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 GAIN OR LOSS? 
 
GAIN OE LOSS? 
 
 AN APPRECIATION OF THE RESULTS OF 
 RECENT BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 BT THE REV. 
 
 BERNARD J. SNELL, 
 
 M.A., B.Sc. 
 
 Five Lectures delivered at Brixton Indejpendent 
 Church, London. 
 
 ilonlian = 
 JAMES CLAEKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET. 
 
 1895. 
 
First Edition, March, 1895. 
 Second Edition, April, 1895. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 It is an old winter custom at 
 Brixton Independent Church for 
 the minister to announce a series 
 of Sunday Evening Lectures for 
 the continuous treatment of one 
 theme. In response to many 
 suggestions, I undertook this 
 subject, I trust with a due sense 
 of responsibility ; and with some 
 hesitation, I have consented to 
 the publication of the Lectures. 
 They will be regarded as com- 
 monplace by many students of 
 Biblical Criticism, and as a 
 superfluous attempt to do poorly 
 what has been done by others 
 with conspicuous ability. But 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 it must be remembered, in ex- 
 tenuation of my offence, that 
 the pews of our churches are 
 filled with unceasing relays of 
 young men and women to whom 
 it is more difficult than ever to 
 hold the Faith of Christ in the 
 old forms. For their sake I 
 spoke, and for their sake this 
 little volume is printed, in the 
 hope that I may help some to 
 maintain an intelligent hold of 
 those Truths 
 
 *' Which, be they what they may, 
 
 Are yet the fountain-light of all our day. 
 
 Are yet a master-light of all our seeing ; 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the 
 being 
 Of the Eternal Silence ; truths that wake, 
 To perish never." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. — A Plea for Free Inquiry ... 1 
 
 n. — The Growth of the Bible. 
 
 The Old Testament 31 
 
 III. — The Growth of the Bible. 
 
 The New Testament 61 
 
 IV. — Misleading Theories 91 
 
 Y. — Positive Results of the Higher 
 
 Criticism 125 
 
I. 
 
 A PLEA FOB FKEE INQUIRY. 
 
A PLEA FOE FEEE INQUIEY. 
 
 " Te shall know the truth, and the truth 
 shal make you free." — St. John viii. 32. 
 
 The highest reverence for the 
 Eible is shown when we take it 
 simply as it stands, and try to 
 learn what it means. That is 
 true criticism. To say that it 
 is presumption to criticise the 
 Bible shows an utter misunder- 
 standing of the idea. For criti- 
 cism is not merely depreciatory 
 and privative : criticism is judg- 
 ment, appreciation. All study 
 is criticism. The Bible is not 
 the one book which we are for- 
 bidden to taste, or to jpresume to 
 understand. On the contrar}^, 
 if there is a book in the world 
 to be read with eyes open, it 
 is the Bible. The Bible has a 
 
A. PLEA rOE 
 
 meaning like every otlicr booli, 
 its meaning is to be discovered 
 in the same way. We shall not 
 love the Eible less, if we scru- 
 tinise it more. It is futile to 
 claim that these sacred records 
 will stand the same scrutiny as 
 secular records, unless the claim 
 can be guaranteed by the same 
 tests. Men have too long been 
 invited to accept the Bible for 
 ultra- rational reasons ; it is time 
 to base the appeal on rational 
 reasons. Talk about "not com- 
 ' ing to the Bible with our 
 reason " — it is the only way we 
 can come. 
 
 There is no let or hindrance 
 in the Eeligion of Christ to the 
 pursuit of truth, nor is there 
 any Christian virtue involved 
 in resolutely refusing to change 
 the opinion we have held. 
 Inquiry after truth cannot be 
 displeasing to the God of truth. 
 All inquiry is safe while we 
 keei^ our eyes towards the light 
 
FREE ITs'QUIRY. 
 
 and our feet in the path of duty. 
 It is not a matter of faith who 
 "wrote the Psalms or who edited 
 the Hexateuch ; it is a matter for 
 legitimate inquiry. So far from 
 ignorance being the mother of 
 devotion, ignorance andjpreju- 
 dice are among the greatest 
 obstacles to the coming of the 
 Kingdom. Those who value 
 the Eiblo will take pains to 
 understand it. 
 
 I am persuaded that the truly 
 orthodox view of the Eible is 
 that view which holds most of 
 the facts, and that the Bible 
 becomes ever more beautiful, 
 m.ore vitPvUy historical and sxdI- 
 ritually significant the more 
 we understand it. The higher 
 critics are not the latest ene- 
 mies of Eevelation — unbeliev- 
 ers over whom we should utter 
 jeremiads, and at w^hose names 
 we should start v/ith alarm. 
 They are scholars who for 
 devout love of the Scriptures 
 
A PLEA FOR 
 
 prosecute, after a scientific 
 nietliod, the study of all the 
 facts to hand. If their conclu- 
 sions are wrong, only better 
 scholarshij) than theirs can 
 prove them so. 
 
 If the true meaning of Scrip- 
 ture can be obtained, there is 
 some hope of general agreement 
 among men ; and there is a man- 
 ifest tendency on the part of 
 
 critics to find common ground. 
 It is sometimes said that the re- 
 ligion of all sensible men is the 
 same. If, then, all sensible men 
 can be induced to agree as to 
 the plain meaning of Scripture, 
 to that degree there is hope of a 
 diminution of those lamentable 
 sects and schisms which have 
 arisen largely from divergen- 
 cies of interpretation. The lines 
 of separation will vanish, when 
 once the spiritual becomes tran- 
 scendent, all in all. 
 
 "While some oscillate between 
 superstitious idolatry of the 
 
TKEE IXQUIFtY. 
 
 book and its total rejection, 
 there are many, unable to enter- 
 tain the traditional view of the 
 Bible, who want to save their 
 faith without slaying their in- 
 telligence. There is a smould- 
 ering scepticism, the extent 
 of which is realised by few. 
 Parents say, "We cannot read 
 the Bible to our children, for 
 we cannot answer their ques- 
 tions." And I am bound to do 
 my best to help you read the 
 Bible without equivocatl6.»ii, to 
 help you retain for yourselves 
 and your children the substance 
 of the faith, and keep a way 
 open for Eeligion in your hearts. 
 Without a sure foundation 
 Faith crumbles before the first 
 attack. 
 
 There is always a danger and 
 temptation to a preacher to be- 
 come petty in his treatment 
 of the Bible. The authorities, 
 whom he consults, have weighed 
 the exact force of each word of 
 
8 A PLEA FOR 
 
 the original by the finest mea- 
 surement, and many of them 
 under a sense that eternal des- 
 tiny hung on the result. And 
 grammatical construction has 
 been insisted on to a degree 
 which almost justifies the re- 
 mark of Matthew Arnold upon 
 the translators of the Eevised 
 Version, that they " seemed to 
 think that man was made for 
 the aorist and not the aorist for 
 man." But all, save the blind, can 
 see that there is danger in the 
 alienation between the best cur- 
 rent scholarship and Christian 
 activities, and that here lies the 
 source of much popular indiffer- 
 ence and scepticism. The story 
 of past civilisation warns us 
 that a bridge is needed between 
 the thoughts of the scholars 
 and j)opular faith, or the gulf 
 will widen till Eeligion itself is 
 swallowed up. You want to 
 teach your children the truth 
 and nothing but the truth, at 
 
FEEE IXQUIHY. 9 
 
 the same time that you teach 
 them Eeligion. It is a perilous 
 experiment to sejparate the two. 
 Suppose you are very anxious 
 that your boy should not spill 
 the ink, and you tell liim that 
 the inkstand stings. You cer- 
 tainly succeed in inducing him 
 to avoid it. Eut on the day on 
 which he discovers that it does 
 not sting, his confidence in you 
 is undermined. Teach your lad 
 that the Bible is verbatim et 
 literatim the very Word of God, 
 and for a time your method 
 succeeds ; but one day he will 
 find, as you have done, mistakes 
 and incongruities, and he will 
 turn to you with the just indig- 
 nation of a young man, and say, 
 "I wanted the truth, and you 
 taufT:ht me falsehood." Men and 
 brethren, the claim of Biblical 
 infallibility is a ghost with 
 v/hich you can coerce children ; 
 but children grow up to dis- 
 believe in ghosts. 
 
10 A PLEA FOR 
 
 In view of these facts I recog- 
 nise the duty of speaking as 
 plainly as I can and of answer- 
 ing any real questions, in order 
 that I may show our religion to 
 bo in harmony with the results 
 of historical criticism, as it is 
 in harmony with the verified 
 results of natural research, and 
 in order that I ma}^, if possible, 
 blend the best results of current 
 scholarship with the old rev- 
 erence of the faithful. Of course, 
 I am no specialist in the ex- 
 ploration of the documents 
 that lie so close to the faith 
 of Christendom. But I have 
 gathered information from all 
 quarters, principally from tho 
 English scholars, into the fruits 
 of whose labours we have en- 
 tered — Eobertson Smith, Driver, 
 Cheyne. I have consulted many 
 books in general currency, like 
 Miss Wedgwood's "Message of 
 Israel," and Dr. Horton's "Eev- 
 elation and the Bible," which. 
 
FREE INQUIRY. 11 
 
 try to hand on in popular 
 form for general consumption 
 the conclusions of the experts, 
 so that my indebtedness and 
 research have been somewhat 
 widespread. But I shall be 
 rewarded if I succeed in bring- 
 ing the words of Christ a little 
 nearer to your hearts, and in 
 making that great Son of Man 
 stand out in finer sublimity 
 as the Lord of Life. "These 
 things are written that ye may 
 believe, and that believing ye 
 may have life." 
 
 It is a shock to many intelli- 
 gent believeis to hear what are 
 the results of the ripest erudi- 
 tion applied to the problem of 
 the Bible : — that Hebrew litera- 
 ture did not begin before the 
 ninth century B.C. ; that Moses 
 did not write the Pentateuch, 
 nor David the Psalms ; that 
 the major part of the Judaic 
 Law was delivered, not amid 
 the thunders of Sinai, but 
 
12 A PLEA rOE 
 
 to a nameless innovator in 
 Babylon a millennium after ; 
 that the Books of the Law, so 
 far from being homogeneous, 
 are the composite product of 
 mpcuy documents under several 
 editors, and were introduced by 
 Ezra only 444 years B.C. ; that 
 the Psalms are five Temple 
 Hymn-books joined together, 
 most of them dating from the 
 time of the Maccabees; that 
 Solomon did not write Eccle- 
 siastes, nor The Song, nor The 
 Proverbs ; that Isaiah wrote 
 only half the book that bears his 
 name ; that Jeremiah wrote not 
 n\l of " Jeremiah," and none of 
 Lamentations ; that Daniel did 
 not write a word of " Daniel," 
 and Zechariah only a part of 
 "Zechariah" ; that only half of 
 the Old Testament was written 
 before the Exile; that Ezekiel 
 is earlier than the Levitical 
 legislation, and Deuteronomy 
 of the age of King Josiah ; that 
 
TREE i:^QUIEY. 13 
 
 in the New Testament many 
 books are moved from their 
 traditional anchora.2:e : that 
 Paul did not write the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, and that his 
 authorship of the pastoral 
 Ei)istles to Timothy and Titus 
 is questioned ; that the Second 
 Epistle of St. Peter is non- 
 Petrine ; that though the 
 fourth Gospel may be genuinely 
 derived from St. John, there 
 are interlinear additions by a 
 later hand, and that the present 
 form was not assumed till the 
 beginning of the second century. 
 Now, it is not surprising that 
 the bare list of such readjust- 
 ment of names and dates should 
 excite some uneasiness, nor that 
 some should go trembling for 
 the Ark of God. But let us 
 remember that to entertain fear 
 of truth is distinctly dishonour- 
 ing to the God of truth. Let us 
 nourish the steadfast confidence 
 that truth is stronsf and will 
 
14 A PLEA FOR 
 
 prevail. We are born for truth, 
 and truth must be better than 
 mistakes. " Things are what 
 they are, and the results will 
 be what they will be." Danger 
 arises only when we deny truth ; 
 the only safety for the Bible is in 
 telling the truth about it. No 
 fraud is more mischievous than 
 pious fraud ; the call to be 
 religious is not stronger than 
 the call to see of what sort our 
 religion is, and it may bo 
 necessary to exorcise a super- 
 stition to save a truth. jSIothing 
 can invalidate a proved fact ; 
 and criticism, by restoring these 
 books to their original form, has 
 really restored to them a higher 
 authority. Christianity no more 
 falls to pieces, because we learn 
 the truth about the Bible, than 
 the stars fall when you fold 
 up your telescope. 
 
 To say that the Bible must be 
 approached on the same footing 
 as other books by no means 
 
FREE INQUIRY. 15 
 
 implies that they are its equals ; 
 any more than to say that we 
 must come to a painting by 
 Eembrandt and a work of an 
 unknown artist in the same 
 mental posture, implies that 
 they are of equal artistic value. 
 A man who has just been helped 
 and made anew by the Eible is 
 apt to say, " That Eook which 
 made a new man of me does 
 not contain a single flaw; I 
 will test with it everything 
 beside ; I will ascertain from it 
 whether our astronomers tell 
 us the truth, whether adders 
 are deaf or conies chew the 
 cud ; what it says I will hold 
 to." Now, that is hardly final 
 as against the zoological facts 
 that conies do not chew the cud, 
 and that adders have auditory 
 nerves. Questions of fact, of 
 history and philology, cannot be 
 decided by the most devout of 
 presumptions in favour of the 
 plenary authority of Scripture. 
 
16 A PLEA FOR 
 
 Siicli an attitude cannot stand 
 against tho conclusions of 
 scholarship any more than 
 the plucky Matabcles could 
 stand against our magazine 
 rifles. 
 
 Did God Almighty dictate 
 one view of a king's life and 
 character to one writer, and 
 another to another ? Did He 
 furnish to Moses one summary 
 of the history of the captivity 
 of Israel in Egypt, and of the 
 Exodus, and of the giving of 
 the Law, and quite an incon- 
 sistent summary to St. Stephen ? 
 Did God lead the first three 
 Evangelists to describe the last 
 meal taken by Christ as the 
 true Jewish Passover, while 
 He led the fourth Evangelist 
 to describe the Last Supper 
 as eaten on the day before 
 the Jewish Passover ? Can 
 such an incredible view of In- 
 spiration be endorsed ? " Mys- 
 tery " ! It is mystification ; and 
 
FREE INQUIRY. 17 
 
 there is no more wholesome 
 discipline in trying to crowd 
 such incongruities into the 
 mind, than there is in trying 
 to believe that seven times six 
 is other than six times seven. 
 It is simply intellectual con- 
 fusion. 
 
 "Oh, bother the scholars!" 
 says the plain man of the pew, 
 "This is good enough for me." 
 And he forgets that apart from 
 the scholars he would have had 
 no English Bible at all, let alone 
 a revision of its text ; and he 
 forgets that the readjustment of 
 views which experts claim he 
 cannot, in the long run, with- 
 stand. What the specialists 
 think to-day he will think to- 
 morrow, without being able to 
 help himself. There is no court 
 of appeal from the consensus of 
 the scholars. "I am tired of 
 criticism," quoth he. Eut criti- 
 cism will force itself forward 
 till these questions are dis- 
 
18 A PLEA FOE 
 
 cussed in an equable spirit. 
 These questions will not be 
 settled until they are answered. 
 NothinG^ is gained by the ostrich 
 trick of burying the head in 
 darkness. Everything will be 
 lost if we put sacred things 
 under the guardianship of 
 superstition. Eetter scepticism 
 than make-believe. If the Bible 
 is to retain any authority among 
 intelligent Englishmen, we must 
 admit that the antique theories 
 and traditions which have been 
 so unquestioningly adopted from 
 Judaic Pharisees are imperfect ; 
 that errors have been made 
 about the Bible, and that there 
 are errors in the Bible in close 
 combination with highest truth. 
 Such admissions ought never to 
 have troubled any one. They 
 have been, to the disgrace of 
 the puliDit, a trouble to thou- 
 sands. It is better that men 
 should learn the truth from a 
 believer rather than from an 
 
FREE INQUIRY. 19 
 
 unbeliever, as they will learn 
 it. It is not fair to your chil- 
 dren that you should, for the 
 sake of their faith, keep them 
 in the dark about truths which 
 in after years they are bound 
 to hear, perhaps from men 
 who have no care for their 
 faith. 
 
 The Bible is a book of God, 
 but it is not framed after an 
 ideal standard of perfection. 
 That is the great mistake that 
 has been made. The Pope, in a 
 recent encyclical, states that In- 
 spiration is essentially incom- 
 patible with error, that it ex- 
 cludes and rejects error. It is 
 sufficient to say that no scholar 
 holds that. 
 
 The universe is the work 
 of God, and the students of 
 science once began with their 
 a priori theories about that. 
 " The earth," said they, " must 
 be a flat surface ; it must be the 
 centre of the universe." And 
 
20 A PLEA FOR 
 
 they "framed eccentrics and epi- 
 cycles and a wonderful engine 
 of orbs," and twisted the facts 
 to correspond. So long as they 
 held by that fatuous course, the 
 gates of knowledge were shut 
 against them. God did not 
 make a perfect world such as 
 they had supposed. His thoughts 
 are not as our thoughts. 
 
 In the same way men said, 
 " God gave us the Bible, God is 
 all-wise, therefore the Bible 
 can hold no mistakes ; it must 
 be free from all discrepancies, 
 and its conclusions must agree 
 with the verified discoveries of 
 science." But after a time men 
 learned that it is not so ; that 
 science says one thing, the Bible 
 another. The man who binds 
 up the cause of Christianity 
 with the literal accuracy of the 
 Bible is no friend of Chris- 
 tianity, for with the rejection 
 of that theory too often comes 
 the rejection of the Bible itself, 
 
FREE INQUIRY. 21 
 
 and faith is shattered. We 
 have no more reason to expect 
 Aristotelian logic from the Pro- 
 phets than Attic Greek from the 
 Evangelists ; but men have 
 tried to explain, or explain 
 away, discrepancies and har- 
 monise impossibilities until 
 Eiblical criticism has become a 
 by- word for disingenuousness. 
 Men have applied to the 
 Eible methods of reconciliation, 
 which they would be ashamed 
 to apply to any other book. 
 They will explain away the dis- 
 parities in Christ's genealogies, 
 although from David to Christ 
 St. Matthew makes twenty- 
 eight generations, and St. Luke 
 thirty- eight, with only two 
 names common to the two 
 lists. 
 
 There is no sign of that 
 mechanical perfectness which 
 some presuppose. For instance, 
 if there is one thing which 
 we should have imagined as 
 
22 A PLEA FOR 
 
 accurately reported, it is the 
 inscription on Christ's cross. 
 Now, we have four accounts 
 of the Crucifixion, and four 
 inscriptions are repeated : St. 
 Matthew gives " This is Jesus, 
 the King of the Jews " ; St. 
 Mark gives "The King of the 
 Jews " ; St. Luke gives " This is 
 the King of the Jews " ; and St. 
 John gives " Jesus of Nazareth, 
 the King of the Jews." Judge 
 that impartially, and you have 
 fair reliable witness, but a sum- 
 mary end to the notion of in- 
 fallible witness. There is over- 
 whelming evidence for the 
 authenticity of the New Testa- 
 ment, but tiie absence of minute 
 accuracy is in itself a hint. It 
 is best to acknowledge such 
 differences as occur quite 
 naturally. Nay, it is the sine 
 qud non of all intellectual hon- 
 esty in our faith towards the 
 Bible. Let us take the facts ; let 
 the theory take care of itself. 
 
FEEE INQUIEY. 23 
 
 When we first realise the 
 natural way in which the 
 writers of the Bible collected 
 their facts and gave their im- 
 pressions, we are surprised at 
 the entire absence of claim to 
 supernatural guidance to Divine 
 accuracy. According to the 
 Jewish dictum, " The law speaks 
 with the tongue of the children 
 of men." One of the Evano-elists 
 does not profess to be an original 
 narrator, but simply "to set 
 forth in order what witnesses 
 had declared," — he is an editor 
 who tells us that he has taken 
 due pains to be accurate. 
 Another Evangelist, " who saw, 
 bare record, and his record is 
 true, and he knoweth that he 
 saith true." All the writers have 
 their own characteristics and 
 their favourite forms of expres- 
 sion. St. Paul tells the Corin- 
 thians, "I think that I have the 
 Spirit of God," " I have no com- 
 mandment, but I give my judg- 
 
24 A PLEA FOR 
 
 ment." What could be more 
 cautious and discriminating ? 
 How lie hesitates in difficult 
 cases ! Listen how he corrects 
 himself: "I thank God I bap- 
 tized none of you save Crispus 
 and Gains. Yes, beside that I 
 baptized also the household of 
 Stephanus. Beside, I know 
 not whether I baptized any 
 other." 
 
 You see that the Bible is not 
 at all what you would have 
 expected a revelation to be, — 
 sixty-six books by different 
 men, variously endowed. It 
 does not consist of golden say- 
 ings and rules of life, nor does it 
 give ex]planations of the philo- 
 sophical and social problems of 
 the world. It contains history, 
 poetry, drama, memoirs, letters. 
 Great principles are wrapped 
 up in little stories. It tells us 
 how the Israelites tolerated 
 slavery and polygamy ; it tells 
 of lust and treachery and crime, 
 
FEEE INQUIRY. 25 
 
 for it holds no brief for its own 
 licroes. It is a literature. You 
 cannot pass judgment on a 
 literature in one sentence. And 
 all sorts of moral difficulties 
 arise because the Bible is so 
 different from what we think 
 it ought to be. It is con- 
 stantly revising and restating 
 itself, because it contains the 
 progress and upward growth 
 of a people. Let the book 
 stand ; it does not need our 
 apologies. 
 
 "What will be the upshot of 
 the present criticism ? Is there 
 no peril in reconstruction ? 
 Will the veracity of the Bible 
 be impugned or its validity 
 undermined ? These are the 
 anxious questions of earnest 
 hearts. Well, reconstruction 
 imperils something ; but it 
 must go on nevertheless. What 
 is destroyed is for the most part 
 mere traditional opinion about 
 the Bible — the wood, hay, and 
 
26 A PLEA FOR 
 
 stubble which had been mixed 
 with what is abiding and 
 indestructible. Nothing will 
 be destroyed, unless we choose 
 to cherish an untenable theory 
 of Inspiration. 
 
 "But is it safe?" asks the 
 tremulous soul. Oh, ye of little 
 faith ! The universe is so con- 
 structed by the All-wise God 
 that nothing but truth is safe. 
 There is no safety in pusilla- 
 nimity. The immediate utility 
 of any truth should not be the 
 main concern of any honest 
 man. Do your duty, and trust 
 to God for the result. Safe ! A 
 ship's true safety is not in lying 
 water-logged in harbour, but in 
 voyaging to its far-olf port. 
 Truth is safe anywhere while 
 God rules. "Give her but 
 room." 
 
 Depend upon it, we may trust 
 the Bible to do its own work 
 and make its due impression. 
 We need not hide the truth 
 
FREE INQUIRY. 27 
 
 about the Bible in order to 
 get it properly vakied. What 
 is Divine in it will speak 
 to men. Try to treat the 
 volume as a flawless chrono- 
 logical or scientific record, 
 and you will be disappointed. 
 Treat it as a means of re- 
 ligious edification, and you 
 cannot fail. 
 
 The dominant quality of the 
 Bible is Inspiration; but it is 
 not all inspiring, any more 
 than all the gold region is 
 golden. Or, to use a better 
 simile, the vitalising oxygen is 
 mingled with the nitrogen, 
 and for that very reason is 
 the more serviceable to human 
 life. 
 
 The crawling centuries pass, 
 and this book stands forth 
 amid the " literature of power," 
 the classic of the soul ; it comes 
 out of a profounder depth of 
 thought than any other book. 
 Oh, the sovereignty of the 
 
28 A PLEA FOR 
 
 Bible does not depend on the 
 things which critics discuss. 
 ''There is more in the Bible 
 that finds me," said Coleridge, 
 "than in all other books put 
 together." It impresses us with 
 the idea of God as no other 
 book does. This age has seen 
 no more mordant scoffer than 
 Heine ; but when he lay on the 
 '' mattress grave," from which he 
 was not to rise again, it was (as 
 he confesses) the reading of the 
 Bible which brought him back 
 to faith and God, — " He that has 
 lost his God can find Him again 
 in this book, and towards him 
 who has never known Him it 
 wafts the breath of the Divine 
 Word." "Let mental culture 
 go on advancing," said Goethe, 
 "let the natural sciences go on 
 gaining in breadth and depth, 
 and the human mind expand 
 as it may, it will never go 
 beyond the elevation and moral 
 culture of Christianity as it 
 
FREE INQUIRY. 29 
 
 glistens and shines forth in the 
 Gospel." 
 
 We search the world for ti'uth ; we cull 
 The good, the pure, the beautiful. 
 From graven stone and written scroll. 
 From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 
 And, weary seekers of the best. 
 We come back laden from the quest, 
 To find that all the sages said 
 Is in the book oui' mothers read. 
 
II. 
 
 THE GROWTH OF THE 
 BIBLE. 
 
 The Olb Testament. 
 
THE GEOWTH OF THE 
 BIBLE. 
 
 The Old Testament. 
 
 "At sundry times and in divers manners.'* 
 
 Heb. i. 1. 
 
 Mussulmans regard the Koran 
 as a book made in heaven and 
 let down to earth. It is only 
 very ignorant Christians who 
 think the same of the Bible. 
 The very word Scriptures {scrip- 
 turce) indicates a composite 
 origin ; the plural word Bihlia 
 (the books) was commonly used 
 until the thirteenth century. 
 Among other sacred books of 
 the peoples, the Bible stands 
 like a coralline structure ; it is 
 the literature of a race whose 
 genius was for religion, as 
 
34 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 truly as the genius of Greece 
 was for art, and the genius 
 of Eonie for civil organisation. 
 It is a selected national library, 
 in which patriotism and piety 
 are one -a sacred anthology of 
 the Hebrews, miscellaneous in 
 character and form, but care- 
 fully chosen to tell the story 
 of a people's gradual approach 
 to a higher ethic and a nobler 
 thought of God, from barbaric 
 beginnings with foul deities 
 and human sacrifices, until it 
 culminates in the teaching of 
 a Father in Heaven Who from 
 His children requires only the 
 self-sacrifice of loving obedience 
 to His WiU. 
 
 Enquiring into the growth of 
 the Bible, it is necessary to 
 warn you against supj)osing 
 that the titles of chapters, or 
 the accompanying dates, or the 
 headings of pages have any 
 authority. They are the remains 
 of a system of interpretation 
 
THE BIBLE. 35 
 
 adopted by modern theologians, 
 who had arrived at certain dog- 
 matic conclusions, and inge- 
 niously subjected the Bible to 
 the requirements of their theo- 
 logic system by insinuating 
 these head-lines and guides ; 
 they are not integral with the 
 originals and are best disre- 
 garded, since they give the im- 
 pression of an intellectual unity 
 which does not at all exist. 
 
 Let me caution you against 
 possible disappointment because 
 of our inability to reach definite 
 and certain conclusions to many 
 of the questions that arise. The 
 argument is complex, and will 
 declare itself only to those who 
 take pains. The masters of 
 criticism differ among them- 
 selves. "Dead certainties" 
 belong to an early stage of 
 knowledge and development, 
 and as we grow older we begin 
 to suspect that all is not so sure 
 as we were once apt to believe. 
 
35 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 " On all great subjects there is 
 always sometliing more to be 
 said." " Orthodoxy is but the 
 premature conceit of certainty." 
 The novice asks, "If John did 
 not write 'John,' who did? If 
 Moses did not write the Penta- 
 teuch, who did ? " And in the 
 absence of all definite reply, he 
 assumes airs of triumph. I 
 have stood beside Adam's grave 
 and heard the old question, 
 " Whose grave is it, if it be not 
 Adam's ? " That is hardly a 
 conclusive demonstration that 
 the father of our race lies there. 
 And in many questions of 
 Biblical research we must 
 be willing to wait awhile in 
 " adult suspension of judgment," 
 prepared sometimes, like the 
 Patriarch, to go out not knowing 
 whither. Eecall those memor- 
 able words of Cromwell, " I 
 beseech you, by the mercies of 
 God, remember, it is possible 
 you may be mistaken." 
 
THE BIBLE. 37 
 
 Trying my best to keep 
 abreast of the experts, I can 
 hope only imperfectly to set 
 forth their conclusions ; indeed, 
 the difficulty of the under- 
 taking increases enormously as 
 I make the attempt. 
 
 The most casual student of 
 the early books of the Bible 
 must have noticed certain pecu- 
 liarities in the use of different 
 names for the Divine Being. 
 The first chapter of Genesis 
 always speaks of " God " 
 (Elohim). From the fourth 
 verse of the second chapter to 
 the end of the fourth chapter, 
 we have always the " Lord 
 God." From the fifth chapter to 
 the ninth verse of the sixth 
 chapter, we have always the 
 " Lord " (Jahweh or Jehovah). 
 Now this is not accidental ; 
 and, following the hint given 
 by those facts, a wonderful 
 discovery has been made, for 
 the changing use of the names 
 
38 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 is accompaiiied by a marked 
 difference of style in the narra- 
 tion. "We are all familiar with 
 the reduplication of the stories 
 in Genesis, which are particu- 
 larly perplexing since they are 
 not always susceptible of recon- 
 ciliation. There are two stories 
 of the Creation with striking 
 differences in style and detail ; 
 two documents are fused to- 
 gether and lie side by side with- 
 out an attempt at harmoni- 
 sation, in such a manner that 
 they could not have been writ- 
 ten currente calamo by the same 
 author. There are two stories 
 of the Flood : in the former, two 
 of every creature entering the 
 Ark ; in the latter, seven pairs 
 of clean animals, two of un- 
 clean ; and the time of the sub- 
 sidence of the waters is differ- 
 ent. Two stories are artlessly 
 soldered together, but each is 
 homogeneous and consistent in 
 itself. Two ingenuous versions 
 
THE BIBLE. 39 
 
 of the same story continually 
 occur. Nothing is gained by 
 straining them into reconcilia- 
 tion. There are two inconsis- 
 tent accounts of the origin of 
 '' Beersheba," of "Israel," of 
 "Eethel." There are two in- 
 congruous lists of the three 
 wives of Esau. There are two 
 stories of Abraham's wife being 
 forcibly attached to a royal 
 harem, at so late an age that 
 some commentators suggest a 
 " preternatural youth." The 
 stories can, with a little care, 
 be dissociated. There are two 
 versions of the Decalogue in 
 the twentieth and thirty-fourth 
 chapters of Exodus respectively. 
 And it is well known that the 
 reason for the Fourth Com- 
 mandment in one differs con- 
 siderably from the reason as- 
 signed in the other. Indeed, 
 the twentieth chapter is ethi- 
 cally in advance of the thirty- 
 fourth chapter. How surprised 
 
40 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 you would be if, in reading 
 tJie Ten Commandments, I 
 were to add, "Thou shalt not 
 offer the blood of my sacrifice 
 with leaven," " The firstling of 
 an ass thou shalt redeem with 
 a lamb, and, if thou redeem 
 him not, then shalt thou break 
 his neck." (Exod. xxxiv.) Yet 
 these words were written on the 
 tables. Some of the laws are 
 reiterated, sometimes in the 
 same, sometimes in different 
 language in the Book of ]^ um- 
 bers. The period of the service 
 of the Levites is fixed from 
 thirty to fifty years of age, also 
 from twenty- five to fifty years 
 of age, and it was subsequently 
 modified by Ezra to twenty to 
 fifty years of age. In the same 
 book, the rebellion of Korah, 
 Dathan, and Abiram is a con- 
 fusing amalgam of two distinct 
 incidents. Samuel regarded the 
 people's wish for a king as a sin 
 against God ; yet in Deutero- 
 
THE BIBLE. 41 
 
 noiny there are provisions for a 
 king. 
 
 Now, in view of these anoma- 
 lies, it may be well for me to 
 give the general theory of the 
 higher critics. The first six 
 books of the Bible — the Hexa- 
 teuch (Joshua being a close 
 continuation of the first five 
 books) — are anonymous, for 
 there is no ground for the tradi- 
 tional authorship by Moses of 
 books which estimate his cha- 
 racter (" Yery meek, above all 
 the men who were upon the 
 face of the earth," Numbers xii. 
 3), and record his death ("No 
 man knoweth of his sepulchre 
 unto this day^' Deut. xxxiv. 6), 
 and were evidently written by a 
 man who lived on the West of 
 Jordan (Deut. i. 1 and iv. 46), 
 whither Moses never penetrated. 
 Think, also, of the meaning of 
 such verses as Gen. xxxvi. 31, 
 " Before there reigned any king 
 over the children of Israel " ; 
 
42 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 Numbers xv. 32, " A\Tiile tho 
 cliildren of Israel were in the 
 wilderness " ; and Gen. xii. 6, 
 "The Canaanite was then in 
 the land." These books have 
 been disentangled or disin- 
 tegrated into various docu- 
 ments as follows: — First, the 
 Book of the Covenants (Exodus 
 xxi. to xxiii. 19), the oldest 
 part of the Bible, due to Moses, 
 who was the real architect of 
 Israel, binding the people to 
 Jehovah. AVe know that the 
 " Law of Moses " was originally 
 so brief and simple that it could 
 be written on the stones of an 
 unhewn altar. And it is natural 
 to suppose that whatever the 
 great lawgiver himself act- 
 ually wrote would be sacredly 
 preserved. 
 
 Then come the Elohistio 
 and Jehovistic history books, 
 originating probably in the 
 reign of David or Solomon, 
 with a slightly later document 
 
THE EIDLE. 43 
 
 fusing these tTro. They are the 
 story-book of the Pentateuch, 
 with which we were early 
 familiarised. 
 
 Xext comes Deuteronomy, a 
 book by itself. Seven hun- 
 dred vears after ^Moses, vou 
 will remember how, under King 
 Josiah, a Book of the Law was 
 found in the temple. It had 
 been so long lost that its pro- 
 visions were in oblivion, ignored 
 and violated, and the very 
 existence of such a law-book 
 had passed away from memory. 
 It came as an absolute novelty 
 upon the peo^Dle — like a thun- 
 derbolt awakening consterna- 
 tion ; it exercised in J udaism 
 an influence as important as 
 Luther's discovery of the Bible 
 in the monastery exercised in 
 Protestantism. It seems impos- 
 sible to conceive that so preci- 
 ous and sacred a document, the 
 property of the nation, could 
 have been lost. Yet the very 
 
44 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 tradition of its existence was 
 dead, whicli is as inconceivable 
 as that besieged citizens should 
 forget a spring of water. In 
 sober fact, the book was written 
 then, in the interests of ethical 
 religion. In their eagerness to 
 enforce a truth the writers were 
 led to conceal a fact ; they put 
 it, as all the Law, under the 
 authority of Moses, because he 
 gave the initial impulse to 
 Israel's national and religious 
 life, and because they felt that 
 they were developing his prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 Next we have the Priestly 
 Code, which runs from Genesis 
 to Joshua, and contains nearly 
 all the sacerdotal regulations of 
 Exodus, Numbers, and Leviti- 
 cus, with their historical frame- 
 work. This originated in the 
 captivity, or at least some 
 little time before it was read 
 by Ezra and accejoted by the 
 people. We have all found it 
 
THE BIBLE. 45 
 
 difficult to understand how the 
 prophets could have spoken as 
 they did, if they had known of 
 this priestly code. For instance, 
 Jeremiah (vii. 22) rej)resents 
 God as saying, "Fori spake tio^ 
 to your fathers nor gave them 
 commandment in the day when 
 I brought them out of Egypt 
 concerning burnt- offerings and 
 sacrifices." And if Isaiah had 
 known of these sacrificial ordin- 
 ances, how could he have asked, 
 " When ye come to see my face, 
 who hath required this at your 
 hand to tread my courts " ? 
 
 Finally, we have the editing 
 of the Hexateuch after the 
 return from the exile ; and for 
 this we are indebted to the 
 Scribes, to whom we also owe 
 the books of Chronicles, Ezra, 
 Nehemiah, and some of the 
 Psalms. 
 
 Now, on what main grounds 
 is it supposed that some of the 
 early portions of the Bible had 
 
46 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 SO late an origin ? The question 
 of Hebrew style cannot be jDro- 
 fitably discussed ; but we can 
 be sure that it is as impossible 
 for a Hebraist to fail to dis- 
 criroinate between early and 
 late Hebrew, as it is for us to 
 confuse the English of Chaucer 
 with that of Tennyson. Here, 
 however, is one salient fact 
 which has contributed to these 
 striking conclusions: the Law 
 forbade sacrifice save at a cen- 
 tral sanctuary, yet all the early 
 saints and heroes sacrificed 
 freely — Samuel oif ering on high 
 places, Saul building altars, 
 David and Solomon permit- 
 ting various local celebrations, 
 Elijah declaring that the de- 
 struction of the altars of 
 Jehovah was a breach of the 
 Covenant. Yet this was all 
 wrong according to Deuter- 
 onomy. The primitive notion 
 of sacrifice in all the ancient 
 world had been a tribal feast 
 
THE BIBLE. 47 
 
 ^t wliicli the Deity was sup- 
 posed to partake. Deuteronomy 
 changed all that into a j)riestly 
 ceremonial, needing for the 
 inajority a pilgrimage to Jeru- 
 salem. In the earlier Book of 
 the Covenants, every place 
 Vv^here God records His name is 
 to be a sanctuary ; the essen- 
 tial feature of Deuteronomy is 
 that there is to be only one 
 altar. After the issue of that 
 book, in other words, after the 
 revolution initiated by Josiah, 
 local places of worship were 
 suppressed. The later prophets 
 were all influenced by that 
 idea, but there is no trace of it 
 in the earlier prophets. Ezekiel, 
 the prophet-priest, who wrote 
 in Babylon, shows the process 
 of transformation out of which 
 issued the complex hierarchical 
 system. There is a free sketch 
 of it in the last nine chapters of 
 his book, where, in imagination, 
 he restores the Temple services. 
 
48 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 This is the task that Ezra actu- 
 ally undertook. It must have 
 occurred to you that all the 
 elaborate hierarchy, with its 
 intricate furniture of ritual, 
 Tvas a late product after many 
 generations ; that it was an 
 impossible creation of a nomad 
 desert tribe. And, in fact, only 
 late did Jerusalem become the 
 one holy place of the land ; 
 only late came the festivals 
 which imply a settled agricul- 
 tural life ; only late did the 
 Levitical priesthood become the 
 one sacred order conducting 
 the worship of Jehovah without 
 idolatrous symbolism. 
 
 By the captivity ' Israel was 
 brought into contact with one 
 of the most advanced civilisa- 
 tions of the world, and through 
 it lost its provincialism and 
 race insularity. In the captivity 
 Israel was thrown in upon its 
 inner life, and its religion found 
 its highest reach of thought. 
 
THE BIBLE. 49 
 
 That was the moment of the 
 nation's second birth ; " cross 
 fertilisation" of ideas took 
 place, and religion threw off 
 its lingering polytheism. Then 
 came leisure for Israel to look 
 back, and retrospection took 
 form in the new histories of 
 their past. Judges, Samuel, and 
 Kings assumed their present 
 shape. Then came leisure to 
 look within, and new Psalms 
 were written to which ad- 
 versity lent occasional fierce- 
 ness, but more frequently a 
 long-drawn sigh to God for 
 relief, or cry of confession and 
 repentance. Then came leisure 
 to look forward, and the nation- 
 al ideal was changed. Instead 
 of a dream of a puissant King, 
 there arose a vision of the righ- 
 teous, suffering servant of God, 
 and select souls of the nation 
 caught the idea that they were 
 being trained in the school of 
 sorro Wj and charged to lead the 
 
 4 
 
50 THE GROWTH OP 
 
 world into a knowledge of their 
 Eternal Eigliteous God. In 
 the second part of Isaiah we 
 have the Toice of the captivity 
 with all its pathos and passions. 
 The race which had been so 
 unfaithful to its God returned 
 from the Babylonian exile, 
 intent in devotion and fanati- 
 cal in its excess of zeal for Him. 
 Judaism was born by the 
 Eux3hrates as Mosaism had been 
 born bv the Nile, so it is natural 
 that there should be no hint in 
 the latter constitution, as repre- 
 sented in Leviticus, of the 
 organisation of national life. 
 It is natural that there should 
 be no civil code, so that while 
 whole pages are devoted to cos- 
 tumes and rubrics, we hear 
 nothing of the government of 
 a nation. The idea of a nation 
 is, in fact, supplanted by the 
 idea of a church; the people 
 became a congregation. 
 Now, all this may be called 
 
THE BIBLE. 51 
 
 destructive criticism, but it is 
 only as a pile of bricks is 
 destroyed when the house is 
 built ; instead of unity which 
 was formal and mechanical, 
 the whole becomes vital and 
 organic. The message becomes 
 actualised, and its historic 
 growth is explained ; the fas- 
 cination of the Bible is deep- 
 ened, while its ethical grandeur 
 is unscathed. 
 
 There is an objection which 
 will occur to some minds, and I 
 wish to face it frankly. If our 
 historical sources are so far 
 removed from the events, and 
 not due to contemporaries, how 
 can their testimony be regarded 
 as authoritative ? That is a 
 difficulty ; but, on the other side, 
 it is also a relief. There are 
 many narratives which are im- 
 probable, not to say impossible, 
 of belief. To take one example 
 out of many : In Numbers 
 xxxi. we read that twelve thou- 
 
52 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 sand Hebrews slew all the 
 men and married women of 
 Midian, captured thirty-two 
 thousand virgins, and drove off 
 eight hundred thousand head 
 of cattle, all with the Divine 
 sanction. Now, as Dr. Horton 
 says, " There is a type of ortho- 
 doxy which deems the Chris- 
 tian faith and hope bound up in 
 the accuracy of that apjDalling 
 act of barbarity. If this was not 
 commanded by God, there is no 
 word of God spoken to men." 
 Nothing is so detrimental to 
 Christianity as to represent 
 such things as essential. AVe 
 must long, many of us, for 
 some way of disbelieving that 
 and kindred incidents without 
 throwing aside the truth of the 
 book that contains them, and it is 
 a real relief to find that the 
 name of God may be dissociated 
 from these atrocities. How can 
 we believe that our Heavenly 
 Father ordained (Exod. xxi. 20, 
 
THE BIBLE. 53 
 
 21) that "if a man smito his 
 servant, or his maid, with a rod, 
 and he die under his hand, he 
 shall surely be punished. Not- 
 withstanding, if he continue a 
 day or two, he shall not be 
 punished, for he is his monev " ? 
 Or (Deut. xiv. 21), "Ye shall 
 not eat of anything that dieth 
 of itself ; thou shalt give it to 
 the stranger that is in thy 
 gates, that he may eat it, or 
 thou may est sell it to an alien" ? 
 The characteristic difficulties 
 experienced by most of our 
 fellow- citizens are not specula- 
 tive and philosophic, but prac- 
 tical and historic difficulties 
 like these. They have keen 
 eyes for the inconsistencies of 
 the Old Testament, and will 
 gladly accept any reasonable 
 method of getting quit of them. 
 We have in the Bible the long 
 history of a national religious 
 evolution from the time when 
 they deified stones, trees, and 
 
54 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 living principles, to the time 
 "when Jehovah was chosen as 
 the tribal Deity and His wor- 
 ship connected with morality, 
 and so on to Monotheism, 
 properly so called. For, re- 
 member, the Hebrews were not 
 pure Monotheists all the while, 
 but rather, to use the expression 
 of Max Miiller, " Henotheists," 
 that is, worshippers of one God 
 while acknowledging many. 
 The Decalogue is not strictly 
 monotheistic, "Thou shalt have 
 no other gods before Me." 
 Jehovah is the "Lord of Lords," 
 "Who is like unto Thee, Jeho- 
 vah, among the gods ? " In 
 Deut. iv. 19, Jehovah is repre- 
 sented as allotting various 
 nations to various deities, but 
 retaining Israel for Himself ; 
 and it is continually assumed 
 that other nations have their 
 gods, and that banishment 
 from Canaan is equivalent 
 to banishment from Jehovah. 
 
THE BIBLE. 55 
 
 You cannot have failed to 
 have been struck with the con- 
 tinual intrusion of Baal and 
 the motley divinities of other 
 lands, and the frequent seduc- 
 tion of Israel into the vile 
 licence of their neighbours. 
 Each house had its teraphim or 
 domestic divinities, and even 
 the symbolism of the Temple 
 was idolatrous (the twelve oxen 
 holding the laver, the horns of 
 the altar, the cherubs or cloud 
 dragons). Indeed, even after 
 Elijah signally proclaimed the 
 sole supremacy of Jehovah, the 
 worship of many gods was 
 widely retained. Note how in 
 the twenty- third chapter of the 
 second Book of Kings, Josiah 
 " brought forth out of the 
 Temple of the Lord all the 
 vessels that were made for Baal 
 and for Asherah and for the 
 hosts of heaven . . . put 
 down the idolatrous priests 
 whom the kings of Judah had 
 
56 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 ordained to burn incense in the 
 high places in the cities of Judah 
 and in the places round about 
 Jerusalem, them also who 
 burned incense unto Baal, to 
 the sun, and to the moon, and 
 to the planets, and to all the 
 hosts of heaven, and he brought 
 out the Asherah from the House 
 of the Lord and turned it into 
 the brook Kidron and stamped 
 it small to powder . . . and 
 he brake down the houses of 
 the Sodomites, that were in the 
 House of the Lord, where the 
 women wove hangings for the 
 Asherah . . . and he defiled 
 Topheth, which is in the valley 
 of the children of Hinnom, that 
 no man might make his son or 
 his daughter to pass through 
 the fire to Molech. And he took 
 away the horses that the kings 
 of Judah had given to the sun, 
 at the entering in of the House 
 of the Lord." And so on through- 
 out the chapter. What the popu- 
 
THE BIBLE. 57 
 
 lar religion of Israel continued 
 to be long after this may be 
 inferred from the scornful 
 invective of Jeremiah : "Accord- 
 ing to the number of thy cities 
 are thy gods. Judah." The 
 prophetic Eeligion was far 
 above the level of the masses, 
 and Israel only gradually ar- 
 rived at the conviction that the 
 sacrifice of righteousness was 
 the only oblation God required. 
 Vestiges of savagery are im- 
 bedded in the older books, like 
 "dragons of the slime" in the 
 rocks beneath our feet. But 
 the spiritual genius of Israel 
 sloughed them off and left them 
 behind. It is a great gain to 
 conceive of the Old Testament 
 as representing an evolution 
 from lower to higher things, 
 from the savagery of Deborah's 
 song to the deep inwardness of 
 the penitential Psalms, from a 
 brutal and idolatrous poly- 
 theism towards that thought of 
 
58 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 God which illumined the mind 
 of Christ. 
 
 Finally, in the gap between 
 the two Testaments, there was 
 great activity. They were not 
 years of decadence and formal- 
 ism, but most fruitful in reli- 
 gious growth ; no prophet arose, 
 but the sacred books were read 
 in every synagogue and learnt 
 in every home. Many sects 
 sprang into being ; in every 
 village a meeting-house (syna- 
 gogue) was built, opening its 
 doors on Sabbath and market 
 days. Quietly the life deepened 
 and the nation prepared for its 
 final development of Eeligion. 
 
 Then in the fulness of time 
 came the Man. The Law was 
 the tutor to lead the nation into 
 the school of Christ, and when 
 Israel's work was done, the 
 faithful heart could exclaim, 
 "Now lettest Thou Thy servant 
 depart, Lord, according to 
 Thy word, in peace ; for mine 
 
THE BIBLE. 59 
 
 eyes have seen Thy salvation, 
 which Thou hast prepared 
 before the face of all peoples ; 
 a light for revelation to the 
 Gentiles, and the glory of Thy 
 people Israel." 
 
III. 
 
 THE GEOWTH OF THE 
 BIBLE. 
 
 The New Testament. 
 
THE GEOWTH OF THE 
 BIBLE. 
 
 The New Testament. 
 
 "Every one therefore which heareth 
 these words of mine, and doeth them, shall; 
 be likened unto a wise man, which built 
 his house upon the rock: and the rain 
 descended, and the floods came, and the 
 winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and 
 it fell not: for it was founded upon the 
 rock." — St. Matthew vii. 24, 25. 
 
 Inteeest is more readily 
 roused in the New Testament 
 than in the Old, for it is the 
 historic source of our faith, the 
 well-spring of all that is best 
 in Christendom. These short 
 records have done more to re- 
 generate mankind than all the 
 writings of philosophers and 
 moralists ; they made the death 
 
64 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 of Christ into the birth of 
 Christendom. 
 
 It is impossible for me now 
 to discuss the formation of the 
 Canon — that were too long a 
 story : how in the early cen- 
 turies there grew up around 
 the young Eeligion an enor- 
 mous mass of Christian litera- 
 ture, much of it apocalyi)tic, 
 more of it spurious, most of it 
 ■valueless ; how about a hun- 
 dred years after Christ men 
 began to make different selec- 
 tions of this literature according 
 to their predilections ; how in 
 an age of credulity, in which 
 the science of criticism did not 
 so much as exist, some books 
 oscillated long between accept- 
 ance and rejection ; how, largely 
 under the influence of Augus- 
 tine, at the end of the fourth 
 century, a final selection was 
 made and the Canon closed, 
 the guiding principle of choice 
 being pious feeling and apos- 
 
THE BIBLE. 65 
 
 tolic sanction. But the mere 
 sketch of the story is sufficient 
 to assure us that the New Tes- 
 tament in its integrity is not a 
 miraculous whole. 
 
 There are many hundreds of 
 versions of the text ; the oldest 
 manuscripts (Sinaitic and Vati- 
 can) date from the fourth cen- 
 tury, while the oldest Hebrew 
 manuscripts of the Old Testa- 
 ment are not older than the 
 tenth century, though there are 
 earlier copies of the Greek 
 Septuagint Version (200 B.C.). 
 It is a noteworthy fact that the 
 older the manuscripts are, the 
 more they vary among them- 
 selves, for the more free and 
 unconstrained their writers 
 were about modifying the re- 
 cord. The order of the books in 
 our New Testament is due, not 
 to chronological sequence, but 
 broadly to their subject-matter, 
 as was the case with the arrange- 
 ment of the Old Testament. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 There is no reason to suj)pose 
 that the original writers were 
 the amanuenses of God, super- 
 naturally guarded from inac- 
 curacy. The glory of their 
 Master has irradiated them ; but, 
 in truth, they were very simple 
 men unused to literary labour. 
 And it is good for the world 
 that it was so, for Christ needed 
 no record save the simplest. 
 Literary genius on the part of 
 His biographers would have 
 obscured more than it revealed. 
 The Evangelists were men who 
 could not have invented the 
 great words and deeds which 
 they reported ; and all the in- 
 firmities of their memory and 
 imperfections of their style 
 could not mar the picture which 
 they drew of the " sinless years 
 that breathed the Syrian blue.'* 
 
 Jesus Himself wrote nothing; 
 He did not write the truth, He 
 was the Truth. He gave His 
 disciples no command to pub- 
 
THE BIBLE. 67 
 
 lisli, but to preach. His epistles 
 were to be the regenerate lives 
 of His apostles. His testament 
 was to be written in the incar- 
 nate living words of such as 
 were being saved by Him. No 
 daily record of Christ's life had 
 been kept. There was no Bos- 
 well among the Twelve. And 
 when Jesus had gone from them 
 the disciples believed that He 
 would speedily return. That 
 illusion suffused their whole 
 nature. No conviction was 
 more strong or influential. 
 '\Vliat need, then, of writing 
 books about Him when He 
 would be here so soon ? Indeed, 
 the committing of a record to 
 writing for the sake of posterity 
 would undoubtedly seem to 
 many of them to imply a lack 
 of faith in His promise. They 
 did not at first realise the world- 
 wide mission of their Lord, still 
 less did they guess the thou- 
 sands of years which must 
 
68 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 elapse before His kingdom 
 should be won. It does not 
 come natural to peasants to 
 write books, and nothing was 
 farther from the intentions 
 of those Galileans. Only the 
 pressure of circumstances forced 
 the New Testament from the 
 narrow and comparatively un- 
 cultured circles of the primitive 
 churches. 
 
 They preached Christ, and 
 their sermons were largely com- 
 posed of summaries of His life. 
 These summaries settled into 
 definite " forms of teaching " 
 or traditions, of which we have 
 examples in St. Paul's accounts 
 of the Lord's Supper and the 
 Eesurrection (1 Cor. xi. 23-25, 
 XV. 3-8j. But as the generation 
 of men who had seen the Lord 
 passed away, younger Christians 
 desired to have in some written 
 form the testimony associated 
 with the names of the elders. 
 Thus it was that the first 
 
THE BIBLE. 69 
 
 informal memoirs of the Great 
 Life came to be written — not 
 treatises, bat memorabilia. 
 Many, doubtless, had gradually 
 made private memoranda for 
 their own use, without a 
 thought of collecting or edit- 
 ing them for the general body 
 of Christians ; still less with 
 any idea of writing for the 
 information of those with- 
 out ; and still less, again, with 
 any purpose of shaping books 
 that would endure till the end 
 of the world. So it came to pass 
 that the first Christian Scrip- 
 tures were not highly regarded ; 
 for men did not (Papias A.D. 
 140) "consider things taken 
 from books to be of such good 
 to them as things from the 
 living, abiding voice." But the 
 Master's words were very pre- 
 cious, and many reminiscences 
 gathered round them as they 
 wrote. We have traces of Gos- 
 pels written by Peter, Thomas, 
 
70 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 Bartholomew, and otliers. For 
 many, like St. Luke, " took in 
 hand to set forth in order a 
 declaration of those things 
 which are surely believed 
 among us," and they depended 
 for their authorities on the 
 common stock of Christian 
 memory. 
 
 We have four Gospels, or, 
 as I should prefer to say, 
 four records of the Gospel, for, 
 according to New Testament 
 usage, " Gospel " never denoted 
 a written word ; it stood for the 
 substance of the message of 
 Christ. Our books are, in each 
 case, the Gospel " according to " 
 such an one ; not as claiming 
 his actual authorship, but as 
 implying the agreement of their 
 contents ^vith the recognised 
 document or tradition coming 
 from that original. Three of 
 these little books are of quite 
 different character from the 
 fourth, and they are classed 
 
THE BIBLE. 71 
 
 together as the Synoptics, 
 because they give the same 
 synopsis of events, agree in 
 general plan, for the most part 
 in the narratives, and some- 
 times in the very words. Yet 
 though they are so intimately 
 connected, they are quite inde- 
 pendent. They were not written 
 in collusion, for each has its in- 
 dividual character and had its 
 own editor. Indeed, one of the 
 great gains of modern criticism 
 is the universal admission of 
 the specialists that the Evan- 
 gelists meant in good faith to 
 write history. Of late the 
 general confidence in the Scrip- 
 ture writers has much increased. 
 They were entirely set on ac- 
 curacy so far as that was possi- 
 ble to them. 
 
 Our Book of St. Mark is the 
 shortest and the earliest of the 
 four ; it is a clear, straight- 
 forward, matter-of-fact narra- 
 tive. You can read it s:t a 
 
72 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 sitting, and it produces the im- 
 pression of being a faithful 
 story. We have it in its primi- 
 tive condition, or nearly so, as 
 it left the hand of St. Mark, 
 who derived his information 
 mainly from St. Peter, and 
 wrote probably in Eome about 
 the year 70. It is well under- 
 stood that St. Matthew made a 
 collection of the sayings of 
 Jesus in the Aramaic language, 
 in which He sjpoke. This is not 
 extant, but it was largely used 
 in combination with the record 
 of St. Mark to furnish the mate- 
 rial of our Eooks of St. Matthew 
 and St. Luke, St. Matthew 
 drawing more freely on the col- 
 lection of sayings, St. Luke 
 more freely on the Book of St. 
 Mark. So that we have the defi- 
 nite authority of one Apostle, 
 St. Matthew, for the sayings; 
 and, on the other hand, for the 
 acts of Jesus, we have the 
 authority of another Apostle, 
 
THE BIBLE. 73 
 
 St. Peter, of whose preaching 
 the Eook of St. Mark is the 
 digest. 
 
 Our Book of St. Matthew was 
 written for Jews. It aims to 
 show that Jesus was the Mes- 
 siah, foretold for Israel, and 
 that His Gospel had its root in. 
 Judaism. It is full of refer- 
 ences to the Old Testament, and 
 Christ's lineage is traced to 
 Abraham, the father of all 
 Hebrews. It emphasizes the 
 conseryative position of our 
 Lord towards the Law, and 
 dwells on His faithful adher- 
 ence to Jewish customs. Its 
 key-note may be said to be, 
 " Think not that I am come 
 to destroy the law or the 
 prophets ; I am not come to 
 destroy, but to fulfil." (Com- 
 pare the remarkable passage in 
 which Jesus is represented as 
 acquiescing in Eabbinical au- 
 thority and tradition, xxiii. 2,3.) 
 
 Our Book of St. Luke was 
 
74 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 probably written originally by 
 the Gentile physician who was 
 the companion of St. Paul. Its 
 sympathies are more catholic 
 than those of St. Matthew, and 
 it was intended for a wider 
 circle. The genealogy of Jesus 
 is traced past Abraham to 
 Adam, for he is more than the 
 Messiah of Israel ; He is the Son 
 of Man who is to lighten the 
 Gentiles with the Gospel of 
 peace and goodwill to all. 
 According to St. Luke, the first 
 sermon of Jesus was founded 
 on that part of Isaiah which 
 most finely transcends the 
 bounds of Jewry. St. Luke 
 alone gives the stories of the 
 Good Samaritan, the Pharisee 
 and Publican, and the Prodigal 
 Son ; St. Luke emphasizes 
 Jesus' friendship for publicans 
 and sinners ; St. Luke accentu- 
 ates His broad human tolerance 
 and His tenderness to the poor. 
 Eenan calls it the most beauti- 
 
THE BIBLE. 75 
 
 fill book ever written ; and 
 many of you will remember 
 its impression made on the 
 Greek girl in Cardinal New- 
 man's "Callista." From St. 
 Luke's preface we learn with 
 what pains ho made his com- 
 pilation. Without claiming 
 chronological accuracy, he 
 insists that he is bearing relia- 
 ble witness, and acknowledges 
 his obligations to those who 
 " from the beginning were eye- 
 witnesses and ministers of the 
 "Word." Among other sources 
 before him as he Y/rote was 
 our Book of St. Mark, which he 
 must have regarded as a reli- 
 able report, for he made it the 
 frame within which he worked 
 up additional material. 
 
 There is only one other point 
 that I feel obliged to add in re- 
 gard to the Synoptics. Our Books 
 of St. Matthew and St. Luke add 
 independent accounts of Jesus' 
 birth and infancy, for which 
 
76 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 there is no parallel in the older 
 Book of St. Mark, which lays 
 the " Beginning of the Gospel" 
 and Christ's story in the preach- 
 ing of St. John the Baptist. 
 Those lovely nativity stories, 
 which have seized on the imag- 
 ination and nestle in the heart 
 of Christendom, cannot, there- 
 fore, be fairly regarded as of the 
 same compelling authority as 
 the rest of the narrative which 
 is common to the three Books. 
 But, be it remembered, they are 
 not so important either. Jesus 
 Himself never referred to them, 
 and argued (Matt. xxii. 41-45) 
 against the necessity of a 
 Davidic descent. The fourth 
 Gospel does not found its claim 
 for Christ as the Eternal Word 
 on a miraculous conception, 
 which is the more strange, if 
 its author was actually the be- 
 loved disciple to whose care 
 Jesus committed His mother. 
 St. Paul does not seem con- 
 
THE BIBLE. 77 
 
 scious of such an idea, for ho 
 does not make a solitary refer- 
 ence to the stories in question, 
 nor do the other books of the 
 New Testament give the most 
 shadowed hint of them. We 
 may reassure ourselves that 
 the Divinity of Christ does 
 not rest on them. They were 
 accepted by the Early Church 
 as a fulfilment of an Old Tes- 
 tament oracle (Isaiah vii. 14) ^ 
 and, in view of the doctrine 
 of Original Sin, as a consis- 
 tent account of the birth of 
 the Holy One who knew no 
 sin ; they were to them the 
 only adequate explanation. But 
 that explanation was not re- 
 garded as an essential element 
 of faith in Him, and it is well 
 to reduce it to its proper dimen- 
 sions, and to realise that the 
 sinlessness of Christ is His real 
 Divinity, and constitutes Him 
 the world's Saviour from sin. 
 The problem of the Gospel 
 
78 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 according to St. John is very 
 difficult, but extremely interest- 
 ing in all its phases. Some 
 experts are confident beyond all 
 doubt that the Apostle John 
 wrote it ; some equally learned 
 are equally confident that he is 
 the last person in Christendom 
 who could have written it. It 
 seems to me that in this vexed 
 question most men tend to a 
 judgment in accord with their 
 personal and religious idiosyn- 
 crasies, and (though you may 
 catch the note of personal pre- 
 judice in this thought) that 
 recent research and criticism 
 are making it practically certain 
 that the fourth Gospel was the 
 work either of John or of a dis- 
 ciple under his inspiring in- 
 fluence. The book differs essen- 
 tially from the Synoptics ; it is 
 more obviously an organic 
 whole than they. It contains 
 very little of the common 
 tradition that underlies them ; 
 
THE BIBLE. 79 
 
 for example, though, according 
 to St. Matthew, Jesus never 
 Bpoke without a iDarable, St. 
 John does not relate a sin.^le 
 parable, nor does the very word 
 occur. The book introduces new 
 material, and uses all in quite 
 a new style and spirit, betoken- 
 ing the personal authorship of 
 a man of original mind, mystic 
 temper, and strong spiritual 
 individuality. It is extremely 
 instructive to observe that the 
 writer introduces the entirely 
 original conferences of our Lord 
 with Nicodemus, with the 
 woman of Samaria, and with 
 the Greeks who desired to see 
 Him; but in each case the 
 character who is introduced 
 to start the discourse of Jesus 
 is allowed forthwith to drop 
 out of sight, showing that 
 didactic considerations deter- 
 mine the writer, his predomi- 
 nact interest iDeing in the 
 religious import of the stories 
 
80 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 he tells. His animating motive 
 is to convince his readers that 
 Jesus is the Son of God. It 
 appears to me that the aged 
 disciple, recalling the dear past, 
 saw it all transfigured in the 
 light of his long spiritual ex- 
 perience and under the in- 
 fluence of his later Greek ideal- 
 ism. He presupposes that his 
 readers are already familiar 
 with the main facts. His func- 
 tion is not to tell the story of 
 Jesus, but to interpret it, as a 
 poet, with "sovereign hand- 
 ling," less concerned with in- 
 cidents than with their inner 
 meaning. Sometimes it is im- 
 possible to say where Christ's 
 addresses begin or end, so freely 
 does the writer treat his subject- 
 matter ; as though it were quite 
 unnecessary to distinguish be- 
 tween what the Lord said and 
 what grew out of it. The ideas 
 are Christ's, the interpretation 
 is the writer's. St. John is de- 
 
THE BIBLE. 81 
 
 termined to set forth the glory 
 he had seen in the Word made 
 flesh, the utterance of God's 
 love, the embodiment of human 
 perfection and Divine excel- 
 lence, the Light of the world, 
 the Bread of Life, the Shepherd, 
 the Way, the Truth, the Life. 
 He does not so much endeavour 
 to present Christ as the Logos^ 
 as to show that the truths 
 contained in that familiar doc- 
 trine are better expressed in 
 Him their true Eepresenta- 
 tion. 
 
 Lo, He comes. 
 Hungry, thirsty, homeless, cold ; 
 Hungry, by whom saints are fed 
 With the eternal living bread ; 
 Thirsty, from whose pierced side 
 Living waters spring and glide ; 
 Cold and bare He comes, who never 
 
 Can put off His robe of light ; 
 Homeless, who must dwell for ever 
 
 In the Father's bosom bright. 
 
 That is the aim of the fourth 
 Gospel ; and, in attaining that 
 
 6 
 
82 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 aim, it becomes the supreme 
 book of the New Testament, 
 " the heart of Christ," " the echo 
 of the older Gospels in the upper 
 choir." 
 
 The "Acts of the Apostles" 
 was written by one who was 
 witness of the later part of the 
 incidents he reports. It is a 
 summary of the history of the 
 Early Church, as the Early 
 Church conceived its own na- 
 tivity ; though it is impossible 
 for us to believe with the same 
 assurance as they, that Philip 
 was transported through the 
 air (chapter viii. 89), or that 
 Paul's handkerchief healed the 
 sick (xix. 12). A comparison 
 of the book with particulars in- 
 cidentally detailed in St. Paul's 
 Epistles is very instructive. 
 
 The library of books which 
 we assuredly owe to St. Paul 
 has been steadily growing of 
 late. A short time ago, and 
 only four Epistles were unani- 
 
THE BIBLE, 83 
 
 mously assigned to him — 
 Komans, Galatians, and the 
 first and second of Corinthians ; 
 they were frequently called the 
 ''gi-eat quadrilateral of Chris- 
 tianity." Now, the first of 
 Thessalonians is regarded as 
 authentic, the earliest of his 
 letters and probably the oldest 
 book of the New Testament, 
 being written in A.D. 52 in 
 order to give the Thessalonians 
 better instructions concerning 
 Christ's return. St. Paul be- 
 lieved the Parousia would occur 
 in his own lifetirae (iv. 15-17), 
 but he wrote to calm their 
 expectations and exhort them 
 to quiet industry as the 
 best preparation. The second 
 Epistle to the same Church may 
 not be in its original form, but 
 it also calls to order the idle 
 and disorderly. The Epistles to 
 the Philippians, Colossians, and 
 Ephesians are now accepted by 
 the majority of critics. But the 
 
84 THE GKOWTH OF 
 
 pastoral Epistles are much more 
 doubtful, both by reason of 
 their contents and the peculi- 
 arities of their style. 
 
 AYe cannot exaggerate our 
 indebtedness to the great 
 Apostle, who had higher in- 
 tellectual understanding of 
 our Lord's teaching than had 
 any around him. But it 
 is well to remember that he 
 did not issue his opinions as 
 though they were Papal Bulls, 
 but frequently used such 
 phrases of modesty and self- 
 restraint as " I speak as a man," 
 " I speak not after the Lord but 
 as in foolishness." So that it is 
 not prudent to take all his 
 opinions as oracles ; for ex- 
 ample, his suggestion to Timothy 
 (if it was his^, that he should 
 use " a little wine," is not to be 
 taken as a general edict for all 
 time ; nor his prejudice against 
 feminine oratory, as if women, 
 however capable, were per- 
 
THE BIBLE. 85 
 
 petually bound, on tliat account, 
 to retain their seats in silence ; 
 nor Ms low opinion of marriage 
 as the Christian ideal. Still 
 less wise is it to quote an iso- 
 lated, splintered fragment of 
 his writing as an axiom from 
 which to deduce a system of 
 theology or ecclesiasticism ; 
 though such is a form of mis- 
 quotation to which St. Paul has 
 from of old been iDCCuliarly 
 liable (2 Peter iii. 16). Sacred 
 and useful a^ are these Epistles, 
 we must go hack to the Gospels 
 to find the simplicity that was 
 in Christ. And even 
 
 They are but broken lights of Thee, 
 And Thou, Lord, art more than they. 
 
 As to the other Epistles : That 
 to the Hebrews may have been 
 written by Apollos or by Barna- 
 bas, amid the disappearance of 
 the Temple and the old Jewish 
 cultus, the author seeking to 
 show the relation of the old 
 
86 THE GEOWTH OF 
 
 Covenant to the new order 
 introduced by Christ. With 
 that end in view the Old Testa- 
 ment is treated honiiletically 
 in that profoundly religious 
 Epistle, which we owe to an 
 unknown hand. 
 
 The Epistle of James does not 
 claim to be written by an 
 Apostle. It is an elementary 
 ethical letter addressed to Jews 
 abroad, saying little about 
 Christ, and quoting much prac- 
 tical counsel from the Eooks of 
 "Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. If 
 in some respects his teaching is 
 difficult to reconcile with that 
 of St. Paul, I remind you that 
 the echo of Divine truth in 
 different souls is very varied. 
 " When God makes a prophet 
 He does not unmake the man." 
 
 The Epistles of St. Peter are 
 very disappointing. Whether 
 the first be genuine or not, it 
 is certainly unimportant. The 
 second is credited by none, 
 
THE BIBLE. 87 
 
 being a work compiled from the 
 Epistle of Jude. This last is a 
 companion letter to that of 
 James, the author's brother. 
 He makes quotations from the 
 Books of Enoch and the As- 
 sumption of Moses. 
 
 The first Epistle of St. John 
 is simple and evangelic ; it has 
 all the character of the fourth 
 Gospel, and was probably 
 written by the same hand. 
 The second and third Epistles 
 of St. John are only echoes of 
 the first, were only late recog- 
 nised as Canonical, and contain 
 no new truth. The Book of 
 Eevelation belongs to the very 
 large class of literature issued 
 when calamities and persecu- 
 tions broke on the Church. It 
 is the work of " John the Theo- 
 logian," bidding men be of good 
 courage, since the Lord will 
 quickly come to save His own, 
 and the celestial Jerusalem 
 shall arise instead of the ruined 
 
88 THE GROWTH OF 
 
 capital which Eome had devas- 
 tated. The basis of the book is 
 a purely Jewish document re- 
 vised by one whose conception 
 of the true Israel is the count- 
 less multitude bought with the 
 blood of the Lamb. We may 
 not see much practical worth 
 in this or some other of the 
 books, but it does not become 
 us to treat lightly words which 
 have stood the accumulated 
 judgment of centuries. Depend 
 upon it, a correct canon of 
 judgment for us is that they 
 are valuable in jpi'oportion as 
 they are in touch with the 
 Spirit of Christ. 
 
 Finally, let us never forget 
 that it is the worth of Christ 
 that substantiates and vali- 
 dates the New Testament. Its 
 supreme value is in its presen- 
 tation of that blessed and self- 
 less life, which has so slowly 
 risen on the world in its true 
 beauty. He holds Christendom 
 
THE BIBLE. 89 
 
 about Him as the sun draws 
 the planets. " The Greatest of 
 the Great," He is more rever- 
 ently loved than all other, 
 transcendently above us, yet so 
 real that we find in Him our 
 brother and friend. Goethe, 
 the great apostle of culture, 
 advised his readers that they 
 should every day read a fino 
 thought, look at a beautiful 
 picture, and hear lovely music. 
 For the sake of Christian 
 culture nothing is better than 
 that every day we should stand 
 for a moment beside Christ, 
 listen to a word of His, and get 
 into sympathetic contact with 
 His mind. And that, not to 
 increase aesthetic admiration, 
 but to deepen our saving know- 
 ledge of Him, who strengthens 
 us in good and warms the heart 
 with holy love. For such a 
 daily exercise of devotion and 
 religious energy we may recall 
 Christ's own promise : " Every 
 
90 GEOWTH OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 one therefore which heareth 
 these words of Mine, and doeth 
 them, shall be likened unto a 
 wise man, which built his house 
 upon the rock : and the rain 
 descended, and the floods came, 
 and the winds blew, and beat 
 upon that house ; and it fell 
 not : for it was founded upon 
 the rock." 
 
IT. 
 
 MISLEADING THEOEIES 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES, 
 
 " If thou take forth the precious from the 
 vile, thou shalt be as My mouth, saith the 
 Lord."— Jee. XV. 19, 20. 
 
 Let me remind you that while 
 some time must elapse before 
 the results of historical criti- 
 cism are absorbed, we have 
 already the immediate advan- 
 tage of being delivered from 
 the misleading theories of the 
 Bible which have wrought so 
 much mischief. To the allega- 
 tion that has been made, 
 " Such sermons are unsettling," 
 I reply plainly that most of 
 the infidelity in Christendom 
 has been produced by the un- 
 tenable dictum that the Bible 
 is the flawless autograph of 
 God. Voltaire was trained by 
 
94 MISLEADING THEORIES. 
 
 the Jesuits, Eenan was educated 
 in the intensely orthodox semi- 
 nary of St. Sulpice, Eradlaugh 
 was reared in narrow Evan- 
 gelicalism, George Eliot's Posi- 
 tiTism was the reaction from 
 impossible doctrines instilled 
 in early days ; and most in- 
 tellectual men who reject 
 the Eible and break away 
 from " the Christ our Human 
 Brother and Friend," owe their 
 loss to the fact that they were 
 taught to build their religion 
 upon the Eible instead of treat- 
 ing the Eible as the outcome of 
 religion. 
 
 The doctrine of infallibility 
 is due to the craving for an 
 authoritative external proof of 
 religious belief. The infalli- 
 bility of the Eible is a figment 
 of the intellect precisely on a 
 par with the infallibility of the 
 Pope. Men want to be rid of 
 the long struggle after truth, 
 so they invest either an indi- 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 95 
 
 vidua! or a book with the requi- 
 site authority. All that a man 
 has will he give for certainty. 
 It is a dream ; for they forget 
 that the postulate of infalli- 
 bility in priest or Bible is 
 practically void, apart from 
 a prior infallibility in self. 
 
 Suppose the Bible be infalli- 
 ble, still the text is susceptible 
 of many interpretations. One 
 iinds written there the necessity 
 of immersion ; another, sacra- 
 mental grace; another, apos- 
 tolic succession, non-resistance, 
 and the rest. An infallible book 
 is useless apart from an infalli- 
 ble interpretation. 
 
 SupxDOse the Bible be infalli- 
 ble, what is included in the 
 Bible ? The All- wise has not 
 given clear definition as to what 
 constitutes the Bible. The his- 
 tory of the formation of the 
 Canon is most disappointing 
 from that aspect. It was based 
 broadly on the survival of the 
 
96 MISLEADING THEOEIES. 
 
 fittest, according to the judg- 
 ment of the leading churchmen 
 of the day. The men who 
 framed it could not get beyond 
 possibilities ; and it is still prob^ 
 lematic whether it would have 
 not been better had they in- 
 cluded such books as Ecclesias- 
 ticus and Wisdom, and excluded 
 books of such slight literary 
 merit and spiritual significance 
 as Esther and the Chronicles. 
 You are aware that the Eoman 
 Church includes the Apocrypha 
 within the Canon, as it is 
 included in the volume that 
 has always lain in this pulpit. 
 
 But taking the Canon as we 
 usually understand it, we do not 
 find any writer claiming that 
 he worked under the direction 
 of irresistible power, nor does 
 the Bible in any place treat 
 itself as a body of infallible 
 oracles. I desire to emphasize 
 this, because the objections 
 to Biblical infallibility cannot 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 97 
 
 possibly toiicli the authority of 
 the Bible, unless the Bible it- 
 self profess to be infallible. 
 Clearly the New Testament 
 "writers did not regard the 
 Old Testament as infallible, 
 or they would not have quoted 
 it as they did, without care for 
 verbal accuracy, continually 
 accommodating its woid to 
 another purpose than that 
 which was originally intended 
 (Matt. ii. 15, 18 ; xxvii. 9, 10 ; 
 Eoraans i. 17 ; 1 Peter ii. 6). 
 Nor did Christ countenance any 
 such theory of the Old Testa- 
 ment. He treated it with loving 
 reverence, and studied it with 
 care ; but He besi3oke absolute 
 freedom from the bondage of 
 the letter. Nor did the apostles 
 say, "Believe the Bible or 
 perish," but "Believe Christ 
 and be saved." They would 
 have had small symx^athy 
 with the theory that finds 
 spiritual resting ground on 
 
 7 
 
98 MISLEADING THEORIES. 
 
 things, instead of in the Living: 
 God. 
 
 Think of it, and you will see 
 that a revelation perfect with 
 heavenly excellences and powers 
 would have been to man an 
 undecipherable language. There 
 is no sign that God ever gave 
 an infallible guide at all, nor 
 that He could ever educate man 
 in that way. In the Old Testa- 
 ment He expected Israel to 
 recognise His message by the 
 truth that was in it. No miracu- 
 lous help was vouchsafed for 
 its recognition, nor could it 
 have been usefully bestowed. 
 They were to know the truth 
 by the way in which it searched 
 their hearts and consciences. 
 How else can truth be known ? 
 How can the false prophet be 
 distinguished from the true, 
 save by the power of his mes- 
 sage ? How can anything ex- 
 ternal authenticate a spiritual 
 truth ? What relation is there 
 
MISLEADIISrG THEOKIES. 99 
 
 between physical power and 
 spiritual truth ? Its apprecia- 
 tion depends on sympathy ; 
 spiritual things are spiritually 
 discerned. But, indeed, to speak 
 plainly, the Bible is not a vade 
 mecurn to furnish rules of action 
 when you are perplexed with 
 difficulties ; its aim is not to 
 settle debate, but to train men to 
 govern and guide themselves. 
 It is not a directory, but an 
 inspiration to us that we may 
 fight against sin and all the 
 m.isery that sin begets. Its great 
 purpose is not to lay on us a 
 Divine '' Thou shalt^' but to kin- 
 dle in us a Divine " loughV And 
 it is not so much guidance that 
 we need as something far more 
 searching and kindling ; not sub- 
 stitutes for thought, but stimu- 
 lus to thinking. The Bible does 
 not reveal truths inaccessible to 
 reason, but "transmutes the pro- 
 babilities of reason into the veri- 
 ties of faith." We have to read 
 
100 MISLEAr)i:N'G THEOrJES. 
 
 as wise men, and. judge what 
 the Sx)irit saith to the Churches. 
 If the purpose of the Bible be to 
 compose all our differences, and. 
 settle us all in intellectual union, 
 the Bible has manifestly failed 
 of its purpose. Its aim is, in 
 truth, dynamic ; it belongs to 
 the " literature of power." 
 
 Now, on the theory of an 
 infallible book, all its contents 
 are raised, or reduced, to one 
 level. The reasoning is cogent 
 enough : — " The Bible is God's 
 "Word ; God's Word is absolutely 
 true ; therefore all Scripture is 
 equally authoritative and in- 
 fallible." So the Bible becomes 
 a kind of fourth Person of the 
 Blessed Trinity. And we are 
 landed in endless contradic- 
 tions, for what St. Paul de- 
 clared "weak and beggarly 
 elements " are as Divine as his 
 own Psalm of Charity ; and the 
 words of our Master are neu- 
 tralised by being tied to dead 
 
MISLEADmG THEOEIES. 101 
 
 traditions. There is only one 
 choice — all or none. "Thus 
 saith the Lord " is behind all. 
 
 It is a des^Derate and fatuous 
 alternative. "We know that the 
 Jews extracted texts from their 
 Scriptures, and made talismanic 
 charms of them, nailed them 
 on doors, wrote them on walls, 
 bound them round their brows. 
 It was not more superstitious 
 or idolatrous than is the deter- 
 mination to find the "Word of 
 God in everything included in 
 the Bible. So slave-holders 
 found proof texts for their 
 brutalities, and Mormons for 
 their license. So for many cen- 
 turies men read, " Thou shalt 
 not suffer a witch to live," and 
 thousands of poor wretches 
 were murdered in the Name of 
 God. (Even Luther said, "I 
 would have no compassion on 
 witches; I would burn them 
 all.") 
 
 Treat the Bible as a homo- 
 
102 MISLEADING THEOEIES. 
 
 geneous whole ; and the stories 
 of Olympian vengeance and 
 miraculous injustice, the de- 
 struction of Sennacherib's army 
 and the Psalms of inhuman 
 imprecation, legal technical- 
 ities and Levitical trivialities, 
 are as Divine as the fifty-third 
 chapter of Isaiah or the four- 
 teenth chapter of St. John. 
 There are no degrees of com- 
 parison in infallibility. 
 
 It will be superfluous for most 
 of you that I should labour this 
 point. But suppose an intelli- 
 gent lad learns that Almighty 
 God ordered a massacre of 
 harmless people, as atrocious 
 as that of the Armenians by 
 the Turks; that He struck a 
 man dead for preventing the 
 Ark from falling from a cart ; 
 that He sent a plague on a 
 capital city because a king took 
 a census of the population. 
 And he is told " It is wicked to 
 doubt these things." Is not his 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 103 
 
 sense of right and wrong per- 
 plexed ? Is it not best to say 
 frankly, "My boy, they piti- 
 ably misunderstood God, they 
 thought He was altogether like 
 themselves " ? We cannot be 
 sure that our highest thoughts 
 concerning: God are necessarily 
 true, but we can be sure that all 
 thoughts about God, below our 
 highest, are necessarily false. 
 And, in the light of that convic- 
 tion, we are compelled to dis- 
 criminate between various parts 
 of the Scriptures. Treat all the 
 Scriptures as equally fertile 
 soil, and men will end by re- 
 garding it as all equally desert. 
 "Take forth the precious from 
 the vile." 
 
 The whole form and fashion 
 of the volume is against this 
 rigorous theory. The Bible is 
 constantly revising itself and 
 improving itself; old things 
 pass away, and better things 
 succeed. How should this book 
 
104 MISLEADIISTG THEORIES. 
 
 of survivals from over so long 
 a period be of like nature and 
 authority throughout ? It is 
 the long historv of the idea of 
 the redemptive action of God ; it 
 is the spiritual autobiography 
 of a people from its childhood 
 to its maturity ; it consists of 
 the most miscellaneous collec- 
 tion — legend, history, and 
 family genealogy, ecclesiastical 
 ritual and rubric, proverbs and 
 folk-lore, battle songs and love 
 songs, dramas and novelettes, 
 memoirs, doctrinal treatises and 
 friendly letters — many of them 
 anonymous, many pseudony- 
 mous. Let the Bible speak for 
 itself. Why should we make it 
 speak as the Scribes ? They 
 began by claiming authority 
 and, on that ground, acceptance. 
 Let the Bible speak for itself. 
 The less we ask of its readers 
 beforehand, the better. To im- 
 pose conditions is a gratuitous 
 and noxious trial of faith. 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 105 
 
 Don't protect it by a dogma of 
 infallibility, or you discredit it. 
 As well shore up Helvellyn 
 with a few beams. The Bible 
 stood well enough in its own 
 strength before that crude de- 
 fence was reared around it, and 
 it will stand long after that 
 crudity is forgot! n. Eeverence 
 for the Bible thrives better in 
 the light of history and fact 
 than in the mystic darkness of 
 supernaturalism. 
 
 When, as a young man, I 
 found evidences of legendary 
 detritus in the Bible, ought I to 
 have thrown the book away 
 and given up the idea of becom- 
 ing a minister ? Of course I 
 was forbidden by conscience to 
 enter a church where freedom 
 would be denied, but I was at 
 liberty to seek an honest posi- 
 tion among Independents, to 
 whom Catholicism and pro- 
 gressivism are second nature. 
 I do not consider that I am 
 
106 MISLEADING THEORIES. 
 
 bound, as minister of Christ, to 
 defend Abram's cruel treatment 
 of Hagar, the duplicity of Jacob, 
 or the treachery of Jael ; it is 
 not my duty to apologise for 
 the sins of the " Man after God's 
 own heart '* ; I do not hold 
 a brief for Elisha who called 
 out bears to devour the children 
 who gave him a nickname ; I 
 have nothing to say in favour of 
 the making of a woman from a 
 man's rib, or the abnormally 
 low specific gravity of iron 
 axes, or the temporary stoppage 
 of the sun in the heavens, or 
 any other miracles to which 
 neither my intellect nor my 
 conscience responds. Neither 
 you nor Tare bound to acquiesce 
 in all the sentiments of Eccle- 
 siastes, or to believe Micaiah 
 when he said, " The Lord sent a 
 lying spirit." What do we lose 
 by relegating to legendary folk- 
 lore Samson's slaying of thou- 
 sands with the jaw of an ass. 
 
MISLEADIXG THEOEIES. 107 
 
 or his tying brands to the tails 
 of three hundred foxes ? Such 
 things elseivhere would cause no 
 difficulty ; let us apply ordinary 
 standards of judgment. "When 
 you read a book you find no 
 difficulty in determining what 
 deserves your admiration or in 
 judging what is debasing and 
 poor ; you trust your own saga- 
 city. What your heart proves 
 good to you, alone is good 
 to you. No number of " Thus 
 saith the Lords " can induce or 
 help us to square the Eden 
 story with archaeology, Babel 
 with ethnology, Jonah with 
 ichthyology, or the one-win- 
 dowed ark, crowded with sets of 
 all the living creatures of the 
 world, with zoology. Eeverence 
 should make us pause before 
 we call this the Word of God. 
 ** Where the human mind is 
 concerned, it is idle to speak of 
 an authority which can simply 
 be imposed. There neither is 
 
108 MISLEADING THEOPtlES. 
 
 nor can be such a thing. The 
 real question is whether there 
 is an authority which can im- 
 pose itself, which can freely 
 win the recognition and sur- 
 render of the mind and heart 
 of man." 
 
 Many sincere men have been 
 staggered by these things ; but 
 when their intellect or their 
 better nature rebelled, they felt 
 guilty of arraigning God. 
 " Thus saith the Lord," said the 
 Hebrews. And we have to 
 occidentalise the phrase before 
 we see that it was but the 
 voice of the Hebrew conscience 
 in various stages of advance. It 
 is a relief to be able to recognise 
 that, to find oneself possessed of 
 a serene faith which no such 
 words can affect, nor the re- 
 moval of such words disturb. 
 
 Again, on the theory of infalli- 
 bility, the Bible becomes a final- 
 ity all round, so that inquiry 
 and investigation thereafter are 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 109 
 
 an impertinence. Eesearch is 
 barred, as by a statute-book, to 
 human thought ; we are an- 
 chored here. I believe with 
 all my heart that we have a 
 final revelation of God's loving 
 and redeeming purpose in 
 Christ, so that no improvement 
 therein is possible or conceiv- 
 able ; but in all other respects 
 the Bible is not a final autho- 
 rity, and all attempts, for in- 
 stance, to make the science of 
 the Bible tally with modern 
 scienc? is labour thrown away 
 througii a gigantic misconcep- 
 tion. In the first chapter of 
 Genesis Creation is portrayed 
 in six stages. The order does 
 not correspond with the actual 
 course of events as stamped on 
 the record of the rocks in 
 tables of stone. There are 
 many "harmonies," but it is 
 very difficult to reconcile the 
 harmonies. The whole passage 
 is not a treatise of science, but 
 
110 MISLEADING THEORIES. 
 
 a devotional poem of Creation. 
 The writer swept in masterly 
 survey over all created things, 
 collected them into six con- 
 gruous groups, and declared 
 each group the work of Al- 
 mighty God. It is not geology ; 
 it is theology. The truths that 
 are too vast for our human 
 grasp are seen in this spiritual 
 Song of Creation, casting their 
 shadow on the early imagina- 
 tion of the race — God, behind 
 all appearances, the Creator. 
 
 There is not in all the Bible 
 a final utterance on science. 
 Catholics complain that we 
 Protestants will not believe in 
 the progressive illumination of 
 the Christian Church ; that we 
 leave no room for continuous 
 revelation of the mind of God. 
 I fear that we do injustice to 
 Eome in harping so much on her 
 fear of the Bible, which fear has 
 been largely the result of re- 
 action against Protestant idola- 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. Ill 
 
 try of the Bible. In tlio 
 middle ages (as Mr. Baldwin 
 Brown pointed out in the most 
 memorable of all his books, 
 *' First Principles of Ecclesias- 
 tical Truth"), Eome frequently 
 translated the Bible into the 
 "vernacular, and always based 
 her theology on Scripture as the 
 ultimate authority. The New 
 Testament of Erasmus with its 
 caustic comments went through 
 its many editions with the ap- 
 probation of Pope Leo X. The 
 diffe. ence between Eome and 
 the Eeformers lay in this — that 
 Eome regarded the Bible as 
 full of iniallible truths about 
 doctrines and morals, and held 
 that saying faith is in assent 
 thereto, according to the find- 
 ing of Mother Church. Eome 
 would convert the Bible into a 
 sacerdotal trust. Luther, Cal- 
 vin, and Zwingle found in the 
 Bible personal fellowship with 
 the Eedeeming God, and taught 
 
112 MISLEADING THEOPtlES. 
 
 that the chief end of the 
 Bible is to bring God nep^rer 
 that we may trust liim. That 
 is the Protestant doctrine, 
 which I unfeignedly hold, and 
 to which I always give earnest 
 utterance. But it seems to me 
 that many Eyangelicals who 
 abhor Popery really hold the 
 mediaeval rather than the Ee- 
 formation idea of Scripture. 
 They have transferred the inte- 
 rest from the Word of God to 
 the record of the Word, and 
 invested that record with attri- 
 butes which cannot belong to 
 it. There cannot be finality in 
 the revelation of the Infinite, 
 whose Spirit evermore guides 
 us into all truth. 
 
 Lastly, the theory of infalli- 
 bility makes the Bible a me- 
 chanical puzzle. The most 
 wonderful interpretations find 
 some justification for them- 
 selves ; the most egregious 
 folly of piety has something 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 113 
 
 to plead. The doctrine of 
 the Trinity, that "crowning gift 
 of the Spirit to the Church 
 through the resourcefulness of 
 Greek intellect," has been 
 found in the plural noun 
 which is used in Genesis for 
 the Divine Being. The doctrine 
 of the Atonement is discerned 
 in the scapegoat of Azazel, and 
 Eahab's red cord from the win- 
 dow is typical of Christ's Blood. 
 The total depravity of man is 
 in the wails of Jeremiah, and 
 eccle 4astical allegories are en- 
 twined in the Song of Solomon. 
 The main results of modern 
 science are anticipated in cryp- 
 tograms, which also indicate 
 the course of European history. 
 Scripture is turned into Sibyl- 
 line leaves and consulted about 
 the fall of the Papacy, the re- 
 turn of the Jews to Palestine, 
 the approach of the end of 
 the ages — about anything, in 
 short J rather than about the 
 
 8 
 
114 MISLEADING THEOrJES. 
 
 Divine Humanity to which 
 they point. Kor is the grave 
 folly of these grotesque perver- 
 sions confined to the ignor- 
 ant classes. Here is an inter- 
 pretation by Swedenborg : — 
 " xind Eebecca arose (hereby 
 is signified the elevation of 
 the affection of truth), and 
 her damsels (hereby are signi- 
 fied the subservient affections), 
 and they rode upon camels 
 (hereby is signified the intellec- 
 tual principle elevated above 
 natural scientifics)." 
 
 In this lamentable way the 
 Bible becomes the dead prey c f 
 the dogmatists, and on this 
 style anything may be made to 
 mean anything else. Language 
 has a legitimate meaning ; we 
 want to know not what Scrip- 
 ture may be made to mean, but 
 what it does mean. It is diffi- 
 cult enough already to ascertain 
 the precise meaning of some 
 passages, but it would be im- 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 115 
 
 possible if every passage might 
 have many interpretations. 
 
 That is the outcome of the 
 prevalence of the theory of in- 
 fallibility. I have shown that 
 the Eible makes no such claim 
 for itself. Dean Stanley ex- 
 pressed the wish that he might 
 awhile be Pope, and regarded 
 as infallible ; for in virtue of 
 his infallibility he would 
 straightway decree that he was 
 fallible. Now in regard to the 
 claim that is made, not by but 
 for the Bible, there remains to 
 me the ungracious task of 
 showing how impossible a claim 
 it is. I would not speak thus 
 did I not believe that Eibliola- 
 try is a most mischievous super- 
 stition, and did we not all know 
 that some advocates of Christ 
 stake the whole credit of His 
 religion on the absence of mis- 
 takes within the sacred Canon. 
 These good men do not realise 
 the harm they do to the cause 
 
116 MISLEADING THEORIES. 
 
 they love, nor how thorny is the 
 crown they thrust on the Bible. 
 Some of you doubtless feel as 
 if I were, in these sermons, 
 breaking the staff of your life ; 
 but I ask you to suspend judg- 
 ment till I arrive at the end. 
 I am negative only in the 
 interests of something better. 
 Every departure from popular 
 belief seems at first destructive : 
 it needs keen eyes to perceive 
 the germ of the bud which is 
 to replace the fallen leaf. I 
 believe that criticism makes the 
 Bible more real, more precious, 
 and more useful ; that the whole 
 book becomes more easy of ap- 
 prehension, and is reduced from 
 confusion to order. "While to 
 my own mind there is no prac- 
 tical importance in discussing 
 errors of the Bible, I am bound 
 with wholesome brevity to 
 show, ere I finally dismiss the 
 subject, the utter impractica- 
 bility of the high and dry 
 
MISLEADING THEOEIES. 117 
 
 theory of inerrancy. Many of 
 you well know the examples ; 
 but inasmuch, as a certain 
 devout inattention is thought 
 to be the appropriate medium 
 for the discernment of Biblical 
 truth, some of you may not 
 have noticed them. 
 
 II. Samuel xxiv. 1 : God moved 
 David to number the people, 
 and there were found in Israel 
 eight hundred thousand war- 
 riors, in Judah five hundred 
 thousand warriors. I. Chron. 
 xxi. 1 : Satan moved David to 
 number the people, and there 
 were found in Israel one million 
 one hundred thousand warriors, 
 and in Judah four hundred 
 and seventy thousand, without 
 counting Levi and Benjamin. 
 ^' "When God writes history He 
 will be at least as accurate as 
 Bishop Stubbs or Mr. Gardiner." 
 
 II. Samuel xxiv. 24: David 
 paid to Araunah for his thresh- 
 ing floor fifty shekels of silver, 
 
118 MISLEADING THEORIES. 
 
 but in I. Chron. xxi. 25, six 
 hundred shekels of gold. 
 
 II. Chron. xiv. 1, xv. 19: Asa 
 reigned peacefully, "The land 
 was quiet ten years ... to the 
 thirty- fifth year of his reign 
 there was no war." But I. Kings 
 XV. 16, " there was war between 
 Asa and Baasha all their days." 
 The very conservative Professor 
 Sayce remarks that " Assyrian 
 inscriptions have shown that 
 the chronology of the Book of 
 Kings is hopelessly wrong." 
 
 Matthew xxvii. 9 quotes as 
 from Jeremiah what you find in 
 Zechariah. The obvious slip of 
 memory in no way invalidates 
 his trustworthiness as a narra- 
 tor. Calvin confessed the dis- 
 crepancy and contemptuously 
 dismissed it as unimportant. 
 
 Stephen, " a man full of faith 
 and of the Holy Ghost . . . full 
 of grace and power," said (Acts 
 vii. 16) that Abram bought the 
 sepulchre in Shechem of the 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 119 
 
 sons of Hamor,bnt Genesis xxiii. 
 16, 17, declares the purchase of 
 Machpelah made of Ephron the 
 Hittite, and Genesis xxxiii. 19, 
 says that Jacob bought the 
 ground in Shechem of the sons 
 of Hamor. Calvin candidly- 
 confessed, " Stephen evidently 
 made a mistake." Of course he 
 confounded two transactions. 
 
 These are not " inventions of 
 the enemy " ; they are straight- 
 forward quotations. Now, in 
 the presence of errors such as 
 these, which no man who is at 
 the same time honest and in- 
 telligent can possibly deny, who 
 are the true friends of the 
 Bible ? They who admit that 
 there are errors, and affirm that 
 the worth of the Bible lies in 
 quite another sphere than 
 exactitude of information ; or 
 they who deny, in the face of 
 palpable evidence, that there 
 are any errors, and protest 
 that if there were but one, 
 
120 MISLEADING THEOEIES. 
 
 the cause of the Bible would 
 be ruined ? Or, to put it 
 in another way, is it right to 
 stake such a momentous re- 
 sult on such a paltry issue ? 
 An issue, remember, which 
 ought never to have been raised 
 at all, and one to which there is 
 but one possible ending — infi- 
 delity. The Bible is wounded 
 in the house of its friends. 
 There is just one way of 
 retreat ; one may say, " The 
 original manuscripts were free 
 from error." The assumption is, 
 of course, baseless. It is worse 
 than ludicrous to suppose that 
 Providence worked an initial 
 miracle, which, for all practical 
 purposes, might as well never 
 have been wrought. Whatever 
 we think, let us be free from 
 disingenuousness. 
 
 I have confessed plainly there 
 are mistakes. However you 
 may wish to hold the contrary 
 opinion, there is, I think, no 
 
MISLEADII^G THEORIES. 121 
 
 opportunity for you to do so, for 
 no man lias a right to believe 
 anything but the truth. How- 
 ever "orthodox " you may desire 
 to be, "God's orthodoxy is truth.'* 
 
 In the Old Testament men 
 did not always with justice 
 interpret the movement of the 
 Divine Spirit in their hearts, as 
 in that terrible commission of 
 slaughter, when Samuel mis- 
 took patriotic passion for 
 Divine fire. And in the New 
 Testament Apostles made mis- 
 takes : Paul withstood Peter — 
 which was right ? Peter, at 
 first, believed he was right in 
 abstaining from Gentile fellow- 
 ship ; afterwards he corrected 
 his error. Many disciples, along 
 with Paul and the Thessa- 
 lonians, were mistaken about 
 Christ's early return ; and 
 within certain limits it may 
 be asserted that Christendom 
 was founded on that illusion. 
 
 What, then, does all this 
 
122 MISLEADING THEORIES. 
 
 prove ? Simply that God does 
 not reject the fallibility of men 
 as an unfit vehicle of His in- 
 spiration. " Holy men spoke 
 as they were moved by the 
 Holy Ghost," but they were 
 not, because inspired, thereby 
 qualified to pass an examina- 
 tion in all things in Heaven 
 and Earth, past, present, and to 
 come. 
 
 Believe me, the rest in final 
 authoritative teaching is but 
 temporary and delusive ; the 
 next stage is atheism and 
 despair. I love and trust the 
 Bible too much to protect it 
 with any chevaux de frise. 
 This Book is the classic of 
 religion, speaking in many 
 tones ; I hold it to be the 
 charter of the freedom and 
 progress of man, the record 
 of the Word of God, His gift 
 to us. Bead it carefully and 
 prayerfully. Its light shines 
 from God. Kich with the 
 
MISLEADING THEORIES. 123 
 
 spoils of time, its worth is 
 not less but greater as the 
 generations pass. 
 
 Let the truth be found, if 
 God permit. And. when it is 
 found, let it be published 
 abroad, as God assuredly wills. 
 For truth is His ally, "fair as 
 the morn, clear as the sun, 
 and terrible as an army with 
 banners." 
 
V. 
 
 POSITIVE EESULTS OF 
 THE HIGHEE OKITICISM. 
 
POSITIVE KESULTS OP 
 THE HIGHEE CRITICISM. 
 
 "Ye search the Scriptures, because ye 
 think that in them ye have eternal life; 
 and these are they which bear -witness of 
 me."— St. John v. 39. 
 
 I TKUST you will not suppose 
 that the Higher Criticism is 
 a term of self-praise adopted 
 by supercilious scholars. The 
 sciolist, who condemns it on 
 that account, resembles the gen- 
 tleman of reactionary tenden- 
 cies, who, in be-rating his con- 
 temporaries, said, " This nine- 
 teenth century " ! and then with 
 withering scorn, " This so-called 
 nineteenth century " ! 
 
 The higher or historic criti- 
 cism is simply a name that 
 distinguishes it from the lower, 
 
128 POSITIVE RESULTS OF 
 
 or grammatical and textual, 
 criticism. The former explores 
 with ampler method and farther 
 reaching purposes, attempts to 
 learn the truth about the origin 
 of the books, the circumstances 
 that gave rise to them, the 
 motives that directed their 
 writers. The mineralogist 
 analyses the composition of the 
 rocks, the geologist explores 
 the stratification of the earth's 
 surface, and systematises the 
 results of minuter observations. 
 This is the larger function of 
 the Higher Criticism. We are 
 familiar enough with its results 
 in other fields. Greek history 
 has been, in recent years, traced 
 in firmer outline than was 
 possible to Plato himself ; of 
 Eoman history we have a surer 
 grasp than had Cicero ; and 
 similarly the history and reli- 
 gion of the Hebrews are seen 
 more clearly to-day by those 
 who will avail themselves of 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 129 
 
 the best results to hand, than 
 by the men who collected and 
 canonised the Old Testament or 
 the rabbis of Jewry. 
 
 In speaking of the positive 
 results of the Higher Criticism, 
 I fear that, inadequate as has 
 been my treatment of the fore- 
 going subjects, the present at- 
 tempt must be, in the nature of 
 things, still more unsatisfactory. 
 But there is this consolatory 
 reflection, that the whole of my 
 ministry is positive, and that it 
 is my continual delight to 
 fasten your attention on the 
 great foundation truths of the 
 Gospel of Christ for the need of 
 man. Now I want to suggest to 
 you that the Higher Criticism is 
 the honest attempt of our best 
 scholars to save the Bible, I 
 want to make you feel sure that 
 just as the net result of the 
 negative attack on the Gospel is 
 that it has tightened its hold 
 upon society, so the net result 
 
 9 
 
130 POSITIVE RESULTS OF 
 
 of the most fearless Biblical 
 criticism is that the Bible is 
 made a more capable instru- 
 ment of religions education and 
 spiritual culture. 
 
 Some of the most striking 
 results of recent Biblical criti- 
 cism are undoubtedly negative 
 in their character so far as the 
 general public is concerned. 
 The demolition is the more dra- 
 matic, and, at first, monopolises 
 the attention, so that only stu- 
 dents see the possibility and 
 promise of constructive work. 
 At first its influence is rather 
 discomposing than invigorating 
 to one's beliefs, but one can 
 hardly exj^ect to build a new 
 house on the site of the old 
 without some little temporary 
 disturbance. 
 
 The loss is much more 
 apparent than real. We lose 
 an impracticable, misleading 
 theory of no edifying value 
 whatever. Yfe do not lose the 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 131 
 
 Scriptures, nor one grain of 
 their profitableness for instruc- 
 tion in righteousness. We lose 
 t-ome cherished prepossessions 
 along with that shadowy fetish 
 — say, rather, we lose a heavy 
 hurden and grievous to be 
 borne, and with it a crowd of 
 difficulties. We gain a more 
 reasonable ground for faith and 
 a more enlightened assurance 
 of the continuity of the Divine 
 redeeming purpose.. While the 
 dawn is young a little sunshine 
 raises the mists, but more sun- 
 shine dispels them. Let us 
 have enough confidence in 
 Christianity to believe that no 
 criticism can do it harm ; it is 
 indeed a fragile thing if it be 
 endangered by examination of 
 its OAvn evidence. I believe 
 that the Bible is not merely as 
 much as before, but that it is 
 much more than it ever was. 
 The tearing away of old associa- 
 tions is distressing and painful ; 
 
132 POSITIVE EESULTS OF 
 
 the pruning-knife of criticism 
 cuts deep, but it cuts well, nor 
 is there any danger in the knife 
 of truth, save to the growth of 
 error and superstition. To say 
 otherwise, nay, to think other- 
 wise, means infidelity, all the 
 more dark and subtle because 
 it does not recognise itself for 
 what it is — fear of the truth 
 and doubt of the God of truth. 
 Oh for more faith in God 1 
 
 AH is weU, tho' faith and form 
 Be sundered in the night of fear, 
 Well roars the storm to those that hear 
 
 A deeper voice across the storm. 
 
 For pity's sake let us not be 
 such slaves of circumstance as 
 to imagine that the sole crite- 
 rion of truth is its immediate 
 utility. Were it of no gain 
 at all, still the true thing must 
 be spoken, yes, even though it 
 should seem to destroy what 
 men call an essential. " Essen- 
 tial " for what ? Nothing 
 
THE HIGHEK CEITICISM. 133 
 
 short of the truth can be 
 essential for the best life of 
 the soul of a child of God. 
 
 If you have followed me at 
 all sympathetically up to this 
 point, you will see that we are 
 relieved from the responsibility 
 and unthankful office of apolo- 
 gising for God by trying to 
 explain away the crudities of 
 the earlier pages of the Bible. 
 The doings of Jacob and the 
 sins of David were not recorded 
 for our approval but for our 
 disapproval and instruction. 
 The slaughter of the Canaanites 
 was largely a fancy picture 
 painted to encourage an in- 
 tolerant spirit of patriotism. If, 
 indeed, God had been such as 
 He is here at times portrayed, 
 we might justly have said with 
 Prometheus, '' I reverence Thee 
 — wherefore ? " Great gain has 
 thus been made for intellectual 
 candour. The man who any 
 longer imagines that all the 
 
134 POSITIVE EESULTS OF 
 
 Biblical content is the smooth, 
 uniform utterance of the Divine 
 mind, and that every Hebrew 
 "Thus saith the Lord" is the 
 indisputable oracle of the Al- 
 mighty Father, has a pathetic 
 intellectual simplicity. Our 
 fathers, in their dis]3utes, fre- 
 quently said that one clear text 
 is as good as a thousand, no 
 matter from what quarter of the 
 Bible it has been drawn. They 
 did not hesitate to build the 
 most portentous inferences 
 upon the most slender textual 
 foundation ; indeed, they de- 
 lighted in what Coleridge called 
 *' the ever- widening spiral ergo 
 out of the narrow aperture of 
 {single texts." We have acquired 
 a sense of proportion and per- 
 spective. We want to know 
 when, where, by whom and 
 under what circ am stances the 
 text originated ; for we are 
 aware that there is in the Bible 
 increasing and improving know- 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 135 
 
 ledge of what is truly Divine 
 as the Book moves on. The 
 ideas that the people cherished 
 in early days were denounced 
 by the prophets as foolishness, 
 and by Christ as little more 
 than ignorance. There is a 
 prayer in the Psalms (cix.) that 
 the writer's enemy may be 
 cursed of God, his days few, 
 his wife a widow, and his chil- 
 dren fatherless vagabonds on 
 whom none will have mercy. 
 There is another prayer (Psalm 
 cxxxvii.), "Happy shall he be 
 who taketh and da sheth thy little 
 ones against the rock." If those 
 verses are inspired, by whom 
 are they inspired but by the 
 spirit of all evil ? Some ancient 
 texts are merely fossils, which 
 are useful enough for studying 
 past development, but, though 
 of animal origin, are scarcely 
 available for digestion as food. 
 Through a whole wilderness of 
 mistakes and crudities and 
 
136 POSITIVE KESULTS OP 
 
 delusions lay the way of the 
 Bible towards its final goal 
 — first the natural, after that 
 the spiritual. Do not rack your 
 brain and strain your conscience 
 in the attempt to accept what 
 your moral sense rejects. It 
 would be strange if, after the 
 illumining influence of Christ, 
 you did not find imperfections 
 in the low levels of early 
 thought and life. 
 
 We have gained a credible 
 clue to the origin and history 
 of the Canonical books. By 
 means of the introduction of a 
 more correct historic perspec- 
 tive, we see that every part has 
 its own immediate and local 
 meaning. The men of the Bible 
 are kindred souls of like pas- 
 sions with ourselves ; there is 
 living movement and human 
 reality in the pages. Is there a 
 man for whom the Bible is less 
 real and powerful because it was 
 not written by denaturalised 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 137 
 
 men, with the pen of angels, 
 but fashioned by the experi- 
 ences of human life, and toned 
 by the varying moods of human 
 souls, now tremulous with re- 
 morse and heart-break, now 
 glad with victorious faith ? 
 
 For us, the worth of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures begins with 
 the fact that ancient Israel was 
 the first people of the world to 
 see tliat religiousness and good- 
 ness are essentially one. In the 
 old world, familiar to us through 
 many channels, the religious 
 man needed not to be a good 
 man. Why should he be ? The 
 gods were often vile, so vile, 
 that to be manlike was better 
 than to be godlike. To the 
 modern man godliness is one 
 with goodness; to the ancient 
 godliness was often viciousness. 
 Now, it was a transcendent 
 moment when there entered the 
 heart of man the great idea that 
 God and Eighteousness are 
 
138 POSITIVE RESULTS OF 
 
 really and everlastingly one. 
 In that moment Eeligion began 
 to mean, before all else, morality 
 and the service of God ; to 
 mean, before all else, the doing 
 of duty to men. That was a 
 moment of Eevelation. " Be ye 
 holy, for I am holy, saith your 
 God." Through Moses that 
 signal service was rendered to 
 his people ; he bound them, by 
 religion, to righteousness. By 
 that discovery he laid the foun- 
 dation of that nation in the 
 Holy One of Israel. That was 
 the Law of Moses in its essence. 
 All the Law grew from that 
 germ, and subsequent additions 
 through the long centuries were 
 quite naturally connected with 
 the name, and invested with the 
 authority, of the great Lawgiver 
 of Israel. Eobertson Smith com- 
 pared it with the supposition or 
 legal fiction of Eoman Juris- 
 prudence, whereby all law was 
 supposed to be derived from the 
 
THE HIGHER CrtlTICISM. lol) 
 
 Laws of the Twelve Tables. No 
 falsehood was meant or con- 
 veyed. The object was to main- 
 tain the continuity of the legal 
 system. 
 
 In the same way the Psalter 
 was connected with David, the 
 " sweet singer of Israel." Like 
 Moses, he embodied an influ- 
 ence and a tendency; he was 
 the centre around which the 
 poetry of the nation crystallised, 
 as did the Law round Moses. 
 Not that nearly all the Psalms 
 were written by him. Far 
 otherwise. They were the voice, 
 not of one man, but of the great 
 congregation. They are in five 
 sections (1-41, 42-72, 73-89, 90- 
 106, 107-150), and each section 
 ends with a doxology, after the 
 pious Oriental fashion. And if 
 there is any one who, at the first 
 blush, regrets their dissociation 
 from David, and is tempted to 
 regard that as a grievous loss, I 
 would suggest to him this ques- 
 
] 40 POSITIVE EESULTS OF 
 
 tion : Would the Book of 
 Common Prayer be of more 
 value if it fell out that Henry 
 the Eighth was its sole author ? 
 It is well to remember that 
 traditional criticism of the long 
 ago was prone to ascribe as 
 many books as possible to pro- 
 minent names, Moses, David, 
 Solomon ; modern criticism has 
 had to distribute them to their 
 proper, even if unknown, 
 authorship. 
 
 The prophets too, under simi- 
 lar freedom of treatment, are 
 made actually accessible and 
 comprehensible. According to 
 a widespread method of 
 thought, there are large tracts 
 of the Old Testament which do 
 not mean anything in particu- 
 lar, and were not intended to 
 mean much. For the average 
 man of the pew the prophecies 
 are closed, or, if open, only as a 
 museum of antiquities, which 
 *' visitors are requested not to 
 
THE HIGHEE CRITICISM. 141 
 
 touch." Tho Higher Criticism 
 has shed such light on the 
 prophecies that they are made 
 "habitable by modern men," in- 
 teresting to students of history, 
 and intelligible to thoughtful 
 religious people. They have 
 been the lone hunting-ground 
 of millenarians and others, 
 "who regarded them as the rid- 
 dles of sacred weather - pro- 
 phets. In being made a branch 
 of Christian evidence they have 
 been impoverished. They are 
 being reclaimed for civilised 
 uses. The Book of Daniel, 
 for instance, was written in 
 the second century B.C., in a 
 time of Israel's deep depression. 
 It was the expression of her 
 passionate revolt against the 
 tyranny of Antiochus Epi- 
 phanes; it was the Gospel of 
 that age, and kept alive the 
 vital spark of a people in a 
 crucial hour, when it was just 
 possible that Israel might have 
 
142 POSITIVE EESULTS OF 
 
 gone out without producing 
 Christianity. That prophecy 
 was no forecast of modern 
 European i)^^^^^^^^! changes. 
 The predictive element in pro- 
 phecy has been unduly magni- 
 fied by the popular imagination. 
 Why, the distinction of a 
 true prophet was that he was 
 no soothsaver ; that role he 
 scornfully left to the false 
 prophets, and when he did, as 
 rarely, indulge in prediction 
 he was frequently wrong 
 (Isaiah xxiii. Jeremiah xxxvi. 
 30. Amos vii. 10—17). So far 
 as the ideal moral order, which 
 they predicated, is carried out 
 by events, so far their prevision 
 was justified by results ; in pro- 
 portion as history swerves from, 
 the ideal moral order, so far 
 they were mistaken. They felt 
 after tendencies, and sometimes 
 their predictions were strangely 
 fulfilled ; but they "understood 
 in part." The prophets were 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 143 
 
 men who got beliind tradition to 
 reality, beliind the expediencies 
 of the moment to the just thing 
 that stands in the power of G od ; 
 they were reformers amidst the 
 strife, men of insight and con- 
 viction, of a vision and a faculty 
 Divine, who saw life steadily 
 and saw^ it whole, and therefore 
 bade their comrades face the 
 future without fear. " God 
 must fulfil Himself," said they. 
 " His promises are the impera- 
 tive of His nature ; it must be 
 so." Thoughts beyond their 
 thought to those high bards 
 were given, and with resolute 
 hand they held aloft the torch 
 of hope, lit by the sun of the 
 better day that was coming. 
 " Instead (says Pfleiderer) of 
 having in Hebrew history a 
 series of riddles, of psychologi- 
 cal and historical puzzles, 
 everything is comprehensible. 
 We have a clear development, 
 analogous to the rest of history, 
 
144 POSITIVE KESULTS OF 
 
 the external history of the 
 nation and the internal history 
 of its religious consciousness in 
 constant accord and fruitful 
 intercourse, and though not an 
 unbroken advance in a straight 
 line of the whole people, still a 
 laborious struggle of the repre- 
 sentatives of the highest truth 
 with the stolid masses, a strug- 
 gle in which success and defeat 
 succeed each other in dramatic 
 alternation, and even failure 
 only seems to aid the evolution 
 of the idea itself in even 
 greater purity from its original 
 integuments. This is human 
 history, full of marvels and of 
 Divine Eevelation, but nowhere 
 interrupted by miracle or by 
 sudden unaccountable transi- 
 tions.'* Eevelation depends al- 
 ways on man's power to see, 
 not on God's willingness to 
 reveal. God reveals Himself 
 whenever we learn more of His 
 truth. 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 145 
 
 Then, not only is the Bible 
 made more comprehensible, but 
 the apologetic power of the 
 Bible is increased. The old 
 secularist attacks on the book 
 become ridiculous, when it is 
 seen that their weapons are out 
 of date and innocuous, and 
 iheir gibes without point. The 
 most popular anti- Christian 
 tract in our day is the " Mis- 
 takes of Moses." It was written 
 in the worst possible taste, so 
 that many of you doubtless 
 shrank from reading it ; but its 
 main contention was justified, 
 as long as the average Christian 
 argued that if Moses made a 
 mistake all religion was a 
 falsity, and there was a sum- 
 mary end of Christian faith 
 and hope for this world and the 
 next. It and its congeners had 
 some force as a protest against 
 such a notion of the Bible as 
 we know to be unfounded. It 
 was the theory that provoked 
 
 10 
 
146 POSITIVE RESULTS OF 
 
 attack ; men disbelieved with 
 defiance, as under a sense of 
 attempted wrong and trium- 
 phant escape. " Here are blem- 
 ishes," they said ; " absurd sci- 
 ence and contradictory stories, 
 predatory wars and barbarous 
 laws ; that is the morality of 
 your infallible book." As well 
 judge a sculptor by a fragment 
 of broken stone in his studio. 
 Those things were not the end 
 towards which progressive Ee- 
 velation was moving. That is 
 not the morality of the Eible. 
 Eemember the dominating and 
 persevering tendency which 
 is the vital spirit of the 
 Eible. How did Israelitism 
 work out ? Did it overcome the 
 crudities and extrude them ? 
 Only children and fools judge 
 things as they appear ; wise 
 men try to discern things as 
 they are. As well treat the 
 sky as a flat vault, neglecting 
 all the depth of heaven and 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 147 
 
 the incalculable distance of 
 the stars, and forgetting all the 
 astronomy you ever knew, as 
 treat this volume, full of thou- 
 sands of years, as if it had all 
 been written yesterday, with- 
 out any historic perspective at 
 all. Like the old world itself 
 the Bible was long a- growing. 
 
 Some have been grieved be- 
 cause of some things I have 
 ventured to say, but these Phi- 
 listine attacks upon the sacred 
 legacy of the past move me (as 
 one bred on the Bible and lov- 
 ing it dearly) to scornful won- 
 der. Who are we, in these late 
 days of debt to that long past, 
 that, like imps of mischief, we 
 should push out lips of mock- 
 ing laughter at the painful up- 
 ward struggle of the dead cen- 
 turies, at the poor, pathetic 
 mistakes made by men whose 
 experiences generated the reli- 
 gious atmosphere that we 
 breathe ? It is as unfair as it 
 
148 POSITIVE RESULTS OP 
 
 is graceless. These ancient 
 Scriptures must be assayed, not 
 beside sheets fresh from Pater- 
 noster-row, but beside the aw- 
 ful immorality and unspeak- 
 able religions of contemporary 
 peoples. In no ancient state 
 was the idea of God so imperial 
 and majestic, so kindly and 
 tender ; in none was man so 
 dignified, or life so lofty. Their 
 laws were humane to the men 
 who toiled, their literature was 
 deeply compassionate to the 
 poor, their most sacred sanc- 
 tions threw a shield of defence 
 over the weak, and nobly vin- 
 dicated the cause of the op- 
 pressed. Grant that we are 
 driven to deny the perfect- 
 ness of their conceptions ; at 
 least let us remember that if 
 we are enabled to correct their 
 moral mistakes, it is the Bible 
 itself that supplies the stand- 
 ard which we employ. 
 
 That people which was always 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 149 
 
 turning back, was perpetually 
 pressed forward along the high- 
 way of the Lord, as by an in- 
 evitable force, towards their 
 destiny. What is this goal 
 towards which the Scriptures 
 moved ? What is this standard 
 of perfection by which we 
 judge ? Christ, the Word of 
 God, to whom the whole book 
 turns, of whom it is the record, 
 in whom it culminates. The 
 history of Israel is the time- 
 development of the Christ ; 
 " God, who at sundry times and 
 in divers manners spake by the 
 prophets, hath spoken to us by 
 His Son." Letter by letter He 
 taught His people, until, in the 
 fulness of time, He gave the 
 Word which from the begin- 
 ning was God. 
 
 It has been said that all 
 Biblical criticism finally re- 
 solves itself into questions 
 about Christ ; the Higher Criti- 
 cism accentuates that truth as 
 
150 POSITIVE EESULTS OF 
 
 it has never been accentuated 
 before. Behold the Man ! Be- 
 hold the Lamb of God ! He is 
 the Master — He, so long over- 
 shadowed by the Bibliolatry 
 which dared to say, " By me, if 
 anv man enter in he shall be 
 saved ! " He is the Servant of 
 God of whom the prophets 
 bare witness, the Messiah of 
 Humanity, the God-man. He 
 is the Saviour of the world, a 
 quickening Spirit who betters 
 us, we know not how, who 
 binds us to the love of virtue, 
 and communicates His Spirit in 
 perpetual possession. Under 
 the play of historical criticism 
 the ii^ure of Christ has drawn 
 nearer us and stands in clearer 
 light. 
 
 That one face, far from vanisli, rather 
 
 grows, 
 Or decomposes but to recompose, 
 Becomes my Universe tbat feels and knows. 
 
 Under the light of historical 
 criticism the Bible is seen to be 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 151 
 
 the long way to the Christ, Im- 
 manuel, our human Brother and 
 Friend ; that was the increas- 
 ing purpose that ran through 
 the ages, and " The veil was 
 done away in Christ." The 
 time-honoured maxim of Chil- 
 lingworth, " The Bible only 
 the Keligion of Protestants," 
 is superseded by the better 
 maxim, " Christ only the Eeli- 
 gion of Christians." 
 
 Men have been patching 
 motley texts together and 
 " proving things/' constructing 
 systems and rearing prodigious 
 theories about things celestial 
 and things terrestrial ; but 
 unless the Bible leads their 
 souls to Christ, the Master and 
 Saviour of all souls, they search 
 the Scriptures in vain. The 
 text which I have chosen for 
 this evening was long read as 
 if Jesus had been exhorting the 
 Pharisees to search the Scrip- 
 tures; they did little else. 
 
152 POSITIVE RESULTS OF 
 
 They thougM that they knew 
 and understood the Scriptures 
 above all others ; they wor- 
 shipped the law and the testi- 
 mony. This, rather, was what 
 Christ said : " Ye search the 
 Scriptures, and in them ye think 
 ye have eternal life ; you miss 
 their best meaning, you are 
 blind to their ultimate purpose, 
 — they testify of Me, — I am the 
 Light of the world, — I am He 
 of whom Moses did write." 
 And by the new emphasis that 
 is laid by the Higher Criticism 
 upon the person and authority 
 of our Lord, a signal service is 
 rendered to the cause of true 
 religion. Loyalty to Him is the 
 one test of Christian life, and 
 in closer apprehension of the 
 truth as it is in Jesus lies the 
 only hope of real union among 
 men who profess and call them- 
 selves Christians. 
 
 I am well aware that the main 
 question will be decided, not by 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 153 
 
 critical dissertation, but the con- 
 sideration of the improvement, 
 the gai3 that these innovations 
 bring along with them. The 
 plain man wants to know — 
 ''Does the Bible become more 
 intelligible ? "Will the new ar- 
 rangement produce a cosmos or 
 a chaos ? " The answer to that 
 question is the verdict on the 
 whole. The Higher Criticism, 
 by intensifying the human and 
 literary interest of the Bible, is 
 likely to multiply its students 
 and readers. It is doing so, and 
 not before it was needed, for 
 the Bible has shared the fate of 
 most classics — to be more talked 
 about than read. It has been 
 so long viewed as a treasury of 
 texts or a quarry of oracles that 
 its intellectual interest was, for 
 many people, occasionally at 
 vanishing point. To its misfor- 
 tune it is the volame from 
 which the preachers extract 
 their texts ; and to its greater 
 
154 POSITIVE EESULTS OF 
 
 misfortune, the people who 
 read it most regularly read it 
 ia textual snippets. How is it 
 possible under such a method to 
 appreciate the majesty of the 
 Book, the breadth of its hori- 
 zon, the largeness of its spirit ? 
 How many of us have so much 
 as thought of reading through 
 and mastering even the shortest 
 book of all the sixty-six — to 
 catch its real drift and purport ? 
 That great artist in letters, of 
 whose lonely burial in the 
 southern sea we have this week 
 learnt, once wrote, "I believe it 
 would startle and move any 
 one, if they could make a cer- 
 tain effort of imagination, if 
 they could read the Gospel 
 according to St. Matthew 
 freshly like a book, not dron- 
 ingly and dully like a portion 
 of the Bible." Of course, we 
 are all tolerably familiar with 
 those parts of the Bible which 
 are included in the formal and 
 
THE HIGHEE CRITICISM. 155 
 
 informal lectionaries of the 
 churches, and by courtesy wo 
 are supposed to know the whole 
 volume intimately. But so de- 
 sultory is our reading, and for 
 the most part superficial, that, 
 in trutli, the sacred volume 
 holds a dark continent unex- 
 plored by most of us. The 
 Higher Criticism, in adding to 
 the literary, historic, and moral 
 worth of the Eible, makes the 
 whole of the book vividly inte- 
 resting, and some of the least 
 regarded portions, apparently 
 sterile and uninviting, are now 
 most fascinating. So much is 
 this the case that I fully 
 anticipate a renaissance of 
 Bible - reading among the peo- 
 ple, as it is gradually under- 
 stood that the best book for the 
 heart has been made the best 
 book for the intellect too, and 
 that our paramount instrument 
 for devotion and heartsease 
 is equally paramount as a 
 
156 POSITIVE EESULTS OF 
 
 means of liberal intellectual 
 education. 
 
 Of course, remembering how 
 the Bible fixes our thoughts 
 steadily on the bettering of 
 character, we must never for- 
 get that a man can draw prac- 
 tical benefit from the Bible 
 without any theory whatever, 
 just as the light of day is 
 sweet, whether we understand 
 the undulatory hypothesis or 
 not. The helpfulness and vi- 
 tality stored in these written 
 words is marvellous beyond all 
 telling, and I will not make 
 the old, melancholy, and mis- 
 chievous mistake of supposing 
 that any theory is indispensable 
 to Christianity. No ; a man 
 can be a good Christian into 
 whatever mould he runs his 
 intellectual conclusions. " The 
 light that never was on sea or 
 land" does not depend, for the 
 clearness of its shining, on the 
 correctness of our premises and 
 
THE HIGHER CEITICISM. 157 
 
 analyses. But I am not asking 
 how little use and understand- 
 ing of the Bible is compatible 
 with Christian culture ; my 
 anxiety is rather to increase 
 our use and deepen our under- 
 standing of it. Surely it is good 
 to know what demonstrable 
 truth we may about this Divine 
 Library, which wields an in- 
 fluence like nothing else, re- 
 veals us to ourselves, and more 
 than all else reveals to us the 
 communing and redeeming 
 Presence of our God and 
 Father. Its beauties and de- 
 lights increase as we the more 
 understand it. No criticism 
 can hope to explain the Bible 
 completely, any more than 
 chemistry or physiology can 
 explain a man. But the might 
 and majesty of the Book are 
 made more conspicuous, and 
 its serviceableness is increased ; 
 it is made more " profitable for 
 doctrine, for reproof, for correc- 
 
158 THE HIGHEE CRITICISM. 
 
 tion, for instruction in right- 
 eousness/' while its place is 
 made more impregnable than 
 ever before. It is our book of 
 Keligion, inextricably one with 
 our highest hopes, one with our 
 fathers' prayers and all the 
 yearnings of the Christian ages. 
 Its words have a glow and a 
 force which belong to no other 
 Book. Guarded by the love of 
 mankind, it stands, the promise 
 and potency of God's tender 
 care for the souls of men, and 
 under its shadow we go to that 
 fair day in which " The Lord 
 God Himself giveth them light 
 for ever." 
 
LONBOH : 
 
 VT. SPEAIGHT AKD SONS, I'SINTJRii, 
 
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