That monster the higher critic

THAT MONSTER

THE HIGHER CRITIC

BY

MARVIN E. VINCENT, D.D.

NEW YORK
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY

(INCORI'OKATED)

182 Fifth Avenue

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THAT MONSTER

THE HIGHER CRITIC

BY

MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D.

NEW YORK
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY

(incorporated)
l82 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1894, by
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH &• COMPANY

(incorporated)

PRESS OF

EDWARD O. JKNKINS' SON,

NEW YORK.

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

Is the Biblical critic a dangerous, devouring beast ?

A good many think so : at least a good many have
an impression to that effect, which is a quite different
thing from thinking. Nevertheless, impressions often
carry people farther than intelligent opinions ; and just
because a mere impression, in seven cases out of ten, is
untruthful, and because it cannot give a rational ac-
count of itself, and therefore does the more mischief, —
it needs to be dealt with.

TTNEEASOXIXG PAXIC.

There is a story of a wag who laid a wager that he
would break up a country menagerie and circus. Ac-
cordingly, when the rustic crowd had duly inspected
the elephant and the hyenas, and were seated round
the arena eagerly awaiting the entrance of the clown
and the bareback rider, he rushed into the ring, wav-
ing his hat, and shouting : " Ladies and gentlemen,
save yourselves ! The Gy-as-cutus has broke loose ! ! "
Dire was the panic that followed ; numerous the bruises
and scratches; appalling the damage to bonnets and
draperies; but the tent was emptied at last, and the
farmers and their wives and daughters were jogging
homeward and congratulating each other on their es-
cape, when it occurred to some of them to ask : " What
is a gyascutus, anyway?"

(3)

4 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

The story very well illustrates one aspect of the
popular attitude towards Biblical criticism. Upon the
settled faith and tranquil content of a large body of
Christians, breaks the cry, " The higher criticism has
broken loose ! " It is charging, head on, with smoking
nostrils, against the Bible ! It means destruction to the
faith once delivered to the saints. Meanwhile few stop
to ask, "What is higher criticism, anyway?" The
majority run ; that is, they evade the question with
some such irrelevant platitude as u The old Bible is good
enough for me." A few more determined souls, never
for a moment doubting that higher criticism, whatever
it may mean, is something deadly, " set the teeth and
stretch the nostril wide," and solemnly affirm that
Higher Criticism must be exterminated and the higher
critics suppressed.

Might it not be worth while to ask whether there is
any reasonable ground for this panic? u What is the
gyascutus ? " If we must fight a wild beast it is a great
advantage to know the nature and the habits of the ani-
mal, and whether he can do all the damage of which he is
said to be capable. It is said that the devil, in the form
of an ox, once met Cuvier, the naturalist, and threatened
to eat him up, whereupon Cuvier replied, " Can't do
it: graminivorous!" It might possibly appear, on a
closer inquiry, that the Higher Criticism is not, on the
whole, an evily disposed beast. It might possibly ap-
pear, incredible as it may seem, that he delights to
browse in the green pastures of the Word, and to drink
of the still waters of Siloa's brook. It might be found
quite unnecessary to chain or to muzzle him, even in
the dooryards of the defenders of the faith.

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 5

THE POPULAR IMPRESSION OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND
HOW IT IS FOSTERED.

If we try to define the impression which largely
prevails concerning Biblical criticism, we find that it
is substantially this : that criticism of the Bible means
picking flaws in the Bible. Criticism, in the popular
vocabulary, is synonymous with fault-finding, an utter-
ly mistaken and one-sided conception. Again : that
criticism of the Bible implies distrust of the Bible, or
positive hostility to the Bible : that Biblical criticism is
allied to infidelity : that a Biblical critic is a presump-
tuous intruder upon holy ground, an ungodly agitator,
who is bent on undermining the sacredness and author-
ity of Holy Scripture : that his function is, per se,
superfluous and reprehensible. " Why," it is asked,
" should the Bible be criticised at alii Is it not a sacred
book, inspired of God, an infallible manual, to be im-
plicitly received and unquestioningly believed? Why
cannot the critics let the Bible alone ? "

A few illustrations will show the use which is made
of this impression in aggravating the popular sus-
picion.

A very eminent living divine was quoted some time
ago as saying : " I see the divine authorship of the
Bible as plainly as I see the authorship of the stars ;
.... and when the critics pick away at the Bible,
1 say, 'Well, it is no great matter; if it gratifies
them it does not hurt me. As long as all the universi-
ties in the world combined are not able to make another
Bible that shall be so cosmical in its range of appeal,
and so mighty in its power over men and women, over

6 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

mind and heart and life, and over the growing civiliza-
tion itself to which it ministers, I rest assured that this
is God's book and not man's.' "

This statement is eloquent and telling. Moreover, it
tells the truth ; and jet the truth is put in such a way as
to create a wrong impression. Any Christian scholar
would indorse what is said of the power of appeal and
the evidence of divinity residing in the Bible itself, and
also the contempt implied for a hostile, petty, captious
criticism of the Bible. But the writer makes no dis-
tinction between critics. His phrase, " the critics," is
sweeping, and the whole passage implies a contemptu-
ous tolerance of the Biblical critic as such. I do not
assert that the author meant this ; but if he did not,
his mode of expression was unguarded.

Another clergyman, also living, stated that in a cer-
tain theological seminary the students were told, in the
theological lecture-room, the truth about the divine in-
spiration and authority of the Scriptures ; but that on
coming under the hands of the New Testament pro-
fessor, they were told that it was doubtful whether the
last twelve verses of the second gospel were written
by Mark.

Now both these statements were truthful, and yet
they were combined in such a way as to make the
whole statement false : that is to say, a contrast was
made and emphasized which did not exist except in the
writer's imagination. The impression he meant to con-
vey was that sound, orthodox teaching in one depart-
ment was offset by false and dangerous criticism in the
other department. It was a cry of u gyascutus! " The
writer was holding up a scarecrow. He may have be-

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 7

lieved in it, and have been as much scared as anybody,
but it was a scarecrow none the less, and nothing else.
Suppose the New Testament professor did say that, as
he ought to have done if he did his duty, what of it?
What is the gyascutus ? If the accuser did not know
that Biblical students for years have observed a striking
difference between the diction of those twelve verses
and that of the rest of the gospel, leading them to
suspect that those verses were by another hand, — he
was inexcusably ignorant of what, as a seminary gradu-
ate and a public teacher of Scripture, he ought to have
known. Suppose the verses were by another hand.
What difference does it make ? The last verses of John's
gospel are by another hand than John's. Moses cer-
tainly did not write the account of his own death in
Deuteronomy.

A certain professor in another theological seminary
stated in his inaugural address that he had on his table
twenty-five books (I think that was the number, but a
few more or less makes no difference) from which he
had been trying to find out what Higher Criticism is,
and that he had been unable to discover. The state-
ment was so startling that a dignitary on the platform
who has made himself conspicuous in the war against
the higher critics, declared that he could have told him
that. We are bound to believe the Professor's state-
ment, but it was a proclamation of his own ignorance
and a significant comment upon his competency as an
instructor of young men. Yet he is one of the men
who utters diatribes against the higher critics, and
swells the cry, " The gyascutus has broke loose ! "

Such illustrations might be multiplied almost indefi-

8 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

nitely. Similar utterances come from pulpits, from
denominational journals, and from speeches in ecclesi-
astical bodies. They all go to proclaim, not this or
that position of Biblical critics, but the function of the
Biblical critic, and the Biblical critic himself as such,
and the science of Biblical criticism for the most part,
as things to be suspected and kept at arm's length.

It may be freely granted, for the fact is notorious,
that there is a criticism and a class of critics hostile to
the Bible. The equipment of such critics is, in many
cases, formidable. They are ripe scholars, deft and
plausible reasoners, and vigorous thinkers. Their prin-
ciples of interpretation are utterly rationalistic. They
deny the supernatural in the evolution of Christian
history : their aim is mainly destructive, and their con-
clusions, if generally accepted, would practically rob the
church of the Bible. But, while this is undeniable,
how utterly unfair it is to make such critics alone rep-
resentative of Biblical criticism : in other words, to
throw all Biblical criticism and all Biblical critics indis-
criminately into one pile, and to label the pile with the
name of its worst and most dangerous element.

THE TERM "HIGHER CRITICISM."

As already hinted, the term " Higher Criticism "
awakens special apprehensions. One who might pos-
sibly confront the name "critic" with reasonable com-
posure, finds the chills running down his back at the
mention of a higher critic. He is a gyascutus of a
peculiarly large, ferocious, and destructive species.

I am not aware that the addition of the word
" higher " materially affects the state of the case. Very

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 9

much more has been made out of that unfortunate ad-
jective than has any basis in fact. I certainly have no
stand to make for the term "Higher Criticism." I
might be disposed to think it infelicitous, not suffi-
ciently explicit or comprehensive. The distinction be-
tween a lower and a higher critic is mainly technical.
But to assume that because a term is not felicitous its
meaning is therefore indefinite, is nonsense, and is in
the face of all experience. Nothing is more capricious
than the origin and application of names, and names
stick, and have a sharp and definite meaning long after
the circumstances of their origin have been forgotten.
Higher Criticism means simply literary criticism, in-
cluding all literary and historical questions raised by
the composition and contents of the Biblical writings.
Lower Criticism is textual criticism, embracing all that
relates to the restoration of the Biblical text to its orig-
inal form. Higher criticism has therefore a simple and
perfectly definite meaning, understood by every scholar,
and capable of being understood by any person of ordin-
ary intelligence. As already hinted, a great deal too
much has been made of the distinction between lower
and higher criticism, so that the distinction has been
magnified into a bugbear. The two go together. A
sound literary criticism must always be based on a cor-
rect text, and the ideal critic must always be both a
lower and a higher critic. As a writer in the July
number of the Contemporary Review justly observes,
" It would be difficult to say why careful and learned
discussion on grounds of internal evidence should be
called ' higher' than equally careful and equally learned
discussion on grounds of external evidence. Both,

10 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

evidently, are capable of fully exercising the highest
powers of the human mind, though it is easier and
cheaper to conduct the former badly, and a more deli-
cate and difficult matter to perform it well."

Let me give a single illustration. A student reads
the gospel of Mark in the original Greek text, and
carefully observes its literary peculiarities — its diction
and style, its imagery, its phrasing, how far its diction
is affected by the Hebrew tongue and by Hebrew
moods of thought, and many other peculiarities. He
finds in the history of Eusebius a quotation from a very
early church father, Papias, to the effect that Mark
wrote down the reminiscences of Christ's life as he
heard them from Peter in his preaching or in private
interviews with him. This leads him to investigate the
genuineness of this passage of Papias, and to study the
writings ascribed to Peter in the- New Testament. In
these writings he discovers a great many of the char-
acteristics which appear in Mark. Then he turns to
the book of Acts in which several of Peter's speeches
are reported, and which contains certain narratives
which must have proceeded from Peter himself, such
as the healing of the cripple at the Beautiful Gate of
the temple, and Peter's miraculous deliverance from
prison. In the style and diction of these he finds the
same characteristics which appear in Mark and in the
first Epistle of Peter. He draws from these compari-
sons certain important and interesting conclusions ; as,
for instance, that Papias was right, that Mark's gospel
contains reminiscences of Christ's life and sayings
drawn in great part from the testimony of Peter, and
therefore of an eye-witness : that the first Epistle as-

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 11

cribed to Peter was really liis work : that there was a
definite stream of Petrine tradition on which the author
of the Acts drew. That is one of the simpler pro-
cesses of Higher Criticism, but it will serve to illustrate
the thing itself. It is a specimen of hundreds of in-
quiries applied to both Testaments with a view to de-
termine on internal grounds the authorship and the
history of the composition of different books. No sane
person imagines that there is anything impious, pre-
sumptuous, heretical, or diabolical in such processes.

WHAT IS CRITICISM 5

But let us now ask, What is criticism? since a
misconception or partial conception of that word un-
derlies much of the popular unrest concerning this
subject.

Its fundamental idea is separation. It is derived
from a Greek verb meaning " to separate." If I have
in a basket fifty sound apples and twenty which are
more or less rotted, and I put the sound apples into
one pile and the rotten ones into another, that is criti-
cism. But that process implies judgment, which pro-
nounces an apple sound or unsound. Out of the pri-
mary meaning of the Greek word, " to separate," grew
the secondary meaning, "to judge," since judgment
always implies a separation of the true from the false ;
of the bad from the good ; of reliable evidence from
doubtful evidence. In so simple a matter as that of
the apples, the process of judgment is easy. If one
were called upon to decide as to the respective quality
of a dozen diamonds, more knowledge and practised

12 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

skill would be demanded ; and the sifting of the evi-
dence on which turns the life or the death of an ac-
cused man often requires the highest wisdom.

Now there is presented to us a collection of docu-
ments known as the New Testament. On examining
this collection we find ourselves compelled to sort out
and classify and pass judgment on certain facts which
attach to the different documents. For instance, we
find that they have been composed by different authors
and therefore exhibit different characteristics. We
find that several of them are by the same author, and
therefore exhibit similar characteristics. We find that
reasons are assigned for suspecting that one or more
of the documents were not composed by the author to
whom they have commonly been ascribed. For ex-
ample, we may hesitate, after weighing the evidence,
to assign the Epistle to the Hebrews to Paul, or the
second Petrine Epistle to Peter.

Again we find that there are two distinct elements
running through all the documents of both Testaments.
One of these is elevated, heart-searching, prophetic —
in short, divine: the other betrays the operation of
human modes of thought, employs current forms of
speech and statements based on scientific notions
now obsolete; is marked at times by careless writing
or error of detail — an element which is distinctly
human.

Similarly, we may find reason to inquire whether
certain passages have not been inserted in the orig-
inal documents. For example, is the story of the
angel descending periodically into the pool of Be-
thesda a part of the original narrative, or is it a popu-

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 13

lar legend, originally written in the margin by way of
comment, and afterwards inserted in the text by some
copyist ? Was the story of the woman taken in adul-
tery a part of John's original gospel ?

All such matters force themselves upon the conscien-
tious student. He cannot evade them. He must ex-
amine them and form an opinion about them. He must
dravv lines between the work of one author and the
work of another ; between the original text and inter-
polations ; between the genuine and the corrupted text ;
between the human element and the divine. He is a
critic in spite of himself. His criticism is not the
outcome of individual caprice ; it is no diabolical con-
trivance deliberately aimed at the integrity of Scrip-
ture. It is simply the honest dealing of a fair and
trained mind with phenomena which are patent. These
phenomena are not imaginary, they are facts which de-
mand explanation.

Criticism, in some form or other, begins the moment
that one begins to study his Bible intelligently. No in-
telligent person can regard the Bible as one solid block
of divine truth of uniform texture and grain through-
out. Its varieties assert themselves on the very sur-
face. Its books belong to different eras and have their
distinctive marks. They have grown out of different
local circumstances, and have been shaped by them.
The Psalms are the products of different ages and
authors. The iirst Corinthian Epistle grew out of one
set of events, the second out of another, and the
Epistle to the Romans out of another. No one who
overlooks these facts can understand his Bible ; but the
tracing out and defining and classifying of these differ-

14 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

ences is criticism, and higher criticism. Criticism is not
of scholars' making, but of the Bible's making, of
God's making.

Suppose a critic makes a mistake, as he often does.
Suppose a critic abuses the resources of scholarship, and
employs them to undermine the sacredness and the au-
thority of Scripture: such facts do not make against
the value or the necessity of Biblical criticism, nor ex-
pose it to just vituperation. The fact that a man now
and then uses an axe for the murder of his neighbor,
or hurts somebody by a careless stroke, does not prove
that an axe is a bad and hurtful thing. On such a mode
of reasoning we should be compelled to reject the Bible
itself, since no book has been more abused or made the
instrument of more mischief.

Such things are rudimentary and self-evident to schol-
ars ; but I am not writing for scholars, neither am I set-
ting up a man of straw for the purpose of knocking
him down. The popular objection to Biblical criticism
does not turn on the distinction between Higher and
Lower Criticism, or on any other distinction within the
field of criticism. It lies against Biblical criticism as such.
The very name suggests mischief. Any critic is an in-
truder on holy ground. The Bible is not a subject for
criticism, and should be let alone.

A FALSE ISSUE BETWEEN IGNORANT PIETY AND INTEL-
LIGENT CRITICISM.

Now our discussion has nothing to do with the adap-
tations of the Bible to the lowly and uneducated. That
it has a mission to such no one thinks of denying. If

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 15

the Bible were for scholars only, it would be useless to
a very large part of the world. But there is a fearful
amount of pious platitude in circulation, the general
drift of which is to set believing ignorance over against
critical study to the disparagement of the latter. The
contrast between the " carping critic " and the rt hum-
ble believer" has been worn threadbare, and like many
such stock phrases, carries with it a falsehood. For
while there are carping critics and humble believers,
"carping" does not represent the whole body of Bibli-
cal critics any more than "humble" represents the
whole body of believers. In many cases it would be
much more to the point to contrast the carping believer
with the humble critic.

In any case, the issue between pious ignorance and
intelligent criticism of the Scriptures is an utterly false
issue. While, as already remarked, the Bible has the
power, under the influence of the Divine Spirit, to im-
part to the lowly and the unlearned a rule and ideal of
faith and duty, an incentive to fidelity, and a comfort
in sorrow, it is a fair question how large a proportion
of such results is due to the Bible alone without the in-
tervention of the human teacher. The Bible never dis-
parages knowledge. It emphasizes it and presses it on
its readers as an object of diligent search. Whatever
it may give to an ignorant faith, it gives far more
richly to an intelligent faith. Hence, I repeat, it is pal-
pably absurd to raise an issue between an intelligent
criticism and a blind* and passive and credulous accept-
ance of Scripture, assuming some special illumination
on the part of the unlearned which puts him at advan-
tage as against the scholar : to say that " the insight of

16 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

a saint is of more value than the skill of a gramma-
rian." That may be or may not be. It is entirely possi-
ble that an uneducated laborer, firmly grounded in the
faith of Christ, might find in the gospel of John some-
thing which the author of " Supernatural Religion "
could not discover. None the less it remains true that
there is that in Scripture which the mere insight of a
saint cannot apprehend or deal with. There are cer-
tain things which are revealed to the wise and prudent
and are hidden from babes. If there is a region where
the saint sees more and farther than the grammarian,
there is also a region where the saint cannot see with-
out the aid of the grammarian, and where the saint, if he
attempts to play the role of interpreter or instructor,
only makes himself and the Bible ridiculous. It is
quite true that " the natural man discerneth not the
things of the Spirit of God," and that "they are fool-
ishness unto him "; but it is also true that the spiritual
man needs something more than spiritual illumination
to enable him to weigh the evidence for a reading, to
correct a mistranslation, or to settle a question of gram-
mar, history, or archaeology. The insight of a saint
gives little or no help in determining the authenticity
of Second Peter, or in explaining the meaning of bap-
tism for the dead, and of the woman's having power on
her head because of the angels. Piety, by itself, is
helpless in the presence of such questions. Criticism
alone cannot mount on textual and syntactical ladders
to the beatific vision, but neither is pious ignorance
winged for that flight.

The critical spirit and furnishing, balanced by a gen-
uine faith, is that which always gets the best and the

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 17

most out of the Bible. To set these two against
each other is to put asunder what God hath joined to-
gether, and grossly to slander both God and the Bible.
The true formula is not "criticism or faith," but
" criticism and faith." The man who regards his Bible
as something to be merely received passively and be-
lieved unquestioningly, practically degrades into a
child's primer the book which is adapted to stimulate
and feed and train his best mental and spiritual powers.
It is true that some people never get beyond the
primer. Let us by all means be thankful for the
primer, but let us not assert that the primer fills the
place of literature. The Bible shows its divine charac-
ter by inviting and encouraging the spirit of inquiry
which is the foundation of all criticism. How a man
can be in contact with God in a book or anywhere else
and not ask questions it is hard to conceive.

CRITICAL TESTS LEGITIMATE.

Hence nothing can be more radically false than the
position that the Bible is above criticism, and that it is
the sacred duty of scholarship to let it alone : that it is
a charmed thing, invested with a superstitious sanctity,
fenced off from ordinary modes of investigation and
treatment. That is a popular delusion which must be
effectually dissipated before the Bible can take its true
and high place in human thought. Such a seclusion of
the Bible works more mischief than all the incursions
of the most rampant and hostile criticism, because
it belies the true character and intent of the Bible,
which is most truly divine in being so intensely human.
It has been evolved under human conditions: it has

18 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

developed itself co-ordinately with the history of the
church and out of it : it communicates with men through
ordinary human media : it uses human words and human
figures of speech : it appeals to human qualities : it
carries a revelation given " by divers portions and in
divers manners" through individuals of different char-
acters, temperaments, and attainments: its inspiration
resides in characters rather than in documents, and finds
its highest expression in the testimony of the God-man
Jesus which is the spirit of prophecy. The medium of
the revelation must be human if it is to be intelligible.
If it is not intelligible it is not divine, and if it is
human it must submit itself to critical tests such as are
applied to other books. It cannot refuse the criteria
appropriate to those human media through which God
has chosen to transmit it. Hence the Bible is fairly
subject to those literary, grammatical, historical, philo-
logical, and psychological tests which are applicable to
Homer or Dante or Shakespeare.

On any other ground the Bible can never be success-
fully vindicated in the eyes of scholarly and fair-
minded men. They will say ; It is all very well for the
Bible to appeal to faith, but if it cannot also appeal to
fact, and sound reason and common sense, it is not
worth fighting over. It is easy enough for you to
prove the book to be anything you claim, provided you
are allowed to suppress all testimony save such as you
choose to adduce. The Bible is pre-eminently histori-
cal. It professes to relate facts and to relate them in
sequence. If you refuse to have those facts tested by
ordinary historical canons, you create a presumption of
intentional falsification. You proclaim yourselves sus-

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 19

picious of the truth of Biblical history. The Bible is
a literary product. It cannot evade literary tests : we
laugh at a claim to an inspiration which exempts it from
these or renders it superior to them. The Bible em-
ploys logic, and appeals to human reason. Let us test
its logic by the rules which we apply to Aristotle or to
Bacon. The alternative of such criticism is passive
acceptance on authority, and this we absolutely refuse.
The Bible comes down into our homes and marts,
speaking our language, clothed in our forms of thought,
and peremptorily claiming absolute mastery. It utters
commands, and promises rewards, and threatens penal-
ties. If it has a divine right to speak thus, it condemns
many of our opinions and practices. But if it com.
mands and threatens and promises and condemns on
our ground, it must vindicate itself on our ground. It
shall not be allowed to throw stones and launch darts,
and then retreat behind the walls of a supernatural
sanctity, declaring that it will not have the temper of
its mail tried by our spear-points.

FATAL EFFECT OF A DEFENSE OF SCRIPTURE ON FALSE
GROUNDS.

Nothing can be more disastrous to truth than a de-
fense upon false grounds. The work of the reverent
critic is also made necessary by the professed friends of
the Bible ; and the Bible has suffered more at the
hands of these than from its declared enemies.

Nothing stands the enemy of Scripture in better
stead than to have its friends and defenders assume un-
tenable ground : to make claims for it which have no
foundation in fact; for thus the true issues are con-

20 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

eealed ; the real danger to the enemy is evaded ; the
conflict is shifted to ground where the assailant has a
real advantage, and which the defenders themselves
have furnished him.

For example, a challenger of the authority of Scrip-
ture is met with the sweeping assertion that the Bible
is authoritative because every word and line nas been
so directly and infallibly inspired by God as to make
it without error of any kind, verbal or historical.
As a fact, the authority of the Bible does not rest upon
verbal inerrancy, but upon something quite different
and far higher and more convincing: but the defender
chooses his own ground, and sacrifices the higher
ground for the inferior and utterly indefensible posi-
tion where the challenger is only too glad to carry on
the fight. He turns the position, carries it by square
and proved denial. He confronts the assertion with
the Bible itself. He says that the Bible does contain
errors of detail, and he points them out. He is en-
tirely right. He scores a legitimate victory, and the
defender of the Bible sustains a defeat which he need
not have suffered if he had been wise enough to take
different and higher and defensible ground. The case
is all the worse when the representatives of a great
Christian body, in council assembled, plant themselves
upon this position, asserting the dogma of verbal in-
errancy, and insisting that the teachers of the church
shall accept and proclaim it under penalty of dis-
franchisement. In registering for themselves an im-
agined triumph, they register for themselves a crush-
ing defeat, a verdict which a better educated sense of
the character and claims of Scripture is certain to re-

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 21

verse within no long time. Meanwhile there is rejoic-
ing in the tents of the enemy. The church has delib-
erately selected a position where his batteries can rake
it. It has arrayed its own scholarship against itself : it
has brought down on itself the indignation of its most
intelligent and fair-minded members, and has sensibly
weakened its hold on their loyalty. It has solemnly
committed hari-kari before a sneering crowd of atheists
and rationalists.

SOUND CRITICISM DEMANDED BY THE EXTENSIVE PER-
VERSION OF SCRIPTURE.

This is only one of hundreds of illustrations which
show the mischief wrought by the assumption of false
positions by the defenders of Scripture. A true and
sound criticism is imperatively demanded at this point,
a constructive criticism, to set forth what the Bible
really is, and what the Bible really says. Thoughtful
Bible-readers would be more awake to this necessity if
they could be made to see how terribly the Bible has
been overlaid and obscured and twisted and misread
throughout the entire history of the church. It is one
of the most disheartening and humiliating records in
the history of religion. Some one once said of the
Dutch people that a sufficient proof of their greatness
lay in the fact that they were above water at all ; and
it might with equal truthfulness be said that one of the
strongest evidences of the divine origin and quality of
the Bible is its survival of its expounders. It has suf-
fered more from its friends than from' its enemies.
The great, distinctive fact which, along with much
that is reverent, earnest, and scholarly, marks the his-

22 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

tory of Biblical exegesis down to the Reformation pe-
riod, and which reasserts itself subsequently, — is the
practical rejection of the actual Bible, and the persist-
ent effort to run it into the moulds of tradition, mysti-
cism, philosophical speculation, scholasticism, and eccle-
siastical dogma. This is no loose assertion. It is a
matter of historical fact which any competent student
can verify for himself, and it is by no means a thing of
the past only.

The Bible has been practically turned against itself.
It has furnished ideas which men have developed after
their own fashion and to serve their own ends, insisting
that the Bible was constructed after that fashion and
for those ends. The Bible has been cited in justifica-
tion of every conceivable monstrosity of speculation,
of every theological nightmare, of every refinement of
cruelty, of every whim of crank or fanatic, of every
ghastly moral or religious hobby which has disfigured
Christian history.

" The Devil can quote Scripture for his purpose."

— "in religion
What damned error but some sober brow
"Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding its grossness with fair ornament."

The Jewish translators of the Old Testament, about
three hundred years before Christ, whose Greek trans-
lation was the Bible of Christ's and Paul's times,
garbled the original Scripture in order to make it more
acceptable to Gentile readers, and to conceal its blows
at their own national conceit. They inserted rabbini-
cal legends, they struck out or changed passages which

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 23

reflected upon the character of Jewish heroes or ex-
posed the moral delinquencies of their ancestors.

In the days of Christ the Old Testament Scriptures
were so overloaded with the enormous mass of rabbinic
interpretation and comment, that the law itself was su-
perseded and despised. The plainest sayings of Scrip-
ture were resolved into another sense, and it was de-
clared by one of the Rabbis that he who renders a
verse of Scripture as it appears, says what is not true.
It was assumed that the Pentateuch was a continuous
enigma, and that a meaning was to be found in every
monosyllable, and a mystic sense in every hook and flour-
ish of the letters. Jesus was literally justified in say-
ing, "Thus have ye made the commandment of God of
none effect through your tradition."

In the succeeding period Scripture suffered at the
hands of allegorical interpretation, by which the law of
Moses and the histories of Scripture became well-nigh
unrecognizable. Genesis was declared to be a system
of psychology and ethics, and the different individuals
who figure in that book — Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, —
denote different states of the soul. The Church
Fathers — Irenseus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexan-
dria, Origen — alter, misquote, introduce Jewish leg-
ends, and resolve the plainest statements and narrations
into allegory. Anything which Origen thought could
not be literally true, such as the stories of Noah's
drunkenness and Lot's incest, any Old Testament pre-
cept which seemed to him unjust, he interpreted in a
mystical sense.

In the period from the seventh to the twelfth cen-
turv, the church claimed to be the sole infallible inter-

24 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

preter of Scripture, and treated the study of the orig-
inal tongues as little better than a crime. In the scho-
lastic era, the Bible served as the handmaid of Aris-
totle. We are suffering to-day from the new scholasti-
cism of the post-Reformation era, built on party creeds,
and fettering and emasculating a sound exegesis by an
arbitrary and dictatorial confessionalism. The seven-
teenth century formulas identified inspiration with me-
chanical, literal, verbal infallibility ; called the writers
of Scripture " amanuenses of God," " hands of Christ,"
"scribes and notaries of the Holy Spirit," "living and
writing pens." It was asserted formally that the very
vowel-points and accents of the Hebrew Bible were
divinely inspired, an assertion which was substantially
reiterated in the presence of the New York Presbytery
by one of the prosecutors of Dr. Briggs.

Time and space would alike fail to depict what the
Bible has endured at the hands of popular expounders,
half-trained or untrained, in sensational sermons, in
motto-texts, in expositions, the atrocities of which would
fill volumes, in which the preacher may be seen " rid-
ing furiously," Jehu-like, across country, some rampant
fancy of his own. There is too much truth in the re-
mark of a living scholar, that " preachers have become
privileged misinterpreters."

The foregoing is only a slight and imperfect sketch.
The details are innumerable, and are frightful to any
sincere lover of the Bible. They prove, however, the
imperative need of a sound, devout, scholarly, cour-
ageous, searching criticism applied to restore to the
church the Bible as it is. They go to show that the
best modern criticism is a new Protestantism which

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 25

faces the real Bible and labors to clear away the
mountains of trash under which church councils, theo-
logical systems, and individual conceits have buried
it. It is high time that a new face should be put
on this matter; that the true critic should be recog-
nized as a restorer and not as a destroyer : not as the
impostor in the Arabian story, going about and offer-
ing to give new lamps for old ones, but as the true
magician, holding up in the face of the dogmatists,
pulpit mountebanks, false interpreters, packed councils,
and heresy hunters of all ages, past and present, the
old Word, which " is a lamp unto the feet and a light
unto the path."

" THE OLD BIBLE IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME."

We often hear it said : " The old Bible is good
enough for me ; " and the phrase carries with it a savor
of mingled pathos, piety, and humility which is very
captivating to an untrained sense. The old Bible is
good enough for you ! So it ought to be good enough
for you or for any one else. But you mean by the
" old Bible " the Bible with a multitude of perver-
sions, false interpretations, false applications, false theo-
ries of its origin and purpose sticking to it and encrust-
ing it like so many barnacles. When you say that the
old Bible is good enough for you, you mean that you
would rather have the barnacled Bible than the pure
original. You mean that you do not want the barna-
cles disturbed ; and that you regard any attempt upon
the barnacles as impertinent presumption. You mean
that you are too indolent or too ignorant to face and
examine the results of scholarly criticism, and that you

26 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

resent the intrusion upon your indolence and the ex-
posure of your ignorance. You strike at the men who
come to give you the real thing which you affect
to prize. You call them hard names and drive them
from your fellowship; and you probably think that you
are doing this in the interest of Christian peace and
truth. You are terribly deceived. You do not want
the old Bible ; but the Bible of the schools, of the alle-
gorists, of the scholastic theologians, of the sensational
preachers. The old Bible is not good enough for you.

IS THE HIGHER CRITIC A RESTORER?

But is it true, can it be shown to be true that the
higher critic is a restorer and not a destroyer? Can
any real advance in Biblical knowledge, any substantial
helps to Biblical interpretation, any sounder theories of
interpretation, any new light upon the historical rela-
tions of Scripture, any effective vindication of assailed
books of either Testament be pointed out as the work
of the higher critics ? In reply it may be said, sum-
marily, that nearly every real advance in the methods
of Biblical study, and nearly every most solid and im-
portant contribution to both the interpretation and the
defence of Scripture in the last century, is due to higher
criticism. In the bitter, unchristian, and utterly undis-
criminating attack upon the higher Biblical criticism,
many of the leaders and promoters of that attack have
been like a man who is living on the riches of his bene-
factor and endeavoring to poison him at the same time.
For they are using freely in their defences of the faith,
in their homilies, in their Bible-classes, in their written
articles, results which have been won for them by the

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 27

higher critics. The pulpits generally throughout the
country are to-day dispensing arguments and statements
and defences founded upon the results of higher criti-
cism. And if one were disposed to turn the tables and
to enter upon heresy-hunting, he might easily iind
grounds for a most edifying array of presentations to
ecclesiastical courts, in the books which perhaps the ma-
jority of their members are using, and which some of
them are publicly recommending. Let any one, for
example, study Funk and Wagnalls' advertising circu-
lar of Meyer's Commentary, and note the authors of
the numerous hearty indorsements which appear therein.
And yet Dr. Meyer never hesitates to say that a .New
Testament writer has made a mistake. He denies the
authenticity of Matthew's gospel and of the Pastoral
Epistles, and resolves into poetical legend Luke's story
of the infancy of Jesus.

If these gentlemen, in short, could succeed in elim-
inating from the Biblical literature and the Biblical teach-
ing of this day all the results of the higher criticism,
they would spoil most of their own " crack" sermons,
besides putting back Biblical knowledge two centuries
at least.

HIGHER CRITICISM NO NOVELTY.

It possibly needs to be said that higher criticism is
no new thing. There is, I believe, an impression on
some minds that it is a "brand new" invention. If
some of its assailants had read a little more widely, they
would have discovered that many of the matters which
they are treating as obnoxious novelties had been dis-
cussed before they were born, and that some of the
conclusions which they are busily denouncing as horn-

28 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

ble and heretical have long been accepted facts in the
churches of England and of Germany. There is still a
disposition in orthodox circles to suspect everything on
Biblical or theological topics which issues from Ger-
many. " German rationalism" is a cant phrase in the
mouths of many who use it with only the vaguest sense
of its meaning. Over forty years ago Henry B. Smith
caustically remarked that "the indiscriminate censure
of all that is German, or that may be so called, is a sign
rather of the power of prejudice than of a rational love
for all truth."

WHAT IS DUE TO GERMANY.

It may be freely granted that Germany has evolved
some theological and philosophical monstrosities, which
is not altogether strange in view of the titanic struggle
through which her faith has passed, and from which it
has not yet wholly emerged. Yet it remains true that
no nation of Christendom has equalled Germany in
the amount and value of its contributions to the accu-
rate knowledge and sound interpretation of the Scrip-
tures. To Germany are due the most important and
decisive vindications of the New Testament against the
assaults of destructive criticism.

Let us look at a few instances. Ferdinand Christian
Baur died in 1860. He was a man of immense learn-
ing, wonderful historic grasp, and great controversial
acuteness. His theory of the origin of the New Testa-
ment writings struck at the historic roots of at least
two-thirds of them. It involved the rejection of the
four Gospels and of the Acts, and the spuriousness of
all but four of the Pauline Epistles. It assumed that

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 29

the primitive church was divided into two antagonistic
parties represented respectively bj Peter and by Paul,
Peter standing for the primitive orthodoxy, and Paul
being regarded as an innovator and a heretic ; and that
the Book of Revelation was a veiled attack on Paul
and his followers. Most of the New Testament writ-
ings were composed either in the interest of one of
these two parties or with a view to reconcile them.

This theory, maintained with great learning and in-
genuity, became the nucleus of a school in Germany,
and exerted some influence in England ; but its main
positions were successfully refuted, and are generally
abandoned even in Germany. They were stormed and
carried by higher critics — by the school of Schleier-
macher, by Bleek, Ewald, Meyer, and Ritschl. None
the less Baur rendered a vast and permanent service to
sound Biblical criticism and to New Testament study
by his development of the principle of historic as distin-
guished from literary criticism, the principle that a New
Testament book must be studied in the light of its his-
torical setting. This principle is now universally ac-
cepted by all critical schools as the true basis of New
Testament study, and has had a large influence in placing
the New Testament books on a firmer and more defen-
sible foundation in the minds of Christian scholars.

Strauss, in 1835, resolved the gospel narrative into a
poetical fiction. His fundamental principle was that
nothing which is supernatural can be historical. There
is no such thing as an iucarnation, and the resurrection
of Jesus is " a world-historical humbug." The issue,
pressed home by his telling style and penetrating criti-
cism, was the issue between a real Christ and a mythi-

30 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

cal dream. There was no god-man as a person. All
that we have is a Christ-idea, the result of the Jewish
belief that the Messiah would work miracles, and of
the persuasion of Jesus' disciples that he was that Mes-
siah. The " Life of Jesus " aroused a tempest in Ger-
many, and its positions found adherents in both Eng-
land and America. Some hints of its influence upon
the younger minds of England may be found in that
delightful book by Henry Rogers, "The Eclipse of
Faith." To-day Strauss' mythical theory is as dead as
himself, thanks to the higher critics. It fell under the
lire of Ullmann, Tholuck, and Neander. Neander's
"Life of Jesus" was the answer to Strauss'. McClin-
tock translated this for American readers, and later,
Dr. George Fisher, of New Haven, another higher
critic, effectively exposed the fallacies of Strauss.

Numerous attempts have been made to assign the
composition of our gospels to a late date. Baur, for
example, placed the fourth Gospel in the latter half of
the second century. This question is forced upon
every candid student of the New Testament, " When
were our gospels written ? " since we are dealing with
adversaries who are bent on showing that the gospels
were composed at least a hundred years after the events
which they relate. This, of course, eliminates the tes-
timony of eye-witnesses, and weakens the credibility of
all stories of miracles. In 1874 appeared in England
the first volume of a book entitled " Supernatural Re-
ligion," by an anonymous author. Two more volumes
followed. The work passed through several editions,
and was trumpeted by the English press as the most
dangerous and powerful attack ever made upon the

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 31

New Testament. It was a dangerous book to that
class of students who are easily moved by daring asser-
tions and by a parade of learning. The author aimed
to show that there cannot be found a single distinct
trace of any of the first three gospels except the third,
during the first century and a half after Christ's death.
Canon Joseph B. Lightfoot, afterwards Bishop of Dur-
ham, effectively pricked this bladder in a series of
papers in the Contemporary Review. Bringing to the
task a learning far larger than that of the anonymous
author, with a dignified courtesy, but with merciless
severity, he exposed the shallowness of his pretentious
scholarship, and the weakness of his positions, and the
book fell from his hands in a state of collapse. Bishop
Lightfoot was a higher critic of the very first rank,
and an earnest minister of the gospel, against whose
piety and devotion to his calling no voice was ever
raised. His four remarkable commentaries on Gala-
tians, Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians, crowded
with the processes and results of the higher criticism,
are in the libraries of thousands of ministers on both
sides of the Atlantic, and furnish sermon-material for
hundreds of the men who are declaiming against the
higher critics and their works; while his wonderful
volumes on the Apostolic Fathers, the last work of his
life, deal with some of the most complicated problems
of early church history, and furnish important links in
the chain of testimony which connects our gospels with
the apostolic age.

But perhaps none of the services of the higher criti-
cism surpass in value the vindication of the fourth gos-
pel against the attempts to assign it to another author

32 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

and to a later date. The light over this gospel has raged
furiously since the attack inaugurated by Bretschneider
in 1820. It cannot be said that the question is finally
closed, nor that all its difficulties, some of which are
serious, are satisfactorily disposed of. But while,
twenty-five years ago, critical scholars would probably
have admitted that the external evidence in the case of
John's gospel was weaker than that in favor of the other
three — they would say to-day that the external evidence
for John's gospel is at least equal in amount and strength
to the evidence for the synoptic gospels, and not a few
would assert that, externally, that gospel is the best at-
tested of the four. The development and marshalling
of this vast and imposing array of testimony to the au-
thenticity of the fourth gospel is due exclusively to the
higher critics, and, very largely, to German critics.
The church throughout the world owes an enormous
debt to Neander, Bleek, Schleiermacher, Tholuck, Lut-
hardt, Weiss, and Paul Ewald in Germany ; to Godet
in Switzerland ; to de Presensee in France ; to West-
cott, Liddon, Lightfoot, and Sanday in England, and
to Norton and Ezra Abbot in America. At one time,
indeed, the school of Schleiermacher carried their en-
thusiasm for the fourth gospel to such an extent as
practically to disparage the other gospels in com-
parison.

WHAT IS THE REAL ISSUE?

These illustrations will suffice. They cover points
of vital interest to every lover of the Bible, and might
easily be multiplied. They settle the question at
issue. That question is not whether higher critics
have not often assailed the integrity of Scripture:

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 33

not whether devout critics have not made mistakes,
but whether these assaults and these mistakes are
to be taken as representative of Higher Criticism, and
whether Higher Criticism as such is to be branded
as suspicious, condemned en masse, or superciliously
whistled down the wind as beneath the notice of ortho-
doxy. Whistling is a cheap and painfully common ac-
complishment, and does not imply exceptional musical
endowment or attainment. Before this sweeping, un-
discriminating verdict is accepted, it might be well to
inquire into the qualifications of the jury.

The question, again, is whether the higher critic is
an intruder on Biblical ground : whether, apart from
his personal attitude, his function is contemptible, su-
perfluous, and dangerous. To this question the history
of Biblical research utters an emphatic No ! To pro-
claim the higher critic, as such, the enemy and the
assailant of the Bible, and the higher criticism as only
rationalistic and shallow, is to proclaim what is radi-
cally false, and grossly unfair. Let it be plainly
understood that tne learning and the scholarship are
on the side of the higher criticism and not of its
maligners : that the higher criticism is represented by
men both in England, Germany, and America, whose
attainments, position,, and reputation are of the highest
order, and whose piety is equal to their learning.
The attempt to class as enemies of the Bible such
higher critics as Schleiermacher, Tholuck, Neander,
Meyer, Weiss, Eitschl in Germany ; Westcott, Light-
foot, Sanday, Salmon in England, and Abbot and
Briggs in America, not to speak of a multitude of
others, is an attempt which must simply recoil upon

34 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

its authors. The work of these men speaks for itself.
It is not free from error, as no human work is. That
it has struck hard at certain accepted traditions,
that it has shaken some strongly-rooted conclusions,
that it has converted into open questions certain things
which had been accepted as axioms, that it has com-
pelled students to approach the Bible from other sides,
and to study it under new conditions — is all true, and
happily true. But its weight has been steadily on the
side of the divine authority, sacredness, and right-reason-
ableness of Scripture. The patient and self-denying
toil of these men, often traversing dreary, arid wastes
of an obsolete literature for the verification of a single
fact, tracing historical rootlets amid the accumulated
rubbish of centuries down to their vanishing point,
rummaging tombs and monasteries for manuscripts,
bringing to light the buried words of palimpsests by
the aid of chemistry, bravely confronting the numerous
difficulties and complications of different families of
manuscripts in order to get back to the original text —
these things are an honor to Christianity. These are
not mere loose and general statements. Pages might
easily be filled with the proofs. Witness the work of
Tischendorf and Tregelles, of Westcott and Hort and
Scrivener on the New Testament Text. Witness the dis-
covery and publication of the Sinaitic Codex. Witness
the recovery of Tatian's Diatessaron and the accom-
panying labors of Moesinger, Zahn, Ciasca and others.
Witness the recovery of the Apology of Aristides, of
the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, of the Gospel
and Apocalypse of Peter, and the numerous careful
and critical discussions of their bearing on the evi-

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 35

dence for the early existence and authority of the
gospels.

What have the assailants and insulters of the higher
critics to show in comparison ? Let that comparison be
faced and pressed. Buckle used to say, when a man
was pointed out to him as distinguished, " What has
he done ? " We throw down the challenge to the men
who are vilifying the higher critics as the enemies of
the Bible: What have you done for the advancement
of Biblical study ? What do your leaders represent ?
Produce your catalogue of names. Produce their
books, their researches, their discoveries, and let us see
how it compares with the work of the higher critics.

I have thus endeavored to show :

That criticism or higher-criticism (I am not partic-
ular as to the distinction) is no intruder upon Biblical
ground, and that the critic's function is neither super-
fluous nor contemptible.

That Biblical criticism is engendered by the very
nature and structure of the Bible. That a sound criti-
cism is made necessary by the false positions and un-
tenable claims of the friends of the Bible, and by in-
numerable perversions and misinterpretations both of
its character and of its substance.

That it is the aim of the true critic, instead of
weakening confidence in the Bible, to lodge it more
firmly and deeply in the faith of the church, by culti-
vating just conceptions of its character and intent, and
by letting it speak for itself.

That the principal advances in Biblical knowledge
and in the methods of Biblical study, are due mainly
to the work of critics, and of higher critics.

36 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

That the admission of the existence and work of hos-
tile criticism and of the errors of devout criticism in no
way makes against the value and necessity of Biblical
criticism itself : and that to represent criticism merely
by its errors and abuses is both uncandid and unjust.

halt !

It is about time to call a halt. If we cannot have
charity, we must strike for justice. The holders of tra-
ditional views of Scripture have their rights which no
one disputes. They have the right to hold and the
right to announce and to advocate their views; but the
exercise of those rights lays them open to fair discus-
sion. Scholars of another type, who hold that tradi-
tion is not final, and that no aspect of Scripture is
closed against investigation and critical handling, have
also their rights, among which is exemption from un-
christian abuse, misrepresentation and ecclesiastical per-
secution when they differ from the traditionalists.

There is greatly needed, in the first place, a clear,
popular definition of the aims of the higher criticism,
and a searching exposure of the attempts to befog its
true character and to identify it with an infidel ration-
alism. A large part of the church is in the dark as to
what Biblical criticism is and intends, and as to its
general temper and spirit. It gets its impressions at
second hand, and too often through those who only par-
tially understand the subject, or who are bent on be-
spattering criticism in the interest of a dogmatic and
overbearing ecclesiasticism. There is prevalent a false
impression as to the bearing of certain critical con-
clusions upon the inspiration and genuineness of the

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 37

Bible. The idea prevails and is fostered, that the
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the singleness
of Isaiah, and the Pauline authorship of the Epistle
to the Hebrews are inseparably bound up with the
integrity and inspiration of Scripture. The sooner
that impression can be dissipated, the sooner it can be
shown that a man who does not believe that Moses
wrote the Pentateuch is not denying or assailing either
the inspiration or the authority of the Pentateuch —
the better. The inspiration of the Pentateuch does not
depend upon its having been written by Moses. The
Epistle to the Hebrews no less remains an integral and
authoritative part of the New Testament if it be shown
that Paul did not write it. Inspiration does not de-
pend upon authenticity. No one knows who wrote the
book of Job or many of the Psalms. They are none
the less inspired for that reason : and to raise the cry
of danger to the Bible when such things are asserted by
Christian scholars, to scream frantically to the church
to rush to the dykes and stop the inpouring and de-
vouring flood, as if both her life and her Bible de-
pended on the successful denial of such assertions — is
simply to cry " the gyascutus has broke loose ! " and
to raise a panic which is as ridiculous as it is cause-
less. If it can be shown that the critics are wrong,
well and good. If they are right, well and good also.
If the church has been under any mistake about the
Bible, she is the one most interested in knowing it. If
the church has that faith in the Bible which she pro-
fesses to have, she will not be afraid to have the truth
about it appear : she will believe that the Bible will
come out of the hottest Are of criticism, in a new

38 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

guise perhaps, but more glorious and with a mightier
power of appeal than ever. Free discussion cannot
hurt the church or the Bible.

Nor is it fair to identify the free discussion of such
questions with the question of orthodoxy. No creed
or confession makes it heresy for a man to believe that
David did not write all the Psalms ; or that there were
two authors of Isaiah. No creed or confession requires
any man to hold a particular theory of inspiration on
penalty of disfranchisement. Both the Westminster
and the Anglican articles content themselves with assert-
ing the fact of inspiration without attempting to de-
fine its mode. It is only six or seven }Tears since two
most promising young men were rejected by the Pres-
bytery of New York in the face of a declaration
which Dr. Sehaff affirmed would have satisfied any
church council in Christendom, and all because they re-
fused to affirm that the original autographs of Scrip-
ture were absolutely without error in all particulars.
The test was one which the Presbytery had no right to
impose, which was entirely extra-confessional, as is the
recent deliverance of the Presbyterian ' General As-
sembly on verbal inerrancy. In any case the General
Assembly has no right to frame and impose dogma, and
that dogma is equally unconstitutional and unsound.

WHO SHALL TRY SCHOLARS?

A second point of challenge concerns the tribunals
before which Christian scholars are summoned, and
which are called to decide in issues that turn upon
Biblical scholarship. The question of competency
must be squarely faced and some plain things must

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 39

be said, even at the risk of giving offence. The trial
of a Christian scholar on a question of critical scholar-
ship by an assembly of five or six hundred men, a
large proportion of whom are laymen entirely un-
familiar with such questions, is a palpable injustice
and an offence against Christian decency. If there
must be a heresy-trial, it should be before a com-
mission of the scholar's real peers, and not of his eccle-
siastical peers merely. A writer in a recent number of
the New York Evangelist states that at the last Gen-
eral Assembly, the Presbytery of Dakota was repre-
sented by two Indians, " one a pure-blood, the other a
French half-breed. One of them could neither speak
nor understand the English language, the other could
scarcely understand it and could not converse in it."
And yet these two were members of the court which
tried and condemned Professor Smith, and their votes
counted as much as would the votes of Dr. Prentiss or
of Dr. Parkhurst if they had been members of the
Assembly.

I remember a lad in northern New York, a nice boy,
who grew up in the shadow of the Presbyterian Church,
who never went to college and never displayed any
scholarly tendencies, and who, at an early age, took
his place in his father's wholesale grocery and became,
I believe, an efficient and excellent grocer. In due
time his Christian character and general intelligence
caused him to be chosen to the Eldership. I do not
suppose that he knew whether Hebrew was read from
left to right, or from right to left, or upside down ; that
he had the faintest knowledge of church history ; that he
could have distinguished a Greek character from a cunei-

40 THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC.

form, or that be had any more critical knowledge of the

Bible than he might have gotten in working out his Sun-
day-school lesson with a commentary and a lesson paper.
Yet he was a . member of the Assembly which tried Pro-
fessor BriggS. And this is only one specimen of scores
of ecclesiastical jurors whose lives are passed in trade
and agriculture, good, devout men who read their
Bibles, men of hard common sense, intelligent enough
in dealing with any matter which they understand or
can he made to understand, hut. as unfitted to sit in
judgment upon questions of Biblical scholarship and
criticism as an amiable Christian butcher is to operate
upon a brain-tumor. Nay, even certain gentlemen of
the legal profession, who have made themselves con-
spicuous in recent ecclesiastical prosecutions, and who
have been indiscreet enough to put themselves into
print, have furnished a significant commentary upon
the wisdom of the venerable adage "Let the shoemaker
stick to his last."

Let it be plainly understood, and the sooner it is un-
derstood the better for all parties, that criticism, Higher
Criticism, has come to stay, and to fight if necessary.
The time has passed for the Christian critic to stand hat
in hand before the sanhedrims of the church supplicat-
ing for toleration. He has a right in the church and
a place in the church ; a right to speak and to be heard ;
a right to prosecute the free investigation of the Scrip-
tures within the church, and a right to resist those who
attempt to thrust him out of doors. It will be the part
of wisdom for the church to take care how she dials
with her Christian scholars, ami to beware of arraying
her scholars against herself. The church which pulls

THAT MONSTER, THE HIGHER CRITIC. 4L

down the men who seek to mount to the high watch-
towers and to kindle the lamps of truth, may indeed
succeed in keeping its lighthouses dark ; but it will not
be very long before that church will go down in the
world's charts as a barren, desolate, dangerous reef,
bristling with menace of shipwreck.

Date Due

jjpBJ*^-*

f)

BS500 .V77

That monster the higher critic.

Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library

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