CHAPTER

IV.

CHRIST A D CRITICISM

BY SIR ROBERT A DERSO

OF ''THE

c\UTHOR

BIBLE

AND

MODERN

LONDO , E

. C. B., LL. D.

CRITICISM,''

ETC.,

ETC.,

GLA D.

In his ''Founders of Old Testa1nent Critici ,sm'' Professor

Cheyne of Oxford gives the foremost place to Eicl1horn. Iie
hails him, in fact, as the founder of the cult. And according
to this same authority, wl1at Jed Eichhorn to enter on his task
Was ''his hope to contribute to the winning back of tlie edttcated classes to religion.'' The rationalism of Ge11nanyat
the close of the eighteenth century would accept the Bible
?nly oa the terms of bringing it down to tl1e level of a human
book, and the problem which had to be solved was to get rid
of the element of miracJe which pervades it. Working on the
labors o~ his predecessors, Eichhorn achieved this to hjs own
satisfaction by appealing to the oriental habit of thought, wliiCh

e1zes upon ultimate causes and ignores intermediate processe .

l'hi commended itself on two grounds.
It had an undoubted
element of truth, and it was consistent with reverence for Holy
Scripture.
For of tl1e founder of the ''Higher Criticism'' it

faith in that Which is holy, even in the miracles of the Bible,

Was never shattered by Eichhorn in any youthful mind.''
In
the
view
of
his
succes
ors,
however,
Eichhorn's
hypothe
.
.
.
Sts was open to the fatal objection that it was altogether tn
adequate. So the next generation of critics adopted the more
drastic theory that the Mosaic books were ''mosaic'' in the
sense that they were literary forgeries of a late date, composed
of materials supplied by ancient documents and the myths and
legends of the Hebrew race. A11d tho11gh this theory has been
,

69

70

The Fundamentals.

modified from time to time during the last century, it remains

substantia lly the "critical" view of the Pentateuch. But it is
open to two main objections, either of which would be fatal.
It is inconsistent with the evidence. And it directly challenges
the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ as a teacher; for one
of the few undisputed facts in t~is controversy is that our
Lord accredited the books of Moses as having divine authority.
THE

TRUE AND THE

a
l

b
t

COUNTERFEIT.

It may be well to deal first with the least important of these c

objections. And here we must distinguish between the true \\
Higher Criticistn and its counterfeit. The rationalistic f
"Higher Criticism," when putting the Pentateuch upon its trial, tl
began with the verdict and then cast about to find the evidence; c1
whereas, true criticism enters upon its inquiries with an open o
mind and pursue& them without prejudice. The differenc.e p
may be aptly illustrated by the position assutned by a typical q
French judge and by an ideal Eng lish judge in a criminal trial. f
The one aims at convicting the accused, the other at elucidating f
the truth. "-The proper functi~n of the Higher Criticism is p
to determine the origin, date, and literary structure of an ancient writing." This is Professor Driver's description of true
criticism. But the aim of the counterfeit is to disprove the 0
genuineness of the ancient writings. The justice of this state- q
ment is established by the fact that Hebraists and theologians f
of the highest eminence, whose investigation of the Penta- a
teuch problem has convinced them of the genuineness of the
a
books, are not recognized at all.
s
In Britain, at least-and I am not competent to speak of
tJ
Germany or Amer ica-no theologian of the first rank has
1
adopted their "assured results." But the judgment of such
C
n1en as Pusey, Lightfoot and Salmon, not to speak of 1nen who
are still with us, they contemptuously ignore; for the ration- ,~
11
alistic I-Iigher Critic is not one who investigates the evidence,
but one wqo accepts the verdict.
Y

Christ and Criticism.

71

THE PHILOLOGICAL INQUIRY.

ins
: is
If, as its apostles sometimes urge, the Higher Criticism is
tal. a purely philological inquiry, two obvious conclusions follow
l'he first is that its verdict 111ustbe in favor of the Mosaic
books; for each of the books contains peculiar words suited to
the time and circumstances to which it is traditionally assigned.
ty. l'his is admitted, and the critics attribute the presence of such
\Vords to the Jesuitical kill of the priestly forgers. But this
Only lends weight to the further conclusion that Higher Criti!se tism is wholly incompetent to deal with the main issue on
ue Which it claims to adjudicate. For the genuineness of the
.tic ~entateuch must be decided on the same principles on which
.al, the genuinene ss of ancient document s is dealt with in our
:e ; tourts of ju stice. And the language of the documents is only
,en one part of the needed evidence, and not the most important
ic.e Part. And fitness for dealing with evidence depends upon
cal qualities to which I-Iebraists, as uch, have no special clain1.
.al. lndeed, their writings afford signal proofs of their unfitness
n.g for inquiries ,vhich they insist on regarding as their special
15
Preserve.
LnTake, for example, Professor Driver's grave assertion that
ue
the presence of two Greek words in Daniel ( they are the names
:he
of musical instruments) demand a date for the book subsetequent
to
the
Greek
conquest.
It
has
been
established
by
Pro(llS
ta- fessor Sayce and others that the intercour se between Babylon
:he and Greece in, and before, the days of Nebuchadnezzar would
amply account for the presence in the Chaldean capital of muof sical instrument s with Greek names. And Colo.net Conder,
tas tnoreover,-a very high authority-c,onsiders the words to be
ch Akkadian, and not Greek at all! But apart from all this, we
ho can imagine the reception that would be given to such a state,n- ~ent by any competent tribunal. The story bears repeating-it .
:e, ts a record of facts-that at a church bazaar in Lincoln some
Years ago, the alarm was raised that pickpockets were at work, .

The Fundamentals .

72

and two ladies had lost their purses. The empty purses were
afterwards found in the pocket of the Bishop o,f the Diocese!
On tl1e evidence. of the two purses the Bishop, should be convicted as a thi ef, and 0n the evid.ence of the two words the
book of Daniel sho,uld b e co,nvicte d as .a forgery!
'

HIST ,OR.ICAL BL,UNDE R.

. Here is another typical item in the Critics' indictment of

Danie l. The book opens by recotding Nebuchadnezzar's siege
of Jerusalem in the third year of Je11oiakim, a statement the
corr ectness of which is confirmed by history, sacred and secu~
Jar. Berosu.s, the Cl1ald.e:an his t orian, , tells us that during this
expedition Nebuchadnezzar received tidings of his father's
death, and that, committing to oth~rs the care of his army and
of his Jewish and other prison ers, ''h e himself hastened home
across the desert.'' Bu t the German skeptics, having decided
that Daniel wa.s a forgery, had to find evidence to support
their verdict. And so they made the brilliant discovery that
Berosus was here ref erring to the exp edition of th ,e following
year, when Nebuchadnezzar won the battle of carchemisb
against the army of tl1e king of Egypt, and that he had not
at that time invaded Judea at all. But Ca,rchem ,ish is on th,e
Euphrates, and the idea of ''hastening home'' from there to
Babylon across the desert is worthy of a schoo lboy 's essay!
That he crossed the desert is proof that he set out from Judea;
and . his Jewish captives were, of course, Daniel and his cont
/ panion princes. . His invasion of Judea took place before hiS
accession, in Jehoiakam's t.liird year, whereas the battle of Car"
chemish was fought after his accession, in the king of Judah'~
fourth year, as the biblical books record. But this grotesqtJe
blunder ' of ' Bertholdt' 's ''Book of Daniel' ' in the be,ginni,og
i>f the nineteenth century is gravely reproduced in Pro f essof
Driver's ''Book of Daniel'' at the beginning of the twentietb
century.
1

73

Chris,t and Criticism.,

.

CRITICAL 1 PROFANI 'T .

According to '' the critical hypothesis,'' tl1e books of the Pentateuch are literary forgeries of the
Exi lic Era, the work of the Jerusalem priests o:f those evil
days. From the Book of Jeremiah we know that those men
were profane apostates ; and if ''the critical hypothesis'' be true,
they were infinitely worse than even the prophet's inspired de' nunciations of them indicate. For no eighteenth century atheist ever sank to a lower depth of profanity than is displayed
by their use of the Sacred Name. In the preface to his ''Darkness and Dawn," Dean Farrar claims that he ''never touches
the early preachers of Christianity with the finger of fiction.''
When his story makes Apostles speak, he has ''confined their
words to the words of a revelation."
But ex. hyp., the authors
of the J?entateuch ''touched with the finger of fiction'' not only
the holy men of the ancient days, but their Jehovah God. ''Je- .
hovah spake unto Moses, say ing." This and . kindred formulas
are repeated times without number in the Mosaic books. If
this be romance, a lower type of profanity is inconceivafile,
unless it be that of the man who fails to be shocked and reBut to return to Mose s.

'

volted by it.
But no; facts prove that this judgment is unjust. For men
of unfeigned piety and deep reverence for divine thi11gs can
be so blinded by the superstitions of ''religion'' that the imprimatur of the church enables them to regard these discred,
ited books as Holy Scripture.
As critics they brand the Pen ..
tateuch as a tissue of myth and legend and fraud, but as re-
ligionists they assure us that this ''imp lies no denial of its in ..
d.
f
.
t
t
''*
sp1rat1on or 1sparagement o 1 s con ents .
it

ERRORS REFUTED BY FACTS.

In controversy it is of the greatest importance to allow op ..

ponents to state their position in their own words ; and here
*"The Higher Criticism : Three Papers,'' by Professors Driver and
Kirkpatrick.

74

is Professor Driver's state1nent of the case against the Books

of Moses:
'"We can only argue on grounds of pr o'bability deriv ,ed fro111
our view of the progress of the art of writing, or of literary
composition, o,r of tl1e rise .and growtl1 of the prophetic to11e
and f ee.li:ng in ancie nt Israel, or of th.e perio ,d. at wh ich the ,
traditions co,ntained in the narratives might have taken shape,
or of the probability that they would have been written down
before the impetus given to culture by the monarchy ha 1d taken
effect, and similar considerati ,011s,for estimating n10,st of whi cl1,.
tho ,ugh plausible argun1ents on one si,de or the other may be
a,dvanced, a standard on which we can confidently rely scarcely
admits of being fixed.'' ( ''Introduction, '' 6th ed,., page 123.)
This n10,dest ref 1erence to '''literary c101np os.it.io1n'' and '''tll)e
art of writing'' is characteri sti,c. It is intended to gloss over
the abandonment of one of the chief points in the origina l
attack. H ,ad ' 'D1iver's Int1..oducti ,on'' appeared twenty years
earlier, the assump tion tl1at su.ch a litera .ture as the Penta ,te,uch
could belong to the age of l\tloses would doubtless have been
branded as an anachron .ism. For one of the main grounds on
which the book,s w ere ,as.signed t,o the latter ,da,ys 0,f ' the monarchy was that tl1e Hebrews of ' six ce11turies earlier wer ,e, an
illiter ,ate people. And aft er that error had been refuted by
a1cl1a.elogical dis,coveries, it was still maint .ained that a code .
,of laws so adv.anced, and so elaborate, as that of Moses could
not have originated in such an age. This figment, however,
was in its turn exploded, when the ,sp1ade of the expl.orer
broug 'ht to light ' th.e 110w fa,m,ous C,ode of' Khammt1 'r ,abi, the
~mraphel of Genesis, who was king of Babylon in the time
of Abraham.
.
Instead, howeve1, of donni11g the white sheet . wl1en confron ted by this new witness, the critics, with great effro ntery,
pointed to the newly-found Code as the original of the laws o,f
Sin.ai. Such .a conclusion is natural 011 the part 0 f tnen wl10
tr eat the P entateuch as merely hu1n,an., But the critic .s canno t
l1ave it both ways. T'he Moses wl10 copied Kham111t1rabimt1st
'

75

Christ an.d Criticis11i.

have bee11the real Moses of the Exodus, and not tl1e mythical
Moses of the Exile, who wrote long centuries after Khammurabi had been f org,otte11!

AN INCREDIBLE

THEORY.

The evidence of the Khammurabi Code refutes an importa11tco,unt in tl1e critics' indictment of the P'entate uch; but we
can call .ano ther witness wllos e testimony den1olishcs their
wl1ole case. The Pentateuch, as we all know, and t'he Pentateu ch alo ,ne, constit utes the Bible of the Samaritans~ Who,
then, were the Samaritans ?' And how and when di d they
obtain the Pentateuch ? Here again the critics shall speak
f or themse ,lves. Among the distinguished men. who ha V'e championed their crusade in Britain there 'has been none more esteemed, non e more scholarly, than the late Professor Robertson Smith; and here is an extract from his ''Samaritans'' article in the ''Encyclopedia B1"ita11n
i,ca'':
''They (the Samarita11s) 1ega1dthemselves as Israelites, descendants of the ten tribes, and claim to possess the O'r .thodox .
religion of Moses * * * The pri estly law, which is
throughout based 011 the p1~actice of the pri ests in Jerusalem
before the Captivity, was r,educed to f orm after the Exile, and
was pu 'blished by Ezra as the law 0 the rebuilt temple of Zion.
The Samaritans must, tl1erefore, have derived th eir Pentate ,uch
from the Je ws after Ezra' 's reforms.'
And in the same paragrapl1 he says that, according to the c,ontenti ,on of the Samaritans, ''no ,t only t'he temple of Zion, but the earlier t,emple O'f
Shilo h and the pri esthood of Eli, were S chismatical.'' . And
yet, ,as he goes on to say, ''the Samari ,tan r'eligion was built on

the Pentateuch alone.''

No,w marlc what this implies. We know something of racia1 bitterness. We know more, unfortunately, of the fierce
'bitterness of religious strif e. And both these elements combined to alienate the Samaritans from the Jews. But more
than this, in the post-exilic period distrust and dislike were

'

'

The F undamentals .

turned to intense hatred ''abl1orrence'' is Robertson Smith's

word by the sternnt-ss and contempt with which the Jews
spurne d their proffered . help in the work of reconstruction ,at
Jerusalem, and refused to acknowledge them in any way. And
ye:t we a.re aske4 to believe t:ha t, at t.his very time a.nd in
these very circumstances, the Samaritans, while hatin .g the
Jews much as Orangemen hate the Jesuits, and denouncing
the whole Jewish cult as schismatical, not only accepted these
Jewish books relating to tha t cult as tl1e ''service books'' of
their own ritual, but adopted them as theilr ''Bib le,'' to the exclusion even of the writings of their own Israelite prophets,
and the venerated and sacr ,ed books wl1ich record the history
of their king . In the whole range of controversy, religious
or .secular, was there ever propound ,ed a theory more utterly
incredible and pr eposterous !
.
SS

'

PREPOS TEROu s p ,osITION.

ANOTHER

N 0 less preposterous are the grounds on which this conc1usion is commended to us. Here is a statement of them, quoted
from the standa rd textbook of the cult, Hasting's ''Bible Dictionary'' :

''There is at least one valid ground for the conclusion -that

the Fentateucl1 was first a,ccepted by the Samaritans ,after the
Exile. Why was . their request to be allowed to take part in
the building of t he: second temple refused by the heads of the
Jerus ,alem communi ty? Very pr obably b.ei,cause: th e Jews were
.awa,re that , t.he Sa.m.aritans di d no t as yet possess th e LawBook11 .It is hard to suppose tha.t otherwise they w ou],1
d have
met with this refusal. Further, anyon e wl10, like the preslent
writer, regards the m,odern criticisn1 of tl1e Pentateuch as essentially correct, has a second decisive reason for adopting
the above view.' '' ( Professor Konig's article, ''Samaritan Pentateuc .h,'' page 68.)
Here are two ''decisive reasons'' for holding that ''the Pen~
tateuch was first acc epted by th e Samaritans after th e Exile .."
First, be-cause ''very prol?ably'' it was belc,aitse tl1ey had not
1

. i7

Christ a1id C1,.iticis1n

..

those forged books that the Jews spurned their- help ; and so
they .went home and adopted the forged books as their BibleI
And, secondly, because criticism has proved that the books
Were 11oti11existence till then. To characterize the writings
of these scl1olars as they deser, ,e is n ot a grateful task b ut the
tin1e has come to throw off reserve, when such d.rivel as tl1is is
gravely put forward to induce us to tear from ou,r Bible the
Roly Scriptures on wl1ich our Divine Lord based His claims
to Messiahship.
,
.
1

THE , IDEA OF SACRIFICE

REVELATION.

The refut .ation 0 the 'Higl1,er Criticisn1, does not"prove that

tl1e Pe,ntateuc11 is inspired of God. The writer who ~ould
set himself t,o establish such a thesis as tl1at withi11 the limits
of a Review Article migl1t well be admired for his enthusiasm
and daring, but certainly not for his modesty or discretion.
Neither does it decide questions which lie within the legitimate .
province of the true Highe1 Criticis111, as e.1:.gr., the authorship of Genesis . It is incredible that for the , thousands of
years that elapsed before the days of Moses, God left His
people on earth without a revelation. It is plain, moreover,
that many of the ordinances divinely entrusted to Moses were
but a renewal of an earlier revelation. TJ1e teligion of Babylon is clear evidence of such a p1i1neval revelation. Ho\v else
ca11 the universa lity of sacrifice be accounted for?
Could s11ch
a practice have originated in a humaa brain?
If some demented ereatu re co11ceivedthe idea that killing:
a beast before his enemy's door would propitiate him, his neighbors would no doubt have suppressed l1im. And if he evolved
the belief that his god would be appeased by such an offensive
practice, he must have supposed his god to be as mad as him~
self. The fact that sacrifice prevailed among all races ca11
be explained only by a primeval revelation. And the Bible
tudent will recognize that God thus ought to impress on
men that death was the penalty of in, and to lead ~them to
1

78

Tlie Fu1ida:mentals.

look f o:rward to a great blood shedding that would bring life

. and blessing to mankind. But Babylon was to the ancient
world what Rome has been to Christendom.
It corrupted
eVery divine ordinance and truth, . and perpetuated them as thus
corrupted ,. And in the Pen ,tatettch we hav e the divine re-iss,ue
Of the true cult. The figment that the deba sed and corrupt
version was the original may satisfy some profe ssors of 11:e
brew, but no one who has any practical know ledge of human
natt1re wou]d entertain it.

INSUFFICIE

,NT EVIDENCE.
~

At thisv stage, however, what concerns us is not the divine

authority of the book s; but the hum .an error and f o11yof the
critical attack upon them. The only historicaJ basis of that at
. tack is the fact that in the revival ttnder Josiah, ''the book of
the law' ' was found in the temple by Hilkiah, the high prie st, .
to .whom tl1e young king entrusted the duty of cleansing and
renovating the long negl,ecte d shri ne. A :most natural discovery it was, seeing that Moses had in express terms commanded
that it should be kept there (2 Kings 22 :8; Deut. 31 :26). But
ess1was a detestab 1le
~ accordig to the critics, the whole busiQ1
trick of the priests. For they it was who forged the books
and invented the command, an .d then hid the product of their
infam0us wo~k where they knew it wot11d be fo und.
And apart from this, the only foundation for ''the assured
re sults of modern critici sm," as they themselves acknowledge,
consists of ''grounds of probability'' and ''plausible arguments" I
In no civilized country w,ould an hab itu ,al criminal he conv,icteid
of petty larceny on such evidence as this ; and yet it is 011 tl1ese
grounds t~at we a ,re called up ,on 'to gfve 'ttp , 'the s,a,cr ed books
which o,t1r Divi ,ne L ord accr'e dited as ''tl1e Wor d of God'' and
n1ad.e tl1e bas,is, of His do,ctriria,1 teacl1in,g.

'

CHRIST

OR ,CRITICISM?

And this brings us to the second, and incomparably

the

79

Christ ,and Cri,ticis1n..,

g1aver, objection to, '' tl1e assured 1~es11lts ,of modern criti,cism,.'
That the Lord Jesu s Cl1rist i,dentifi ed Hin1se lf with .the Hebrew Scriptures, and in a very special way with the Boole of
Mo ses,. no one di sp ut ,es. A11d tl1is being' so, we mu st make
cl1oice between Christ a11d Criticism. .For if ''the .crit ical hy"
Pothe sis'' of the Pe~tateuch .be sustained, the conclusion is
,Seemingly inevitable, eitl1er that H ,e was no ,t divine , or that
the 1,.ecords of His teaching at"e unt1ttstworthy.
Which a]ternative sha11 we adopt? If . the second, t'hen

t
o
in,
s
piration
.
m
u
st
be
abandoned,
and
,
a
gno
,
s
ticism
,ever}r claim
.
tnu st supplant faith in the case , of every fearles s thi .nker . In spiration is far too great a qttestion for incidental treatment
here ;I bttt two remarks with re spe ct to it may not be ino.ppor tu ne. Behind the f rau ,ds of Spiritualis1n there lies tl1e f,act, atte sted by men of high character, some of W'horn are eminent
as scientis ,ts and ,s,cholars, that definite communications are receiv,e d in precise words from the worl9- of spirits. ,* And this
being so, to deny that the Spirit of God could thu s communicate trttth to men, or, in other wo1~ds, to 1eject verba] inspiration on a priori gr ,ounds, betr ,ays the stupidity of sys,tematized
ll~belief. And, se,co,ndly, it is a111
azing that any one who regards the comin ,g of Chri st as. God's supreme , revelation of
Him .self can ima ,gine that ( to pttt it on no higher ground than
''P roviden ,ce'') , the Divine ,Spirit could fail to ensure that mank,ind shquld have a trustworthy a,nd tr,ue recor d of His mis sion and His teaching.
.
1

A ~IORE HOPELESS DILEMMA.

But if the Go sp,el narr ,ative be authenti ,c, we are drive ,n back
upon the alternativ e tl1at He of wh om they sp eak cou ld not
1

be divine.

''No t so,''' the critics protest, ''for did He not Himself conf ,ess His ignor ,ance ? And is not this explained h,y the
~postle's statement that in I-Iis humiliation He empti ,ed Him self of His Deity?'' ' And tl1e inference , drawn from 'this (to
'
*The fact that,. as the Christian believes,, th,ese spirits are demons
\Vho personate the dead , does not affect th e argi11nent.

The Fundamentals.

80
'

quote the standard text-book of tl1e cult) is that the Lord of

Glory ''held the current Jewish n otions respecting the divine
attthority and revelati on of the Old Te.stament.'' But even if
this conclusion--as portentotts ,as it is prof a11e could be es tab'
lished, instea d of affor ding an escape from the di:lemma i11
which the Higher Critici.s.m involve ,s i.ts votaries, [ it would 01ily
serve to ma.ke tha t dilemma in,or,e 110,peless and m.ore t errlble.
Fo ,r what chiefly concerns us is not that, e:r. hyp., the Lord's
doctrinal teaching was fal se, but that in u11equivocal terms, a11d
with extreme solemnity, He declared again and again that His
teaching was not His . own but His Father's, and that the very
words i11 which He conveyed it were God-given.

A few years ago tl1e devout were distressed by the procee 1dings of a certain Chicago ''prophet,'' who claime,d divine
authority for his lucubration ,s. I{indly disposed peopie, rejecting a severer estimate of the man and his, platform uttera .nces,
regarded h.:im merely a.s a profane fool. Sha11thie criti.c.s, betra ,y u,s, int 0 f orm ,in,g a si1nila1l.y indulgent e,s timate of
My pe11 refuses to con1plete the sentence!
.

And will it b.e believed that th e on:ly ,scriptural basis offe1ed

us for this ast ounding position is a verse in on ,e of the Gospels .
and a word in one of the Epistles ! Passing strange it is that
1ne11 who handle I1oly Scripture with sttch freedom when it
conflicts with their ''assured re sults'' should attach such e11or~
mous importance to an isolated verse or a single wor .d, when
it can be misused to support them. The verse is Mark 13 :32,
where tl1e Lord says, with 1eference to His coming a.gain: ''Of
tl1at day and hou r knowetl1 no one ; no,, n,ot th e angels which
are in heaven, 11either th ,e S on, but the Fa ther.'' ' But this follows in1mediately upon the, words: ''Heaven , and earth sha ll
pass away, bt1t I1Iy words shall n ot p,ass away.' '
1

THE

WORDS OF GOD.

Th e Lor ,d's words were not ''in spired''; they were the words
of God in a still higher s.ense.. ''The peop le were astonished

81

Christ and Criticism.

at His . teaching,'' we are told, ''f or I-Ie taught them as .one

having exousia." The word occurs again in Acts 1 :7, where
lie says that times and seasons "the Father hath put in His
own exousia.'' And this . is explained by Phil. 2 :6, 7 : ''1-Ie
counted it not a prize ( or a thing to be gr ,asped) to be on
an equality with God, but emptied f imself'' the word on
which the kenosis theory of the critics depends. And He not
only stripped Himself of His glory as God; . He gave up His
liberty as a man. For He never spoke His own words, but
only the words which the Father gave Him to speak. And this
was the limitation of His ''authority''; so t.hat, beyond what
the Father gave Him to speak, He knew nothing and was silent.
,
B,ut when He spoke, ''He taught them as 0 ne. who had
authority, and not as their scribes.'' From their scribes they
were used to rec eive definite teaching, but it was teachin ,g based
oti ''the law and the prophe ts.'' But here was One who Stood
apart and taught them from a wholly different plane. ''For,''
He declared, ''I spake not from Myself ; but the Father which .
sent Me, He hath given Me a commandment what I should say
and what I should speak. * * * The things , therefore,
which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I
,peak'' ' (Jo ,hn 12 :49, 50, R. V.).
And let us not forget th3.t it was not merely the substance
of His teaching that was divine, but the very language in
, which it was conveyed. So that in His prayer on the night 0f
the betrayal He could say, not only ''I .l1ave given them Thy
W'ord,'' but ''I have given tl1em the words whic]1 Thou gavest
Me.''* His words, therefore, about Moses and tlie Hebrew
Scrip tures were not, as the critics, witl1 sucl1 daring and seeming, profanity, maintain, the lucubratio ns of a superstitious and

ignorant Jew; they we re the words of God, an d conveyed truth

that
was divine and eternal.

When in the dark days of the Exile, God needed a prophet

1

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iii

*Both the Joro\' and the

14: 10, 24,

P1J/Ja-ra John

17:8~ 14;

as again in Chap.

,.

82

..

The P undamentals.

who would speak only as He gave l1imwords, He struck Ezekiel dumb. Two judgment s already rested on that people~
the seventy years ' Servitude to Babylo,n, and then the Captivity
. and they were warned .that continued impenitence wou1d
bring on the1n the still mo re terrible judgment of the seventy
years' desolation s. And till that la9:t judgment fell, Ezekiel
remained dumb (Ezek. 3 :26; 24 :27; 33 :22). But the Lord
Je sus Christ needed no such discipline. He came to do the
Father' s will, and no word s eve,r pa ssed His lips save the
words given Him to speak .
In thi sl connection, mo reover, . two fact ls wh.ich are strangely
overlooked claim pr ominent notice. The first is, that in Mark
13 the antithe sis is not at all b,etween man and ,God , b ut -between the Son of God and the Father. And th e se,cond is
tl1at. He had been r,e-inve sted with all that, according to Phi].
2, He laid aside in c,oming into the world.
''All things
have be.en delivered unto Me 0 My F ath er,," He declar e,d.; and
tl1is at ,a time when the proofs , th.at ' 'H e wa,s de .spise d and r ejected of men'' were pre ssing on Him. His reassuming the
glory awaited His return to heaven , but here on earth the all
thing s were alre ady His ( Matt. 11 :27) .
.
1

AFTER THE K E NOSIS

The fore going is surely an adequate reply to the kenosis

figment of the critic s ; but if an.y should still doubt or cavil,
there is another answer which is complete and crushing.
Whatever may have been the limitation s under which He rested
during His ministry on earth, He was released from them when
He rose f,rom th e dead. And it wa s in Hi s post -"resttrrecti .o~
teaching that He gave the fullest and cleare st testimony to the
Hebr ,ew Scriptures.
T hen it wa s that, ''beginning at M 0 ses,
and all the prophet s, He expoun ded ttnto them in all the Scrip
tt-tres the things concernin .g Himself.''
An4 aga.in, c.onfinning
all His previous teaching about those Scriptures, ,iHe said unto
them, The se .are the words wh ich I' spake unto you while I w,as
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83

Christ and criticism.

Yet with You,that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms,
concerning Me.''
And th e record adds: ''Then 0pened I-Ie their mind that
they might understand the Scriptures . '' And the rest of the
New Testament is the fruit of that ministry, enlarged and unfolded by the }Ioly Spirit gi, 1en to lead them into all truth.
And in every part of tl1e New Testament the Divine authority
of the Hebrew Scriptures, and espec.ially ,of the Books of
Moses, is either taught or assumed.
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THE VITAL ISSUE.

Certain it is, then, that the vital i,ssue in this controversy

is not the value of the Pentateuch, but the Deity of Christ.
And yet the present article does not pretend to deal with the
truth of the Deity. Its humble aim is not even to establish
the a11thority of the Script ,ur es, but m.erely to discredit the
critical attack upon them by exposing its real character and its
Utter fe,ebleness. The writer 's, method, therefore, has been ~-tnainly destructive criticism, the critic .s' fav .orite weapon being
thus turne .d against . themselves.
1

A DEMAND

FOR CORRECT STATEMENT

One cannot but feel distress at having to ac.cord s,uch tr ,eattnent to certain distinguished men whose reverence for divine
things is, beyond reproach. A like distress is felt at times by
those who l1ave experience in dealing with sedition, or in supPressing riots. But when men who, are entitled to consjderation and respect thrust themselves into ''the line of fire,'' they
tnust take the consequences. These distinguished men will llot
fail to receive to the fttll the deference to which they are entitled, if ,o,nly th ey wi]l djssociate tl1emselves from the dishonest claptrap of this crusade ( ''the assured results of modern
criticism''; ''all scholars are with us''; and so a.n -bluster and
falsehood by which the weak and ignorant are browbeaten or

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The F undame,ntala.

84

. deeeived) and acknowledge that their ''ass ,uried results'' are

mere hypoth ,eses, repudiated by Hebraists and theologians as
competent and, eminent as themselves .
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TH .IN GS TO FEAR. ,
1

The effects of this ''Highe ,r Criticism'' a,re extremel ,y grav ,e.

For it has dethroned the Bible in 'the home, an ,d the good, old
practice of ''family worship'' is rapidly dying out. And great
national interests also are involved. For who can doubt that
the prosperity and power of the Protestant nations of the world
ar~ due to the influence of tl1e Bible up ,on character and con ...
,duct? ' . Races of m en who for g,ene ,rations have been taught
to think for themselv ,es in matters of ~he highest moment will
naturally excel in every sphere of effort Or of enterpr.is e. And
more than this, no one who is trained in the fear of God will
fail in his duty to his neighbor, but will prove himself a good
citiz en. But 'the detl1ronem ent 0 tl1e Bible leads pr,ac,tically to
the dethronement of God ; a11 d in Ge,rmany and America ., ,and
. now in England, the effects of this are declaring the1nselves
in ways, and to a:n extent, well fitted to cause anxiety for the

future.
CBR .IST ' SUPREME

If a personal word may be pardoned in conclusion, the

writer would appeal to every book he has written in proof
that he is no champion of a rigid, traditional ''orthodoxy.''
With a single limitation, he would advo cate full and free criticism of Holy Scripture.
And t'hat one lim,itation , is tha ,t the
wor ,ds of th ,e Lo ,rd Jesus Christ s,hall be, deeme d a, ba ,r to cri ,ticism and "'an end of coritrovers .y'' on every , subject exp ressly
dealt with in His teaching. ''The Son of God is come'' ; and
by Him ca1ne both grace and TRUTH.
And from His hand
it is that we have reeeived the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
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