135 
 511 
 f\S4 
 
 PresenteD to ttje 
 
 A-^^^S'Sf ^('i'-l'foc^ 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BS511 .A54 1905 
 
 Bible and modem criticism. With a prefa 
 
 olln 
 
 3 1924 029 275 174 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924029275174 
 
If undelivered, to be returned 
 
 '^Book Fund/' 
 
 27, Devonshire Street^ 
 
 Portland Place, 
 
 London, W. 
 
 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
 
 The Buddha of Christendom. A Book for 
 
 the Present Crisis 5/- 
 
 The Silence of God. 
 
 Sixth Edition 2/6 
 
 Human Destiny. 
 
 Fifth Edition 3/6 
 
 The Coming Prince ; or, The Seventy 
 Weeks of Daniel. 
 
 Seventh Edition 5/- 
 
 Daniel in the Critics' Den. A Reply to 
 Prof. Driver and the (late) Dean of Canter- 
 bury. Second Edition . . . 3/6 net. 
 
 The Gospel and its Ministry. A Handbook 
 of Evangelical Truth. Twelfth Edition, 
 Revised 2/6 
 
 Pseudo-Criticism ; or,The Higher Criticism 
 
 and its Counterfeit .... 3/6 
 
 "For Us Men": Chapters on Redemp- 
 tion Truths 2/6 neU 
 
 A Doubter's Doubts about Science and 
 
 Religion (put of print ^ 
 
THE BIBLE 
 
 AND 
 
 MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 BY 
 
 SIR ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., LL.D. 
 
 WITH A PREFACE 
 
 BT THB RIGHT REVEREND 
 
 HANDLEY C. G. MOULE, D.D. 
 
 BISHOP OP DURHAM 
 
 FIFTH EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 27 PATERNOSTER ROW 
 1905 
 
ao^%i^ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE following chapters have little need of 
 any prefatory remarks of mine. Alike 
 their subject, their material, and the author's 
 handling of that materia.1, will command the 
 attention of a wide circle of readers, and will 
 indeed repay it. But I am honoured by the 
 request to prefix these few paragraphs, and I 
 obey. 
 
 I have the author's full leave to say that there 
 are details in the matter of the book, and even 
 certain aspects of the treatment, from which I 
 hold myself detached. For example, I cannot 
 commit myself to concurrence with the whole 
 of the important but incidental criticism of the 
 Revised Version. I am in suspense on some 
 main items of Sir R. Anderson's discussion of 
 outlines of the prophetic future, while I regard 
 with profound respect the ability and the sug- 
 gestiveness of the discussion. Again, I must 
 dissociate myself from certain passages which 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 reflect upon the animus of some representatives 
 of the New Criticism with a severity I cannot 
 follow. Among both leaders and followers in 
 that school I reckon some much-respected friends, 
 of whose reverent and Christian aims I am 
 sure ; and that fact is continually with me in 
 any expression of the profound anxiety with 
 which I view the tendency of the school. 
 
 But when I have said this, I am amply free, as 
 I am earnestly willing, to avow my mental and 
 spiritual sympathy with the great envoi of this 
 remarkable book. 
 
 What is the book? It is the free and (to use 
 the word in its best sense) popular presentation 
 of the results of an independent study of the New 
 Criticism, as actually put before us in representa- 
 tive works, done by a student entirely free from 
 professional bias, and trained in a severe school 
 of legal and judicial investigation to sift witnesses 
 and weigh evidence. It is an example of exactly 
 the sort of work which, in my opinion, the Church 
 needs in an eminent degree, and which is, I 
 fear, lamentably rare to-day — the careful study of 
 religious problems by laymen at once open-minded 
 and devout In the best specimens of such study 
 there is often, to my thinking, a quite peculiar 
 value ; a fresh and bracing air of thought all their 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 own, a faculty for throwing wholesome light upon 
 subjects tangled by the over-handling of experts. 
 Experts, as Sir R. Anderson often pertinently 
 reminds us, are by no means, as such, good 
 judges. 
 
 " At the bar we sometimes find a man's logic 
 swamped by his learning ; and so it is in theo- 
 logy." Thus wrote the late Lord Hatherley to 
 me, in a private letter, thirty years ago, and went 
 on to say that he wished for leisure to illustrate 
 the poor reasoning power of some of the greatest 
 German literati. Lord Hatherley was one of 
 our first masters of evidence. He was a life-long 
 student of the Holy Scriptures. And the modest 
 Introduction to his Continuity is a fine summing- 
 up in favour of their properly supernatural 
 character. That book was a noble lay contribu- 
 tion to the defence of faith. Another master of 
 the practical application of legal science gives us 
 another here. 
 
 And is there not a cause ? 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 Testament (to speak 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 of it only for the instant) from an angle totally- 
 different (I use the words deliberately) from that 
 taken by our Lord Jesus Christ, alike before and 
 after His Resurrection from the dead. To Him, 
 tempted, teaching, suffering, 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 "zV is written;'' 
 as if an appeal to a definite supernatural book- 
 revelation were a thing discredited and to be 
 given up. 
 
 If a severe necessity of irrefragable truth 
 demands this, be it so. But let not the conclu- 
 sion 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 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 worshipping, theology may hold that He con- 
 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 affirmations, and 
 draws confident inferences, where his basis as to 
 facts is unsound. 
 
 Such a fallible Christ lies open to the suspicion 
 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 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 impalpable forecast. 
 Such extensions have undoubtedly come to be 
 freely made within Christian circles ; and not 
 only in the Encyclopedia Biblica, 
 
 If these conclusions be demanded by irrefutable 
 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 them 
 in the best modern style. Let us make them 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 with a groan, and take care to carve no more the 
 unauthentic promise on the tombs of our beloved. 
 
 But first let us be absolutely sure that our 
 detraction 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. 
 
 Wisely does Sir R. Anderson disclaim any 
 neat theory of inspiration ; as wisely does he 
 emphasise the true, the profound, humanity of the 
 Bible. But all the more is he in the right when 
 he analyses with the utmost rigour the flaws in 
 the modern analysis of the Book, and calls 
 reverent attention to the mysterious facts of its 
 organic structure, and gives us both precept and 
 example for an always deepening study of its 
 hidden treasures. 
 
 The matter is one where, while the fairness of 
 
 controversy must be guarded, as ever, its mere 
 
 courtesies may not always be in place. For the 
 
 question is of tremendous urgency. " We are 
 
 contending for our all." 
 
 HANDLEY DUNELM. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 THE title of this book is borrowed from The 
 Times, It was the heading given to an 
 important correspondence, in which I was per- 
 mitted to take a prominent part, some years ago, 
 in the columns of the leading journal. 
 
 I will only add that my obligations to the 
 Bishop of Durham are much greater even than 
 they here appear to be. And I am deeply 
 indebted to two other friends for valuable help. 
 I would specially name the Rev. Robert Sinker, 
 D.D., of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 R. A. 
 
 NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION 
 
 The following paragraphs from the " Note to 
 the Second Edition " contain all that seems 
 necessary by way of preface in issuing a Fourth 
 Edition of this work. Or if I add anything, it 
 will be merely to express my appreciation of 
 the generosity and favour with which the book 
 has been received by Christians generally. 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Charles Reade on miracles, 52. Christianised sceptics, 53. 
 Prayer, and a silent heaven, 54. The Divinity of Christ the 
 real question, 55. Matthew Arnold on miracles, 56. The 
 rejection of Christ and of the Bible, 58. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Presumption for a written Revelation, 64. " Brainless idiots," 
 and great lawyers, 65. Christianity rests on a Divine revela- 
 tion, 67. The Old Testament accredited by Christ, 67. 
 Christ discredited by the critics, 69. Why not have two 
 wives? 70, Kenosis theories, 71. The two sides of the 
 tapestry, 77. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The method of the inspiration, 78. David and his sin : Carlyle's 
 testimony, 80. Verbal inspiration, facts and fallacies, 83. 
 Yahweh or Jehovah, 87. The human element in miracles, 88. 
 Verbal inspiration discussed, 89. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Verbal inspiration, continuedt 95. Dependent on translations, 96. 
 "Words are but counters : " Eternal," 97. " Priest," 98. 
 Original records lost, loi. Various readings, 102. The 
 Revised Version of New Testament, 104. The "Herald 
 Angels' Song," 108, 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Creation story of Genesis, ii i. The Gladstone-Hmdey 
 controversy, 112. The Times correspondence of 1892, 115. 
 The teaching juf GfinfiS'S p"'^ ^T^^ n reatioi? "day," iig . 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The Book of Daniel, 129. Questions of language, 131. " His- 
 torical Errors/' 135. The Canon, 138. The "Seventy 
 ' Weeks," 138. 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 The Book of Jonah. An Irish story, 142. Whale or shark, 143. 
 The miracle, 146. Accredited by Christ, 147. Historical 
 difficulties, 149. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Moral difficulties : Queen Victoria and a homicide, 155. Des- 
 truction of the Canaanites, 157. The Jews and the world, 
 159. The price of Araunah's threshing-floor, 161. The 
 chronology of the Bible, 162. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Higher Criticism and the New Testament : a conversation 
 with a Higher Critic, 169. Bishop Gore's school, 172. In- 
 spiration of the Gospels, 175. The Lord accredited the Old 
 Testament, 175, He assured the inspiration of the New 
 Testament, 176. The Epistles, 179. The Apocalypse, 183. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Vaccination : the scepticism virus, 185. The " Ptolemaic 
 System" of Bible Study, 186. The First and Fourth Gospels 
 as read on this system, 187. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The true exegesis of the Gospels, 194. The scope of Matthew, 
 198. The Lord's testimony, 201. The crisis of the Ministry, 
 204. ITie parables of chapter xiii., 205. Other effects of 
 His rejection, 206. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Parousia. Amateur detectives, and ignorance of the Higher 
 Critics, 210. A conference on the Gospel, and the 
 doctrine of the types, 216. 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Errors in the Gospels : an Irish story, 221. The blind men 
 outside Jericho, 224. Theudas's insurrection, 226. "This 
 generation shall not pass," 227. The Inscription on the 
 Cross, 227, 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The Last Supper and the day of the Crucifixion, 232. The 
 "Preparation," 237. The day of the "First-fruits," 238, 
 The Calendar a prophecy : Doctrine of the Festivals, 243. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Summary and conclusion, 249. The critics and their com- 
 petence, 252. Practical advice, 255. ^* Post-mortem talk," 
 258. The Genesis "documents," 260. The origin of Higher 
 Criticism, 261. Kenosis teaching of the Higher Criticism, 
 and the issue at stake, 264. 
 
 Appendix — 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Note I. Isolated Texts relied on by the Higher 
 
 Critics ..... 267 
 
 Note II. The Revised Version of the New Testament 269 
 
 Note III. *' Three Days and Three Nights " . . 271 
 
 Note IV. The Genealogies of our Lord , ■ 273 
 
 Note V. The Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of 
 
 God, and the Church , . . 275 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 iSL 
 
 IN these days of unrest many Christians are 
 distressed by doubts whether the Bible 
 may be received with the settled and simple 
 faith accorded to it in the past. They have been 
 corrupted or disturbed by the Christianised 
 scepticism which prevails ; and, to use an apt 
 illustration, their anchor has dragged and they 
 are drifting. It may be, therefore, that one 
 who has known similar experiences, and is no 
 stranger to such doubts, may be able in some 
 measure to help others who are thus troubled. 
 
 In the history of Christendom, Churches of 
 every name, and — as judged from the inquirer's 
 point of view — of every degree of orthodoxy or 
 of error, have agreed in regarding the Bible 
 as a divinely inspired and infallible revelation. 
 No detailed proof of this statement is necessary 
 here, for not only is its truth acknowledged, 
 but the grounds on which the historic belief 
 
2 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 is challenged lie entirely apart from all appeals 
 to authority. 
 
 And no appeals of this kind shall prejudice 
 my discussion of the question. Being by 
 temperament and habit a sceptic, they weigh 
 but little with me personally, and I have found 
 a firmer basis for my faith. But there are two 
 sides to this. Many there are who loudly protest 
 against appeals to authority, and yet their own 
 faith in Holy Scripture has been jettisoned 
 solely because contemporary scholars of a certain 
 school have declared against the old beliefs. 
 
 If authority is to decide the question, the 
 issue is not doubtful. For every one of these 
 apostles of unfaith, scholars of equal eminence 
 may be cited on the other side. And behind 
 them is the overwhelming testimony of " the 
 whole congregation of Christian people dispersed 
 throughout the whole world," who, all down the 
 ages until recent times, have spoken with one 
 voice upon this subject. If our nineteenth century 
 critics are to be listened to, are these to be refused 
 a hearing ? 
 
 Nor can we forget the martyrs, who in un- 
 numbered thousands — their names are written in 
 heaven, but earth has kept no record of them — 
 braved every kind of agony of mind and body 
 
Ch. I.] THE MARTYRS' TESTIMONY 3 
 
 that could be devised by religious hate — the most 
 fiendish type of hate that fallen human nature 
 knows. It was not strong men only who swelled 
 their ranks. Weak women there were, too, and 
 even children were not wanting. What was the 
 secret of their triumph? Was it "the general 
 sense of Scripture corrected in the light of 
 modern research " ? In the solitude of the dungeon 
 and amidst the horrors of the torture chamber 
 they were sustained by words from the Bible, 
 which they took to be the words of God. Words, 
 for example, such as these : "He hath said ' I 
 will never leave thee nor forsake thee,' so that 
 we may boldly say ' The Lord is my helper,' and 
 'Iwill not fear what man shall do unto me.'" 
 But further knowledge and higher culture, forsooth, 
 would have taught them that the words, " I will 
 never leave thee nor forsake thee," are but an 
 inaccurate quotation from a book which is now 
 known not to have the authority that for thousands 
 of years has been attributed to it ; and that the 
 added words are by "a sub-apostolic writer" 
 whose treatise is separated by no hard and fast 
 lines from similar writings outside the canon of 
 Scripture. 
 
 So at least the critics would have us believe. 
 But if we are to shut out the testimony of the 
 
4 THE BIBLE AND MODERN, CRITICISM 
 
 martyrs, as well as that of ** Christian people 
 dispersed throughout the whole world," including 
 contemporary scholars equal in fame to the critics, 
 let us not be guilty of the unfairness and stupidity 
 of assuming at the start that the critics are right. 
 Let us refuse appeals to authority on either side, 
 and deal with the question on its merits. 
 
 And this leads me, by way of further preface, 
 to enter a protest against the shallow and jaunty 
 scepticism of the day. The issues at stake are 
 tremendous, and in dealing with them no degree 
 of earnestness and solemnity can be excessive. 
 One of the apostles of unfaith will tell us that 
 " Milton and Shakespeare and Bacon, and Can- 
 ticles and the Apocalypse and the Sermon on 
 the Mount, and the eighth chapter of Romans 
 are all inspired." That " there is a true inspira- 
 tion in the instinct of the owl ; that it is heard in 
 the rushing of the wind ; that it is seen in the 
 springing of a blade of grass ; that it murmurs 
 along the streams that flow among the hills." 
 Such trifling is deplorable. A mere peasant can 
 see that if this be the meaning of inspiration, we 
 must fall back upon natural religion. If the 
 Bible be nothing more than what such writers 
 see it to be, Christianity rests on no rational basis. 
 This is no argument in proof that the Bible is 
 
L'H. I.] THE « ENCYCLOP-^DIA BIBLICA" 5 
 
 inspired ; but it ought to check all levity in 
 dealing with the question. If my bank-notes are 
 forgeries, I am a ruined bankrupt ; this does not 
 prove them genuine, but it will prevent my parting 
 with them unless compelled to do so by cogent 
 proof that they are counterfeit. 
 
 But it will be said, perhaps, that in England at 
 least no scholar of repute among the Higher Critics 
 assumes a position which is really destructive of 
 Christianity. Though they challenge the au- 
 thority of various books of the Canon, they leave 
 untouched all that is vital. Let us test this. 
 The Encyclopedia Biblica is the most recent 
 exposition of the views of this school. Its editor 
 is Professor Cheyne, of Oxford,' a man who is a 
 teacher of teachers, and whose name stands high 
 as an authority on all subjects of this kind. The 
 following extracts are culled from the article on 
 the Gospels : — 
 
 " Several of the reported sayings of Jesus clearly bear 
 the impress of a time which he did not live to see " 
 
 (§ 136). 
 
 " The conclusion is inevitable that even the one 
 Evangelist whose story in any particular case involves 
 
 * To give him his full title, the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., D.D., 
 Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at 
 Oxford, and formerly Fellow of Balliol College; Canon of 
 Rochester. 
 
6 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 less of the supernatural than that of the others, is still 
 very far from being entitled on that account to claim 
 implicit acceptance of his narrative" (§ 137). 
 
 " With reference to the resurrection of Jesus . . • the 
 appearance in Jerusalem to the two women is almost 
 universally given up. . . . The statements as to the 
 empty sepulchre are to be rejected " (§ 138). 
 
 " As for the feeding of the five thousand and the four 
 thousand, so also for the withering of the fig tree, we still 
 possess a clue to the way in which the narrative arose 
 out of a parable" (§ 142). 
 
 " It is very conceivable that a preacher on the death 
 of Jesus may have said, purely figuratively, that then 
 was the veil of the temple rent in twain." 
 
 " We must endeavour to ascertain how many, and still 
 more what sorts of cures were effected by Jesus, It is 
 quite possible for us to regard as historical only those of 
 the class which even at the present day physicians are 
 able to effect by psychical methods, — as more especially 
 cures of mental maladies. 
 
 " It is not at all difficult to understand how the 
 contemporaries of Jesus, after seeing some wonderful 
 deed or deeds wrought by him which they regarded as 
 miracles, should have credited him with every other kind 
 of . miraculous power without distinguishing, as the 
 modern mind does, between those maladies which are 
 amenable to psychical influences and those which are not. 
 It is also necessary to bear in mind that the cure may 
 often have been only temporary" (§ 144). 
 
 No one who reads the foregoing extracts will 
 be surprised at the writer's raising the question 
 
Ch. I.] AN END OF CHRISTIANITY 7 
 
 ''whether any credible elements were to be found 
 in the Gospels at all." " All the more empha- 
 tically " therefore he enumerates nine passages 
 which he saves from the general wreck. ' These, 
 he goes on to say, "might be called the founda- 
 tion pillars of a truly scientific life of Jesus ; . . . 
 they prove that in the person of Jesus we have to 
 do with a completely human being, and that the 
 Divine is to be sought in Him only in the form 
 in which it is capable of being found in a man ; 
 they also prove that He really did exist, and 
 that the Gospels contain at least some absolutely 
 trustworthy facts concerning him." 2 
 
 Any person of ordinary intelligence can see 
 that this teaching makes an end of Christianity 
 altogether. The public facts of the life of the great 
 Rabbi of Nazareth are not questioned. What 
 the world saw nineteen centuries ago, the world 
 believes to-day. And those facts, combined with 
 His traditional teaching, may be made the basis 
 of a Christianised Buddhism which would possibly 
 
 « These are. Matt. xi. 5 (Luke vii. 22) ; Matt. xii. 31, f. ; Mark iii. 
 21 ; vi. 5, f. ; viii. 12 ; viii. 14-21 ; x. 17, f. ; xiii. 22, and xv. 34 
 (Matt, xxvii. 46). 
 
 " § 138. I trust no one will judge me harshly for thus 
 reproducing here this blasphemy. I deem it a duty to do so 
 because so many Christians are trifling with the infidel move- 
 ment in ignorance of its aims and methods. The article cited is 
 not by the Editor. 
 
8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 be the best of all human religions. But Chris- 
 tianity is not a human religion, but a divine revel- 
 ation of transcendental truths and of facts that 
 are of such a nature that no amount of mere 
 human testimony could accredit them. 
 
 " The first of these facts, upon which all the 
 rest depend, is that the Nazarene was the Son of 
 God. The founder of Rome was believed to be 
 the divinely begotten child of a vestal Virgin. 
 And in the old Babylonian mysteries a similar 
 parentage was ascribed to the martyred son of the 
 Queen of Heaven. What reason have we then 
 for distinguishing the birth at Bethlehem from 
 these and other kindred legends of the ancient 
 world?"! 
 
 He was, we read, "declared to be the Son of 
 God o > • by the resurrection from the dead." 
 But even this is filched from us: "the statements 
 as to the empty sepulchre are to be rejected." Some 
 of the German sceptics formerly accepted the public 
 proofs of the resurrection, and therefore their 
 teaching seemed to imply belief in that supreme 
 miracle. Among the initiated, however, they ex- 
 plained the " resurrection " by denying the death. 
 The cumulative evidence that the Nazarene was 
 
 ' The Buddha of Christendom^ p. 96. 
 
Ch. I.] CREDULITY OF THE CRITICS 9 
 
 seen alive after the Crucifixion was proof that He 
 had not really died. As He hung upon the 
 cross He swooned, and before He recovered con- 
 sciousness He was laid in the sepulchre. The 
 superstitious imagination of the disciples, unnerved 
 by the terrible ordeal they had suffered, gave a 
 colour to the facts ; and ere the Gospel narratives 
 came to' be written, the resurrection legend had 
 gained shape and substance. But the Oxford 
 infidelity of to-day is far in advance of German 
 infidelity of half a century ago. The Gospels are 
 now romance pure and simple, with no foundation 
 save the public facts, and a few isolated passages 
 which prove that the great Teacher was really an 
 historic personage. 
 
 And the objective foundations of our faith being 
 thus destroyed, Christianity in its subjective phase 
 is the merest superstition. Not one of the nine 
 authentic passages, thus saved from the wreck, 
 will avail us here. Faith is impossible. We 
 must fall back on mere opinions. And he who 
 would die for his opinions is a silly fanatic. The 
 man who has nothing to rest upon but Professor 
 Cheyne's Bible, and yet believes in " the forgive- 
 ness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the 
 life everlasting " is obviously a credulous person 
 who would believe anything. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 NO error lives unless it rests upon some 
 element of truth. And the Higher 
 Criticism owes its vitality to the fact that 
 the Bible is a human book. The written 
 Word is the counterpart of the Living 
 Word, And the ancient controversies about 
 the Christ have in modern times their 
 counterpart in controversies about the Scrip- 
 tures. Human nature being what it is, men 
 in their eagerness to escape from one error are 
 prone to rush into another. The old Gnostic 
 heresy, in that development of it which main- 
 tained that everything material was evil, tended 
 to the denial of the humanity of Christ. This 
 led to an assertion of His humanity in a way 
 which encroached upon the doctrine of His 
 Divine nature. In the swinging of the pen- 
 dulum of opinion the mean of truth was lost, 
 and the two extremes were manifested in the 
 
Ch. IL] the bible a human book II 
 
 practical denial that He was man and the 
 practical denial that He was God. 
 
 So has it been with the Bible. The ration- 
 alism of the post- Reformation age asserted or 
 assumed that the Bible was only and altogether 
 a human book. An unintelligent orthodoxy 
 maintained that it was only and altogether 
 Divine. And both these extremes find advo- 
 cates in England to-day. The sympathies of 
 the Christian are naturally with those who give 
 an exclusive prominence to the Divine side of 
 Scripture. But our sympathies must not betray 
 us into a participation in their error. Christ 
 was not half man and half God ; He was abso- 
 lutely human, and yet absolutely Divine. And 
 so is it also with the Bible. While it is absolutely 
 the Word of God, it is also the most thoroughly 
 human book in the world. Hence its amazing 
 power over the hearts and minds of men. And 
 our condemnation of the Higher Critics must 
 not blind us to the fact that if they have not 
 actually rescued this truth, they have brought 
 it into prominence and made it real. But on 
 the other hand our debt to them in this regard 
 cannot be allowed to outweigh, or even to 
 palliate, the evil of their system. 
 
 We owe a debt to the red revolutionists of 
 
t2 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 a century ago. But what lives in our memory 
 is not the good which has resulted from their 
 work, but the excesses they committed in 
 achieving it. The German rationalists and 
 their imitators and disciples of the Encyclo- 
 pcBdia Biblica are in their own sphere on a par 
 with the men of the Reign of Terror in France. 
 To teach us that a queen is but a woman, we 
 do not need the shameful spectacle of the blood- 
 stained guillotine, the debasing lesson that, as 
 Edmund Burke expressed it, "a woman is but 
 an animal, and not the highest kind of animal 
 either." And we can know, and rejoice in the 
 knowledge, that the Bible is thoroughly, ex- 
 quisitely human, without having to suffer the 
 ordeal of seeing our adorable Lord thus 
 patronised and blasphemed, and the holy 
 writings which testify to Him perverted and 
 degraded. 
 
 If a surgeon thinks only of his patient*s dignity 
 and rank, a trembling hand perchance may unfit 
 him for his task. But the man who plunges his 
 knife into a living human body as though it 
 were the carcase of a brute, is no better than 
 a butcher. And so we can criticise the Bible 
 on its human side without ever allowing 
 ourselves to forget that it is ** the living 
 
Ch. II.] DEAN ALFORD'S ESTIMATE 13 
 
 and eternally abiding Word of God " ; but we 
 search in vain the writings of the critics for 
 any indication of the reverence which is its due. 
 
 How different the spirit which animates them 
 from that which characterised that great expositor 
 and divine, Dean Alford ! Here are the closing 
 words of his New Testament Commentary : — 
 
 '* 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 
 revealed Scriptures : and with it, this my labour 
 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 depths even of its 
 simplest sentence. May He spare the hand 
 which has been put forward to touch His Ark." 
 If the critics know anything of the spirit of 
 these words they are consummate masters of 
 the art of concealing their emotions. 
 
 It will be said, perhaps, that the book I have 
 cited does not fairly represent the teaching of 
 the Critical School. If the objection refers to 
 those who belong to the Church of England, 
 it is well founded. It is happily unusual for 
 English gentlemen to give solemn pledges in 
 entering upon positions of influence and trust. 
 
14 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 and then to flout and violate those pledges. ' 
 But the Encyclopcedia Biblica is in this sphere 
 what the enfant terrible is in the family circle — 
 it gives out unblushingly what many of the critics 
 themselves would deprecate. 
 
 The difference between the work in question 
 and the more conservative and cautious Dic- 
 tionary of the Bible edited by Dr. Hastings, 
 to which Professor Driver, of Oxford, has lent 
 his name, is that the one represents the Bible 
 as error and romance mingled with truth, and 
 the other as truth mingled with romance and 
 error. For certain purposes the distinction is 
 a real one, but here it is immaterial. For the 
 question I have raised is whether the old- 
 fashioned belief in the inspiration of Scripture 
 can be maintained ; and the main purpose 
 of every work emanating from these writers 
 is, as they would say, to remove the diffi- 
 culties and dangers which the historic view 
 of inspiration is supposed to create. 
 
 The one set of writers hand me a purse of 
 coins, with an assurance that most of them 
 are genuine. The other set of writers hand 
 
 » Ordination in the Church of England is conditioned on an 
 unequivocal reply to the question, " Do you unfeignedly believe 
 all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament ?" 
 
Ch. IL] ARE THE GOSPELS INSPIRED? 15 
 
 me a purse of coins, with a warning that 
 most of them are counterfeit. But as I am 
 unable to distinguish between the base coins 
 and the gold, honesty forbids my trading with 
 any of them, and therefore all my seeming 
 wealth is practically useless. In either case 
 the Bible is like a lottery bag, from which 
 blanks and prizes must be drawn at random. 
 If the one section of the critics may be trusted, 
 the prizes abound ; if the other section be right, 
 the blanks predominate. But in either case, I 
 repeat, faith is impossible, and therefore Chris- 
 tianity is destroyed. 
 
 I am not prejudging the question raised in 
 my opening sentences : I am merely seeking to 
 state it clearly and intelligently, and to enter 
 a protest against levity in dealing with it. Let 
 me put it in a concrete form : Are the Gospels, 
 as the critics of every section tell us, merely 
 human documents, based in part upon the 
 memory of the writers, in part upon earlier 
 records, in part upon oral traditions of the 
 great Teachers acts and words.'* Or are they, 
 as Christians have heretofore believed, God- 
 breathed Scriptures — the Word of God, by 
 which the sinner may be born again, and 
 the disciple may " grow in grace " and be 
 " throughly furnished unto all good works " ? 
 
i6 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 For example, may I trust the record contained 
 in the third chapter of John ? Not one of the 
 disciples, we may be sure, was with the Lord 
 when Nicodemus "came to Him by night." But, 
 waiving that, what reason have we for supposing 
 the interview is reported accurately ? Very many 
 people bear testimony that the words of the 14th, 
 15th, and 1 6th verses have been the means of 
 producing in them that change of heart and life 
 which the Bible calls being born again and being 
 converted. But this implies that the words are 
 not a mere fallible human record of a conversation 
 alleged to have occurred between Christ and a 
 Pharisee ; but an infallibly inspired proclamation 
 of Divine love to the lost, bringing everlasting 
 life to all who believe in the Son of God. Now 
 these two views stand entirely apart. One or 
 other of their- must be false. And which is it ? 
 
 Take another case. Who vouches for the 
 record of the scene enacted, and the words 
 spoken by our Divine Lord, in Gethsemane? 
 The three disciples who alone were present lay 
 sleeping, wholly unconscious of the solemnity and 
 significance of that awful hour. And the critics 
 tell us that when at last they awoke they were 
 so utterly dazed and stupid that they mistook the 
 shimmer of the moonlight for an angelic appa- 
 
Ch. II.] POLICE OFFICERS v. THE SAINTS 17 
 
 rition. Either the record is in the strictest sense 
 inspired, or else it is no better than a fairy tale. 
 
 I have often wondered at the definiteness 
 with which some police officers could repeat the' 
 identical language used by a prisoner on arrest, 
 or in the course of a railway journey. In these 
 men habit and training have developed a natural 
 aptitude for accuracy. Eliminate, as the critics 
 do, the work of the Spirit of God, and I have 
 no hesitation in saying that if I had on one side 
 the testimony of the police inspectors of the 
 department I recently controlled, and on the 
 other side that of all the apostles and isvangelists, 
 I should trust to the memory of the officers rather 
 than to that of the saints. But an officer's duty 
 requires that as soon as practicable after hearing 
 any important statement he shall record it in 
 writing ; and if some months after the event I 
 found that he had neglected that duty, and yet 
 that he professed to repeat the exact words used 
 in a prolonged conversation, I should lose all 
 confidence both in his judgment and in his 
 truthfulness. 
 
 And now \o explain my parable. What 
 importance am I to attach to the record ot 
 prolonged discourses supposed to have been 
 spoken by the Lord ; such, for example, as " the 
 
 3 
 
i8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Sermon on the Mount," ^ **the Second Sermon 
 on the Mount/' ^ or the Lord's last words before 
 the Passion, 3 recorded more than forty years 
 after they were uttered? If the Gospels are 
 not inspired in the strictest sense in which 
 theologians speak of inspiration, these records are 
 worthless. Indeed if the critics are right, the 
 Evangelists belonged to the class of " chatty " 
 and imaginative people whose presence is often 
 welcome in social life, but always dreaded in the 
 witness chair of a Court of Justice. It avails 
 nothing to plead that the apostles were very holy 
 men. Experience teaches us that very holy men, 
 and very learned men, too, may be very silly. 
 And if some of the critics are to be believed, 
 silliness was as marked a characteristic of the 
 Evangelists as holiness.4 
 
 In all this, I repeat, I am not " laying down 
 the law," but only ** stating the case." Neither 
 am I specially addressing those who sympathise 
 with my conclusions. I appeal to all intelligent 
 and fair-minded thinkers. The only kind of 
 
 * Matt, v., vi., and vii. ■ Ibid. xxiv. and xxv. 
 3 John xiv., XV., xvi., and xvii. 
 
 * Indeed the patronising tone of their criticisms implies that 
 if men of their own type had been employed to write the Gospels, 
 the record would have been free from the defects and errors 
 which now mar it. * 
 
Ch. II.] GOLDWIN SMITHES TESTIMONY 19 
 
 person I wish to ignore is the fool. 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 counter- 
 part 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. 
 
 "The Reformation was a tremendous earth- 
 quake ; it shook down the fabric of mediaeval 
 religion, and as a consequence of the disturbance 
 in the religious sphere, filled the world with 
 revolutions and wars. But it left the authority 
 of the Bible unshaken, and men might feel that 
 the destructive process had its limit, and that 
 adamant was still beneath their feet. But a 
 world which is intellectual and keenly alive to 
 the significance of these questions, reading all 
 that is written about them with almost passionate 
 avidity, finds itself brought to a crisis the cha- 
 racter of which any one may realise by distincdy 
 presenting to himself the idea of existence without 
 a God." 
 
20 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 These are the words of one ^ whose thorough 
 sympathy with ** science and criticism " could not 
 blind him to the gravity of the crisis they have 
 caused. Fresh and vigorous minds will press on 
 where these teachers now timidly shrink back. 
 And while a religious agnosticism may afford a 
 doubtful refuge to the cultured classes, agnosticism 
 with no element whatever of religion will engulf 
 the unthinking multitude. Men may well, start 
 back at sight of such a goal. 
 
 Hear another witness, a veritable apostle of 
 unfaith. In answer to the infidel taunt that 
 Christianity was " an awful plague," because 
 its success involved the ruin of Roman civilisa- 
 tion, Matthew Arnold writes : "It was worth 
 while to have that civilisation ruined fifty times 
 over, for the sake of planting Christianity through 
 Europe in the only form in which it could then 
 be planted there." ^ And surely some feeling of 
 deep regret, if not of misgiving about his own 
 position and influence, must have touched his 
 heart as he penned the lines : — 
 
 « The sea of Faith 
 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd ; 
 
 * Professor Goldwin Smith. 
 " God and the Bible (Preface). 
 
Ch. IL] the thesis restated 21 
 
 But now I only hear 
 
 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar." 
 
 I have already restated my thesis : let me do 
 so once again. We shall gain nothing by dealing 
 with generalities. Let us open the Gospels at 
 the last of the test passages I have cited, and take 
 the well-known words : — 
 
 " Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe 
 in God, believe also in me. 
 
 "In my Father's house are many mansions : 
 if it were not so, I would have told you. I go 
 to prepare a place for you. 
 
 "And if I go and prepare a place for you, 1 
 will come again and receive you unto myself; 
 that where I am, there ye may be also." 
 
 May we still use such words as these to 
 comfort us in sorrow, and to cheer and 
 strengthen us when life is failing, and its 
 supreme crisis is drawing near? May we still 
 trust them, as our fathers did, as a message 
 from the heart and lips of our Saviour and Lord, 
 ministered to us by the Divine Spirit who 
 inspired His servant to record them? May we 
 read the Gospels thus ? Or is all this but an ex- 
 quisite dream from which we must awake to the 
 clear, cold light of nineteenth-century criticism ? 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 IN this enlightened age we are not content 
 with checking the spread of a disease when 
 it appears : we seek to diagnose it and to dis- 
 cover its origin. And an inquiry of this kind 
 respecting the prevailing epidemic of unbelief 
 cannot fail to be useful. 
 
 The scepticism of the day may be clearly 
 traced to the rationalism which almost swamped 
 the religious life of Germany in the second half 
 of the eighteenth century. But the chief cause 
 of that apostasy has never been fully recognised. 
 Not even in the darkest periods of the history of 
 Christendom had the character and authority of 
 the Bible ever been questioned.^ It was always 
 regarded as the inspired word of God, the 
 supreme and infallible guide in all questions of 
 faith and morals. But just as apostate Jews in a 
 preceding age had "made the word of God of 
 
 * Questioned by Christians, I mean ; and speaking broadly. 
 
 22 
 
Ch. IIL] the reformers and the bible 23 
 
 none effect by their traditions," so also did 
 apostate Christians. ' 
 
 In England the law is supreme. But it does 
 not rest with * ' the man in the street " to 
 interpret the law : that is the function of the 
 King's Courts. And so here. The supremacy 
 of the Bible was unquestioned. But the Church 
 was the " keeper " and the " interpreter " of 
 it ; and it so kept it as to keep it from the 
 people, and it so interpreted it as to "change 
 the truth of God into a lie." An open 
 Bible was the prize at stake in the glorious 
 Reformation struggle. The leaders in that great 
 revolt proclaimed the truth of salvation in Christ 
 apart from the Church, and without the interven- 
 tion of priests. And this truth set the conscience 
 free from the bondage which had enthralled it. 
 
 But justification by faith was not the only 
 truth that had been lost in the superstitions of a 
 thousand years. Every truth of the Bible had 
 been perverted or darkened. And yet the men 
 who came after the Reformers were content to 
 maintain the ground already gained. " The 
 Bible the religion of Protestants " was a proverb 
 in the Reformation age. But in the age which 
 followed it, the religion of Protestants became 
 narrowed to the special truths which the Refor- 
 
24 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 mation brought to light. And with what result ? 
 In course of time the memory grew dim of the 
 darkness and perils of pre- Reformation times, 
 and of the struggle by which liberty was won. 
 More than this, the methods of the Reformers 
 were forgotten, and the spirit which inspired 
 them had died out. And so it came to pass that 
 when the eighteenth century gave a new impetus 
 to the mental activity and free thought promoted 
 by the Reformation ; and the German mind, so 
 famed for its analytical subtlety, turned to the 
 study of Scripture in the cold light of reason, 
 difficulties innumerable presented themselves. 
 And to these difficulties the Evangelical Churches 
 had no adequate answer to offer. The Bible was 
 discredited by the ignorance and incapacity of its 
 defenders ; and the resulting mischief has never 
 been retrieved. 
 
 It is no reproach upon the Reformers that their 
 writings fail to help us in such bloodless conflicts. 
 For theirs was a life and death struggle such as 
 leaves no leisure for questions like those which 
 make up the stock-in-trade of the critics. But if 
 they could revisit the scenes of their labours and 
 their triumphs, how deep would be their indignation 
 and distress at the discovery that the mass even of 
 real Christians have no fuller knowledge of Divine 
 
Ch. III.] POST-REFORMATION APOSTASY 25 
 
 truth than they themselves had attained. And 
 this wholly understates the case. From the 
 great truths which Luther taught with a fulness 
 and boldness never since surpassed, the Lutheran 
 Churches have largely apostatised. The doctrines 
 of Grace have been swamped in a pagan sacra- 
 mentalism which destroys true Christianity. 
 
 And such an apostasy can only be explained by 
 ignorance of Scripture as a whole. It was 
 charged upon the Hebrew Christians of 
 apostolic days that they were ignorant of the 
 A B C of revealed religion ; ^ and a like charge 
 can be sustained against the Evangelicalism of 
 Germany at the close of the eighteenth century. 
 '* Truth is one"; but when the circle of Divine 
 truth is broken, men soon forget its unity, and 
 the segments that remain lie open to attack. 
 What advance had been made in the knowledge 
 of Scripture during the two centuries and a half 
 from the date of the Diet of Worms? The^ 
 Bible as a whole is, of course, "a book of 
 piety " ; and its worth in that respect is un- 
 challenged. But, ignoring that element, the Old 
 Testament naturally admits of a threefold division 
 — the historical, the typical, and the prophetical. 
 
 * Heb. V. 12. 
 
26 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 But history lies outside the special province of 
 theology. Prophecy was ostentatiously neglected 
 until Hengstenberg appealed to its testimony in 
 answering the rationalists. And as for the third 
 division, Hengstenberg himself lamented the 
 prevailing Ignorance respecting it. '*The eluci- 
 dation of the doctrine of the types," he declared, 
 " now entirely neglected, is an important problem 
 for future theologians." 
 
 And how can any one who is ignorant of " the 
 doctrine of the types," and of the grand scheme of 
 Divine prophecy, understand the New Testament 
 aright? Such a man has not learned even the 
 language in which the New Testament is written. 
 Nor does this remark apply only to special 
 passages : it bears upon the scope and meaning 
 of entire books, and the relation of the books to 
 one another — the "hidden harmony" of Scripture 
 as a whole. 
 
 The rationalistic crusade against the Bible, 
 which Eichhorn christened "the Higher Criti- 
 cism," owed its strength and success to the appeal 
 it made to the human element in the Scriptures. 
 The Bible is called "the word of God" for the 
 same reason that Christ is called "the Word of 
 God " — it expresses the mind of God. But as 
 Christ is " very God " and yet perfect man, so the 
 
Ch. III.] CRITICISM CANNOT BE STIFLED 27 
 
 Bible, while absolutely Divine, is yet the most 
 human book in all the world. And as the Living- 
 Word became subject to all the infirmities of 
 humanity, sin excepted, so also the written Word 
 is marked by all the characteristics of human 
 writings, ierror excepted.^ German Evangeli- 
 calism, however, had neglected the human side 
 of the Bible, as indeed a certain type of Evan- 
 gelicalism does to the present day. 
 
 But to attempt to stifle criticism of Scripture 
 by the cry that " the Bible is the word of God " 
 only serves to excite distrust on the part of 
 earnest and honest-hearted inquirers. There never 
 was an attack made upon the truth that could 
 not be refuted. ** Truth is one " ; but error is in 
 its very nature inconsistent, and therefore absurd. 
 And while Divine truth is spiritual, and can only 
 be spiritually discerned, human error is natural, 
 and can be met on its own ground. We cannot 
 " reason " men into the kingdom of God, but by 
 reasoning we can expose errors which prejudice 
 them against it. 
 
 We can appeal to them, moreover, not to 
 expend all their scepticism upon "the Biblical 
 writers," but to reserve a little of it for the 
 
 ■ I here use the word " error " in its deeper sense, and I do not 
 prejudge questions which shall be considered in the sequel. 
 
28 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 critics themselves — to carry the Higher Criticism 
 one step further, and bring the exponents of the 
 science within its scope. Take Professor Blank, 
 for example, who criticises the Bible in such a 
 patronising way. Surely it is legitimate to 
 investigate his fitness for his self-appointed task. 
 His eminence as a scholar in his own particular 
 line is unquestioned. But would those who know 
 him best accept him as an arbitrator in any case 
 where a sound judgment, and breadth of view, 
 and common sense are necessary qualifications ? 
 Or if the case came into court, and Professor 
 Blank were found to be foreman of the jury 
 empanelled to try it, would not the parties ask 
 for half an hour's adjournment, and retire to 
 consider a compromise rather than go to trial ? ' 
 "After all," says Matthew Arnold, "shut a 
 
 * Some years ago I published a defence of one book of Scrip- 
 ture against the attack of an eminent critic, and Mr. Gladstone 
 was at the pains of writing two successive letters to impress on 
 me that the distinguished scholar in question was wholly wanting 
 in the judgment requisite for dealing with questions of the kind. 
 
 One of the prominent figures in Charles Lever's most popular 
 novel is Dr. Barrett, who was Vice-Provost of Trinity College, 
 Dublin, a century ago. His extraordinary erudition made him the 
 envy and admiration of contemporary scholars ; his extraordinary 
 silliness made him the butt of every undergraduate. And stories 
 of his great learning and his great folly are rife to the present 
 day. And in no department of scholarship is this phenomenon 
 more likely to be manifested than in that of Philology. 
 
Ch. III.] MATTHEW ARNOLD ON THE CRITICS 29 
 
 number of men up to make study and learning 
 the business of their lives, and how many of 
 them, from want of some discipline or other, 
 seem to lose all balance of judgment, all common 
 sense!" In the same connection, he speaks of 
 " the ordeal of the Englishman's strong and strict 
 sense for fact," and he adds, "We are much 
 mistaken if it does not turn out that this ordeal 
 makes great havoc among the vigorous and 
 rigorous theories of German criticism concerning 
 the Bible-documents." And " German criticism " 
 does not cease to be German because during the 
 present generation it has been fathered by 
 Englishmen, 
 
 •* Great men are not always wise," ' and even 
 in the natural sphere they may prove to be blind 
 guides. The "Ptolemaic System" is a monu- 
 mental proof of this. Pythagoras had taught 
 men to regard the sun as the centre of our 
 system ; and that truth held sway until, by 
 methods analogous to those of the Higher 
 Critics of to-day, Ptolemy persuaded his con- 
 temporaries to abandon it. And for long 
 centuries all the wisdom of the wise was on 
 the side of error. And when we turn to the 
 
 " Job xxxii. 9. 
 
30 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 religious sphere the wonder is how any Protes- 
 tant, with the history of Christendom open to 
 him, can be influenced by the dicta of men of 
 intellect and genius. Down to the present hour, 
 have not men of the highest eminence in every 
 branch of human knowledge bartered the truths 
 of Christianity for the pagan superstitions which 
 are the stock-in-trade of priestcraft ? 
 
 The leaders in this Higher Criticism crusade 
 in England have facile pens and they are 
 prolific authors. And yet if they may be judged 
 by their writings, there is not one of them 
 who is a student of prophetic truth or of 
 the typology of Scripture. Their Bible is 
 but an ill-assorted collection of Jewish books. 
 Their " Jesus " came to found a new religion, 
 and they seem very hazy about His coming 
 back again. The ground-plan of the Bible they 
 know nothing of. 
 
 "The whole Scriptures are a testimony to 
 Christ : the whole history of the chosen people, 
 with its types, and its law, and its prophecies, 
 is a showing forth of Him," Thus wrote Dean 
 Alford, one of the greatest commentators of 
 our age. But all this ha:s no existence for the 
 critics ; and if they would speak out plainly, some 
 of them would brand it as superstitious drivel. 
 
Ch. III.] WHY THE CRITICS ARE SCEPTICS 31 
 
 As the spiritual Christian reads their books 
 he is conscious of an atmosphere and an environ- 
 ment that are uncongenial. For their writings 
 are in great measure but a post mortem upon 
 dead truth. Some of them, like the Jews of 
 old, have '*a zeal for God, but not according 
 to knowledge." But these are a minority. As 
 for the rest, if they have ever known what it 
 means — but here I tread on delicate ground, 
 and I will call a witness from the grave to 
 express my meaning. The following letter, 
 which appeared many years ago in the columns 
 of the Record newspaper, made a profound im- 
 pression on me at the time, and it may appeal 
 to others to-day. The writer of it withheld his 
 name, but I was told at the time that he was 
 Professor Birks, of Cambridge. Here are his 
 words : — 
 
 "You well observe in a recent article that the public 
 is becoming accustomed to the strange vagaries on the 
 Bible which men of learning and high position in the 
 Church seem so constantly falling into, 
 
 " I should be glad to express, through the medium of 
 your columns, what appears to me the secret of all this ; 
 and I the rather desire to do so, because I am myself a 
 monument of the delivering power and mercy of God in 
 this very matter. 
 
 " It is very observable that almost all the men who 
 
32 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 have thus notoriously erred from the way of truth are 
 men of some kind of eminence in natural ability. Of 
 Mr. Maurice I cannot say I think that even in natural 
 things he excels in distinctness of ideas, or the power of 
 clearly discerning nice differences. But the errors of 
 such men as Heath, and especially Bishop Colenso, 
 cannot be attributed to any confusion of mind as to 
 things which differ — ^their eminent honours at Cam- 
 bridge forbid our taking that view. Besides, I know 
 from past experience in the same gloomy school, that 
 the possession of very considerable natural acumen does 
 not in the least degree aid a man whose mind is per- 
 plexed about the foundations of Bible truth. 
 
 " As to the objections urged by the above gentlemen 
 to the generally-received views of Scripture, and the 
 doctrines which flow so immediately from its simple 
 and spiritual acceptance as the Word of God, they 
 know as well as we do that they are hackneyed and 
 as old as our fallen nature, but then that does not 
 remove them ; they cannot receive the simple accounts 
 of Scripture, because they have not Divine faith. I 
 remember when I first began to read the Bible (and 
 I thought I was sincerely seeking the truth) I was 
 miserable because I could not believe it ; I dared not 
 reject any statement I found there, but I could not 
 fully believe it was true. The Bishop of Natal just 
 expresses what I felt, and the fact that we took exactly 
 the same University honours (in different years of course) 
 makes me sympathise with him peculiarly. My own 
 history was just this : — I had read and studied deeply 
 in mathematics, had mastered every fresh subject I 
 entered upon with ease and delight ; had become 
 accustomed (as every exact mathematician must do) 
 
Ch. Ill] THE "RECORD" LETTER 33 
 
 to investigate and discover fundamental differences 
 between things which seem to the uninitiated one 
 and the same ; had seen my way into physical 
 astronomy and the higher parts of Newton's immortal 
 'Principia/ and been frequently lost in admiration of 
 his genius till St. Mary's clock warned me that mid- 
 night was past three hours ago. I had, in fact (as we 
 say), made myself master of dynamics, and become 
 gradually more and more a believer in the unlimited 
 capabilities of my own mind ! This self-conceited idea 
 was only flattered and fostered by eminent success in 
 the Senate House, and by subsequently obtaining a 
 Fellowship at Trinity, and enjoying very considerable 
 popularity as a mathematical lecturer. 
 
 " It would have spared me many an hour of misery in 
 after days had I really felt what I so often said, viz., 
 that the deeper a man went in science, the humbler he 
 ought to be, and the more cautious in pronouncing an 
 independent opinion on a subject he had not investigated 
 or could not thoroughly sift. But, though all this was 
 true, I had yet to learn that this humility in spiritual 
 things is never found in a natural man. 
 
 " I took orders, and began to preach, and then, like 
 the Bishop among the Zulus, I found out the grand 
 deficit in my theology. I had not the Spirit's teaching 
 myself, and how could I without it speak "in demon- 
 stration of the Spirit and of power " ? 
 
 " In vain did I read Chalmers, Paley, Butler, Gaussen, 
 &c., and determine that, as I had mastered all the other 
 subjects I had grappled with, so I would the Bible, and 
 that I would make myself a believer. I found a poor, 
 ignorant old woman in my parish more than a match 
 for me in Divine things. I was distressed to find that 
 
 4 
 
34 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 she was often happy in the evident mercy of the Lord 
 to her, and that she found prayer answered, and that all 
 this was proved sincere by her blameless and harmless 
 walk amongst her neighbours ; whilst I, with all my 
 science and investigation, was barren, and unprofitable, 
 and miserable — an unbeliever in heart, and yet not 
 daring to avow it, partly from the fear of man, but 
 more from a certain inward conviction that all my 
 sceptical difficulties would be crushed and leaped over 
 by the experience of the most illiterate Christian, 
 
 " I was perfectly ashamed to feel in my mind like 
 Voltaire, Volney, or Tom Paine. I could claim no 
 originality for my views ; and I found they were no 
 comfort, but a constant source of misery to me. 
 
 " It may now be asked how I came ever to view 
 Divine truth differently. I desire to ascribe all praise 
 to Him to whom power belongeth ; I desire to put my 
 own mouth in the dust, and be ashamed, and never 
 open my mouth any more, because of my former un- ' 
 belief. I cannot describe all I passed through, but I 
 desire with humility and gratitude to say, I was made 
 willing in a day of Christ's power. He melted down 
 my proud heart with His love ; He shut my mouth for 
 ever from cavilling at any difficulties in the written 
 Word ; and one of the first things in which the great 
 change appeared was, that whereas beforetime preaching 
 had been misery, now it became my delight to be able 
 to say, without a host of sceptical or infidel doubts 
 rushing into my mind, 'Thus saith the Lord.* Oh, I 
 am quite certain no natural man can see the things of 
 God ; and I am equally certain he cannot make himself 
 do so. ' It was the Lord that exalted Moses and 
 Aaron,' said Samuel ; and, * By the grace of God I am 
 
Ch. III.] THE "RECORD" LETTER 35 
 
 what I am/ said St. Paul ; and so, in a modified and 
 humble sense, I can truly say. 
 
 "It used to be a terrible stumbling-block to me to 
 find so many learned men, so many acute men, so many 
 scientific men, infidels. It is not so now ; I see that 
 God has said, ' Not many wise men after the flesh, not 
 many mighty, not many noble' ; I see, as plainly as it 
 is possible for me to see anything, that no natural man 
 can receive the things of the Spirit of God. Hence I 
 expect to find men of this stamp of intellect coming out 
 boldly with their avowals of unbelief in the written 
 Word of God. The only answer I can give to them is : 
 ' God has in mercy taught me better ' ; and never do I 
 sing those beautiful words in the well-known hymn but 
 I feel my eyes filling with tears of gratitude to the God 
 of all compassion — 
 
 " Jesus sought me when a stranger, 
 Wandering from the fold of God." 
 
 " So it was with me ; so it must be with any one of 
 them if ever they are to know the truth in its power, or 
 to receive the love of the truth that tliey may be saved. 
 
 " I feel very much for the young of this generation, 
 remembering the conflicts I passed through in conse- 
 quence of the errors of men of ability." ' 
 
 ' After the Third Edition of this book had gone to press, the 
 author ascertained that the writer of the foregoing letter (which 
 appeared in the Record, October, 1862) was the Rev. Robert 
 Walker, M.A., Vicar of Wymeswold, Leicestershire. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 I HAVE always felt that the death of 
 Charles H. left a stain upon the fair fame 
 of England. No, I do not mean Charles I. ; 
 neither would I endorse the words of Junius that 
 "he ought to have died upon the same scaffold." 
 For that Whitehall execution is a matter as to 
 which opinions may differ. But that the nation 
 that beheaded his father and deposed his brother 
 should have permitted him, after such a reign, to 
 die in his Palace as King of England — this is 
 a fact which in my humble judgment is discredit- 
 able to the English people. 
 
 Even during that infamous reign there were 
 multitudes of people who believed in the virtue 
 of women. But no person of culture — no one 
 who was abreast of the times, or who understood 
 the trend of contemporary thought — acknow- 
 ledged a traditional belief of that kind. And 
 
 ''Society" tacitly ignored it. In fact it came to 
 
 36 
 
Ch. IV.] FAITH AND MORALS 37 
 
 be looked upon as proof of narrow-mindedness or 
 boorishness. The profession of morality became 
 unfashionable. The standard of morality was- 
 gone. 
 
 The analogy between faith and morals is close 
 and real. And the decline of morality in the 
 Restoration period is finding its counterpart in 
 the sphere of faith to-day. We have come 
 within sight of an apostasy unparalleled in the 
 history of Christendom. Every attack which open 
 infidelity has ever launched against the Bible is 
 now being repeated by men " who profess and call 
 themselves Christians," and who claim to be the 
 apostles of a new movement in defence of the 
 citadel of Christian truth. And just as vice 
 became fashionable in the days of Charles II., so, 
 as Professor Cheyne naively owns, this system of 
 attacking truth in the interests of truth haa 
 become " fashionable " in Britain to-day. The 
 appearance of his Encyciopadia has checked 
 the movement for the moment : but the scare 
 thus caused will soon subside. It has fluttered 
 the lesser lights of the Higher Criticism, who 
 have been serving as acolytes in the worship of 
 this new goddess of Reason. For they are not 
 clear-headed enough to see that Professor Cheyne 
 has only pressed their own principles to legitimate 
 
38 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 conclusions. Without help from France, Charles 1 1 . 
 could not so easily have overcome what he 
 deemed English prudery ; and so here, foreign 
 critics have been called in to force the pace with 
 their British brethren. The French women were 
 more "advanced" than the English ; that was all. 
 And this is precisely what is said about the 
 EncyclopcBdia writers as compared with ordinary 
 British critics. 
 
 The late Professor Robertson Smith is ap- 
 pealed to on every hand in proof that there is 
 nothing in the Higher Criticism to injure or alarm 
 a Christian. By far the most interesting per- 
 sonality among contemporary critics, his apologia^ 
 published soon after he was deprived of his Chair 
 in Aberdeen, was marked by the glow of real 
 spirituality. Evangelical fervour, too, charac- 
 terised the man. As honest and upright as he 
 was amiable and attractive, he seemed at that 
 time to be a martyr to the cause of truth. It is 
 this very element, however, that makes his case 
 such a warning. 
 
 " Thanks to the cold sluggishness of our 
 national character," well - seasoned '* society 
 ladies " may possibly have spent a dozen years 
 at the court of Charles without becoming much 
 worse than when they entered it. But no 
 
Ch. IV.] ROBERTSON SMITHES APOSTASY 39 
 
 pure woman in the gush and glow of life could 
 pass through such an ordeal without sinking to 
 the level of those by whom she was surrounded. 
 And no man of Robertson Smith's temperament 
 could allow his mind year after year to be 
 saturated with German infidelity, and yet end 
 where he began. His Old Testament in the 
 Jewish Church discloses what he was in 1881 : 
 the Encyclopczdia Biblica shows what he became. 
 For by him it was that this sad book " was 
 originated." He it was "who requested Professor 
 Cheyne to take up the work as showing his own 
 •uncompromisingly progressive spirit.'" ' 
 
 People are led to suppose that the Higher 
 Criticism is the outcome of an honest inquiry 
 after truth. But the history of the movement 
 as written by the critics themselves explodes such 
 a delusion.2 Of Eichhorn, "the founder of 
 modern Old Testament criticism," Professor 
 Cheyne writes that " it was his hope to contribute 
 to the winning back of the educated classes to 
 religion." And to attain this end he set himself 
 to eliminate from the Bible everything to which 
 the rationalists took exception. " Religion " is 
 
 * The Times, April 11, 1902. 
 
 " In proof of my words I need but appeal to Professor 
 Cheyne's Founders of Old Testament Criticism, 
 
40 TJEIE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 fair ground for compromise ; but Christianity is 
 not a religion but a faith ; and faith, like morality, 
 admits of no compromise. 
 
 Men like Matthew Arnold may create a 
 mythical ** Jesus" out of materials supplied by an 
 expurgated edition of the Gospels, from which 
 everything distasteful to their fastidious scepticism 
 has been eliminated. And they may make this 
 " Jesus " the Buddha of an ideal religion which 
 will please every one except the sinner who is 
 conscious of his need of a Divine Saviour. But 
 all this is treason to the Christ of God ; and the 
 Christian who sets himself to "huckster" ^ the 
 truth in this way, either sinks to the level of the 
 rationalist, or leads others down to that abyss. 
 This may take two generations to accomplish. 
 Eichhorn's greatest pupil, Ewald, was as devout 
 as himself, but his criticisms were more searching. 
 Ewald's greatest pupil, Wellhausen, became a 
 mere rationalist; and, as Professor Cheyne justly 
 says, he only applied Ewald's principles more 
 consistently. 2 
 
 ' 2 Cor. ii. 17. The primary meaning of the word translated 
 "to corrupt" is "to huckster" and the whole passage indicates 
 that it is in this sense the apostle uses it. Eichhorn treated the 
 Bible on the principle of a "Dutch auction"; he adapted his 
 wares to the market, huckstering the Scriptures to suit the 
 rationalists. 
 
 ■ Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 107. 
 
Ch. IV.] PROFESSOR CHEYNE'S POSITION 41 
 
 Professor Cheyne himself is the English Well- 
 hausen.i He is our only critic of eminence who 
 is clear-sighted enough to see the end of the road 
 on which he is travelling, or courageous enough 
 to follow it. In his judgment, expressed of 
 course in veiled language and with perfect 
 courtesy, other critics, such for example as his 
 distinguished colleague at Oxford, are the timid 
 advocates of an impossible compromise. Pro- 
 fessor Driver's * ' sympathy with old-fashioned 
 readers " has led him, he says, " to forget the 
 claims of criticism." 2 It is this "spirit of com- 
 promise " 3 that Professor Cheyne *' chiefly 
 dreads." And the compromise he deprecates is 
 not Eichhorn's compromise with rationalists, but 
 the tendency of the English critics to pander to 
 the weakness of those who revere the Bible and 
 believe in the Divinity of Christ. We have 
 already seen how summarily he rejects the 
 foundations of Christianity, and we need not be 
 surprised at his assertion that by no one " has it 
 yet been made probable that there was a his- 
 torical individual among the ancestors of the 
 
 * Only in the sense here indicated. For unlike Wellhausen, 
 Professor Cheyne is always reverent in tone, and he is one of the 
 fairest of the critics. 
 
 " Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 366. s Ibid., p. 247. 
 
42 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Israelites called Abram." ' The existence of 
 Abraham is, not even probable. The sceptic 
 would say it is not ** certain," and thus leave an 
 opening for discussion ; but on both vital and 
 incidental questions Professor Cheyne has the 
 courage of his convictions, and boldly takes the 
 unassailable ground of open infidelity.^ 
 
 Here I would wish to expose another popular 
 blunder. The idea prevails that the Higher 
 Criticism is the special preserve of H ebre w 
 scholars. Now this is undoubtedly true of the 
 sort of study for which Eichhorn coined the title, 
 namely, a critical examination of the text of a 
 book with a view to analysing its contents. But 
 any one can see that there is no connection what- 
 soever between an inquiry of that kind and the 
 rejection of the supernatural element in the Bible 
 in order to propitiate the Rationalists. We must 
 
 * Founders of Old Testament Criticism, p. 239. 
 
 " Infidelity is a strong term, but not too strong. In an article 
 in The Nineteenth Century for January, 1902, Professor Cheyne 
 says that Abraham was a "lunar hero.'' Having regard to our 
 Lord's references to the Patriarch, this is shockingly profane ; 
 and having regard to the recent discoveries of archaeology, it 
 is on other grounds extraordinary. Professor Cheyne would 
 possibly deny that he says this. But he says that Winckler, the 
 German, says it ; and he repeats it with approval, calling it *' A . 
 turning-point in Old Testament study," and commending it to 
 the attention of English scholars. I never knew a receiver of 
 stolen goods who did not resent being called a thief ! 
 
Ch. IV,] THE MOSAIC ERA LITERARY 43 
 
 avoid the stupid pedantry of explaining a phrase 
 by its origin and not by its use. The Higher 
 Criticism at once degenerated into what it is to-day 
 — a sceptical crusade against the Bible, tending 
 to lower it to the level of a purely human book. 
 
 Here, however, the pioneers of criticism com- 
 pare favourably with their successors. They 
 had the excuse of the ignorance which then 
 prevailed about Old Testament times. The 
 attack on the Pentateuch, for example, was based 
 on the assumption that the Mosaic Era was 
 a barbarous age. It seemed an anachronism to 
 suppose that such a literature could have existed 
 at such a time. But this, as Professor Sayce will 
 tell us, was " a baseless assumption due to the 
 ignorance of the critic." ' Referring to the work 
 of " the excavator and the decipherer " in Eastern 
 lands, the same writer goes on to say, " Discovery 
 has followed there upon discovery, each more 
 marvellous than the last, and a lost world of 
 culture and civilisation has been brought to 
 light. . . . We can follow the daily life of the 
 Egyptian 3,000 years ago more minutely than the 
 daily life of a mediaeval Englishman ; . . and 
 study the letters of Canaanites who lived before 
 
 * Lex Mosaicay p. 7. 
 
44 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 the birth of Moses." And again, "In the 
 century before the Exodus, Palestine was a land 
 of books and schools." ' 
 
 But though the only reasonable foundation of 
 the attack on the Pentateuch has thus been 
 destroyed, the critics go on repeating the state- 
 ments made in ignorance of all this by their great 
 predecessors. Or if they try to shore up their 
 crumbling edifice, it is by the abuse of a few 
 isolated texts which are pressed remorselessly into 
 the service. 2 
 
 Let this fact, then, be kept prominently in view, 
 that a knowledge of Hebrew has nothing what- 
 ever to do with the question of the authenticity of 
 the books of Moses. And speaking generally, 
 philology has only an incidental importance in 
 the whole Higher Criticism controversy. If, for 
 example. Professor Driver declares that ** the 
 Hebrew of Daniel is that of a much later age 
 than the sixth century B.C.," he is answered by 
 Professor Cheyne, who, though a more uncom- 
 promising critic, is a safer guide on matters 
 of this kind. We may therefore dismiss the 
 Hebraists altogether from this part of the inquiry. 
 
 And even in relation to questions which 
 
 " Lex Mosaica, p. 9. ■ See Appendix, Note I. 
 
Ch. IV.] THE SECOND ISAIAH THEORY 45 
 
 specially concern them, the function of the 
 experts is merely to prepare the proofs. The 
 decision should rest with those who have practical 
 experience in dealing with evidence. To allow 
 the critics to adjudicate upon the evidence they 
 have themselves prepared would be quite as 
 stupid and as dangerous as to permit the police 
 to try the prisoners whose cases they bring into 
 court. And yet this is, speaking generally, the 
 attitude maintained by educated Englishmen 
 towards every question raised in this controversy. 
 It is intellectually as deplorable as that of the 
 Irish Roman Catholic peasant who grovels before 
 his priest and takes the law from his mouth. 
 
 Take for example the Isaiah controversy. The 
 critical attack upon Daniel not only destroys one 
 of the great Messianic prophecies, and impairs the 
 authority of the New Testament, but impugns the 
 teaching of the Lord Himself. But this "second 
 Isaiah " hypothesis involves no element of this 
 kind. The question therefore is open to dis- 
 cussion, and the Christian may consider it on its 
 merits. The reasons urged in favour of it are 
 undoubtedly striking and important. They are, 
 first, certain literary differences which mark the 
 various sections of the Book ; and secondly, the 
 definiteness of the references to the exile and the 
 
46 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 return, contained in the latter portion of it. No 
 one will dispute, however, that were it not for 
 this second consideration the question would not 
 be pressed ; for in a writer so " versatile " as 
 Isaiah, I a change of style is by no means extra- 
 ordinary. And the critics do not deny that God 
 might have inspired Isaiah to utter all these 
 prophecies. 
 
 In a recent sensational murder trial, it was 
 suggested that the real delinquent was a stranger 
 who resembled the accused. The suggestion 
 was a reasonable one, and its acceptance would 
 have explained certain difficulties in the case for 
 the prosecution. But an experienced judge and 
 a sensible jury wanted to know where this stranger 
 had come from, and what became of him. And 
 so here. We want to know something about this 
 Isaiah 1 1. 2 
 
 If it were possible to hold that the "second 
 Isaiah " was the real Isaiah, this difficulty might 
 perhaps be ignored. For the author of the open- 
 
 * "A writer so versatile and dramatic.'' Professor G, A. Smith's 
 Isaiah, 
 
 ^ I fear I shall be deemed ignorant for speaking of two Isaiahs. 
 I really forget how many of them are reckoned' by some of the 
 critics — sixteen, I think. But in these pages I wish to deal 
 seriously with the criticisms of sober scholars,, and to ignore the 
 vagaries of faddists. 
 
Ch. IV.] SECOND ISAIAHS 47 
 
 ing prophecies of the Book — those scathing 
 denunciations of the religion of the people — ^may 
 well have been hated and persecuted ; and it is 
 conceivable that his very name should have been 
 erased from the popular annals. But the last 
 twenty-seven chapters are altogether unique, not 
 merely by reason of their unequalled brilliancy 
 and power, but also because they are such "com- 
 fortable words " as never before or since were 
 heard in Israel- A prophet raised up in the dark 
 days of the exile to deliver such messages of hope 
 and joy would have become immortal. He would 
 have been the idol of the whole nation, the most 
 famous and popular personage of his time. But 
 if we are to accept the theory of the critics, he 
 appeared and vanished again, like a morning 
 mist, without leaving even the vaguest tradition 
 of his name, his personality, or his career. And 
 this, remember, in the exilic or post-exilic period, 
 that is to say within historic times. 
 
 And when we are told that there were several 
 "second Isaiahs," a galaxy of the most brilliant 
 prophetic stars that ever shone in the national 
 firmament of Israel, the suggestion becomes so 
 utterly preposterous that if the case could be 
 brought before any serious judicial tribunal it 
 would be " laughed out of court." 
 
48 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 But as usual with experts, the critics look only 
 at one side of the question. And while experience 
 refuses to sanction an hypothesis so wild as that 
 which they propose, it warns us authoritatively that 
 in common with all experts they are exceptionally 
 liable to err. 
 
 In his History of the Criminal Law y Sir James 
 Fitzjames 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 
 accept the dicta of experts until they had been 
 thus tested; and yet the history of the Higher 
 Criticism movement gives abundant proof that 
 no class of expert is more untrustworthy than the 
 critic. 
 
 What about Schleiermacher, and Baur, and 
 Strauss, and their several schools .'* Who now 
 defends their conclusions? The New Testament 
 fared worse at their hands than does the Old 
 Testament to-day at the hands of their successors. 
 And yet the lucubrations of those brilliant scholars 
 and critics are now put aside as " an episode " 
 even by such an arch-heretic as Professor Har- 
 nack of Berlin. " There was a time " (he writes) 
 ** — the general public indeed have not got beyond 
 
Ch. IV.] VAGARIES OF CRITICISM 49 
 
 it — in which the oldest Christian literature, in- 
 cluding the New Testament, was looked upon as 
 a tissue of deceptions and forgeries. That time 
 is passed. For science it was an episode in which 
 it learned much, and after which it has much to 
 forget. . . . The oldest literature of the Church 
 in all main points and in most details, from the 
 point of view of literary criticism, is genuine and 
 trustworthy." ' 
 
 What guarantee have we, then, that the vagaries 
 of present-day criticism about the Books of Moses, 
 the Prophets and the Psalms, will not be dis- 
 missed as lightly by the Higher Critics of the 
 future ? I am not referring here to the puerilities 
 of " the Polychrome Bible " — such puerilities 
 offend the common sense of all intelligent people. 
 What I have in view is such theories, for example, 
 as that the dispensation of the prophets preceded 
 the dispensation of the law — a very slight 
 acquaintance with the general scheme of revela- 
 tion will save us from any error of the kind ; or 
 to take another case, that prophetic writings 
 which deal with the events of the captivity must 
 be assigned to the captivity era. This theory 
 
 ' He adds : " In the whole New Testament there is in all pro- 
 bability only a single writing which can be looked upon as 
 pseudonymous in the strictest sense of the word— i.e., 2 Peter," 
 
50 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 originated with the sceptics, and it is a neces- 
 sary part of the rationalistic crusade against the 
 supernatural element in Scripture. But it is 
 adopted by critics of a different school, who 
 defend it on the ground that to suppose a prophet 
 to become ** immersed in the future would be not 
 only without parallel in the Old Testament, it 
 would be contrary to the nature of prophecy."' 
 Now this is a question as to which we need no 
 help from the philologist. Any Christian who 
 has made a life study of the Bible is as com- 
 petent to form an opinion upon it as the ablest 
 Hebraist in Christendom. And most of us would 
 insist that this theory is utterly opposed to fact. 
 If the 64th chapter of Isaiah was necessarily 
 written after the captivity, the 53rd chapter 
 was necessarily written after the crucifixion. And 
 so also with the Messianic Psalms, and number- 
 less passages in the minor prophets. Professor 
 Driver tells us that "the prophet never abandons 
 his own historical position." And therefore he 
 <:alls the prophecies of Isaiah " discourses." In 
 other words, the prophecies came by the will of 
 man. But no prophecy of the Scripture is of this 
 ■character. ** For no prophecy ever came by the 
 
 * Professor Driver's Introduction^ p. 224. 
 
Ch. IV.] THE PROPHETS SPOKE FROM GOD 51 
 
 will of man ; but men spake from God, being 
 moved by the Holy Ghost " — borne along as a 
 storm-caught ship is driven before the wind.^ 
 
 * 2 Peter i. 21. The word " moved " is literally carried along : 
 see its use in Acts xxvii, 15, 17 (driven). The whole passage is of 
 great importance in this connection — " No prophecy of the Scrip- 
 ture is of any private interpretation." The word rendered " inter- 
 pretation" occurs here only. The verb is used in the LXX. 
 (Gen. xli. 12) as the translation of the Hebrew pathar, to open 
 unfoldj disclose. And the word here rendered " private " occurs 
 113 times in the New Testament, but nowhere else is it so 
 translated. It is rendered " his own *' 77 times. And the word 
 " is " is not the verb to be, but to come into existence, to come to be. 
 What the passage declares, therefore, is that no prophecy ever 
 originated with the prophet's own unfolding (or sending forth). 
 It speaks, not of the interpretation of the prophecies, but of their 
 ori^n and source, and thus disposes of the theories of the 
 critics. (See Dr. BuUinger's Figures of Speech used in the Bible, 
 p. 130.) 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CHARLES READE, the great novelist, 
 thus states in his own inimitable way the 
 attitude of the Christianised sceptic toward the 
 miraculous in Scripture : " Say there never was 
 a miracle and never will be, and I .differ with, 
 but cannot confute you. Deny the creation and 
 the possibility of a re-creation or resurrection ; 
 call David a fool for saying, • It is He that hath 
 
 made us and not we ourselves,' and a wise 
 
 man for suggesting that, on the contrary, mole- 
 cules created themselves without a miracle, and 
 we made ourselves out of molecules without a 
 miracle ; and although your theory contradicts 
 experience as much as, and staggers credulity 
 more than, any miracle that has ever been 
 ascribed by Christians or Jews to infinite power, 
 I admit it is consistent, though droll." 
 
 But, he goes on to say, once grant the creation 
 of the world, and " it is a little too childish to 
 
Ch. v.] CHRISTIANISED SCEPTICISM 53 
 
 draw back " and to haggle over miracles of the 
 kind recorded in the Bible. 
 
 The intelligent and consistent sceptic is entitled 
 to respect and sympathy. But what can be said 
 for the man who professes to believe in the 
 Apostles' Creed, and yet rejects on a prion 
 grounds the Gospel miracles ! 
 
 Here is the preface to the Fourth Gospel : — 
 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word 
 was with God, and the Word was God. The 
 same was in the beginning with God. All things 
 were made by Him ; and without Him was not 
 anything made that was made." The sceptic at 
 once declares his unbelief. And from his own 
 standpoint he is right ; for he regards the record 
 as human, and no one but a credulous fool 
 would believe such statements on merely human 
 authority. The Christianised sceptic, on the 
 other hand, assures us that "the Nazarene" was 
 really the God who made the heavens and the 
 earth; and yet he cannot believe in His healing 
 a case of paralysis, or raising Lazarus from the 
 dead.' Was there ever such an instance of 
 ** straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel"! 
 
 For not only do the minor and incidental 
 
 ' John V. 1-9 ; xi. 44. 
 
54 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 miracles of the Ministry rest upon the same 
 testimony as the great foundation miracle of the 
 Incarnation, but if that greatest of the miracles 
 be accepted, the others are in such sense con- 
 nected with it that, even if no record of them 
 remained, we might reasonably assume they took 
 place. Will my readers decide this question for 
 themselves ? Suppose a parent, or wife, or hus- 
 band, or child were lying at the point of death, 
 and you knew that He who made the world was 
 sojourning in our midst " in fashion as a man," 
 would all the Professors and sceptics of Christen- 
 dom prevent you from seeking His presence, and 
 casting yourself at His feet with the appeal that 
 He would cure your loved one ? 
 
 But it may be said, if this argument were sound 
 such cures would be as frequent now as in the 
 days of the Ministry. To which I answer first, 
 that this objection is not legitimate with the 
 Christian, for the Scriptures themselves explain 
 the mystery of a silent heaven in the present dis- 
 pensation ; and secondly, that notwithstanding 
 that explanation, the silence is the greatest trial 
 which faith has to endure. Matthew Arnold's 
 God — "the Eternal, not ourselves, that makes 
 for righteousness " — may satisfy the student in the 
 dreamland of his library ; but men who have to 
 
Ch. v.] THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 55 
 
 do with the stern realities of life will say of this 
 fastidious sceptic what Pascal said of Descartes, 
 that the only God he admitted was a God who 
 was useless. There are times in every life when 
 *' heart and flesh cry out for the Living God " ^ — 
 a real, personal God. Reason revolts against the 
 conception of a God that could not cure our sick, 
 and heal our afflicted ones. His power is beyond 
 question. If, then, He does not do it, are we to 
 conclude that His goodness and love are at fault ? 
 This is a part of the searching discipline of the 
 life of faith.2 
 
 It is at the foundations that intelligent and true 
 scepticism challenges the truth of Christianity. 
 The miracles controversy is the merest skirmish- 
 ing. The Divinity of Christ is the field upon 
 which must be fought the decisive battle between 
 faith and unbelief. From the human standpoint, 
 the supreme miracle of the Incarnation is in- 
 credible. Here the Christian and the unbeliever 
 measure their distance. And the one as well as 
 the other holds a position which is unassailable. 
 It is the attempted compromise of the Christianised 
 sceptic which is intellectually contemptible. The 
 sceptic says, " No amount of human testimony 
 
 ' Psa. Ixxxiv. 2. 
 
 ■ Tke Silence of God deals specially with this question. 
 
56 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 could avail to accredit such a miracle ; therefore 
 I reject it." The Christian leaves that position 
 unchallenged, but he answers, ** The truth you 
 refuse does not rest upon human testimony, but 
 upon a Divine revelation ; therefore I accept it." 
 
 Let me repeat my question in another form. 
 And here I appeal to any honest, sane, and 
 sensible man, I care not whether he be believer 
 or unbeliever, Christian or Pagan : Suppose the 
 Divine Being who made heaven and earth were 
 sojourning among us, would you expect Him to 
 work what we call miracles? In other words, 
 would you attribute to Him power greater than 
 we ourselves possess ? The question needs only 
 to be stated; for the answer is obvious. Not only 
 should we look for miracles, but if, in circum- 
 stances which would lead any good man to act, the 
 miracles were wanting, their absence would dis- 
 credit the assumption that the Being was Divine. 
 
 The more closely this matter is investigated, 
 the more clearly it will appear that the Divinity 
 of Christ is the pivot on which the whole con- 
 troversy turns ; and the effect of sceptical criti- 
 cism upon every fearless and logical thinker will 
 be to compel him to make choice ** between a 
 deeper faith and a bolder unbelief." 
 
 Says Matthew Arnold, "At the stage of ex- 
 
Ch. v.] MATTHEW ARNOLD ON MIRACLES 57 
 
 perience where men have now arrived, it is 
 evident to whoever looks at things fairly that 
 the miraculous data of the Bible . . . proceed 
 from a medium of imperfect observation and 
 boundless credulity. The story of the miraculous 
 birth and resuscitation of Jesus was bred in such 
 a medium." ' I respect a thinker and writer of 
 this type, and I freely acknowledge that if the 
 Bible be nothing more than these Higher Critics 
 would have us believe, he is entirely in the right. 
 The Christian believes, while the sceptic rejects, 
 **the story of the miraculous birth." But the 
 Christianised sceptics accept the Christian's creed 
 while they destroy the foundation on which it 
 rests. And yet they pose as persons of superior 
 enlightenment and intelligence ! 
 
 If people would use their reason and common 
 sense in this matter, the battle would soon be joined 
 
 * God and the Bible (Preface). His argument against the 
 evidential value of miracles {Lit and Dogma, chap. vL 
 especially) I deal with in my Silence of God, though without 
 citing him. With much of it I agree. The assumption that 
 miracles are impossible indicates merely the stupid tendency of 
 the human mind to become enslaved to the results of experience. 
 It reminds me of Dean Swif f s story of the man with the wonder- 
 ful nose. The learned society of the place met to discuss the 
 case, and passed a resolution that no man could have such a 
 nose. At which juncture the man himself walked in, nose and 
 all ! Any one can find proofs that what are called miracles 
 occur even in our own day. 
 
58 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 between faith and unbelief, and we should be rid 
 of the shallow and illogical half-scepticism of the 
 critics. A teacher appeared in Judea, and pro- 
 claimed himself to be the Son of God and Israel's 
 Messiah. Utterly unaccredited by the established 
 religion of the time, he gathered round him a 
 company of disciples — humble men all of them, 
 mostly peasants and fishermen, wholly unknown 
 to fame. Every element that, in our own day, 
 we should call orthodox and respectable agreed 
 in repudiating him. We are apt to assume that 
 the religious leaders of the Jews were either fools 
 or fiends, whereas the testimony of the Apostle 
 Paul gives proof that they were men of piety and 
 zeal — men who were certainly not inferior in these 
 respects to the religious leaders of Christendom 
 at any period of its history. 
 
 But these men rejected Him on perfectly 
 reasonable grounds. It is, perhaps, impossible 
 for us to understand their position, or to view 
 the facts as they viewed them. But here is 
 the startling testimony of one who in early life 
 had stood where they did, " There was in such 
 a Messiah," he writes, "absolutely nothing — past, 
 present, or possible ; intellectually, religiously, or 
 even nationally — to attract, but all to repel." ' 
 
 ' Dr. Edersheim, Life and Times of the Messiah (vol. i., p. 145). 
 
Ch.V.] CHRIST AND THE BIBLE 59 
 
 How was it, then, that His disciples believed 
 on Him? ''Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 Living God," was the Aposrie Peters testimony. 
 To which the Lord made answer, " Flesh and 
 blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my 
 Father which is in heaven." ' The facts were 
 the same for both. But the facts were regarded 
 from wholly different points of view. The Jews 
 regarded them in the light of human judgment : 
 the disciples viewed them in the light of a Divine 
 revelation. 
 
 And the reasons given for disparaging the 
 Bible to-day are but the echo of the reasons 
 urged for rejecting Christ in the days of the 
 Ministry. One of the popular exponents of the 
 Higher Criticism has denounced the "baseless 
 notion that a book written by human pens and 
 handed down by human methods, transcribed, 
 translated, compiled by fallible minds, is, or can 
 be, the Word of God." Yes ; this is so very like 
 what they said about the Lord. " Is not this the 
 carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James 
 and Joses and Judas and Simon ? And are not 
 His sisters here with us? And" (the record 
 adds) "they were offended at Him."^ Of course 
 
 ' Matt. xvi. i6, 17. ■ Mark vi. 3, 
 
6o THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 they were ; and if the critics, including the writer 
 I have quoted, had lived in the days of the 
 Ministry, their principles would have led them 
 to take sides with those who rejected Him. 
 
 ** But the Bible contains not only what is false, 
 but what is positively immoral and evil." Yes ; 
 and they said of Him, " Behold a gluttonous man 
 and a wine-bibber."' They even called Him 
 Beelzebub ; ^ and the critics have never gone so 
 far as this in denouncing Holy Scripture. 
 
 These grosser charges against the Lord were 
 altogether blasphemous ; and so are these baser 
 libels upon the Scriptures. They discredit only 
 those who make them. But as regards what may 
 be described as legitimate criticisms, it will be 
 urged that the critics are fair and intelligent and 
 devout, and that they can prove the truth of all 
 they say. Yes, they think they can prove the 
 truth of it. And many of the leaders of the 
 Jews were quite as devout and intelligent and 
 fair as they. The facts, moreover, on which the 
 Jews relied in denying that the Nazarene could 
 be the Son of God were indisputable ; whereas 
 the grounds on which the critics deny that the 
 Bible can be the Word of God are most of them 
 
 ' Matt, xi, 19. ■ Ibid. x. 25. 
 
Ch. v.] CHRIST AND THE BIBLE 6i 
 
 untenable, and all of them disputed. ^ And those 
 that are admitted — the "human pens" and 
 "human methods" — have their counterpart in the 
 facts of the family and workshop at Nazareth, 
 
 I am not playing with words. Nor am I using 
 the rejection of Christ as a mere illustration of 
 my theme. This would be irreverent, I insist 
 that the cases are parallel. There is a definite 
 analogy between the grounds on which the Jews 
 rejected Christ and the grounds on which some 
 critics reject the Bible, And the cause of the 
 rejection is the same in both cases — the incapacity 
 of unspiritual men to deal with spiritual things. 
 If the Lord had not claimed to be Divine, they 
 would have ranked Him among the greatest of 
 their Rabbis. And if the Bible did not claim to 
 be Divine, it would be held in the highest honour 
 by many who now disparage it. But the Jews 
 insisted that the Lord should be judged like any 
 other human being, just as the critics maintain 
 that the Bible must be treated like any human 
 book. And the inevitable result in the one case 
 was the crucifixion of Calvary : in the other, it is 
 the apostasy of the Encyclopcedia Biblica. 
 
 That "a book written by human pens, and 
 
 « See Chaps. VII. and VIII., fosU 
 
62 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 handed down by human methods," should be the 
 Word of God, does not seem so wild a suggestion 
 as that **the carpenter, the son of Mary," should 
 be the Son of God. As for the book, even if we 
 throw in the " transcribing " and " translating," 
 not only does the notion not appear ''baseless" at 
 all, but the objections to it can be shown to be 
 either inapplicable or frivolous.' 
 
 If positive proof be demanded that the Bible is 
 the Word of God, we must rise above the level at 
 which the critics ply their trade — we must take 
 account of its deeper, spiritual meaning ; but in 
 answering their objections and criticisms we can 
 meet the critics on their own ground. Not so 
 with the truth that ** the Nazarene" was the Son 
 of God. Here we are confronted with that which 
 not only clashes with all experience, but which 
 transcends all human thought. Therefore it is 
 that flesh and blood cannot reveal it. 
 
 And these solemn words of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ are not falsified by the fact that there are 
 multitudes who, apart from any spiritual appre- 
 ciation of a Divine revelation, profess to believe 
 in His Divinity. For the acceptance of what is 
 true in itself, if it be based on grounds which are 
 
 « See Chaps, VII, and VIIL, post. 
 
Ch.V.] pascal on religion 63 
 
 either false or inadequate, is not faith but super- 
 stition. And of this character are all beliefs 
 begotten of mere " religion," whether the religion 
 be called Christian or Pagan. For, as Pascal 
 wrote, religion makes people stupid.' 
 
 ' The passage is given in God and the Bible (Preface). He is 
 dealing with the difficulty people urge that they cannot believe, 
 and his prescription is that they should act as if they believed ; 
 using " the ordinances " — taking holy water, having masses said, 
 &c., and he adds : — Naturelletnenl mime cela vous fera croire & 
 vous abetira. No wonder that the Port Royal editors suppressed 
 a passage so cruelly cynical but so true ! For while Christianity 
 elevates and ennobles the whole being, mere religion seems to 
 make men either fools or £ends. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SHIFTING the burden of proof is one of the 
 commonest tricks of casuistry. By this 
 artifice Infidelity would inveigle us into allowing a 
 presumption against the existence of a written reve- 
 lation. But, as has been well said, "Agnosticism 
 assumes a double incompetence — the incompetence 
 not only of man to know God, but of God to make 
 Himself known. But the denial of competence is 
 the negation of Deity. For the God who could 
 not speak would not be rational, and the God who 
 would not speak would not be moral." And the 
 author of these words ' sums up his argument by 
 declaring that *' the idea of a written revelation 
 may be said to be logically involved in the notion 
 of a living God." 
 
 This might be stated much more strongly. 
 What should we think of a man who, living in 
 wealth in some distant colony, never communi- 
 
 * Principal Fairbairn, of Oxford. 
 
 64 
 
Ch. VI.] THE TESTIMONY OF LAWYERS 65 
 
 cated with his family in England, even though 
 aware of their being in perplexity and trouble and 
 want? ^ It seems inconceivable that a good and 
 loving God could leave His offspring without a 
 revelation during their sojourn in a world so full 
 of doubt and care and sorrow and sin. But these 
 pages are addressed to Christians, and every 
 Christian believes that we have a revelation. In 
 spite of all that has been said about it, indeed, 
 some of us believe that the Bible is the Word of 
 God. But this only proves our want of intelli- 
 gence. For, we are assured, no one believes it 
 nowadays unless he is "a brainless idiot." 2 
 
 The study of the law, Edmund Burke declares, 
 " does more to quicken and invigorate the under- 
 standing than all other kinds of learning put 
 together." Here then is the mature and deliberate 
 testimony of a great lawyer : " Frequent peru- 
 sals of the Old and New Testament have satisfied 
 him that each is an inspired work, such as no 
 wisdom of man could have framed ; and further, 
 that the earlier Revelation is inseparably con- 
 nected with the later, as the acorn is connected 
 
 * Even among criminals it is only the most degraded of men 
 who forget their families. 
 
 " If the author I quote were living I should pillory him by 
 giving his name. But as he has gone to his account, I abstain 
 from doing so. 
 
 6 
 
66 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 with the oak which springs from it." ' This 
 " brainless idiot " was Lord Chancellor of 
 England, 
 
 Among the other " brainless idiots " who have 
 in the full blaze of modern "culture" cherished 
 this despised belief in the Bible, may be reckoned 
 his immediate successor, Lord Cairns, the greatest 
 Lord Chancellor of modern times. I am assured 
 that Lord Selborne may be classed in the same 
 category. And to them may be added two other 
 very eminent lawyers and judges, Lord Justice 
 Lush and Mr. Justice Archibald. In such com- 
 pany no one need be ashamed of belonging to the 
 guild of the "brainless idiots." And if the faith 
 of the Christian rested on such a basis, it might 
 be shown that that guild includes not a few of the 
 greatest of living scholars and thinkers. 
 
 But it is not because the Bible is accredited by 
 the faith of eminent and saintly men that the 
 Christian reverences it as the Word of God. 
 And it is for the Christian I am writing. Were 
 it otherwise, my argument would run on wholly 
 different lines. And if any one demands my 
 definition of a Christian, I may answer, for my 
 present purpose, every one who accepts the 
 
 ' Lord Hatherley's Continuity of Scripture. 
 
Ch. VLJ CHRIST ACCREDITS THE BIBLE 67 
 
 " Apostles* Creed " ; every one who believes that 
 the Lord Jesus Christ was the Only-begotten Son 
 of God. Now the only rational basis for such a 
 belief is a Divine revelation. The man who 
 denies the inspiration of the Gospels, and yet 
 believes in the Incarnation, is, I repeat, a credu- 
 lous person who would believe anything. With 
 the honest agnostic or infidel I should wish to 
 discuss this question in a patient and sympathetic 
 spirit ; but with fools I have neither sympathy 
 nor patience. Here, however, I am addressing 
 neither honest infidels nor credulous fools, but 
 Christians whose faith is being undermined by 
 both. 
 
 And the moment we accept the Gospels as a 
 Divine revelation, we have done with xhdXprotigi 
 of the critics, the "historic Jesus," and we stand 
 in the presence of our Divine Lord and Saviour. 
 And from His hands it is that we receive the 
 Hebrew Scriptures. Three times over in the 
 Temptation He appealed to the Book of Deuter- 
 onomy as the Word of God — His only defence 
 and answer to the Devil's arguments and claims. 
 And in the Sermon on the Mount He says : 
 "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or 
 the prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but ta 
 fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and 
 
68 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise 
 pass from the law till all be fulfilled." The '*jot" 
 is the smallest letter in the alphabet ; the ** tittle " 
 is one of the smallest strokes — minute points 
 and projections, by which certain letters are dis- 
 tinguished. No language could express more 
 unequivocally the Divine authority of every 
 detail of ** the law and the prophets." ' 
 
 And in His teaching after the resurrection, we 
 are told, " Beginning at Moses and all the pro- 
 phets, He expounded unto them in all the 
 Scriptures the things concerning Himself."^ Dean 
 Alford's note upon this is so admirable and so 
 apt, that I cannot refrain from quoting it. The 
 ** things concerning Himself," he says, '*mean 
 something very different from mere prophetical 
 passages. The whole Scriptures are a testimony to 
 Him: the whole history of the chosen people, 
 with its types, and its law, and its prophecies, is 
 a shewing forth of Him, And it was here the 
 whole that He laid out before them . , p the 
 
 ' " A book partly legend, partly dishonest legend, fabrications 
 for a purpose, with history which is not history, with a Levitical 
 code made looo years after the time of Moses, , . . — can such a 
 book as this be one to which the Son of God puts the solemn 
 declaration above given ? " — Higher Criticism^ What is it ? By 
 Rev. Robert Sinker, D.D., of Cambridge, p. 170. 
 
 " Luke xxiv. 27. 
 
Ch. VI.] THE CRITICS DISCREDIT CHRIST 69 
 
 meaning of the whole, as a whole, fulfilled in 
 Him." 
 
 That this was the Lord's estimate of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures I need not delay to prove. 
 For it is not disputed. The Higher Critics 
 acknowledge it, and as it bars advance in their 
 sceptical crusade against the Bible, they give it pro- 
 minent notice. To avoid risk of misrepresenta- 
 tion, I always like to state the views of opponents 
 in their own words. So I turn again to the most 
 up-to-date and accredited text-book of the Higher 
 Criticism. And here I read : ** 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." ' 
 
 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 libertine, these men are, though unwittingly, 
 to the avowed infidel. Just as a pure woman is 
 insidiously trained to hear language and to tolerate 
 suggestions which in time prepare the way for 
 
 ' Hastings* Bible Dictionary^ article " Old Testament," p. 601. 
 
70 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 advances of a kind that at first would have excited 
 disgust and anger ; so the holy and healthy- 
 spiritual instincts of the Christian are gradually- 
 deadened by his becoming accustomed to hear 
 his Divine Lord thus patronised and disparaged. 
 
 ** Writings of this character are far more dan- 
 gerous to the simple-minded Christian than any 
 direct attack on his Master. They are very 
 shockingly irreverent. A patronising tone is 
 assumed, which exhibits the critic as presuming 
 to judge Him who, we believe, will be our Judge." 
 These weighty words, which the Christian will 
 do well to ponder, are from the pen of one of the 
 Lord Chancellors whom I have already quoted. 
 
 If the subject were not too sad and too solemn 
 for ridicule, I would illustrate this teaching by 
 applying it in another sphere. Why should not a 
 man have two wives ? 
 
 The question will provoke a wild scream of 
 indignation : in view of the teaching of the New 
 Testament, how can any one dare to raise it ? 
 Yes, the teaching of the New Testament is 
 explicit, but **both Christ and the apostles or 
 writers of the New Testament held the current 
 Jewish notions respecting" marriage. The im- 
 portance of the question of marriage is absolutely 
 trivial in comparison with that of the character 
 
Ch. VL] "KENOSIS" THEORIES 71 
 
 and authority of Holy Scripture. And if the 
 testimony of the Gospels and Epistles on the one 
 question may be thus evaded, it is mere trifling to 
 appeal to it on the other. If the Higher Critics' 
 estimate of the Bible be a just one, then, in view 
 of the history of the Patriarchs, the position of 
 woman and the sacredness of marriage must be 
 classed with the superstitions which the Christian 
 religion has borrowed from a degenerate Judaism. 
 
 Most true it is that the Lord Jesus Christ was 
 man, and that " being found in fashion as a man 
 He humbled Himself." Within certain limits 
 therefore, Kenosis^ theories have their place. But 
 not upon the question here at issue. To assert 
 that His teaching had no higher authority than 
 that of man, is a perilous position for a Christian 
 to assume. But even if we could for the sake of 
 argument concede this, it would not touch the 
 fact that the same Holy Spirit who inspired 
 mere men to speak from God, was given to Him 
 without measure; and on that Divine fact He 
 based His claim to speak "the words of God. "2 
 
 What mean such statements as these, " He that 
 rejecteth Me and receiveth not My words hath 
 
 * A Greek word, the noun of the verb used in Phil. ii. 7, (" He 
 tmptied Himself," R.V.) 
 
 * John iii. 34. 
 
72 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 one that judgeth him: the word that I have 
 spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. 
 For I have not spoken of Myself ; but the Father 
 which sent me, He gave me a commandment, 
 what I should say, and what I should speak. " ^ 
 And again, " Belie vest thou not that I am in the 
 Father, and the Father in Me .<* The words that I 
 speak unto you, I speak not of Myself." ^ In view 
 of such language, we can understand His solemn 
 declaration, " Heaven and earth shall pass away, 
 but My words shall not pass away'' 3 
 
 '* The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, 
 full of grace and truth " — not grace only,butTRUTH ; 
 for "grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." 4 
 Hence His testimony to Himself, " I am the 
 light of the world ; " S "I am the way, the truth, 
 and the life." ^ And yet we are told deliberately 
 by men who claim to be Christians and Christian 
 ministers, that His whole teaching respecting 
 matters of vital importance in relation to faith and 
 morals, was steeped in ignorance and superstition. 
 For let the facts be kept clearly in view : we are 
 called "brainless idiots" for believing that the 
 Old Testament is the Word of God ; and yet in 
 this we are merely following our Divine Lord. 
 
 ' John xii. 48, 49. ^ Ibid. xiv. 10. s Luke xxi. 33. 
 
 * John i. 14, 17. 5 Ibid viii. 12. * Ibid xiv. 6. 
 
Ch. VL] "KENOSIS" THEORIES 73 
 
 It IS not easy to write calmly upon this subject, 
 but I will maintain a studied reserve. Let the 
 plain facts speak. I claim the utmost attention 
 to them, for their importance is immense. The 
 Higher Critics admit that '*the Divine authority 
 and revelation of the Old Testament" was ex- 
 pressly taught by the Lord Jesus Christ. But to 
 avoid the consequences of this admission, they 
 represent that in this matter the Lord was the 
 dupe of "a current Jewish notion," or in other 
 words, of an ignorant error. And this, remember, 
 is not the position or language of the extreme 
 section represented by Professor Cheyne, but of 
 the " cautious " and " conservative " English 
 critics of Professor Driver's school. 
 
 To raise the question, as some do, whether the 
 Lord was versed in higher mathematics or the 
 discoveries of modern science, would be a mere 
 quibble were it not for its profanity. And the 
 objection that in childhood He must have been 
 subject to the limitations of childhood is wholly 
 irrelevant. For it is with the Christ of the 
 Ministry that we have to do. And the question 
 does not relate to limitations upon knowledge in 
 matters as to which He was silent, but to ignor- 
 ance leading to teaching which the critics allege 
 to be false and mischievous, on subjects of vital 
 
74 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 moment to His disciples and to the Church for 
 all time. But even this is not all. When He 
 appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, 
 not only did He not revise the teaching of the 
 days of His humiliation, but He repeated it with 
 increased definiteness.' 
 
 Counsel in a lawsuit has sometimes to advise 
 that unless some adverse witness can be dis- 
 credited, the case must collapse. In this Higher 
 Criticism campaign, the witness who must be 
 discredited is our Divine Lord. No straining of 
 the doctrine of the Kenosis will cover this : it brings 
 us within sight of the great Anti-christian apostasy 
 of the latter days.^ 
 
 As we proceed, then, let us keep these two facts 
 clearly in view. First, that the Lord Jesus 
 Christ regarded the Old Testament as Divinely 
 inspired in the very sense in which all these 
 critics repudiate inspiration ; and secondly, that 
 
 ' The " Jesus " of Matthew Arnold, the agnostic, is " manifestly 
 above the heads of his reporters " {Lit. and Dogma, Pref . 1888) ; 
 the "Jesus" of these writers who claim to be Christians, is 
 manifestly on a level with them. 
 
 = There lies before me as I write, the current number of a weekly 
 religious paper which has done yeoman's service in the Higher 
 Criticism crusade. It contains a fierce attack upon Prof. Cheyne 
 and the third volume of his Encyclopaedia. I turn the page to 
 find a notice of an able and valuable little book of the Rev. 
 David M'Intyre, of Glasgow, entitled The Dinne Authority of the 
 Scriptures of the Old Testament ; and here I read, " All this citatioa 
 
Ch. VI.] "KENOSIS" THEORIES 75 
 
 the only escape from that conclusion is to dis- 
 parage either His teaching or the record of it. 
 And this is to destroy Christianity altogether. 
 
 Even Professor Cheyne and his school accept 
 the personality of ** the historic Jesus," He was 
 they tell us, " undoubtedly a devout Jew ; " and as 
 the traditional teaching of this traditional Jesus is 
 superior to that of Mahomet or Gautama, '* the 
 Christian religion " would no doubt survive the 
 collapse of Christianity. But that is not what 
 concerns us here. The Christian is not the 
 votary of the best of all human religions. He is 
 the recipient of a Divine revelation which has 
 brought Him the knowledge of salvation in a 
 personal Saviour, and has made him the redeemed 
 disciple of a personal Lord and Master. We are 
 followers, not of the historic Jesus of the critics — 
 the dead Buddha of nineteen centuries ago — but 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son 
 
 of passages is useless, unless it first be made good that our Lord's 
 knowledge of critical questions was different from that of his con- 
 temporaries." This suggests Dr. Puse/s words, "I know not 
 whether the open blasphemy of the eighteenth century is more 
 offensive than the cold-blooded patronising ways of the nine- 
 teenth." Can anything well go further than this — that in His 
 apprehension of the very Scriptures which testified of Himself, 
 our Lord was less intelligent than the editor and staff of this 
 newspaper 1 I would wish to believe that the words were written 
 hurriedly and thoughtlessly. 
 
76 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 of God, who "died for our sins according to the 
 Scriptures." ' 
 
 Now any clear thinker can see that if, in the 
 words I have just quoted, " the Scriptures " 
 mean mere human records, this whole system 
 rests upon a foundation of sand. The death 
 of " the historic Jesus " is a fact so well accredited 
 that no transcendental proof of it is needed. But 
 that " Christ died for our sins " is a fact which 
 nothing but a Divine revelation could possibly 
 accredit. Therefore it is that those who give 
 up inspiration generally end in giving up the 
 atonement. 
 
 But Christ ** rose again the third day, according 
 to the Scriptures^ What Scriptures? The refer- 
 ence is to the Old Testament, of course. But 
 where does the Old Testament tell us that Christ 
 would die for our sins and rise again the third 
 day ? Here comes in the force of Dean Alford's 
 words: '*The whole Scriptures are a testimony 
 to Him ; the whole history of the chosen people, 
 with its types, its law, and its prophecies." 
 
 But just as the unbelieving Jews were entirely 
 taken up with the humanity of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and He was nothing to them but ** the 
 
 * I Cor. XV. 3. 
 
Ch. VI.] TWO SIDES TO THE TAPESTRY 77 
 
 carpenter's son," so these critics are engrossed 
 with the human side of Scripture. Its deep 
 spiritual significance they ignore. They study 
 the tapestry upon the wrong side, and write 
 ponderous tomes replete with important and use- 
 ful information of every kind about the materials 
 used in the making of it, and the men who wove 
 it, and the marvellous way it was put together 
 at different periods and how it has been preserved 
 to our own day. But its chief defect — natural 
 enough, having regard to its history — is the utter 
 want of design or pattern of any kind. We, 
 however, who look at the fabric upon the upper 
 side are filled with admiration at its symmetry 
 and beauty. And as we think of the Master 
 mind that planned it, and mark the way in 
 which every detail of His plan has been realised, 
 all that those who are busy plodding at the 
 other side of it can tell us serves only to 
 deepen our wonder and to increase our delight. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 WE have seen that our belief in God 
 tends to a belief in the existence of 
 a written revelation. ^ And having reached this 
 point it would be idle pedantry to discuss the 
 rival claims of the Bible and of other books. 
 Moreover, I am writing for Christians, and 
 with the Christian the only question open is — 
 How, and to what extent, is the Bible inspired.'^ 
 Now it is admitted that the Lord Jesus Christ 
 has taught us to reverence the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures as inspired in the strictest sense. ^ And 
 we have seen that if part at least of the New 
 Testament be not inspired in that same sense, 
 there is no rational basis for believing any of 
 the transcendental truths of Christianity. 
 
 What concerns us, then, is the method of the 
 inspiration. And the first question which arises 
 may be popularly stated thus, Whether did God 
 
 * p. 64, ante, ' P. 67, ante. 
 
 78 
 
Ch. VIL] THEORIES OF INSPIRATION 79 
 
 inspire the Scriptures, or the men who wrote 
 them? Now I am not going to enter on this 
 well-worn controversy. Were I to restate the 
 question and ask, Are the Scriptures inspired 
 writings ? or Are they the writings of inspired 
 men ? it would need a lengthy chapter to explain 
 the point at issue. I take note of the fact, first, 
 that the Bible itself advances no theory of 
 inspiration ; and secondly, that none was ever 
 formulated until modern times. And further, 
 I would urge that between these rival theories 
 there is no such antithesis as the controversy 
 supposes. 
 
 True it is that " Saul among the prophets " 
 became a proverb ; and a dumb ass was once 
 inspired to rebuke a prophet. But not even 
 the Higher Critics have suggested that either 
 Balaam's Ass or the Son of Kish made any 
 contribution to the written revelation. If by 
 inspired men be meant men filled with the 
 Spirit, and specially guided by the Spirit, then 
 we may assert with confidence that the Biblical 
 writers were inspired men. 
 
 Which of course will call out the taunt. Was 
 David one of your " inspired men " ? That sneer 
 shall be answered in the words of a rugged, 
 honest-hearted man of the world : — 
 
So THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 " David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into 
 sins enough ; blackest crimes ; there was no 
 want of sins. And therefore the unbelievers 
 sneer and ask, Is this your man according to 
 Gods heart? The sneer, I must say, seems 
 to me but a shallow one. What are faults, 
 what are the outward details of a life, if the 
 inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, 
 true often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, 
 be forgotten? 'It is not in man that walketh 
 to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a 
 man, repentance the most divine ? The deadliest 
 sin, I say, were that same supercilious con- 
 sciousness of no sin ; — that is death ; the heart 
 so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility 
 and fact ; is dead : it is ' pure ' as dead dry 
 sand is pure. David's life and history, as 
 written for us in those Psalms of his, I con- 
 sider to be the truest emblem ever given of 
 a man's moral progress and warfare here below. 
 All earnest souls will ever discern in it the 
 faithful struggle of an earnest human soul 
 towards what is good and best. Struggle often 
 baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck ; yet 
 a struggle never ended ; ever, with tears, repent- 
 ance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew." ^ 
 
 * Thomas Carlyle, Heroes^ Sect, II, 
 
Ch. VII.] DAVID AND URIAH 8x 
 
 s^ A passing word about the ** blackest crimes." 
 I am no apologist of evil. But the matter of 
 Uriah s wife I leave to each man to settle with 
 his own conscience, asking him only not to forget 
 the facts. Most men cater for the sin which 
 brings them down ; but the temptation which 
 led to David s fall was not of his seeking. By- 
 accident it was that Bathsheba crossed his path. 
 Nor did he even know that she was married. 
 And when he had brought the woman into 
 peril, he tried to save her by recalling her 
 husband to Jerusalem. But in this he was 
 foiled by Uriahs keenness as a soldier. He 
 was bent on ** returning to the front " ; and 
 drunk or sober he could not be turned from 
 his purpose. The wretched king was thus 
 confronted by the fact that the death of the 
 man he had wronged was the only possible 
 way to save the woman he had tempted. The 
 horrible doom of the unfaithful wife awaited 
 her. And in desperation he framed the guilty 
 plot. It is a terrible instance of what men 
 have so often proved, that one sin always 
 leads to another, and immorality often leads 
 to crime. The only unique element in Davids 
 case was the depth and permanency of his 
 repentance. Here is the Divine summary of 
 
 7 
 
82 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 his life story : " Save only in the matter of 
 Uriah the Hittite, David did right in the eyes 
 of the Lord, and turned not aside from any- 
 thing that He commanded him all the days 
 of his life''^ No wonder that he was **a man 
 after God*s heart! "2 
 
 Yes, it was men like David that God used 
 to write the Bible. And the fifty-first Psalm 
 betokens more fitness for the part than the 
 smug Pharisaism and self-confidence of all the 
 critics of Christendom. 
 
 There is no doubt that the writers were 
 inspired men. And those whose lives are un- 
 folded to us were severely trained in the school 
 of God. They knew the meaning of the crucible 
 and the refiner's fire. As the apostles proved 
 in later times, they were made a spectacle to 
 angels and to men. Visions of unutterable glory, 
 like those vouchsafed to Isaiah and Ezekiel, alter- 
 nated with sufferings that tore their very heart- 
 strings. And here it may be said in passing, 
 that no one can even understand the Scriptures 
 who is entirely a stranger to experiences 
 like those of the men who wrote them. We 
 can beat back attacks by exposing ignorance 
 
 ' I Kings XV. 5. 
 
 ^ See Professor Margoliouth's striking passage on this sub- 
 ject in his Defence of the Biblical Revelation, pp. 209, 210. 
 
Ch. VII.] VERBAL INSPIRATION 83 
 
 and folly and error, and turning the weapons 
 of assailants against themselves. But " the 
 natural man receiveth not the things of the 
 Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto 
 him ; neither can he know them, because they 
 are spiritually discerned."' And the tenor of 
 a spiritual life is the path of discipleship, and 
 discipleship means being a partaker of the 
 sufferings of Him who was called "the Man 
 of Sorrows," as well as a sharer of the joy 
 that is unspeakable and of the peace that passes 
 understanding. 
 
 But some will say, "All this is unreservedly 
 conceded : the men who wrote the Scriptures were 
 inspired, and inspired to write them ; and there- 
 fore their writings are inspired. But though the 
 thoughts were divinely given them, the words in 
 which they expressed them were their own. Our 
 difficulty springs from the dogma of verbal 
 inspiration." 
 
 Now first, let us face the facts ; and they are 
 facts some of which a certain phase of dull 
 "orthodoxy" blindly ignores. A critical examina- 
 tion of the text will satisfy us that, for example, 
 the prophecies of Isaiah were written in Isaiah's 
 language, and those of Jeremiah in Jeremiah's 
 
 * I Cor. ii. 14. 
 
84 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 language, and so on. The inference drawn from 
 this is that, even assuming that God suggested 
 the ideas, each writer must have been left free to 
 express them in his own words ; and therefore 
 that inspiration is no guarantee of accuracy 
 Whether this be so or not, must be decided on 
 other grounds. To base it on the ground stated 
 involves the fallacy of supposing that God has a 
 language of His own, and therefore that human 
 words cannot have a Divine authority. 
 
 A more egregious fallacy there could not be. 
 The connection between language and thought is 
 one of the most interesting problems of meta- 
 physics. But words are merely sounds ; and in 
 one sense the relation between a word and the 
 idea it represents to a trained mind is as arbitrary 
 as that which a note on the piano bears to the 
 musical sound produced by striking it. A trained 
 mind, I say, because if the idea be not there, the 
 sound will not call it up. 
 
 But, it will be objected, words have a history, 
 and therefore they are not mere arbitrarily chosen 
 sounds. True, but this only adds force to my 
 argument. Some new idea arises in the mind, 
 or some new object is presented to it. The 
 existing vocabulary contains no word to represent 
 it, and a new one is framed to supply the want. 
 
Ch. VII.] WORDS ARE BUT COUNTERS 85 
 
 To those, therefore, who frame the word, it seems 
 to carry its own meaning ; but this is due solely 
 to its connection with the mental processes which 
 led to its birth. To others it is but a sound. 
 For example, the fraudulent way in which 
 " escheats " were formerly seized by the Crown 
 led to the creation of the word ** cheat"; but 
 there is not one person in ten thousand who now 
 thinks of its origin, and to such it is a mere sound 
 which they have learned to connect with a 
 particular idea. 
 
 If a man has not the conception which we 
 associate with the word " eternal," the word, even 
 though it were emblazoned across the sky, could 
 not evoke it. And shouting olam or aionios into 
 his ear would be mere noise to him. "Words 
 are the counters of wise men, the money of fools." 
 They represent ideas, but they have no intrinsic 
 value. And, as I have said, their relation to the 
 ideas they represent is arbitrary. Write pain on 
 a piece of paper, and show it on Dover pier : you 
 will be referred to a doctor. Cross the Channel 
 and exhibit it at Calais : you will be directed to 
 the refreshment-room.^ 
 
 » Some one may object that the sound would be different. 
 Very well. At Calais, call out the French word for lady, a?id 
 they may imagine you have lost a travelling companion : at 
 Dover they would certainly think you most profane. 
 
86 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 The argument is that as Isaiah, for example, 
 wrote in his own language, his writings cannot 
 be called "the Word of God." Will the critics 
 tell us in what language other than his own the 
 prophet could have written? If a man makes 
 a communication to another, he conveys it either 
 in his own language, or in that of the recipient. 
 But as God has no language of His own, He 
 speaks to men in theirs. Would the Bible be 
 more Divine if it were written in some celestial 
 volapuky with a superadded miracle, unparalleled 
 in the whole range of recorded miracles, to make 
 men understand it ? A nice sort of Bible that 
 would be ! 
 
 Of course, God could have made all the 
 prophets use the same words and idioms as the 
 earliest of them. But what would have been 
 gained by this? Some people would persuade 
 us that the English race now holds the place once 
 held by Israel. If this were so, and God were to 
 give us a special revelation to-day, it would not 
 be in ancient Hebrew, but in modern English. 
 Even supposing, for example, that Yahweh is the 
 correct orthography of the great covenant name, 
 we may be quite sure that Jehovah is the name 
 by which God would call Himself in addressing us 
 — that name which is enshrined in the religious 
 
CH.VIL] THE NAME JEHOVAH 87 
 
 thought and worship of all the English-speaking 
 races of the world. For Yahweh would be mere 
 jargon save to the Hebraist; and it is very- 
 doubtful whether the Hebraist's knowledge of the 
 etymology of the term would not mislead him as 
 to its significance. 
 
 Take these words, for instance : '* The Lord 
 Jehovah is my strength and my song; He also is 
 become my salvation." ' Now to the believer, 
 as such, the question of the spelling or the 
 etymology of the name is of no more import- 
 ance than that of the type in which it is printed. 
 The only practical question is whether he has the 
 conception which the name is intended to call up. 
 The name was in use from primeval times : it 
 was the great covenant name of God. But it 
 was not till He identified Himself with an earthly 
 people that men could know what it really meant 
 to have a Jehovah God. 2 
 
 ' Isa. xii. 2. 
 
 ' This is the meaning of Exod. vi. 3 {see Appendix, Note I). I 
 venture to suggest that the use of Yahweh^ or Yahveh, savours of 
 pedantry. It is justified on two grounds ; ist, traditional 
 authority (for the contempt which the critics feel for " traditional 
 beliefs" does not apply if the tradition.be Rabbinical); and 
 2ndly, that it carries its own meaning. To which plea I answer 
 that its etymological meaning is not its meaning as used ia 
 Scripture. It is not an English word, and its use is therefore 
 precisely the same kind of pedantry as, e,g., using Firenze instead 
 of Florence. 
 
 The vowels of our magnificent word Jehovah are accounted 
 
S8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Some men, no doubt, would be better satisfied 
 with the Bible if all the prophets had written in 
 exactly the same dialect and style ; and better 
 still if they had written in Pauline Greek or 
 modern English. That would have been a 
 miracle indeed, and really worth notice! Of 
 course, God might have inspired the Scriptures 
 in this way. Yes, and the Lord might have fed 
 the multitudes without using up the disciples' little 
 store of loaves and fishes. But this is not His 
 way. Divine power summoned Lazarus from 
 the grave, but it was left to human hands to loose 
 him from the grave-clothes. Divine power called 
 Jairus's daughter back to life, but her parents 
 were commanded to give her food.^ It appears 
 to be a principle with God never to put forth 
 Divine power save in so far as human means 
 are inadequate or unavailable. And any one 
 who grasps this principle holds a clew to the 
 
 lor thus : The old Hebrew MSS. had no vowels, but when the 
 name occurred, the Jews suppressed it from feelings of reverence, 
 and read Adonai instead ; and the vowels of this name were 
 inserted under the line to remind the reader of the keri, or word 
 to be read. As a matter of fact, the name was uttered daily in 
 the blessing of the priests (Diet Christ Ant, vol. i., p. 198) ; and 
 the spelling of the many names with which it is incorporated 
 (such as yehoido., ^d/ioshaphat, &c.) would indicate that Jehovah 
 may be correct. Yahveh is a mere guess which may be right or 
 ■may be wrong. 
 ^ Luke viii, 55. 
 
Ch. VII.] THE FACT OF INSPIRATION 89 
 
 solution of many a difficiilty in this matter of 
 inspiration. It is a principle which mars the 
 dramatic effect of most of the miracles, the miracle 
 of inspiration not excepted ; but dramatic effect is 
 not studied in Divine miracles at all. 
 
 In this aspect of it, then, the verbal inspiration 
 difficulty is unworthy of notice. The only ques- 
 tion of any practical importance is whether, as 
 the New Testament so plainly teaches, God 
 spoke "through" (or **in") the writers of the 
 Old. But just as the morbidly inquisitive brain 
 of a certain sort of child insists on seeing inside 
 a watch, when sober common sense asks only 
 whether it can be trusted to tell the time ; so 
 while ** the common sense of faith " is content to 
 know that God inspired the Bible, there are 
 minds that demand to know all the mysteries of 
 the problem of inspiration. And some people 
 think they have solved these mysteries, just as 
 there are men who fancy they have mastered the 
 infinite wonders of Nature. But wiser heads 
 distinguish between the facts, whether of revela- 
 tion or of nature, and the theories which men 
 offer in explanation of them. We do well to 
 accept with intelligent and unfaltering confidence 
 the fact of inspiration so clearly taught by our 
 Divine Lord ; but we do well also to view 
 
90 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 with great distrust all human theories relating 
 to it. 
 
 "But," some one will here interrupt, "any- 
 body can see the difference between a man's 
 recording matters within his own knowledge, and 
 matters or truths of which he could know nothing 
 except by direct revelation," Yes, anybody can 
 see it. And after he has seen it, what then ? 
 Does the interrupter mean, for example, that the 
 prophet is to be believed implicitly when he 
 declares that " the ransomed of the Lord shall 
 return, and come to Zion with songs, and 
 everlasting joy upon their heads " ' ; but 
 that he is not to be trusted when in the next 
 sentence he records that "In the fourteenth 
 year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of 
 Assyria came up against all the defenced cities 
 of Judah and took them " ? ^ And if he does 
 not mean this, what sense is there in the 
 interruption ? Any one but a H igher Critic 
 would test a chain at the weakest link, and 
 not at the strongest. He would say, " If you can 
 satisfy me that God made the prophet write those 
 words about future blessing for Zion, I shall have 
 no doubt about the Sennacherib invasion." The 
 
 * Isa. XXXV. 10. ■ Ibid, xxxvi. i. 
 
Ch. VII.] OBJECTIONS ANSWERED 91 
 
 problem has difficulties for those who want to 
 frame theories of inspiration ; but the Christian 
 who merely wants to be assured that the truth 
 of Scripture is Divinely guaranteed, brushes the 
 difficulties aside. 
 
 ** But," the objector says again, "the manner 
 in which the Old Testament is quoted in the 
 New — loosely quoted sometimes from the 
 notoriously loose Septuagint translation — ex- 
 plodes all your theories of verbal inspiration." 
 Well, so much the worse for the theories. But 
 will the objector tell us in what way this affects 
 the fact of inspiration. The Bible was not 
 written for the wise of this world ; still less for 
 fools. To understand it aright we need both 
 spiritual intelligence and common sense. The 
 latter quality will help us here. Any one who 
 possesses it can see that in the historical narrative 
 of Isaiah xxxvi.-xxxix., for example, the sense 
 is everything, and the choice of words is a 
 matter of comparative indifference. Whereas in 
 chapters xxxv. and xl. absolute verbal accuracy 
 may possibly be essential. And so we find some- 
 times a quotation so loosely given that care is 
 needed to trace it to its source, while in other 
 cases emphasis is laid upon the very tense of a 
 verb or the number of a noun. It is not that 
 
92 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 in the one case the statement is less true than in 
 the other, but that less importance, or possibly 
 none, attaches to the particular words used to 
 express it. 
 
 Instances of this are familiar to every Bible 
 student. Here, for example, is one of them. Of 
 those who denied the resurrection, the Lord 
 demanded, *' Have ye not read that which was 
 spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God 
 of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God 
 of Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead, but 
 of the living," ' Now here the whole force of the 
 argument depends on the tense of the verb. To 
 say that the language of Exodus means merely 
 that God was the God of the patriarchs, would 
 be quite in keeping with the loose way the Bible 
 is treated by the critics. But the word is not I 
 was the God of Abraham, but "I am the God of 
 Abraham " ; and therefore Abraham is still an 
 existing person, a person in being. And as a 
 clew to the use of Scripture, it is noteworthy that 
 these words were spoken '*by God,'' and spoken 
 to those whom the Lord was then addressing. 
 
 Take another instance still more striking. 
 '*Is it not written in your law, *I said, Ye 
 
 » Matt. xxii. 31, 32, 
 
Ch.VII.] the testimony of CHRIST 93 
 
 are gods-? If He called them gods to whom 
 the word of God came (and the Scripture 
 cannot be broken), say ye, &c." Now here 
 Psa. Ixxxii. is ascribed to God, and not to the 
 Psalmist ; it is declared to be Scripture which 
 cannot be broken ; and it is appealed to as 
 making "an end of controversy." And as in 
 the other case, the force of the argument depends 
 on the absolute accuracy of the words.' 
 
 We see, then, how and why a Divine revelation 
 must be made in the language of those to whom 
 it comes. And upon their fitness and capacity 
 to receive it depend any limits and failure of the 
 revelation. For words are merely like paper 
 securities for money. Intrinsically valueless, 
 their worth depends on the gold they represent. 
 If the gold be wanting, the paper is only paper 
 and nothing more. If the thoughts the words 
 represent are absent, the words are only empty 
 sounds. Therefore it is that inspired men are 
 needed to be the channels of a revelation, and 
 spiritual men alone can understand it aright. 
 
 " Behold, God is my salvation ; I will trust 
 and not be afraid : for the Lord Jehovah is my 
 
 * John X. 34, 35. The critics meet all this by representing 
 the Lord as an ignorant person and the Evangelists as being 
 untrustworthy. See Chapters VI. and XIX. 
 
94 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 strength and my song ; He also is become 
 my salvation." We are dependent on Hebrew 
 scholars to give us these English words : we 
 are absolutely dependent on the Spirit of God 
 to enable us to understand them. True exegesis 
 consists in "interpreting spiritual things to spiri- 
 tual men." * And therefore Hebrew scholars as 
 such cannot help us here ; for they can only 
 explain natural things to natural men, 
 
 ' I Cor. ii, 13, R.V. marg. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WHEN Xerxes issued his great proclamation 
 in favour of the Jews, it was sent, we are 
 told, to each of the hundred and twenty-seven 
 provinces of the Empire, from India to Ethiopia, 
 **and unto every people after their language."^ 
 Could any of the nations have pleaded a wrong 
 or a disability because the royal commands 
 reached them only in their own dialect or tongue ? 
 Was this not altogether an advantage and a 
 benefit? We may be sure that the great king 
 would have made short work of such a grievance, 
 and of those who urged it. He would have 
 judged, and rightly judged, that the objection 
 was merely an excuse for disaffection or disobe- 
 dience. 
 
 And yet one of the popular objections urged 
 against "verbal inspiration" as a practical truth 
 is that ordinary Christians being ignorant of the 
 
 ' Esther viii, g. 
 
 95 
 
96 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 language in which the revelation was given are 
 entirely dependent on translations. But this is 
 only another phase of the very difficulty discussed 
 in the preceding chapter. It is based upon the 
 fallacy of supposing that words have any intrinsic 
 or essential meaning. As we have seen, the 
 ablest Hebraist in Christendom has not neces- 
 sarily any better knowledge of the Old Testament 
 revelation than the humblest Christian who enjoys 
 the benefit of his learned labours. And if he be 
 not spiritually enlightened, it may be confidently 
 assumed that the humble Christian will have the 
 advantage. The pundit indeed can trace words 
 to their roots, but this sort of inquiry, important 
 and interesting though it be to the philologist, 
 may for practical purposes prove misleading. 
 The meaning of a word depends, not upon its 
 origin, but upon its use ; and its use may vary 
 at different periods of a language s development. 
 For example, one whom we call an uncultured 
 peasant our forefathers would have described as 
 a **lewd villain" ; and a clever youth they would 
 have called a "crafty knave." 
 
 Every ancient language has a history ; but 
 while the history of modern English, and, to a 
 certain extent, of New Testament Greek, is open 
 to our view, the steps by which the language of 
 
Ch. VIIL] objections to inspiration 97 
 
 Moses and the prophets had reached the stage 
 of what we call sacred Hebrew, are unknown. 
 One thing is certain, namely, that the language 
 of the Old Testament, like that of the New, 
 was an adaptation to high and sacred uses of 
 words which had been current in pagan com- 
 munities. And this being so, it might be 
 plausibly contended that our own language, 
 having been formed and moulded upon Christian 
 thought, is a fitter vehicle for the communication 
 of Divine truth even than the Hebrew of the 
 prophets or the Greek of the apostles and 
 evangelists. Words are but counters ; and 
 counters which were rescued from base or 
 vulgar uses may not be so fit to stand for the 
 gold of revealed truth as ours which never have 
 been thus prostituted. 
 
 Take an illustration. The English peasant 
 who hears of eternal life through faith in Christ 
 may grasp fully and at once the truth those 
 words convey; while the Jewish peasant was 
 much in the position of an Englishman with 
 some newfangled translation which tells him 
 of " age-enduring life through faith in the 
 Anointed One." 
 
 As a matter of fact the heresies of the 
 eschatological controversy largely depend on 
 
98 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 the undoubted fact that neither ancient Hebrew 
 nor classical Greek had any term equivalent to 
 our English word " Eternal." The Pagan mind 
 had no such conception. Their highest thought 
 was of prolonged existence in time, whereas 
 eternal life in Christ is outside the sphere of 
 time both in its origin and in its continuance. 
 
 Or take a different sort of case. If the word 
 "priest" suggests a false conception to a man*s 
 mind, the study of its Hebrew or Greek equiva- 
 lent will in no way correct the error. During 
 a summer holiday in the West of Ireland I once 
 had opportunities of addressing Roman Catholics, 
 and I conceived the plan of weaning them from 
 the errors of their creed by speaking of the priest- 
 hood of Christ. But I found that while my words 
 were Scriptural and right, the meaning they 
 conveyed to my hearers was wholly false and 
 wrong. They understood me to mean that what 
 Roman Catholic priests were and did, Christ was 
 and did. 
 
 And this experience gave me the clew to the 
 meaning of the closing verses of the fifth chapter 
 of Hebrews. The Hebrew Christians, in ignor- 
 ance, as the writer says, of the rudiments even 
 of revealed religion, assumed that there was a 
 necessary connection between the office of a priest 
 
Ch. VIII.] THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST 99 
 
 and the offering of sacrifices for sins ; ^ and there- 
 fore the doctrine of the priesthood of Christ 
 operated in their case to undermine one of the 
 great truths of the Epistle, that "there is no 
 more offering for sin." 2 
 
 All objections to verbal inspiration which are 
 based on the phenomena of language may be 
 ruled out, for they rest on no substantial founda- 
 tion. That a revelation could be made only in 
 human language is a necessity from the limitations 
 of human thought ; and how there canine language 
 without words — how there can be inspiration 
 
 * Ignorance which the most elementary knowledge of Scripture 
 ought to have removed ; for there were sacrifices long before 
 there were priests. The words of Heb. v. 12 (R.V.) are, "Ye 
 have need that one teach you again which be the rudiments of the 
 first principles of the oracles of God." The words of vi. i are^ 
 "the first principles of Christ." The one refers to revealed 
 religion generally, the other to the special revelation of Judaism. 
 
 • At Professor Sanda/s Oxford Conference on this subject, the 
 Rev. Mr. Puller, of the " Cowley Fathers," was the only member 
 who seemed to grasp the elementary truth that the work of 
 priesthood began after the sacrifice had been killed, and that the 
 priesthood of Christ dates from His ascension. " On earth He 
 could not be a priest at all" (Heb. viii. 4, R.V,). 
 
 The R.V, of Heb. v. i makes havoc of the truth. It tells us 
 that every high priest is taken from among men, and is appointed 
 to offer sacrifices for sins. The teaching of the verse is correctly 
 given in A.V., that every high-priest-taken-from-among-men 
 {i.e., every Aaronic priest) is appointed for that purpose. But our 
 High Priest is "the Son of God" (iv. 14), and His priesthood is 
 based upon the Sacrifice which has for ever put away sin, so that 
 now "there is no more offering for sin " (x. 18), 
 
100 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Other than verbal inspiration — is a metaphysical 
 problem which I confess I am not clever enough 
 to be able to solve. ^ And the question whether 
 a revelation gains or loses by being translated 
 from one language into another depends on 
 whether the language into which it is rendered 
 is better or worse fitted to clothe and express the 
 thoughts contained in it. 
 
 The obj ections which some writers urge 
 against verbal inspiration are analogous to those 
 which other writers urge against belief in a 
 personal God who thinks and loves. They 
 call this "anthropomorphism." But let no one 
 be scared at being called by such a hard 
 name. They who use it — very superior persons 
 they are — are like silly children who ape full- 
 grown people. When the silly children discover 
 their folly by some disaster, they can be whipped 
 and put to bed ; but the philosophers may not 
 discover theirs until it be too late for repentance. 
 We do not assume that God really has ears and 
 nostrils and hands and feet, any more than that 
 He has a language of His own. But the wisest 
 and best of us are like children — very young and 
 very foolish children, — and as He pities us as 
 
 * Of course a revelation may be by way of visions, as in the 
 Apocalypse ; but this only puts the question one step back. 
 
Ch. VIIL] ORIGINAL RECORDS LOST loi 
 
 a father pities his children, He spealcs to us about 
 Himself in a way we can understand. Let no 
 one, then, be cajoled or browbeaten into the 
 mingled pedantry and silliness and sin of thinking 
 we are wiser than He is, or that we can do 
 without verbal inspiration and the God of the 
 Bible. 
 
 But an objection of another kind remains. 
 The original records of the Divine revelation 
 have been lost, and vast periods of time separate 
 us from them. For example, some five and 
 thirty centuries have passed since Moses wrote, 
 and yet the oldest Hebrew record we possess of 
 his writings was probably written after the time 
 of Alfred the Great of England. We deem it 
 a disadvantage to have access only to a copy of 
 an important document, but here it is a case of 
 repeated copying during thousands of years, and 
 in circumstances of which we know but little. 
 
 Now this objection is a real one, and it must be 
 owned that at first sight it seems extremely for- 
 midable. But its practical importance grows 
 less and less the more closely we examine it. 
 
 In the first place, the special importance to 
 us of the Hebrew Scriptures depends on their 
 relation to Christianity ; and as the Jew was 
 the custodian of them, it is certain that if they 
 
102 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 have been wilfully tampered with, the change 
 has not been made in the interests of Christian 
 truth. But in the second place, the extreme 
 reverence with which the Jews regarded their 
 Scriptures affords a powerful guarantee against 
 any deliberate corruption of the text. It may 
 be taken as certain that any errors which 
 have crept in are errors accidentally made in 
 copying the manuscripts. And when estimating 
 the number and, what is of more importance, the 
 character of such errors, the Jewish reverence for 
 the text claims very special consideration. For it 
 insured such care in copying as to make any 
 blunder of a really serious kind improbable in 
 the extreme. 
 
 We know, for example, that in the days of the 
 Massoretes, to whom we practically owe our text 
 of the Old Testament, not only the words, but 
 the very letters, contained in the sacred books 
 were counted. And we know also that even 
 when words were believed to have been errone- 
 ously inserted or omitted, the scribes never dared 
 to make a correction save by a marginal note. 
 And there is no reason to doubt that these 
 practices were based on the habits and traditions 
 of earlier days. 
 
 Hostile critics have sometimes sought to score 
 
Ch. VIII.] TEXTUAL CRITICISM 103 
 
 a point by appealing to the Samaritan Pentateuch 
 and the Septuagint version. But not even a 
 hostile critic would deny that if the Massoretic 
 text were revised in the light of those authorities, 
 the result would be prejudicial to accuracy ; and, 
 further, that even if the revision were drastic and 
 reckless, it would not affect a single question of 
 morals or a single point of Christian truth or 
 doctrine. And this being so, the whole question, 
 so far as the Old Testament is concerned, is one 
 of purely academic interest. 
 
 And a kindred remark applies equally in regard 
 to the New Testament. A fact which is all the 
 more striking and important because the materials 
 for hostile criticism here are vastly greater than 
 in the case of the Old Testament. All our 
 leading commentators have grappled with the 
 question. As it has been well said, *• All of them 
 face that formidable phantom of textual criticism, 
 with its 120,000 various readings in the New 
 Testament alone, and will enable us to march up 
 to it, and discover that it is empty air ; that still we 
 may say with the boldest and acutest of English 
 critics, Bentley, 'choose (out of the whole MSS.) 
 as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by 
 design out of the whole lump of readings, and not 
 one article of faith or moral precept is either 
 
104 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 perverted or lost in them. Put them into the 
 hands of a knave or a fool, and even with the; 
 most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not 
 extinguish the light of any one chapter, or so 
 disguise Christianity but that every feature of it 
 will still be the same.'" 
 
 These words have since received most striking 
 confirmation. In the Revised Version of the 
 New Testament textual criticism has done its 
 worst. It is inconceivable that it will ever again 
 be allowed to run riot as in the work of the 
 Revisers of 1881. When that version appeared. 
 Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln raised the 
 question "whether the Church of England, — 
 which in her Synod, so far as this Province is 
 concerned, sanctioned a Revision of her Authorised 
 Version under the express condition, which she 
 most wisely imposed, that no changes should be 
 made in it except what were absolutely necessary, 
 — could consistently accept a version in which 
 36,000 changes have been made ; not a fiftieth 
 of which can be shown to be needed, or even 
 desirable^ 
 
 But what concerns us here is not the changes 
 in the translation, but the far more serious matter 
 of the changes in the text. The question at issue 
 between the majority of the Revisers, who followed 
 
Ch. VIIL] THE REVISED VERSION 105 
 
 Doctors Hort and Westcott, and the very able 
 and weighty minority led by Dr, Scrivener, the 
 most capable and eminent "textual critic" of 
 the whole company, was one with which every 
 lawyer is familiar, but of which the Revisers may 
 have had no experience, and with which they 
 were not competent to deal. 
 
 We have a far greater number of MSS. of 
 the New Testament than of the heathen classics ; 
 but, strange to say, with four exceptions, none of 
 these are older than the sixth century of our era. 
 But we possess " versions " (or translations) which 
 are older than any known MSS. ; and the writings 
 of the early Fathers abound in quotations from the 
 New Testament.' We are thus enabled indirectly 
 to reach MSS. much older than the oldest that 
 have survived. And as the Fathers were 
 scattered over the Christendom of their time, 
 their acquaintance with the text was derived, 
 of course, from very many independent sources. 
 And when their quotations agree with one 
 another, and also with the "versions," as well as 
 with our later MSS., many of which must have 
 been copied from MSS. more ancient than any 
 
 ' It has been said that if the Gospels were lost the text could 
 be regained, with trifling gaps, from the writings of the Ante- 
 Nicene Fathers. (Dr. Sinker's Higher Criticism, p. 177.) 
 
io6 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 which have survived, this agreement will satisfy 
 any one who is versed in the rudiments of the 
 science of evidence. 
 
 But while the lawyer understands the value of 
 indirect evidence, the layman is always inclined 
 to disparage it in favour of the direct. Witnesses 
 of credit and repute testify that they saw the 
 accused commit the crime with which he is 
 charged. What more can any one want ? The 
 average juryman is ready at once to convict ; and 
 he cannot imagine why the judge should allow 
 further time to be spent upon the case. But the 
 judge knows well that evidence of this kind is apt 
 to err, and needs to be tested with the utmost 
 care.' Now the old MSS. are the witnesses of 
 credit and repute, and the Revisers played the 
 part of the average juryman ; and there being 
 unfortunately no one to check them, they con- 
 victed the Authorised Version of inaccuracy in 
 numberless instances. But, in the opinion of 
 the greatest critical authority among the Revisers, 
 whose protests were unavailing to prevent this 
 deplorable mutilation of the sacred text, the 
 
 * Of course, if the accused is seized at the time, the evidence of 
 eye-witnesses is conclusive. The conflict between direct and 
 indirect evidence arises where the accused is arrested after 
 an interval, and his identity becomes the salient question in the 
 case. 
 
Ch. VIIL] the revised version I07 
 
 system on which these changes were made "is 
 entirely destitute of historical foundation." ^ 
 
 If the Revisers had kept to the terms of their 
 commission, and been content with the cor- 
 rection of " manifest errors," a very few sessions 
 would have sufficed to produce a text which 
 might have commanded universal acceptance. 
 But it is certain that errors were not manifest 
 when many of the greatest of contemporary 
 critics and scholars could not regard them as 
 errors at all — men like the minority upon their 
 own company, men like the eminent prelate I 
 have quoted, and the learned editor of The 
 Speaker's Commentary. And as several of the 
 Revisers themselves have explained in detail the 
 principles on which the revision of the text was 
 conducted, and those principles are found to be 
 unsound when judged by the science of evidence, 
 our confidence in the result of their labours is 
 destroyed. 
 
 The " argument " of the present volume 
 demands a reference to this question, but a 
 fuller discussion of it would be out of place. 
 I will therefore dismiss it by citing a single 
 illustrative instance of reckless and erroneous 
 
 « Dr. Scrivener, Plain Introduction, &c. 
 
io8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 alteration of the text. And instances of the 
 kind abound, especially in the Gospels. 
 
 The instance I select is " the Herald Angels' 
 song," and I choose it not only as being 
 thoroughly typical of the methods of the 
 Revisers, but also because of its importance and 
 the interest attaching to it. " Glory to God in 
 the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward 
 men " : ^ for these words, which hold such a place 
 in the memory and heart of every English- 
 speaking Christian, the miserable substitute 
 offered us is, ** Glory to God in the highest, and 
 on earth peace among men in whom He is well 
 pleased." This one piece of mutilation might 
 suffice to discredit the work of the Revisers. 
 
 Two questions are here involved, the altered 
 text, and the translation of that text. The 
 English of the Revisers, says one of the most 
 eminent of their own number, " can be arrived at 
 only through some process which would make 
 any phrase bear almost any meaning the trans- 
 lator might like to put upon it." 2 " * Men in 
 whom He is well pleased,'" says the editor of 
 The Speaker^ s Commentary^ ** seems to me im- 
 possible as a translation of avOpwiroi euSoKiag* I 
 
 " Luke ii. 14. 
 
 = Dr. Scrivener's Introduction (Ed. Miller), vol. ii., p. 347. 
 
Ch. VIII.] THE HERALD ANGELS' SONG 109 
 
 do not know whether those Greek words have 
 any meaning, but if they have they must desig- 
 nate men of a certain quality or character." ^ 
 Then as regards the text, the whole difference is 
 the addition of the letter 5 to the word eudokia ; 
 and the manuscript authority for this addition is 
 the reading of four ancient Greek MSS.,^ every 
 other known copy of the Gospels being against it. 
 
 Now this is precisely the sort of question in 
 respect of which any one who has practical 
 acquaintance with the science of evidence would 
 appeal to Patristic authority, and that appeal 
 would dispose of the whole matter ; for the 
 testimony of the Greek Fathers in favour of the 
 familiar reading is overwhelming. 3 
 
 * R.V, of the First Three Gospels, p. 30. Canon Cook adds, 
 "What is meant by the marginal rendering 'mei4 of good 
 pleasure' I am utterly at a loss to conjecture." 
 
 ' Canon Cook enumerates them as the Sinaitic, and A, B, and 
 D, and he adds that the text of the first and third of these " was 
 noted as incorrect by a critical scholar at the time when the 
 manuscript was written " {Ibid., pp. 27, 28). 
 
 » In The Revision Revised (pp. 42-44), Dean Burgon gives the 
 list of Fathers from the second to the sixth century, indicating 
 that the words as known to ms, i.e., as given in our A.V., were 
 quoted by them fifty-eight times. Speaking generally, the Greek 
 authorities are on the side of the A.V. ; while the R.V. can 
 appeal to the Latin versions. This is remarkable, but the 
 explanation of it is simple. Some ancient MS. upon which the 
 first Latin version was based, evidently omitted the preposition 
 from the sentence, and as this destroyed its meaning the s was 
 added to eudokia to make the words intelligible. 
 
no THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 " On earth peace, good will toward men " — 
 the Christian may still rejoice in these hallowed 
 and most precious words. And he may assume 
 with confidence that here, as in so many other 
 instances, the Revisers' changes in the text are 
 new errors, and not the correction of old errors. 
 And yet the fact remains — indeed it is uni- 
 versally acknowledged — that even a revision 
 conducted so unwisely and on a system so 
 opposed to all the principles and rules of evidence, 
 has not destroyed a single truth of Christianity 
 or left a single point of Christian doctrine or 
 practice in jeopardy. The sceptical taunt that 
 textual criticism undermines the truth of Inspira- 
 tion is for ever silenced by the Revised Version 
 of the New Testament.' 
 
 » See App. Note II. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SOME there are who will have read the 
 preceding chapters with sympathy, who yet 
 will feel that their own special difficulties remain 
 unnoticed. They love the Bible, and are assured 
 that it is in the main Divine, but there is much 
 in the Old Testament which unduly tries their 
 faith. "The creation story of Genesis," they 
 would say, "is discredited by science. The Book 
 of Jonah is incredible. The Book of Daniel can 
 no longer be defended. The history of Israel is 
 marked by moral difficulties which cannot be 
 explained away. And no one can now defend 
 the correctness of Old Testament chronology. 
 
 " Nor are these difficulties confined to the Old 
 Testament. Whatever theoretical defence may 
 be made for the inspiration of the Gospels, the 
 fact remains that they are marked by errors 
 which prove that, if they be inspired, inspiration 
 affords no guarantee of truth." 
 
112 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 With these several questions I will now pro- 
 ceed to deal.^ And first as to ** the proem to 
 Genesis." If I were beginning an octavo volume, 
 I should seek to recapitulate the controversy on 
 this subject, and to define the stage it has at 
 present reached. I should mark the various 
 positions which have been successively occupied 
 or abandoned by the disputants, as one or 
 another of the fluctuating theories of science has 
 gained prominence, or newly found fossils have 
 added to ** the testimony of the rocks." But I 
 will content myself with recalling the main inci- 
 dents of the discussion between Mr. Gladstone 
 and Professor Huxley some years ago in the 
 pages of the Nineteenth Century,^ 
 
 In The Dawn of Creation and Worship Mr. 
 Gladstone sought to show that the order of 
 creation as recorded in Genesis has been "so 
 affirmed in our time by natural science that it 
 may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and 
 established fact." He averred that science was 
 perfectly in accord with Moses in recognising 
 that life appeared upon our globe in the order of, 
 
 * This chapter is based in part upon Chapter VIII. of the 
 author's Doubtcf's Doubts about Science and Religion — a book long 
 out of print. 
 
 " The articles in question appeared in the later months of 1885, 
 and January and February, 1886, 
 
Ch. IX.] THE CREATION STORY 113 
 
 first, the water population ; second, the air popu- 
 lation ; and, third, the land population. To 
 which Mr. Huxley replied as follows :— 
 
 " It is agreed on all hands that terrestrial lizards and 
 other reptiles allied to lizards occur in the Permian 
 strata. It is further agreed that the Triassic strata 
 were deposited after these. Moreover, it is well known 
 that, even if certain footprints are to be taken as 
 unquestionable evidence of the existence of birds, they 
 are not known to occur in rocks earlier than the Trias, 
 while indubitable remains of birds are to be met with 
 only much later. Hence it follows that natural science 
 does not * affirm ' the statement that birds were made 
 on the fifth day, and * everything that creepeth on the 
 ground ' on the sixth, on which Mr. Gladstone rests his 
 order ; for, as is shown by Leviticus, the ' Mosaic 
 writer' includes lizards among his 'creeping things.'" 
 
 The following is the quotation from Leviticus 
 which Mr. Huxley "commended to Mr. Glad- 
 stone's serious attention " : — " And these are they 
 which are unclean unto you among the creeping 
 things that creep upon the earth ; the weasel, 
 and the mouse, and the great lizard after its kind, 
 and the gecko, and the land-crocodile, and the 
 lizard, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon. 
 These are they which are unclean unto you 
 among all that creep" (chap. xi. 29-31, R.V.), 
 And he added, " The merest Sunday-school 
 
 9 
 
114 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 exegesis, therefore, suffices to prove that when 
 the Mosaic writer in Gen. i. 24 speaks of creep- 
 ing things, he means to include lizards among 
 them." 
 
 A charming specimen this certainly is of " the 
 merest Sunday-school exegesis." The argument 
 which so completely satisfied its author, and 
 silenced his opponent, is nothing but an ad 
 ^aptandum appeal to the chance rendering of 
 our English Bible. For the word translated 
 "creeping thing" in Leviticus xi. has no affinity 
 with the word so rendered in Genesis i. 24, 
 whereas it is the identical word which our trans- 
 lators have rendered " moving creature " in 
 the twentieth verse, which records the first 
 appearance of animal life.^ 
 
 Mr. Huxrley's answer was, therefore, an over- 
 whelming refutation of his own position. Science 
 proclaims the seniority of land reptiles in the 
 genesis of life on earth, and the despised Book of 
 Genesis records that "creeping things," which, as 
 Mr. Huxley insists, must include land reptiles, 
 were the first "moving creatures" which the 
 Creator^s fiat called into existence. 
 
 ^ The word in verses 24 and 26, relating to the life of the 
 sixth day, is remes ; but in verse 20, relating to the fifth day, it is 
 sheretZj which occurs ten times in Lev. xi. 
 
Ch. IX.] HUXLEY'S ATTACK ON GENESIS 115 
 
 Some may think that if Mr. Huxley were still 
 with us he could make short work of this. But 
 the plea will not avail. In the Times correspon- 
 dence of ten years ago on The Bible and Modern 
 Criticism^ I put him on his defence on this very 
 question. His only answer was to repeat his 
 blunder. Thereupon Canon Girdlestone inter- 
 vened to assure him that " he had been wholly 
 misled by the English version," and the Duke of 
 Argyll challenged his representation *' both of the 
 contention of Mr. Gladstone and the narrative in 
 Genesis." My own rejoinder was to repeat his 
 words in detail and to hold him to them. 
 
 Lawyers have a plea of ** confession and avoid- 
 dance " ; Mr. Huxley's next letter was marked by 
 avoidance without confession, and ended by a 
 sneer at my reference to the spiritual side of Holy 
 Scripture. To which the Duke of Argyll replied 
 as follows : 
 
 " In Professor Huxley's letter in your issue of yester- 
 day he completely shifts his ground. He now asserts 
 that Genesis ascribes creation to acts which he calls 
 * supernatural,' whereas, he urges, science asserts that it 
 originated in a * process of natural evolution.' 
 
 " This antithesis is absolutely unknown to the litera- 
 ture both of the Old Testament and the New. It is 
 equally unknown to science and also to philosophy. The 
 B^ble knows nothing of what men now call ' the super- 
 
ii6 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 natural/ It regards all * natural processes ' as the work - 
 of a Divine Being. Professor Huxley asserts or implies 
 that this is erroneous, and that wherever we can trace 
 the operation of natural causes, we must exclude all 
 idea of a Divine origin or direction. I venture to 
 assert, on the contrary, that this is very bad science, 
 and still worse philosophy.*' ' 
 
 The letter enlarges upon this, and ends by 
 noting that the " broad issue " for which Mr, 
 Huxley contended was, *'that in ascribing the 
 creative working to a Divine Being the narrative 
 of Genesis is in * irreconcilable antagonism ^ with 
 modern science," an issue in which he would not 
 have " the general support of the most eminent 
 men of science in the United Kingdom." 
 
 My own final reply appeared in the same issue 
 of The Times, as follows : — 
 
 My rejoinder to Mr. Huxley shall be brief. Any one 
 who will be at the pains to turn to his Nineteenth 
 Century articles will see that "his argument from 
 Leviticus," instead of being, as he now pleads, "inci- 
 dental " and " superfluous," was vital to his attack upon 
 Mr. Gladstone's position. Upon it depended the only 
 allegation of fact, as contrasted with theory, in his 
 indictment of the Mosaic cosmogony. According to 
 
 ' The Times, February 8, 1892. Mr. Huxley's letter here re- 
 ferred to is that which appeared in the Times of the 3rd, and 
 which is reproduced in his Life (vol. ii., p. 297). 
 
Ch, IX.] REFUTATION OF HUXLEY 117 
 
 science reptiles existed before birds, but according to 
 Genesis birds existed before reptiles. So he asserted. 
 And the ground of his assertion was that, while birds 
 belong to the fifth period of creation, " creeping things " 
 belong to the sixth, and that "creeping things" are 
 defined by " the Mosaic writer " himself in Leviticus xi. 
 to include reptiles. 
 
 Now that this is proved to be merely an ad captandum 
 appeal to the phraseology of the English Bible, Mr. 
 Huxley takes refuge in the plea that the word used in 
 Genesis i. 24 may include reptiles. But this, even if 
 true, will not help him. The fact remains that the 
 word in Leviticus xi. is wholly different from the word 
 used in Genesis i. 24, whereas the validity of his argu- 
 ment depends on its identity with it And the argument 
 is his, not mine. He it is who insists that Genesis i* 
 must be interpreted by Leviticus xi. ; and, adopting his 
 canon of interpretation, I have shown that he is " hoist 
 with his own petard." 
 
 It is on petty points of this sort that the conventional 
 attacks upon the Bible rest But the foundations of 
 faith are of a very different character. If facts be 
 adduced to prove the Bible false, I shall give it up, and 
 cease to be a Christian. But practical men and men of 
 common sense care little for mere theories. In common 
 with many other Christians I regard the Darwinian theory 
 of evolution as being, within strictly defined limits, a 
 reasonable hypothesis. But the peculiar biological 
 theories with which Mr. Huxley's name is prominently 
 identified, are in a different category. I am old enough 
 to remember the time when they first gained currency in 
 England. I am young enough to be warranted in 
 hoping I may outlive their popularity. But these 
 
ii8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 unproved, and possibly ephemeral, theories of the hour, 
 dignified by the title of " natural science," are put for- 
 ward as the grounds on which the Book of all the ages 
 is to be rejected ! 
 
 Mr. Huxley wrote another letter, but it con- 
 tained nothing save pretentious phrases about 
 science, and ungenerous sneers at those who 
 believe the Bible. So far as this controversy is 
 concerned he left his opponents in possession of 
 the field. The fact asserted by Mr. Gladstone 
 remains established by this searching test. It is 
 asserted, and it will still be asserted as unblush- 
 ingly as if this correspondence had not taken 
 place, that Genesis is proved false by the facts of 
 science ; whereas the testimony of science, what- 
 ever it be worth, confirms the Biblical order of 
 creation.' In The Nineteenth Century Mr. 
 Huxley wrote, "There is no one to whose 
 authority on geological questions I am more 
 readily disposed to bow than that of my eminent 
 friend Professor Dana ; " and Professor Dana's 
 decision was, '* I agree in all essential points with 
 Mr. Gladstone, and believe that the first chapter 
 of Genesis and science are in accord." 
 
 ^ And if any one now seeks to get rid of this by falling back 
 on the " coincidence " theory, the mathematician will cut in to 
 tell him that the order of any seven events can be given in no 
 less than 5,040 ways. 
 
Ch. IX.] THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 119 
 
 For my part, I am willing to make the 
 scientist a present of this conclusion. If Pale- 
 ontology, instead of confirming, as it does^ 
 the Mosaic cosmogony, seemed to discredit it, 
 the fact would only serve to strengthen the 
 belief I entertain on independent grounds, that 
 the fossils may be relics of an earlier economy of 
 life, which was engulfed in the catastrophes which 
 produced the present rock-formation of our earth. 
 
 Whether the origin of our globe was nebular 
 or meteoric, it may have been the home of life 
 for ages before the epoch of the Adamic creation. 
 In the record of that creation the conception of a 
 making-out-of-nothing has no place. The Bible 
 is merely the history of the Adamic world, and 
 even that, moreover, only as a background on 
 which to display the great revelation of redemp- 
 tion. The opening verses of Genesis, therefore, 
 mark the successive eras through which the 
 Creator rescued our planet from its " waste and 
 void " ' condition, and prepared it as a fitting 
 home for man ; but as to its origin and earlier 
 history Holy Writ is silent, "/w the beginning 
 God created the heaven and the earth." But 
 
 * Gen. i. 2. These same words are used in Jer. iv. 23 of the 
 ruin brought upon the land by the judgment of " the Desolations." 
 That the earth was not originally " waste " Isa. xlv. 18 declares. 
 
120 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 when the beginning was, we cannot even con- 
 jecture ; and if we go on to inquire the meaning 
 of "creation," all that Scripture will tell us is 
 that ** things which are seen were not made of 
 things which do appear " — ^a statement which will 
 bear every test that can be applied to it. If in 
 the past this earth ever suffered a catastrophe 
 such as that which Scripture declares will engulf 
 it in the future, the Mosaic narrative would be at 
 once accounted for and explained. 
 
 That narrative is a part of the revelation upon 
 which Christianity is based, and one essential 
 portion of it — the recorded origin of the woman 
 — is enshrined in the Christian system as typical 
 of the spiritual union between Christ and His 
 Church. I accept that narrative as a Divine 
 revelation. And I endorse Mr. Huxley's dictum, 
 '*that it is vain to discuss a supposed coincidence 
 between Genesis and science, unless we have first 
 settled, on the one hand, what Genesis says, and, 
 on the other hand, what science says." The 
 matter is not ripe for discussion. We are a very 
 long way indeed from settling "what science 
 says " ; and while it seems to be taken for 
 granted that ** what Genesis says " is known to 
 all, closer study and fuller knowledge will destroy 
 all dogmatism here. 
 
Ch. IX.] THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY 121 
 
 When it is said that God "made the firma- 
 ment/' and the " two great lights," and the 
 "beasts of the earth," the same word is used 
 as when Noah "made" the ark, and Moses the 
 tabernacle. If abiogenesis^ were an ascertained 
 fact, and not an exploded error, the advocate of 
 spontaneous generation might appeal to the lan- 
 guage of the Creator's ^a/, "Let the waters bring 
 forth," " Let the earth bring forth." If evolution 
 were an established truth, and not a mere theory, 
 the evolutionist might turn to Genesis, and mark 
 how order and life were slowly evolved in the 
 world. Nor need he find any difficulty in sup- 
 posing that mammals may have been developed 
 among the "water population," and the " air popu- 
 lation " too, before animals of that order appeared 
 upon the land. Mr. Huxley's argument on this 
 point is valid only as destroying the position to 
 which his "Sunday-school exegesis" forced Mr. 
 Gladstone to retreat. 
 
 I turn to the narrative. The earth existed, but 
 it was " desolate and empty," a mere waste of 
 waters, wrapped in impenetrable darkness. The 
 changes recorded are, first, the dawn of light, and 
 then the formation of an atmosphere followed by 
 
 * A term coined by Huxley himself to express spontaneous 
 generation. 
 
122 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 the retreat of the waters to their ocean bed ; then 
 the dry land became clothed with verdure, and 
 sun and moon and stars appeared. ^ 
 
 But the question remains, What was the 
 creation day ? No problem connected with the 
 cosmogony has greater interest and importance. 
 I own to a decided conviction that while the 
 passage clearly indicates our ordinary day, the 
 word is used in a purely symbolic sense. When 
 dealing with a period before man existed to mark 
 the shadow on the dial, and before the sun 
 could cast that shadow, it is not easy to 
 appreciate the reason, or indeed the meaning, 
 of such a division of time as our natural day. 
 " Days and years and seasons " seem plainly to 
 belong to our present solar system, and this is 
 the express teaching of the fourteenth verse. 2 
 
 The problem may be stated thus : As man is 
 to God, so his day of four and twenty hours is to 
 
 * The laughter formerly excited by the idea of light apart from 
 the sun has died away with increasing knowledge (see Dr. Sinker's 
 Higher Criticism, p. 121) ; and, in our ignorance of that primaeval 
 life, it is idle to question the possibility of the third-day vegetation- 
 It may possibly have been the " rank and luxuriant herbage " of 
 which our coal-beds have been formed ; for one statement in the 
 narrative seems strongly to favour the suggestion that our present 
 vegetation dates only from the fifth or sixth day (Gen. ii, 5, R.V.). 
 
 ' That the earth is older than the sun may at one time have 
 appeared impossible. But it seems to be involved in the 
 meteoric hypothesis. 
 
Ch. IX.] THE CREATION "DAY" 123 
 
 the Divine day of creation. And here I would 
 suggest that the " evening and morning " may 
 represent the interval of the cessation from work, 
 which succeeds and completes the day. The 
 words are, "And there was evening, and there 
 was morning, one day."" The symbolism is 
 maintained throughout. As man's working day 
 is brought to a close by evening, which ushers in 
 a period of repose, lasting till morning calls him 
 back to his daily toil, so the great Artificer is 
 represented as turning aside from His work at the 
 end of each "day" of creation, and again re- 
 suming it when another morning dawned. 
 
 And is not this in keeping with the mode in 
 which Scripture speaks of God? It tells us of 
 His mouth and eyes and nostrils, His hand and 
 arm. It speaks of His sitting in the heavens, 
 and bowing Himself to hear the prayer ascending 
 from the earth. It talks of His repenting and 
 being angry. And if one CcwSs^a this, he may 
 fairly be asked. In what other language could 
 God speak to men ? 
 
 Nor let any one fall back on the common 
 fallacy that a Divine day is a period of a thousand 
 years. With God, we are told, a day is as a 
 
 * If the creation story was revealed by way of Apocalyptic 
 visions, these words are fully explained. 
 
124 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 
 In a word, the seeming paradox of the trans- 
 cendental philosophy is endorsed by the express 
 teaching of Scripture, that time is merely a law 
 of human thought. When, therefore, God speaks 
 of working for six days and resting on the seventh, 
 we must understand the words in the same sym- 
 bolic sense as when He declares that His hand 
 has made all these things.' 
 
 But the mention of the creation sabbath is the 
 crowning proof of the symbolic character of the 
 creation "day." God "rested on the seventh 
 day from all the work which He had made." 
 Are we, then, to suppose that He resumed the 
 work when four and twenty hours had passed ? 
 Here, at least, revelation and science are at one : 
 the creation sabbath has continued during all the 
 ages of historic time. God is active in His 
 universe, pace the atheist and the infidel, but the 
 Creator rests. Scripture, indeed, tells of a 
 supreme catastrophe that is yet to engulf our 
 planet, and of a new creation which is to follow 
 it, of which the resurrection of Christ is the 
 earnest and pledge. But these are topics I must 
 not enter upon, I content myself with noticing 
 
 ' Isa. Ixvi. 2. See p. loo ante. 
 
Ch. IX.] THE CREATION "DAY" 125 
 
 the well-recognised fact that the creation sabbath 
 is a vast period of time, and urging that the 
 working days of creation must be estimated on 
 the same system. 
 
 This must be borne in mind as we proceed. 
 The water population and the air population 
 belong to the same " day" ; but ages of time may 
 have intervened before the appearance of the 
 latter.^ So also with the land population of the 
 sixth day. For aught that we can tell, the 
 appearance of man may have been separated 
 from that of other mammals by a period of time 
 as prolonged as that which divides the present 
 hour from the close of the creation "week." ^ 
 
 But all this is mere conjecture. And my 
 object in suggesting it is not to frame a system 
 of interpretation, but to enter a caveat against 
 confounding the teaching of Scripture with any 
 
 ■ Of course the suggestion of the Authorised Version is 
 erroneous that the water was the birthplace of the "feathered 
 tribe." The words are, " Let the waters bring forth abundantly 
 the moving creature that hath life, and let fowl fly above the 
 earth in the open firmament of heaven." 
 
 ■ The second chapter indicates that there was an interval 
 between the formation of the man and of the woman. The 
 Paleontologists' proofs that earth was the dwelling-place of 
 intelligent beings at a much earlier period, are not complete 
 enough to justify any definite comparison between those earlier 
 inhabitants and the Adamic race. Indeed, it is doubtful whether 
 they afford certainty of being pre-Adamite at all. 
 
126 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 system of interpretation whatever. I deprecate 
 the idea that I am posing as a ** reconciler." I 
 have no such ambitious aim as that of seeking 
 to convince the scientists. I wish rather to warn 
 the faithful against assaults upon the Mosaic 
 cosmogony, based on "the merest Sunday-school 
 exegesis '' on the one hand, and on the theories 
 of science on the other. T\\.^ facts of science in 
 no way clash with Scripture. They serve only 
 to assist us in understanding it aright. 
 
 Of the origin of our world the first chapter of 
 Genesis tells us nothing, save that '* in the 
 beginning," whenever that was, God created it. 
 It may be, as Mr. Tyndall said in his Belfast 
 address, that ** for aeons embracing untold 
 millions of years, this earth has been the theatre 
 of life and death." But as to this the Book of 
 Genesis is silent. It deals merely with the 
 renewing and refurnishing of our planet as a 
 home for man. And this, moreover, as I have 
 already urged, to prepare the foundation for the 
 supreme revelation of redemption. 
 
 In conclusion, I would guard myself from any 
 suspicion of seeking "to prove the truth of the 
 Mosaic narrative." My object here is to beat 
 off attacks which stumble or distress ignorant and 
 weak-kneed believers. And to this end I have 
 
Ch. IX.] GENESIS AND SCIENCE 127 
 
 shown that Professor Huxley, the ablest and 
 most bitter assailant of Genesis which this age 
 has produced, has been met and routed upon 
 ground of his own choosing. The first chapter 
 of Genesis "was not written to teach science" ; 
 but not a single "fact of science" can be found to 
 discredit it. This cannot be said of any one of 
 "the religibus books of the East" — in this re- 
 spect they are but a tangle of error and folly. 
 Neither can it be said of any scientific book pub- 
 lished before recent years. The "science" of 
 the last generation is discredited by the dis- 
 coveries of our own times. Never until our own 
 times have Scripture and science been in accord ; 
 but the changes which have harmonised them 
 have been in science and not in Scripture. And 
 this can only be explained on one of two 
 hypotheses. Either science was more advanced 
 when Genesis was written than at any time 
 during all the Christian era, or else " the Mosaic 
 narrative " is a Divine revelation. ' 
 
 * The Times correspondence quoted in this chapter originated 
 with a " declaration on the truth of Holy Scripture," signed by 
 Dean Goulbourn and a number of other clergymen, which 
 appeared in The Times of December 18, 1891. My object in 
 intervening was to point out that these clergymen in taking their 
 stand upon the ground that the Church was "the witness and 
 keeper of Holy Writ," betrayed the cause they sought to defend, 
 
128 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 and were false to the Church of England, which in Article XX. 
 claims only to be " a witness," &c. My second letter {The Times, 
 January 23, 1892) was in reply to the letter of " A Beneficed 
 English Clergyman of Twenty-five Years' Standing," who took 
 infidel ground. Mr. Huxley's reply appeared in The Times of 
 January 26th. Letters from the Duke of Argyll, Canon Girdle- 
 stone, and myself appeared on February ist, and were answered 
 by Mr. Huxley on February 3rd and 4th. My last letter (quoted 
 above) appeared on February 8th, and Mr. Huxley's rejoinder 
 on the nth. The title "The Bible and Modern Criticism" was 
 assigned to the correspondence by the editor of The Times. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 MORE than a quarter of a century ago, 
 when I first came definitely under the 
 influence of the Higher Criticism, doubts began 
 to undermine my faith in Holy Scripture. I 
 then knew but little either of the history or the 
 aims of the movement ; and a taste for critical 
 inquiries, combined with impatience of mere 
 "orthodoxy," created in my mind a prejudice in 
 its favour. At the same time I had a sufficient 
 acquaintance with the general scheme of revela- 
 tion, and especially with the typology and pro- 
 phecy of Scripture, to prevent my being misled 
 by the teaching of the critics about the Pen- 
 tateuch, or by their theories that the '* Priestly 
 Code," as they call it, was later than the Prophets. 
 This being so, it was not till I reached the 
 Book of Daniel that I felt any serious alarm. 
 The New Testament is so identified with that 
 book (as the critics themselves allow) that if 
 
 10 129 
 
130 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Daniel be discredited, the authority of the Gospels 
 and Epistles is impaired, and the Apocalypse 
 must be entirely given up. And yet the case 
 against the book seemed overwhelming. Not 
 only was its authenticity destroyed by glstring 
 historical errors, but its claim to genuineness was 
 vetoed by the very language in which it was 
 written : its Hebrew, I learned, belonged to a 
 later period than the Captivity, and the Greek 
 words contained in it absolutely precluded an 
 earlier origin than the date of Alexander's con- 
 quest. 
 
 Now, unlike the critics, my tenure of the public 
 position I held was not conditioned upon any 
 pledge that I believed the Scriptures. Had I 
 come to accept the conclusions of the critics, I 
 might have continued to draw the emoluments of 
 my office without any twinges of conscience or any 
 reflection upon my honour. When, therefore, I 
 set myself to investigate the case against Daniel, 
 I did so in the same spirit in which I have not 
 infrequently prosecuted criminal charges against 
 persons whom, though I greatly wished to save, 
 I was determined to bring to justice if guilty, I 
 say this because it is the fashion to assume that 
 to attack the Bible gives proof not only of " cul- 
 ture," but of mental vigour and freedom, and that 
 
Ch. X.] THE BOOK OF DANIEL 131 
 
 its defenders are always narrow-minded and 
 prejudiced. 
 
 I first took up the special question upon which 
 I was dependent upon the experts, namely, the 
 philological features of the book. And here I 
 kept to the writings of the critics. My first shock 
 was the discovery that, according to the evidence 
 of some of the most advanced and fearless of its 
 assailants, the Hebrew of the book decides 
 nothing as to its date.' The bold statements 
 to the contrary, therefore, are proof only of 
 recklessness on the part of those who make them. 
 
 And my amazement and indignation reached a 
 climax when I discovered that the supposed Greek 
 words mDante/hB.dy one after another, been given 
 up by the critics, until only iwo or three remained ; 
 and that it is upon these words, which are the 
 names of musical instruments, that the critics veto 
 the acceptance of the book.2 If the instruments 
 
 * See, c.^., Professor Cheyne's article " Daniel" in Encyc, Brit, 
 " Professor Driver of Oxford declares that " the Greek words 
 demand f the Hebrew supports, and the Aramaic permits, a date 
 after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great" {Book 
 of Daniel, p. Ixiii.). In the Introduction to Daniel in " The Temple 
 Bible," Dr. Sinker writes : " Yet about this time a brother of the 
 Greek poet Alcaeus held ofi&ce at the Court of Babylon. Still 
 earlier, Sargon mentions the Greeks {Javanu) of Cyprus; and 
 much earlier, we find a Greek in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. 
 Clearly then there is no reason why in the time of Daniel Greek 
 musical instruments and their names should not have been known 
 in Babylon," 
 
132 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 themselves came from Greece, it might be 
 assumed that they would carry with them to 
 Babylon the names by which they were known in 
 the land of their origin. 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 tolerated. If only these 
 men could be "got into court," and subjected to 
 cross-examination, they would lose not only their 
 case but their reputation ! 
 
 The argument from the language of the Book 
 of Daniel having thus utterly broken down — in 
 truth it is an insult to our intelligence — we dismiss 
 the Philologists from the inquiry altogether. The 
 remaining question is one of evidence of a wholly 
 different kind ; and no university professor, how- 
 ever eminent, is as fit to deal with it as the 
 trained lawyer or the experienced juryman. I 
 press this. These pages will be read by many 
 who are as competent to decide the fate of Daniel 
 as any of the critics whose dictum about the book 
 is blindly accepted by the public. And those 
 who study the controversy will recognise the 
 truth of Hengstenberg's statement, that the attack 
 upon the book originated in a prejudged deter- 
 mination to eliminate the supernatural element 
 from the Bible. Devout men like Eichhorn and 
 
Ch. X.] THE ATTACK ON DANIEL 133 
 
 his pupil Ewald sought to win the rationalists 
 back to religion by joining in their attack upon 
 the only true basis of religion. 
 
 A criminal prosecution sometimes originates in 
 some virulent prejudice which clouds the judg- 
 ment even of fair and upright men. The Dreyfus 
 case in France is the most famous example of this 
 in modern times. No generous mind would 
 tolerate the belief that men like the French 
 Ministers of State were the guilty accessories to 
 an infamous plot against an innocent man. They 
 deprecated the methods of the prosecution, but 
 they accepted the result. And so here, men like 
 Professor Driver accept the verdict of the Higher 
 Criticism against the Book of Daniel, while 
 deprecating the ** exaggerations of the rationalists." 
 But whence these exaggerations.? The Public 
 Prosecutor does not " exaggerate " in presenting 
 a case to the court. On the contrary he is 
 careful to state it with perfect fairness, and to 
 notice every point in favour of the accused as 
 well as against him. Not so, however, a private 
 prosecutor. The " exaggerations " of the German 
 critics are the clearest proof that the crusade 
 against Daniel was the outcome of prejudice or 
 malice. 
 
 In my published defence of the book I have not 
 
134 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 sought to score a single point by trading on these 
 "exaggerations." The popularity of the Dean of 
 Canterbury precluded my ignoring him, but I 
 have taken Professor Driver as the accredited 
 exponent of the case of the English critics. And 
 in meeting his indictment of Daniel, I have 
 accepted his own statement of the evidence. Any 
 competent tribunal would, I believe, decide that 
 the Septuagint translation of the book is older 
 than the date to which the critics assign the 
 Hebrew original, and that the canon of the Old 
 Testament was closed anterior to that date. 
 But meeting them on their own ground, I have 
 shown that no part of their case against the book 
 will stand the test of cross-examination. And 
 further, it has been demonstrated that its great 
 central prophecy has been fulfilled in Messianic 
 times with absolute definiteness and precision. 
 And this demonstration Professor Driver himself 
 has cited, ^ only to leave it and pass on; though 
 if it remains unchallenged it should end the 
 controversy. 
 
 If there are those whose faith in Scripture 
 depends on the fate of Daniel, a brief summary 
 of the defence of the book may serve only to 
 
 * Book of Daniel, p. 149, 
 
Ch. X.] DANIEL: HISTORICAL ERRORS 135 
 
 prejudice the issue. And yet the briefest sum- 
 mary is all that can be given within the limits of 
 this chapter, I 
 
 The critics* attack upon the book rests on three 
 grounds : — philological peculiarities, historical 
 errors, and its position in the canon. The first 
 I have already dealt with. As regards the second, 
 the only vital *' error " is the opening statement of 
 the book, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judea in 
 the third year of Jehoiakim. But this is a fact in 
 history established by writers sacred and profane. 
 
 The critics here rely on the history of Berosus, 
 quoted by Josephus. That historian tells that 
 during the expedition Nebuchadnezzar heard of 
 his father's death, and at once handed over his 
 Jewish captives to others, and "himself hastened 
 home across the desert'' The German rationalists, 
 mixing up Berosus with Scripture,^ and under- 
 standing neither, infer that it was from Car- 
 chemish, where a decisive battle was fought in 
 ^^ fourth year of Jehoiakim, that Nebuchadnezzar 
 started homewards. But Carchemish is on the 
 
 * Dean Farrar's philippic is a portly volume ; and in Professor 
 Driver's Book of Daniel the " Introduction " alone occupies 
 a hundred closely printed pages. My reply to both occupies 
 only a hundred and eighty pages of large and leaded type {Daniel 
 in the Critics' Den, 1902). Greater condensation is impossible. 
 
 ■ Jer. xlvi. 2. 
 
136 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Upper Euphrates, and the road thence to Babylon 
 is clear of the desert altogether. If, as Berosus 
 tells us, Nebuchadnezzar had Jewish captives, he 
 must have invaded Judea ; and if the desert 
 lay between him and his capital, it must have 
 been from Judea that he set out on his homeward 
 journey. 
 
 This "historical error" is a blunder so glaring 
 that a schoolboy might well be ashamed of it. 
 And yet it is gravely adopted and reproduced 
 by English ecclesiastics and Professors for the 
 enlightenment of a much deluded public.^ It 
 is a specimen of the ** historical errors" of the 
 Higher Critics. Ex uno disce omnes. 
 
 Another "historical error" deserves a passing 
 notice. When the sceptics first framed their 
 indictment of Daniel, Belshazzar appeared to be 
 a myth. For history testifies that the last king 
 of Babylon was Nabonidus ; that he was absent 
 
 * See Professor Driver's Book of Daniel, p. 2. Dean Farrar's 
 words are : " Nor did Nebuchadnezzar advance against the Holy 
 City even after the battle of Carchemish, but dashed home 
 across the desert." One does not expect to be amused by a book 
 on such a subject, but this is really amusing. The fact is these 
 English scholars copy from the German rationalists without 
 inquiry or independent thought. The refutation of this silly 
 blunder does not depend merely on the point above mentioned, 
 but upon the history as a whole. See Daniel in the Critics' Den, 
 App. I. 
 
^'^^ 
 
 Ch. X.] BELSHAZZAR AND DARIUS 137 
 
 from the capital when Cyrus entered it, and that 
 he lived many years after the Persian conquest. 
 The contradiction between history and Scripture 
 was complete. But the since deciphered inscrip- 
 tions have disclosed that Belshazzar was eldest 
 son and heir to Nabonidus, that he was regent in 
 Babylon during his father's absence, and that he 
 was killed the night the Persian army entered 
 the inner city.^ 
 
 The only difficulty still unsolved in the Daniel 
 story is the identity of Darius the Mede- But 
 here again the inscriptions tell us that, in the 
 conquest of Babylon, Cyrus had united with him 
 a Median of such power and fame that it was he 
 who appointed the new officials ; and that when 
 an amnesty was proclaimed, it was issued in their 
 joint names. The absence of Darius's name from 
 the commercial tablets is amply explained by the 
 fact that, as Daniel indicates, he, like Belshazzar, 
 was only a viceroy or vassal king. 
 
 Not one single new point against Daniel has 
 been brought to light for a century. Every 
 decade brings to light some new proofs of its 
 genuineness and authenticity. 
 
 ' Professor Sayce's statements on this are but a false inference 
 from a false reading of the tablet. See Daniel in the Critics' Den, 
 App. 11. 
 
138 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 DanieFs place in the Canon is too large a 
 question for incidental treatment. But the mere 
 fact of its inclusion would satisfy any fair tribunal 
 of the genuineness of the book, and it renders it 
 absolutely certain that the Sanhedrim regarded 
 it as genuine.^ In the Septuagint version, more- 
 over, it is placed among the prophets, as in 
 our English Bible; which seems to indicate 
 that such was its original position. And if 
 so its transfer to the third division of the 
 Canon was effected, no doubt, after the beginning 
 of the Christian era. The Hebrew Bible now 
 brackets it with the Psalms of David and 
 other books held by the J ews in the very 
 highest esteem. 
 
 Then, again, the critics cannot tear from its 
 pages the great prophecy of the " Seventy 
 Weeks." And that prophecy, so far as its fulfil- 
 ment belongs to the past, was fulfilled with such 
 definiteness and precision as to make an " end of 
 controversy " upon the whole question. Taking 
 history from the historian and chronology from 
 the chronologist, it will be found that the interval 
 from the issue of the decree to build Jerusalem to 
 the public proclamation of the Messiah, was 
 
 * See Danielin ike Critics* Den, pp. 99-1 ii. 
 
Ch. X.] DANIEL ACCREDITED BY CHRIST 139 
 
 exactly and to the very day the period foretold 
 by Daniel.' 
 
 Could the prediction have been a mere guess 
 by some learned and pious Jew? If we refer 
 this question to a mathematician he will tell us 
 that in such a forecast the chance of accuracy 
 would be so small, and the probability of error 
 so great, that neither the one nor the other could 
 be expressed arithmetically in figures. The calcu- 
 lation, in fact, would become lost in infinity. The 
 attempt, therefore, to dismiss the fulfilment of the 
 prophecy as a mere coincidence "is not intelligent 
 scepticism, but a crass misbelief which is sheer 
 credulity." 
 
 And lastly the fact claims notice — ^and this 
 alone should satisfy the Christian — that the Book 
 of Daniel bears the express imprimatur of our 
 Divine Lord. Witness His words : " When ye, 
 therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, 
 spoken of by Daniel the prophet^ stand in the holy 
 
 * According to Dan, ix. 25, sixty-nine sevens of prophetic years 
 were to elapse between the issuing of the edict to rebuild the 
 city, and " Messiah the Prince" t and the period from ist Nisan in 
 the 2oth year of Artaxerxes (Neh. ii.) to " Palm Sunday " when 
 our Lord made His public entry into Jerusalem (Luke xix. 36-38) 
 was exactly 173,880 days (=69 x 7 X 360). This is dealt with in 
 detail in Tht Coming Prince, and also in Daniel in the Critics* Den 
 (1902). 
 
I40 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 place." The attempt to evade this by the plea 
 that the words here given in italics are a 
 gloss, is so unwarranted that no English writers 
 would have suggested it were it not that they 
 follow the German sceptics like sheep. The 
 words occur in the great prophecy of Matthew 
 xxiv. ; and the reference to Daniel is so unmis- 
 takable that the omission of the name could not 
 even obscure it. 
 
 Bishop Westcott declares that " no other 
 book of the Old Testament had so great a share 
 in the development of Christianity." It is Heng- 
 stenberg's testimony that "there are few books 
 whose Divine authority is so fully established by 
 the testimony of the New Testament, and in 
 particular by the Lord Himself." And even 
 Professor Bevan of Cambridge — one of the 
 narrowest of the critics — admits that " the in- 
 fluence of the book is apparent almost every- 
 where." 
 
 But the Christian accepts the Book, not because 
 its rejection would be, as Sir Isaac Newton urged, 
 ** to undermine the Christian religion " ; but 
 because its claims to acceptance are complete 
 and convincing, and the case for its rejection 
 
Ch. X.] THE BOOK OF DANIEL 141 
 
 owes its seeming cogency only to ignoring some 
 of the most salient facts, and misrepresenting 
 others.' 
 
 ' In reading this chapter in the proof I am increasingly im- 
 pressed with its inadequacy as a defence of Daniel ; especially 
 as I have so very recently (Easter, 1902) published my full 
 answer to the indictment as formulated by Professor Driver and 
 Dean Farrar. In Daniel in the Critic^ Den (1902) not a single point 
 tu-ged by the assailants is overlooked, and the critics are put 
 upon their defence. I have only now had the benefit of reading 
 the " Introduction " and Notes to Daniel in The Temple Bible, 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 AMONG the many stories told of Chief 
 Baron O'Grady, first Lord Guillamore, of 
 the Irish Court of Exchequer, there is one about 
 a judgment of his which is probably unique in 
 judicial annals. The two puisne Barons who 
 were sitting with him in bank in the hearing of 
 an important case, had delivered elaborate judg- 
 ments, taking opposing views of the law ; and the 
 Chief Baron's judgment which followed was given 
 in the single sentence, ** I agree with my brother 
 Smith for the reasons assigned by my brother 
 McClelland." 
 
 When the mind is wavering in its acceptance 
 of what seems to be true and right, there is 
 nothing so helpful as an able and exhaustive 
 statement of all that can be said upon the other 
 side. In this way I owe much to the Higher 
 Critics for settling my faith in Scripture ; and I 
 
 confess that my full acceptance of the Book of 
 
 X42 
 
Ch. XI.] THE BOOK OF JONAH 143 
 
 Jonah dates from my study of their reasons for 
 rejecting it- 
 
 We all know the old woman who was ready to 
 believe that Jonah swallowed the whale, if only 
 the Bible said so ; but we are not all equal to 
 faith feats of that kind. From standard books of 
 great authority I learned that it would be as 
 impossible for a whale to swallow a man as for 
 a man to swallow a whale ; the shark was said 
 to be the only fish in the sea that could accom- 
 plish it ; and my faith became somewhat knock- 
 kneed in presence of the shark.' 
 
 But I was reminded of the words, '* Now the 
 Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up 
 Jonah." Yes, there is no doubt that Almighty 
 God could extemporise a sea monster for the 
 purpose. And such a miracle would not involve 
 a greater display of power than many others ; but 
 it would be a miracle of a kind that has no pre- 
 cedent or analogy in Scripture. We have learned 
 to re-define " supernatural power" ; for "nature " 
 is merely a way of expressing one sphere of God s 
 working. And as already noticed, Divine miracles 
 are wholly free from any merely dramatic display 
 
 * I am not justifying my scepticism. For the word translated 
 "whale " in our New Testament may mean any large fish. But 
 our minds easily become enslaved not only to ideas but to words. 
 
144 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 of the resources of the Almighty.^ My difficulty 
 therefore was, not that what was narrated was 
 supermXaral, but that it seemed ^^/^natural. 
 
 And yet the fact was indisputable that nothing 
 in the Old Testament was accredited more de- 
 finitely by the Lord Jesus Christ than this very 
 miracle. It was used by Him not as an inci- 
 dental illustration, but as a prophecy and a type in 
 the strictest sense, of His death and resurrection. 
 There is no evading this ; and therefore the 
 Christian will find that to jettison the prophet 
 Jonah, so far from calming the waves of scepti- 
 cism, will only bring the barque of his faith into 
 still greater peril. 
 
 We have become accustomed to find that 
 distinguished Professors, and ecclesiastics of high 
 degree, in criticising the Bible, sometimes display 
 ignorance of spiritual things ; but in the sphere of 
 the natural one does expect facts from their lips 
 and pens. A friend of mine put up a new summer- 
 house in his garden. The entrance to it is so 
 wide that a carriage and pair might drive through 
 it ; and that entrance consists of the jaws of a 
 sperm whale ! 
 
 A whale unable to swallow a man ! In his 
 
 * See p. 88, ante. 
 
Ch. XI.] JONAH AND THE WHALE 145 
 
 Cruise of the " CacAe/oi" Mr. Bullen, an experi- 
 enced whale fisher himself, describes the creature s 
 mouth as large enough to hold a picnic party, and 
 he tells of a shark 15 feet long being found 
 in the stomach of one of these monsters. A 
 whale that he himself helped to kill ejected the 
 food it had swallowed; and it was, he says, "in 
 masses of enormous size, some of them being 
 estimated to be of the size of our hatch-house, 
 viz., 8 feet X 6 feet X 6 feet." And in this 
 connection he mentions a fact of special interest 
 here, that the whale when dying vomits the 
 contents of its stomach. 
 
 This same writer discusses the question how a 
 monster so unwieldy can get hold of the smaller 
 fish. "It is manifestly absurd," he says, "to 
 suppose the whale capable of catching fish in the 
 ordinary sense, indicating pursuit. " And his 
 explanation of it is that " as the cachelot swims 
 about with his lower jaw hanging down in its 
 normal position, and his huge gullet gaping 
 like a submarine cavern, the fish unwittingly 
 glide down it." 
 
 When in the light of these facts I again take 
 up the Book of Jonah, I am conscious of a strange 
 revulsion of feeling. The Hebrew Concordance 
 tells me that when I read that " God prepared a 
 
 II 
 
146 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 great fish," the word used is the same as when 
 the king of Babylon "appointed" a certain pro- 
 vision for Daniel and his companions. In other 
 words, the statement means that in the providence 
 of God, when Jonah was thrown overboard, one 
 of these huge sea monsters was swimming by, 
 "his huge gullet gaping like a submarine cavern," 
 and Jonah went down just as a midge might go 
 down the throat of a man when running against 
 the wind. 
 
 This part of the miracle, therefore, which I was 
 inclined to reject as being unprecedented and un- 
 natural, proves to be no miracle at all. Neither 
 is there any miracle in Jonah's being vomited out 
 again: that was a process as natural as for a child 
 to get rid of its dinner. Both the swallowing and 
 the vomiting were perfectly natural, and there 
 was nothing about either to excite even our 
 wonder, much less incredulity. Where the 
 miracle began and ended was that God preserved 
 the life of His servant through it all. 
 
 And here — to repeat a favourite phrase — faith 
 and unbelief must measure their distance. To 
 say that God could not do this is to deny God 
 altogether : to say He would not do it is absurd 
 — any one of us would do it in similar circum- 
 stances if only we had the power : to say He did 
 
Ch. XI.] JONAH ACCREDITED BY CHRIST 147 
 
 not do it is a flagrant case of begging the 
 question. The New Testament refers to Jonah 
 as a prophecy of the resurrection of Christ. For 
 '* He rose again the third day according to the 
 Scriptures'' ;^ and where, save in Jonah, shall 
 we find in the Old Testament a plain and clear 
 prophecy of His rising on the third day? And 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, in the most definite and 
 solemn manner, identified Himself with this very 
 miracle. In the beginning of His ministry 
 "signs" abounded ; but when, after the Council 
 which decreed His rejection, the Pharisees again 
 demanded a "sign," His answer was that the 
 only sign they should have was "the sign of the 
 prophet Jonah." His words, repeated we know 
 not how often, cannot be explained away : — "As 
 Jonah was three days and three nights in the 
 whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three 
 days and three nights in the heart of the earth. "2 
 Some people seem to classify the miracles of 
 Scripture. The little miracles they accept as a 
 matter of course : it is only the big ones which 
 try their faith. I would suggest to such people 
 
 ' I Cor. XV. 4 (see p. 76, anii), 
 
 " Matt. xii. 38-40, and xvi. 4. The Lord may have given the 
 same answer a score of times for aught we know. And see 
 p. 144, an/fi, and Appendix, Note III. 
 
148 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 to enter the Jonah miracle low down on their list, 
 but at the top to place those most stupendous and 
 seemingly incredible of all miracles, the incarna- 
 tion and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 And when in some little measure they have 
 realised who and what He is, His words will 
 silence unbelief; and they will recognise that 
 whatever judgment may be formed upon the 
 Book of Jonah, the fniracle which it records is 
 inseparably identified with the truth of Christianity, 
 
 That it was on account of the miracle that the 
 Germans decreed the rejection of the Book no 
 honest person would dispute. But after their 
 manner, they heaped up incidental reasons for 
 their decision. And these reasons their English 
 followers have, with childlike simplicity, adopted. 
 Their interpretation is of the nightmare kind ; 
 everything in the book ought to have happened 
 differently ; things are included which ought to 
 have been omitted, and things are omitted which 
 ought to have been included. The only element 
 of doubt is whether it is typical, or mythical, or 
 legendary, or allegorical. Historical it certainly 
 cannot be. 
 
 Now this sort of criticism any Old Bailey 
 practitioner could work up far better than the 
 Professors. For let it be kept in view that the 
 
Ch. XL] DR. DRIVER ON JONAH 149 
 
 whole argument from the language of the Book 
 may be ruled out. Professor Driver indeed 
 asserts that " It cannot have been written until 
 long after the time of Jonah." But this is only- 
 Professor Driver's way. Even such an uncom- 
 promising critic as Professor Cheyne dissociates 
 himself from such a conclusion ; ^ and as any one 
 can see, the grounds set out in support of it are 
 entirely inadequate. And this being so, we may 
 dismiss the Hebraists from the inquiry, and 
 consider the general question on its merits. 
 
 Though Professor Driver denies the genuine- 
 ness of the book, he is careful, as usual, to dis- 
 sociate himself from the reckless extremes of 
 the more advanced critics. ** No doubt," he says, 
 ** the outlines of the narrative are historical." 
 And yet "there are indications that it is not 
 strictly historical." ^ These '* indications " are — 
 
 That the conversion of the Ninevites is " con- 
 trary to analogy." 
 
 That such a conversion "should have pro- 
 duced so little permanent effect." 
 
 ■ He somewhat superciliously remarks, "The evidences of date 
 are difficult to seize " {Encyclopcedia Briiannicay article " Jonah "). 
 And see Speaker's Commentary ^ "Jonah," Excursus B ; and also the 
 late Dr. John Kennedy's valuable monograph On the Book of 
 Jonah (chap. viii.). 
 
 ■ Iniroduciionj "Jonah.*' 
 
ISO THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 That it is not "easy to imagine" the king 
 acting as is represented. 
 
 This, remember, represents the superior 
 enlightenment and intelligence of the Higher 
 Criticism. Of the king referred to we know 
 nothing ; and possibly if his character were 
 known it would not be "easy to imagine" his 
 acting in any other way ! And as regards the 
 second point, it is only a student among his 
 books, who knows nothing practically of human 
 nature, who could entertain such an objection. 
 I put it on this ground because it is idle to 
 appeal to the history of the chosen people in 
 the wilderness, for these critics dismiss the 
 divinely given story as a legend. But the 
 repentance of the Ninevites is " contrary to 
 analogy." Yes, and the conduct of masses of 
 men when moved by any powerful passion 
 is generally "contrary to analogy." 
 
 But there is something else which, if we 
 extend our view beyond our own times, is also 
 contrary to analogy ; and that is that any man 
 holding the position of an English clergyman 
 should treat with such entire indifference 
 the words of his Divine Lord. " The men 
 of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this 
 generation, and shall condemn it ; because 
 
Ch. XI.] A TRAVESTY OF JONAH 151 
 
 they repented at the preaching of Jonah ; and, 
 behold, a greater than Jonah is here."' Let the 
 critics, dealing with the studies which alone are 
 within their competence, give us reasons to 
 doubt the genuineness of the Book of Jonah, 
 and we will consider the question on its merits. 
 But that the men of Nineveh repented at the 
 preaching of Jonah is a fact which rests, not on 
 the Book of Jonah merely, but on the word of 
 "a greater than Jonah" — the Lord Jesus Christ 
 Himself.2 
 
 The view of the Book presented by these 
 writers is but a grotesque travesty. We seem 
 to see a dripping, half-drowned Jew rushing 
 through Nineveh, and shouting his startling 
 message, like an escaped lunatic turned town- 
 crier. And presto ! all the inhabitants repent 
 and turn good like clockwork, while the prophet 
 himself turns sulky and bolts. This is their 
 reading of it. This is Higher Criticism ! 
 
 "Oh, the blindness of conventional critics, 
 groping in Hebrew records not for pearls of 
 facts, but for pebbles of dogma ! They have 
 failed to observe that the God of Jonah is the 
 God of the New Testament. Yet it is so, and 
 
 * Matt. xii. 41. ■ See note, p. 74, ante. 
 
152 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 this great book connects the two Bibles, instead 
 of contrasting them." ' 
 
 The Book is essentially a drama, of which the 
 brief and quickly changing scenes present a story 
 that is wonderfully real and intensely human. 
 Can men who scout the idea of a prophet's 
 refusing a call to service, and fleeing from the 
 Lord, know anything of the deeper experiences 
 of a spiritual life ? And in such cases the 
 Divine action is generally "contrary to analogy." 
 When Paul was bidden to go to Rome, and yet 
 turned to Jerusalem, he was brought to Rome 
 as a prisoner, discredited by a chain : when 
 Jonah was bidden to go to Nineveh, and yet 
 took ship for Tarshish, he ended by entering 
 Nineveh as a prophet accredited by a miracle. 
 For the fame of his miraculous deliverance pre- 
 ceded him 2 ; and when he proclaimed that the 
 God by whom he had been thus delivered had 
 decreed the destruction of their city, all men 
 naturally hung upon his words. What calls to 
 righteousness he uttered upon that wonderful 
 
 ' The words are from the pen of Charles Reade. He declares 
 that this Book of " 1,328 English words" "is the most beautiful 
 story ever written in so small a compass " {Bible Characters). 
 
 ' The Lord's words in Luke xi. 30 admit of no other meaning. 
 He Himself as crucified and risen was to be "a sign" to Israel, 
 just as Jonah rescued from death was a sign to the Ninevites. 
 
Ch. XI.] THE TRUE STORY OF JONAH 153 
 
 text during the forty days of his ministry we 
 know not. We can only conjecture what such 
 preaching must have been. 
 
 And when the forty days were expired, he left 
 the capital and made a hermit's lodge in which to 
 wait "till he might see what would become of 
 the city." But the days went by and nothing 
 whatever happened. There must have been 
 critics and sceptics in plenty in a place like 
 Nineveh, and we can well imagine how they 
 crowed. The men of faith, the "overcomers," 
 are **a little flock" in every age ; with the many 
 the prophet and the prophet's God must soon 
 have become a byword and a jest. And we 
 can realise how Jonah would murmur against 
 God, even as Elijah did, and, like him, exclaim, 
 "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of 
 hosts." 
 
 Every Christian who knows what it is to have 
 a spiritual history has in some little measure had 
 such experiences as these. And then it is that 
 a silent heaven crushes us ; then it is that the 
 heart craves some token of the Divine presence. 
 And we can imagine with what gladness Jonah 
 recognised such a token in the gourd raised up 
 to shelter him. We can imagine, too, the bitter- 
 ness of the recoil when the vulgar facts of a 
 
154 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 waking day — the east wind and the garish sun- 
 shine — destroyed his gourd and threw him back 
 upon himself. And as the curtain falls upon 
 this last scene we almost seem to hear the 
 closing words, " Thou hast had pity on the 
 gourd, for which thou hast not laboured, neither 
 madest it to grow ; which came up in a night 
 and perished in a night And should not I 
 spare N ine veh, that great city, wherein are 
 more than six score thousand persons that 
 cannot discern between their right hand and 
 their left?" 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 WHAT I am about to narrate may well 
 appear so incredible that I am prepared 
 to find that my personal guarantee of its truth 
 will at first sight fail to carry conviction. 
 
 A few years ago — I could give details of every 
 part of my narrative — a certain London merchant 
 killed an unfortunate wretch whom circumstances 
 had placed in his power. He did not actually 
 kill him with his own hands, but he had him 
 brought to a secluded room which was deliberately 
 prepared for the purpose, and there he stood by 
 while his victim was strangled by a man whom 
 he had hired to do the deed. I myself examined 
 the place. I can testify, moreover, that all the 
 facts were known, not only to the authorities, but 
 to the Queen. And yet not only did the homicide 
 go unpunished, but, with full knowledge of all I 
 have narrated, Her Majesty singled him out for 
 royal favour and conferred a title upon him. 
 
156 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 What estimate will my readers form of such 
 conduct on the part of one whom we have been 
 taught to regard as a pattern and paragon of 
 public and private virtue? 
 
 But before they pass judgment upon the facts 
 they ought to know a few additional details. The 
 victim of the tragedy I have described was a con- 
 demned murderer ; the man who was paid to 
 strangle him was the common hangman, the 
 secluded room was in Newgate prison, and the 
 merchant who received a knighthood was the 
 Sheriff whose official duty it was to execute the 
 criminal. 
 
 And now the meaning of my parable will begin 
 to dawn upon the reader. Let these added 
 details be suppressed, and a plain narrative which 
 does not contain a syllable that is untrue or even 
 exaggerated, may seem to endanger the reputa- 
 tion of Queen Victoria. And it is precisely by 
 this sort of suppression that the Bible and the 
 God of the Bible are misrepresented. Will any 
 '* person of culture" in our day dare to defend 
 the extermination of the Canaanites ? Will any 
 one, I answer, dare to defend the strangling of a 
 poor helpless wretch in a shut-in room ? 
 
 It is not God's way to justify Himself at the 
 bar of His creature's judgment. He acts and 
 
Ch. XII.] DESTRUCTION OF THE CANAANITES 157 
 
 speaks autocratically. But in this matter He has 
 deigned to explain His decrees. Men read the 
 Bible story in the false light of the evolution 
 craze. They picture to themselves a nun\ber of 
 semi-civilised tribes on the upward path of pro- 
 gress, exterminated by an invading horde of 
 religious fanatics.' But the Christian knows that 
 they were a degenerate and apostate race whose 
 destruction was decreed by a God of infinite 
 mercy, because they had given themselves up to 
 unnatural and loathsome sin. Four centuries 
 had passed since Sodom fell. And among the 
 citizens of Sodom not even ten could be found 
 who were clear of the evil. What then must 
 have been the condition of the land when God at 
 last called in the Israelites as His executioners ? 
 Of the guilty nations there was one that 
 seemed still to merit pity, and on account of that 
 nation the judgment was delayed. If for four 
 generations the favoured people were left as 
 strangers in a strange land, it was ** because the 
 iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full'' ^ 
 
 ' The discoveries of the archeologist make it plain that at the 
 era of the Exodus, Palestine had long enjoyed a high civilisation 
 {Lex Mosaica, p. 9). The nations were lapsing from civilisation, 
 not emerging from barbarism. 
 
 ' Gen. XV. i6, and see xiii. 15 and xviii, 32, and compare Rom. 
 i. 21 ff. This is not a subject for plain speaking. I will dismiss 
 
158 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Considering that the historic Church of Western 
 Christendom, by disparaging the sacred bond of 
 marriage, affects a higher standard of morality 
 than the Divine revelation of Christianity will 
 sanction, it is not strange that men should claim 
 to be more merciful than God. But the Bible 
 narrative makes it clear as light that the exter- 
 mination of the Canaanites was the carrying 
 out of a Divine decree. That the men of a 
 wandering tribe, with neither cavalry nor 
 ** military base," and encumbered by multitudes 
 of women and children and camp followers, 
 should conquer a nation with walled towns 
 and '* chariots of iron " — the equivalent of 
 modern artillery — this is a feat to which his- 
 tory affords no parallel. And seven such nations 
 fell before the Israelite invaders. Such facts 
 seem to indicate that it was as clearly a Divine 
 judgment as was the destruction of Pharaoh's 
 army in the sea. 
 
 To the solution of other ** difficulties" of a 
 kindred type my parable may afford the clew ; as, 
 for example, the imprecatory Messianic Psalms, 
 
 it with the strange confession that prior to knowledge acquired at 
 Scotland Yard, these Divine judgments upon Canaan were a 
 difficulty to my faith. There are some kinds of vice that seem to 
 spread like leprosy, and to become hereditary. 
 
CH.XIL] THE JEWS AND THE WORLD 159 
 
 which are prophetic warnings of Divine judg- 
 ments upon those who take the place of enemies 
 of God. But I turn away to notice briefly 
 difficulties of another kind, which depend, not on 
 ignoring facts, but on perverting them, I will 
 select one as illustrating the class to which I refer. 
 What can be more unlike the Christian's God 
 than the scheme of granting to the Jews a 
 monopoly of Divine favour, and leaving the 
 world to its fate ? To which I will make answer 
 by asking another question, What can be more 
 unlike the Christian's Bible ? 
 
 In commerce there are two well-known 
 systems on which merchants deal with the public. 
 The one is to sell directly to every one who 
 wishes to become a customer ; the other is to 
 deal only through an agent. When the owner 
 of some famous French vineyard, for instance, 
 appoints an English agent, and refuses to supply 
 his wines except through that agent, his object is 
 to make it easier for the English public to obtain 
 supplies, and to ensure them against adulteration 
 and fraud. And God's purpose for Israel was 
 that that favoured nation should be His agents 
 upon earth. Jerusalem was to be " the place of 
 His name." But " the house of God," designed 
 to become a house of prayer for all nations, they 
 
i6o THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 treated as their own, and ended by making it **a 
 den of thieves."^ 
 
 All nations are to be blessed in Christ ; and the 
 Israelites as a people were a type of Christ, and 
 ought to have been a blessing to the world. But 
 instead of bringing honour to the name of God, 
 they caused His name to be blasphemed among 
 the heathen.2 They were as false to -the Divine 
 trust committed to them, as the " historic Church " 
 of Christendom has been in this Christian dispen- 
 sation. 
 
 In cases of this kind human error either ousts 
 Divine truth altogether, or else becomes so 
 identified with it in popular estimation that 
 men in rejecting the error reject also the truth. 
 And in this respect very ** superior persons" are 
 often the greatest offenders. Matthew Arnold, 
 for instance, like many another writer of the same 
 type, identifies the truth of the Eden fall with that 
 horror of Augustinian theology, the damnation of 
 infants.3 Indeed the whole Augustinian doctrine 
 of election, as distinguished from the truth of 
 election, is a case of putting the new wine of the 
 Christian revelation into the old bottles of a 
 bygone dispensation. 
 
 ' I Kings viii. 41-43 ; Isaiah Ivi. 7 ; Mark xi. 17 (R.V,). 
 ** Rom. ii. 24 ; Ezek. xxxvi. 20, 23. 3 See p. 219, post. 
 
Ch. XIL] ARAUNAH'S THRESHINGFLOOR i6i 
 
 I will here notice, in passing, a Biblical 
 "blunder" of which much has been made. In 
 2 Sam. xxiv. 24, we read that David bought the 
 oxen and threshingfloor of Araunah for fifty 
 shekels of silver. From i Chron, xxi. 25, we 
 learn that David gave 600 shekels of gold for the 
 place. It is extraordinary that any honest and 
 intelligent mind could find a difficulty here. 
 Fifty shekels of silver were presumably a fair 
 price, though to us it seems very little, for the 
 oxen and for the temporary use of the threshing- 
 floor, for the purpose of the sacrifice.^ And this 
 was all that the king had in view at the moment. 
 But does any one imagine that the fee-simple of 
 " the place " — the entire site of the Temple — was 
 worth only fifty silver shekels ? David went on 
 to purchase the entire homestead out and out ; 
 and the price he paid for it was 600 shekels of 
 gold. And this is what the " Chronicler " records. 
 
 The " Chronological errors " of the Bible fall 
 within the same category. Mere textual blunders 
 seem scarcely worth notice here, such, e,g,^ as the 
 
 * The English reader must not base anything on the force of 
 the English words " buy " and " bought " in 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. The 
 narrative in Chronicles suggests that it was the Lord*s "answering 
 him by fire " that led the king to go on to the purchase of the 
 place. 
 
 12 
 
i62 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 reading seven Instead of three in 2 Sam. xxiv. 13,^ 
 and eight instead of eighteen in 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9. 
 Having regard to all the circumstances, the wonder 
 is that such mistakes are so rare. But the whole 
 scheme of Biblical chronology is regarded as 
 proof of error. This will repay looking into. 
 
 No sceptic will accept the wild chronology of 
 the Egyptologists. If the English people were 
 not so unimaginative, they would reckon the 
 several dynasties of the Heptarchy as successive, 
 and thus lay claim to a really imposing national 
 antiquity. But no one who has studied the 
 subject will dispute that the story of man's 
 tenancy of the earth reaches back to an earlier 
 period than Biblical chronology appears to 
 warrant. Such a discovery, however, troubles 
 only those who suppose the Bible to be a history 
 of the human race. 2 
 
 Upon this subject the intelligent Bible student 
 will not fail to arrive at three conclusions. The 
 first is that there is a definite system in Biblical 
 chronology ; and the second is that the writers 
 had no thought of any system whatever. And, 
 thirdly, finding that there Is a system, and that it 
 
 ' LXX. reads three, and this in itself proves that it is merely an 
 error of copying. 
 ' See p. 194, post 
 
Ch. XII.] BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY 163 
 
 is not the outcome of human thought or plan, he 
 will accept the obvious conclusion that it is 
 Divine. 
 
 Some of our chronologists have vaguely noticed 
 such a system, but all of them have been misled 
 by the universally prevailing error of regarding 
 the birth of Christ, and not the Crucifixion, as the 
 crisis and close of the Jewish dispensation. As 
 to His birth date Scripture is silent; but His 
 death date is fixed with definiteness. For no date 
 in history is indicated more precisely than the 
 epoch of the Ministry, namely, the 15th year of 
 Tiberius Csesar ; and as the Crucifixion occurred 
 at the fourth Passover of the Ministry, its date is 
 definitely fixed by Scripture itself as inA,D. 32.' 
 
 On a subject of this kind all heresies and fads 
 are to be deprecated. Let us accept the dates as 
 given by our greatest chronologist, Fynes Clinton. 
 But with one slight correction. His " Adam " 
 date is B.C. 4138, and his ** Deluge " date 2482 ; 
 but for cogent reasons given by the learned 
 author of the Ordo sceclorum, I would add three 
 years to the Gen. xii.-xiv. period, and fix the 
 
 * Luke iii. i is an end of controversy on this subject with all 
 who reject the nightmare system of interpreting Scripture. The 
 matter is fully discussed in Daniel in the Critics' Den, App. vi., 
 and also in The Coming Prince^ to which I beg to refer the reader. 
 
1 64 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Creation at B.C. 4141, and the Deluge at B.C. 2485. 
 Clinton assigns the Call of Abraham to B.C. 2055, 
 and the Exodus to B.C. 1625. 
 
 Clinton fixed these several dates without 
 reference to any system ; but their striking 
 significance will be made clear by the following 
 table : — 
 
 B.C. 
 
 4141 Adam — The Creation. 1 ^^^- . 
 
 ^ ^ v 1050 years. I 
 
 2485 Noah— The Flood. \ \ 2086 years. 
 
 >430 years. J 
 205 s Abraham — The Covenant^ 
 
 j-430 years. ") 
 1625 Moses — The Law. J V2086 years. 
 
 A.D.32 Christ — The Crucifixion.. 
 
 ^I656years._ 
 
 Now to dismiss these results as accidental is 
 simply absurd. Certain it is that they are 
 absolutely accidental in the sense that they were 
 not designed either by the chronologist or by the 
 ** Biblical writers." But the proof these figures 
 afford of a Divine plan of ** time and seasons " is 
 overwhelming. And if any one should still in- 
 sist that the results are a mere coincidence, the 
 mathematician will tell him that the probabilities 
 against such a coincidence are altogether incalcu- 
 lable. In a word, such a conclusion is a misbelief 
 which revolts our intelligence. 
 
Ch. XIL] biblical chronology 165 
 
 Are we, then, to conclude that the period from 
 this "Coronation year," 1902, to the first appear- 
 ance of the Adam race on earth was exactly 6,042 
 years ? By no means. Scripture itself will furnish 
 us with a clew to the system on which the Divine 
 chronology is framed. 
 
 According to i Kings vi. i, Solomon's temple 
 was begun in the 480th year from the Exodus. 
 " If a little of the time and energy which the critics 
 have expended in denouncing that passage as a 
 forgery or a blunder had been devoted to searching 
 for its hidden meaning, their labours might per- 
 chance have been rewarded. That the chronology 
 of the period was known is plain from Acts xiii., 
 which enables us to reckon the very same era as 
 573 years. How then can this seeming error of 
 93 years be accounted for ? It is precisely the 
 sum of the several eras of the Servitudes, The 
 inference, therefore, is clear that * the 480th year ' 
 means the 480th year of national life and national 
 responsibilities." ^ 
 
 * Acts xiii. 18-21 gives 40 years in the wilderness, 450 years 
 under the Judges, and 40 years for the reign of Saul. To which 
 must be added the 40 years of David's reign, and the first three 
 years of Solomon, for it was in his fourth year that he began to 
 build the Temple. The servitudes were to Mesopotamia for & 
 years, to Moab for 18 years, to Canaan for 20 years, to Midian for 
 7 years, and to the Philistines for 40 years. See Judges iii. 8, 14 ; 
 iv. 2, 3 ; vi. i. ; xiii. i. But 8 + 18 + 20 + 7 + 40 years are pre- 
 
1 66 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Call this a coincidence, and the mathematician 
 will tell you again that the probabilities against 
 such a coincidence are simply incalculable. 
 When the rejection of one hypothesis involves the 
 acceptance of another, mere unbelief degenerates 
 into misbelief. 
 
 A life without God is death. Righteousness 
 must keep a strict account, or Grace may pardon. 
 And when God forgives sin, He " remembers it 
 no more." The record is wiped out, and the time 
 it covers is treated as a blank. The days of our 
 servitude to sin are ignored in the Divine chron- 
 
 cisely equal to 93 years. To believe that this is a mere 
 coincidence would involve an undue strain upon our faith. 
 
 Acts, xiii, 20 is one of the very many passages where the New 
 Testament Revisers have corrupted the text through neglect of 
 the well-known principles by which experts are guided in dealing 
 ■with conflicting evidence. It is certain that neither the apostle 
 ^aid, nor the evangelist wrote, that Israel's enjoyment of the land 
 was limited to 450 years, or that 450 years elapsed before the era 
 of the Judges. The text adopted by R.V. is therefore clearly 
 wrong. Dean Alford regards it " as an attempt at correcting the 
 difficult chronology of the verse ; " and he adds, " taking the 
 words as they stand, no other sense can be given to them than 
 that the time of the Judges lasted 450 years." That is, as he 
 explains, not that the Judges ruled for 450 years — in which case 
 the accusative would be used, as in verse i8 — but, as the use of 
 the dative implies, that the period until Saul, characterised by the 
 rule of the Judges, lasted 450 years. 
 
 The objection that I omit the servitude of Judges x. 7, 8 is met 
 by a reference to the R.V. The punctuation of the passage in 
 Bagster*s Bible perverts the sense. That servitude affected only 
 the tribes beyond Jordan. 
 
Ch. XII.] BIBLICAL CHRONOLOGY 167 
 
 ology. May not this be the explanation of the 
 enigma ? And if it be, we shall be prepared to 
 find that possibly the Divine chronology of the 
 race omits as many periods of various lengths as 
 does the 480 years era of i Kings vi. 
 
 But this is mere conjecture. What concerns us 
 is the fact^ first, that the chronology of the Old 
 Testament is framed upon a system, and a system, 
 moreover, which is not of human design ; and 
 secondly, that there is a mystic element in it. 
 And if when the Egyptologists have been brought 
 to reason by some process akin to " cross-examin- 
 ation," it should become clear that the history of 
 our race extends back far beyond the time of 
 which Scripture appears to take cognisance, the 
 discrepancy may be thus accounted for. 
 
 The element of design is beyond question, and 
 the clew to it is to be found in the history of the 
 favoured people. As we have seen, the covenant 
 with Abraham is made the central date between 
 the Creation and the Cross, and the ages measured 
 back and forward from that epoch are each 
 divided into two periods of equal length, but 
 in inverse order. And the history of that people 
 is marked throughout by cycles of *' seventy 
 weeks " of years. 
 
 From the entrance into Canaan (b.c. 1586-5) 
 
i68 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 to the establishment of the monarchy (b.c. 1096) 
 was 490 years. 
 
 From the kingdom (b.c. 1096) to the Servitude 
 to Babylon (b.c. 606) was 490 years. 
 
 From the conquest by Babylon the national 
 history of Judah was suspended until the royal 
 edict of Artaxerxes Longimanus of Persia ordered 
 the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, and 
 restored the old polity of the Judges ; and then 
 began the mystic era of 490 years which con- 
 stitute the " seventy weeks " of Daniel's prophecy. 
 
 And from the dedication of Solomon's temple 
 (b.c. 1005) to the dedication of the second temple 
 in the sixth year of Darius Hystaspis (b.c. 515) 
 was also a period of 490 years. 
 
 Now all this is deduced from works written in 
 different ages by men who had no plan or purpose 
 of the kind in view. To attribute the results to 
 chance is too silly for discussion, and no intelli- 
 gent person will hesitate to conclude that the 
 chronology of the Old Testament is part of a 
 Divine plan, or " economy of times and seasons." 
 I deprecate the suggestion that the Christian's 
 faith in the Bible depends on such incidental 
 proofs of its ** hidden harmony." But they are 
 not altogether without value as an antidote to 
 the scepticism of the critics. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 I HAVE a vivid recollection of a conversation 
 it was my privilege to hold some years ago 
 with one whose words, whether by voice or pen, 
 always command the attention of the public, and 
 who has identified himself to some extent with 
 the Higher Criticism. He took exception to my 
 saying that the truth of Christianity is identified 
 with the Divine authority of the Hebrew Scrip- 
 tures. The teaching of the Lord Himself, he 
 averred, was its full and sufficient basis ; and for 
 that teaching we are dependent only on the 
 Gospels. And on my pressing him he maintained 
 that the Gospels were inspired in a special sense 
 — in the strictest sense, indeed, in which both 
 Jews and Christians have spoken of inspiration — 
 so that even in such prolonged discourses as ''the 
 Sermon on the Mount," we have an infallible 
 record of the very words of Christ. 
 
 " But," I urged, "if you accept the inspiration 
 
 169 
 
170 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 of the Gospels — and the denial of it destroys the 
 only reasonable foundation for our faith in Christ 
 — you must accept also the Lord's teaching as to 
 the Divine authority of the Old Testament. You 
 want me to believe, moreover, that the Gospel 
 of Luke, for example, is fully and strictly inspired, 
 but that the Acts, written by the same Evangelist, 
 is of lower authority and value ; and that the 
 Epistles, though written by inspired Apostles, 
 were not inspired in the same sense as the 
 Gospels, two of which are by men who were not 
 apostles at all." 
 
 To this I received no answer. Nor is any 
 answer possible. Every free and fearless thinker 
 will side with me in saying that no compromise 
 of the kind thus proposed is tenable. We must 
 make choice between two positions in this matter. 
 Either the Bible is "God-breathed" (which is 
 the traditional belief of the people of God in all 
 ages), or else its claim to our faith is merely that 
 it consists in the main of the writings of men who 
 received Divine revelations, and therefore that it 
 contains such revelations. Or to state the prob- 
 lem in other words, either the Bible is the Word 
 of God, or it merely contains portions and truths 
 which may in a sense be thus described. 
 
 And the question here involved is not affected 
 
Ch. XIIL] inspiration of scripture 171 
 
 by doubts as to the genuineness of some particular 
 book or books. If an expert examines the con- 
 tents of my purse and convinces me that one of 
 my coins is spurious, the discovery only serves to 
 give me increased confidence in the value of the 
 rest. This is not in the least what people usually 
 mean who say that the Bible merely contains the 
 Word of God. They mean that the human 
 element so permeates the mass that no part of it 
 is absolutely Divine. The Divine element, there- 
 fore, which is also present, and on account of 
 which they maintain in a sense the Inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, is no guarantee of absolute 
 truth. In fact they give to the word Inspiration 
 *' a meaning which is in great measure independent 
 of the truth or falsehood of the writings so 
 inspired."' 
 
 Now any person of ordinary intelligence can 
 see that a Bible of this kind affords no ground 
 for faith. We may say "I think," "I hope;" 
 but to go on and say " I believe," " I know," 
 would be unwarrantable. This does not trouble 
 the mere library student ; but those who are 
 actively engaged in the Christian ministry, and 
 have practical acquaintance with the spiritual 
 
 ■ Prebendary Waco, D.D., Lex Mosaica, p. 610. 
 
172 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 needs of men, know well that this half scepticism 
 will not satisfy any who are alive to the great 
 realities of "sin and righteousness and judgment." 
 For nothing short of certainty will satisfy the 
 awakened soul. 
 
 Until recent years, in Britain at least, certainty 
 was found in the Bible regarded as Divinely 
 inspired ; and here it was that faith and unbelief 
 measured their distance. But it is a notable test 
 of the growth of " the Christian religion " and the 
 decline of Christianity, that so many of those who 
 give up the Bible are eager to claim a footing in 
 the camp of faith. The compromise which satis- 
 fies some is that to which I have referred, the 
 setting up an inner Canon within the Canon of 
 Scripture, by arbitrarily selecting certain books 
 as being in a special sense inspired. But this, as 
 we have seen, is not even consistent with itself. 
 
 The Lux Mundi school, on the other hand, 
 has fallen back on "the Church" as the source 
 of authority. In this matter the position of the 
 Church of Rome is that of the Latin fathers in 
 the teaching of the fourth and fifth centuries. It 
 was definitely formulated by Augustine of Hippo, 
 according to whom, as Professor Harnack puts it, 
 ** The Church guaranteed the truth of the faith, 
 when the individual could not perceive it." But 
 
Ch. XIIL] THE "LUX MUNDI" SCHOOL 173 
 
 behind the Church was an inspired, and therefore 
 infallible, Bible, of which it was the Divinely ap- 
 pointed custodian. I Now this position is at least 
 intelligent, and it may be stated in a way that seems 
 to command approval. Our Courts of Justice are 
 not above the law, but they are the accredited 
 exponents of the law ; and it rests with them, and 
 not with private persons, to interpret the law. 
 And so here, the Church does not claim to supplant 
 the Bible, but merely to interpret it authoritatively 
 and infallibly. 
 
 And this was, with certain modifications, the 
 position maintained by English High Churchmen 
 of the last generation. But the new school of 
 which the editor of Lux Mundi is the aposde, 
 sets up the Church, not because the private 
 Christian is incompetent to interpret the infallible 
 Bible, but because the Bible, so far from being 
 infallible, is marred by error, and therefore affords 
 no sure basis of faith. 
 
 The ancient theory is thus described by 
 Professor Huxley in his last letter in the Times 
 correspondence cited in a previous chapter 2 : — 
 **The infallible Church guarantees the infallibility 
 
 • This is reaffirmed in that wonderful document, the Pope's 
 Encyclical letter of November 18, 1893. 
 ' Chap. IX., ante. 
 
174 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 of the Bible ; and the infallible Bible guarantees 
 the infallibility of the Church. But if the Hindoo 
 who rested the earth-bearing elephant upon a 
 tortoise, and was met by the question, * On what 
 then does the tortoise rest ? ' had answered, * On 
 the elephant,' the reply would not have very 
 much assisted the querist." 
 
 But this writers '* earth-bearing elephant" rests 
 upon a tortoise which rests upon nothing. He 
 claims belief of the facts recorded in the Gospels, 
 but refuses to guarantee that the Gospels are free 
 from error ; and when we demand why we should 
 believe them, the answer we get is, '*To these 
 facts, in the Church's name^ we claim assent." We 
 are to accept the facts, he tells us, not only with- 
 out raising the question whether the Scriptures 
 which record them are inspired, but without 
 exacting an assurance even that they are true.' 
 
 I cite these witnesses merely to confirm what 
 every intelligent thinker must recognise, that 
 faith — or, in other words, Christianity — must 
 have some fixed and sure foundation. And this 
 we have first and chiefly in the words of the Lord 
 
 ' Bishop Gore's creed on this subject is formulated in Lux 
 Mundi (see p. 340 especially), a work to which in his more recent 
 treatise on the Church he expressly refers his readers. I have 
 more fully discussed the question in The Buddka of Christendom, 
 
Ch. XIIL] our LORD'S TESTIMONY 175 
 
 Jesus Christ Himself. *' Heaven and earth shall 
 pass away," He declared, '* but My words shall 
 not pass away," His words were not " inspired " : 
 they were absolutely Divine : it is the record of 
 them that is inspired. Nor let any one object 
 that here my argument moves in a vicious circle. 
 For these pages are addressed to Christians, and 
 the faith of the Christian can have no other basis 
 than the Gospels, regarded as God-breathed 
 Scripture. H I were writing for sceptics — if the 
 question at issue were the truth of Christianity — 
 my argument would run on different lines. 
 
 And from this standpoint it is that we proceed 
 to consider the character of the Bible as a whole. 
 As we have seen, the Hebrew Scriptures are 
 accredited to us by the Lord Himself. i His 
 language respecting them is clear and explicit: 
 *' The Scriptures cannot be broken." " They are 
 they which testify of Me." "It is easier for 
 heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the 
 law to fail." And the resurrection brought no 
 change in His teaching. Kenosis theories, there- 
 fore, will avail nothing here. " Beginning at 
 Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto 
 them in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
 
 * See pp. 67-69, ante. 
 
176 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Himself." ** And He said unto them, These are 
 the words which I spake unto you while I was 
 yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled 
 which were written in the Law of Moses, and in 
 the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning 
 Me.'' ^ This was the well - known threefold 
 division of the Hebrew Bible — the Law, the 
 Prophets, and the other writings. The Book 
 of Psalms came first in the last division of the 
 Canon, and thus gave its name to the whole. 
 The Bible which the Lord thus unfolded to His 
 disciples was identical with the Old Testament 
 we have in our hands to-day, not one book or 
 chapter less or more, and He thus accredited it 
 as a whole and in every part as being a testimony 
 to Himself. 2 
 
 But the question remains whether the New 
 Testament has equal claims upon our faith. 
 
 Now, first, let us mark the Lord's assurances 
 and promises to those whom He left as His 
 witnesses upon earth. In view of persecution to 
 come. He said this to them, " When they deliver 
 you up, take no thought how or what ye shall 
 speak ; for it shall be given you in that same 
 hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that 
 
 » Luke xxiv. 27, 44. " See p. 68, ante. 
 
Ch. XIII.] VERBAL INSPIRATION 177 
 
 speak, but the Spirit of your Father which 
 speaketh in you." ^ At another time, and in a 
 different connection, He said again, " When they 
 bring you before the synagogues, and the rulers, 
 and the authorities, be not anxious how or what 
 ye shall answer, or what ye shall say ; for the 
 Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour 
 what ye ought to say." 2 
 
 If " verbal inspiration " is not here implied, 
 will some one tell us how it could be more clearly 
 described or expr'essed? Or are we to suppose 
 that these men were to utter Divinely given 
 words when defending themselves before the 
 courts, but that they were to sink to some lower 
 level of inspiration when declaring or expound- 
 ing truth for the guidance of the Church in all 
 ages? ** He that heareth you heareth Me," He 
 said in appointing them to their ministry ; 3 and 
 so fully was their testimony to rank with His 
 own, that a worse doom than that of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah shall befall the house or city that 
 refused to "hear their words J' ^ 
 
 ' Matt. X. 19, 20. " Luke xii. 11, 12 (R.V.). 
 
 3 The fact that these words have been prostituted by the 
 Church of Rome to cover the gigantic imposture of its claims, 
 must not be allowed to rob us of their true meaning and 
 legitimate application. 
 
 < Matt. X. 14, 15. 
 
 13 
 
178 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 At the first great Pentecost, we read, '* They 
 were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began 
 to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave 
 them utterance/' Again I ask, if this be not 
 "verbal inspiration," what is? But though thus 
 inspired to preach to a Jerusalem crowd, these 
 same men were left to "sanctified mother wit" 
 when they sat down to write the Gospels which 
 were to be the basis of His people's faith to the 
 end of time ! 
 
 Here was His promise to them : " The 
 Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father 
 will send in My name. He shall teach you all 
 things, and bring all things to your remembrance, 
 whatsoever I have said unto you," ' If these 
 words were fulfilled, there is an end of the 
 inspiration controversy so far as the New 
 Testament is concerned. 
 
 Some writers on Inspiration convey the im- 
 pression that they regard it as a sort of spiritual 
 electricity or steam, which was not to be wasted 
 by supplying more than absolutely necessary. 
 And judging God by their own mean thoughts, 
 they suppose the supply was so stingy as actually 
 to fail of its purpose altogether. For that 
 
 ' lohn xiv. 26. 
 
Ch.XIII.] inspiration of the epistles 179 
 
 purpose was not to please or satisfy cranks or 
 critics, but to reveal to us with absolute definite- 
 ness and certainty the truth of God for faith to 
 rest upon, and the will of God for heart and 
 life to follow and obey. And any inspiration 
 which comes short of this is practically worth- 
 less. 
 
 Now when we come to the Epistles we must 
 read them in the light of these promises of 
 inspiration and infallible guidance to those who 
 wrote them. We know the estimate in which, 
 under the Lord's teaching, the Apostle Peter 
 held the Old Testament prophets ; ' and yet 
 he makes those prophets subordinate to the 
 apostles. *' Unto whom it was revealed," he 
 writes, " that not unto themselves, but unto us 
 did they minister the things which are now 
 reported unto you by them that have preached 
 the Gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent 
 down from heaven^ 2 For they had the presence 
 of the Holy Spirit in a new and peculiar sense, 
 unknown even to the prophets of Jehovah. And 
 
 ' See p. 51, anit, 
 
 =* I Pet. i. 12. This is to be understood by reference to the 
 Lord's promise that they would have the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit in a special sense different from that in which He was with 
 the people of God before the ascension Qohn xiv, 17 ; xv. 26 ; 
 xvi. 7, 13). 
 
i8o THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 therefore their words were Divine. " The mouth 
 of Jehovah hath spoken it," was Isaiah*s language 
 respecting the great prophecy of comfort, and he 
 added, "the word of our God shall stand for 
 ever." And these identical words are applied 
 by the apostle to the apostolic preaching. Their 
 word was ** the Word of God " by which be- 
 lieving souls were born again to God — that 
 word which **endureth for ever."' 
 
 If this was not verbal inspiration, what is ? 
 But are we to suppose that this enlightenment 
 was limited to Gospel sermons, and denied them 
 when they entered upon the discharge of their 
 highest apostolic functions ? ^ 
 
 And not only does the Apostle Peter place 
 apostolic words on a par with those of the 
 greatest of the Hebrew prophets ; he goes 
 further and brackets the Epistles of the Apostle 
 Paul with ** the other Scriptures " 3 — thoge holy 
 writings which "cannot be broken," which were 
 held to be "the Word of God" — "the oracles 
 of God." 
 
 ^ I Pet. i. 23-25 ; Isa. xl. 5-8. 
 
 " The Church of Christendom regards the preaching the Gospel 
 to the world as essentially an apostolic function. But this was 
 precisely the ministry which, after Pentecost, the apostles left to 
 the body of believers (Acts viii. i, 4. Mark the words, " except 
 the apostles."). 
 
 » 2 Pet. iii, 15, 16. 
 
Ch. XIII.] THE APOSTLE PAUL'S CLAIM i8i 
 
 And the Aposde Paul himself, when his 
 authority was questioned in Corinth, wrote such 
 words as these : " If any man think himself to 
 be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge 
 that the things which I write unto you are the 
 commandments of the Lord." * 
 
 Now in these pages I am not laying down 
 , the law, or defending any theory of inspiration. 
 I am writing merely as a Christian to Christians, 
 and dealing with Scripture as I find it. And I 
 have done so in an unconventional way which 
 will shock some old-fashioned people. At the 
 risk of still further offending them, I will ask 
 this question : "If this is not the language of 
 an inspired apostle, and intended to place his 
 Epistle on a par with the very words of His Lord 
 and Master, must we not write him down as 
 either an hysterical fool or an arrogant and pro- 
 fane ecclesiastic } " 
 
 And now I ask for special attention to this 
 Apostle's language in the earlier part of this same 
 Epistle : it is the nearest thing the Bible gives 
 to an explanation of inspiration. " Now," he 
 writes, "we have received, not the spirit of the 
 world, but the spirit which is of God ; that we 
 
 * I Cor, xiv. 37. 
 
i82 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 might know the things that are freely given us by 
 God. Which things also we speak, not in the 
 words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which 
 the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual 
 things with spiritual." ^ For the translation of 
 these last words, the Revisers suggest two alter- 
 natives.2 But to avoid side issues, let us take 
 the passage as it stands. And I ask, If the 
 apostle had in view the suggestion that inspiration 
 extended only to the ''things" he wrote, and not 
 to the words in which he wrote them, could he 
 have met it more definitely ? 
 
 Not only were his communications about things 
 Divinely revealed, but they were made, not in 
 words such as human wisdom would suggest, but 
 in words taught him by the Spirit of God. Will 
 some one tell us how " verbal inspiration " could 
 be expressed, if this does not express it ? Or 
 does the critic again try to escape by the quibble 
 that this kind of inspiration applied only to 
 apostolic speakingy and not to apostolic writing? 
 
 Not, I repeat, that such inspiration places the 
 Apostle in the position of the Planchette in a 
 
 ' I Cor, ii. 12, 13. 
 
 = The one is to read combining for "comparing," in which 
 case the clause means, " combining the things of the Spirit with 
 the words which the Spirit teaches us to use in regard to them " ; 
 and the other is, " interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men," 
 
Ch. XIIL] THE APOCALYPSE 183 
 
 spiritualistic siance — as a sort of animated type- 
 writing machine. In inspiration God uses the 
 mind as well as the hand of man, and He gives 
 His revelation in human words — the language 
 of the agent whom He thus employs.^ 
 
 I have dealt thus briefly with the Epistles. Of 
 the Apocalypse I need not speak at all ; for all 
 must recognise that if it be not what it claims to 
 be — a Divine revelation — its visions may be 
 dismissed as the lucubration of a disordered 
 brain. And between these alternatives the 
 Christian will not hesitate. It fitly closes the 
 sacred volume. " It recapitulates and confirms 
 all the preceding testimony of prophets and 
 apostles. As it refers to the history of God's 
 kingdom on earth from the Garden of Eden to 
 the reign of David — so it brings before us, in 
 new combinations, and with a light fuller and 
 brighter, the symbolism of Isaiah and Daniel, of 
 Ezekiel and Zechariah. The glorious facts and 
 doctrines revealed in the Gospels and Epistles, are 
 presented here in the most condensed form. Only 
 in the light of its predecessors can this Book be 
 understood. The wonderful and manifold threads 
 laid during many centuries are here connected ; 
 
 * See pp. 86, 87 ante. 
 
i84 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 the voices of all previous witnesses are blended 
 together for the last time, in harmony majestic 
 and melodious." ' 
 
 **But," it will be said, "if we come down to 
 the prosaic level of fact, all this is met and answered 
 by the errors of the New Testament ; and it is 
 chiefly in the Gospels — the pivot on which all the 
 rest is made to turn, that these errors will be 
 found." This claims consideration, and the 
 following chapters shall be devoted to it. 
 
 ■ The words are Adolph Saphir's. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 TO poison a healthy body with the virus of 
 a foul disease is horrible, but yet when 
 smallpox is raging vaccination becomes a duty. 
 And in these days when an epidemic of scepticism 
 prevails, and no one can hear a sermon or read 
 a book without risk of infection, inoculation by 
 a friendly hand may possiby serve to avert a 
 malignant attack of the disease. 
 
 Let us be done with grandmotherly theology. 
 The dark ages are past and gone. We belong 
 to an age of enlightenment, The Twentieth 
 Century has dawned. No Protestant, moreover, 
 should fear free thought. To fall back upon 
 authority and traditional beliefs is sheer apostasy 
 from the principles of the Reformation. 
 
 Beneath appeals like these there lies a definite 
 element of truth. And, truth or no truth, they 
 are always popular. I am bound, moreover, in 
 honesty to confess that personally I am pre- 
 
 I8S 
 
i86 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 disposed to respond to them. Every book I 
 have written gives proof of fearlessness in 
 bringing critical methods to bear upon the study 
 of Scripture. I cannot associate myself with any 
 general campaign against criticism. My quarrel 
 with the Higher Criticism is not because it is 
 criticism, but because, instead of being what it 
 claims to be, it is criticism of a spurious 
 type. 
 
 I have already referred to the Ptolemaic 
 System. " Ptolemy the Astronomer was a 
 ' Higher Critic' The belief had long prevailed 
 that the sun was the centre of our system ; but he 
 had no difficulty in proving that this traditional 
 belief was untenable. Once he got men to 
 consider the matter from their own standpoint, 
 all could see the absurdity of supposing that the 
 earth on which they lived and moved was flying 
 helter-skelter round the sun. And nothing more 
 was needed but to keep the mind occupied with 
 the many apparent difficulties of the hypothesis 
 he opposed, to the exclusion of all thought of 
 the few but insurmountable difficulties of the 
 theory he advocated. The Professors and 
 experts were convinced, the multitude followed 
 suit, and for more than a thousand years the 
 puerilities of the Ptolemaic System held sway, 
 
Ch. XIV.] THE "PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM" 187 
 
 with the sanction of infallible science and the 
 blessing of an infallible Church." ' 
 
 Let us then turn to study the Scriptures on 
 the " Ptolemaic System." This kind of work 
 is not to my liking, but I think I could do it as 
 well as the Professors. Shutting out God, let us 
 insist on dealing with the Bible from the purely 
 human standpoint, and treat it as a purely human 
 book. Were I writing a many-volumed work. 
 I should like to go over the whole of the Old and 
 New Testament in this way. But here I must 
 be content to take a test case, as the lawyers 
 would say ; and I cannot do better than keep to 
 the Gospels. And still further to limit the 
 subject, I will confine myself to the First and 
 the Fourth. I want to inoculate the reader with 
 the scepticism virus. 
 
 Apart from superstition and the thraldom of 
 received opinions, can any honest-minded person 
 fail to recognise that these Gospels receive their 
 colour and mould from the idiosyncrasies of the 
 men who wrote them ? Could we not name a 
 '* Matthew " and a '* John " within the circle of 
 our own acquaintance? Matthew is a man of 
 narrow mind and heart, who has not a thought 
 
 * Daniel in the Critics' Den, 1902 Ed., p. 146. 
 
1 88 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 beyond the interests of his little land and people. 
 The very first sentence of his book gives proof 
 of this. His Messiah is the son of Abraham the 
 Arab chief, and of David the petty tribal king. 
 The triviality of Joseph's pedigree is his next 
 concern. He then goes on to record the birth 
 of the sacred child as connected with a dream 
 and a prophecy ; and he makes occasion to bring 
 in a story of his being hailed, even in infancy, as 
 ** King of the Jews," and being regarded by 
 king Herod as a rival claimant to his throne. 
 
 The preaching attributed to the Messiah is 
 another indication of the writer's character. We 
 all know the sort of man who delights in the 
 pedantry of discarding familiar expressions, and 
 of using phrases peculiar to himself. Such a man 
 was Matthew. Three-and- thirty times he insists 
 on writing "kingdom of heaven," though not 
 one of all the other writers of the New Testament 
 employs the expression even once. It was not 
 that he coined it. He borrowed it from the Book 
 of Daniel, which relates so specially to the fortunes 
 of the Jewish nation. 
 
 Then comes "the Sermon on the Mount," that 
 crux of the orthodox. People of a certain sort 
 pretend that the world could be governed on the 
 principles there enunciated ; but they are careful 
 
Ch. XIV.] THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 189 
 
 not to act on them when their own interests are 
 involved. This is followed by the record of a few 
 extraordinary miracles ; and next we come to the 
 sending out of the disciples. And what a com- 
 mission they received, if Matthew may be trusted ! 
 " Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into 
 any city of the Samaritans enter ye not : but go 
 rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel." ^ 
 Jews, and none but Jews, are even to hear about 
 the Saviour of the world ! Could the wit of man 
 frame words more inconsistent with what the rest 
 of the New Testament declares to be the spirit 
 and scope of Christianity ! 2 
 
 But why go on ? From the first chapter to the 
 last we shall search in vain for a single sentence 
 to raise the narrative above the plane of Jewish 
 interests and hopes. Even the great prophecy 
 recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter has 
 Jerusalem for its centre. And the vision of 
 judgment in the chapter which follows represents 
 blessing or doom to the Gentiles according as 
 
 ' Matt. X. 5, 6. 
 
 ■ " If Christianity consist of the doctrines preached in the 
 Fourth Gospel it is not too much to say that the Synoptists do not 
 teach Christianity at all. The extraordinary phenomenon is 
 presented of three Gospels, each professing to be complete in 
 itself, and to convey the good tidings of salvation to man, which 
 have actually omitted the doctrines which are the conditions of 
 that salvation " (Supernatural Religion, ii. 465). 
 
i^o THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 they befriended or persecuted the favoured nation. 
 And finally, even the great commission after the 
 resurrection is represented here as addressed to 
 Jews, charging them to baptize and teach the 
 Gentiles.^ 
 
 The change from the First Gospel to the Fourth 
 is like emerging from a gloomy cloister to the 
 free air of heaven and the open sunshine. The 
 True Light was in the world — His own world, 
 the world that He had made. ** The Word was 
 made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and 
 truth." And the secret of His coming was 
 because God loved the world ; and the purpose 
 of it was " that whosoever believeth in Him 
 should not perish, but have eternal life." Who- 
 soever. The narrow channel of a nation's hopes 
 is lost in the great wide sea of Divine love. And 
 there is life, and not judgment, for the sinner 
 who believes. ** For God sent not His Son into 
 the world to condemn the world ; but that the 
 world through Him might be saved." 
 
 But here a doubt obtrudes itself: a cloud 
 appears and shuts out our sunshine. If the 
 peculiarities of the First Gospel be due to the 
 
 ' This is true ; but the inference here drawn from it is, I need 
 not say, entirely false. The commission is a prophetic one. 
 See The Buddha of Christendom, pp. 270-273. 
 
Ch. XIV.] DIFFICULTIES AND DOUBTS 191 
 
 character of the writer of it, may not also the 
 distinctive features of the Fourth be thus ac- 
 counted for. And if it be clear that both cannot 
 be inspired, what ground is left for claiming a 
 Divine authorship for either ? 
 
 Difficulties and doubts of this kind troubled me 
 even before I left school. But fortunately I did 
 not then know that they were supposed to be 
 proof of abnormal cleverness. ,For though in 
 childhood I often met a pundit who, as I after- 
 wards discovered, was one of the pioneers of 
 Higher Criticism in this country, he never tried 
 to corrupt the faith of the young, as so many of 
 his successors do to-day. And had he done so he 
 might possibly have failed to influence me ; for 
 we children were impressed not so much by his 
 great learning as by his great silliness. So in 
 my schoolboy days, instead of thinking I was 
 very clever, I took for granted I was very 
 wicked ; and I generally dismissed the matter in 
 the hope that when I became a Christian in the 
 true and real sense, I should be able to read the 
 Bible differently, and to understand things which 
 then seemed to me inexplicable — a hope that was 
 in due time realised, though not in the trans- 
 cendental way that I expected. 
 
 Some people seem to enjoy parading their 
 
192 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 inner experiences. To me it is an ordeal. But 
 I will submit to it if others can be helped thereby. 
 In the first enthusiasm of my Christian life I 
 gave no thought to difficulties such as these. 
 But there are times, as every Christian knows, 
 **when neither sun nor stars in many days appear, 
 and no small tempest lies on us " ; and at a 
 crisis of this kind these difficulties all came back ; 
 and in the light of knowledge gained in my 
 college days, they seemed more utterly insoluble 
 than ever. 
 
 Men place in parallel columns the events 
 recorded in the Evangelists' narratives, and call 
 this a " Harmony of the Gospels." What I 
 wanted was a clew to some sort of harmony in 
 the doctrines they taught. A systematic study 
 of them brought me no relief. I could make 
 something of the Synoptists, as they are called ; 
 but John refused to blend with Matthew. I 
 turned to Commentaries and ** Introductions," and 
 found in them almost everything except what I 
 was in search of. If I could have satisfied 
 myself that the Fourth Gospel was Divinely in- 
 spired, I should have been willing to throw over 
 the other three. But proof of this was wanting. 
 It was written long after the other Gospels, and 
 therefore, viewed as a human document, it was 
 less trustworthy than the rest. 
 
Ch. XIV.] DIFFICULTIES AND DOUBTS 193 
 
 Discoveries of this kind delight a Higher Critic ; 
 to me they gave only pain. If a man has cogent 
 proof that his father is a rogue or his wife 
 unfaithful, he must face the fact, and consider 
 how to act on it- But one who would accept the 
 proof with alacrity and pleasure is not more utterly 
 contemptible than the man who can contemplate 
 the collapse of faith in the Bible without distress, 
 if not dismay. I kept my difficulties to myself, 
 until a lecture I heard one evening in a friend's 
 drawing-room gave me a clew to the solution of 
 them ; and the Bible became a new book to me 
 from that hour. At this point I will drop the 
 personal element in my narrative, and give in 
 another chapter the results attained. To 
 describe the steps by which those results were 
 reached would be, if not uninteresting, at least 
 unprofitable. 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE Bible is the history of man." "The 
 Gospels were written to teach the way of 
 salvation." These are but specimens of popular 
 errors , which serve to make those who hold 
 them an easy prey to the sceptics. 
 
 Save for a brief preface of eleven chapters, 
 covering a period measured by thousands of years, 
 the burden of the Old Testament is the story of 
 the Hebrew race. And the first book of the, 
 New Testament is the sequel and conclusion of 
 the Old. The Gospels are not a set of faulty and 
 erring narratives, written with a common object. 
 Their purpose in the Divine scheme of revelation 
 is to present the Lord Jesus Christ in the four 
 great aspects of His mission and work, ^ as 
 Israel's Messiah, Jehovah's Servant, Son of Man 
 and Son of God. And it is by a true instinct 
 that earnest souls turn to the Fourth Gospel when 
 
 * "Four discriminated aspects of their common subject, . . . 
 but one portrait " (Bampton Lectures, 1864). 
 
 194 
 
Ch. XV.] MATTHEW AND JOHN 195 
 
 they seek the path of life ; for the words which 
 close the twentieth chapter describe the contents 
 of every page, " These are written that ye might 
 believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; 
 and that believing ye might have life through 
 His name." 
 
 I must adhere to the limits I have set myself, 
 and deal only here with Matthew and John. 
 Does any Christian really believe that the striking 
 differences between the two, from first to last, can 
 be explained on the theory that the one apostle 
 was a bigoted Jew and the other a dreamy 
 enthusiast ? 
 
 And if the Gospels be mere human docu- 
 ments, nothing less than this will account for the 
 facts. Both men received the same teaching 
 throughout the whole period of the Ministry. 
 Both heard those "most sacred of all sacred 
 words " uttered upon the eve of the Crucifixion. 
 Both were re-commissioned in the same terms 
 after the resurrection. And yet as we study the 
 First Gospel — I here repeat as fact and truth what 
 I have already suggested as a sceptical difficulty 
 — "- From the first chapter to the last we shall 
 search in vain for a single sentence to raise the 
 narrative above the plane of Jewish interests and 
 hopes." 
 
196 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Let me give a startling instance of the contrast 
 in the teaching. The Fourth Gospel tells of eternal 
 life as the free gift of God to every sinner who 
 believes in Christ ; whereas in the First Gospel 
 the only passages where eternal life is mentioned, ' 
 deal with it on strictly Old 1 estament lines. 
 There are two possible explanations of all this. 
 Either one of the apostles of the Lord — men 
 specially chosen to be His witnesses in a wholly 
 peculiar sense — deliberately set himself to mis- 
 represent his Master's mission and pervert His 
 teaching ; or else he did this innocently, through 
 sheer stupidity and ignorance. Will any Chris- 
 tian dare to identify himself with either of these 
 hypotheses ? Can any one — Christian or not — 
 suggest a third ? 
 
 Yes, a third is possible ; but it assumes that 
 the Gospels SLveno^ mere human records. **Christ 
 was a minister of the circumcision for the truth 
 of God to confirm the promises made unto the 
 fathers."^ And **the Hebrew Gospel," as it is 
 
 " Matt. xix. 16, 29 ; xxv. 40-46. 
 
 » Rom. XV, 8. The next verse runs on, " And that the Gentiles 
 might glorify God for His mercy." To the people of the cove- 
 nant His coming was a matter of promise ; to Gentiles (who are 
 " strangers from the covenants of promise " — Ephes. ii. 12), it was 
 pure mercy. The Divine accuracy of Holy Scripture never 
 misses distinctions such as this. 
 
Ch. XV.] THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 197 
 
 sometimes called, is the Divine record of this 
 " Ministry of the Circumcision." 
 
 With this clew to guide us we shall find that 
 the very same characteristics which, in my case 
 at least, tempted to unbelief, now establish faith. 
 People read the New Testament backwards, and 
 with erroneous preconceptions of its scheme and 
 scope ; and when they reach its preface they 
 demand, **What has a Jewish genealogy to do 
 with the advent of the Son of God as the Saviour 
 of the world?" The answer is, ** Absolutely 
 nothing" ; and the Gospel which so presents Him 
 omits even the mention of His birth. The Bible 
 opens with the declaration, "In the beginning 
 created God " : ' so here, ** In the beginning was 
 THE Word. 2 And then, "The Word was made 
 flesh and dwelt among us." How made flesh it 
 matters not. ** He was in the world, and the 
 world was made by Him, and the world knew 
 Him not. But as many as received Him to 
 them gave He the right to become children of 
 God, even to them that believe on His name," 
 
 The casual reader will miss nothing from these 
 words ; and yet the omission I have made is one 
 of the utmost moment. I have quoted the tenth 
 
 ' Gen. i. i. This is the order of the words in the Hebrew. 
 ■ John i. I. 
 
198 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 and twelfth verses ; here is the eleventh : '* He 
 came unto His own, and His own received Him 
 notr^ 
 
 This brief sentence gives the whole purpose 
 and scope of the First Gospel. Now we can 
 appreciate its opening words, ** The book of the 
 generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the 
 son of Abraham," He was '*a minister of the 
 circumcision," the earthly people of the covenant 
 — "of whom," as the Apostle Paul declares, "is 
 Christ as concerning the flesh." ^ And he speaks 
 of Him again as "of the seed of David."3 
 Hence His genealogy is traced to Abraham, the 
 father of the covenant and the founder of the 
 race, and to David, the head of the royal 
 house. 4 Hence, too, the emphasis laid upon the 
 fact of his birth in Bethlehem, the royal city. 
 
 Let me repeat all this in borrowed words, 
 "The record of St. Matthew, ever recognised as 
 the Hebrew Gospel, is the true commencement of 
 the New Testament, showing how it grows out of 
 
 ' Our English idiom cannot express the meaning here : the 
 margin of R.V. gives one of the " schoolboy translations " that 
 so often mar that work. The French is more apt : '* \\ est venu 
 chez soi, et les siens ne Tont point regu." 
 
 » Rom. ix. 5, R.V. 3 2 Tim. ii. 8. 
 
 * As regards the difference between the genealogies of Matthew 
 and Luke, see Appendix, Note IV. 
 
Ch. XV.] CANON BERNARD ON MATTHEW 199 
 
 the Old, and presenting the manifestation of the 
 Son of God not as a detached phenomenon, but 
 as the predestined completion of the long course 
 of historic dispensations. It is the Book of the 
 generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the 
 Son of Abraham, It founds itself on the ideas 
 of the old covenant It refers at every step, 
 especially in its earlier chapters, to the former 
 Scriptures, noting how that was fulfilled which 
 was spoken by the prophets. It is a history of 
 fulfilment, presenting the Lord as the fulfiller of 
 all righteousness, the fulfiller of the Law and the 
 Prophets, not come to destroy, but to fulfil. It 
 sets Him forth as a King and Lawgiver in that 
 kingdom of heaven for which a birthplace and a 
 home had been prepared in Israel : and thus 
 corresponds to that period in the historical course 
 of events when the word was preached to none 
 but to the Jews only."' 
 
 And now it only remains for me to give, in 
 this new light, a brief sketch of the contents of 
 
 * Canon Bernard's Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, 
 being the "Bampton Lectures,'* 1864. This book, long out of 
 print, but now happily reissued, is one of the most valuable of 
 the Bampton series. Such another, though of a wholly different 
 character, is Dr. Hatch's volume of 1880. Though The Organi- 
 sation of the Early Christian Churches is one of the greatest 
 theological books of the age, it appears to be systematically 
 "boycotted" by High Church and Low Church alike. 
 
200 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Matthew's Gospel. The briefest will suffice ; for 
 others will find, as I did, that once the key is in 
 their hands, they can open the treasure for them- 
 selves. One proviso, however, is essential. The 
 Old Testament teems with prophecies and pro- 
 mises relating to the Jewish race. But the 
 way some people dispose of these is to appro- 
 priate most of them to the Gentile Church of 
 this dispensation, and to dismiss the rest as 
 Hebrew poetry. And with this sort of "inter- 
 pretation" of Scripture I can make no terms. 
 Those who adopt it may skip the rest of this 
 chapter : it will have no meaning for them. 
 
 Between the second chapter of Matthew and 
 the third, there is an interval of more than thirty 
 years. The third chapter speaks of the Baptist s 
 mission, and records the baptism of Christ. The 
 Old Testament closes with the promise, " Behold, 
 I will send you Elijah the prophet " ; and the 
 opening page of the New Testament tells of the 
 ministry of him who came "in the spirit and 
 power of Elias." John was Elijah, tf they would 
 receive kim,^ The baptism of Christ is an enigma 
 to those who attach a pagan meaning to the 
 
 * Matt. xi. 14, R.V. {margin). On this passage see by all means 
 Dean Alford's note, as a correction to the prevailing scepticism on 
 this subject. 
 
/ '' 
 
 Ch. XV,] PREACHING THE KINGDOM 201 
 
 ordinance. His purpose was to identify Himself 
 with the true remnant of the nation. Then 
 followed " the Temptation " ; and " from that 
 time" His ministry began. The Lord Himself 
 took up the Baptist's testimony, " Repent, for 
 the kingdom of heaven is at hand." ' Literally, 
 " the kingdom of the heavens " — an expression 
 used three and thirty times in Matthew, and never 
 once again in the New Testament. 2 The fulfil- 
 ment was at hand of all that God had prophesied 
 and promised of a time when the heavens would 
 rule over the earth — ^a reign of righteousness and 
 peace. 
 
 The closing verses of the fourth chapter receive 
 but litde notice, and yet their importance in the 
 narrative is immense. ** He went about all 
 Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preach- 
 ing the gospel of the kingdom and healing all 
 manner of sickness and all manner of disease 
 among the people. And His fame went through- 
 out all Syria; and they brought unto Him all 
 sick people . . . and He healed them. And 
 there followed Him great multitudes of people" 
 from every part of all the land. 
 
 The seeming triumph of this first circuit of the 
 
 ' See Matt. iii. 2 ; iv. 17 ; x. 7. 
 
 " See Appendix, Note V. 
 
202 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Ministry led to the proclamation of the principles 
 of that kingdom which He preached — the spiritual 
 and moral atmosphere which must prevail where 
 God rules. For such is the purpose of the 
 Sermon on the Mount. Men are always ready 
 for Divine blessing if only they can have it on 
 their own terms. If after working such miracles 
 the Lord had proclaimed a holy war, the nation 
 would have rallied round Him. Or had He pro- 
 claimed His ** brotherhood " with fallen man — had 
 He preached a "gospel of humanity" — their 
 heathen conquerors even might have hailed Him 
 as a deliverer and carried Him in triumph to the 
 deserted palace of the Caesars ; for never, perhaps, 
 before or since, was the pagan world so full of 
 weariness and despair as in the hateful reign of 
 Tiberius.' 
 
 But His purpose was far different. Christen- 
 dom has taught, throughout its history, that by 
 His advent He fulfilled the law and ignored the 
 prophets ; His contemporaries looked to Him to 
 fulfil the prophets while accepting their own in- 
 terpretation of the law. But the Sermon on the 
 Mount makes it as clear as light that if the 
 
 ' During the period of the Ministry, Tiberius was absent from 
 Rome, He had withdrawn to the island of Caprese, where he 
 gave himself up to an orgy of sensuality. 
 
Ch. XV.] THE LORD'S MIRACLES 203 
 
 heavens are to rule the earth, the will of God 
 must be " done on earth as it is done in heaven." ' 
 
 The narrative next records a series of miracles 
 of special significance. There was One in Israel 
 who could put His hand upon a leper and yet be 
 undefiled^; who could heal the sick by a word, 3 
 or by a touch 4 ; who could command the winds 
 and waves, 5 and control the powers of hell ^ ; who 
 could not only heal the body, but cure and save 
 the soul.7 And as a crowning public proof that 
 His power reached to the under world, He could 
 even raise the dead,^ 
 
 This was the period of His personal ministry. 
 He afterwards commissioned the Apostles, giving 
 them the same powers He Himself had exercised,9 
 and entrusting them with the same testimony, 
 "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Hence 
 the limit placed upon their ministry; for "the 
 
 * That the question should even be raised whether the Sermon 
 on the Mount should guide men now in government is proof of 
 the hopeless ignorance of Scripture which prevails. It is teach- 
 ing for the governed in the days of the kingdom. Its principles 
 are eternal, but some of the definite precepts of this " kingdom " 
 teaching were expressly cancelled by our Lord Himself (see, 
 e.g., Luke xxii. 35, 36). The common belief appears to be that 
 the Lord's presence or absence is an element of no importance 
 whatever. But that is not His view of the matter ! 
 
 ' Matt. viii. 3. s Ibid. viii. 13. 4 ibid. viii. 15, 
 
 s Ibid. viii. 26. * Ibid, viii. 28-32. » Ibid. ix. 2. 
 
 « Ibid. ix. 25. 9 Ibid. X. 8. 
 
204 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 kingdom of heaven " is the Messianic kingdom 
 in its earthly aspect. 
 
 Chapter xii. records the crisis which changed 
 the entire character of His public ministry. The 
 religious leaders of the nation had seen H is 
 miracles and heard His words — they had received 
 all the public proofs of His Messiahship ; and 
 what was their response ? They " went out and 
 took counsel against Him how they might destroy 
 Him."' The Lord's answer was to ''withdraw 
 H imself ; " and though the multitudes which 
 crowded after Him still proved His power to 
 heal, instead of bidding them, as in the past, to 
 tell others of His fame, He ** charged them that 
 they should not make Him known." The chapter 
 closes with words of awful judgment upon that 
 ** wicked generation " that had thus rejected Him.^ 
 
 His rejection gave a new character also to His 
 teaching. Till then it had been open : now it 
 became veiled in parables. The rejection of the 
 light brings judicial blindness. The parables 
 were given that all might hear the new phase of 
 '* kingdom" teaching, but that only those whose 
 eyes and ears were spiritually open should know 
 and understand it, 3 
 
 ' Matt. xii. 14. ' Ver. 45. s Matt. xiii. 10-17. 
 
Ch. XV.] PARABLES OF MATTHEW XIIL 205 
 
 No greater contribution has ever been made to 
 theology than will be his who fully and intelligently 
 elucidates the teaching of the thirteenth chapter 
 of Matthew. It contains seven parables. The 
 first is the preface to the rest, and governs them 
 all. The Divine description of their subject and 
 scope is "the mysteries of the kingdom of 
 heaven." i There was nothing secret about the 
 kingdom foretold in prophecy and preached by 
 the Lord and His apostles. But a heavenly 
 kingdom in which a king reigning in righteous- 
 ness gives place to a sower sowing seed, is an 
 utter enigma. The theories of expositors here 
 are no answer to the ridicule of rationalists. But 
 the Divine explanation of the "mystery" silences 
 both the ridicule and the theories. 
 
 Human apostasy and sin cannot thwart God's 
 purposes, but they may and do postpone the ful- 
 filment of them. The disciples themselves came 
 to understand that, on account of their Lord s 
 rejection, there was to be another "coming." 2 
 These parables give us the key to the whole 
 intervening period. The first unfolds the 
 " mystery " of an unseen Sower taking the place 
 of a manifested ruler. The next three describe 
 
 * Ver. ir. ■ Matt. xxiv. 3. 
 
2o6 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 the public effects of the ministry of **the Sower." 
 These, together with the prefatory parable, were 
 spoken to the multitude : the final three, togethei 
 with the interpretation of the parable of the tares, 
 were spoken privately to the disciples,^ and they 
 teach what is essential and secret. 
 
 In the earlier phase of the Ministry "signs** 
 were openly given, abundantly sufficient to satisfy 
 the doubts and silence the cavils of the Pharisees.^ 
 But when, after they had thus proved themselves 
 to be *'a wicked and adulterous generation," they 
 again sought a **sign," the answer they received 
 was a definite refusal. The only miracle they 
 were to witness now was that of the Prophet 
 Jonah — the death and resurrection of their re- 
 jected Messiah.3 And following upon this. He 
 forbade all further testimony to His Messiahship. 
 In this later phase of His ministry He had 
 enjoined silence upon those who benefited by 
 His ** signs"; now He forbade even His dis- 
 ciples to tell any one that He was the Christ, and 
 He unfolded to them the mystery of His Passion.4 
 
 But exigencies of space forbid my pursuing the 
 subject further in detail. As regards the great 
 prophecy of the twenty-fourth chapter, I will only 
 
 • Matt. xiii. 36. " See, e.g., John ii. 23 ; iii. 2, R.V. 
 
 3 Matt. xvi. 1-4. * Ibid. xvi. 20, 21, R.V. 
 
Ch. XV,] THE ARGUMENT RESTATED 207 
 
 say here that it deals, not with "the end of the 
 world," but with the consummation of the age ^ — 
 the events which are to mark the close of " the 
 evil age which has set in." 2 
 
 In conclusion let me restate this part of my 
 argument. If we are to regard Matthew as a 
 merely human book, we find ourselves compelled 
 to account for its peculiar characteristics in either 
 of two ways. Either the writer, albeit he was an 
 apostle of the Lord, and shared all His teaching, 
 remained in utter ignorance of the distinctive 
 truths of Christianity ; or else, with a knowledge 
 of these truths, he perversely and wickedly con- 
 cealed or distorted them. 
 
 The critic must make choice between these 
 alternatives. But the Christian refuses both ; for 
 he rejects the assumption on which both are based. 
 
 « Matt. xxiv. 3 (R.V. margin). The word used in verse 3 is 
 sunteleia (cf. Heb. ix. 26) ; the word ielos is employed in verse 6. 
 Matt. xxiv. has been well described by Dean Alford as "the 
 anchor of apocalyptic interpretation." I have dealt with it in 
 chapter xiii. of Tke Coming Prince. 
 
 •Gal. i. 4. The "age" here intended is that of chapter xiii, 
 (see p. 205, ante), which is to end with the return of Christ to 
 estabhsh His kingdom. And then "the mystery of God will 
 be finished"— the mystery that a God of infinite power and 
 goodness permits evil to prevail in the world (Rev. x. 7 ; xi. 15). 
 Thai will not be an "evil age," and God's people will not need 
 deliverance from it. "The evil age which has set in " is the age 
 during which Christ is rejected. 
 
2o8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 To him the First Gospel is not a mere human 
 treatise, but a Divine revelation ; and grasping 
 the thought that the purpose of that revelation 
 was to present Christ as Israel's Messiah, he 
 accounts for the extraordinary phenomena of the 
 book in the only way in which they can be reason- 
 ably explained, namely, that the Spirit of God so 
 guided and restrained both the mind and the hand 
 of the writer, that his narrative from first to last 
 does not contain a single sentence inconsistent 
 with the Divine purpose with which it was 
 written. 
 
 It is not that the Lord's words were not 
 accurately recorded by the Evangelists, but that, 
 while His teaching covered the whole field of 
 truth, the inspiring Spirit led the writers to dis- 
 criminate, so that each gave prominence to that 
 aspect of it which he was used to present. A 
 commander-in-chief may lay before his generals his 
 whole plan of battle, but when he issues his orders 
 each brigadier receives only what it concerns him 
 to know. The infantry are not told what part 
 the cavalry will have to play, and neither is in- 
 formed where the artillery will be placed. So 
 was it with the Lord and His teaching. In the 
 very same discourses probably He unfolded to 
 the apostles the truth relating to the kingdom of 
 
Ch.XV.] the argument restated 209 
 
 heaven, and kindred truth in relation to the wider 
 sphere of the kingdom of God.^ But though 
 these men heard the same words, and though no 
 doubt they discussed them together times without 
 number, the fact remains that when they came to 
 write, these various aspects of truth were kept 
 distinct. If this is to be explained on natural 
 principles, it is a phenomenon which is absolutely 
 without parallel in human experience. 
 
 ■ See Appendix, Note V. 
 
 «s 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THESE sceptical critics always remind me 
 of the amateur detective. The amateur 
 detective is strong on details. But he generally 
 enters upon an inquiry with a fixed preconcep- 
 tion as to what he is going to find, and he 
 exhausts his power of attention upon trifles that 
 seem to point in the direction on which his mind 
 is set. The trained expert, on the other hand, 
 coming in with an open mind and a wider 
 knowledge, will seize on clews that the amateur 
 has missed. 
 
 The microscope serves to make the wonders of 
 nature seem all the more wonderful, and no criti- 
 cism of Scripture can be too searching and 
 minute, if only it be intelligent and spiritual. 
 Such criticism, moreover, is an antidote to the 
 criticism of the sceptics. For if " knowledge is 
 power," ignorance is weakness. And in no 
 sphere is this more true than in the spiritual. 
 
Ch. XVI.] THE "SECOND ADVENT" an 
 
 But the knowledge that is wanting is the know- 
 ledge of Holy Scripture. For all Scripture is 
 profitable, that the man of God may be "ready 
 at every point." ' And we cannot with impunity 
 neglect large sections of Scripture which are 
 inextricably interwoven with the rest 
 
 The doctrine of the '* Second Advent," as 
 theologians call it, will serve as a notable illustra- 
 tion of this. The New Testament speaks of the 
 coming of the Son of Man to earth, to bless His 
 people upon earth. It speaks of the descent of 
 the Lord from heaven, and of His people being 
 caught up from earth to meet Him. It speaks of 
 His coming as a bridegroom to claim a bride. It 
 speaks of His coming as a king to receive a 
 kingdom. It speaks of His feet standing on the 
 Mount of Olives, "in like manner" as He stood 
 there with His disciples on the day of His 
 ascension. It speaks of His being revealed 
 from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming 
 fire, taking vengeance. It speaks of the dead, 
 small and great, being arraigned before the great 
 white throne above. It speaks of the living 
 nations upon earth being gathered before His 
 judgment throne of glory. 
 
 • 2 Tim. iii. 17. Thus it is that Alford renders it. 
 
212 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Now what are we to make of all these con- 
 flicting statements ? A dull Evangelicalism in 
 the past was content to read them at different 
 times, and to believe them all without attempting 
 to understand them. But to maintain such an 
 attitude in the face of modern criticism is to 
 court disaster as certainly as if we were to face 
 modern artillery with the ordnance used at 
 Waterloo. Scripture itself must teach us how 
 all these apparently irreconcilable statements can 
 be reconciled. 
 
 But first let us hear what the critics have to 
 say about them. We turn for enlighteninent to 
 the standard work already quoted, Dr. Hastings's 
 Dictionary of the Bible ^ of which Professor Driver 
 of Oxford is one of the principal editors. The 
 article entitled "Parousia"^ deals with this subject. 
 Its effort to harmonise the passages fails. They 
 represent, we are told, ** two distinct types of 
 thought." In the one "the Parousia is conceived 
 after the analogy of the contemporary Jewish 
 Apocalypses": in the other "the Parousia is 
 rather the completion of an order of things 
 already existing." "The question naturally pre- 
 sents itself as to which of these two types most 
 
 ' A Greek word meaning "the coming," or (as, e.g.^ in 2 Cor. x, 10 
 and Phil. ii. 12) "the presence." 
 
Ch.XVL] the critics on the "PAROUSIA'' 2IS 
 
 fairly represents the teaching of our Lord." If 
 to this question a clear answer can be given, all 
 will be well. But the general result is that the 
 confusion is due to ** an imperfect apprehension 
 by the disciples of the Master's meaning." ' 
 
 The only certain thing, therefore, is the utter 
 uncertainty that exists as to the truth upon this 
 subject. Not a single statement in the New 
 Testament relating to the future Coming is 
 worthy of confidence. And as the New Testa- 
 ment writers may not be trusted on this most 
 vital issue, no clear-headed, sensible person will 
 give implicit belief to their words respecting any 
 of the transcendental doctrines of Christianity. 
 Faith is impossible. Agnosticism becomes the 
 only rational attitude of mind. 
 
 But this does not solve the difficulty. How^ 
 then, are all these conflicting statements to be 
 explained ? Now what would be the thought of 
 one who tried to reconcile the prescriptions of 
 some eminent physician, and then denounced 
 him because the effort failed ? Such a genius 
 
 ' The alternative, we are told, would be " to believe that He, 
 who in all other respects possessed an insight so much clearer than His 
 contemporarieSy should, in the matter of eschatology alone, have 
 had nothing new to contribute." The italics are mine, and they 
 are designed to call attention to the manner in which some mea 
 dare to speak of their Divine Lord. 
 
214 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 would not be more unintelligent than are these 
 exponents of **the best and latest scholarship." 
 Prescriptions differ because the cases to which 
 they apply are different. And the predictions of 
 the Parousia differ for a like reason. 
 
 The Bible teems with prophecies and promises 
 relating to earth, which still await fulfilment. 
 And not one of these shall fail. God has not 
 ** cast away His people whom He foreknew." 
 Israels rejected Messiah is to return ; and " they 
 shall look upon Him whom they pierced, and 
 mourn," Meanwhile this Gentile dispensation 
 has intervened ; for Israel's temporary loss is our 
 eternal gain. And God has purposes for earth that 
 reach beyond a gathered Church and a restored 
 nation. "The earth shall be full of the know- 
 ledge of the Lord " : this is not a rhetorical 
 shriek, but a Divine prophecy. " Thy will be 
 done on earth as it is done in heaven " is not a 
 day-dream of pious fools, but an inspired prayer 
 for the realisation of a Divine purpose plainly 
 revealed in Scripture. This very earth, so cursed 
 and blighted by human sin, shall yet be the scene 
 of a display of Divine power and goodness, 
 bringing glory to God and blessing to mankind. 
 
 Mingling with these manifold displays of grace 
 there will be sessions of judgment. And all are 
 
Ch. XVI.] THE CRITICS ON THE "PAROUSIA" 215 
 
 included in ** the doctrine of the Parousia." For 
 every purpose of God, whether of judgment or 
 of grace, is headed up in Christ ; and therefore 
 in the unfolding of these purposes there will be 
 many manifestations of Christ, And while the 
 Higher Criticism, in keeping with its persistent 
 ignorance of Divine truth, takes all these many 
 Scriptures, and throwing them into "hotch-pot" 
 (as the lawyers would say), parades the resulting 
 mass of confusion and error and folly as the 
 outcome of superior enlightenment, the spiritual 
 Christian will seek humbly and reverently to 
 " sort " each of these Divine prophecies (as Lord 
 Bacon puts it) ** with the event fulfilling the 
 same," assigning to each its right place in the 
 grand scheme of revelation.^ 
 
 And that phase of Evangelicalism which shares 
 the ignorance of the critics leaves the Bible an 
 easy prey to their attacks. If the Christian 
 neglects the Bible he cannot be "ready at every 
 
 ' There is nothing exceptional about this " Parousia " article. 
 On the contrary, it is a fair specimen of the pompous pedantry 
 of book-scholarship, combined with a special type of igno- 
 rance characteristic of writers of this school. I use the word 
 "ignorance" deliberately, for while they pose as the apostles 
 of a new enlightenment in the exposition of the New Testa- 
 ment, their writings give proof that, as already urged, they 
 are ignorant of "the word of the beginning of Christ" — the 
 very language in which the book is written. 
 
2i6 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 point." The ''doctrine of the types," for instance, 
 is not an abstruse branch of study which, like a 
 "special subject" in a school curriculum, may 
 safely be ignored. It bears upon the most 
 elementary truths. 
 
 Many years ago I was present at a conference 
 convened to consider what people call " the 
 simple Gospel." Among the clergymen who took 
 part in the discussion there were two of con- 
 siderable note as teachers. Before half an hour 
 elapsed one of them had practically unfurled the 
 banner of Calvinism, and the other that of 
 Arminianism. According to the one, Christ has 
 borne the sins of His people ; and though the 
 Gospel is to be preached to all, salvation is only 
 for the elect. According to the other, Christ has 
 borne the sins of the whole world, and the doom 
 of the impenitent will be due to their rejection of 
 the Gospel. 
 
 Now both these positions cannot be right, and 
 yet both can appeal to numerous passages of the 
 New Testament which seem to support them. 
 Where then are we to find the key to the 
 enigma ? The typology of the Pentateuch is the 
 Divine picture alphabet which God has given to 
 enable us to spell out these truths ; and if, whether 
 from carelessness or arrogance, we neglect it, we 
 
Ch. XVI.] THE DOCTRINE OF THE TYPES 217 
 
 are sure to fall into error. Calvinism assumes 
 that the sin-ofFering exhausts the doctrine of the 
 Gospel. But the sin-ofFering is only one of many- 
 kindred types, and all are needed to unfold in its 
 fulness the sacrifice of Christ. True it is that 
 the sin-offering was only for the redeemed people ; 
 but it was not by the sin-offering that they 
 obtained redemption. When we speak of Christ's 
 bearing our sins, we use a figurative expression ; 
 but the figure is not rhetorical but typical, and 
 the sin-ofFering is the type which explains it. 
 Therefore it is that Scripture never speaks of 
 Christ*s "bearing the sins of the world." He 
 is *^' the propitiation for the sins of the whole 
 world ; " and forgiveness of sins is to be preached 
 to all, for " He gave Himself a ransom for all ; " ^ 
 He came to be ** the Saviour of the world.'' 2 
 
 But what of the Baptist's testimony, *' Behold 
 the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of 
 the world " ? 3 I do not forget it. But in the 
 accuracy of Scripture language there is a definite 
 difference between '* bearing the sins of the world," 
 and " taking away the sin of the world." 
 
 *'What hair-splitting!" some one will here 
 exclaim. Yes ; in attacking or perverting Scrip- 
 
 ' I Tim, ii. 6. * i John iv. 14. 3 John i. 29, 
 
2i8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 ture, attention to the minutest and most trivial 
 points is '* Higher Criticism"; but in the defence 
 of Scripture it is hyper-criticism ! The special 
 truth of the sin-offering is the identification of 
 the offerer with the victim. Substitution is but 
 a half-truth. But there can be no identification 
 with Christ until we receive the Gospel. Then 
 it is, and not till then, that we become one with 
 Him. And if one with Him, His death is our 
 death, and we can adopt the words, " His own 
 self bare our sins in His own body on the tree." 
 
 This is the language of the sin-offering. But in 
 the Passover, by which redemption was obtained, 
 there was no laying on of hands, no previous 
 identification of the sinner with the victim. The 
 victim died for the sinner's sins, but it was by the 
 sprinkling of its blood that the sinner obtained 
 the benefit of the sacrifice. The Gospel by 
 which we are saved is that " Christ died for 
 our sins according to the Scriptures," and faith 
 is the counterpart of the sprinkling of the blood. ^ 
 
 The sin-offering typified Christ's bearing the 
 
 ' Dean Alford explains John i. 29 by reference directly to 
 Isa. liii. 7, and presumably to the sin-offering. But the bracketing 
 of the slaughtered lamb with the shorn sheep in the prophecy 
 clearly proves that the words do not refer to the offerings, but 
 present the Messiah as the innocent and uncomplaining victim 
 of the violence of men. Moreover the word there rendered 
 
Ch. XVI.] THE DOCTRINE OF ROM. V. 219 
 
 sins of His people. But redemption involves a 
 larger question than this. For man is not merely 
 a committer-of-sins, but a sinner in a deeper 
 sense. He belongs to a sinful race. I am not 
 discussing the philosophy of sceptical-expositors, 
 but the plain teaching of Scripture. '* Through 
 one trespass the judgment is unto all men to 
 condemnation." ' Not that all men shall be in 
 fact condemned, for the believer " shall not come 
 into condemnation " ; 2 but this is the scope and 
 tendency of the judgment. And ** Even so, 
 through one righteous act, 3 the free gift is unto 
 all men to justification of life." Not that all 
 are justified, but that this is the scope and 
 tendency of the grace. Words could not teach 
 more plainly that the death of Christ is as far- 
 reaching as the sin of Adam. By that death He 
 has taken away the sin of the world, and God 
 has reconciled the world to Himself.4 
 
 With the critics the types of the Pentateuch 
 are but a part of " the priesdy code," which was 
 
 " slaughter " is not a sacrificial term. It is never used of killing 
 for sacrifice ; never at all in the Pentateuch, save in Gen. xliii. 16. 
 And the word translated "laid on" in verse 6 is never once 
 used in connection with the offerings or sacrifices. 
 
 ' Rom. V. 18. » John v. 24. 
 
 3 AiKaitofia — "an amendment of a wrong; hence, judgment, 
 punishment " (Liddell and Scott). * 2 Cor, v. 19. 
 
220 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 based on the success or failure (I know not 
 which) of the ministry of the prophets. They 
 have no Divine significance whatever. But with 
 the intelligent Christian these types are " the 
 word of the beginning of Christ." He turns to 
 the New Testament to find the doctrine relating 
 to each one of them, and he turns back to the 
 Pentateuch, as to a key-picture, to make sure that 
 he has overlooked nothing in the doctrinal teach- 
 ing of Christianity. If, for example, as we have 
 seen, he reads of Christ as a Sin-bearer, he 
 studies the Sin-offering ; if he reads of the 
 **lamb" of our redemption, the Passover; if of 
 the blood of the New Covenant by which 
 we are sanctified, and of which the cup of the 
 Lord's Supper is the sign and emblem, then the 
 twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus unfolds its depth 
 of meaning.^ 
 
 These paragraphs are humbly offered as 
 instances of true criticism in contrast with the 
 criticisms of the critics. Such instances might 
 be multiplied indefinitely. And in such proofs 
 of the absolute accuracy and hidden unity of 
 Scripture, the Christian finds overwhelming 
 cumulative evidence of its Divine origin and 
 authority. 
 
 ' See The Buddha of Christendom^ ch. xii. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 IN the course of a summer visit many years 
 ago at one of the historic homes of Ireland, 
 an incident occurred which often comes to my 
 mind as I read the criticisms of the critics upon 
 the Gospel narratives. 
 
 The eldest son and daughter of the house left 
 us one morning to spend the day with relatives 
 some half-dozen miles away. Late at night, from 
 my bedroom window, I saw the returning carriage 
 drive up to the hall door. The lady alighted 
 with a gentleman who was not her brother. At 
 breakfast next morning she told us that her 
 brother had remained at his cousin's house, and 
 she had brought back a Mrs. Somebody — men- 
 tioning a name I did not know. Owing to the 
 disturbed state of the country, surprise was 
 expressed that two ladies should have thus driven 
 home alone at night. This enabled me to press 
 the question whether a gentleman had not 
 
222 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 escorted her ; and her answer was unequivocal 
 that her only companion had been the lady she 
 named. 
 
 When in my official life I have found a conflict 
 of testimony between persons of known integrity, 
 I have always sought some way of reconciling 
 them. But in this case I confess I was baffled ; 
 and had I not had more confidence in my friend 
 than the critics have in the Bible, I should have 
 given her up as being utterly untruthful, and 
 perhaps worse. But I afterwards obtained from 
 her the solution of the enigma. The lady she 
 named was the wife of their doctor. His house 
 was near the gate of the park ; and when his wife 
 alighted he took hen place in the carriage and 
 drove with my friend to the hall door. 
 
 Not all the Biblical critics of Christendom 
 can find in Scripture a more hopeless conflict 
 of testimony than would have been my friend's 
 account, and my own, of her return to her father s 
 house that night. If we had both written about 
 it without first comparing notes, I should have 
 asserted that her only companion was a gentle- 
 man; she would have declared that her only 
 companion was a lady. '* Sherlock Holmes " 
 himself could have made nothing of it. And yet 
 the solution of it seems ludicrously simple when 
 
Ch. XVIL] difficulties in the gospels 223 
 
 all the facts are known. She was thinking of 
 her six miles' drive ; I, of her arrival at the 
 house. Both accounts, therefore, would have 
 been absolutely true, though to all appearance 
 one or other would have seemed absolutely false ; 
 and any one who attempted to play the r6le of 
 '* reconciler " would have fared badly at the 
 hands of the critics. 
 
 There are difficulties in the Gospel narratives 
 which appear equally inexplicable. And the 
 efforts of zealous " reconcilers " to explain them 
 sometimes do more harm than good. They 
 probably admit of some very simple explanation, 
 which would be obvious if all the circumstances 
 were in view. The question, however, to which 
 they give rise in the mind, I will not say of a 
 competent critic, still less of a spiritual Christian, 
 but of any person endowed with common sense — 
 a quality which seems to be sometimes lacking to 
 both Christians and critics — concerns the general 
 character of the writings thus seemingly impugned. 
 And here I am not assuming that the Evangelists 
 were inspired, but merely that they were com- 
 petent and trustworthy witnesses. 
 
 To introduce into this book a glossary of 
 difficult passages would be wholly foreign to its 
 scope : indeed it would make it unreadable. In 
 
224 THE EIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 the preceding chapters I have selected illustrative 
 examples of the objections dealt with, and I will 
 still pursue the same course. I will proceed to 
 give instances of difficulties which appear insolu- 
 ble, of others which are easily explained, and of 
 a third class which indicate only the perversity or 
 the ignorance of those who urge them. 
 
 Of the class first mentioned I know of no case 
 more apt than that of the blind men outside 
 Jericho.^ A definite contradiction seems to mark 
 the Gospel narratives. I am not referring to the 
 fact that Matthew mentions two men as healed 
 on the occasion, whereas Mark and Luke speak 
 of one only. The received explanation of this — 
 that " the sources from which each Evangelist 
 took his narrative " differed in this way — is 
 strangely shallow and unintelligent, for this only 
 puts the ** difficulty " one step back. But a little 
 knowledge of human nature and of real life will 
 oust that "difficulty" altogether. If either 
 Evangelist said that the Lord cured only one 
 blind man on the occasion, the matter would be 
 different. But one of the two men was evidently 
 a well-known character — " blind Bartimeus " — 
 while the other, possibly, was a stranger to the 
 
 » See Matt. xx. 29-34 ; Mark x. 46-52 ; and Luke xviii. 35-43- 
 
Ch. XVIL] the blind men at JERICHO 225 
 
 locality. Two of the Evangelists speak only of 
 the man who was known : Mark names him, and 
 Luke refers to him as " a certain blind man." 
 To represent this as a " contradiction " bespeaks 
 the perversity of fools. 
 
 But a very real difficulty remains ; Luke repre- 
 sents the incident as occurring when the Lord 
 was approaching Jericho, while the other Gospels 
 say expressly that it was when He was leaving 
 the town. The contradiction here seems as 
 hopeless as that recorded in my Irish story. 
 Possibly, however, the explanation of it would 
 be just as simple ; but I, at least, decline to 
 play the rdle of "Sherlock Holmes" in dealing 
 with Holy Scripture. 
 
 A popular preacher and writer who is one of 
 the lesser lights of the Higher Criticism has 
 published the statement that in his Oxford days 
 "the whole foundation" of his faith was shaken 
 by discovering that, in Acts v. 36, Gamaliel is 
 said to have mentioned an insurrection under one 
 Theudas, whereas Josephus records an insurrec- 
 tion under a man of that name half a century 
 later ; the inference being, of course^ that the 
 Evangelist was thus proved to have blundered. 
 
 Who among us has not been equally silly at 
 times ! But some of us are shrewd enough to 
 
 16 
 
226 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 conceal our silliness from other people. There 
 are three possible explanations of the difficulty, 
 any one of which would suffice. First, in any 
 conflict of statement between a writer so accurate 
 as Luke, and a writer so notoriously inaccurate 
 as Josephus, the presumption of error is entirely 
 against the historian, and not against the 
 Evangelist^ Secondly, it is very probable that 
 the Theudas of Gamaliers speech is one of the 
 insurgents mentioned by Josephus under another 
 name. But thirdly, the whole difficulty assumes 
 that the historian enumerates all these insurrec- 
 tions, whereas, in fact, he declares there were 
 " thousands " of them ; and one Theudas may 
 well have been the leader of such an outbreak 
 before ** the days of the taxing," and another 
 Theudas may have headed a similar revolt during 
 the reign of Claudius.^ 
 
 Among the difficulties which, though easily 
 explained, seem to unsettle the faith of a certain 
 sort of people, there is one that may serve 
 to illustrate the perverseness of some of the 
 
 * For the sake of argument I here treat the Third Gospel as a 
 merely human book. 
 
 = Antiquities, xvii. 10,4, and xx. 5, i. Josephus mentions three 
 Judases within ten years, and four Simons within forty years as 
 leaders of such revolts. There may well, therefore, have been 
 two named Theudas in the same half-century. 
 
Ch. XVII.] "THIS GENERATION" 227 
 
 German critics. ** Verily I say unto you," the 
 Lord declared in telling of the dread events 
 which are to herald His return, " this genera- 
 tion shall not pass till all these things be 
 fulfilled." ^ What meaning can possibly be given 
 to these words, save that the Parousia was to 
 occur in the lifetime of those to whom He spoke ? 
 The question is answered by a fact well known 
 to the critics themselves, that the word here 
 re^nder^d generation "has in Hellenistic Greek 
 the meaning of a race, or family of people." ^ 
 And any intelligent reader can see that in other 
 passages also it is used in that sense. 3 The Jews, 
 instead of suffering the fate of every other 
 conquered race in all the world's history, were 
 to remain a separate people to the end. The 
 Lord's words, therefore, instead of proving a 
 stumbling-block ought rather to establish our 
 faith. 
 
 People seem to be strangely troubled about 
 the Inscription upon the Cross. Dean Alford 
 writes : — 
 
 **The title over the cross was written in Greek. 
 
 ' Matt. xxiv. 34. 
 
 ' Alford's Greek Testament \ and see any Lexicon. 
 3 See, e.g., chap, xxiii. 36, and various passages in the LXX., as, 
 e.g.t Gen. xxxi. 3 ; Jer. viii. 3. 
 
228 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 According then to the verbal-inspiration theory, 
 each Evangelist has recorded the exact words of 
 the inscription ; not the general sense, but the 
 inscription itself — not a letter less or more. This 
 is absolutely necessary to the theory."' 
 
 Extraordinary statements these from a writer 
 who is usually so sensible and so accurate. 
 Whether any inspiration other than verbal in- 
 spiration is possible, is a problem of metaphysics, 
 and I am not going to discuss it here. Neither 
 shall I defend any "verbal-inspiration theory'' 
 What concerns us is the fact of inspiration, so 
 plainly taught by the Lord Himself. And as we 
 have seen in a previous chapter, the fact of 
 inspiration is consistent with sometimes insisting 
 upon the exact words of Scripture with a definite- 
 ness so minute that men would call it "hair- 
 splitting," and in other instances quoting Scripture 
 in a way that men would call "loose." What- 
 ever human theories of inspiration may demand, 
 verbal inspiration does not assume that "each 
 Evangelist has recorded the exact words of the 
 inscription," but that the record as given by each 
 was guided and controlled by the Spirit of God. 
 And no one who has studied the human element 
 
 * Cow., vol. i., Prol. I. § vi. i8. 
 
Ch. XVIT.] inscription on the cross 229 
 
 in other Divine miracles will be surprised at find- 
 ing a human element in this miracle of inspiration. 
 
 But to resume. Each of the four Gospels 
 gives the inscription in a slightly different form. 
 Here is the text of each : — 
 
 " This is Jesus, the King of the Jews " (Matt. 
 xxvii. 27)' 
 
 " The King of the Jews " (Mark xv. 26). 
 
 "This is the King of the Jews" (Luke xxiii. 
 
 38). 
 
 "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" 
 (John xix. 19). 
 
 Now let us assume, for the sake of argument, 
 that the full inscription was, "This is Jesus of 
 Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Its purpose 
 was clear — not in the least to identify the accused, 
 but solely to give the accusation on which he was 
 condemned. Pilate would not have noticed the 
 charges which so excited the religious leaders of 
 the Jews ; but the claim to be a King they 
 represented as a political offence. And though 
 he saw that the prisoner was no rioter, no leader 
 of sedition, and that the accusation was dis- 
 honestly preferred, he feared lest the Sanhedrim 
 should make trouble for him with Caesar if he 
 refused to entertain it.^ Therefore he yielded to 
 ' John xix. 12. 
 
230 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 their clamour. But he revenged himself upon 
 them by putting up the charge in a form that 
 brought them into contempt, giving prominence 
 to the royal title. Their remonstrance was most 
 noteworthy. " Write not * The King of the 
 Jews,' but that He said, ' I am King of the 
 Jews.'"' And this, which alone was essential, 
 or important, all the Gospels agree in giving. 
 
 But this is not all. ** The title over the cross 
 was written in Greeks If Dean Alford s words 
 are to be judged as the Bible is judged, this 
 statement is a sheer blunder. " The title " was 
 written in Hebrew and Greek and Latin; and 
 this is probably the explanation of the whole 
 matter. **The Hebrew Gospel" might be ex- 
 pected to record the Hebrew inscription. Luke, 
 writing for a Roman officer, would, not unnaturally, 
 reproduce the Latin.^ The inscription as given 
 by John may well be the Greek. And Mark 
 gives merely, as his words imply, the gist of the 
 charge — "the inscription of the accusation." 
 
 I have dealt thus fully with this matter in 
 spite of the fact that I am personally unable to 
 sympathise with people who find a difficulty in 
 
 ' John xix. 21. 
 
 » " This is the King of the Jews " has a distinctly Latin 
 ring. 
 
Ch. XVII.] INSCRIPTION ON THE CROSS 231 
 
 differences of the kind. Such differences only 
 prove that the Gospels are not, as the critics 
 would tell us, copied from one another, or from 
 a common source, but that they are wholly in- 
 dependent narratives. And they weigh nothing 
 with people who have any practical knowledge 
 of men, or who have intelligent views of in- 
 spiration. For nothing tends more to discredit 
 witnesses than mechanical uniformity of state- 
 ment ; and in revelation, as in nature, we may 
 expect to find endless variety of detail combined 
 with absolute unity in essentials. 
 
 In conclusion, I will deal with a difficulty of a 
 totally different character. But it is important 
 enough to deserve a chapter to itself. The three 
 first Gospels, we are told, are at variance with 
 the fourth, as to the day on which the Lord was 
 crucified. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE reader will do well to skip this chapter. 
 If it were written to prove Scripture to be 
 wrong, it would be interesting; and, moreover, 
 it would betoken "culture," and might even 
 attract the notice of the newspapers. But as its 
 object is merely to defend Holy Writ on a 
 subject about which enough has been written 
 against it to fill a bookcase, it is really not worth 
 reading. 
 
 The first three Gospels agree that the Lord's 
 Supper was instituted at the Jewish Passover on 
 the night before the Crucifixion. ^ H ere is 
 Matthew's testimony : — 
 
 " On the first day of unleavened bread the 
 disciples came to Jesus, saying. Where wilt thou 
 
 * Theories of an " anticipatory celebration " by the Lord and 
 His disciples on the 13th Nisan, or a deferred celebration by the 
 leaders of the Jews on the 15th, are preposterous. Here I will 
 but refer my readers to Dr. Edersheim's Life and Times of the 
 Messiah, a book which ought to be an " end of controversy " on 
 the subject of the present chapter, 
 
 232 
 
Ch. XVIII.] DAY OF THE CRUCIFIXION 233 
 
 that we make ready for Thee to eat the Pass- 
 over ? " Not " the first day of the Feast,"' as the 
 A.V. gives it, but the day on which leaven was 
 put away, namely, the 14th Nisan. Mark and 
 Luke state even more explicitly that it was the 
 day when the Passover was killed.' 
 
 But, we are told, ** It appears from John xviii. 
 28 that on the Friday morning the Jews who 
 conducted our Lord to the pretorium had not yet 
 eaten the Passover." That day, therefore, must 
 have been the 14th Nisan. And this is confirmed 
 by the fact that the Evangelist calls it ''the 
 preparation of the Passover" and adds that the 
 following day " was a high day," ^ which proves 
 that it must have been the Feast day, or 15th 
 Nisan. 3 
 
 Now at this stage I do not ask that the 
 Evangelists shall be believed as men who were 
 inspired, nor that their writings shall be accepted 
 
 ' Matt. xxvi. 17 ; Mark xiv. 12 ; Luke xxii. 7. 
 
 " John xix. 14, 31. 
 
 3 In Hastings's Bible "Dictionary (vol. ii., p. 634), Prof. Sanday, 
 after noticing that the Synoptists identify the Last Supper with 
 the Passover, goes on to say, " St. John, on the other hand, by a 
 number of clear indications (John xiii. i ; xviii, 28 ; xix. 14, 31), 
 implies that the Last Supper was eaten before the time of the 
 regular Passover, and that the Lord sufEered on the afternoon of 
 Nisan 14." Prof. Cheyne's Encydopeedia Bihlica says, "The 
 Synoptists put the Crucifixion on Friday the 15th Nisan, John on 
 Friday the 14th " (article "Chronology," p. 806). 
 
234 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 as Divine oracles, but only that they shall be 
 treated as intelligent and trustworthy witnesses 
 are treated in our courts of justice. Three of 
 them agree in giving a clear and explicit account 
 of certain facts ; while the fourth uses language 
 which appears to some to conflict with that of the 
 others. The first question, therefore, would be 
 whether either the competence or the truthfulness 
 of any of them is open to suspicion. And to this 
 the answer is an emphatic negative. The cir- 
 cumstances, moreover, veto the suggestion of a 
 mistake ; for the events of those dreadful days 
 must have been burned into the memories of all 
 who took part in them. This being so, the point 
 upon which any tribunal would fix attention 
 would be whether the evidence of the witness 
 that seems to differ from the rest may not have 
 been misconstrued. 
 
 I seize upon that point. And my contention 
 is not that, by straining words or having recourse 
 to far-fetched explanations, the last Gospel can 
 be twisted into agreement with the others ; but 
 that the exegesis which makes it differ from 
 them is in every part of it a tangle of blunders. 
 For as Lange says, " If the expressions of John 
 be pondered in their full significance, he will be 
 found to have declared more accurately than the 
 
Ch. XVIII.] THE SUPPER NOT THE FEAST 235 
 
 rest of the Evangelists that [the Lord] Jesus was 
 crucified on a Friday, and that it was on the first 
 day of the [Feast of the] Passover (viz., on the 
 15th Nisan)."! 
 
 First and chiefest among the blunders which 
 mark this controversy is that of confounding the 
 Passover with the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 
 Just as the Feast of Weeks came to be known as 
 Pentecost, so the earlier feast was popularly 
 called the Passover.2 But no intelligent and 
 devout Jew would confound the Supper with the 
 Feast. The language of the Law is clear, "In 
 the fourteenth day of the first month at even is 
 the Lord's passover ; and on the fifteenth day of 
 the same month is the feast of unleavened 
 bread." 3 
 
 Bearing this in mind, we open John xiii. The 
 scene is laid at the Paschal Supper, before the 
 Feast of the Passover 4 — that is, on the eve of 
 the festival. And when Judas went out, the 
 disciples supposed he was gone to buy what was 
 needed for the feast (ver. 29). The feast was a 
 Sabbath, when trading was unlawful ; but to 
 
 " Life of Christy pt. vi., sect. ii. 
 
 » See Luke xxii. i, and cf. Josephus, AnU xiv. 2, i, and xvii. 9, 3. 
 3 Lev. xxiii. 5, 6 ; Numb, xxviii. i6, 17. 
 
 * We must distinguish this from such passages as Matt. xxvL 17, 
 where the A.V. wrongly introduces the word "feast." 
 
236 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 make provision for all that was needful for the 
 feast was lawful on the preceding night. ^ For 
 yet another blunder is the assumption that always 
 and for all purposes the Jewish day began in the 
 evening.2 The Passover was eaten during the 
 evening of the 14th Nisan; the feast day began 
 the following morning. 
 
 The weekly Sabbath was reckoned from 
 evening to evening. And every day was so 
 reckoned for purposes of ceremonial cleansing — 
 a fact which enables us to detect another of the 
 blunders of this theory. Ceremonial defilement 
 lapsed at sundown. 3 Therefore, as the Paschal 
 Supper was not eaten until the evening, the Jew 
 would not have been precluded from partaking, 
 by reason of his having entered the Pretorium 
 early in the day. Not so, however, with the 
 holy offerings of the feast day,4 which were eaten 
 before evening. The only question, therefore, is 
 whether partaking of them could properly be 
 described as " eating the Passover." The law of 
 Moses supplies the answer — " Thou shalt sacri- 
 fice the Passover unto the Lord thy God of the 
 
 ' Edersheim's Life and times of Messiakj vol. ii., p. 508. 
 
 =" One source of error here is the assumption that either the 
 modern Jewish calendar or practice is the same as in the days of 
 the Ministry. 
 
 3 Lev. xxii. 7. ^ The Chagigah of the Talmud. 
 
Ch. XVIIL] "THE PREPARATION" 237 
 
 flock and the herd . . . seven days shalt thou 
 eat unleavened bread therewith'' ' 
 
 And further still. The Pharisees planned the 
 betrayal on the night of the Supper, because they 
 feared a riot if they seized the Lord upon the day 
 of the Feast.2 For the suggestion that it was 
 unlawful to be out of doors on that night is due 
 to confounding the law of the Passover in Egypt 
 with the law of the annual celebration. 
 
 But the day of the crucifixion was ** the prepa- 
 ration of the Passover ; " 3 and must not this 
 mean the day before the Passover ? My answer 
 is that not a single writer, sacred or profane, can 
 be quoted in support of such a view. "The 
 preparation " was a term in common use among 
 the Jews to describe the day before the weekly 
 Sabbath. It is so used by each of the Evan- 
 gelists, and by none more definitely than the 
 Fourth, in this very chapter. Every Friday was 
 "the preparation"; this particular Friday was 
 "the Passover preparation." 4 
 
 * Deut. xvi. 2, 3, c/. 2 Chron. xxxv. 7, 8. 
 
 » Matt. xxvi. 5 ; Mark xiv. i, 2. 3 John xix. 14. 
 
 * See Matt, xxvii. 62 ; Mark xv. 42 ; Luke xxiii. 54 ; and John 
 xix. 31 and 42. Josephus {Ant xvi. 6) cites an imperial edict 
 relieving the Jews from appearing before the tribunals either on 
 the Sabbath or after the ninth hour of preparation day. This 
 term was so universally used that it even passed into the Chris- 
 
238 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 One point still remains : **that Sabbath was a 
 high day." ^ True ; for not only was it, as being 
 the Sabbath of Passover week, one of the 
 greatest Sabbaths of the year, but further, as 
 being the second day of the Feast, it was kept by 
 the Jews as "the day of the First-fruits " — one of 
 the '* red-letter days " in the calendar. 
 
 And now I will turn away to criticisms of 
 another kind, far higher than any of which the 
 Higher Critics take cognizance. Men would be 
 happy in this world if only they could shut out 
 God, And every human religion is designed as 
 a sort of backsheesh to appease or please the 
 Deity. But the Divine religion of Judaism was 
 for a redeemed and happy people ; and its special 
 characteristic was a series of festivals — seasons of 
 national rejoicing. The month Nisan began the 
 sacred year ; ^ and in that month the first great 
 festival was celebrated — the Feast of Unleavened 
 Bread, or of Passover. One of the rites per- 
 
 tian Church ; and in his note on Mark xv. 42, Dean Alford quotes 
 Bishop Wordsworth as saying that it is "the name by which 
 Friday is now generally known in Asia and Greece." See also 
 his note on Matt, xxvii. 62. 
 
 ' John xix. 31. 
 
 ^ Before the Exodus it was the seventh month (Exod. xii. 2), 
 a position it still holds in the civil year. 
 
Ch. XVIII.] THE JEWISH FESTIVALS 239 
 
 taining to it was the cutting of the first sheaf of 
 the ripened grain, and presenting it in the 
 Temple. During the seven succeeding weeks 
 the entire grain harvest was garnered ; and then 
 took place the " Feast of Harvest," or as it was 
 commonly called, of Pentecost, But in Palestine 
 the harvest of the trees was as important as that 
 of the field ; and in the autumn, when all had 
 been gathered in, was celebrated the '* Feast of 
 I n-gathering, " or of Tabernacles — the great 
 "harvest-home" of the nation. Feasts they 
 were, and the people were called upon *'to 
 rejoice " as they celebrated them. All human 
 religion is marked by sadness : in the harmony of 
 the Divine religion the ruling note was joy.^ 
 
 The first great festival immediately followed 
 the Paschal Supper ; the last, the Day of Atone- 
 ment. For all true worship and all real joy begin 
 with, and are based upon, redemption and for- 
 giveness. The sacred calendar was thus intended 
 as a prophecy ; and every part of it has its fulfil- 
 ment in the great reconciliation. Holy Writ 
 teaches expressly that the Sheaf of the First- 
 fruits prefigured the resurrection of Christ. Its 
 acceptance was the public proof of the Divine 
 
 * The law of the Feasts will be found in Exod. xxiii. 14-17 ; 
 Lev. xxiii, ; and Deut. xvi. 1-17. 
 
240 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 blessing upon the harvest, and the pledge that 
 all would be safely garnered. And so, in the 
 antitype, the resurrection of Christ is the pledge 
 and proof that all His people shall, like Him, be 
 raised — ** Christ the first-fruits ; afterward they 
 that are Christ's, at His coming." ' 
 
 But in the post-captivity revival, the Jews 
 misread the long-neglected law, and in error 
 appointed the day after the feast day, instead 
 of **the morrow after the Sabbath," for the pre- 
 senting of the first-fruits. And thus it came 
 about that the Lord was lying in the grave 
 upon the very day the rite was celebrated which 
 prefigured His resurrection from the dead. That 
 rite belongs not to the Sabbath, but to "the 
 morrow after the Sabbath" — not to the seventh 
 day, which was the "rest" of the old creation, 
 but to " the first day of the week," the rest-day 
 of that new creation of which He is the First- 
 born and the Head.^ 
 
 * I Cor. XV. 23. The words are iv ry wapovffiijf. avrov. It is not 
 an isolated event, but the time of His presence as contrasted 
 with this, the time of His absence. 
 
 " Deut. xvi. 9 makes it clear that the day of the first-fruits was 
 not to be a Sabbath, and that the Divine intention was that a 
 sheaf of corn, cut that very day, should be carried to the Temple 
 and waved before the Lord. And it follows, of course, that the 
 true day of Pentecost (which in that year was observed upon 
 a Sabbath) must always be the first day of the week — a fact 
 
Ch. XVIIL] the teaching of the types 241 
 
 The seeming fitness of assigning the death 
 of Christ to the very day the Paschal lamb was 
 killed has weight with many.' But this is owing 
 to the almost exclusive prominence which popular 
 theology accords to that most popular of types. 
 The offerings of the opening chapters of Leviticus ^ 
 have a still larger place in the doctrinal teaching 
 of the New Testaments; and these great sacri- 
 fices of the law marked the feast day on which 
 the Lord was crucified.4 
 
 Other synchronisms, too, there were. The 
 greatest mystery of the Passion was not His 
 suffering from men, but His being forsaken of 
 God. In a real sense, indeed, the sufferings 
 inflicted upon Him by men were but a conse- 
 quence of this. Hence His reply to Pilate, 
 
 which confirms the presumption that it was when assembled on 
 the Lord's Day that the Church received the gift of the Holy- 
 Ghost. It is held by some that the ambiguous word employed 
 in Acts ii. i means "fulfilled" in the sense of passed (Smith's 
 Bible Diet, " Pentecost," vol. ii., p. 786). 
 
 ' To suppose it occurred at the same hour is a blunder. The 
 lamb was killed " between the evenings," «.«., between the sun's 
 decline and its final disappearance — about 6 p.m. (Edersheim, 
 ii. 490). 
 
 » The burnt-offering with its meat-offering, the peace-offering 
 (the Chagigah of the Talmud) and the sin-offering (Lev. i.-iv.). 
 
 3 In Hebrews, e.g.* the offerings of the law are prominently 
 mentioned, while the Passover has no place in the doctrine of the 
 Epistle, 
 
 < Numb, xxviii. 17-23. (Comp. Josephus, Ant. iii, 10, 5.) 
 
242 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 ** Thou couldest have no power at all against 
 Me, except it were given thee from above." 
 If men seized and slew Him, it was because 
 God had delivered Him up. " This is your 
 hour and the power of darkness," He exclaimed 
 in Gethsemane. And not till that destined hour 
 had struck was the Almighty Hand withdrawn 
 which till then had shielded Him from outrage. 
 His death was the close, and not the beginning, 
 of His sufferings : in truth it was the hour of His 
 triumph. 
 
 The yearly Passover was merely a memorial 
 of the Passover in Egypt ; and the midnight 
 agony in Gethsemane was the great antitype 
 of that midnight scene when the destroying angel 
 flashed through the land of the Pharaohs. And 
 as His death was the accomplishment of His 
 people's deliverance, it took place upon the 
 anniversary of ** that selfsame day that the 
 Lord did bring the children of Israel out of 
 the land of Egypt." ^ And that day again was 
 a great anniversary : it was " the selfsame day " 
 of the covenant with Abraham. ^ 
 
 ' Exod. xii. 51. 
 
 * Ibid., verse 41. The day of the resurrection was also an 
 anniversary. On the 17th day of the month Nisan (or Abib) 
 the renewed earth emerged from the waters of the Flood (Gen. 
 viii. 4) ; the redeemed people emerged from the waters of the 
 sea, and the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead. 
 
Ch. XVIII.] THE CALENDAR A PROPHECY 243 
 
 As we have seen, then, the Sacred Calendar 
 of Israel is a prophecy of redemption. In the 
 Temple there was the inner shrine within the 
 second veil, where none but the High Priest 
 might ever enter; the holy place, into which 
 the priests might come ; and the court without, 
 where all the people could approach. And in 
 redemption we have the same threefold division : 
 first the Christ, and those who, as ** partakers of 
 the heavenly calling," have, in Him, the right 
 of nearest access ; secondly, the earthly people, 
 yet to become a kingdom of priests ; and, thirdly, 
 the great multitude of the redeemed of earth. 
 And so here. The sheaf of the first fruits in its 
 primary interpretation stands for Christ alone. 
 But the prophecy of the Calendar, like many 
 another prophecy, has a double fulfilment; and, 
 in its secondary application, that sheaf represents 
 not merely the personal Christ, but the official 
 Christ, including all who share ** the heavenly 
 calling. "I And the wave loaves of Pentecost 
 
 ' '* The heavenly calling " is not limited to " the Church which 
 is His body*' — the special election of the present dispensation ; 
 it includes also the Bride — a special election out of Israel in the 
 dispensation to follow. John the Baptist — the last great prophet 
 of the earthly people — speaks of the Bride (John iii. 29) ; and 
 then the Bride disappears from Scripture, to reappear in Rev. 
 xix. 7, xxi. 9 fE., which relate to the restoration of the earthly 
 
244 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 represent the earthly people, as such, in their 
 special place of privilege and blessing. 
 
 But the covenant promise to Abraham included 
 blessing for all the nations of the earth. This is 
 in the book of the beginnings — the book of 
 Genesis ; and in the visions of the Revelation, 
 the book of the endings, we read of the elect 
 Pentecostal company of the redeemed of Israel 
 on earth, and then of the palm-bearing multitude 
 of the Feast of Tabernacles — "a great multitude 
 which no man could number, of all nations and 
 kindreds, and people and tongues." ' 
 
 This is not a wild inference from isolated texts- 
 It is the burden of prophecy as a whole. The 
 present dispensation, we are expressly told, is 
 typified by the first of the sacred festivals. *' Our 
 passover has been sacrificed, even Christ," says the 
 
 people. But Christian theology more suo appropriates all Israel's 
 blessings, the bridal glory not excepted, and with exemplary dis- 
 crimination apportions the curses to the Jews ! Holy Scripture 
 nowhere speaks of the Church of this dispensation as the bride ; 
 and Eph. v. 25-33 asserts by implication that it is not To appeal 
 to 2 Cor. xi. 2 is mere trifling. 
 
 ' Gen. xxii. 18, Rev. vii. 3-9. (The carrying of branches of 
 palm trees marked the Feast of Tabernacles, Lev. xxiii. 40.) And 
 compare Rev. xiv. 1-6. The scene here again is laid on earth. 
 First we have the 144,000 of the redeemed of Israel ; and their 
 promised blessing is followed by the proclamation of " the ever- 
 lasting gospel " to " every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and 
 people." Zech. xiv. gives the result in plain, prosaic words. 
 
Ch. XVIIL] "RESTORATION OF ALL THINGS" 245 
 
 Apostle in enjoining holiness of life, " wherefore 
 let us keep the feast."' And the true Pentecost 
 is yet to come. The great event of the Church's 
 baptism, as recorded in the Acts, was within the 
 scope of Joel's prophecy, 2 but it was not the fulfil- 
 ment of it. That belongs to those wonderful and 
 awful days of mingled blessing and judgment, 
 which are to herald *' the times of the restitution 
 of all things" — the period of the last great 
 festival, the Feast of Tabernacles. 
 
 For the "restoration of all things" is not, as 
 some would tell us, the accomplishment in eter- 
 nity of a scheme, now secret, to bring all the lost 
 to heaven. It is the realisation upon earth, and 
 in days which shall yet be marked and measured 
 in human calendars, of a Divine purpose plainly 
 declared upon the open page of Scripture. Of 
 these "times of restoration " the inspired Apostle 
 tells us, " God hath spoken by the mouth of all 
 His holy prophets since the world began." And 
 to make it more emphatic still, he adds, " Yea, 
 all the prophets, from Samuel and those that 
 
 " I Cor. V. 7, 8 (R.V.) The subject here is, not the Eucharist, 
 but the Christian life on earth. 
 
 " Joel ii. 28-iii. 2. Mark the language of the inspired Apostle 
 in Acts ii. 16. In the accuracy of Scripture a distinction is 
 often made between events which are within the scope of a 
 prophecy and events which fulfil it. 
 
246 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 follow after, as many as have spoken, have like- 
 wise foretold of these days." In a word, they 
 are the burden of all prophetic testimony, from 
 first to last, in relation to what theologians call 
 **the Second Advent." 
 
 In the simple prose of the Epistle to the 
 Romans this same truth is plainly taught. The 
 *'faH" of Israel has proved *'the riches of the 
 world"; the setting aside of Israel, "the recon- 
 ciling of the world." What then, the Apostle 
 asks, shall be their restoration to favour but "life 
 from the dead " ? Mark the force and meaning 
 of these words. When the coming Pentecost — 
 the presentation to God of the " two wave loaves " 
 of Israel and Judah restored to Divine favour and 
 blessing — leads on to the last great Feast of 
 Ingathering, results will be achieved on a 
 scale so vast and wonderful that, in contrast 
 with them, the greatest present-day successes 
 In evangelising the world will seem like death. 
 In comparison with the Feast of Passover the 
 Feast of Tabernacles — that coming triumph of 
 redemption — will be " as life from the dead," 
 
 But in the great mass of critical literature all 
 this is absolutely ignored. And yet it is but 
 the realisation of the prayer, '* Thy will be 
 done on earth as it is done in heaven " — words 
 
Ch. XVIIL] the scope of the bible 247 
 
 which are daily uttered as an incantation by 
 multitudes of people who regard the hope of 
 their fulfilment as a dream of fanatics. 
 
 Even that poor type of Evangelicalism whose 
 horizon of truth is narrowed to what might be 
 described as the Police Court Gospel which tells 
 how Christ has paid the sinner's penalty, stands 
 on a vastly higher level than the mere religionist, 
 with his "carnal ordinances," not omitting ritual 
 and millinery. But such teachers, one and all, 
 leave us an easy prey to rationalistic critics. For 
 while they vehemently assert that the Bible is 
 the Word of God, they use it merely as a book 
 of piety or of religion. 
 
 The story is told of one who hid himself in the 
 library of a famous German theologian of the 
 eighteenth century, that he might learn the secret 
 of his fellowship with God. Let us thus take the 
 place of eavesdroppers upon the Apostle of the 
 Gentiles as he writes his great Redemption 
 treatise. He first unfolds the wonders of grace 
 in the gospel. Then he turns aside to mark 
 how every Divine scheme of blessing for man 
 on earth has been baffled by human sin. And 
 lastly he goes on to show how this tale of 
 apostasy and ruin is but a dark background 
 for the display of a supreme purpose which is 
 
248 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 to include the fulfilment of all that has thus 
 seemingly been thwarted and lost. And having 
 thus reached the climax of the revelation en- 
 trusted to him for the Church, nothing remains 
 but to enforce by exhortation and appeal a life 
 of holiness and righteousness befitting those who 
 are recipients of such " mercies," But ere he 
 turns the page he exclaims in adoration, "O the 
 depth of the riches both of the wisdom and 
 knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His 
 judgments and His ways past finding out. For 
 of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all 
 things : to Him be the glory for ever. Amen." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THIS book has already passed the limits I 
 had fixed for it ; and though I seem to 
 have but touched the fringe of a subject which 
 is inexhaustible, the present chapter must be 
 the last. 
 
 Here, then, is my answer to the question of 
 the opening page, Whether, in view of modern 
 criticism, the Bible may still be received with 
 the settled and simple faith accorded to it in the 
 past? "I hold no man's proxy," and yet in a 
 sense I represent a class that may surely claim a 
 right to be heard in this controversy. Taught in 
 early life to regard the Bible as the inspired Word 
 of God, we came in time to feel the power of 
 destructive criticism. And our faith was severely 
 tested by the strain. For the man who believes 
 on mere human testimony that a virgin bore a 
 child, and that a dead man came back to life, is a 
 
 superstitious creature who would believe anything. 
 
 249 
 
250 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 The question at issue, therefore, is between 
 agnosticism and Christianity. And we have 
 faced that question in the light of all that the 
 critics have to urge. Some of us have studied 
 the Bible quite as diligently as they have ; and 
 as the result, while wholly free from the trammels 
 of "articles" and "creeds," we have come back 
 to the faith of those who framed those formularies. 
 We do not look upon the martyrs with patronising 
 pity as fanatics or fools. The faith they died for 
 we deem worth living for. And if belief in Holy 
 Scripture in the sense in which they believed in 
 it led to the same consequences now as in dark 
 days gone by, we trust we should not shrink from 
 them. 
 
 My answer, then, is clear and unequivocal. As 
 for the manner of it I am well aware of its faults 
 and imperfections. But one characteristic of it, 
 for which I expect to be taken severely to task, I 
 refuse to regard as a fault at all. At the outset 
 I waived appeals to authority, and therefore I 
 have deliberately abstained from paying the 
 critical scholars the homage to which they are 
 accustomed. To adopt the words of Dr. Pusey, 
 " I have turned against sceptics their own 
 weapons, and used ridicule against the would- 
 be arguments of a false criticism which thought 
 
Ch. XIX.] MORALITY OF THE CRITICS 251 
 
 itself ' free ' because it made free with God's 
 Word." I 
 
 My treatment of the critics is due to no want 
 of deference for scholarship. But that which 
 gives them such a commanding influence upon 
 the public mind is not their scholarship, but the 
 vantage-ground they occupy as professors of 
 Christian universities or colleges, or ministers of 
 Christian Churches. Their power to attack the 
 Bible is mainly due to positions they have gained 
 by giving solemn pledges to defend it. Not that 
 I accuse them of conscious dishonesty in this. 
 They are above the suspicion of such a charge. 
 But they do not view things as others view them. 
 The morality of religious men seems to differ 
 from that of ordinary men. The critics see no 
 inconsistency between their position and their 
 teaching ; just as they cannot see the obvious 
 consequences of that teaching. Moreover, with 
 some notable exceptions, they are mere experts, 
 and experts are proverbially lacking in judgment. 
 
 To speak in this way of such eminent person- 
 ages will seem to some people almost to savour 
 of profanity. Many of us have laughed over 
 David Ross's warning to his wife in The Days of 
 
 * Dr. Pusey's Daniel (Preface). 
 
253 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 Auld Lang Syne^ ** We maun be cannie wi' 
 Johns title, wumman, for ye ken professor is a 
 by-ordinar* word : a' count it equal tae earl at the 
 verra least, an' it wudna dae tae be aye usin't." 
 But in this controversy we cannot afford to be 
 "cannie." The issues at stake are too tremen- 
 dous. And moreover, nothing sublunary is 
 sacred to a lawyer, 
 
 I may plead, too, that I have merely brought 
 the critics within the meshes of their own net. I 
 have treated them as they themselves treat the 
 ** Biblical writers." Appeals to the New Testa- 
 ment they refuse on the ground that the inspired 
 Apostles of the Lord, and even the Lord Him- 
 self, were prejudiced and ignorant : is it very 
 shocking, then, to question their own competency ? 
 As for me, I would say, in borrowed language, 
 how deeply I feel my "utter weakness before the 
 power of His Word and my inability to sound 
 the depths even of its simplest sentence." But 
 yet it would be the merest affectation in one who 
 knows even a little of the spiritual meaning and 
 •* hidden harmony " of Scripture, to pretend that 
 he can study such works as Hastings's Bible 
 Dictionary and The Encyclopcedia Biblica without 
 being conscious of living in a sphere which most 
 of the writers seem to have never entered, and 
 
Ch. XIX.] COMPETENCE OF THE CRITICS 253 
 
 of the very existence of which they display no 
 knowledge. 
 
 It will be said perhaps that in these books the 
 editors and contributors write avowedly as critics, 
 and it is not fair to assume that they are only 
 critics. But can any one point to anything that 
 has come from their facile pens which gives proof 
 of acquaintance with the spiritual power of Holy 
 Scripture as **the living and eternally abiding 
 Word of God"? (i Pet. i. 23.)! 
 
 *' It is the first rule of criticism," one of the 
 most eminent and trusted of the critics tells us, 
 '* that a good critic must be a good interpreter of 
 the thoughts of his author " ; ^ and it would be 
 difficult to frame a sentence which more definitely 
 discredits the whole fraternity. " These are they 
 which bear witness of Me " 3 is the Divine 
 inscription upon the Hebrew Scriptures ; and in 
 ignoring this the critics are entirely out of touch 
 
 ' " Robertson Smith/' exclaims a friend at my elbow. " Oh the 
 pity of it !" is my rejoinder; for I recall such words as these : 
 "Only of this I am sure at the outset, that the Bible does speak 
 to the heart of man in words that can only come from God" 
 {Old Testament in the 'Jewish Church). But see p. 39, ante. And 
 one of the most notable of his successors in Scotland is now 
 running the same course ; so that Professor Cheyne need no 
 longer pity his weakness [Old Testament Criticism^ p. 245), 
 
 ' Robertson Smith, Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 
 Lecture III. 
 
 9 John V. 39 (R.V.) 
 
254 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 with the thoughts both of the God who inspired 
 the Bible and of its human authors. 
 
 Our quarrel with the Higher Criticism, I repeat 
 with emphasis, is not because it is criticism, but 
 because it is purely destructive, and therefore 
 the lowest kind of criticism. And, moreover, it 
 systematically ignores the science of evidence, 
 on which all true criticism rests. In fact, when 
 judged by every test that can be applied to it, 
 it is found wanting. 
 
 In the higher sense of the word a "critic" 
 is a skilled and impartial judge — all that here 
 in England we expect a judge to be. Its 
 secondary meaning is that of " a harsh examiner," 
 a hostile fault-finder. These sceptical writers 
 belong to the second category. And let this be 
 kept in view. We do not reject the ascertained 
 results of true criticism. Our protest is against 
 the assumptions of a criticism which is unsound 
 in principle, and which is carried on by unsound 
 methods. ** We are prepared as Christian men to 
 receive and welcome the fullest light of the new 
 learning. We are not prepared to be dragged at 
 the wheels of those who would give us a dis- 
 credited Old Testament, an emasculated New 
 Testament, a fallible Christ." ' 
 
 ■ These words are quoted from Dr. Sinker's valuable treatise 
 on The Higher Criticism (p. 184). 
 
Ch. XIX.] SCEPTICISM AND SCHOLARSHIP 255 
 
 If therefore I may venture to combine practical 
 counsel with this summary and retrospect, I would 
 say, first, let no one be ** browbeaten out of belief" 
 by these attacks upon Holy Scripture. The 
 Bible is not discredited because eminent scholars 
 have turned against it in the camp of faith. 
 The critics represent indeed that the scholarship 
 of Christendom is with them. But the claim 
 is absolutely unfounded. ^ Their apparent pre- 
 eminence is due largely to their being adepts in 
 the art of what the Americans call " literary log- 
 rolling." They are ** a mutual admiration society." 
 No one of them can raise a cry but that the whole 
 party responds. And then the secular Press joins 
 in. For the Press is with them. Naturally. 
 For the newspapers represent "the world," and 
 " the world " is never on the side of Divine 
 truth. 
 
 The alarming spread of scepticism among the 
 Nonconformists during the last quarter of a 
 century has been largely due to their wincing 
 under this charge of want of scholarship. They 
 long refused to barter the faith of Christ for 
 German rationalism. But Matthew Arnolds 
 
 * Such a book as Lex Mosaica is in itself an answer to it. That 
 notable work is a complete refutation of the critical attack upon 
 the Pentateuch. 
 
2S6 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 appeal for " culture '* was a veiled taunt which 
 they keenly felt ; and like the schoolboy who is 
 shamed into evil ways by the fear of being deemed 
 unmanly, they betook themselves to the new cult. 
 Under this inriuence many of the younger men 
 are now ministers of "culture," instead of being 
 ministers of the gospel. The result is that while, 
 politically and socially, Nonconformity never stood 
 higher, as a spiritual power it has sensibly 
 declined. It is bartering its birthright for a 
 mess of pottage. 
 
 It is noteworthy that this boast of a monopoly 
 of scholarship, and this taunt of want of culture, 
 were among the weapons used by the Arians in 
 the supreme controversy of early days. Those 
 who stood with Athanasius in the great struggle 
 for the faith of Christ appeared for a time to be a 
 weak minority. But the undeclared suffrages of 
 *'the whole congregation of Christian people" 
 were behind them ; and in the end the truth 
 triumphed. 
 
 If I may go on to offer advice of a still more 
 practical kind, I would say in the words of that 
 most sensible of men, the town clerk of Ephesus, 
 ** Seeing that these things cannot be gainsaid, ye 
 ought to be quiet." It is idle to hold exciting 
 meetings, and to shout for '* about the space of 
 
Ch. XIX.] NEGLECT OF THE BIBLE 257 
 
 two hours" that the Bible is the Word of God. 
 A reaction is sure to follow ; and when the shout- 
 ing is over thoughtful people will turn away to 
 listen to the critics. 
 
 The success of the sceptical movement is not 
 due to the strength of the attack, but to the 
 weakness of the defence. With the vast majority 
 of Christians the Bible is nothing more than " a 
 plan of salvation" and "a book of piety." Of 
 **the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of 
 God " which it unfolds they are content to 
 know nothing. The golden threads of type and 
 prophecy which are in the warp and woof of it 
 from Genesis to Revelation, they ignore. And 
 some who pose as champions of the Bible share 
 the ignorance of those whom they seek to lead. 
 No wonder, therefore, if scepticism prevails. 
 
 I once asked the late Bishop of Limerick, when 
 visiting him in his charming summer home upon 
 the Kenmare river, whether, when separated from 
 his library and his work, the time did not some- 
 times hang heavily. I well remember Dr. Graves's 
 answer. "Give me," said he, "a single square 
 yard on the side of a dry ditch, and I can find 
 enough to interest me for a day." To me, I 
 confess, a Kerry ditch, wet or dry, would be 
 nothing but a ditch. And there are multitudes 
 
 18 
 
258 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 "who profess and call themselves Christians" to 
 whom the Bible is nothing but a book. And yet 
 with the spiritually intelligent every page of it will 
 bear the microscope. Not a single student of 
 prophecy can be found in the ranks of the critics ; 
 not a single individual who understands the 
 Pentateuch as "the word of the beginning of 
 Christ." I 
 
 Let us never forget that the Higher Criticism 
 is what has been called ''post-mortem talk." No 
 one could make a constant study oi s. post-mortem 
 report upon some lost relative or friend without 
 becoming morbid or degraded. And a like 
 deterioration seems to result from the habitual 
 study of the critics. Let us then keep their books 
 on the upper shelf, and use them only for reference. 
 These writers seem to miss even the open and 
 obvious scope of the Old Testament as the Divine 
 history of the Abrahamic race. And its esoteric 
 teaching about Christ, which pervades not merely 
 the writings of the Prophets, but the Law and the 
 " Former Prophets " (as the historical books were 
 called), they entirely ignore. And it is neither 
 
 * In other words, the critics know nothing of the typology of 
 Scripture. And therefore they are ignorant of the language in 
 which Christian doctrine is taught in the New Testament (see 
 p. 26, ante). 
 
Ch. XIX.] CONFIDENCE IN THE BIBLE 259 
 
 wholesome nor even safe for the Christian to 
 accustom himself to a system of Bible study in 
 which Christ has no place.' 
 
 Here I would add a warning against being 
 frightened by a parade of seeming errors in the 
 Scriptures. In the preceding chapters I have 
 selected examples of various classes of difficulties, 
 and have shown how some that may seem to be 
 insoluble can not only be explained, but so 
 explained as to become helps to faith. Others 
 there are, no doubt, to the solution of which 
 we cannot find a clew, though perhaps, if we 
 had all the facts and circumstances in view, the 
 solution might be simple and obvious. But surely 
 it is a poor sort of faith that depends on the 
 absence of difficulties. 
 
 Treat your Bible as you would treat your friend. 
 A friendship that cannot bear the strain of a 
 misunderstanding does not deserve the name; 
 nor a faith that gives way in presence of a diffi- 
 culty. But with many the place the Bible holds 
 resembles that not of a friend at all, but rather 
 that of a mere acquaintance. For proofs that it is 
 the Word of God are clear and abundant. But 
 
 * " It is ignorance of Christ which turns the Scriptures into a 
 dark, inexplicable riddle." — Birks's Modern Rationalism. 
 
26o THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 they do not lie open on the surface. Gold and 
 diamonds are not picked up upon the highway ; 
 men need to dig for them. Even Nature hides 
 her treasures from the trifler, God is " a re warder 
 of them that seek Him diligently." 
 
 But nothing is gained by exaggeration or 
 overstatement. When, adopting the language of 
 Scripture itself, we call it the Word of God, the 
 oracles of God, we make full allowance for possible 
 errors in transcription, and imperfection in trans- 
 lation. But as we have seen, to press these 
 considerations to a point that would impair 
 its Divine authority betokens perverseness and 
 pedantry. 
 
 And this leads me to repeat a warning against 
 identifying the fact of inspiration with any 
 definition of it, or with popular theories 
 respecting it. Many people, for instance, seem 
 to assume that we cannot regard Genesis as 
 inspired unless it be maintained that every 
 portion of it was imparted to Moses in the 
 same way that the 53rd chapter of Isaiah was 
 imparted to 'the prophet. But what warrant is 
 there for this? If the Higher Criticism view 
 of Exodus, for example, be sustained, that book 
 is a profane fraud, and our Divine Lord is an 
 unreliable teacher. But if the a pTdori argument 
 
Ch. XIX.] THE GENESIS "DOCUMENTS" 261 
 
 in favour of a written revelation be valid,' it 
 vetoes the assumption that there was no such 
 revelation during the thousands of years which 
 preceded the Mosaic age. That Genesis was 
 based on existing "documents" is a reasonable 
 suggestion ; but the inference that this disproves 
 its claim to inspiration is false. Our Lord set 
 His seal upon the book as a whole, but He said 
 no word either to guide or to restrain the efforts 
 of reverent and competent criticism to analyse it. 
 
 While therefore the absence of definitions and 
 theories will seem to some a serious defect in 
 this book, it is a defect which I refuse to remedy. 
 If any one doubts whether God could make His 
 will known to men, unmistakably, and in language 
 they can understand, the question at issue is not 
 inspiration at all, but the power and character of 
 God. And while an intelligent scepticism will 
 apply the severest tests to anything claiming to 
 be a Divine revelation, the rejection of it on 
 a priori grounds is nothing but the dull stupidity 
 of an ignorant unbelief 
 
 The Higher Criticism is, as we have seen, the 
 product, not of nineteenth century enlightenment, 
 but of eighteenth century rationalism. And yet 
 
 ' See p. 64, ante. 
 
262 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 it can boast of a far more venerable origin. For 
 while there is plenty that is novel in its elaborate 
 details, in its main outlines there is nothing new. 
 People talk as though the faith of the Church as 
 to Holy Scripture was settled in an uncritical and 
 ignorant age when the objections and difficulties 
 which now influence the minds of men were 
 unknown. The thought is worthy of this 
 conceited age of ours. The faith of the Church 
 was settled under a fire of keen and intelligent 
 criticism. Names such as Celsus and Porphyry, 
 and the rest, not to speak of the Gnostics and 
 other sects, will occur to every student. The 
 " Mosaic narrative " was, then as now, explained 
 as allegory, or dismissed as fable. The Mosaic 
 books were declared not to be Mosaic at all, but 
 the product of a later time. The historical books 
 were discredited as being unauthentic, and the 
 miracles were ridiculed. And in the case of 
 such books as Jonah and Daniel it may be 
 averred that the modern attack adds nothing 
 that will stand the test of still more modern 
 discoveries. The distinctive element in the 
 Higher Criticism is merely that the attack is 
 now delivered from the Christian camp. 
 
 And in conclusion I would repeat with 
 emphasis a warning against being deceived as 
 
Ch. XIX.] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MOVEMENT 263 
 
 to the significance of the present movement. 
 There is nothing which proves more plainly a 
 critic's want of judgment, and of clearness of 
 vision, than the incapacity to see that the 
 Christ controversy of the Early Church is re- 
 opened by the Bible controversy of to-day. A 
 supernatural creed which does not rest on a 
 supernatural foundation is not faith, but super- 
 stition. Puzzle - headed people may taunt us 
 with putting the Bible in the place of Christ, 
 but every clear thinker recognises that once we 
 pass out of the sphere where reason and the 
 senses can teach us, we are dependent absolutely 
 on a Divine revelation. 
 
 Not that ** the historic Jesus " is a myth. The 
 rejection of the Evangelists* testimony betokens 
 not a reasonable scepticism, but the stupidity of 
 the ** boot-eating" juror, who doggedly refuses 
 to believe the evidence. But an intelligent 
 appreciation of the evidence for the public facts 
 of His life and ministry stands quite apart from 
 belief in the Divinity of Christ. The foundation 
 truth of Christianity is that the Man of Calvary 
 is now sitting upon the throne of God. And I 
 appeal to all fair minds whether I am not justified 
 in saying that those who believe this upon no 
 better authority than the Higher Critics' Bible* 
 
264 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 are credulous and superstitious. We can reach 
 the Living Word only through the written Word. 
 Therefore in contending for a really inspired — 
 an absolutely authoritative — Bible, we can say 
 with Athanasius, ** We are fighting for our all." ^ 
 
 But it is not merely in this incidental way that 
 the Higher Criticism undermines the foundations 
 of Christianity. It attacks them directly. The 
 critics freely acknowledge that the Lord Jesus 
 Christ accredited the Old Testament as being the 
 Word of God. Unless, therefore, they can dis- 
 credit His testimony their whole position must 
 be condemned as not only false, but profane. 
 And from this, as we have seen, 2 they do not 
 shrink. 
 
 The Christian truth of the Humiliation is that, 
 with the full realisation of all that He was, and 
 the clear apprehension of all that God had 
 revealed in the Scriptures which testified of 
 
 * It is a well-known fact that the present dearth of candidates 
 for Holy Orders is due, not to the^ causes publicly put forward, 
 but to the effects of the Higher Criticism in undermining faith 
 in the Incarnation among those who might be expected to offer 
 themselves for ordination. And it would be a rash statement at 
 this moment to assert that the majority of the clergy believe the 
 Apostles' Creed. The book Contentio Veritatis, by " Six Oxford 
 Tutors," bears startling testimony to the extent of the present 
 apostasy. Those of the writers who clearly believe in the 
 supernatural appear to do so as Churchmen and not as Christians. 
 
 ' Pp. 69-74, ^'^i^' 
 
Ch. XIX.] "KENOSIS" HERESIES 265 
 
 Him, the Lord in infinite grace stooped to the 
 lowest depths of self-emptying and self-effacement. 
 But the Kenosis of this new theology betokens 
 not Divine grace but human misfortune. It is 
 not the humiliation of Christ, but His degrada- 
 tion. 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,^ 
 
 Such is the doctrine of the critics on this 
 question of transcendent importance. Nor is it 
 an excrescence upon their theology that might 
 be got rid of : it is vital to their system. They 
 admit that they are challenging what has been 
 the belief of the Church in all ages. They admit 
 that that false belief — ^as they deem it — is based 
 upon the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Their whole position, therefore, is untenable 
 unless they can disparage His authority or His 
 competence. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that the Higher Criticism 
 
 » John xiii, 3. 
 
 ■ This is merely a summary of the argument of chap. vi. 
 
266 THE BIBLE AND MODERN CRITICISM 
 
 raises again in a new and more subtle phase 
 the same issue as the old Arian heresy. It is 
 not the Bible that is at stake, but the Christ of 
 the Bible. Is it, then, the language of exaggera- 
 tion to declare that in resisting it ** we are 
 fighting for our all"? 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE I. 
 
 (Chap. IV. p. 44, ante.) 
 
 Isolated Texts Relied on by the Higher Critics. 
 
 It is notorious that great heresies are generally based on 
 isolated texts, and the rationalistic attack on the Pentateuch 
 relies on a perversion of Exodus vi. 3 and Jeremiah vii. 22. 
 
 The former passage is used by the critics to prove that the 
 name "Jehovah" was unknown to the Patriarchs. It is droll 
 how these men employ arguments which refute themselves; for 
 if the book be a literary forgery it is certain that the brilliant 
 author of it would not have given himself away like this. 
 
 Most of the Tiibingen heresies have an element of 
 truth in them, and the figment that Jehovah was the tribal 
 deity of Israel is a travesty of the truth that this was 
 God's covenant name — His name in relation to His people as 
 brought into covenant relationship with Himself. To Abraham 
 the covenant was a promise ; it was not till four centuries after- 
 wards that it was established as a public fact. The Patriarchs 
 received private revelations, but now He was about to declare 
 Himself openly. Hence His words in Exodus vi. — ^^ Tkou 
 shalt see what I will do to Pharaoh." And He adds, " I am 
 Jehovah; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and 
 unto Jacob, as God Almighty, but as to My name Jehovah I 
 was not known to them " (R.V., margin). The significance of 
 
 that name was never known until (as He goes on to say) He 
 
 267 
 
268 APPENDIX 
 
 "remembered" His covenant; that is, until the time had 
 come for Him in fulfilment of it (see p. 87, ante) to deliver 
 His people from their sojournings and their bondage. 
 " Wherefore^ say unto the children of Israel^ I am Jehovah^* 
 (ver. 6). 
 
 Jeremiah vii. 22 reads : " I spake not unto your fathers, nor 
 commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the 
 land of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices." And 
 this is taken as proof that " the Levitical Code " was not in 
 existence in Jeremiah^s day. 
 
 Such a perversion of the prophet's words would be impos- 
 sible but for the prevailing ignorance of the teaching of the 
 Pentateuch. To the intelligent Christian they appear to be 
 merely a bare statement of a fact which is plain upon the open 
 page of the Book of Exodus. The prophet adds, " But this 
 thing commanded I them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will 
 be your God, and ye shall be My people." This was the 
 burden of all the Divine teaching at the Exodus. When God 
 brought Israel out of Egypt there was not even a suggestion 
 of the Levitical code of sacrifices. That was promulgated 
 after the formal dedication of the covenant, as a Divine 
 provision to maintain Israel in the position already assured to 
 them as a redeemed and holy people. And its significance 
 was twofold. Its esoteric teaching was of Christ. Its outward 
 value was solely as a test of obedience. But when, in the 
 pre-exilic apostasy, the Jews made it a mere religion, and put 
 it in the place of heart-obedience to God, it became only a 
 curse to them. 
 
 I will risk a charge of egotism by referring here to Chapter 
 KII. of my Buddha of Christendom. I do so, however, because, 
 though it affords a refutation of this error of the critics, it was 
 written without any reference to the Pentateuch controversy. 
 
NOTE 11. 
 
 (Chap. VIII. p. no, ante.) 
 
 The Revised Version of the New Testament. 
 
 I wish to bring in the R.V. controversy only in so fax as my 
 argument demands it. The method on which the revisers 
 dealt with the text has been thus described by one of the 
 company (Dr. Newth), whose account is confirmed by Bishop 
 EUicott himself. The Bishop, as chairman, asked whether 
 any textual changes were proposed. "By tacit consent" Drs. 
 Scrivener and Hort were left to reply by stating their respective 
 views. "Dr. Scrivener opens up the matter by stating the 
 facts of the case and giving his judgment on the bearings of 
 the evidence. Dr. Hort follows, . . . and, if differing from 
 Dr. S.'s estimate of the weight of the evidence, gives his 
 reasons and states his own view. After discussion the vote 
 of the company is taken, and the proposed reading accepted 
 or rejected. The text being thus settled, the chairman asks 
 for proposals on the rendering." 
 
 Is it any wonder that a learned writer declared that if this 
 
 description of their action " is not a kind of joke, it is quite 
 
 enough to 'settle' this Revised Greek Testament in a very 
 
 different sense"? Fancy a question of prescriptive rights 
 
 being " settled " in such a manner as this in a court of justice ! 
 
 And remember that, while "textual criticism" sounds very 
 
 recondite, the question at issue in every instance was as 
 
 definitely a matter of evidence as is the case in a suit about 
 
 a water-course or a right of way. And it ought to have 
 
 been dealt with according to the established principles and 
 
 rules of evidence. 
 
 269 
 
270 APPENDIX 
 
 If the four or five most ancient MSS. were always in accord 
 a plausible case might be made out for following them to the 
 exclusion of the other authorities. But as a matter of fact they 
 are scarcely ever in accord in any instance where they differ from 
 the Received Text. Suppose that in a prescriptive rights 
 action the "ancient witnesses " called for the plain tiif differed 
 in their evidence, and the jury by a majority vote decided to 
 follow some of them in opposition to the others and also to the 
 united voice of the rest of the community ; and you have in a 
 parable the action of the Revisers in "settling" the Greek text. 
 
 And in numberless cases where the Revisers happily 
 refused to mutilate the text, they compromised matters by 
 allowing the insertion in the margin of an alternative reading, 
 which, though possibly quite devoid of authority, suggests 
 a doubt as to the right reading of the passage. 
 
 The question of the translation is quite outside the purpose 
 of this reference to the R.V"., which is merely to emphasise 
 the fact that sceptical objections based on textual criticism 
 are worthless. I will therefore dismiss the matter with a 
 word of comment and a word of advice. 
 
 An old MS. may have survived its fellows for the same 
 reason that an old pair of boots sometimes survives, namely, 
 through having been put aside on account of some fault or 
 blemish. Of the five most ancient MSS. which the Revisers 
 chiefly followed, three are declared by critics of eminence to 
 be corrupt and untrustworthy. 
 
 And the advice I venture to offer to readers who cannot 
 revise the R.V. for themselves is this : Read the Gospels 
 always in the Authorised Version, using the R.V. only as a 
 book of reference ; and when the text differs, assume that the 
 A.V. is right, for in the great majority of cases it is so. 
 
NOTE III. 
 
 (Chap. XI. p. 147, anU.) 
 
 "Three Days and Three Nights." 
 
 Some people cannot understand how the Lord's words that 
 He would be "three days and three nights'* in the grave 
 could be true if He died on Friday and rose on Sunday 
 morning. This is a notable instance of the common blunder 
 of interpreting words and phrases otherwise than by their use. 
 Words are but counters ; they have no intrinsic value. The 
 only practical question, therefore, is What do they stand for ? 
 And what alone concerns us here is. What meaning did the 
 Lord's words convey to those to whom they were addressed ? 
 To this question the Gospels afford the answer. Four-and 
 twenty hours after His burial the Jews came to Pilate and 
 said, "We remember that that deceiver said, while he was 
 yet alive, After three days I will rise again ; command there- 
 fore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day " 
 (Matt, xxvii. 63, 64). Compare with this 2 Chron. x. 5-12, 
 relative to the new king and his Israelite subjects. " He said 
 unto them, Come again unto me after three days, ... So 
 Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third 
 day'' Or see Esther iv. 16; v. i. The Queen's order to her 
 people was, " Fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink, three 
 days, night or day." And yet " On the third day " Esther 
 held the banquet. 
 
 In either case the words conveyed to those who used and 
 
 heard them a meaning different from that which we attach to 
 
 271 
 
272 APPENDIX 
 
 them. Had Jeroboam not come on the third day it would 
 have meant rebellion. Had that Easter Sunday passed leaving 
 the seal upon the tomb unbroken, the guard would have been 
 withdrawn, and the Pharisees would have proclaimed their 
 triumph. 
 
 A prison chaplain would find no difficulty in explaining 
 this to his congregation. Our civil day begins at midnight, 
 and the law reckons any part of a day as a day. Therefore 
 while a sentence of three days means three days of twenty- 
 four hours, equal to seventy-two hours, a prisoner under such 
 a committal is seldom more than forty hours in gaol ; and I 
 have known cases where the period was in fact only thirty- 
 three hours. And this mode of reckoning and of speaking 
 was as familiar to the Jew as it is to the habiiu'es of our 
 criminal courts. " A day and a night make an Onah^ and a 
 part of an Onah is as the whole." Dr. Lightfoot quotes this 
 Jewish saying in his Horm Hebraicm (Matt. xii. 40) ; and he 
 adds : " Therefore Christ may truly be said to have been in 
 his grave three Onoth .... the consent of the schools and 
 the dialect of the nation agreeing thereunto." 
 
 I have seen it stated that as Jonah's imprisonment in the 
 whale lasted three days and three nights the Lord must have 
 laid for as long a period in the grave. But this is only another 
 phase of the ^ame blunder. There is no reason to suppose 
 that Jonah's "three days and nights" was a longer period 
 than our Lord's. 
 
NOTE IV. 
 
 (Chap. XV, p. 198, anfe.) 
 
 The Genealogies of Our Lord. 
 
 Some people seem to assume that the gospel "Genealogies" 
 were dictated to Matthew and Luke by the Spirit of God: 
 others, that they were based on the gossip of Joseph's family. 
 It is not easy to decide which view is the more extraordinary. 
 These genealogies were of course transcripts of Jewish records ; 
 for such pedigrees were a speciality with the Jews, especially 
 in the case of families belonging to the Royal or Priestly 
 houses. And if they had not been authentic they would have 
 been promptly exposed, and the Gospels discredited, by 
 the Jewish opponents of Christianity. As Dr. Bloomfield 
 writes {Greek Test, Com.)\ "If these genealogies of Christ 
 (which must be understood to have been derived from the 
 public records in the temple) had not been agreeable thereto, 
 the deception would have been instantly detected." 
 
 This is so obvious that I should not notice it were it not for 
 the use made of these genealogies by certain of the critics. 
 For example, one of the lesser lights, quoted more than once 
 in these pages, referring to the very probable hypothesis that 
 Matthew gives the pedigree of Joseph, and Luke that of Mary, 
 predicts that " a coming generation of Bible students will find 
 it almost incredible that such an explanation should have been 
 seriously urged." He goes on to notice superciliously that 
 
 19 273 
 
274 APPENDIX 
 
 " Joseph's family occupied twenty-eight generations, while in 
 the same time Mary's family got through thirty-eight genera- 
 tions ; " and ends, " Luke inadvertently states that Joseph was 
 the son of Heli, when he meant that Mary was the daughter 
 of Heli." This is meant to be very smart. The reader must 
 decide whether such writing does not justify my treatment of 
 the critics. The real question thus raised is not at all the 
 inspiration of the Gospels, but whether the Evangelists are 
 deserving of any attention or respect. 
 
 An alternative explanation, that Matthew gives Joseph's 
 genealogy as legal successor to the throne of David, and Luke 
 his private genealogy, is maintained with much erudition and 
 force in Lord Arthur Hervey's Genealogies of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ An epitome of his argument will be found in his 
 article, "Genealogy of Christ," in Smith's Bible Dictionary, 
 A brief notice of the other view will be found in Dean 
 Plumptre's note to Luke iii. 23 in Bishop EUicott's New 
 Testament Commentary for English Readers. 
 
 Dr. BuUinger states the matter thus: — "Matthew gives 
 the royal and legal line through Solomon; Luke gives the 
 natural and lineal line through Nathan, The former is the 
 line according to legal succession ; the latter is the line accord- 
 ing to natural descent, , . , Both lines meet in Joseph, the 
 son of Jacob by birth, and the son of Heli by marriage with 
 Mary, Heli's only daughter." ' 
 
 ' Number in Scripture., p. 159. In a footnote he notices that the verb 
 used in Luke iii. 23 means " to own as a custom or usage" (Liddell & Scott). 
 It is not " as was supposed," but " as was reckoned by Jewish customs.*' 
 <Bloomfield's Gr* Test) 
 
NOTE V. 
 
 (Chap. XV, p. 20I, anfe.) 
 
 The Distinction between the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 THE Kingdom of God, and the Church. 
 
 The term " Kingdom of Heaven,'' or, to be strictly accurate, 
 " the ICingdom of the Heavens,'' occurs thirty-three times in 
 the First Gospel, and nowhere else in the New Testament.^ 
 
 The Greek work basileia has the same range of meaning as 
 our English word "Kingdom." It means (i) royal authority; 
 sovereign power; rule; or (2) the territory or country over 
 which a king rules. Therefore the Kingdom of the Heavens 
 must mean either (i) the rule of the heavens over the earth, 
 or else (2) the heavens as the scene or sphere of Divine rule. 
 We cannot hesitate in deciding that (i) is the meaning here, 
 " the heavens" standing for " God " by a well-known figure of 
 speech. And our best commentators, recognising this, refer 
 to the Book of Daniel to explain it ; but, having thus found 
 the key, they generally throw it away unused. 
 
 " That the heavens do rule '' was announced to Nebuchad- 
 nezzar as a present fact and truth (Dan. iv. 26). But yet the 
 visions of Daniel ii. and vii. foretold a future kingdom — a 
 kingdom in the same sense in which Babylon, Persia, Greece, 
 and Rome were kingdoms — foretold a time when God would 
 take back the sceptre of earthly sovereignty which He had 
 
 ' The expression was used by Jewish writers in a vague senses the 
 inward love and fear of God [Horn Hebraica^ Matt. iii. 2). 
 
 27s 
 
276 APPENDIX 
 
 entrusted to Nebuchadnezzar. Now this Messianic kingdom 
 is connected in prophecy with the race of Abraham and the 
 throne of David. And the New Testament opens with a 
 revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ as the heir of David and 
 of Abraham — the Messiah of the Promises, the king of 
 Messianic prophecy. And His ministry began by an an- 
 nouncement that the promised rule was about to come. 
 Matt. iii. 2 was not the statement of a present truth or fact, 
 but a prophetic declaration. This was the purpose of the 
 First Gospel ; and the Holy Spirit so guided and restrained the 
 writer of it that it contains not one single sentence that is 
 inconsistent with that purpose. It is the Gospel of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven ; for the expression is peculiar to 
 Matthew, who uses it some thirty-three times, meaning always 
 and only the promised Messianic earthly kingdom. 
 
 The expression " the Kingdom of God " occurs five times 
 in Matthew ; fifteen times in Mark ; thirty- three times in Luke; 
 twice in John (iii. 3, 5) ; seven times in Acts, and occasionally 
 in the Epistles. In this expression the word " Kingdom " 
 has no longer a fixed meaning. In some of the passages it 
 means the rule of God ; in others, the whole sphere in which 
 that rule is exercised ; and in others again it has an ethical or 
 spiritual meaning, as representing the state of blessedness 
 pertaining to the Divine rule. John iii. 3, 5 affords a notable 
 instance of this third category. Scripture would never say 
 " Except a man be born again he cannot see f^ Kingdom of 
 Heaven.^' Still more incongruous would it be to say "he 
 cannot see the Church?' Many things may be predicted of 
 both the Kingdom of Heaven and of the Kingdom of God ; 
 just as of England and of the British Empire. But though 
 the terms may often be used interchangeably, they are not 
 synonymous. 
 
APPENDIX 277 
 
 This will appear very plainly if we examine the passage in 
 Matthew where the term " the Kingdom of God " occurs. 
 They are chaps, vi. 33 ; xii. 28 ; xix. 24 ; xxi. 31 and 43. The 
 intelligent student of Scripture will see that in no one of 
 these passages could "the Kingdom of Heaven" be used. 
 
 Chap, xvi. 19 claims special notice. It has been said 
 that if these words had not been written the apostasy of 
 Rome could never have arisen. If the distinction I am 
 pleading for were recognised, the pretensions of Rome would 
 collapse. It was in relation to the Earthly Messianic Kingdom 
 that the Lord conferred upon Peter this " power of the keys." 
 To talk of "the Keys of the Kingdom of God" is absurd. 
 More silly still does it seem to the intelligent Christian to talk 
 of the Keys of the Church which is the body of Christ, But 
 Rome, though claiming to be the inspired keeper of the 
 truth, is ignorant of these distinctions, albeit they are so 
 obvious and so elementary. 
 
 In no case can the term "Church of God" be used 
 interchangeably with "Kingdom of Heaven." For the one 
 means a company of people, and the other a system of 
 Government. The English word "Church" has meanings 
 which the Greek word Ecclesia does not possess. In the 
 LXX, Ecclesia is the usual rendering for the Hebrew Kahal 
 (as *Adah is usually rendered sunagogi). And whether in 
 the LXX., in the New Testament, or in classical Greek it 
 means only and always a company of privileged or represen- 
 tative people. Acts xix. 32, 39, 41 may appear an exception, 
 but we who are used to hearing an election mob addressed as 
 "gentlemen" need not wonder if a Greek official flattered an 
 Ephesian mob by the use of the word Ecclesia. And the 
 English rendering of i Tim. iiL 15 may also seem an 
 exception. But there, as in verses 4, 5, and 12 of the same 
 
278 APPENDIX 
 
 chapter, the word house is used by a common figure of speech 
 for household. Paul so uses the word again in i Cor. i. i6 ; 
 and it is so used in several passages in Acts. The language 
 of I Pet. ii. 5 cannot be strained to support the figment that 
 a building would ever be an Ecdesia, 
 
 It is noteworthy that the word occurs nowhere in the 
 Gospels save in Matt. xvi. i8, and xviii. 17, And I deprecate 
 any exposition of these passages which makes them refer 
 exclusively, or even primarily, to the present dispensation. 
 Such an exegesis is, I think, refuted by the fact that it is in 
 the teaching of the First Gospel that these words are recorded. 
 But may I here hazard the opinion that a right understanding 
 of our Lord's words in Matt. xvi. 16-19 would suffice to 
 undermine the whole fabric of the apostate religion of 
 Christendom ? 
 
 In the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians the word 
 ecclesia acquires a new dignity. In every other occurrence of 
 it in the New Testament, and always in the LXX., it represents 
 a company of people on earth. But in Ephesians and Colossians 
 it includes saints on earth and saints in heaven. Having regard 
 to I Cor. xii. 12, some would maintain that the body means 
 only the saints on earth. But the closing words of Eph. i. 
 ("His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all") 
 precludes any such limitation. And the language of Ephesians 
 and Colossians vetoes the suggestion that the term "body" 
 is merely an illustration of the union between Christ and the 
 Church. It is a figure, -of course; but we must distinguish 
 between a figure which is the expression of a fact and a figure 
 which is merely an illustration of a fact. The union between 
 Christ and those who are members of His body must be more 
 real, not less real, than the union between a man and the 
 members of his natural body. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abraham, a " lunar hero," 42 
 Advent, The Second, 211 ff, 227, 246 
 Alford, Dean, 13, 30, 68, 76, i66«, 
 
 200;?, 207», 2iS», 227, 238/1 
 Anthropomorphism, ICX3 
 Apocalypse, The, 183 
 Araunah, The threshing-floor of, 161 
 Argyll, Duke of, 115, I28« 
 Arnold, Matthew, 20, 28, 40, 54, 
 
 56, 57* 74«i 160, 255 
 
 Bampton Lectures, Canon Bernard's, 
 I94«,.i99 
 „ ,, Dr. Hatch's, I99« 
 
 Belshazzar, 136, 137 
 Bentley, 103 
 Berosus, History of, 135 
 Bible, Authority of the, i, 15, 19, 22, 
 175 ff, 249 
 „ Character and scope of the, 
 
 15, 119, 194, 257 
 ,, a human book, 10, 11, 12, 27 
 ,, a Divine book, ii, 27 
 ,, MSS of the, lOl, 105, 109, 
 270 
 Birks, Prof., 31, 3S«, 2S9« 
 BulUnger, Dr. E. W., si«, 274 
 
 Calendar, The sacred, 238, 243 
 Calvinism, 216, 217 
 
 Canaanites, Extermination of the, 
 
 156-158 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 80 
 Charles II., Death of, 36, 37, 38 
 Cheyne, Prof., 5, 9, 37, 39, 40, 41, 
 
 42. 44. 75* I3i«i 149 
 Christ, The Divinity of, 11, 55, 56, 
 17 5* 263 
 „ Rejection of, 58-61 
 „ Testimony of, to the Scrip- 
 tures, 69, 72, 74, 78, 175 
 Chronological errors, 161 ff 
 Chronology, Biblical, 163 ff 
 Church, The, 172, 243» (see 
 
 "Ecclesia") 
 Creation, The, ii2fF 
 Criticism, see "Higher Criticism" 
 Critics, Capacity of the, 28, 30, 49, 
 132, 210, 215«, 251, 25s 
 „ Inconsistency of the, 53, 57, 
 
 251 
 ,, Credulity of the, 9 
 Crucifixion, The date of the, 163, 
 232 ff 
 
 Dana, Prof., u8 
 Daniel, Book of, 44, 45, 129 ff 
 Darius the Mede, 137 
 David, King, 79-82, 161 
 "Day," The Creation, 122-125 
 
 279 
 
28o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Driver, Prof., 14, 41, 44, 50, 73, 
 I3i«. 133. 134. 136, 149. 212 
 
 EccUsia^ Meaning of the word, 277 
 Edersheim, Dr., 58, 232», 236W, 
 
 24I» 
 
 Eichhorn, 26, 39, 40», 41, 42, 132 
 Encyclopedia Biblica^ The, $ ff , 12, 
 
 14. 37. 39, 61, 233», 252 
 Epistles, Inspiration of the, 179 ff 
 Evidence, Principles of, 106 
 Ewald, 40, 133 
 Experts as witnesses, 45) 48 
 
 Fairbairn, Dr., 64 
 Farrar, Dean, 134, 135^ 
 Feasts, The Jewish, 238 ff 
 First-fruits, The, 239, 240, 243 
 
 Gamaliel's speech (Acts v. 36), 225, 
 
 226 
 Genealogy, Our Lord's, 198, 273 
 Genesis, Documents of, 260, 261 
 Genesis, The creation story of| 
 
 iiiff 
 Gethsemane, 16, 242 
 Gladstone, Mr., 28«, Il2ff 
 Gospels, Scope of the, 15, 16, 194 
 Graves, Bishop, 257 
 
 Harnack, Prof., 48, 172 
 Hastings' Bible Dictionary^ 14, 69, 
 
 212, 233«, 252 
 Hatherley, Lord, 65, 66, 70 
 Hebrew and the Higher Criticism, 
 
 42, 44, 50, 94, 96, 132, 149 
 Hengstenberg, 26, 132, 140 
 " Herald Angels' Song," The, 108 
 HigherCriticism, Character of,26,43, 
 129, 150, 251, 
 254, 258, 262 
 „ )» Origin of, 39,261 
 
 „ „ Strength of, 10, 
 
 257, 267 
 
 Higher Criticism, Tendency of, 9, 
 
 37, 43, 61, 70, 264 
 Humiliation, The, 264 (see Kenosis) 
 Huxley, Prof., on Genesis, ii2fF,i27 
 
 ,, ,, on Infallibility, 173 
 
 Incarnation, The, 8, 55 
 Infants, The damnation of, 160 
 Insc^ption on the Cross, The, 227- 
 
 230 
 Inspiration, 4, 78 ff, 169 ff, 260 
 
 Verbal, 83 ff, 95 ff, 
 177 ff, 228 
 „ No definition of, 261 
 
 Irish story, An, 221 
 Isaiah, Book of, 45-47, 86, 90, 91 
 Isaiah II., 45, 46 
 
 Jehovah, The name, 86, 87, 267 
 Jericho, The blind men at, 224, 225 
 Jews, Position of the, 159 
 
 ,, Restoration of the, 246 
 John, Gospel of, 53, 190, 194, 197 
 Jonah, Book of, 142 ff 
 
 Kenosis, The, 7i-74i 175, 265 
 Kingdom of heaven, The, 201 ff, 275 
 Kingdom of God, 275 
 
 Lange, 234 
 
 Language of the Prophets, 86, 93, 
 
 97 
 Lawyers, Testimony of great, 65, 66 
 Zux Mundi Schoolj The, 172-174 
 
 Marriage, 70 
 
 Martyrs, The, 2, 3, 250 
 
 Massoretes, The, I02 
 
 Matthew, Gospel of, 187 ff, 195 ff, 
 276 
 
 Miracles, 52-57, 88, 147, 203, 206 
 
 Morality and Faith, Analogy be- 
 tween, 37-39, 69-70 
 
 Mosaic era literary, The, 43, I57» 
 
INDEX 
 
 281 
 
 Nicodemus, 16 
 
 Nonconformists, Sceptidsm among 
 the, 255 
 
 O'Grady, Chief Baron, 142 
 Ordination pledges, 14, 251 
 
 Parables of Matthew xiii., 204, 205 
 Parousiay The, 211 fF, 227 
 Pascal, 55, 63 
 
 Passover, The, 218, 220, 233, 235 ff 
 Pentateuch, The, 43, 44, 129, 255«, 
 
 258 
 
 Pentecost, Feast of, 239, 243, 245 
 Police V, Saints, 17 
 Preparation, The, 237 
 Priesthood of Christ, 98, 99 
 Prophecy, Character of, 50, 51 
 Prophecy, Study of, 26, 30 
 Ptolemaic System, The, 29, 186 
 Pusey, Dr., 250 
 
 Queen Victoria and the homicide, 
 155. 156 
 
 Reade, Charles, 52, I52« 
 Reformation, The, 19, 23, 24 
 " Restitution of all things," The, 245 
 Resurrection, The, 8, 76, 147 
 Revised Version, The, 99^, 104 fF, 
 
 i66», 269 
 Revolution, The French, 12 
 
 Saphir, Adolph, 184 
 Sayce, Prof., 43, I37« 
 Scepticism of the Day, The, 4, 22, 53 
 Scrivener, Dr., 105, 107, 108, 269 
 " Sermon on the Mount," The, 188, 
 
 202, 203« 
 Servitudes, The, 165 
 
 Sinker, Dr. R., 68«, io5«, I22«, 
 
 I3i«, 254 
 Sin-offering, The, 217, 218, 220 
 Smith, Goldwin, 19 
 Smith, Robertson, 38, 39, 253« 
 Speaker's Commentary^ Editor of 
 
 the, 107, 108 
 Stephen, Sir J. F., 48 
 Surgeon and patient, I2 
 Swift, Dean, 57« 
 
 Tabernacles, Feast of, 239, 244, 
 
 246 
 Tapestry, Two sides to the, 77 
 Temptation, The, d*] 
 Theudas, The Insurrection of, 225, 
 
 226 
 "Three days and three nights, *" 
 
 147, 271 
 Tiberius, The reign of, 163, 202 
 Times J Tke, 39, 115, I27« 
 Tyndall, Mr., 126 
 Types, Doctrine of the, 26, 216, 
 
 220, 238 ff, 258^ 
 
 Verbal Inspiration, see " Inspira- 
 tion" 
 Victoria, Queen, 155 
 Virgin birth. The, 8, 249 
 
 Weelcs, The Seventy, 138, 139, 168 
 Wellhausen, 40, 41 
 Westcott, Bishop, 105, 140 
 Whale of Jonah, 143-146 
 Words, Meaning of, 84 ff, 96-98 
 Wordsworth, Bishop, 104 
 
 Xerxes, Proclamation of, 95 
 
 Yahveh, The name, 86, 87 
 
SOME OF THE TEXTS EXPLAINED 
 OR NOTICED. 
 
 vi. 3 . 
 
 
 Exodus. 
 
 • • • 
 
 87« 
 
 PAGE 
 ,267 
 
 i. 1-3 . 
 
 John. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 . 53 
 
 xxiv. 24 
 
 
 2 Samuel, 
 I Kings. 
 
 • 
 
 161 
 
 1. 10-12 
 i. 29 . 
 
 X- 34, 35 
 
 xiv. 1-3 
 
 
 197 
 217 
 
 93 
 21 
 
 vi. I 
 
 
 . 
 
 • 
 
 165 
 
 
 Acts. 
 
 
 xxi. 25 . 
 
 z 
 
 Chronicles. 
 Isaiah. 
 
 • 
 
 161 
 
 111. 19. . 
 V. 36 . 
 xiii. 18-21 
 
 . • ■ ■ 
 
 245 
 
 225 
 
 i65« 
 
 liii. 7 - 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 2i8m 
 
 
 Romans. 
 
 
 vii. 22 . 
 
 
 Jeremiah. 
 • ■ • 
 
 Daniel. 
 
 • 
 
 26S 
 
 XV. 8 . 
 
 I 
 ii. 13 • 
 
 . . . . 196 
 
 Corinthians. 
 
 94, 1S2 
 
 ix. 25 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 • 
 
 139 
 
 XV. 3 . 
 
 . 
 
 76 
 
 
 
 Matthew, 
 
 
 
 XV. 23 . 
 
 * « • ■ 
 
 240 
 
 xi. 14 . 
 xii. 38-40 
 xiii. 
 
 • • • 
 
 * 
 
 200 
 
 147 
 205 
 
 2 
 
 u. 17 . 
 
 Corinthians. 
 
 40 
 
 xxu. 31, 
 xxiv. 3 
 xxiv. 34 
 
 32 
 
 Luke. 
 
 • 
 
 92 
 
 207 
 
 227 
 
 V. I 
 
 V. 12 . 
 
 Hebrews. 
 
 . 25, 
 
 99« 
 98,99 
 
 ii. 14 , 
 
 
 . 
 
 108 
 
 -no 
 
 
 2 Peter. 
 
 
 xxiv. 27, 
 
 44 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 176 
 
 i. 21 
 
 . 
 
 SI 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS. LIMITED. PRINTERS. WOKING AND LONDON. 
 
SOME PRESS NOTICES OF THE FIRST EDITION, 
 
 "This vigorous criticisrn of the methods of the ' Higher Critics/ 
 . . , The title of the volume is taken from the heading given to 
 a correspondence which appeared some years ago in our columns, 
 and in which Sir Robert took a prominent part." — The Times. 
 
 " It is full time that such a book as this was written. ... Sir R. 
 Anderson is well known to thoughtful readers as the writer of 
 works of singular logical directness, and the present is justly 
 styled by the Bishop of Durham, in a Preface of striking cogency, 
 as well as beauty, 'this remarkable book.' ... Sir Robert is 
 happy in his illustrative stories. The story of Queen Victoria 
 and the homicide shows strikingly the danger of suppression as 
 to the Bible and the God of the Bible. The Irish story of the 
 apparent conflict of testimony is most relevant to the assertion 
 as to the conflict of testimony in Scripture. We think we have 
 said enough to prove to our readers that Sir R. Anderson's treat- 
 ment of his subject deserves a profound and prayerful study. 
 He has seen, and plainly points out, what many even of true- 
 hearted defenders of the faith have seen but imperfectly — that 
 more, infinitely more is at stake than any literary question affecting 
 the Bible."— r/td Record, 
 
 " It is a book which should be placed in the library of all who 
 are repelled by the methods of the critics." — Daily Express. 
 
 " The book of the year." — Things to Come, 
 
 " Those of our readers who cannot buy Sir R. Anderson's book 
 for themselves should enquire for it at the nearest free library, 
 and not rest content until it is put into circulation there. . . . 
 We doubt whether there is any other writer on this subject who 
 can be considered equally successful in grasping the crucial 
 points, and at the same time putting them before the general 
 public in a concise and intelligent form." — Church Family 
 Newspaper, 
 
 " This is a work for the present age. Sir Robert Anderson has 
 rendered immense service by its publication. It should be widely 
 circulated." — The News, 
 
 " We sincerely thank Sir Robert Anderson for devoting him- 
 self, heart and mind, to the good cause which here engages him. 
 He shows, as we have many a time pointed out, that, when 
 studied with care. Holy Scripture justifies to the full all the 
 claims which it makes of inspiration, integrity, and authority. 
 He deals with many men and topics in this substantial volume, 
 and in an appendix he discusses, succinctly but to good pur- 
 pose, several important questions raised in the course of the 
 book. We trust his pages will have many readers, and that his 
 arguments will be brought under the notice of such as have been 
 unsettled in mind through disturbing criticism." — The Christian. 
 
Press Notices {continued) — 
 
 " Valuable as the author's former works were, his latest volume 
 excels them. ... * The Bible and Modern Criticism ' should be 
 read and digested by all thoughtful Christians, for its eloquent 
 and scholarly testimony in favour of ' The Scriptures of truth ' 
 cannot fail to confirm believers and to assist waverers and all 
 such as feel perplexed by the insidious reasonings of the New 
 Critics. We could wish that copies of Sir Robert Anderson's 
 book were placed on the study shelves of all ministers and 
 teachers of the Gospel, and presented to the libraries of our 
 theological colleges." — The English Churchman, 
 
 " A terse and vigorous style is a striking characteristic of this 
 book. , . . The book throughout is excellent reading, and is 
 enlivened with apposite anecdotes which illustrate and elucidate 
 the points urged. — The Church Missionary Intelligencer, 
 
 " The time has come for spiritual men to take a very decided 
 position, and to use the plainest speech, in relation to criticism. 
 Nothing is to be gained by delaying the inevitable issue of the 
 conflict. We thank Sir Robert Anderson for his able, indepen- 
 dent, and courageous witness.'' — Life of Faith, 
 
 " Among the extending list of works from his able pen we 
 have read none with more intense interest than this. ... It 
 abounds in striking and peculiarly apt illustrations, and will 
 repay reading more than once or twice," — The Witness. 
 
 " A work of singular lucidity of style and of remarkable argu- 
 mentative power. ... He argues with cumulative force in this 
 book, whether he is dealing with the proem in Genesis, the 
 structural unity of the Pentateuch, the records of Jonah and 
 Daniel, the history of Israel or the harmony of the Gospels, that 
 the case of the Higher Critics must collapse unless they can 
 succeed in discrediting the testimony of the chief witness, the 
 Divine Master. . . . His brusqueness and racy invective are 
 intellectually stimulative, although the Higher Critics and loose 
 thinkers are irritated by his book, as is evident from the tone of 
 some of the reviews of it. . . . Sir Robert Anderson has written 
 a trenchant and straightforward book, which places critics, 
 whether as radical as Prof. Cheyne or as conservative as Prof 
 Driver, on their defence before men of common sense, ' — The 
 New York Tribune, 
 
SOME PRESS NOTICES OF THE AUTHOR'S 
 WORKS 
 
 The Buddha of Christendom 
 
 A Book for the Present Crisis. 
 
 Crown Svo, doth^ ^s. 
 
 " Its protests are timely, its historical summaries to the 
 point, its purpose wholesome and sincere." — Speaker. 
 
 " A valuable contribution to the religious literature of the 
 time, and well adapted to the crisis in the English Church." — 
 New York Tribune. 
 
 "A vigorous and well-supported protest against the 
 Romeward tendencies of the day." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "A work of great interest and importance. ... It will 
 help the Protestant cause." — Tke Christian. 
 
 "A leading book of the century." — News. 
 
 " Its central and animating thought ... is one to which 
 Englishmen will do well to give very earnest heed just now," 
 — Record. 
 
 "A powerful plea for true Christianity." — Rock, 
 
 The Coming Prince 
 
 or, The Seventy Weeks of Daniel. 
 
 WITH AN ANSWER TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 Seventh Edition. Cloth, ^s. 
 
 "The results of close study and diligent research are so clearly 
 stated as to be within the easy apprehension of any intelligent 
 reader who gives his mind to the subject ; and there are few 
 books on prophecy written in so fair and impartial a spirit." 
 — Christian. 
 
 " We were unable to lay down the book until we had read 
 it to the last page." — Daily Express. 
 
The Silence of God 
 
 Sixth Edition. Cloth, 2S, 6d, 
 
 " We are profoundly grateful to Dr. Anderson for this most 
 striking endeavour to move a terrible stumbling-block out of 
 the way of many." — Record. 
 
 "It deals with a problem of inexhaustible interest." — 
 Literature, 
 
 "One of the most thoughtful and instructive books of 
 modern times." — Church Bells. 
 
 "He writes forcibly, eloquently, with much knowledge of 
 what others think and say, and with profound conviction and 
 confidence." — Daily News. 
 
 "A book which has astonished religious Europe." — New 
 York Herald. 
 
 Human Destiny 
 
 A Handbook of the Eschatological Controversy (being 
 
 an Answer to the books entitled " Eternal Hope," 
 
 "Life in Christ," "Salvator Mundi," "The 
 
 Restitution of all Things"). 
 
 Fifth Edition. Cloth, ^s. 6d. 
 
 "The most valuable contribution to the subject I have evei 
 seen." — The late C. H. Spurgeon. 
 
 " In these days, when foundation truths are undermined 
 by those who pass for evangelicals, every testimony to the 
 truth which has been thoroughly thought out, and is uncom- 
 promisingly expressed, is a great gain to the Church of God. 
 As such we commend Dr. Robert Anderson's new book." 
 
 " Its strength lies in its fidelity to revelation and its vigorous 
 exposure of mere human speculations." — Christian. 
 
 "This masterly treatise . . . ought to become a treasured 
 handbook on the subject." — Christian Leader. 
 
 " It is seldom that we take up a book that we wish it had 
 been longer, but this is such a book." — Record, 
 
 All the foregoing are published by 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, Paternoster Row. 
 
The Gospel and its Ministry 
 
 A Handbook of Evangelical Truth 
 
 Eleventh Edition^ Revised, Cloth, 2S, 6d, 
 
 •* These essays contemplate the most stupendous subjects which can 
 occupy human thought, and they are not unworthy of their themes. . , , 
 The chapters on * Grace ' and * The Cross ' are worth their weight in 
 gold. " — Christian, 
 
 Daniel in the Critics' Den 
 
 A Reply to Professor Driver, of Oxford, and the 
 (late) Dean of Canterbury 
 
 Second Edition, Cloth^ 3^". 6^/. net, 
 
 "We welcome Sir Robert Anderson's extremely able defence of the 
 truth of the record of Daniel. ... In its cautious, but firm, weighing 
 of evidence, the refutation (of the critics) is crushing." — The Record, 
 
 Pseudo-Criticism 
 
 or, The Higher Criticism and its Counterfeit. 
 
 Cloth, 3^. ^d, 
 
 "A masterpiece of apologetics." — English Churchman, 
 " I read the book through with the keenest interest, and I laid it down 
 with the earnest hope that God would use it very widely among precisely 
 the men for which it was written with such masterly force." — The Bishop 
 OF Durham. 
 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., LTD., 21, Berners St., W. 
 
 " For Us Men " 
 
 Chapters on Redemption Truths. 
 Cloth, 2S. 6d. net, 
 
 ** Intended to help those who are seeking peace with God, or who 
 desire to lead others into the way of life." — Preface. 
 
 " He glories in placing in a plain and simple light the fundamental 
 truths of Holy Writ. With much heartiness, therefore, we commend the 
 book to our readers." — The Christian, 
 
 MORGAN & SCOTT, 12, Paternoster Buildings, E.C 
 
WORKS BY THE RIGHT REV. 
 
 HANDLEY C. G. MOULE, D.D., 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM. 
 
 The Epistle to the Romans . Cr. 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 "The spirit in which he expounds it is beyond our praise." — 
 Spectator. 
 
 Ephesian Studies. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. 
 
 "Dr. Moule's expositions are careful and scholarly; and it need 
 hardly be said that his exhortations and teachings are earnest and 
 devout." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 Colossian Studies : Lessons in Faith and Holiness 
 
 from St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon. Cr. 8vo, 
 cloth, 5s. 
 
 ** These studies are the work of a profound scholar, who never makes 
 the apostle say what he did not say, with the scholar's caution, which 
 checks undue positiveness where the meaning is doubtful ; but above 
 all the work of a believer who manifests intense earnestness of 
 conviction in every line." — Record. 
 
 Philippian Studies : Lessons in Faith and Love 
 
 from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. ' 
 
 " Dr. Moule carefully translates and paraphrases each section of St. 
 Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, and draws out the permanent 
 lessons of faith and love which it contains ; he has made a wise 
 choice of the book of the Bible on which to comment, and has treated 
 it with wisdom and reverence." — Guardian. 
 
 Outlines of Christian Doctrine. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d. 
 
 *' Mr. Moule has attempted a very difficult task, and has at least 
 succeeded in condensing an immense mass of information into a small 
 compass. It is perhaps superfluous to say that his work is characterised 
 by great reverence from the first page to the last. At every point the 
 reader feels that he is reading a statement of a theology which is the 
 life of the writer. In the more strictly theological part the summary is 
 as a rule arranged and expressed excellently." — Guardian, 
 
 To My Younger Brethren : Chapters on Pastoral 
 Life and Work. Cr. 8vo, cloth, 5s. 
 
 "Practical, sensible, and devout." — Glasgow Herald. 
 "This is a valuable work, thoughtful and practical in a high 
 degree. " — Christian, 
 
 Veni Creator : Thoughts on the Person and "Work 
 
 of the Holy Spirit of Promise. Cr. 8vo, cloth, 5s. 
 
 London : HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, Paternoster Row.