Virgin Birth of Christ.) 
 
 As the offspring of sinful man, Jesus would 
 have been nothing more than a human teacher 
 with the frailties and imperfections of other men. 
 The world would still be despairing of a Deliv- 
 erer. The only attempt to evade this reasoning 
 is by denying that man is a fallen being and, in 
 accordance with a universal law, produces after 
 his kind. Of course this sweeps away the entire 
 doctrinal system of the New Testament, whose 
 teaching concerning sin, incarnation and redemp- 
 tion is a consistent whole. The denial of one 
 point carries with it all, including the integrity of 
 the record containing the "disputed event" which 
 Lyman Abbott thinks is an element of weakness 
 in the argument for Christ's divinity. But if the 
 record cannot be relied upon, there is nothing to 
 argue about. We have no more ground to dis- 
 pute the Virgin Birth than we have to dispute 
 the miraculous character and influence that de- 
 
172 Must the Bible Go 
 
 pend upon it — than we have to question other 
 conceded facts that appear in the same narratives. 
 To do so is to put the Scriptures out of court as 
 a competent witness to anything. The extraordi- 
 nary nature of an event does not vitiate the narra- 
 tive. If Matthew and Luke are unreliable in this 
 respect, they cannot be trusted to furnish us a 
 truthful account at all. Thus every man who 
 goes by his own judgment as to what is or is not 
 credible makes his own Bible and we have no 
 authoritative revelation from God. 
 
 John Stuart Blackie, in his Homer and The 
 Iliad (referring to Wolf's theory concerning the 
 writings of Homer which is identical with the 
 critical theory concerning the Old Testament) 
 says : i We who stand on the received text have 
 the tradition of long centuries in our favor, and 
 not one substantial reason against us. Posses- 
 sion in literary as in civil affairs is nine points of 
 the law; and he who wishes to shake an old re- 
 ceived document out of its consistency, must be 
 prepared to bring something more weighty to 
 bear against it than clever guesses and well- 
 devised possibilities." 
 
 Divine inspiration guaranteed the accuracy 
 of the record of events essential to an under- 
 
Must the Bible Go 173 
 
 standing of the truth. These writers got their in- 
 formation first-hand. Luke's reason for writ- 
 ing his Gospel makes the editor of the Outlook 
 an object of pity. "Forasmuch/' he begins, 
 "as many have taken in hand to draw up a 
 narrative, concerning those matters which have 
 been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered 
 them unto us which from the beginning were eye 
 witnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed 
 good to me also, having traced the course of all 
 things accurately from the first, to write unto thee 
 in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou 
 mightest know the certainty concerning the 
 things wherein thou wast instructed," Among 
 the things which were a matter of instruction 
 and narrated by Luke as a certainty, was the Vir- 
 gin Birth. Dr. Abbott terms it "a disputed 
 event." We stand by Luke. 
 
 Now how came Luke into possession of the 
 facts? Sir William M. Ramsay thinks they 
 "came ultimately to Luke's knowledge in some 
 way which he does not explain precisely; but he 
 suggests in his own fashion that Mary was ulti- 
 mately his authority. He knew what was kept 
 hid in her heart;" and that "the knowledge came 
 
174 Must the Bible Go 
 
 to him from her either directly or through a trust- 
 worthy intermediary/' 
 
 This is likewise the opinion of Prof. William 
 Sanday (Oxford), who says : "It is not too much 
 to say that the whole story is told from the point 
 of view of a woman, and more particularly of 
 Mary. Impressions of this kind cannot perhaps 
 be insisted upon ; but for myself I believe that the 
 last link- in the chain by which the substance of 
 the chapters reached St. Luke — and I should not 
 be surprised if the first link too — was a woman." 
 
 Prof. Theod. Zahn, D. D., Erlangen, Germany, 
 whose confession is: "My faith in Jesus as my 
 Redeemer stands and falls with the grateful rec- 
 ognition of the facts which form the contents of 
 the Gosper," affirms that John has "not only indi- 
 rectly shown his familiarity with the Virgin 
 Birth of Jesus and omitted any opposition to it, 
 but he has confessed it with full sounding testi- 
 mony. If the Fourth Evangelist is the disciple 
 who, in compliance with the last will of the dying 
 Jesus, took Mary into his house, we cannot imag- 
 ine any stronger testimony than this; for, what 
 men can know of the birth of Jesus, that was 
 known to the mother who has borne our Lord." 
 
Must the Bible Go 175 
 
 Note: Prof. James Orr sums up his argu- 
 ments in the able work already mentioned, in the 
 following propositions : 
 
 "i. The only two narratives we have of the 
 birth of Jesus tell us that He was born of a 
 Virgin. 
 
 2. The Gospels containing these narratives 
 are genuine documents of the Apostolic Age. 
 
 3. The texts of these narratives have come 
 down to us in their integrity. 
 
 4. The two narratives of the Virgin Birth are 
 independent, 
 
 5. The narratives, nevertheless, are not con- 
 tradictory, but are complementary and corrobora- 
 tive of each other. 
 
 6. There are strongest reasons for believing 
 that Matthew's narrative comes from the circle 
 of Joseph, and Luke's from the circle of Mary. 
 
 7. The Gospel of Mark, which embraces only 
 the public ministry of Jesus, does not contradict 
 the other narratives. 
 
176 Must the Bible Go 
 
 8. The Gospel of John does not contradict the 
 other narratives, but presupposes them. 
 
 9. John unquestionably knew the earlier Gos- 
 pels, and is traditionally identified with opposition 
 to the earliest known impugner of the Virgin 
 Birth, Cerinthus. 
 
 10. Paul does not contradict the Virgin birth. 
 On the contrary, Luke, a chief witness of the 
 Virgin Birth, was the companion of Paul, and 
 Paul's language seems to presuppose some knowl- 
 edge of the fact. 
 
 11. The doctrine of Paul and John — as of the 
 New Testament generally — implies a miracle in 
 the origin of Christ. 
 
 12. The Gospels containing the narratives of 
 Christ's birth were, so far as known, received 
 without question by the Church from their first 
 appearance. 
 
 13. With the exceptions of the Ebionites — the 
 narrowest section of the Jewish Christians — and 
 some of the Gnostic sects, the Church from Apos- 
 tolic times universally accepted the fact of the 
 
Must the Bible Go 177 
 
 Virgin Birth. The Nazarenes, or main body of 
 the Jewish Christians, accepted it. 
 
 14. The early Church set high value on the 
 Virgin Birth doctrinally, as attesting (1) the 
 true humanity of Christ, and (2) His super- 
 human dignity. 
 
 15. The prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 is rightly 
 applied by Matthew to the birth of Jesus. 
 
 16. Yet, as most critics now admit, this proph- 
 ecy was applied by no one in those days to the 
 Messiah, and therefore could not have suggested 
 the invention of this story. 
 
 17. It is granted by a majority of recent 
 critics that the myth — as they call it — of the Vir- 
 gin Birth could not have originated on Jewish 
 soil. 
 
 18. It is conclusively shown by Harnack and 
 others that it could not have originated on Gen- 
 tile soil. 
 
 19. Pagan myths do not afford any proper 
 analogies to the Virgin Birth of Christ, or the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation. 
 
178 Must the Bible Go 
 
 20. The perfect sinlessness of Christ, and the 
 archetypal character of His humanity, imply a 
 miracle in His origin. 
 
 21. The doctrine of the Incarnation of the 
 pre-existent Son implies a miracle in Christ's 
 origin. 
 
 22. The miracle in Christ's origin had of 
 necessity a physical as well as a spiritual side. 
 
 23. The Virgin Birth answers historically to 
 the conditions which faith postulates for the 
 origin of Christ. 
 
 In light of these propositions, I cannot ac- 
 quiesce in the opinion that the article of the Vir- 
 gin Birth is one doctrinally indifferent, or that 
 can be legitimately dropped from the public creed 
 of the Church. The rejection of this article 
 would, in my judgment, be a mutilation of Scrip- 
 ture, a contradiction of the continuous testimony 
 of the Church from Apostolic times, a weakening 
 of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and a practical 
 surrender of the Christian position into the 
 
Must the Bible Go 179 
 
 hands of the advocates of a non-miraculous, 
 purely humanitarian Christ — all on insufficient 
 grounds," 
 
180 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "In proportion as unbelief in the Scriptures in- 
 creases, the Person of the Incarnate Son, who, 
 as the First and the Last, the Beginning and the 
 End, alone gives it Unity, unity and meaning, 
 recedes from our sight ; and as He recedes, dark- 
 ness deepens over both present and future. For 
 years the most unobservant has seen how within 
 the Church the study of prophecy has been 
 greatly disparaged — a sure sign of that decay of 
 faith which, beginning here, extends itself to his- 
 tory and doctrine, and ends in their final rejec- 
 tion." — Samuel J. Andrews, Christianity and 
 Anti-Christianity in Their Final Conflict 
 
 "The connection is so close that few who earn- 
 estly believe in the absolute worth of Christ's 
 Person will be disposed to deny the truth of the 
 Evangelical narratives relating to the manner of 
 His entrance into, and exit from, the world." — 
 Prof. A. B. Bruce, Miraculous Elements in The 
 Gospels. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 A DISPARAGED CHRIST: HIS PERSON 
 
 A gentleman once purchased a map of the U. S. 
 in the form of blocks and having taken it home, 
 gave the blocks to his children to put together. 
 None of them succeeded until it was discovered 
 there was a man in the map. When the figure of 
 the man was made, the map was perfect. Such 
 is the map of Revelation, known as the Bible. 
 Though consisting of many parts, it is yet a com- 
 plete whole. The key to its construction is the 
 heavenly Man called by Himself the Son of Man, 
 by His ablest Apostle "the Lord from heaven." 
 Any attempt to reconstruct this celestial map 
 without respect to Him must result in confusion. 
 He is its principle of unity, its secret of power. 
 
 Many with no spiritual insight have taken it to 
 pieces and subjected each piece to a microscopic 
 examination, but since they did not see the Super- 
 natural Man, their effort to put the parts together 
 has met with no better success than the colored 
 181 
 
182 Must the Bible Go 
 
 deacon said his preacher attained: "He's de bes' 
 in de world to take de Bible apart, but he don* 
 know how to put it togeder again." 
 
 The higher critics and all others who handle 
 the Word of God in a cold, unsympathetic spirit 
 are colossal bunglers. When they are through 
 with it, there is nothing but meaningless patch- 
 work. They are not scientific; for true science 
 does not manufacture facts but discovers them. 
 These men are not looking for facts but for con- 
 firmation to a preconceived theory. Besides, facts 
 are nothing to a man without eyes. As Chester- 
 ton says: "The higher critic finds, like Peeping 
 Tom, that it is no good to have bored the hole 
 when you have lost the eye." We cannot accept 
 the word of blind men touching the facts of in- 
 spiration, and we are not shut up to their specula- 
 tions for knowledge of the truth. The question 
 of a Revelation is not left to them. This is a ques- 
 tion which can be settled only by those who hold 
 the key to the Scriptures. And the key is not 
 furnished by any advocate of a false doctrine of 
 Christ. 
 
 It is not going too far to say the Bible is inex- 
 plicable except upon a true Christology. Every 
 
Must the Bible Go 183 
 
 phase of Biblical teaching responds to the true 
 view of Christ and takes its place in a har- 
 monious, rational system of Christian thought. 
 Any doctrine, cult, or criticism that does not ac- 
 cord Him the honor which the Scriptures demand, 
 is an infinite disparagement of His claims and a 
 denial of humanity's hope. A disparaged Christ 
 means a fallible book, an unredeemed world, and 
 a hopeless eternity. As Sir Robert Anderson, the 
 learned lawyer of London, England, says, in his 
 "remarkable book," The Bible and Modern Crit- 
 icism: "It is not the Bible that is at stake but the 
 Christ of the Bible." Therefore, when the Bible 
 as inspired and authoritative goes out of the faith 
 of the Church, Christ as "the Power of God and 
 the Wisdom of God" goes with it. It is a vain 
 imagination to think, under these circumstances, 
 that the value of the Bible is enhanced and the 
 dignity of Christ is maintained. We believe with 
 the able author just quoted that "The foundation 
 truth of Christianity is that the Man of Calvary 
 is now sitting upon the throne of God," and we 
 justify his statement, in his appeal to all fair 
 minds, "that those who believe this upon no better 
 authority than the higher critics' Bible are credu- 
 
184 Must the Bible Go 
 
 lous and superstitious. We can reach the Living 
 Word only through the written word. There- 
 fore in contending for a really inspired — an abso- 
 lutely authoritative — Bible, we can say with 
 Athanasius, 'We are fighting for our all.' " 
 
 Now, in four principal ways the Christ of the 
 Bible is disparaged, the prevalence of which 
 would be the tragedy of the world : 
 
 i. When His person is compromised, as by 
 Gnosticism and Arianism in the Ancient Church, 
 and by Socinianism or Unitarianism in the mod- 
 ern Church. 
 
 2. When His atonement is denied, as by 
 theories which reject the expiatory character of 
 His death and make salvation to consist in the 
 following of an example. 
 
 3. When His power is limited, as by teaching 
 that confines faith to the Pardon aspect of Chris- 
 tianity and is blind to the supreme purpose of 
 Christ's mission to make men holy. 
 
 4. When His authority is disputed, as by 
 Criticism that holds He spoke in the language 
 of His age and therefore His word is not final 
 touching the Holy Scriptures. 
 
Must the Bible Go 185 
 
 Gnosticism asserting the evil of matter taught 
 that Jesus Christ was not the incarnation of God. 
 Its leading exponent was contemporary with the 
 apostle John who directed his writings against 
 this heresy, declaring that whoever denied the 
 coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh was anti- 
 Christ. A recrudescence of this error has ap- 
 peared in Christian Science (so-called), its 
 founder affirming the impossibility of Deity be- 
 coming corporealized. This cult, however, goes 
 beyond Gnosticism which never denied the reality 
 of matter. It contains elements of absurdity un- 
 known to that ancient heresy. They are alike 
 in sweeping away the doctrine of the incarnation 
 which the Gospel and Epistles of John explicitly 
 teach. 
 
 Arianism exalted Christ to the highest point 
 of creature greatness, but left him nevertheless 
 a creature. At one time it seemed likely to be- 
 come the prevailing form of Christianity, but 
 championed by Athanasius, "against the world," 
 the truth of our Lord's divine-human personality 
 became the creed of the Church. 
 
 Socinianism at first held more honorable views 
 of Christ's person than the later forms of this 
 
186 Must the Bible Go 
 
 heresy. In its present day form of Unitarianism 
 and higher criticism it gives us a Christ below 
 the capacity of the men who have swept the 
 supernatural out of the Bible. Its Kenosis "be- 
 tokens not the humiliation of Christ, but His 
 degradation. It is not that He became man, but 
 that He sank to the level of a Jew of that age. 
 Not that while 'knowing that the Father had 
 given all things into His hands and that He was 
 come from God and was going to God/ He 
 humbled Himself; but that knowing nothing 
 more than His contemporaries, His mind was 
 warped by prejudice and ignorance." 
 
 The disastrous effect of such teaching is in- 
 calculable. Already the decline of spirituality 
 portends the loss of all that evinces the super- 
 natural character of Christianity. It is as Leonce 
 de Grandmaison, editor of Etudes, and Re- 
 searches de Science Religieuse, Paris, says in an 
 able article on the Witness of the Spirit to the 
 Deity of Christ. 
 
 "All yielding, every kind of Arianism, every 
 attempt to reduce the Person of Christ to a 
 subordinate role, eminent, if you will, but after 
 
Must the Bible Go 187 
 
 all within the human sphere — all yielding of this 
 kind has been translated into a spiritual lower- 
 ing, into a patent diminution of religious life/* 
 
188 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "It is common to regard love as the funda- 
 mental feature of the divine character; and in 
 this way it is very difficult to reach the attribute 
 of justice. Most thinkers, indeed, do not reach 
 it at all. This one fact should serve to show the 
 error in which they are entangled. Holy, holy, 
 holy, say the creatures nearest to God, when 
 celebrating His perfection (Isa. VI), and not 
 good, good, good. Holiness, such is the essence 
 of God; and holiness is the absolute love of the 
 good, and the absolute horror of evil. ... It 
 is obvious that justice is included no less neces- 
 sarily than love itself in the fundamental feature 
 of the divine character, holiness." — Godet. 
 
 "The wrath which pours out upon Him is not 
 meant for Him as the righteous One who volun- 
 tarily offers Himself; but indirectly it relates to 
 Him, so far as He has vicariously identified Him- 
 self with sinners, who are deserving of wrath. 
 How could He have made expiation for sin, if He 
 had simply subjected Himself to its cosmical 
 effects, and not directly subjected Himself to that 
 wrath which is the invariable divine correlative 
 of human sin?" — Delitzsch. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A DISPARAGED CHRIST: HIS 
 ATONEMENT 
 
 The connection of the truth discussed in the 
 previous chapter with the nature of the atonement 
 is too close to escape the attention of any thinker. 
 A denial of our Lord's deity reduces His death 
 to the level of martyrdom for an opinion, with 
 no high and lasting significance for the race. 
 When, after His resurrection, He opened the 
 mind of the disciples that they might understand 
 the Scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is writ- 
 ten that the Christ should suffer and rise again 
 from the dead the third day, and that repentance 
 and remission of sin should be preached in His 
 name, unto all the nations, beginning from 
 Jerusalem/' He proclaimed that His death and 
 resurrection possessed elements of universality 
 and moral deliverance utterly inconsistent with 
 the idea of social and political martyrdom, evinc- 
 ing the unique, unparalleled character of this 
 event. This view is further shown by His 
 declaration: "Therefore doth the Father love me 
 
 189 
 
190 Must the Bible Go 
 
 because / lay down my life, that I may take it 
 again. No man taketh it away from me, but I 
 lay it down of myself. I have the power (Greek, 
 authority) to lay it down, and I have power to 
 take it again. This commandment received I 
 from my father" (John 10:17-18); a statement 
 whose bearing is evident from the incident re- 
 corded in John 18:4-8. What made them go 
 backward and fall to the ground? Our Lord 
 there demonstrated the meaning of His own 
 words, "No man taketh it from me, but I lay it 
 down of myself." They could not take Him with- 
 out His consent, nor would He give this until the 
 safety of His chosen was assured. Then with 
 the question "The cup which the Father hath 
 given me, shall I not drink it?" (identical with 
 "this commandment received I from my Father," 
 John 10:18), He permitted his enemies to seize 
 and bind Him. 
 
 Now, no martyr, in the common acceptation of 
 the term, was ever able to say: "No man taketh 
 my life from me but I lay it down of myself. I 
 have power to lay it down and I have power to take 
 it again." For though willing to die, he had no 
 power to prevent his death. Because of his help- 
 
Must the Bible Go 191 
 
 lessness, his life was taken away by men. And 
 death thenceforth held dominion over him. The 
 fact that this was not so with Jesus invested His 
 death with a meaning not possible on the theory 
 of a merely human Christ. 
 
 The positive affirmations of Scripture must fix 
 that meaning. A few passages will suffice in this 
 connection. 
 
 "For this is my blood of the covenant which is 
 shed for many unto the remission of sins." 
 (Matt. 26:28.) 
 
 "Being justified freely by his grace, through 
 the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God 
 set forth to be a propitiation through faith by his 
 blood, to show His righteousness because of the 
 passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the 
 forbearance of God; for the shewing, I say, of 
 His righteousness at this present season; that 
 He might Himself be just and the justifier of him 
 that hath faith in Jesus." (Rom. 3:23-27.) 
 
 "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto 
 Himself, not reckoning unto them their tres- 
 passes, . . . Him who knew no sin He made 
 to be sin on our behalf that we might become the 
 
192 Must the Bible Go 
 
 righteousness of God in him." (2 Cor. 5:19-21, 
 R. V.) 
 
 "Apart from shedding of blood there is no re- 
 mission." (Heb. 9:22.) 
 
 "Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the 
 righteous for the unrighteous that He might 
 bring us to God." (1 Pet. 3 :i8.) 
 
 "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth 
 us from all sin." (1 John 1 17.) 
 
 "Unto Him that loveth us and loosed us from 
 our sins by His blood." (Rev. 1 :5.) 
 
 A true exegesis of these Scriptures can yield 
 but one interpretation. The death of Jesus Christ 
 was an expiation for sin, not a martyrdom for 
 principle. As such it was vicarious, since He had 
 no sin to atone for. But the terrible nature of 
 His sufferings proved the awful reality of sin 
 which had disturbed the moral order of the uni- 
 verse, affronted the majesty and holiness of God 
 and corrupted and separated the sinning creature 
 from the Creator. Yet God would save "rebel- 
 lious man." This He could do only by a plan that 
 would combine the attributes of mercy and 
 justice; that would wipe out infinite wrong and 
 at the same time secure the bestowal of infinite 
 
Must the Bible Go 193 
 
 mercy. Such a plan, in short, to effect man's 
 moral recovery, must safeguard the righteous- 
 ness of God, for that is the foundation of His 
 throne. Superficial thinkers see nothing in this. 
 But the introduction of sin by the revolt of moral 
 beings meant the profoundest problem in the uni- 
 verse. Love alone could not solve it; for love 
 apart from righteousness becomes unprincipled. 
 Repentance was not the way out; for this could 
 neither repair the damage done by wrong nor 
 create a love of right. Forgiveness as a sovereign 
 act, without some provision for the vindication 
 of righteousness and the moral restoration of the 
 sinner, would be equivalent to licensing sin. 
 
 "Once we put law and necessity out of the re- 
 lations between Christ's death and our sin, we 
 dismiss the very possibility of thinking on the 
 subject; we may use words about it, but they are 
 words without meaning .... The simplest 
 hearer feels that there is something irrational in 
 saying that the death of Christ is a great proof 
 of love to the sinful unless there is shown at the 
 same time a rational connection between that 
 death and the responsibilities which sin involves 
 and from which that death delivers." "For love 
 
194 Must the Bible Go 
 
 in the Atonement is inseparable from law." 
 (Denney.) 
 
 The incarnation and suffering of God in Jesus 
 Christ solved the problem. This provided a per- 
 fect righteousness by which grace might have a 
 free hand to rescue sinful man. Love inspired 
 the atonement (John 3:16), but could not save 
 without it (Rom. 3 124-26). Infinite wisdom alone 
 was equal to the exigency — wisdom pervaded 
 with love and girded by power. Thus the cross 
 of Christ is "the power of God and the wisdom 
 of God." And thus it comes that "grace reigns 
 through righteousness unto eternal life through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 5:21.) 
 
 No finite being could have atoned for sin by 
 rendering the homage which infinite righteous- 
 ness demanded as the ground for the exercise of 
 the pardoning prerogative. The sufferings of a 
 man though he were a perfect man, might have 
 had a finite value and served as an example, but 
 they could never have satisfied the infinite factors 
 of this problem. The wrath of God against sin 
 cannot be dismissed as a fiction of theology. "It 
 is usually because we are not angry enough with 
 our own sin that we deny the anger of God." (H. 
 
Must the Bible Go 195 
 
 R. Mackintosh, D. D., New College, Edinburgh.) 
 There is in every man whose conscience has not 
 been perverted by false teaching a feeling that 
 cannot be satisfied by any theory that ignores the 
 question of Justice in relation to Sin. The able 
 thinker just quoted speaks of "situations, terribly 
 and inexorably rear' — situations in which "the 
 consciousness of sin is awake and urgent" — 
 when "the Christian who has nothing to say 
 about vicarious atonement, must acknowledge 
 himself baffled, helpless and dumb." In sup- 
 port of this statement he refers to a conversa- 
 tion which Hugh Falconer had on this subject 
 many years ago with the late Professor Pflei- 
 derer, of Berlin. "He asked me," says Fal- 
 coner, "to give him an actual instance. I men- 
 tioned that a few weeks before our talk a 
 message came to the Manse begging me to come 
 at once to a dying quarryman. The poor fellow 
 was absolutely illiterate. He fastened his hungry 
 eyes on me. What about God whom he must 
 meet in a few hours? I spoke of God's love: in 
 vain. I spoke of His Fatherhood : in vain. Love, 
 compassion, mercy, Fatherhood were too vague. 
 It was like catching at a glittering vapour. Some 
 
196 Must the Bible Go 
 
 instinct of Justice within him refused to be satis- 
 fied. So I said, 'God made us and loves us. But 
 we have broken His law and are hopelessly in 
 His debt. But He Himself has 'paid our debts/ 
 His Christ died for us. There is therefore now 
 no condemnation to those who are in Him/ I 
 gave a rough illustration as a sort of window into 
 a vicarious text. Could not the hungry eyes look 
 through Jt and catch a glimpse of God Himself? 
 They did see through it. "Our debts were paid." 
 He could meet God in Christ his substitute. I 
 put it to my friend. Was there not something 
 honorable in that poor dying quarryman refusing 
 the love till his conscience was satisfied? I can 
 never forget Pfleiderer's emotion as he replied in 
 effect: If a doctrine really meets a deep human 
 need it must be true. ,, (The Heart of the Gospel 
 and the Preacher, "The Constructive Quarterly.") 
 A Christianity without a Divine Savior — in 
 other words, a Christianity without the atone- 
 ment and the regenerating Spirit- — is a counter- 
 feit, utterly inadequate to renew the soul and 
 transform the life. On one occasion, Dr. Parker, 
 the eminent London preacher, referring to the 
 Unitarian conception of Jesus as a great example 
 
Must the Bible Go 197 
 
 only, used this illustration: "We have been to 
 hear Paderewski play. It was wonderful, superb, 
 magnificent. Then we went home and looked at 
 the piano. We would have sold it to the first man 
 who would have been fool enough to buy it. That 
 is the effect of your great example upon me. I 
 want not only a great Example, but a great 
 Saviour, One who can deliver me from my weak- 
 ness and my sin." 
 
 That hits the situation exactly. To say nothing 
 of the impossibility of an example, however glo- 
 rious, correcting the sinful past, such a theory 
 cannot put heart into a man who feels the want of 
 enabling power. A high example may bring 
 despair to an earnest soul. 
 
 Now it is because "God was in Christ recon- 
 ciling the world unto Himself," that His love can 
 be trusted. We have not a God who is indifferent 
 to sin but who has dealt with it in a manner to 
 manifest His righteousness and commend His 
 love. According to the Unitarian view there was 
 no Divine sufferer, no expiation for sin, no mani- 
 festation of a holy and righteous love. This is a 
 degradation of the character of God and a lower- 
 ing of the Biblical conception of Christ. Is it any 
 
198 Must the Bible Go 
 
 wonder some pulpits are powerless ? Forsyth has 
 touched the secret of this weakness in the follow- 
 ing forceful utterance : 'The grace of God can- 
 not return to our preachers or to our faith, till we 
 recover what has almost clean gone from our gen- 
 eral, familiar, and current religion, what liberal- 
 ism has quite lost — I mean a due sense of the holi- 
 ness of God. This holiness of God is the real 
 foundation — it is certainly the ruling interest of 
 the Christian religion. Have our Churches lost 
 that seal? Are we producing reform, social or 
 theological, faster than we are producing faith? 
 We are not seeking first the kingdom of God and 
 His holiness, but only carrying on with very ex- 
 pensive and noisy machinery a 'kingdom-of-God's 
 industry/ We are merely running the kingdom, 
 and running it without the Cross. We have the 
 old trade-mark, but what does that matter in a 
 dry and thirsty land where no water is, if the 
 artesian well on our premises is growing dry?" 
 (The Cruciality of the Cross). 
 
 Nothing but a Gospel that maintains the holi- 
 ness and righteousness of God while it magnifies 
 His mercy can prevail over the sins of the age, 
 and this we have in the vicarious sufferings of the 
 
Must the Bible Go 199 
 
 Son of God. It was the Godhead of Christ that 
 invested His sufferings with infinite value for all 
 moral beings and made the riches of Divine grace 
 available to sinful men. (Eph. 1 130-10; 2 \J\ 3 :8- 
 11). And all theories of the person or of the 
 atonement of Christ which deny or pervert this 
 truth do unspeakable dishonor to Him. The 
 Bishop of London during a visit to this country 
 well said in a speech : 
 
 "The Christian religion does not consist in a 
 belief in a good man named Jesus Christ dying 
 on the Cross, but consists in a belief of the sacri- 
 fice of God Himself. The future lies with no 
 Church which sinks to what is called the new 
 theology. What we must beware of on both sides 
 of the Atlantic is losing the power of our message 
 by trying to make it easier to believe/' 
 
200 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "It is a striking illustration of the separation 
 between the Head and the Church, that after 
 eighteen centuries its scholars are going back to 
 the records of His earthly life to find out who He 
 was ! If it had continued in the heavenly fellow- 
 ship to which He exalted it, it would be able to 
 tell the world with one voice both what He was 
 and what He is." — Samuel J. Andrews, Chris- 
 tianity and Anti-Christianity in their Final Con- 
 flict. " 
 
 "The whole work of Christ's redemption — His 
 Atonement and Victory, His Exaltation and In- 
 tercession, His glory at the right hand of God — 
 all these are only preparatory to what is the chief 
 triumph of His grace : the renewal of the heart to 
 be the temple of God. Through Christ God gives 
 the Holy Spirit to glorify Him in the heart, by 
 working there all that He has done and is doing 
 for the soul. ,, — Andrew Murray, The Two Cove- 
 nants, p. 66. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 A DISPARAGED CHRIST: 
 HIS POWER 
 
 Any view of Christian privilege that limits the 
 possibility of grace in a believer is a serious re- 
 flection on the character and work of Christ. No 
 sincere believer can want to sin. He strives 
 against doing so and longs for perfect deliver- 
 ance. To say therefore, as some do, that no one 
 can keep the law of God and live without com- 
 mitting sin is to confess unbelief in the willing- 
 ness or ability of Christ. In the former instance, 
 his character is impeached. He is made to con- 
 sent to a sinning religion because unable to pre- 
 vent it; in the latter case the inefficiency of the 
 plan of salvation is implied. He is thought of as 
 unable to do what He would do in the believer's 
 heart and life. The first supposition is disproved 
 by the Scriptures that involve the obligation of 
 holiness on man's part and the promise of it on 
 God's part, as well as by those which show the 
 Divine displeasure with sin and delight in holi- 
 
 201 
 
202 Must the Bible Go 
 
 ness. The second supposition is made impossible 
 by the unequivocal declarations of Christ's power 
 to save unto the uttermost them that come unto 
 God by Him and to cause them to walk in the 
 statutes of the Lord by His indwelling Spirit. 
 
 Moreover, the command to be holy is not an 
 arbitrary requirement, but springs out of the 
 very nature of God. "As He who hath called you 
 is holy, so be ye holy in all behavior. Because it 
 is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy/' (I Pet. 
 1:15-16.) What could more clearly prove that 
 God wills the believer's sanctification ? And as His 
 commands are His enablings, the failure to real- 
 ize this grace is due to unbelief. 
 
 The forgiveness of sin by Jesus Christ is re- 
 ceived upon the authority of His word, but the 
 transformation of character is an act of power 
 that demonstrates the truth of His word and 
 glorifies Him before men. "Whether is it easier 
 to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be for- 
 given thee/ or to say, 'Arise, and take up thy bed, 
 and walk?' But that ye may know that the Son of 
 Man hath authority on earth to forgive sins," 
 (he saith to the sick of the palsy), "I say unto 
 thee, Arise and take up thy bed and go thy way 
 
Must the Bible Go 205 
 
 into thine house." It is the sanctification and 
 preservation of the soul in a world of sin that 
 magnifies the Son of God. That complete deliver- 
 ance should be effected at death, when the battle 
 of life is over and there is nothing more to try 
 one's faith and engage one's effort, is no such 
 manifestation of His greatness as the power that 
 cleanses the heart and produces a holy life in the 
 midst of the severest besetments and trials of this 
 world. What a convincing proof of His authority 
 is the example of His power to "destroy the works 
 of the devil," and to reproduce His life in mortal 
 men! What a testimony to His pre-eminence is 
 the experience that can record, "Ye are witnesses, 
 and God also, how holily, and justly, and un- 
 blameably we behaved ourselves among you that 
 believe!" Yet, as Andrew Murray says, "the 
 Church believes so little in the mighty power of 
 God and the truth of His Holy Covenant, that the 
 grace of such heart-holiness is hardly spoken of." 
 Said Frederick W. Robertson: "A man whose 
 religion is chiefly a sense of pardon does not 
 thereby rise into integrity or firmness of char- 
 acter. A certain tenderness of character may very 
 easily go along with a great deal of subtlety." In 
 
204 Must the Bible Go 
 
 proportion as a man exhibits a strong, Christ-like 
 character is he a walking argument for Chris- 
 tianity, and any teaching that prevents his faith 
 from rising to the apprehension of such a privi- 
 lege and dooms him to the existence that cries, 
 "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death," discredits the fin- 
 ished work and resurrection power of Christ and 
 is far below the thought of Paul whose shout of 
 praise betokened his experience of deliverance: 
 "I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord 
 .... For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and 
 death. For what the law could not do in that it 
 was weak through the flesh, God sending His own 
 Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, con- 
 demned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of 
 the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after 
 the flesh, but after the Spirit." 
 
206 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "The nearer we approach through critical and 
 historical studies to the real Jesus of history, and 
 the more closely we succeed in bringing those 
 moral teachers who have resembled Him in any 
 respects into broad and full comparison with the 
 historic Christ, the more we shall find ourselves 
 compelled to agree with those officers who had 
 been sent to bring Jesus, and who had let Him go 
 untouched : 'Never man spake like this man.' " — 
 Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics. 
 
 "Who shall deliver us from the hodge-podge 
 of the critics, that we may listen again to the 
 Voice on the Mount ?" — Rev. Charles Wagner. 
 
 "Our blessed Saviour never speaks of the prin- 
 ciple of the Scripture, or the idea of the Scripture, 
 of the teaching of Scripture, of the promises of 
 the Scripture, of this or that in the Scripture, of 
 'the divine element' in the Scripture, as our mod- 
 erns would say, or of the Word of God contained 
 in the Scripture. He always speaks of the Scrip- 
 ture, that body, that written thing, that collection 
 of books. ... He argues with the Jews, and 
 quotes incidentally a passage from the Psalms. 
 He says, in parenthesis, "And the Scripture can- 
 not be broken." He does not say "This verse can- 
 not be denied," or "The teaching of the Psalms 
 cannot be gainsaid;" but simply^ "Because this 
 verse is in the Scripture, ipso facto, the Scripture 
 
Must the Bible Go 207 
 
 stands good for it, and the Scripture cannot be 
 broken." — Adolph Saphir, The Divine Unity of 
 Scripture. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A DISPARAGED CHRIST. 
 HIS AUTHORITY. 
 
 I now take up the point which in a most impor- 
 tant sense is decisive of those aspects of the sub- 
 ject already noticed, because it concerns the au- 
 thoritative character of our Lord's teaching. 
 
 He taught that the Scriptures testified of Him, 
 meaning the Old Testament, and urged that men 
 should search them, with the view, as the context 
 shows, to find Him there. The modern critic 
 searches the Scriptures with the view, as sug- 
 gested by the fundamental postulates of higher 
 criticism, to eliminate Him. His word is not re- 
 ceived as authoritative concerning their origin 
 and significance. In fact, the manner in which 
 the leading critics speak of Him is shocking to the 
 intelligence and sensibilities of people who believe 
 with Peter that He is "the Anointed One, the Son 
 of the living God," and that He has "the words of 
 eternal life." Two citations will show the limit to 
 which these irreverent critics will go in their as- 
 
 209 
 
210 Must the Bible Go 
 
 sumption of superiority to the Son of God. In the 
 article on the "Old Testament," in Hastings' Bible 
 Dictionary, occurs this statement: "Both Christ 
 and the Apostles or writers of the New Testa- 
 ment held the current Jewish notions respecting 
 the Divine authority and revelation of the Old 
 Testament." In his book, "The Preacher and the 
 Modern Mind," Prof. George Jackson says : "The 
 authorship of a particular psalm, the literary 
 character of a book of the Old Testament, for ex- 
 ample, are not questions that can be determined, 
 with all reverence be it said, by the words of Jesus 
 himself. The only authority here is the authority 
 of facts, and if these are not decisive, nothing re- 
 mains but to confess our ignorance." 
 
 Passing over the manner in which the second 
 quotation confuses the issue by including "the 
 literary character of a book," since Jesus did not 
 express an opinion about that, but about the 
 authorship of certain writings, what amazes one 
 is the dogmatic manner in which it is assumed 
 that the conclusions of higher criticism are facts 
 and then putting Jesus on trial according to this 
 assumption. A thing was not a fact because He 
 said it, nor did He say it because it was a fact ! 
 
Must the Bible Go 211 
 
 Such is the estimate put upon Him by these men 
 who then talk of "reverence" and grow self-com- 
 placent over their superior scholarship. We think 
 the language of Sir Robert Anderson a just char- 
 acterization of such "reverence :" 
 
 "How inferior the Christ of these critics is to 
 themselves, both in spiritual and natural intelli- 
 gence! But the profanity of the words, and the 
 folly and conceit which they betoken, will be plain 
 to every Christian. What the decoy is to the liber- 
 tine, these men are, though unwittingly, to the 
 avowed infidel. Just as a pure woman is insid- 
 iously trained to hear language and to tolerate sug- 
 gestions which in time prepare the way for ad- 
 vances of a kind that at first would have excited 
 disgust and anger; so the holy and healthy in- 
 stincts of the Christian are gradually deadened by 
 his becoming accustomed to hear his Divine Lord 
 thus patronized and disparaged." 
 
 And how great the contrast to such treatment 
 was the spirit which guided one of the great ex- 
 positors, the only spirit that becomes a student of 
 the Word of God, Dean Alford, who thus closes 
 his New Testament commentary: 
 
212 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "I have now only to commend to my gracious 
 God and Father this feeble attempt to explain the 
 most mysterious and glorious portion of His re- 
 vealed Scriptures; and with it, this my labor of 
 now eighteen years, herewith completed. I do so 
 with humble thankfulness, but with a sense of 
 utter weakness before the power of His Word, 
 and inability to sound the depth even of its sim- 
 plest sentence. May He spare the hand which 
 has been put forward to touch His Ark." 
 
 Such a spirit is as foreign to the critical school 
 as heaven is to hell. In the hands of this school 
 the Scriptures are subjected to Philistine usage 
 and compelled to undergo processes that reduce 
 them to the rank of ordinary, fallible literature, 
 void of sanctity and authority. The exalted opin- 
 ion of Christ who affirmed "the Scripture cannot 
 be broken," (not a single line or word, as this 
 reference shows) weighs nothing in the critical 
 estimate, since He merely inherited the traditions 
 of His nation, and was not a scientific investi- 
 gator ! But it is certain that the authors of this 
 profanation will fare no better than did their re- 
 mote progenitors who laid violent hands on the 
 Ark of the Lord. The Dagon of higher criticism 
 
Must the Bible Go 213 
 
 will be found broken in pieces on the floor of its 
 temple. A tourist who visited one of the picture 
 galleries in Florence said to the aged custodian, 
 as he went out, "I do not think much of your pic- 
 tures." "Oh," replied the old man, "that does not 
 matter, sir ; the pictures are not up for judgment, 
 but the visitors are." We can say with equal 
 assurance, Jesus Christ is not up for judgment, 
 but the critics are. 
 
 Now there were during our Lord's ministry on 
 earth the same sorts of people that exist today in 
 relation to His word. There were the simple- 
 hearted believers to whom the Scriptures, con- 
 cealed from the common people by Pharisaical 
 perversion and additions, were opened in all their 
 original beauty and power by this incomparable 
 Teacher. 
 
 The Pharisees who constituted the strongest 
 party of opposition to His teaching, were not 
 blamed for their belief in the genuineness and 
 authenticity of the Scriptures, for Jesus builds 
 His argument against their unbelief in Him upon 
 this fact. Their fault was failure to appreciate the 
 spirit of Scripture, and so overlaying it with false 
 interpretations and narrow restrictions as to hide 
 
214 Must the Bible Go 
 
 the original meaning. Hence when Jesus told 
 them that if they had believed Moses, they would 
 have believed Him, for Moses wrote of Him, their 
 sin was not denying that Moses was the author of 
 certain writings, but not believing what those 
 writings said concerning the Messiah. On the 
 question of authorship, Jesus occupied common 
 ground with them. 
 
 The Sadducees were the rationalists and higher 
 critics of that day, rejecting the Scriptures as a 
 supernatural revelation, and, of course, taking 
 issue with the literalism of Jesus. They neither 
 accepted the letter of Scripture, for which the 
 Pharisees were such sticklers, nor understood its 
 spirit. The spiritual teaching of Jesus offended 
 them, and though they cared nothing for the 
 orthodox party, yet because that teaching im- 
 perilled their prospects, equally with those of the 
 Pharisees, they joined with the latter in condemn- 
 ing Him. 
 
 No doubt both classes talked, as modern 
 Sadducees do, of the "shortcomings of Jesus !" 
 And they got as little benefit from His word as 
 these destructive critics get. Poor, weak, 
 ignorant, mistaken Christ, who does not know 
 
Must the Bible Go 215 
 
 His own mind, whose "shortcomings" necessitate 
 correction by modern as well as ancient critics! 
 What has he to offer a world groping in darkness 
 and oppressed by sin? A fallible teacher cannot 
 speak with authority to the race. If he needed 
 light himself, he can not be the light of the world. 
 If he had "shortcomings," little hope can he bring 
 to sinners. If he could not speak the truth con- 
 cerning the Scriptures that testify of him, who 
 can rely upon his statements concerning himself 
 and the nature of his work ? Who can accept with- 
 out reservation what he says about sin, his death, 
 his resurrection, and his coming again ? In short, 
 an incompetent teacher means an incompetent 
 Saviour, and we are left without salvation and 
 without hope of the future life. This is the log- 
 ical result of the critical position. No wonder, 
 therefore, that men to whom the word of Christ 
 is not sufficient see nothing amiss in the modern 
 attempt, in the name of science and under the 
 euphemism of "physical research," to revive an- 
 cient necromancy and establish commerce with 
 the dead. And this tendency will more and more 
 prevail if the critical attitude toward the Scrip- 
 tures as a final, authoritative revelation from God 
 
216 Must the Bible Go 
 
 becomes general throughout the Church. Yet still 
 for all rings out the solemn warning: "To the law 
 and to the testimony; if they speak not according 
 to this word, it is because there is no light in 
 them/' or as the Revised Version states : "Surely 
 there is no morning for them," Isaiah 8:20. 
 Awful disappointment ! When men discount the 
 Scriptures as a revelation and betake themselves 
 to higher criticism or "psychical research" (de- 
 scribed hy Scripture as "seeking unto them that 
 have familiar spirits and unto the wizards that 
 chirp and mutter/' to communicate with "the 
 dead"), "there is no morning for them." Instead 
 of light, there is "distress and darkness, the gloom 
 of anguish, and thick darkness." (V. 22.) What 
 seems light to the critic is the deceptive glare of 
 "satan transformed into an angel of light," who 
 has taken the place of the authoritative Christ. 
 The supposed voice of revelation becomes a de- 
 moniacal counterfeit. 
 
 But the Christ of Criticism, thank God, is not 
 the Christ of the New Testament. He who said, 
 "which of you convinceth me of sin?" also said, 
 "ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the 
 power of God." His "shortcomings" are the vain 
 
Must the Bible Go 217 
 
 imaginations of Dr. Terry and other learned 
 triflers. He is "the Amen, the faithful and true 
 witness, the beginning of the creation of God." 
 (Rev. 3 :i4.) To say He did not state a fact when 
 He attributed certain writings to Moses and Dan- 
 iel is to raise the question of His veracity or 
 knowledge, that is to say, of His competency to 
 be what He claimed to be, the Redeemer as well 
 as the authoritative Teacher of mankind; is to 
 deny that He is "the Amen, the faithful and true 
 witness." 
 
 No doctrine of the Kenosis which involves such 
 a disparagement of Christ can be true. It is a con- 
 tradiction of ideas to say that deity can empty it- 
 self of deity; for this would be self-annihilation. 
 He could empty himself of that estate of glory 
 "which He had with the Father before the world 
 was." It was for the re-investiture of this He 
 prayed in the language just quoted. (John 17: 
 5.) I think it safe to affirm that certain limita- 
 tions marked the period of His humiliation, but 
 not of the kind the critics assert. The one solitary 
 passage adduced by them (Mark 13 132), cannot 
 be taken in a sense that nullifies His positive 
 affirmations. For if He disclaimed knowledge of 
 
218 Must the Bible Go 
 
 that one particular respecting His coming He just 
 as positively claimed full knowledge of the fact, 
 the manner, and accompanying events of that 
 coming. Hence when the critics accept His word 
 touching that one item, they are estopped from 
 discrediting His teaching about His second com- 
 ing by saying He was influenced by Jewish 
 apocalyptical beliefs and did not speak the truth 
 on that subject. This is to vitiate His entire 
 teaching concerning the future life, and leave 
 faith no standing ground. Whatever limitations 
 He was under were self-imposed, as part of the 
 emptying process. If He did not know a thing, it 
 was because He chose not to know it; just as, if 
 He did not do some things, which God alone can 
 do, it was because He chose not to do them. But 
 when He chose, He manifested the attribute of 
 omnipotence, and when He chose, He displayed 
 omniscience; e. g., when He knew what was in 
 men's hearts (John 2:24-25, Mark 2:6-8). When, 
 in answer to a question of His disciples (Acts 
 1 :j) He repeated in different phraseology the 
 statement of Mark 13:32, He but emphasized the 
 subordination incident to His incarnation with- 
 out implying His ignorance in matters whereof 
 
Must the Bible Go 219 
 
 He affirms knowledge. And the fact that He said 
 He did not know in one instance confirms the 
 accuracy of His statements in other instances 
 when He makes no such denial. He would no 
 more leave a false impression in the latter than in 
 the former. His perfect candor and honesty were 
 the warrant of truth in both cases. Had He been 
 ignorant of the authorship of Old Testament 
 writings He would not have affirmed that author- 
 ship in such positive terms. 
 
 Yet the critics, because the exigencies of a 
 hypothesis require it, set aside His positive state- 
 ments as the utterances of an ignorant man who 
 merely adopted and confirmed the error of His 
 time ! In what sense, upon this theory, can He be 
 regarded as an authority to the men of that or of 
 any age ? But it has been shown how preposterous 
 as well as dishonoring to Christ is this sugges- 
 tion. He never deferred to the opinions of men 
 and more than once offended or astonished them 
 by His independence and originality. "Never 
 man spake like this man," they said; or, "they 
 were astonished at His teaching, for He taught 
 them as one having authority, and not as the 
 scribes." And, as Dr. A. T. Pierson has pointed 
 
220 Must the Bible Go 
 
 out, in reproving those who rejected His Mes- 
 sianic view of the Scriptures He indicated, in 
 less than fifty words, "the whole trend of modern 
 rationalistic criticism. It is one of the most re- 
 markable forecasts which the Word of God con- 
 tains. He said: Tor had ye believed Moses, ye 
 would have believed Me ; for he wrote of Me. But 
 if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe 
 My words?' (John 5:46-47.) And He subse- 
 quently said 'If they hear not Moses and the 
 prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though 
 one rose from the dead' (Luke 16:31). Here the 
 exact trend of rationalistic criticism was indi- 
 cated nearly two thousand years ago ; for it began 
 in disputing the authenticity of Moses' writings ; 
 then it went on from that to dispute the inspira- 
 tion of the prophets ; then it passed on to question 
 the authenticity and infallibility of the words of 
 Christ and now it is disputing as to whether He 
 even rose from the dead ! Our Lord thus gave us, 
 prophetically, the whole drift of this irreverent 
 criticism, showing where it would begin and 
 where it would end." (The Bible and Spiritual 
 Criticism.) 
 
Must the Bible Go 221 
 
 It ends, as we have seen, in such a God-dis- 
 honoring estimate of Jesus as is suggested by 
 what the critics term His "shortcomings;" by 
 their belief that they are better able to speak with 
 certainty and accuracy regarding the Old Testa- 
 ment than He of whom the Voice from the clouds 
 said : 'This is My beloved Son in whom I am well 
 pleased; hear ye Him." 
 
 Accordingly we hear Him when He speaks, for 
 example, of the writings of Moses, David, Isaiah, 
 Daniel, and Jonah and believe what he says of 
 them. We believe that Moses wrote what Christ 
 attributed to him, though the critics say the writ- 
 ing was by some unknown who lived centuries 
 after Moses. YYe believe David wrote the Psalm 
 Jesus says he did when He quotes the passage 
 in proof of His Godhead. We believe there was 
 only one prophet named Isaiah and that he is the 
 author of the part which the critics assign to an 
 anonymous scribe, though Christ quotes from it 
 as Isaiah's. We believe Daniel was the author of 
 the book bearing his name because Christ affirmed 
 his authorship. We believe the story of Jonah to 
 be authentic because Christ sealed its historical 
 validity by His own affirmation. 
 
222 Must the Bible Go 
 
 While this is not the only reason we believe 
 these things, it is enough for our faith. We be- 
 lieve where the critics deny, because the Father 
 has said, "Hear Him," and because He is infi- 
 nitely more worthy of credence that His critics. 
 At the same time we are glad to stand with all 
 reverent scholars who find in archaeology, his- 
 tory, and true spiritual criticism abundant con- 
 firmation of the words of "the True and Faithful 
 Witness," while they note the subjectivism and 
 hostility to Divine revelation which have char- 
 acterized higher criticism. 
 
 As an instance of such hostility, it may be men- 
 tioned, that the attack on the integrity of Daniel 
 began with a repudiation of the miraculous in- 
 cidents of the book. Other reasons were then 
 sought, but they have been shown by able think- 
 ers to be superficial and untenable. It is enough, 
 to quote Keil, that "the testimony of our Lord 
 fixes the seal of Divine confirmation on the exter- 
 nal and internal evidences which prove the gen- 
 uineness of the book." 
 
 The case of Jonah is, perhaps, the most striking 
 illustration of emptying the words of Christ of all 
 rational content chargeable to a false criticism. 
 
Must the Bible Go 223 
 
 Nineveh, situated upon a navigable river com- 
 municating with the Euphrates river and the 
 Persian gulf, doubtless formed "one of the great 
 trading stations between that important inland 
 sea and Syria and the Mediterranean, and must 
 have become a depot for the merchandise supplied 
 to a great part of Asia Minor, Armenia, and 
 Persia." (McClintock & Strong.) Phoenician 
 ships went everywhere, carrying the produce of 
 Assyria and Egypt, as well as their own wares 
 and manufactures. Nothing could be more prob- 
 able, therefore, than that on the very ship which 
 carried Jonah were some Ninevite as well as 
 Phoenician sailors, who revered the fish-god, and 
 that they told the story of the storm at sea and of 
 the fate of Jonah, whose subsequent ejection 
 from the mouth of the great fish may have be- 
 come known to them before his journey to Nine- 
 veh. Dr. W. M. Thompson thinks Jonah may 
 have "carried with him, or there had preceded 
 him, such well-authenticated proofs of his won- 
 derful preservation in the whale's belly as deeply 
 alarmed the Ninevites, on whose account, in an 
 important and portentous sense, the miracle had 
 been wrought. Nor is it difficult to discover how 
 
224 Must the Bible Go 
 
 such reports would have been spread abroad. 
 The sailors of the ship could testify that they 
 threw Jonah overboard in a tempestuous sea; 
 very likely they saw him swallowed by the great 
 fish. They would, therefore, be immensely 
 amazed to find him on shore, alive and well. 
 Such a thing would now make a prodigious noise 
 in the world, and the news of it would fly from 
 city to city with incredible speed. There is no 
 reason to doubt, therefore, that the story of the 
 prophet had preceded him to Nineveh, and pre- 
 pared the way for the success of his preaching." 
 (The Land and the Book, vol. i., page ioo.) 
 
 There can hardly be a question that the knowl- 
 edge of the mighty works of Jehovah in the his- 
 tory of His people Israel, ruling the forces of 
 nature, confounding false gods, and overwhelm- 
 ing nations that stood opposed to His will, had 
 spread throughout the countries to the east of 
 Palestine. And when, under all these circum- 
 stances, the prophet as the representative of the 
 living God, went through the city uttering his 
 ominous prediction, alarm seized upon the king 
 and people and produced the universal repentance 
 described in the book. Such religious fasts were 
 
Must the Bible Go 225 
 
 not unknown in that empire. Figures of the fish- 
 god have been discovered among Assyrian ruins, 
 indicating that it must have had some kind of 
 place in the national pantheon. Hence the report 
 of Jonah's strange experience would lay hold 
 upon the imagination of the Ninevites and make 
 his preaching irresistible. 
 
 Now that these disclosures of ancient history 
 would emphasize the sign of Jonah's appearance 
 in Nineveh as a orophet, thus investing the sacred 
 narrative with the suggestion of reality, has little 
 weight with men who have a theory to maintain. 
 The havoc which the theory plays with the lan- 
 guage of Christ, should, however, open the eyes 
 of many to its irreconcilability with faith in Him. 
 
 Here again the miraculous element of the book 
 was the first point of attack. Then the book be- 
 came a parable, full of good teaching, like the 
 parables of the Gospel, and in this sense a praise- 
 worthy production. The reference of Christ was 
 held not to be an expression of its historical char- 
 acter, but simply the use of an illustration, like 
 other parables. Unfortunately for the theory, 
 Christ's use of the story necessitates fact and a1> 
 solutely excludes the idea of fiction. Some of the 
 
226 Must the Bible Go 
 
 scribes and of the Pharisees asked Him for a sign. 
 He answered: "An evil and adulterous genera- 
 tion seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign 
 be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, 
 for as Jonah was three days and three nights in 
 the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be 
 three days and three nights in the heart of the 
 earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the 
 judgment with this generation and shall condemn 
 it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; 
 and behold a greater than Jonah is here."* 
 
 Observe, they asked for a sign, not an illustra- 
 tion merely, and Jesus said they should have a 
 sign, namely his death and resurrection. What 
 Jonah's experience being in the whale and coming 
 out of it alive was to the Ninevites, Christ's burial 
 and resurrection would be to the men of His gen- 
 eration. Now fiction in the former case would be 
 utterly incongruous with fact in the latter. It may 
 teach lessons, but can not be a sign of anything. 
 Only a fact can be a sign. 
 
 Would not Christ be a trifler to say the Nine- 
 vites had a sign, when, according to this theory, 
 they had nothing of the kind? Trifling, too, 
 would have been the statement that his resurrec- 
 
Must the Bible Go 227 
 
 tion would be a sign, if He never arose from the 
 grave. No spirit manifestation would have an- 
 swered, as modern unbelief would have it. He 
 told His disciples He was to be crucified and rise 
 the third day. It was a bodily crucifixion and 
 therefore a bodily resurrection. Nothing else 
 would have convinced them. Hence His positive 
 assurance: "Handle me and see; a spirit hath 
 not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." 
 
 The men of Nineveh were real facts; so was 
 Jonah, as well as the other persons and events of 
 this context. The grave of Christ was an indis- 
 putable fact ; so was His rising out of the grave. 
 This was a sign to His contemporaries. There- 
 fore, the whale's belly and Jonah's ejection there- 
 from alive, which were paralleled with His own 
 experience, must have been facts. He declared 
 they were facts. To deny this is to impeach His 
 authority and reduce to absurdity His statement 
 of similiarity between these experiences. 
 
 Dr. David James Burrell, the able preacher, 
 has exposed the infidelity of those who dispute 
 the reality of the record concerning Jonah and 
 the great fish in words that must elicit the hearty 
 amen of all who believe Jesus taught the truth. 
 
228 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "In his reference to this narrative," he says, "our 
 Lord did not only signify his assent to its truth, 
 but he adventured the validity of His redemptive 
 work upon it. As his resurrection was to be the 
 seal of His atonement, so the truth of the Jonah 
 narrative was a sign of His resurrection. Had 
 He regarded it as a mere folklore, He could not 
 have made such use of it. We do not use fables 
 as guarantees of fact. Try it in a court of justice. 
 'As surely as Jason sought and found the Golden 
 Fleece, so surely I will tell the truth.' That would 
 scarcely answer. You must certify by an indubit- 
 able fact like this: 'As surely as there is a God 
 in heaven I will tell the truth !' Or try it in a com- 
 mon matter like the contract for a debt ; make out 
 your note on this wise : 'By the sign of Jack and 
 the Beanstalk, or of Cinderella and her Crystal 
 Slipper, I promise to pay when this obligation 
 falls due/ Does this seem preposterous? It is not 
 a whit more preposterous than to allege that 
 Jesus referred to the 'fable' of Jonah when called 
 upon to produce a sign in verification of His own 
 claims as the only begotten Son of God. 
 
 Is it not a remarkable fact, that the very por- 
 tions of Scripture which have been most vigor- 
 
Must the Bible Go 229 
 
 ously assailed and held up to ridicule by destruc- 
 tive critics are those which Jesus marked with His 
 authoritative seal of approval. Verily it looks as 
 if He anticipated the things that are happening 
 in these days ! And in a clash of opinion between 
 Jesus, as the champion of the Divine Word, and 
 all who oppose it, there is no room for hesitation 
 on the part of those who sincerely follow Him; 
 they will be found standing with Him." 
 
 The case of Jonah and the fish will serve to 
 illustrate the critical attitude toward Jesus as an 
 authority in matters wherein His statements are 
 contrary to modern views. If he builds an argu- 
 ment for His Divinity upon a Scripture which 
 He affirmed David said by the Holy Spirit 
 (Psalm no: i, Mark 12:36), the critics say, "Not 
 so; we can no longer accept the word of Jesus 
 about such things. David never said that, and 
 the Holy Spirit never inspired it." If the state- 
 ment of Jesus is unreliable, the passage was 
 neither inspired nor authentic, for He affirmed 
 both. Well might He say, "Ye call me Lord, 
 Lord, but where is mine honor ?" 
 
 This derogation from His honor extends to 
 almost every phase of His teaching. He taught 
 
230 Must the Bible Go 
 
 not as "one having authority/' as His contemp- 
 oraries claimed He did, not as one who knew His 
 subject and spoke the truth; but as one equally 
 ignorant with other men who have not specialized 
 in critical studies ! The trouble with such special- 
 ization is that it possesses neither the scientific 
 nor the Christian spirit. It is as irrational as it 
 is godless. If the specializer does not think the 
 character of Christ entitles His utterances to be 
 received at their face value, there is nothing in 
 his study of Scripture that merits the designation 
 of either fairness or reasonableness. Why, for 
 illustration, pose as loyal disciples of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, as the editors of certain Sunday 
 School publications do, when their own explana- 
 tions contradict His plain statements. When He 
 healed the woman with crooked back He said 
 Satan had bound her. No, run the notes of the 
 Berean Quarterly ; this was just the notion of the 
 people then living. He affirmed in an eschato- 
 logical discourse that a flood swept the ungodly 
 away in the days of Noah. The critics deny His 
 affirmation and hence nullify His application of 
 this reference to His second coming. Such in- 
 stances could be multiplied. 
 
Must the Bible Go 231 
 
 What will be the end of this treatment of 
 Christ? Anti-Christ. The higher criticism is 
 one of the most potent forces now preparing the 
 Church and the world for the coming of the Man 
 of Sin who will usurp the place of the Son of God 
 and inaugurate a reign of lawlessness. Reject- 
 ing or neutralizing the authority of Christ by 
 disputing the plain meaning of His words con- 
 cerning the Scriptures and His own works log- 
 ically and actually ends in uncertainty and un- 
 belief in everything. And I can not do better in 
 bringing this line of thought to a close than to 
 quote the remarks of Handley C. G. Moule, D. D., 
 Bishop of Durham, taken from his preface to 
 Sir Robert Anderson's work, The Bible and 
 Modern Criticism. He says : 
 
 "The attitude towards Holy Scripture of a vast 
 deal of cultured thought and responsible teaching 
 at present offers assuredly a problem which it is 
 idle to dismiss as if it were not portentous. By 
 whatever process it has come to be, teachers and 
 disciples far and wide now regard the Old Testa- 
 ment (to speak of it only for the instant) from 
 an angle totally different (I use the words de- 
 liberately) from that taken by our Lord Jesus 
 
232 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Christ, alike before and after His Resurrection 
 from the dead. To Him, tempted, teaching, suf- 
 fering, dying, risen, 'it is written' was a formula 
 of infinite import. The principle this expressed 
 lay at the heart of His teaching. It is not too 
 much to say that it belonged to the pulse, to the 
 vital breath, of His message to others, and what 
 is mysteriously yet more, to His certainty about 
 Himself. But in wide circles of our Christendom 
 it is now openly or tacitly taken to be out of date, 
 to be narrow, to be uncultured, to make much of 
 'it is written;' as if an appeal to a definite super- 
 natural book-revelation were a thing discredited 
 and to be given up. 
 
 "If a severe necessity of irrefragable truth de- 
 mands this, be it so. But let not the conclusion 
 be reached, or rested in, light-heartedly, and 
 smoothly decorated with the comfortable phrase- 
 ology current in articles and reviews. The con- 
 clusion, if true, is portentous. It is a confession 
 that on a matter central in His message our 
 Master was much mistaken. He appears thus as 
 not merely capable of nescience; that is a very 
 different matter; the most cautious, the most 
 worshiping, theology may hold that He con- 
 
Must the Bible Go 233 
 
 sented, in His humanity, to limitations of His 
 conscious knowledge and to silence outside those 
 bounds. But here He appears as ignorant with 
 that sort of ignorance which profoundly impairs 
 the whole value of a teacher — the ignorance of 
 the man who does not know where his knowledge 
 ends, and so makes confident inferences, where 
 his basis as to facts is unsound. 
 
 "Such a fallible Christ lies open to the sus- 
 picion of fallibility on other matters than the 
 nature and integrity of the Old Testament; and 
 reasonably. The theology which denies the Lord 
 abnormal knowledge of the facts of the past is 
 only consistent when it extends its denial to the 
 future, and takes cum grano the New Testament 
 doctrine of His return, which is a matter either 
 of revelation, or of the vaguest and most impal- 
 pable forecast. Such extensions have un- 
 doubtedly come to be freely made within Chris- 
 tian circles : and not only in the Encyclopedia 
 Biblica. 
 
 "If these conclusions be demanded by irrefut- 
 able fact, let them be made, and accepted. But 
 not, I repeat, light-heartedly, and as if we were 
 the freer for them, and could talk glibly about 
 
234 Must the Bible Go 
 
 them in the best modern style. Let us make them 
 with a groan, and take care to carve no more 
 the unauthentic promise on the tombs of our be- 
 loved. 
 
 "But first let us be absolutely sure that our de- 
 traction from the complete infallibility of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ has infallible grounds. Let 
 us take particular care to be sure that its basis 
 is no a priori theory of the genesis of Religion, 
 which may even already be on its way to discredit 
 in the court of knowledge and thought." 
 
 *As the discussion deals only with Christ's au- 
 thority in relation to the story of Jonah, there is 
 no call for any statement of scientific fact. But 
 since the critical objection denies the wisdom and 
 power of God as well as the authority of Christ, 
 it seems good to present a few facts to silence the 
 gainsaying of foolish men. 
 
 It was the extraordinary character of the mir- 
 acle recorded in the book of Jonah that set the 
 critical mind against its authenticity. But this is 
 a difficulty only for unbelief, whose ideas of pos- 
 sibility are restricted to the narrowest limits. The 
 essence of all unbelief is limiting God. What 
 with the wonderful dispensational and typical 
 teaching of this book (teaching that would be 
 
Must the Bible Go 235 
 
 lost, upon the theory that the work is fiction ; for 
 types are facts before they are illustrations, and 
 dispensations cannot rise out of parables), there 
 was reason for such history. What with infinite 
 wisdom and power, there was the possibility of 
 its occurrence. 
 
 The narrative states that God "prepared a great 
 fish to swallow Jonah. ,, Frank Bullen, who had 
 much experience at sea, writes of the capture of a 
 huge sperm whale which, when dying, ejected the 
 contents of its stomach. "The ejected food was 
 in masses of enormous size, larger than any we 
 had yet seen on the voyage, some of them being 
 estimated to be the size of the hatch-house, viz - , 
 eight feet by six feet into six feet." (Cruise of 
 the Cachalot.) This mass of food in its entirety 
 was two feet longer than a tall man, and equal 
 in breadth and thickness to the bodies of six 
 heavy men rolled into one. (See the New Bib- 
 lical Guide of Urquhart, vol. vii., p. 132, from 
 which this account is taken.) 
 
 There are many kinds of whales, and every 
 one of them, it is said, with the exception of the 
 Greenland whale, has a gullet in proportion to 
 its size. 
 
 Moreover, as Professor Macloskie of Prince- 
 ton, has shown, the structure of the whale is such 
 that if some air-breathing animal "should get 
 mixed with the whale food by being shipwrecked 
 
238 Must the Bible Go 
 
 or by some other accident, and be carried by the 
 influx of water between the monster's jaws, this 
 accident must immediately rescue the intruding 
 air-breather from death, because the intruder 
 should find itself transferred from the water in 
 which it was drowning into the air supply of the 
 whale itself." The air pouch "has thick, elastic 
 walls, and a cavity abundantly large to receive a 
 human body, and to supply it with air for breath- 
 ing/' Professor Macloskie suggests that the 
 pouch of the mother whale may serve the pur- 
 pose of sheltering her offspring at times, com- 
 parably with the mother kangaroo, which uses 
 her marsupial pouch for the protection of her 
 young. 
 
 Nor are these the only illustrations of God's 
 creative power to confound the reasoning of 
 higher critics. A monster fish was caught by 
 Captain Thompson, in June, 1912, in the vicinity 
 of Knights Keys, Florida, which required five 
 harpoons and one hundred and fifty bullets to 
 subdue it, and which then lived several days. In 
 its struggle it smashed a boat into pieces and 
 crushed the rudder and propeller of a thirty-one 
 ton yacht. It weighed thirty thousand pounds, 
 was 45 feet in length, nearly 24 feet in circumfer- 
 ence, more than 8 feet in diameter. Its mouth 
 (open) was 31 inches, 28 inches wide, 43 inches 
 deep. An animal weighing fifteen hundred 
 
Must the Bible Go 237 
 
 pounds was found in its stomach. One writer 
 says that one of the animals taken from the mon- 
 ster lived seven days after its removal. 
 
 What now becomes of the claim of critics that 
 the story of Jonah and the whale is absurd ? This 
 is no romance. Men of great repute who saw 
 the monster have certified to the genuineness of 
 the curiosity. The critics must be left to their 
 own reflections. 
 
238 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "I trust Thee, not to the third day, not to the 
 Easter dawn, but to the end of time. 
 
 "Thy day cometh — that sufficeth me. It is my 
 calm in unrest, my light in the dark, my consola- 
 tion in distress and defeat. 
 
 "I have been led to Thee by the flower of the 
 fields, by the star of the skies, by the voice of the 
 Prophets and the Gospel, by the radiance from 
 the obscurity of the humble, as from the brow of 
 the Heroic and the Just. But henceforth Thou 
 hast no more need of witnesses or of fresh proofs. 
 
 "It is on Thee alone that I believe, in Three that 
 I would have my assurance for Life, for Death, for 
 Eternity/' — Charles Wagner, The Better Way. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE INDISPENSABLE CHRIST. 
 
 The moral necessity of Christ to man has re- 
 ceived no stronger affirmation than that which 
 the experience of unbelief has sometimes wrung 
 from the lips of thoughtful sceptics. The denial 
 of Christianity produces a sort of mental intoxica- 
 tion, under the influence of which men imagine 
 that a new era of social freedom and progress 
 has begun. But alas! the day of disillusionment 
 comes when, sobered by the evil effects of such 
 denial, they view the nature and claims of 
 Christianity with clearer judgment. They are 
 compelled to own its divinity and power as the 
 means of social regeneration and conservation. 
 Christ is seen to be indispensable to the soul and 
 its social habitation. They confess to the utter 
 inadequacy of reason to save the individual and 
 make society what it ought to be. Their hearts 
 protest against the hasty conclusions of their 
 misguided intellects. There is an aching void 
 which the negations of unbelief only intensify. 
 
 239 
 
240 Must the Bible Go 
 
 They find at last the way of relief pointed out 
 by the ancient Scripture — "In returning and rest 
 shall ye be saved. ,, 
 
 As an instance of this recovery of faith take 
 the conversion of Professor Romanes, the scien- 
 tist. How pathetic his frank confession that he 
 was not happy in his position of unbelief, that 
 "instead of the God of the universe, in whom he 
 had believed as a boy, there seemed now nothing 
 but a great big empty hole." This was almost 
 the language of Prof. Clifford, another noted 
 atheist, who yet was serious enough to realize 
 the catastrophe of such an experience: "We feel 
 that the Great Companion is dead." Prof. 
 Romanes' conversion was simply a return to the 
 faith of his childhood, but through the conviction 
 that his reasoning had been fallacious. His case 
 is proof that the fault of scepticism is reasoning 
 from partial premises. When all the facts are 
 lined up, reason at once declares for Christianity, 
 and the heart utters its glad Amen. 
 
 Another example of sober inquiry and frank 
 avowal of belief in the indispensableness of 
 Christianity was that of the French writer and 
 
Must the Bible Go 241 
 
 disciple of Renan, M. Paul Bourget, who said 
 some years ago : 
 
 "As for me this long inquiry into the moral 
 diseases of the France of today has constrained 
 me to recognize that for the individual as well 
 as for society, Christianity is the absolute condi- 
 tion of health and recovery." 
 
 Lavredan, a French author, converted by re- 
 flections upon the present terrible struggle of his 
 nation for existence, closes a statement concern- 
 ing the loss of his unbelief with the words : "A 
 slain people covers the fields. How hard it is to 
 be an atheist in this national graveyard! I can- 
 not ! I cannot ! I have deceived myself and you 
 who have read my books and sung my songs !" 
 
 Professor Abelous, the physiologist, said at 
 the Sorbonne before an audience of professors 
 and medical students, "Science is neither moral 
 nor immoral. They are Utopian who seek to use 
 it for ends which do not belong to it. A morality 
 cannot be established if it leaves the religious 
 sentiment out of consideration. As far as mor- 
 ality is concerned, the supreme word does not 
 belong to science but to Christ, whose immortal 
 words of hope and love will never pass away." 
 
242 Must the Bible Go 
 
 Even more fervent and personal is the testi- 
 mony borne by M. Pierre Loti, in his book, 
 "Jerusalem." Profoundly impressed by the de- 
 votion of the worshipers at the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre, he exclaims: 
 
 "Oh, to believe; Oh, to pray, when the end is 
 near, as these do. For Christ, whatever men may 
 think and whatever men may do, is the Unique. 
 He is the One that cannot be explained. And at 
 this moment, however strange it may appear com- 
 ing from me, I would say to my friends who have 
 followed me thus far, "Seek ye Him ; try to find 
 Him — for outside of Him there is nothing." 
 
 Listen now to the voice of one from the land 
 that has debauched the faith of Christendom by 
 its assaults upon the integrity of the Bible. His 
 awakening is an illustration of the inadequacy of 
 the new theology and higher criticism to meet 
 the crises of life and satisfy the demands of the 
 soul. The awful European war is doubtless a 
 judgment upon the nations that have forsaken 
 the God of Revelation for the Devil of rational- 
 ism, and will, it is hoped, awaken the whole 
 Church to the nature of the obsession. 
 
Must the Bible Go 243 
 
 The voice is that of Pastor Haecker, of the 
 Luther Church, Berlin, who about a year ago 
 abandoned the liberal faction in the State Church 
 to which he was formerly attached. A quotation 
 from an address on his "Return to the Old Gos- 
 pel," will emphasize these remarks : 
 
 "Why have I not tried 'the new gospel* longer 
 — the gospel without the incarnate God, without 
 the death sacrifice of God's love, without the res- 
 urrection of the Lord? Because I sought life 
 and full satisfaction and did not find this in 
 modern theology. As pastor, I was called not 
 only to weddings, but to deathbeds and funerals. 
 There I could offer no fine words on the value of 
 the life which was vanishing, of the virtues of 
 the dead, concerning which I was not convinced. 
 No, at such times I needed to say that One had 
 cried aloud over this world of graves : T live, and 
 ye shall live also.' The modern man must be 
 loved, but not with false concessions; loved as 
 God has ever loved — with Cross-love. He must 
 be loved with the old Gospel, which is the truth. 
 Therefore, we must abandon half-way comprom- 
 ises. We must bring the message, not of great 
 
244 Must the Bible Go 
 
 men who are dead, but of the Son of God Who 
 lives." 
 
 Of like comprehension were the words of the 
 statesman, W. E. Gladstone, who wrote: "All I 
 write, and all I think, and all I hope, is based 
 upon the divinity of our Lord, the one central 
 hope of our poor, wayward race." 
 
 Noble is the confession of faith by Max Muller, 
 the eminent philologist : "In the course of a long 
 life, in pain and sin and grief and desertion, in 
 loneliness, in injustice and disappointments which 
 have overtaken me, Jesus Christ has given me a 
 strength and rest which nothing else can equal. 
 And in all the great unknown that is in store for 
 the future nothing can I endure or do except in 
 His spirit, under His leading." 
 
 Incomparable Being, of whom it is written, 
 "His name shall be called Wonderful !" Who of 
 all the children of men that have heard that name, 
 would not bear witness to its sweetness and 
 power? Who that has felt the weight of the 
 mysteries of existence and longed for the sure 
 word of hope and comfort, but, having learned 
 of Him, has uttered the passionate cry of Peter, 
 "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the 
 
Must the Bible Go 245 
 
 words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure 
 that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
 God." Note the testimony of that devil-priest in 
 India, when the Spirit of God opened his under- 
 standing to the teaching of Jesus: "I saw the 
 horror of my past and the mercy of the Christ 
 who had redeemed me by His love. I believed 
 what He said, that to enter the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, a man must be born again. I knew that 
 my sins would cling to me, in spite of my faith in 
 the living God, unless I was converted and be- 
 came as a little child. I saw, too, that it would 
 be of little use for me to preach faith in a living 
 God to my people, when what they needed was 
 repentance of their sins and liberation through 
 the love of Christ. I felt how true, how true, was 
 this teaching of my Lord." 
 
 Blessed be His name ! Our faith is not a vain 
 thing. We know Whom we have believed, and 
 therefore know what is real, and can say from 
 the heart, with the gentle Whittier ; 
 
246 Must the Bible Go 
 
 "No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
 Nor dream of bards and seers, 
 No dead fact stranded on the shore 
 Of the oblivious years ; 
 
 But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
 
 A present help is He ; 
 And faith has still its Olivet 
 
 And love its Galilee. 
 
 The healing of His seamless dress 
 
 Is by our beds of pain; 
 We touch Him in life's throng and press, 
 
 And we are whole again. 
 
 Through Him the first fond prayers are said 
 
 Our lips in childhood frame, 
 The last low whispers of our dead 
 
 Are burdened with His name. 
 
 O Lord and Master of us all, 
 
 Whate'er our name or sign, 
 We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 
 
 We test our lives by Thine." 
 
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