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 THE BIBLE AND HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 
 m\k\ %^^ 
 
 [Read at the Summer School of the American In- 
 , stitute of Christian Philosophy, July 6, 1893.] 
 
 By Prof. Howard Osgood, D.D , LL.D., 
 
 Of the Rochester Theological Seminary. 
 
 THE wail of man wherever found, the heart-cry that follows 
 the evening sun around the world, the testimony of every 
 religion, is that man is a guilty sinner and needs salvation from 
 himself by an omnipotent and gracious hand. The Lama's 
 prayer wheel, the Chinese temple, the Indian pilgrimages, the 
 African fetish, the crowded spires of Europe and America, all 
 bear branded on them the one prayer, " Save us from our 
 sins." Listen to the accusing cry of man against man, of nation 
 against nation, of church against church, of party against party, 
 of newspaper against newspaper. From the garden of Eden, 
 from the Egyptian book of the dead rising up from the horizon 
 of earliest monumental history of man, from the earliest hymns 
 of the Babylonians, from all the historians and poets of man's 
 greatest deeds and deepest wants, from the blood of Abel to the 
 blood of Christ, through all the forms of man's inhumanity to 
 man, the sin of man is stamped v/herever the foot of man has 
 trod. The best and wisest *nen have most deeply known and told 
 this fact. 
 
 Into the midst of a world burdened with sin and longing for 
 peace and rest, the Bible comes with a very practical claim and 
 test of its being the Word of the only God : that it alone reveals 
 the true character of sin and the way of salvation from sin to 
 peace of heart and holiness of hfe. Man, Christian and heathen, 
 has invented a thousand ways to escape his sin, but not one of 
 them leads to peace and holiness. Is it possible to put this claim 
 of the Bible to a clear test ? Can it change the heart of the 
 worst of men and spread from heart to heart until a whole people 
 is turned from every evil and misery which the heart of man can 
 invent to the love and worship of God, to purity, peace, holiness, 
 and a well ordered state ? 
 
 83 
 
84 THE BIBLE AND HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 Now it is just at this day when the Bible in certain learned cir- 
 cles is denied as a revelation, as the Word of the living God, 
 that we are able to show this test in the clearest possible light. 
 It is in this day when the inheritance of acquired traits is a 
 doctrine used to account for the persistence of Christianity in the 
 world and to deny the miraculous in that persistence that we 
 turn to those peoples whose acquired traits through unknown 
 ages have been filth of body, vileness of mind, cruelty in all its 
 forms, until the last stage of human degradation and sin has been 
 reached and men have made human flesh their greatest feast. 
 We will go to the cannibal islands and coasts of the southern 
 Pacific, some unvisited by foreigners till the man with the Bible 
 came, others taught even hitherto unknown vilenesses by visit- 
 ing foreigners, but all distrustful of every other man and standing 
 with the ever-ready hatchet to prepare another feast of human 
 flesh. 
 
 It is now about fifty years since these islands were visited by 
 men who brought the Bible. They came to commend the Bible 
 to these savages. Through what terrors, dangers and sufferings 
 of body and mind these missionaries passed before one of these 
 savages would listen to the story of the Bible, it is not my pur- 
 pose to rehearse. But from New Zealand and the south to the 
 Fiji, New Hebrides and New Guinea, there are now islands 
 densely inhabited where all forms of savagery have passed away, 
 where prayer to God is heard in every household, where a 
 stranger is far safer at night than in London or New York, where 
 in all forms of life the nakedness of heathenism has been ex- 
 changed for clothing and a right mind. And these former can- 
 nibals attribute this utter change in themselves and in their fel- 
 lows, not to the missionary or his arguments, but to the teach- 
 ings of the Bible brought home to their hearts by a power they 
 could not resist. After years of seeming fruitless work a man 
 read one day before a crowd of these jeering savages the third 
 chapter of John's gospel. He read "God so loved the world, 
 that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on 
 him should not perish, but have eternal life." A naked giant 
 with spear and bludgeon strode towards him and blurted out, 
 "What is that? Say it again." It was read again and sped as 
 
THE BIBLE AND HIGHER CRITICISM. 85 
 
 an arrow to the heart of the questioner, who became a faithful 
 follower in life and in thought of the only begotten Son who died 
 for him ; a single example out of thousands. 
 
 But the proof of change does not end here. One of the first 
 things these changed heathen desire and work for is the transla- 
 tion of the whole Bible into their language. Great as are the gifts 
 made in Christian lands for the circulation of the Bible, they are 
 far below the relative value of the gifts to the same purpose by 
 these converted cannibals. One-half, two-thirds of all their prop- 
 erty is not an unusual sum for these new believers in the Bible 
 to give for printing and circulating the book that has been to 
 them a well-spring of life. Still even this a man might do and yet, 
 according to the Bible itself, be no more than sounding brass and 
 a tinkling cymbal. This is not the supreme proof that these 
 hereditary cannibals, changed to believers in the statements of 
 the Bible, give of their change. All around them the ocean is 
 dotted with islands filled with cannibals, as fierce and cruel as 
 they themselves once were. They know better than any others 
 what awaits them at these islands where the Bible never has 
 come. A party of heathen were sitting around the fire in a 
 cocoanut grove, and one of these changed men was telling them 
 of the Bible, and of his intention to carry its good news to a 
 neighboring district. The heathen begged him not to go, saying 
 it was madness to think of it ; the water was full of crocodiles, 
 and the bush full of snakes. Are there any people there ? he 
 asked. O, yes, they replied, but they are dreadful savages and 
 cannibals, great warriors, and very treacherous. That is enough, 
 said the believer ; wherever there are people, we must go. And 
 so they have gone to the deepest dens of Satan's retreats. They 
 have died by the hatchet, and been eaten. They have died by 
 the fearful fevers of the low coasts, but for everyone who has 
 fallen, two are ready to take his place. These men do not go 
 alone. The women, who but a few years ago were treated as 
 slaves and beasts of burden, go as the wives of these changed 
 men, with courage as high and devotion as constant in life or 
 death as their husbands. 
 
 How do such men die? Namuri had lived in a foreign 
 heathen village, where with his wife he had led a pure and humble 
 
86 THE BIBLE AND HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 life. The heathen priests feared his influence, and one of them 
 sprang- upon him, with killing stone and club, and thought he had 
 killed him ; but Namuri partially recovered. When urged to 
 leave that village and seek a safer residence, he replied, " When I 
 see them thirsting for my blood, I just see myself when the mis- 
 sionary first came to my island. I desired to murder him, as 
 they now desire to murder me. Had he stayed away from such 
 danger, I would have remain id heathen ; but he came and taught, 
 till, by the grace of God, I was changed to what I am. Now the 
 same God who changed me to this, can change these poor heathen 
 to love and serve Him." A few days more, and the same savage 
 priest gave him a crushing blow, from which he died a few hours 
 after. Among his last words were, " O, Lord Jesus, forgive them, 
 for they know not what they are doing, O, take not away all Thy 
 servants from Tanna. Take not away Thy worship from this 
 dark island. O God, bring all the Tannese to love and follow 
 Jesus." 
 
 Great as have been the triumphs of the Bible in these savage 
 islands, they have been due, as the missionaries confess, far more 
 to the zeal of the natives than to any other human means. 
 
 Among all the miracles recorded in the Bible, none are 
 greater than this miracle of the resurrection which has been in 
 plain sight of the world these past sixty years. It is one of the 
 nineteenth century proofs of the words of the Bible, " As the 
 Father raiseth the dead and maketh them alive, even so the Son 
 also maketh alive whom he will." " It is the spirit that maketh 
 alive" (John vi. 63 ; II. Cor. iii. 6). " God, being rich in mercy, for 
 his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead 
 through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by- 
 grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with him, and made 
 us sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus ; that in 
 the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his 
 grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus : for by grace have 
 ye been saved through faith : and that not of yourselves, it is 
 the gift of God : not of works, that no man shall glory. For we 
 are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works^ 
 which God afore prepared that we should walk in them" (Eph. ii. 
 4-10). ** Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth" 
 
THE BIBLE AND HIGHER CRITICISM. 8/ 
 
 (James i. i8). "Sanctify them in thy truth ; thy word is truth" 
 (John xvi. 17). 
 
 I submit that the experience of these formerly savage, now 
 truly Christian islanders, is, as they assert, an unimpeachable 
 proof that the Bible is the Word of God to the human soul which 
 the Holy Spirit uses to restore man to the image of God in 
 purity, holiness, peace and rest. There are innumerable other 
 proofs equally positive. The same proof is found wherever man, 
 convinced of his sin, turns from himself to seek after and find 
 God. Every land now has those who are the living proofs that 
 God by His Word has raised them from the dead and given them 
 life in Christ. 
 
 But all these tests and proofs are idle wind to men who will 
 not taste and see that the Bible is the Word of God. The con- 
 vincing proof is not a philosophical argument, or myriads of con- 
 verts, or the belief of parents, or the authority of learning, but it 
 is to each one, just what it is to these islanders, a deep convic- 
 tion of sin and a discovery of life in Christ as promised by God's 
 Word. That was Paul's experience, and that has been the ex- 
 perience of every one who has made proof of the Word of God 
 by trusting all its promises. They know it to be God's Word 
 with a certainty that is unshakable. They feed on its heavenly 
 manna every morning. They drink of the stream of its pleas- 
 ures. They find Christ everywhere in this Word ; even where 
 they had least expected to behold Him ; and " he that hath seen 
 Christ in the Bible hath seen the Father," and they know that 
 the words the Father gave Christ, Christ gives to them. 
 
 If by Higher Criticism is meant the criticism represented by 
 Kuenen, Wellhausen and their party on the Old Testament, and 
 by Pfleiderer, Harnack and their party on the New, and they are 
 the chief representatives of what they call historical criticism, 
 then it is easy to tell what this criticism says about the Bible. 
 They assert that they examine the Bible as they do any other 
 book, to find a theory that accounts for all the facts they see in 
 the Bible. They have reached a theory about the formation of 
 the Old and New Testaments which they explain and defend 
 in large and learned works. 
 
 The fundamental principle of their criticism, as defined by 
 
88 THE BIBLE AND HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 Kuenen, is that the supernatural is excluded from all considera- 
 tion, the purely natural being sufficient to explain everything. 
 Men who believe in the supernatural, they say, are their oppo- 
 nents. This fundamental principle of course excludes all belief 
 in and all consideration of miracles, which never did occur and 
 which no testimony is sufficient to establish. Of course if there 
 is no supernatural in the world, no miracle, there has been no 
 revelation from God, which would be a miracle, and there can be 
 no foretelling of events and persons far distant in the future. 
 No supernatural, no miracle, no revelation, no prophecies — these 
 are the necessary presuppositions, according to this school, of an 
 unprejudiced study of the Bible. Kuenen on the Old Testament 
 and Pfleiderer on the New assert these facts. 
 
 But no supernatural, no miracle, no revelation, no prophecy, 
 rule God not only out of the Bible but out of the world, which 
 seems rather a large assumption by men who profess to be the 
 only cool, unprejudiced investigators and searchers for the truth. 
 Starting from these few simple and universal propositions, 
 they come out at the end of their learned works just where they be- 
 gan, for these works were written to be the proof of these propo- 
 sitions. These writers cannot claim that they discovered these 
 to them axiomatic truths. Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert, Hol- 
 bach, Helvetius and a host of others in France during all the 
 last century ; Frederic II., King of Prussia, 1740-86, the Berlin 
 Academy under him, most of the professors in the German uni- 
 versities, and the majority of German preachers during the last 
 half of the last century, held and taught these fundamental propo- 
 sitions, and they have been held ever since by the majority of 
 theological professors in the German universities. There is no 
 occasion to doubt the diligence, the honesty, the learning of 
 these professors. No one is ever called to a theological profes- 
 sorship in a German university because he is a converted man, or 
 beHeves the Bible. The one question is. Is he sufficiently learned 
 and can he teach .? Pfleiderer, professor of practical theology, 
 and Harnack, professor of Church history, in Berlin, do not be- 
 lieve in the supernatural. Wellhausen, a leader in this criticism 
 of the Old Testament, declares himself a polytheist; Kuenen — 
 whose purpose in life, his sympathetic biographer tells us, was to 
 
THE BIBLE AND HIGHER CRITICISM. 89 
 
 Strip from Christianity every remnant of supernaturalism, which 
 means that Christ is not God, not born of a virgin, or raised 
 from the dead — Kuenen was professor of theology at Leiden, 
 and secretary of the Society for the Defence of the Christian Re- 
 ligion. So it is no bar to a man's being a Protestant theological 
 professor in Europe that he does not believe in the supernatural. 
 
 For twenty-five years the peculiar phase of anti-supernatural 
 criticism which is called in this country " Higher Criticism," has 
 busied itself with discovering in the Old Testament contradictory 
 narratives, statements, dates, and above all and in all a wretched, 
 incomprehensible editing of the whole. The works of Kuenen, 
 Wellhausen, Budde, Cornill and their followers are filled with 
 their proofs of these contradictions. They have discovered no 
 new facts for grammar or interpretation. They have added 
 nothing to the lexicology of Hebrew. They appeal constantly 
 to scientific exegesis, but they have nothing beyond these afore- 
 mentioned fundamental principles which every intelligent, trained 
 scholar does not possess. Having for twenty-five years followed 
 this criticism in all its works, I can speak for myself and say that 
 I do not see one discrepancy where they see a hundred contra- 
 dictions, and I turn from their works to the Bible as one turns 
 from a dark Indian temple with its hideous forms of man-made 
 gods among a thousand pillars, to the fair light of the sun in 
 God's temple of the sky. 
 
 These writers declare they have proved the historical parts of 
 the Bible to be no history at all. But they have only proved it 
 to those wiio agree that the supernatural is to be excluded from 
 all consideration. They assert that the early history of the 
 Bible is fable and legend, because man is there represented as 
 having a high ideal of God, and a religious sense that only be- 
 longs to later ages. But their fellow professors who teach us of 
 early man as he is shown by his monuments in Egypt and Asia, 
 tell us that the monuments prove over and over again that man 
 as he first appears has a high ideal of God, of morals and an 
 elaborate scheme of religion. Whom shall we believe if we rely 
 only on learned human testimony? This criticism dogmatically 
 states that the Israelites could not write before David, and, 
 therefore, composed no books, kept no records before that time. 
 
90 THE BIBLE /> ND HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 B.C. lOCX). Egyptology and Assyriology give us the myriad proofs 
 that as soon as man appears on monuments, before B.C. 3000, it 
 is with the hand of a master in all written characters and in 
 power of expression, and that the Semites of whom the Hebrews 
 were a part, from the earliest times held in their trained hands 
 all the great roads of the world's commerce. Three hundred 
 and thirty-six letters have been unearthed, all written before the 
 usual date of the Exodus. They are from kings of Babylon and 
 Mesopotamia, from Egyptian prefects on the Syrian and Pales- 
 tinian coast to the Pharaohs. They are written in a Semitic 
 tongue, proving that at that early day Semitic was the language 
 of diplomacy and commerce over Western Asia and with Egypt. 
 The Jew has never, except in this criticism, been accounted the 
 dunce of nations. 
 
 I have said that every religion testifies that the sore of the 
 heart is sin, and the yearning cry of man everywhere is for sal- 
 vation from his sin. But there is one spot on earth where you will 
 never hear sin mentioned or salvation spoken of It is in this 
 criticism. There where the Bible is discussed from Genesis to 
 Revelation by Protestant theological professors, where thousands 
 of pages are crowded with all the marks of human learning, 
 where men grow old in teaching others, there reigns the silence 
 of death over the open sore of the world that brings all its tears, 
 over the deepest woes and most ardent longing of the human 
 soul. Surely there is something wrong with this criticism, when 
 this is its practical result in all its works. That wrong is at its 
 base, in its fundamental principles, which through all the cen- 
 turies have brought forth the same result. 
 
 For one hundred and fifty years the two views of the Bible 
 set forth in this paper have run side by side. Learned men have 
 in great works denied openly, or assumed that there never has 
 been, a revelation from God in words to man ; never a miracle, 
 or prophecy ; that the Bible is only a human book swarming with 
 errors ; that the only religion is morality ; and man knows 
 nothing of a future world. On the other side, men of all con- 
 ditions, learned and unlearned, rich and poor, have believed that 
 the Bible is God's Word to man, that miracles and prophecy are 
 marks of God in the world ; that true religion is the following 
 
THE BIBLE AND HIGHER CRITICISM. QT 
 
 of the God-man, Jesus Christ, in faith, and love, and every grace; 
 that the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to turn man from sin 
 to Jesus Christ and holiness of life. 
 
 Over against the persistent same denial of 150 years is set the 
 fruit of belief, in covering this land with spiritual churches whose 
 annual increase is between 400,000 and 500,000 souls ; in missions 
 to the heathen on which the wealth of the churches is poured 
 out, and the annual increase is more in number than all the deny- 
 ing professors and students ; in publishing and selling annually 
 millions of copies of the Bible, whose circulation is far greater 
 and more universal than any other book ; in tract societies, Sun- 
 day-school societies, and all the means of publication by which 
 many millions of pages are annually sent forth and paid for, to 
 recommend the Bible as God's Word to young and old. And 
 these believers in the Bible as God's Word are further confirmed 
 in their belief by seeing the power of God accompany His Word, 
 to raise multitudes from the foul death of sin to the pure life 
 taught by that Word. 
 
 The two parties approach the Bible from absolutely opposite 
 and contradictory sides : the one approaches it from the side of 
 the sufficiency of the human intellect to decide all questions 
 raised by the Bible, and from the side of the denial of the super- 
 natural in all earthly affairs. The other approaches the Bible 
 from a deep and absorbing conviction of their sin, and a longing 
 for pardon and peacfj from God. The one finds in the Bible an 
 utter misunderstanding of every subject treated by it. The other 
 finds pardon and peace with God, and knows with the deepest, 
 surest knowledge possible to man, that God is the author of the 
 Bible, and they reverence and cherish it as the most precious 
 possession in the world. 
 
 The Bible is as powerful to-day as it ever has been, to ac- 
 complish that which God pleases, and to prosper whereto he sent 
 it, to convince man of his sin, and assure him of salvation. The 
 proof of it is the hundreds of thousands of men, women, children 
 who every year are convinced of their sin, and find the pardon and 
 peace of God through His Word. 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW, 
 
 By Prof. E. L. Curtis, of the Yale Divinity School : 
 
 Whenever we speak of the Bible we should speak with rev- 
 erence and humility. The speaker who preceded me dwelt, in 
 the first part of his paper, upon the wonderful work of our mis- 
 sionaries in the South Sea Islands in proclaiming the truths of 
 the Bible, and he gave to us a very clear and a very true picture 
 of what the Bible as the Word of God in the hand of the minis- 
 ters of Jesus Christ through their presentation of its precious 
 truths has accomplished, and I am sure that he convinced you 
 here that the Word of God is sure and abiding and self-evidenc- 
 ing, a two-edged sword, bringing home to the conscience and 
 bearing impress upon the life, changing the character of man. 
 So far I heartily agree with Dr. Osgood, and I believe that he 
 has presented to us one of the very strongest arguments that 
 can be presented that the Higher Criticism in no way invali- 
 dates the Bible as the Word of God, because the Word of God is 
 that which comes home, testified by the Holy Spirit, to the 
 heart and conscience of man. 
 
 But the word " Higher Criticism," which is sneered at, is a 
 word which, whatever may have been its origin, is now current- 
 ly accepted in this country as defining a certain method of 
 knowledge. Doubtless it was not the best term which might 
 have been chosen. Very likely Eichorn made a mistake when 
 he called the criticism which he used in separating the book of 
 Genesis into its parts the J higher Criticism. It was an unhappy 
 term, but it has passed over into this country and by it we un- 
 derstand a method of the knowledge of literature. When a 
 book is presented you may ask certain questions in regard to it. 
 You may ask whether its ideas are true. You may ask whether 
 its statements of fact are correct. You may ask when and by 
 whom it was written. You may ask after its literary quality, 
 whether it is poetry or prose or fiction. You may also ask 
 
 92 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 93 
 
 after its text, whether that has been correctly handed down. 
 This is an order of interest. In investigation we would reverse 
 this order and start with the text first, and hence we have vari- 
 ous departments of criticism. We have textual criticism. We 
 have literary criticism. We have historical criticism. We have 
 exegetical criticism — criticism that asks after the true meaning- 
 of a writer; and we also have philosophical criticism, or criti- 
 cism which asks after the truth of ideas. Now the Higher Criti- 
 cism is the term which, by general consent, is applied to liter- 
 ary and historical criticism combined. Textual criticism was 
 called the " Lower Criticism " because it came first — first of all. 
 Then we ask after, when and by whom was a writing written. 
 We ask after the historical probability of its statements. We 
 ask also after its literary character, whether it is prose or poetry 
 or fiction, or what is its general literary style, and our endeavor 
 to answer these questions, which olten in the answer may be 
 woven and interlaced together, we call the Higher Criticism. 
 That is the way in which the term is usually understood in this 
 country. 
 
 Now, in the first place, we notice that the Higher Criticism 
 has no bearing upon the ideas or their truth. For instance, to 
 give a plain and practical illustration, I may read the 
 story of Joseph and the story of Joseph comes home to 
 me with wonderful power, teaching me that I ought 
 to be true to God under the most adverse circum- 
 stances, teaching me also the lesson that God will not leave and 
 desert one who is true to Him, but in the end will reward him. 
 And thus we make the story of Joseph an appropriate subject for 
 a sermon for the lessons which it contains. Now the question 
 in regard to whether I shall be true to God under adverse cir- 
 cumstances or temptation the Higher Criticism has absolutely 
 nothing whatever to do with. But I may take up the story of 
 Joseph and I may read it in another way. I may find certain 
 curious statements in this story. I may find that in one part, 
 in some verses, it speaks of Joseph being sold to the Ishmael- 
 ites, and in others to the Midianites. I may find also that the 
 captain in Egypt is Potiphar, the one to whom Joseph is given, 
 and that he is also the one who has command of the prison. I 
 
94 HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 
 
 may find that the story represents the men opening the bag of 
 corn at the inn, and finding the money there, and being surpris- 
 ed and terrified, and that the story represents them also as open- 
 ing their bags at the household and there, in the presence of 
 their father, being surprised and astonished. I may find that in 
 one part of the story Reuben is the one who takes the leading 
 place as the noble and generous one who would deliver his 
 brother, and in the other part that Judah takes this place. Put- 
 ting all these things together I am drawing the conclusion that 
 we have in the narrative of Joseph two traditions, two stories, 
 that have come down and have been woven and fitted together 
 in one ; that there have been two general stories current con- 
 cerning Joseph, and that the writer of the book of Genesis took 
 the two and presented what we now have in our present form of 
 the Book of Genesis. Now work like that is what we understand 
 by Higher Criticism. Now the fact that the story of Joseph 
 might be made out as coming down in this way, formed from 
 two narratives, has absolutely no bearing whatever upon the 
 law of life and the law of conduct as it is written in that story. 
 Dr. Osgood insists that there can be only two camps; that we 
 must either believe that the Bible is absolutely inerrant in all its 
 statements, or else that we must enter the other camp of those 
 that deny the supernatural. I do not want to misrepresent 
 him. Is that the position, Dr. Osgood > 
 
 Dr. Osgood : I did not take that position. Inerrancy is a 
 word quite general at the present day. 
 
 Professor Curtis : Will you please define your position .? 
 
 Dr. Osgood : I have got to take the train. Whilst I did 
 not take that position, I should be perfectly willing to do it if it 
 is a necessity; but I did not do it. I only said that the camp 
 was of those who absolutely disbeUeved, and of those who believe 
 in the Bible as the Word of God, and between the camps there 
 were a good many compromises. 
 
 Professor Curtis : And that in the end we were bound to be 
 separated into two camps, that there would be no middle ground, 
 that those who stood between were bound to perish. That I 
 understood is your position. I do not want to misrepresent 
 you. 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER RE VIE W. 95 
 
 Dr. Osgood : Go on, my dear sir, I am glad to hear you. 
 
 Professor Curtis : Very well. Now I occupy, I am frank to 
 say, a position between. I am forced to do it. Why ? I am 
 forced to do it by a study of this Book, I must interpret this 
 Book plainly and simply in a straightforward, honest way. I 
 must interpret this Book as I interpret language ordinarily. 
 Now I find that there are certain statements in this Book which 
 I cannot explain away. For example, when it says in the 
 Fourth Commandment, " Six days shalt thou labor and do all 
 thy work," etc., I must interpret that language according to its 
 natural meaning. It means six literal days in one case ; it 
 means six literal days in the other. The Hebrew language 
 could have said in six periods if that had been the meaning of 
 the writer, but that was the plain, simple and straightforward 
 meaning of language in that position. And also when we say 
 that Adam lived a certain number of years and begot his son 
 Seth, and Seth lived a certain number of years and begot 
 another son, I must take that language just as it stands, because 
 in no other way do I believe that it was understood by those 
 for whom it was written. When it says that at the time when 
 Joseph was sold into Egypt, Judah had his unhappy connection 
 with the Canaanitish woman and the children were born, and 
 then that those children grew up, and they also had children, 
 which is equivalent to Judah's great grandchildren, and that 
 then when we find another list including those great grand- 
 children among those that went down with Jacob into Egypt, 
 and the time which had elapsed was only at the most nineteen 
 years or about, I say frankly that there must be some discrep- 
 ancy here. When I read in one case that during the days of 
 Samuel there was complete peace, and that the Philistines came 
 no more into the land, and then when I go on a little further 
 and read that the cry of the children came up to God for a sav- 
 iour or deliverer from the Philistines, and when I read at 
 the beginning of the reign of Saul that every man had to go 
 down to the Philistine country in order to sharpen his agricul- 
 tural implements, why then I say that we have the story of two 
 witnesses. Now, when I take up such a work as Livy, for ex- 
 ample, the Roman historian, and I find similar discrepancies in 
 
Cp HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW, 
 
 that, I find no one taking pains to deny or explain away the 
 discrepancies. They admit and receive them. Now I say, 
 Why not do it also in respect to the Bible? Why not treat it 
 in a way which seems to me as fair and honest and straightfor- 
 ward } 
 
 I contend that the Bible was given for the purpose which 
 was expressed here this afternoon by Dr. McLane, when he pre- 
 sented before you so eloquently and so graphically how the pur- 
 pose of the Bible is to present a way of redemption from sin. 
 Christ says, " I am come that they may have life, and that they 
 may have it more abundantly." Now that is the purpose of the 
 Bible. It has come that we might have life, and that we might 
 have it more abundantly. It was not given to teach history in a 
 technical way ; it was not given to teach science in a technical 
 way, but it was given to teach your heart and my heart, and to 
 lead us into a higher and newer and fuller life. And when it 
 comes through Jesus Christ, presented in that way to the sav- 
 age, to the man here in the city, or wherever it is proclaimed, it 
 has the one same effect. This critical way of studying the Bible 
 is a way that I really do not like. I do not think much of it. 
 Here is a great painting. I sometimes use this illustration. You 
 stand and look at it, and a man comes along and says, " That 
 painting is wonderful." It may be like the Sistine Madonna. 
 Some, when they sit before that painting, are moved to tears, it 
 is so wonderful. Suppose a man comes and he commences to 
 discuss the painting, the different colors that are used, explains 
 them scientifically. Suppose he goes and points out certain in- 
 accuracies which may be in the painting ; tells you that the 
 Madonna is not of Jewish features or cast. Suppose he comes 
 and tells you that very likely a pupil of Raphael drew the first 
 sketch of the painting, and that the great artist only filled in and 
 made the finishing touches of it, as sometimes occurs — proba- 
 bly did not occur in reference to this painting, but has occurred 
 in reference to other paintings by the masters of Europe. Now 
 all of that would have no bearing whatever upon the effect of 
 that painting as a work of art. It would not touch its beauty in 
 any way or shape. It would still be there just as powerful to 
 touch and to move man, as it was before. Well, now, it is the 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 97 
 
 same with the Bible and the work of the Higher Criticism. 
 Many people think a great deal depends upon whether it 
 was one man or two men who wrote Isaiah. I am simply giving 
 my own experience. It does not make one iota of difference to 
 me in regard to the religious truth as contained. Do you sup- 
 pose the words, " Let the wicked forsake his way," etc., are any 
 less true whether Isaiah number one or Isaiah number two wrote 
 them ? And so it is. Of some things I am certain, and that 
 that Book is the Word of God in a real and living sense to my 
 soul. I am certain of that. The Higher Criticism does not in- 
 validate in any way the Bible as the Word of God. 
 
 By Prof. G. Frederick Wright, of Oberlin College : 
 
 It has seemed to me that the discussion ought to be prolonged 
 somewhat in order to have both parties properly understood. I 
 doubt if Professor Curtis would receive the same impression from 
 the story of Joseph, believing it to be true and believing it to be 
 a fiction, and the question is whether he believes that story to be 
 true ; whether there was such a Hfe of Joseph, whether those 
 things did actually happen. And so in regard to most of those 
 Old Testament subjects. They approach them in this way that 
 those who believe strongly in the supernatural are inclined to 
 think that the presumption is that there is some way of harmon- 
 izing those accounts, and they look for that harmony on that 
 presumption, whereas it seems to me that a good many others 
 look for where they may possibly make a discrepancy and they 
 seem to think that is the natural thing to do. The most of us 
 are led through our experience of the Bible to believe that there 
 is under it so much truth that we will readily see how the 
 harmony can exist. If you take two good witnesses who contra- 
 dict one another, there is some way of harmonizino- the results 
 and so in regard to the question of Isaiah. It touches our belief 
 with respect of prophecy, and our belief with respect to 
 the interpretation of what Christ Himself says about 
 these things. It means a good deal if Christ says our 
 sins are to be forgiven ; we want to know if those words are 
 
98 HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 
 
 true. They are established to be true of Christ and His mira- 
 cles and the truthfulness of this record. Are these words of 
 Isaiah the utterance of some man who is giving a vague expres- 
 sion to some impulse of his mind, or has he a solid foundation ? 
 So the discussion of this question, whether the history of the 
 Jews is a proper interpretation of human nature, is one that we 
 cannot dispense with. I presume when we came to understand 
 each other's terms that we should be substantially alike. 
 
 By Professor H. G. Mitchell, of the Boston University: 
 
 Mr. Chairman: There are so many things that I should 
 like to say in the few minutes granted me, that I hardly know 
 where to begin or which to select. 
 
 I am always hurt when I hear such things as have just been 
 said with reference to certain of ourbibical scholars. Those who 
 say them are utterly mistaken. It is very easy to show not 
 only that these honored teachers are not undermining the faith 
 of their pupils, but that it is ridiculous to suspect them of so 
 doing. 
 
 I find an illustration of the latter of these two points among 
 my early recollections. When I was a boy, living in a new 
 country, I often saw examples of hasty construction. A man 
 wanted a house, and he wanted it in a hurry. If he waited to 
 dig a cellar with a solid wall, he could not get it enclosed in 
 time to suit his purpose. He therefore planted four strong posts 
 at the proper points, and built his house upon them, and then, 
 perhaps, after the harvest or the winter that was pressing 
 him, at his leisure he supplied it with a more permanent founda- 
 tion. Now suppose that, in such a case, when the masons 
 began operations, the good woman at her work within, on hear- 
 ing the noise under her feet, and seeing the earth wheeled into her 
 dooryard, should rush out and forbid further excavation, insist- 
 ing that the workmen were bringing the house down upon her 
 and her family, what would the workmen naturally reply ? They 
 might try to show her that the work must proceed in spite of her 
 fears, but some one would probably say: " Madam, don't you 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 99 
 
 see that we ourselves are under the house ? Does it seem likely 
 that we would pull it down over our own heads ? " 
 
 The application of this illustration is apparent. The scholars 
 so much abused are Christians. Their God is the God of the 
 Bible, and the salvation in which they rejoice is the theme of 
 that sacred Book. Have they not as much or more at stake 
 than their brethren? Is it reasonable to suppose that they 
 would wantonly overthrow the Bible and thus ruin their own 
 dearest hopes for time and for eternity? The idea is evidently 
 preposterous. 
 
 How, then, is the persistent activity of these scholars to be 
 explained ? They would say that instead of destroying they 
 were fortifying- the Bible, and they could bring proof of this as- 
 sertion. Sometime ago a good woman complained that she was 
 losing her faith, as the result of a series of sermons on the Bible 
 from the modern standpoint. ** Tell her," said a professor in 
 one of our Eastern colleges, who heard of the case, " That but 
 for the Higher Critics and their help in removing difficulties in 
 the Bible, I never should have been saved." 
 
 I can appreciate this statement, for I myself have been greatly 
 helped by the new views. I was taught to believe, for example, 
 that the first two chapters of Genesis were a single inspired ac- 
 count of creation; but the time came when I felt obliged to sur- 
 render either their unity or their inspiration. My later teach- 
 ers said: "There arc two accounts," and my difficulty was gone. 
 The story of the rape of Sarah is another case in point. Most 
 people find it hard to believe that she could have attracted 
 Abimelech's or even Pharaoh's attention at the age at which 
 she is reported to have been taken from her husband ; but 
 if the documentary hypothesis be accepted the difficulty is re- 
 moved, for it appears that the data from which Sarah's age must 
 be computed came from one source, and these incidents in her 
 life from other documents. Let me add one more illustration. 
 In the story of Hagar we are told that when she found herself 
 without water in the desert of Beersheba she laid her child under 
 a shrub to die, but was bidden to go and take him up again, as if 
 he were yet in arms, and the Greek version of Gen. xxi. 1 1 says 
 that when Abraham dismissed her he put the child on her shoul- 
 
100 HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 
 
 der, where Oriental women still carry their babies. It is per- 
 fectly clear that the author of this story intended to represent 
 Ishmael as very young. If, however, you will study the context, 
 you will find that, according to our present Genesis, he must have 
 been, at least, sixteen years of age. The only way out of the in- 
 consistency is to take refuge in the hypothesis that the book is 
 composite, and I, for one, am grateful that this hypothesis has 
 been proposed. These are but specimens. If I had time, I 
 could cite many more instances in which I have found relief from 
 skepticism by adopting more liberal views of the origin and struc- 
 ture of the Bible. I am satisfied that if such views had earlier 
 become current, many whose faith has been shaken or destroyed 
 by the tirades of such men as Col. IngersoU might still be in 
 happy relations with the Church, 
 
 A Voice : May I ask the Professor how he explains the belief 
 in the inspiration of the Bible? 
 
 Professor Mitchell : I am not quite clear as to the meaning of 
 the question, but if I understand him, the questioner feels that 
 the views now generally held by biblical scholars are inconsistent 
 with the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible. They are in- 
 consistent with that form of the doctrine of inspiration which 
 makes it imply the infallibility of the inspired subject and the 
 consequent inerrancy of the Scriptures, but not with the rational 
 and biblical form of that doctrine. " But," some one will say, "if 
 the Bible is not inerrant, of what use is it?" I have often been 
 asked this question. I always meet it with this illustration: 
 Some time ago, when I was spending my vacation in New Hamp- 
 shire, I became confused with reference to the points of the com- 
 pass; so thoroughly confused that I really doubted the identity 
 of the north star. I sent for a compass, hoping that it would 
 help me. It did not help me, for when I consulted it I found 
 that it would not agree either with the statements of my host or 
 the testimony of the heavens. This incident led me to give 
 some attention to the nature of the magnetic needle, when I dis- 
 covered that not only must allowance be made for the variations 
 of this instrument in different localities, but in the case of mari- 
 ners* compasses each one must be adjusted to the ship to which 
 it is to belong. Of course, since that time I do not trust the 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. lOI 
 
 compass as blindly as I did, but I know that, if properly used, it 
 will always prove itself reliable. The same, it seems to me, is 
 the case with the Bible. There is in it a human and fallible ele- 
 ment, but this element is dangerous only to him who refuses to 
 recognize it. I believe that many have made shipwreck of their 
 faith because they had been taught, as are still taught in some of 
 our schools, that a single error in the Bible would destroy its 
 value as Scripture. 
 
 Now if you will allow me, I will return to the line of thought 
 that I was following, and tell you what has been the effect of the 
 new view of the Bible upon my students. I think that most of 
 them accept it before they finish their course, and that most of 
 the others do so soon after graduation. I have never known but 
 two to leave our school, because they could not endure the doc- 
 trine, and one of them afterwards reconsidered his action. I 
 have never known any one to accept it who did not find it help- 
 ful to him, and many of them are touchingly grateful for being 
 made acquainted with it. A few years ago a young man, on 
 whom I feared that my instruction had made no impression, 
 came to me the last day of his first year, and said : " Professor, 
 when we began the study of Genesis, I feared that I was going 
 to lose my faith in the Bible, but after a time my wife suggested 
 that we read the book in the light of the new theory at prayers, 
 and I can't tell you how grateful I am that we were led to make 
 the experiment. It's a new book to us." A few days ago, I 
 found at the end of an examination paper — the last in the course 
 — something like this : " I want to thank you for the good that 
 you have done me, and especially for the light that you have 
 thrown on this book of Isaiah." I had simply interpreted the 
 book as the product of two distinct authors and periods Expe- 
 riences of this sort, which are of almost daily occurrence, make it 
 impossible for me to believe that others who teach the views 
 under discussion, are thereby undermining the faith of their 
 pupils. 
 
 A Voice : I would like to ask if there is any criterion of in- 
 spiration, except that it seems to me that the passage must be 
 inspired } 
 
 Professor Mitchell: There are two sources of evidence con- 
 
I02 HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 
 
 cernirig the reality of inspiration. In the first place, some of the 
 sacred authors testify that they themselves, or others whose 
 deeds or words they record were inspired. In such case, the 
 first question is, What do these authors mean by inspiration ? 
 after which a second is in order, viz. : Do the words or deeds re- 
 corded substantiate the claim to inspiration ? There are, how- 
 ever, large portions of our Scriptures whose authors do not claim 
 to have been supernaturally assisted in their production. In the 
 case of such books, the question is, are the contents of these 
 books of such a character as to require one to assert that their 
 authors must have been inspired to produce them .^ Let me 
 add that the whole question of inspiration is one of secondary 
 importance. The main question is, Is the Bible, whatever its 
 origin, a sufficient guide to a knowledge of God and His will? 
 If it is, what does it matter by what process it was produced ? 
 
 By D. S. Gregory, D.D., LL.D., of New York : 
 
 I did not come with any preparation or intention of making 
 a speech. I agree with the last speaker who has spoken, that if 
 the Higher Criticism had been taught over this country a few 
 years sooner, Col. IngersoU would now have no adversaries, that 
 is, if it had been accepted. I think it would have cleared the 
 track for him, so far as I am able to understand it and its re- 
 sults, and I am inclined to that belief from the observation that 
 I have had of the results of it, or from those with whom I have 
 come especially in contact. Now, there are certain things that 
 I wish Dr. Wright could have presented, as I am sure that I 
 agree with him in his general views on the subject. But let me 
 say just one or two things about this matter of criticism. 
 
 In this country the tendency, as Prof Curtis has said, is to 
 distinguish between the Higher Criticism and the Lower Criti- 
 cism. The Lower Criticism is the textual criticism. The Higher 
 Criticism, literary criticism, embraces everything except the 
 Lower Criticism, according to the common notion. Now, tak- 
 ing that phrase. Higher Criticism, there is Higher Criticism, and 
 Higher Criticism. When I was in the theological seminary I 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. IO3 
 
 was under the instruction of that grand man, Dr. William Henry 
 Green, who, in my estimation, stands at the head of Hebrew 
 scholarship in this country, and is one of the grandest Christian 
 men I ever knew. We had criticism. We did not call it Higher 
 Criticism in those days, but our teacher went over this whole 
 range of German thought and criticism, entered into all the the- 
 ories and discussed them with our class, and presented the 
 grounds and the conclusions, and we had the benefit of his wise 
 thought upon them. He met all these points that are being 
 made still. There was another way of explaining them. 
 
 But I say there is this kind of criticism which is biblical criti- 
 cism in its proper form. We call it, perhaps, historico-gram- 
 matical or grammatico-historical. It is criticism which takes 
 the Bible with grammar and history, and seeks to get at the 
 meaning of it. It begins reverently, accepting the great mass 
 of evidences with which you come to the Bible, the evidences of 
 Christianity which are sufificient with the average man to predis. 
 pose him to at least a friendly reception of the Bible as it is pre- 
 sented to him. There is this kind of criticism which has had 
 grand results, but there is another kind of criticism, and that is 
 the Rationalistic Higher Criticism. Now, I am in favor of the 
 Higher Criticism which I call Rational Higher Criticism, but I 
 have no patience with the Higher Criticism which I call Ration- 
 alistic Higher Criticism — the Higher Criticism that assumes that 
 there is nothing supernatural in the Bible, or if there be a super- 
 natural in the Bible you must leave it out in your study of the 
 Bible. Now, no Christian who has accepted the evidences of 
 Christianity, who has given any adequate thought or study to 
 the subject of the evidences, can come to the Bible and say, I 
 am going to ignore all that is supernatural in it, and I am going 
 to take what I find left after that. 
 
 When a man takes the Bible in that way and starts out 
 with Genesis, he reads: "In the beginning God created the 
 heavens and the earth." That is supernatural. Leave that out. 
 So he goes on down through and he will find by the time he 
 gets to the end he has left out pretty much everything — lost it 
 on the ground that it is supernatural. It involves God, it in- 
 volves miracles, it involves prophecy, it involves something that 
 
I04 HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 
 
 is supernatural, that rests on the supernatural. This Rational- 
 istic Higher Criticism, which assumes that we can take the Word 
 of God and take it without any reference to the great range of 
 Christian evidences and deal with it just as you would deal with 
 Robinson Crusoe, I do not expect any high results from. There 
 have been grand scholars in Germany who have taken that other 
 view. They assume in the Pentateuch, when they come upon 
 two things that can posssibly be tortured into contradictions that 
 they are difficulties, and they set to work to see if those difficul- 
 ties can be reconciled, and they succeed in reconciling them, I 
 think; at least they succeed to the satisfaction of many of the 
 ablest men that I know, and the ablest thinkers in reconciling 
 all these contradictions, or apparent contradictions. 
 
 Just as in the New Testament, you can start out in the Gos- 
 pels and say. Here Matthev/ differs from Luke so and so. Here's 
 a difficulty, contradiction, discrepancy, and that very soon passes 
 into a contradiction. You say. Either this one told the truth or 
 this one did. Here's this genealogy in Matthew : If that is cor- 
 rect, that one in Luke is not correct. There is a perfectly sim- 
 ple way of reconciling the two. There are two different geneal- 
 ogies, as every one has. If you take the rational way and study 
 the rationalistic way, it is a very easy matter to reconcile them. 
 Just so in the Pentateuch. The connection of the first chapter 
 and the paragraph up to the fourth verse in the second chapter 
 is all very plain to Prof. Wright, and very plain to me and Dr. 
 Green, and hundreds of men whom I know, men who have been 
 able to look into the subject and who have looked into it with 
 as much scientific acumen and patience as any men who have 
 reached the other conclusion. Now, I say, on the basis of the 
 evidences of Christianity in favor of the Bible, the attitude of 
 the Christian Church and the Christian man should always be 
 that this Bible is proved by these evidences to be the Word of 
 God. The presumption is against contradiction. It is against 
 error, until error is absolutely proved, and the great objection 
 that I have to all the adverse criticism of the New Testament 
 and to the adverse criticism of the Old Testament is, that they 
 exalt simple difficulties into the place of absolute contradictions. 
 There are myriads of difficulties in the work of creation which 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. IO5 
 
 the scientists have never understood as yet, but they do not pre- 
 tend to say that these are contrary to law. They are trying to 
 find what the law is under which they all come. And I believe 
 that there is a great divine law running through the Bible by 
 which all these discrepancies are being reconciled. 
 
 By W. W. McLane, D.D., Ph.D., New Haven, Conn.: 
 
 I suppose that the sympathy of this meeting is probably very 
 generally with the position of the gentleman who wrote the 
 paper. I happen to be a preacher and not a professor. I don't 
 personally like much of the Higher Criticism, because it is not 
 the method of study which fits a man particularly for preaching. 
 I find that I must read the story of Joseph, not to find out 
 whether it is one story or two traditions woven in one story, but 
 to find, as Prof. Curtis has said, what it teaches in regard to loy- 
 alty to God and God's care of man. I must study the Bible in 
 that way or I do not help the people in preaching. 
 
 Q. Do you find that you can study it the other way and keep 
 your faith in it .■' 
 
 Ao My friend, Professor Curtis here, is a teacher. He is a 
 good preacher, I have no doubt ; but he is a teacher. He is 
 obliged to teach the literature of the Old Testament and he ar- 
 rives at certain conclusions. I want to call the attention of the 
 audience to one thing which I do not think many people think 
 of. Many people confound revelation and inspiration, and do 
 not distinguish between the revelation of a truth to the mind of 
 man by the Spirit of God, and the mere presence of the Spirit of 
 God which may direct men in the writing of historical facts. You 
 must distinguish between revelation and inspiration. I arose, 
 however, because one gentleman back here referred to the inju- 
 rious effect of the teaching of the age. lam not proposing to 
 stand here to say what may have been the effect, one way or 
 another, of all the teaching that may have been connected with 
 the University. I do not know how far the influence of Prof. 
 Harper may go one way or the other. Prof Curtis came from 
 a Seminary where he has done good work. He is now teaching 
 
I06 HIGHER CRITICISM UNDER REVIEW. 
 
 in Yale Divinity School, and when his students come into my 
 prayer meeting, holding some of these positions which I know 
 he holds, and manifest themselves to be profoundly full of faith 
 in the Bible and full of loyalty to Jesus Christ, I must recognize 
 that fact. When one of his students said to me, "The influence 
 of Prof. Curtis is especially spiritual and helpful to the students," 
 and when I can testify to the fact that when he appears before 
 us ministers, to read a paper to us, or anything of that kind, I 
 can speak not for myself, but for them also, to say that he makes 
 the same impression; we mustrecognize that fact, andl think it is 
 due to such men as Prof. Curtis and Prof. Mitchell, to recognize 
 that they stand as Christian men who have a personal interest in 
 this matter, and who are not antagonizing Christianity, but are 
 honestly seeking after truth. And we must be careful in our re- 
 marks not to affirm that they are doing detriment where they 
 are not. And that is the reason I made this remark to say 
 that so far as Prof. Curtis's influence in the Seminary of Yale is 
 concerned, I know it is on the side of the Bible, faith in the 
 Bible and in Christ. 
 
CHRIST AT THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 [Prepared for the Summer School of the American Insti- 
 tute of Christian Philosophy, July, 1893.] 
 
 By David Jas. Burrell, D.D., 
 
 Pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church, of New York. 
 
 [The writer of this paper is well aware that it is liable to misconstruction. He 
 believes, however, that the false methods of the Higher Criticism are so pernicious 
 in their results as to warrant a bold attempt at reductio ad absurdum. It would ap- 
 pear that this can be best accomplished by a frank and fair application of those rules 
 to the doctrine of the Incarnate Word. If this shall seem irreverent, let the blame 
 be laid where it belongs.] 
 
 IN this year of our Lord, 191 8, all followers of Christ have rea- 
 son to congratulate themselves on the prevailing freedom 
 of thought and discussion. It is scarcely believable that only 
 twenty-five years ago the friends of the Higher Criticism were 
 under reproach by reason of their courageous opposition to nar- 
 row and antiquated views of Inspiration. At that time it was as 
 much as a minister's good and regular standing was worth to 
 breathe a word against inerrancy. But truth, as ever, gained 
 the upper hand. Inerrancy, riddled by the running fire of hon- 
 est scholarship, died the death ; and the Bible was reduced to its 
 proper place as a doctrinal and ethical thesaurus, a venerable 
 landmark of literature, an indispensable Book among books. 
 Toward the consummation of that desirable end the friends of 
 progress were enabled to help themselves greatly by insisting 
 that Christ and not the Bible must be kept upon the throne. 
 The word " Christo-centric " was made to answer a most useful 
 purpose. The vice of bibliolatry ceased and the heart of the 
 Church was centred on Jesus Christ. But words are like wear- 
 ing apparel; they serve their time; and afterwards are better 
 honored in the breach than in the observance. Thus the word 
 *' Christo-centric " has served its day. The Written Word hav- 
 ing now been adjusted to its proper place, it has seemed only 
 meet and proper that scholarship should turn its attention toward 
 
 107 
 
I08 CHRIST A T THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 the Incarnate Word. It is for these reasons and under such con- 
 ditions that we find ourselves in the midst of a Christological 
 controversy. The question of the Inerrancy of the Scriptures 
 has given way to the allied and complementary question of the 
 Perfection of Christ. Bibliolatry has indeed ceased, but we are 
 confronted by a more serious danger — to wit, Christolatry. Let 
 us be free and frank in approaching the problem. Thank God 
 the time has gone by when a man could be branded as a heretic 
 for departing from traditionalism or falling out with an historic 
 creed. We are coming to perceive more and more that religion 
 is a life and not a theology. The question of the hour centres 
 in Jesus who is called the Christ. What think ye of Him } The 
 Son of God He doubtless was; but in what peculiar sense are we 
 to understand that term? For there are many sons of God. A 
 sublime Figure among men He doubtless was; but whether or 
 no He was absolutely free from those ills which humanity is 
 heir to is a matter which only the most rigid and courageous scru- 
 tiny can determine. And this is the question before us. 
 
 I. As to our attitude. The same broad and helpful rules of 
 criticism must be observed in these premises that served so well 
 the purpose of the Higher Critics in their controversy respect- 
 ing the Written Word. 
 
 First, and foremost, we must cherish no prejudgments. It is 
 obvious that if we begin by assuming that Christ was "very God 
 of very God," or that He was in anywise unique among men, we 
 beg the question at the outset and make argument impossible. 
 This mode of procedure would be wholly averse to the critical 
 spirit. If we are to discuss this question at all we must divest 
 ourselves of former convictions, hold judgment in equilibrium, 
 and insist that Jesus shall submit to the same critical tests that 
 would be apphed in the case of Homer, Sesostris or Sakya- 
 muni. If I have entertained a sentimental regard for Him as an 
 incomparable Friend, infallible Guide, and divine Redeemer, that 
 must needs be laid aside for the purpose in hand. The only 
 honest critic is brother to the juror that never saw the prisoner^ 
 never read the newspaper, nor in anywise formed an opinion re- 
 specting the case. For how can a man make up his mind if his 
 mind is already made up } Therefore one who has called him- 
 
CHRIST A T THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. IO9 
 
 self a Christian must doff his Christianity for the nonce and hold 
 himself open to conviction either way. If it be asked, when may 
 he resume ? we answer, As soon as the case is passed upon. 
 And if it be suggested that the case may hold fire for a lifetime, 
 we answer, Veritas contra mundum ! No matter what happens, 
 we dare not falter in our search for truth. 
 
 Second^ we must proceed by induction exclusively. This is 
 now conceded on all hands to be the scientific method. A priori 
 reasoning is obsolete. It may indeed be necessary in courts of 
 justice, as jurists contend, but never in the province of spirit- 
 ual things. Here facts alone must tell their story. By facts we 
 understand such visible and tangible phenomena as lead to in- 
 controvertible conclusions. There must be no " In the nature of 
 the case," no " Thus saith the Lord, and therefore." The time 
 for reasoning from either authority or general principles has 
 passed by. There must be no reference to the consensus, nor to 
 traditional belief, nor yet to "The Law and the Testimony." 
 At one time the Scriptures were regarded as the Court of Last 
 Appeal in spiritual questions; but since their inerrancy has been 
 disposed of they must obviously be classed with other documen- 
 tary evidence. Their credibility at any point must be passed 
 upon before we can receive it. It is scarcely necessary to say 
 that proof-texts, so called, are not admissible. Faith, as such, is 
 ruled out. With "things not seen" we have nothing to do. 
 Facts must be forthcoming. Nothing but cold facts — "that 
 ■which we have seen and handled " — will meet the demands of 
 the scientific method. What we require is a calm analysis of the 
 contents of the Gospel. We must take Christ as we find Him. 
 The Incarnation, the Atonement and the Resurrection of Jesus 
 must be frankly and dispassionately surveyed. Love, devotion 
 and kindred sentiments must not be allowed in any wise to prej- 
 udice the controversy. If the critic would arrive at the truth 
 respecting the virtues of the blood of Jesus, he must take his 
 position under the cross with those who "stood beholding," must 
 subject that blood to the analysis which is usual in similar cases 
 and must be guided to his conclusions by a rigid calculation as to 
 serum, coagulum, iron and phosphorus. It must ever be remem- 
 bered that the heart has no lot nor portion in a judicial pro- 
 
no CHRIST AT THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 cedure. Tears blind the eyes in any administration of justice. 
 Judicis est semper in causis veriim sequi. As King Richard said 
 when called upon to sit in judgment on his nephew Bolingbroke, 
 so must we say of Jesus, 
 
 Now by my sceptre's awe I make a vow ; 
 His neighbor nearness to our sacred bio ' 
 Shall nothing privilege him, nor partialize 
 The unstooping firmness of my upright soul. 
 
 II. Thus far as to our attitude ; now with respect to the mode 
 of procedure. 
 
 The first thing to be done is to arrive at the best possible 
 portrait of Christ. And here we shall find ourselves confronted 
 by many difficulties. The four accounts of Jesus, to begin with, 
 are variously divergent and contradictory. To enter into par- 
 ticulars would lead us far beyond the prescribed limits of this 
 paper. Suffice it to say that Matthew dwells upon the Messianic 
 character of Jesus and His descent from Abraham and David. 
 He offers us a kingly picture. In Mark we have a very dif- 
 ferent presentation ; we look in vain here for royal character- 
 istics. Jesus is a servant, coming not to be ministered unto 
 but to minister, and as such His genealogy is a matter of Httle 
 or no moment ; therefore, none is given. In Luke we have yet 
 another and wholly distinct silhouette. Here the lineage of 
 Jesus is traced not to Abraham but to the mythical Father of 
 the race. The conception is distinctly human ; He is the Son 
 of Man. In John we have still another view. As the last of the 
 four biographers of Jesus he outdoes his predecessors in ascrib- 
 ing glory to Him as the eternal, uncreated Word of God. His 
 genealogical table goes back to the remote ages of eternity. He 
 puts a severe strain upon human language n his effort to represent 
 Jesus as every way co-equal with the Father ; calling Him the 
 Light of the World; the Way, the Truth and the Life; and 
 identifying Him with the ineffable I AM. A further examina- 
 tion of these four accounts of Jesus would show them to be 
 discrepant at many points. For centuries the ingenuity of an 
 alleged scholarship, now happily extinct, sought vainly to rec 
 oncile them. From the song of the angels to the titulum on the 
 cross there are disagreements without number. It will be seen, 
 
CHRIST A T THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 1 1 1 
 
 therefore, that the effort to combine these biographies into a 
 consistent portrait of Jesus is not without difficulty. But as in 
 the previous controversy the preliminary step to the higher crit- 
 icism of the Scriptures was the determination of a fairly accurate 
 text, so, if we are to arrive at the truth respecting Jesus we must 
 at the outset secure the best possible portrait of Him. 
 
 Then we are ready for our next step, namely, to weigh and 
 estimate the contents or phenomena of this portrait, which brings 
 us into the distinctive province of the Higher Criticism. And 
 the fairness of our conclusions will still depend upon our proceed- 
 ing without warp or bias. 
 
 At this point we shall doubtless find so many incongruities in 
 the commonly accepted view as to force upon us a reconstruction 
 of the doctrine of Christ. Here again, by reason of the limitations 
 of this paper we must content ourselves with mere generaliza- 
 tions. It is not a pleasant task to point out imperfections in 
 Christ. Nevertheless "historical criticism finds them and we 
 must meet the issue," whether they destroy the traditional im- 
 maculateness of the Saviour or not. It has been taught by some 
 theologians that one verified imperfection destroys His divine- 
 ness ; this claim, however, is a " ghost of modern evangelicalism 
 to frighten children." "And indeed were we to abandon the 
 whole field of supernaturalism so far as the circumstantials of the 
 character of Jesus are concerned and limit His divineness to the 
 essential contents of His life and character, we would still have 
 ample room to seek divine authority where alone it is important, 
 in the teaching that guides our devotions, our thinking and our 
 conduct." 
 
 The frequent errors in the scientific allusions of Jesus are 
 such as to make it quite certain — to put it as mildly as possible — 
 that He was totally unacquainted with science. It is with the 
 utmost difficulty and only by a severe strain of the imagination 
 that His references to man and nature, the processes of natural 
 law and the destiny of material things can be reconciled with 
 such fundamental principles as evolution, natural selection, re- 
 version to type and the conservation of force. In even so small 
 a matter as the germination of a corn of wheat his statements 
 are as contrary to fact as — to use a familiar parallel — were the 
 
112 CnRIST AT THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 preposterous allegations of the author of Leviticus with respect 
 to the coney. 
 
 Nor do the doctrinal and ethical teachings of Jesus present 
 any better showing. As to doctrine He gives us, indeed, almost 
 nothing in systematic form ; His allusions to sin, redemption, re- 
 generation, retributive justice, and the restitution of all things 
 being so brief, fragmentary and incongruous as to render it quite 
 impossible for even His most devoted adherents to arrive at any 
 consensus of belief. His averments respecting a set day of judg- 
 ment and a local heaven and hell with such material adjuncts as 
 fire and brimstone must stagger the faith of the most credulous. 
 
 In the province of ethics, attention is directed to His in- 
 junctions respecting filial love (Matt. viii. 22) ; divorce (Matt. v. 
 32); indiscriminate charity (Matt. v. 42); and many other prin- 
 ciples of the moral law. The woes pronounced upon His enemies 
 have in them all the malignity of the imprecatory Psalms His 
 announcement of the Golden Rule as an original maxim can 
 scarcely b regarded as otherwise than disingenuous, and in His 
 interview with certain disciples on the way to Emmaus as else- 
 where, He appears to have lent Himself to deliberate deceit. 
 And how shall we explain away such hyperbole as that respect- 
 ing the rich man's salvation or the faith that removes mountains } 
 The list might be prolonged indefinitely. 
 
 The same is true of the prophetic utterances of Jesus, All 
 efforts to find any historical correspondence with His predictions 
 respecting the destruction of Jerusalem have been lamentable 
 failures. The great body of Christ's prophecies " have not only 
 never been fulfilled, but cannot be fulfilled because the time has 
 passed forever." 
 
 Nor can accuracy be ascribed to His scriptural references. 
 He used the Septuagint Version, which no scholar would have 
 done. Had He been familiar with the real facts as developed in 
 subsequent research He surely would not have referred to Moses 
 as the author of the Pentateuch or to Isaiah as the writer of the 
 latter portion of the prophecy bearing his name. Indeed there 
 is nowhere a hint or suggestion of any sort that betrays any ac- 
 quaintance whatsoever on His part with even the simplest facts 
 of the Higher Criticism. He indubitably sanctioned the story of 
 
CHRIST AT THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. II3 
 
 the deluge, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from 
 heaven, the changing of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, and Jonah 
 in the whale's belly. If He knew that these were fables, why did 
 He lend Himself to their furtherance ? If he did not know, how 
 could He offer Himself as an inerrant guide in matters of truth? 
 
 An examination of the miracles of Jesus would lead to similar 
 conclusions. The most, if not all, of these miracles have been 
 accounted for upon common principles of natural law ; yet there 
 is no denying that He encouraged the popular tendency to regard 
 them as weird and unearthly, nay, further, that He rashly ventured 
 His Messianic claims upon their supernaturalness. It is needless 
 to extend these illustrations. As we have already said, it is not 
 a pleasant task to point out the faults of Jesus. We have not 
 taken out a brief to prove His imperfection. " Conservative men 
 should hesitai: before they force the critics in self-defence to 
 make a catalogue " of the defects in His life and character. 
 
 WHAT ARE THE CONCLUSIONS? 
 
 (i) There is no soHd basis for the doctrine of an absolutely 
 perfect Christ. As the inerrant Scriptures disappeared before 
 the clear light of scholarship, so does the kindred fable of the 
 immaculate Christ vanish under similar conditions Hke a fog-bank 
 before the rising sun. 
 
 (2) If it be alleged that the imperfections ascribed to the 
 character of Jesus are due to His biographers or to fallible copy- 
 ists, we answer we have to deal with Christ as we have Him. As 
 to an original Christ, flawless and without guile, the suggestion 
 is merely hypothetical. No living man has ever seen Him. 
 There is no portrait of Him in existence. All current accounts 
 of Him, scriptural and otherwise, agree with the foregoing repre- 
 sentation of Him. 
 
 (3) If it be alleged that the original Christ must be received 
 by faith, on the assumption that God would not reveal Himself 
 in an imperfect Christ, we answer again that faith has no place 
 in a judicial investigation ; and all such a priori considerations 
 are foreign to the scientific method. When it was claimed in the 
 former controversy that the original autograph of the Scriptures 
 was inerrant, for the reason that inspiration is a divine breathing 
 
1 14 CHRIST A T THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 
 
 and God could not breathe a lie, the fallacy of such reasoning was 
 instantly apparent. And by the same token, perfection cannot 
 on similar a priori grounds be ascribed to Jesus as the Incarnate 
 Word of God. 
 
 (4) While disavowing the divine perfection of Jesus we are 
 prepared to insist that all the essentials of such perfection were 
 in Him. He was not God, but contained Him. He was not 
 truth, but contained it. He was not the Incarnate Word, but 
 contained it. His character was to perfection as quartz is to 
 gold. The open question is purely quantitative, whether (so to 
 speak) the quartz contains the gold in paying quantities or not. 
 
 (5) The admixture of imperfection in the character of Jesus is 
 what should be expected in the nature of the case. Though be- 
 gotten by the Holy Ghost He was born of a woman and must 
 needs inherit her human frailty. In like manner the errors of 
 Scripture were traced to the personal infirmities of those holy 
 men who wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The 
 parallel is exact. The co-operation of the divine with the human 
 never yet resulted in an indefective product. The faults of the 
 Incarnate Word are, therefore, after the precise analogy of those 
 in the Written Word of God. 
 
 (6) We have no occasion nor necessity for an immaculate 
 Christ. Every purpose is answered by the imposing figure of 
 One who, while pre-eminent in wisdom and goodness, shared the 
 infirmities of His fellow-men. We gain nothing by conjuring up 
 an impossible and unbelievable Avatar. What we want is a work 
 ing basis and we find it in the doctrine of the historical Christ, the 
 Christ who is set forth in the errant Scriptures and the equally errant 
 lives of Christian people, that is the errant Christ. If, in arriving at 
 this result, we seem to have lost some of our traditional beliefs, we 
 find abundant compensation in the sense of having followed a 
 reasonable course of argument to its inevitable conclusions. The 
 fearless seeker after truth must not shrink from the consequences 
 of his temerity. And it must ever be remembered that nothing 
 in the universe is to be valued with truth. This is the pearl of 
 great price. Thrice happy is he who parts with everything that 
 he may buy it. 
 
 It would, however, be a grievous mistake to suppose tnat 
 
CHRIST A T THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 1 1 5 
 
 in stripping away the vain traditions that have gathered 
 about Christ we have parted with Christ Himself. Is a tree 
 destroyed by wise pruning? Did we lose the Scriptures when 
 we proved them to be full of inaccuracies ? Were they not rather 
 the more endeared to us ? So, now that we perceive Christ in 
 His true character, we love and revere Him a thousand-fold 
 more than ever. If any of His people are devoted to Him, we 
 more. A judicious attachment is ever more loyal than a whim- 
 sical and ill-grounded infatuation. Our Christ, stripped of the 
 gaudy tinsel with which superstition had decked Him, rernains 
 to us the wisest of teachers, the most kindly of philanthropists, 
 the most infallible of guides, the most perfect flower of humanity, 
 and the best Incarnation of Deity that is possible to our fallen 
 race. '* That mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the Spirit 
 of God, how it wrought in His bosom." * We accept Him as 
 Redeemer and Friend. We recognize His unspeakable goodness 
 in giving Himself for us. None shall exceed us in devotion to 
 Him; none shall sing more loudly or joyously in His honor. He 
 is the foundation of our faith and the corner-top-stone of our life 
 and character. " He remains the highest model of religion within 
 the reach of our thought and no perfect piety is possible without 
 His presence in the heart." t "Whatever may be the surprises 
 of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will 
 grow young without ceasing; His story will call forth tears with- 
 out end, His suffering will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will 
 proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater 
 than Jesus." % 
 
 ♦ Theodore Parker. f David Strauss. % Ernest Renan. 
 
AUGUSTE COMTE AND POSITIVISM. 
 
 [Read at the monthly meeting of the American 
 Institute of Christian Philosophy, May, 1893.] 
 
 By David H. Greer, D.D., of New York. 
 
 THERE is perhaps no man of eminence in modern times 
 concerning whom there is such diversity of opinion as 
 Auguste Comte. While a few ardent admirers are inclined to 
 give him almost unbounded homage and to regard him as the 
 greatest, or one of the greatest thinkers living or dead, there 
 are others who speak of him as having been crazed with some 
 constitutional disorder or " maniacal disease," and who treat him 
 with a slight bordering upon pity or contempt. Each of these 
 appraisements is partial and one-sided, although it is not difficult 
 to see how each of them should have been made or how the 
 second should be the more common of the two. 
 
 Comte's career had two sides to it or rather two stages m it — 
 that of the philosophic thinker and that of the religious reformer. 
 It is in connection with this latter office that those eccentricities 
 appear which have made him obnoxious to such a large number 
 of persons, and yet with that mistaken estimate of his services 
 which is not uncommon to men who are endowed with great 
 capacity and afflicted with great conceit, it is those very eccen- 
 tricities which he himself has emphasized as the most important 
 features of his life-work and thrust the most conspicuously upon 
 the public notice. It is not surprising, therefore, that men are 
 inclined to forget the great genius of Comte the philosopher, in 
 remembering the colossal vanity of Comte the high-priest of 
 Humanity. And yet despite these drawbacks he is, as Dr. 
 Martineau remarks, " a large and potent factor in modern specu- 
 lation and thought. A few vigorous minds have been moulded 
 by him to an extent unknown perhaps even to themselves, and 
 many more owe no slight obligation to the pregnant hints scat- 
 
 116 
 
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