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The Bible in the Critic’s Den

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The Bible In The Critic’s Den

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The Bible in the Critic’s Den

By Earle Albert Rowell

1917

Contents

Introductory

I- THE STORM CENTER OF THE AGES

II- IS THE CHURCH PREPARED?

III- THE GENESIS OF HIGHER CRITICISM

IV- DOUBT AS AN AID TO BELIEF

V- CREMATING THE OLD TESTAMENT

VI- NEW METHODS OF INTERPRETATION

VII- THE MATTER OF STYLE

VIII- HUMANIZING INSPIRATION

IX- THE CHURCH DEGRADING CHRIST

X- THE CHURCH DEMOLISHING ITS OWN FOUNDATION

XI- MANUFACTURING A NEW GOSPEL

XII- EVAPORATING THE SUPERNATURAL

XIII- THE SURE WORD OF GOD

XIV- THE WITNESS OF PROPHECY

XV- WITNESS OF PROPHECY-GOD’S PEOPLE

Introductory

The few Bibles of the Medieval Ages were chained, and few had access to them. It was then considered

beyond the understanding of the common people. Now the “advanced” man would muti-late it, and bury it

under the hypotheses of “profound learning.” Nevertheless, whether chained, mutilated, or buried, it will

do its God-appointed work; “for no word from God shall be void of power.” Luke 1: 37, A. R. V. Cast off

the roots and branches of ‘Christian Skepticism’ and return, oh return to the old paths, the safe way of faith

and obedience. “Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is

the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk

therein.” Jer 6:16. Introductory A GREATER crisis confronts the religious world to-day than confronts the

civil. The civil is for a time; the religious deals with eternity. This is not saying that the kind and character

of civil government are not important. They are. But the principles which have eternal issue in character

are infinitely more important. For many centuries, the Bible has been considered by the Christian church,

nominally at least, the standard or test by which all creeds should be measured, all moral conduct judged.

That there has been wide diversion from the standard, and perversion of its teaching, goes without saying;

but the nominal standard has been held, the Bible exalted, as the very citadel of faith and morals. Now the

citadel is under bombardment. The holy standard is under fire. Moral rule of conduct, atonement, miracle,

and resurrection are under the dissecting knives of learned doctors of theology, professed friends of the

Christian religion. Formerly infidelity was outside the pale of the church. Now its proponents are men in

canonicals, who have taken sacerdotal vows as shepherds in the flock of God. The author of this little book

was himself once an infidel. He did not then know the Bible or its Giver. He had read and studied works of

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infidelity to confirm his non-belief. Interested and eager, yet he found no rest, no satisfaction. When he

came to see divinity in the Word, righteousness and life the central aim and purpose of the Book, Christ

Jesus, Saviour and Friend, vicarious Sacrifice and coming King, he gave himself to the militant army of

faith, and against the false theories which would undermine the confidence, guide, and hope, of humanity.

Needless to say that much more could be written, has been written; but publishers and author have deemed

best to give a small work a large circulation rather than a more pretentious volume a limited sale. This book

is sent forth with the prayer that it may confirm the faith of the believing, and turn from the darkness of

doubt those who feel themselves slipping from the foundation of God’s eternal verities. THE

PUBLISHERS.

The ocean storms and waves have been beating about the rock for ages, and dashing their thundering

volumes upon its invulnerable strength. But the rock still stands, a foundation for the beneficent lighthouse,

which sends its guiding waves over the stormy deep. The Bible is God’s rock of truth. Sometimes men fail

in furnishing the light, but the Rock of the Word stands fast forever!

1. THE STORM CENTER OF THE AGES

THE most bitterly hated book in all the world is the Bible. Men have written thousands of volumes, and

spent millions of dollars, to disprove it. Fifteen hundred years ago, the emperor Julian brought to bear the

vast wealth and powerful army of Rome to reestablish the Jewish temple and religion, in order to disprove

the prophecies of the Bible. A few years ago, Sir William Ramsay journeyed over Asia Minor to

demonstrate that the New Testament could not be true, and ended by writing books proving its truth. In

their furious endeavor to annihilate the Bible, men have turned the key, lifted the headsman’s ax, pulled the

rope, applied the fagot, betrayed son and daughter, father and mother, to horrible fates, soaked the soil of

Europe and written the pages of history with the blood of the world’s noblest and best. Why this strange

obsession? Why this animosity, as fresh and acrimonious to-day as when the Word Himself hung upon the

accursed tree, the victim of the murderous rage of a whole people He had come to benefit? Why this

virulent passion of 1,900 years of cyclonic vindictiveness towards a religion whose basic principle is love

to God and love to man? This is an enigma that has saddened the hearts of those who feel, and puzzled the

intellects of those who think. The Bible is the most expensive possession of the human race. It has cost the

blood of millions of martyrs. The earth’s greatest and wisest have gladly given their lives that it might live.

The Son of God shed His precious lifeblood that “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people”

might read it. Around the Bible have raged, in varying fury, the storms of the ages. All the moral and

intellectual forces of the centuries have mustered their strength in attack and defense of this one Book, and

its product, Christianity. The attack, and therefore the defense, have altered in form only to increase in

intensity as the centuries have passed. Never for a moment has the battle ceased. There have been lulls,

invariably followed by a fiercer attack upon some other point. No other book could have withstood a

thousandth part of the fiendish, seductive, deceptive, insidious, infuriate assault that has been directed for

so many centuries against the Bible. How, then, it may be asked, can the Bible endure it? The Bible is more

than a book, though it is the greatest of all books. It is more than a compendium of ethics, though it has

revolutionized ethics. It is more than a system of morals, though it is the basis of morals. It is more than a

philosophy of life, though it has transformed life. It is more than a religion, though it is the source of

Christianity, the world’s only true religion. The Bible is all of this and infinitely more. It is the life of God

expressed in words and exemplified in the life of His Son; and this life it is which flows into the soul of the

believer, making him the heir of eternity. Man is not saved by theology, new or old, nor by creeds, good or

bad, but by Christ. What we need is not a new theology, but a new heart; not a change of legislation, but a

change of character. The recent attempt to tinker the Ten Commandments and the Bible to suit man’s

disposition, so as to save man the trouble of suiting his disposition to the Ten Commandments and the

Bible, is not the way to save man, but to damn him; is but the age-old battle raging within the gospel fort.

While the Bible is the result of God’s seeking man, all human philosophies and isms are the fruit of man’s

seeking God. While “destiny without God is a riddle, and history without God is a tragedy,” salvation

without Christ is suicide, and Christianity without the Bible is the doom of nations, the end of the world.

Infidelity takes many forms. When to be a Christian is to court death, there are few infidels within the pale

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of the church; but when Christianity lowers the standard to include the world, inevitably the skeptics come

in. Paul, ages ago, said that wolves would enter the flock and not spare it. Christ foretold as much, more

than once. It should not surprise us, then, to find this a fact. Sad as it will be, it is our duty to defend the

Bible against the skepticism of its professed defenders when these professors adopt the infidelity of the

past and exalt it in the church as new light. Many churches are yet stanch and true, and are trying to keep

the insidious unbelief of some ministers out of their pulpits and church literature. What neither the

ignorance of the bigot nor the hatred of the armed oppressor, the narrowness of the pedant nor the scoffing

malice of the infidel, could accomplish, the defection of some of the trusted religious leaders has done.

While for centuries the combined might of the Bible’s enemies beat vauntingly, fiercely, but in vain,

against the bulwarks of Christianity, ecclesiastical hands, pledged to the defense of the heavenly country,

have torn the banner of Christ from the tower staff, and opened the gates of the fort to the enemies of the

Bible, so that now the battle over the Bible rages, for the first time since the Master’s death, within the

church and around the pulpit. As we look at present-day events, we are compelled to ask: “Are the

convulsions of society the harbingers of a better era? Are the throes through which humanity is passing the

birth pangs that are to give us a grander civilization, or are they the death agonies of the human race? Are

the doubts of the doctors of divinity the germs of a higher belief, or the final and most audacious

entrenchment of infidelity within the church? Is the skepticism of the church’s leaders a nobler spirituality,

or has every doubt a sin sticking to its roots? Are the pulverized Bible and a fallible human Jesus the

foundation of a diviner religion, a surer salvation, or the certain evidence of religious decay and

dissolution?” The church, it has been said, has done everything with the Scriptures except obey them. They

have been read aloud in homes, enshrined in magnificent edifices of worship, honored in gorgeous

ceremonies, commented on, trimmed, and glossed, till now many ministers and their flocks regard them as

a sort of Arabian tales, and Jesus as merely a purer Buddha or a wiser Socrates. The man who proclaims a

belief in the infallibility of the Bible and in the deity of Christ is in many religious circles a religious

curiosity, a survival of an antique superstition. “They shall put you out of the synagogues,” said Jesus;

“yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God. And these

things will they do, because they have not known the Father, nor Me.” John 16:2,3. The history of

hundreds of years, and the torturous death of many martyrs, are a horrible but practical commentary upon

these words of Jesus. Theism alone, a mere belief in God, is so far from being sufficient, that Christ’s own

death was consummated by men of fervent theistic faith. The Mohammedans are the most rigid and

enthusiastic monotheists in the world, but their history also shows them to exercise in behalf of their

religion, cruelty, immense and unsparing. Herein lies much of the danger of the present-day destructive

criticism that is indulged by all too many ministers, many of them ignorant of the threatening dangers of

their teachings. The faith of the critical ministers is not based on nor derived from the Bible. They are

drifting, without knowing it, towards theism, pure and simple, like Unitarianism. However numerous the

eddies of the present current of destructive criticism, and no matter whether found in or out of the church,

the whole stream has been in one direction - to demolish Christ as our Saviour, the Decalogue as the

standard of moral law, and the Bible as the infallible will of God, leaving us evolution in place of a

Saviour, human conceptions of right in place of the Decalogue, and philosophy in place of the Bible. If the

little Rome of Marius could hurl back the hordes of invading Cimbri and Teutons, says Charles Jefferson,

who would have dreamed that the mighty Rome of Augustus would fall a prey to the weak descendants of

the invaders? If the few believers of the apostolic days were victorious against the hatred of the Jew, the

subtlety of the Greek, and the iron might of Rome, combined, who would have dreamed that scores of

millions of Christians in the twentieth century would surrender their faith to the ridicule of the modern

critics? Still the battle goes on, with the Bible as the battle center in every charge. It has survived the hatred

of the infidel, the blind, unreasoning zeal of the fanatic, and the contemptuous indifference of the selfseeker.

Will it survive the combined attacks of avowed infidels without, and baptized, secret infidels

within? Never before in all the long and tempestuous history of war against the Bible, have its open

enemies and its professed friends combined to discredit it. How will it fare under this Ingersoll-Judas

onslaught? In every church are many who are aroused to ask this question, and who seek to unite with the

friends of the Bible in concerted defense against its enemies wherever found. It is the purpose of this little

book to aid in this defense. God’s word spoke light to the primitive earth; that Word is light still to the soul

of faith. There is but one effective preparation — panoplied in “the whole armor of God.”

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2 - IS THE CHURCH PREPARED?

PREPAREDNESS” is the great word of the hour, the word to conjure with. It has even supplanted so

mighty and so popular a word as “efficient.” Preparedness is efficiency for the future - is being efficient for

an event which we believe or know to be inevitable. Preparedness, then, is the foresight of efficiency, is

efficiency carried to the highest point of service. Preparedness postulates the ability not only to arm for an

emergency, but also to foresee what the emergency will be. Obviously, to prepare for something that never

could happen, would be folly. The only reason a nation prepares for war is because it believes war to be

either possible or inevitable. Likewise, if a nation, in preparing, could, by some fortunate eventuality, know

just what kind of fighting engines would be most effective in the future, that nation would concentrate on

their manufacture. To prepare for war, then, presumes the possibility of war, coupled with a belief that

certain armaments will afford efficient protection. How relieved and delighted would our statesmen be if a

true prophet should arise and tell them not only the how and the when of future national trouble, but also

detail to them how to be prepared for it all! While nations do not expect and will not receive such coveted

guidance, the church of God has had detailed information on all points of controversy and trial that ever

would harass it, together with a complete set of instructions, which, if followed, infallibly insure victory for

her in every conflict. Preparedness has been a fundamental teaching of the prophets for ages. Amos, 2,700

years ago, issued the startling warning to the church, “Prepare to meet thy God, 0 Israel.” Amos 4:12.

Isaiah, the great prophet of the Messiah’s coming, understood the necessity of preparing for that event

hundreds of years in advance. Realizing that a comprehension; on the part of Israel, of the significance of

Christ’s coming would purify their religious life, he sent forth the flaming message, “Prepare ye the way of

the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Isaiah 40:3. Malachi, the last prophet of the

Old Testament, bore, as we would expect, a warning and a prophecy of preparedness for Jesus’ coming.

“Behold, I will send My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me.” Mal. 3: 1. Jesus said of John

the Baptist that “this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send My messenger before Thy face, which

shall prepare Thy way before Thee.” Matt. 11:10. See also Luke 1:76. John the Baptist’s message of

preparedness emphasized two things: First, the certainty of the Messiah’s soon coming. “The kingdom of

heaven is at hand.” Second, the only way to prepare for that great and long-looked-for event. “Repent ye:

for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matt. 3:2. John’s work is expressly stated to have been “to make

ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Luke 1:17. This preparation was to be accomplished, not by the

erection of expensive temples, not by higher education, not by science, but by the simple though effective

method of repentance. Just before Jesus left this earth, He told of the campaign of preparedness He would

carry on in heaven: “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come

again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye I may be also.” John 14:2, 3. Thus we see

that the whole activity of Christ’s preparedness campaign looked toward His second advent. That this is

true Jesus makes clear in a parable: “If that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming, . . . that

servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be

beaten with many stripes.” Luke 12: 45, 47. While the nations are saying, “Proclaim ye this among the

gentiles; Prepare war” (Joel 3:9), Christ has sent His servants to sound another preparedness message:

“Prepare to meet thy God.” While the nations are preparing for Armageddon, are the churches preparing

for Christ’s return? Are the churches taking advantage of the supernatural revelation of the future as

outlined in the Bible, and preparing to meet the awful events it foretells? The nations, not knowing

infallibly what the future holds, may be excused for being taken unawares by circumstances. But what

excuse can the church give? She has multiplied millions of Bibles in her ranks, each Bible telling clearly

what to prepare for and how to prepare. Since the church has no excuse to offer for lack of preparation

should she be found in that sad state, it may be pertinent to inquire, Is the church prepared for the

emergencies of the present and the horrors of the future? Let us see what her own leaders say. Dr.

Washington Gladden, who is usually an enthusiastic optimist, says : “The failure of modern evangelism is

not conjectural; the yearbooks show it. . . . It is idle to blink these conditions; we must face them and find

out what they mean.”-”The Church and Modern Life,” pages 179, 180. Many other leading divines concur

with Dr. Gladden in this stricture of the results of modern evangelism. If the present methods are a failure,

what are the prospects for the future? The future of the church depends largely, as all will admit, upon the

number and quality of its leaders. Here, too, we find conditions serious. “The decline in the number of

young men in training for the ministry is notorious,” says G. B. Thompson, in “Churches and Wage

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Earners,” page 192. Even this, serious as it is, is by no means the worst. Dr. George L. Raymond says, “For

years, while occupying a professorship necessarily bringing me into close relation with students proficient

in oratory, I have noticed a gradual decrease in the proportionate number and quality of those entering the

Christian ministry.” “Psychology of Inspiration,” page 4. Dr. Joseph Henry Crooker says that between

1898 and 1908, there was a relative decrease in the number of students in the American divinity schools, of

thirty per cent. (”The Church of To-Day,” page 50.) Modern evangelism a failure, an alarming decrease in

both number and quality of those entering the ministry! Is this the preparedness Christ has a right to

expect? No wonder that Dr. Mott is greatly exercised over these facts. “What calamity,” cries he, “next to

the withdrawal of Christ’s presence, would be more dreaded than to have young men of genius and large

equipment withdraw themselves from responding to the call of the Christian ministry?”-”The Future

Leadership of the Church,” page 4. He admits that the new theologians are responsible for this. “Their

views are unsettled as to the nature and authority of the Bible. One finds not only questioning as to the

nature of Old Testament revelation, but a serious recrudescence of skepticism about the New Testament.

This sense of uncertainty about the character and scope of divine revelation is deepened in the minds of

these young men by their observation of ministers who themselves are unsettled and who give public

expression to their doubts.” Id., page 73. Desperate efforts are put forth to increase the quota of ministerial

students, just as is done to increase church membership in too many cases. As some churches lower the

standard to increase their popularity, so, in order to increase the number of clerical candidates, those who

are practically infidels are not only accepted, but encouraged to enter the ministry. Dr. Mott tries to put as

good a face as possible on this ugly fact. Concerning it, he says: “Such difficulties [skepticism as to the

fundamentals of Christianity] operate less now than formerly, because Christian leaders have come to feel

that a wise tolerance as to formal belief at this period best facilitates the leading of such young men into

settled convictions regarding substantial religious truths. They concede that a certain latitude in such

matters may be permitted.”- Id., page 75. Dr. Mott is known the world over as a great Christian leader, as a

man of fervent personal faith. When he gives voice to such discouraging statements as the above, it is only

because the facts themselves must force him to admissions that pain him. It is indeed painful to

contemplate putting into the ministry, because of a growing decrease of the more desirable, men who are

avowed doubters. How can a doubting ministry be expected to make a believing church? The fruit of faith

does not grow on the tree of doubt. But we are amazed when we consider the kind of instruction given to

the decreasing number and poorer quality who do finally attend the theological colleges. “A theological

student,” says Dr. Charles Jefferson, “at the end of the first year of his seminary course, is the most

demoralized individual to be found on this earth. His early conception of the Bible has been torn down all

the way to the cellar, and he is obliged to build up a new conception from the foundations.”- “Things

Fundamental,” pages 120, 121. The “new conception” is the new theology, or higher criticism, which is so

popular today. To prepare a church for the strenuous present and the still more strenuous future, with

leaders who are “the most demoralized individuals to be found on this earth,” will certainly be a

tremendous task. Is this preparing for Christ’s coming? Is this the way for the church to prepare for any

religious work? What teaching is this that so demoralizes the students? Let a leader of the religious thought

of this country and of the world answer. Dr. Charles Augustus Briggs, for many years instructor in the

Union Theological Seminary, and author of various books used in the theological colleges of the world,

teaches that “we are obliged to admit that there are scientific errors in the Bible, errors of astronomy, of

geology, of zoology, of botany, and of anthropology. . . . There are chronological, geographical, and other

circumstantial inconsistencies and errors. . . . In all matters which constitute the framework of divine

instruction, errors may be found.”-”Study of Holy Scripture,” pages 627, 634. From the above, it would

seem impossible for the world to contain a more erroneous book than the Bible. When we realize that such

instruction as this is a commonplace in scores of theological schools, we no longer wonder that the students

become “the most demoralized individuals to be found on this earth.” That these numerous “errors” are

never shown does not matter; for the young theological student naturally supposes that his instructors,

sworn to the defense of the gospel, would never admit such errors unless they had to do so. Hence he

assumes that the learned professors have ample proof for such sweeping statements; and instead of

investigating to learn the truth, he too often allows his faith to be blasted by such falsehoods. Need we any

longer wonder, in view of the foregoing facts, that the many churches fed with this kind of spiritual poison

are fast dying, instead of growing strong and active in preparation for Christ’s second coming? The awful

calamities thrust upon us by the world war, and the consequent unsettled condition of society, make the

demands on the church heavier than ever before in history. At a time when men’s faith is being shattered by

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terrible events, the world turns to the church for aid, and for a robust faith to carry it through its time of

dire distress. And what does it find? - The church too often unprepared, without faith in the Book which

foretold the terrible events of the present, and foretells those still future, and also warns and instructs how

to prepare to meet them. Church leaders everywhere recognize the fact that the church is at the parting of

the ways; that while, in ages past, she has been called to face many a crisis, the most critical of her history

presses at the gates. Dr. Crocker says: “The increasing paganism of America is no mere fear or fancy of a

timorous pessimist. The thunderheads of a coming storm are on our civic and social horizons. He who will

not see them and do what he can to avert the impending storm is either unfortunately blind or criminally

indifferent.”-”The Church of Today,” page 143. What is the present-day tendency within the church in

many places? Is it towards greater faith in the Bible as God’s infallible Word, or increasing doubt

concerning much of it? Let Canon Cheyne, one of the leaders of English Biblical scholarship, answer:

“Every competent scholar knows that the ‘sober’ criticism of to-day was considered ‘extravagant’

yesterday.”-”Bible Problems,” page 54. May we infer that the extravagant criticism of today will be

considered sober to-morrow? Concerning the term “liberal orthodox,” the Rev. M. J. Savage says, “It

means, when you interpret it and put it in straight English, that they have given up the old-time belief in

almost every one of the points that used to be regarded as absolutely essential.”-”Religion for To-Day,”

page 11. Professor Jordon, of Kingston, puts it “in straight English” also “It is no use attempting to

minimize the difference between the traditional view and the critical treatment of the Old Testament. The

difference is immense; they involve different views as to the course of Israel’s history, progress of

revelation, and the nature of inspiration.”-”American Journal of Theology,” January, 1902, page 114. Dr.

Hazzard claims that the two views “are nothing short of mutually destructive.”-”Reasons for the Higher

Criticism of the Hexateuch,” page 17. The Rev. Isaac Gibson affirms that “the traditional and critical views

are face to face in open antagonism.”-Id., page 100. The Rev. Dr. McFadyen sums up the whole situation

clearly “Almost every representative of both parties . . . stands within the church; and that is what

constitutes the real pathos of the whole situation. If the critics were all without the church, careless of her

interests and indifferent to her Lord, while their opponents were all within the church, alone in their

devotion to the service of Christ, the situation might be easily and plausibly explained. But it is not so.”-

“Old Testament Criticism and the Christian Church,” page 313. Shortly after the crucifixion, the banner of

faith and practice was held high by the church in spotless purity. Soon some of the leaders reasoned that

the pure religion of Christ would be more successful and popular if its demands were not so stringent. Sad

was the day for humanity when such a diabolical idea was advocated, and sadder yet the day when it was

carried into practice. In the black records of the Dark Ages is written the account of that fatal defection

from the high standard of Christ. Terrible was the delusion, blind the reasoning, that led to such a course,

and awful was the penalty. The results of that course are much more evident today than they were when it

was inaugurated. Criminals at heart now seek the respectability of church membership, the better to carry

on their nefarious operations. Two things peculiar to this age conspire to make this possible: the popularity

of Christianity as compared with the apostolic age, and the gradual lowering of the standard in many

places. That famous divine and author, the late Dr. Josiah Strong, than whom no one had the good of the

church more at heart, observed with alarm this tendency. Said he: “Immorality and crime are increasing

much more rapidly than church membership. That is, the dangerous and destructive elements are making

decidedly greater progress than the conservative. Our churches are growing, our missionary operations

extending, our benefactions swelling, and we congratulate ourselves upon our progress; but we have only

to continue making the same kind of progress long enough, and our destruction is sure.”-”Our Country,”

page 216. This is a tremendously startling statement. It comes from one of the most acute observers of

modern times, and one who was never sensational for effect; yet it is one of the most sensational statements

made in this generation. While we see the many activities of the church growing, and congratulate

ourselves upon our progress, if we keep on as we are going, our destruction is inevitable. Then we are

simply progressing downward. It is a thought of awful import; and Dr. Strong, who was an incurable

optimist, would never have given voice to it if he had not been forced to do so by the ugly facts. Dr.

Crooker observes the danger, and raises his voice in warning: “The cheapening of the church is one of the

alarming signs of the times. . . . Piety has never been made plentiful by being made easy. Sensationalism is

not the way to spirituality. . . . Trying to make the church attractive by making it worldly will never enable

it to conquer the world.”-”The Church of To-Day,” pages 55, 56. In order to hold the people who are

pleasure-bent, many churches have formed literary clubs, established gymnasiums, swimming clubs,

photographic clubs, rambling clubs, tennis and croquet clubs, added billiard rooms, smoking rooms,

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restaurants, even dance halls and theaters. A “religious” saloon was opened by Bishop Potter, of New

York, to keep the drinking class in touch with the church. But do these efforts avail to bring people to

church? In 1840, Boston had one Protestant church to every 1,228 souls; in 1900, one to every 2,234. In

New York City, in 1840, there was one to every 955; in 1900, one to every 4,736. There are only one half

as many churches to-day, in proportion to the population, as fifty years ago. (Dr. Strong, “Challenge of the

City,” page 54.) How can we expect other than failure, asks Dr. Strong, when the church dallies with God,

and coquets with Satan? During twenty years in New York, a population of 200,000 moved in below

Fourteenth Street, and eighty-seven Protestant churches moved out. In Philadelphia, in one section, while

the population increased fourfold, twenty-five Protestant churches died or moved out. This is more than a

retreat; it is a rout - a stampede. (”Challenge of the City,” pages 121, 122.) (Temcat’s note- Remember the

urgency with which Ellen White was urging the evangelism of the great cities at that time!) When, as Dr.

Strong estimated, church members spend $200,000,000 a year for cigars, and $7,000,000 a year for

missions, one can hardly expect to find overcrowded churches. “Investigation made by the writer,” says the

Rev. G. B. Thompson, “in New England, and by a friend in a large part of Boston, would not warrant an

estimate of even fifteen per cent of the population as regular attendants.”-”The Churches and Wage

Earners,” page 6. “Within recent years,” says Stelzle, “forty Protestant churches moved out of the district

below Twentieth Street in New York City, while 300,000 people moved in.”-”Christianity’s Storm Center,”

page 17. On Sunday, March 19, 1911, the New York Church Association took the census of church

attendance of all Christians, Protestants and Catholics, of Manhattan Island, and found that ten per cent of

the people were in church. Where were the ninety per cent? It is evident, from the facts presented, that an

exceedingly serious condition confronts us in the general condition of the church. The godly men of all

denominations recognize the danger, and are seeking to know its meaning, and how to overcome it. It is

always wiser to diagnose before prescribing. In the next few chapters, we will inquire into the nature of the

trouble, the effects of which are all about us. In the final chapters, we will seek the remedy. Shall we

destroy the bridge which has borne millions to hope and salvation?

3 - THE GENESIS OF HIGHER CRITICISM

THE year 1914 saw the beginning of the most horrible catastrophe the world has ever seen since the Flood.

This war has devastated a dozen nations, thrown the whole world into a tumult of apprehension, killed and

wounded many millions. That this should or could happen in the most highly civilized and Christianized

nations of earth has led the whole world to ask, “Is Christianity a failure?” This frightful carnage among

Christian peoples, butchering one another with all the ferocity of savages, has given point to the infidel’s

sneer that after nineteen hundred years of Christianity, the world is no better than in the time of the monster

Nero, and seems in some respects worse. Is the cause of this war to be found, as skeptics assert, in the

failure of Christianity? Or is it to be found in the rejection of Christianity by those who profess to accept

it? That the so-called Christian nations have failed somewhere, none can deny. But are the nations as

Christianized as we have been led to suppose? Even in the United States, only about a third of the

inhabitants so much as make a profession of Christianity. “Are all those who profess religion real believers

in the Bible?” is a question that is asked more insistently, as evidence becomes clearer that many of the

religious leaders are teaching infidelity. The Rev. G. A. Gordon, of Boston, is known throughout the nation

as a careful, scholarly minister. He recognizes something new in the history of religion. “A new mood has

arisen in the sphere of religion. It fills the educated world. It reaches the entire intelligence of the time. Is

this new mood for better, or for worse? Is there any law or force upon which one may look for control of

the fearful flood? When Christian scholars, teachers, preachers, disciples of the Lord, have, in one degree

or another, abandoned immemorial traditions, is there any guide on whom we may rely?”-”Religion and

Miracle,” pages 149, 150. The Rev. R. F. Horton, one of the leaders of English religious thought, observes

the same tendency. “The Bible, which was declared by Chillingworth to be the religion of the Protestants,

has been dissected, analyzed, discredited, denied, by Protestant scholars.”-”My Belief,” page 88. The Rev.

Dr. G. A. Smith, known internationally as conservative, is likewise aware of this new movement and its

results. Higher criticism “has shaken the belief of some in the fundamentals of religion, distracted others

from the zealous service of God, and benumbed the preaching of Christ’s gospel.”-”Modern Criticism and

Preaching of the Old Testament.” A new movement that is so prolific of disastrous results is worthy of

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careful study- yes, demands most serious consideration; for if these men are right, the greatest danger that

ever confronted the church is even now besetting her, and immediate aid is needed. The attack on the

church and the Bible has changed greatly in the last generation. To-day there is not the crude and violent

unbelief that repels by its coarseness. Infidelity is just as infidelic, but it is more refined. It has taken on

culture and learning. It no longer inhabits mainly the taverns and the gambling hells. Its headquarters are

now in the great universities and some of the renowned theological institutions, and its propagators are

often their learned professors and theologians. But in neither place is it called by its right name. In the

university, infidelity parades under the garb of science; and in the church, it is called higher criticism. It

everywhere scorns the coarse unbelief of Paine, while adopting his very arguments. It eschews with a

shudder the vulgarity of Rousseau, while vigorously maintaining his conclusions. It clothes itself in the

pleasing livery of culture and learning, or the grave habiliments of Christianity. For hundreds of years, the

thinking of Europe was held in thralldom by the speculations and superstitions of the ancients and the

traditions of the fathers. When, however, the mind began to free itself, the power of superstition was

broken, tradition lost its strength, and men ventured to think for themselves. From believing everything,

they swung to the opposite extreme. Thus we find thinkers of the eighteenth century, led by Descartes,

Hume, and Gibbon, doubting everything. They went so far as to doubt not only the truth of the Bible, but

the existence of God, and even their own existence. Finally some leaders of religious thought, in search for

intellectual novelty, imbibed freely of the rising critical movement among unbelievers, and began gradually

to apply the principles of doubting to the Bible. “Criticism is not this or that opinion,” says Professor Nash,

“neither is it this or that body of opinions. It is an intellectual temperament, a mental disposition.”-”History

of Higher Criticism,” pages 84, 85. It is a movement of doubt, of denial, of skepticism, that is gathering

force in both the world and the church with each passing year. Its roots are in heathenism, its poisonous

fruitage is in the professedly Christian church. This new form of infidelity - higher criticism- must not be

confounded with lower or textual criticism, which has to do solely with ascertaining from the oldest

documents the exact text of Scripture. This study was made increasingly necessary by the advent of the

wholesale criticism, which ran like wildfire over the world of thought. All honor to those noble scholars

who, like Tischendorf, and Tregelles, and Griesbach, and Westcott, and Hort,* have devoted the energies

of their great minds and long lives to the humble but important work of textual investigation. (*This is to

be queried. -temcat) Higher criticism is an entirely different affair. It devotes itself to considering the

“integrity, authenticity, literary form, and reliability” of the Bible.-Charles A. Briggs, D. D., “Study of

Holy Scripture,” page 92. This sounds innocent enough; but when the results of this method are to destroy

the integrity, deny the authority, alter the literary form, and evaporate the reliability of the Scriptures, an

investigation is seriously demanded. Richard Simon, a Roman Catholic priest, is called the “father of

higher criticism.” In 1678, he advanced the new theory that only the ordinances and commands of the

books of Moses were written by him, while the history was the product of various other writers, fused into

its present form either by him or by some one else. Simon’s declared purpose was “to show that the

Protestants had no assured principle for their religion.” How it saddens the heart to see leading Protestants

eagerly engaged in aiding this very work! Simon’s views were so vigorously attacked at the time, that they

lay dormant for scores of years; but in 1753, higher criticism again raised its hideous form from the dust. In

this year, Jean Astruc, another Roman Catholic, by the publication of his “Conjectures,” inaugurated the

main movement which for a hundred and fifty, years has been growing with accelerating influence, until

to-day it is the dominant theological conception in the religious world. In these “Conjectures,” Astruc

called attention to the fact that in Genesis, the word for “Creator is sometimes “God” (Elohim) and

sometimes “Lord” (Jehovah). For instance, in Gen. 1:1, we read that “God created the heaven and the

earth;” and in Gen. 4:9, “The Lord said unto Cain.” Absurd as it may seem, it is a fact that the use of “God”

in one place and “Lord” in another was adduced as proof that the accounts in which these words are found

were written by different men at widely different times. This is the beginning and foundation of that topheavy

structure of higher criticism, which overshadows everything else in the religious world to-day and is

casting the black shadow of doubt across every page of Holy Writ. Thus in the Catholic Church was

conceived, born, and nursed the modern child of unbelief. With shame I must write that it has been adopted

by Protestantism, like many another child of error born of Catholicism, and is eagerly heralded by

Protestant divines as the child of light. In 1771, the German critic Semler published the book “Treatise on

the Free Investigation of the Canon,” which gave a new impulse to the movement. He maintained that as

the canon was not formed at one stroke, but gradually, the documents composing the Bible were produced

by a like growth. While this theory contained a grain of truth, it was soon warped out of all semblance to

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fact. The next step was taken in 1780, by J. G. Eichhorn, who combined in one work all the results of

previous critics; claimed, in addition, to see other differences between the two “sections” than in the divine

name; extended the theory over the whole of the Old Testament; laid down the rule, now, universally

accepted by higher critics, that Bible “writings are to be read as human productions and tested in human

ways;” and for the first time, gave the process the name of “higher criticism.” In 1792, still another Roman

Catholic divine, Dr. Geddes, advanced the movement by promulgation of the “fragmentary hypothesis,”

which resolved the first six books into an agglomeration of longer and shorter fragments between which no

threads of connection existed, put together in the reign of Solomon. All this, however, was mild compared

with what was soon to follow. The Armory from Which Our Lord’s Effective Weapons Were Drawn

(Compare Matt. 4 : 4, 7, 10) “Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of

the mouth of the Lord.” Deut. 8: 3. “Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Deut. 6: 16. “Thou shalt fear

the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Deut. 6: 13, Septuagint. With De Wette’s essays, in

1805, began the bold unbelief of higher criticism proper. He flatly refused to find anything in the books of

Moses but legend and poetry - history, he maintained, there was none. He advanced the now accepted

critical theory that the date of the discovery of the book of Deuteronomy in the temple 624 B. C. was also

the date of its composition. It was declared to be a pious fraud perpetrated by priests to establish their

power, and hidden by them in the temple, to be discovered by one of themselves. That ministers of the

gospel believe and teach such a thing is an astounding fact. That leading ministers of the world believe and

teach that one of the sublimest compositions in the world is only a lie, manufactured by hypocritical

religious leaders for purposes of fraud, is startling evidence of the pernicious character of the higher critical

theory. While the distinction of the divine names failed after Exodus 6, the lynx-eyed critics claimed to

detect other linguistic phenomena which served as well. So Bleek in 1822, Ewald in 1831, and Stahelm in

1835, developed the new theories. In 1835, a long stride was taken in higher criticism. That year saw the

publication of Vate’s “Old Testament Theology,” Baur’s “Pastoral Epistles,” and Strauss’s “Life of Jesus.”

The violent religious controversy arising from these productions lasted till 1853, when Hupfeld superseded

the “fragmentary hypothesis” with the “document hypothesis,” which found three main documents instead

of two. The finishing touches were now given in rapid succession. The “document hypothesis” soon gave

way to the present prevailing theory, the “development hypothesis,” formulated by Reuss, and made public

in 1866 by Graf, who turned a critical somersault by advancing the theory that Leviticus was written two

hundred years after Deuteronomy. Since 1883, Wellhausen has been elaborating this theory, till his views

dominate higher criticism the world over. They have crossed the mountains and permeate France, passed

over the channel and control England, sailed the ocean and prevail in America. There were now four

sources recognized in the first half of the Old Testament, designated by the capitals J, E, D, and P. But this

was by no means all. These four sources were found to be inadequate to account for all the contents of

these books ; so the critics, in an endeavor to make their preposterous theory stand upright, made a further

division and subdivision. The original J and E of Astruc were dissolved into this nebulous series: J1, J2, J3,

J4; E1, E2, E3, E4, etc., or equivalents, all of which are now part of the recognized critical apparatus of

higher critical books and magazines. But the end is not yet. The heights of absurdity might seem to have

been reached; but no, the masterpiece of foolishness was yet to come. Having got themselves entangled in

the critical cogs, it was impossible to escape. The Rev. C. A. Briggs, D. D., gravely informs us that “there

were groups of earlier Ephraimitic (E) and Judaic (J) writers, and they were followed by groups of

Deuteronomic (D) and Priestly (P) writers.”-”Study of Holy Scripture,” page 290. (See also Gunkel,

“Genesis,” page 58; Cheyne, “Founders of Criticism,” page 39; Dr. Driver, “Genesis,” page 16.) Charles

Foster Kent, professor of Biblical literature in Yale University, tells us there were whole schools of writers

at work for centuries on the “task of collecting, arranging, and combining the earlier writings of their

race.”-”Beginnings of Hebrew History,” page 42. (See also McFadyen, “Messages of Prophecy and Priestly

Historians,” page 22.) So at last we have arrived by the critical route at the present position of the new

theology, - that whole “schools of writers” were continuously engaged for centuries in patching, revising,

tessellating, resetting, altering, and embellishing the work of their predecessors, some of which was fraud

and forgery! This is what our leading Protestant scholars believe to be the origin and foundation of the

Christian religion! Reluctantly we are led to admit, in the words of Hugh McIntosh, that higher criticism

“would bury an expired Christianity with an incredible Bible, beside a dead Christ, in a hopeless grave,

from which there is no resurrection; and bury along with them the only consolation of a sorrowful

humanity amid the desolations of death and the darkness of futurity, without one ray of hope to alleviate

the eternal gloom; and would turn mankind backward millenniums, and convert the dawn of a new century

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into a midnight darkness and a world’s despair.” However harshly I may criticize the theories of higher

critics, I desire to make it emphatically understood that at no time have I anything to say against the morals

of a single higher critic. I admire their many noble thoughts, their profound learning. It is not their motive I

impeach or even question. But I exercise the same freedom in criticizing their theories that they have

already used in criticizing the Bible. It is not because I desire to criticize either these gentlemen or their

theories that I have written; it is because, after studying their writings for years, I am more firmly

convinced, each passing year, that the greatest danger which ever threatened the church lurks in these very

theories. I agree with Principal Andrew Fairbairn that “we ought never to have controversy with men, only

with false systems; and with what is false only that we may win the fitter opportunity to speak the truth.”-

“Studies in Religion and Theology,” page 137. It is not the iniquitous life of the abandoned sinner, nor the

debauching example of the libertine, that corrupts men, so much as the subtle influence of harmful

opinions fostered and advocated by moral men, noble men, who, under the delusion that they are

propagating principles for the good of humanity, exert their great learning and charming genius to lead to

eternal ruin. As noble a man as ever lived may, in walking along a hillside, loosen with his foot a stone

above the heads of people below. No matter how many errands of mercy those feet have traveled, the

danger to those beneath will not be lessened one whit thereby, nor the stone be made any softer when it

comes crushing upon them. If I see the stone loosened by feet even now bent on an errand of mercy, shall I

hold my peace because the man is noble, religious? Must I hold my peace and see innocent people killed

because, perchance, the man who kills them is a gentle-souled Samaritan? Who is so lost to the nobler

feelings of humanity, who so indifferent, that he would not cry out with all his might, “Out from under!”

“And what remains of the Bible, Beloved, is divinely inspired.” It is related as a fact that a parishioner of a

higher critic kept note of the Bible books criticized by his pastor, and cut from his Bible the portions

criticized till nothing was left but the empty covers, which he presented to the minister. Higher criticism, if

followed, leaves the world without hope in the morass of sin.

4 - DOUBT AS AN AID TO BELIEF

THE tendency of modern science is to eliminate old methods; that of modern philosophy, to discard

antique theories; that of modern Christianity, to use modern science and modern speculative philosophy to

subvert, annihilate, “the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints.” Jude 3, A. R. V. The horse

is being supplanted by the automobile, the steam engine by the electric engine, and the telegraph by

wireless. In like manner, not to be outdone in the process of substitution, modern ministers, in many

churches, are producing numerous volumes in every country in a Herculean endeavor to give us an up-todate

religion, a Christless Bible nay, - a Bibleless Christianity. Man has become so skilled in art, so

successful in science, so potent in war, that his pride revolts at the thought or suggestion of there being

anything beyond the wonderful scope of his progressive, versatile, adjustive, or creative genius. To hint at

a limitation of his achievements is to insult his ability; to criticize his methods is to malign his morals; to

disagree with his conclusions is to flout his genius; and to deprecate his emasculated religion is to traduce

mankind. In the overweening pride of his progress, man is rearing a lofty intellectual Tower of Babel. Like

the tower on the plain of Shinar, its top is designed to “reach unto heaven”- in sooth, to God Himself. But

let man beware lest his modern Babel share the fate of the ancient tower; for “the secret things belong unto

the Lord.” Through the veil of the Infinite, man cannot penetrate. Here the daring of his speculation is the

measure of his folly. Here the bowed head is the highest wisdom, and silence the noblest eloquence. The

world is being filled with pleasing fables, wooing man from the stony upward path of virtue to the flowery,

easy highway of gratification, luring him to pleasant dreams of Oriental languor in Elysian palaces of bliss.

Honest truth-seekers thus encompassed with a seducing salvation of enrapturing ease, find their minds

often clouded in perplexity, and their souls shrouded in darkness. The world in general is tossed to and fro

by every wind of doctrine, without anchor, without compass, without chart, and without Captain. This, in

an ever increasing degree, is the work of the new theology. Once the attack upon the Bible was from

without. Once the devastating criticism was led by a Voltaire. A century ago, a Paine was mightiest in

hurling invectives at Christianity. Nay, only two decades ago, an Ingersoll or a Bradlaugh held highest the

banner of Bible criticism. Then the friends of the Bible knew its enemies, for they were open and avowed.

But to-day the divine stories upon which our parents were nurtured, around which their affections

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entwined, and by which their faith was supported, are declared by the theological professors of many of the

greatest colleges in the world to be not only untrue in some parts, but false in every particular - the myths

of a superstitious and ignorant people, generated in an age of darkness. Thus has the banner of infidelity

been wrested from the Paines and the Ingersolls, and held aloft by religious leaders. I feel with grief and

write with sadness that the foundations of our faith are thus ruthlessly torn away, not by men who, like

Gibbon and Voltaire, are the declared enemies of Christianity, but by the world’s renowned professed

believers. Thus is the Bible smitten by hand of a friend. Thus is it betrayed, like its Master, with a kiss. The

modern religious teachers and leaders not only adopt the old infidel arguments, but enlarge them; not only

endorse the conclusions of the most rabid infidels, but strengthen them; not only repeat the old infidel

slogans, but invent new ones even more revolutionary. The violent unbelief of Voltaire has been baptized,

and rechristened higher criticism, or new theology, or liberal Christianity. In the doubting minds and the

sordid hearts of the scoffing skeptics of a century or more ago were planted the seeds of the rampant

unbelief which, under the sedulous cultivation of learned divines, is opening into full bloom in the

devastating higher criticism of to-day. Fallacies and frauds advanced a score of times in the past, and a

thousand times exploded, are by the higher critics gravely repeated as new and important truths. The higher

critic’s maxim, that the Bible must be studied like any other book, is the basis of all present criticism. And

this theory has led to its corollary that the Bible must be like any other book. They denounce Christ’s

teaching that “Thy word is truth,” because it contradicts their own. But either the Bible is true or it is not. It

is the word of God or a delusion. It is absolutely reliable or not at all reliable. It is, either infallible or

utterly untrustworthy. There is no middle ground. One must take his position either with Christ, Paul, and

John, or with Paine, Voltaire, and Ingersoll. But the higher critic is trying to manufacture a middle ground.

He endeavors to be at once both infidel and Christian, and succeeds in being only infidel. That I have not

exaggerated; that the higher critic is a doubter first, last, and all the time; that doubting is not only a

pleasant pastime, but a serious business with him, is easy of proof. A religious instructor in the Wesleyan

University wrote in the North American Review for April, I900, as follows: “In every sphere of

investigation, he should begin with doubt and the student will make the most rapid progress who has

acquired the art of doubting well. . . . We ask that every student of theology take up the subject precisely as

he would any other science: that he begin with doubt. . . . We believe that even the teachings of Jesus

should be viewed from this standpoint, and should be accepted or rejected on the grounds of their inherent

reasonableness.” Doubt is the means by which unsanctified reason always works. Self is its mainspring,

and self its goal; self its element, and the worship of self its result. But “0 thou of little faith, wherefore

didst thou doubt?” Matt. 14: 31. “Neither be ye of doubtful min (Luke 12: 29); for “whatsoever is not of

faith is sin” (Rom. 14: 23), and “without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6), while on the

other hand, “all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23). The wisdom of the higher critic is

dangerous; for “the world through its wisdom knew not God.” I Corinthians 1:21, A. R. V. All these

theological exalters of reason should obey the urgent words of Paul counseling them about “casting down

reasonings, . and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5, A.

R. V., margin. In face of these scriptures, the fact that “the art of doubting” is actually– taught as the most

essential qualification for learning religion in a divinity school, is a most appalling condition of affairs, and

is significant of the trend and effect of all the teaching of the new theology. Its foundation is doubt, and its

object is to promulgate doubt. Doubt is its essence, infidelity its sphere, and atheism its result. The

destructive critic has the advantage over the constructive scholar. can without risk scholar. The critic,

having no house of his own, can without risk, set fire to his neighbor’s. And of course the burning of a

house attracts more attention than the building of one. The Samsons of higher criticism may endeavour to

push out the pillar of God’s truth, but they are immovable, God’s Jachin and Boaz, “He shall establish,” “In

it is strength.”

5 - CREMATING THE OLD TESTAMENT

THE teaching of doubt as an aid to belief has resulted in numerous such statements as the following:

“Exquisitely beautiful often are those Hebrew representations of the universe, full of richest poetry of

nature; but honest exegesis can find there no faintest gleam of the light of science.” W. N. Rice, professor

of geology in Wesleyan University, “Christian Faith in an Age of Science,” page 6. “The descriptions of

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the exodus from Egypt, the wandering in the desert, and the conquest and partition of Canaan, . . . to put it

in a word, are utterly unhistorical.”-Kuenen, “Hexateuch,” page 42. (Italics his.) “The mighty patriarchs of

the early days were not men of flesh and blood at all; they are reduced by criticism to personification of

virtues, or to tribes, or at best to tribal heroes.”-Dr. McFadyen, “Old Testament Criticism,” page 9. The

Rev. Dr. C. A. Briggs, one of the leading higher critics of the world, is pleased with this result. “It is safe to

say that the Bible has become a new book to the modern scholar, as the result of all these historical studies

and the researches of historical criticism. The material has been in large part sifted and scientifically

arranged.”-”Study of Holy Scripture,” page 508. But unfortunately for the “scientific” advocates, their

theories have resulted not only in no agreement, but in endless confusion. This is evident from the lack of

harmony among themselves, which even a casual reading of their works makes irritatingly apparent. For

instance, there is a difference of a thousand years in the dating of the Decalogue by men equally scientific.

The same psalms are placed nine hundred years apart by men of equal critical acumen. There is a

divergence of eleven hundred years as to the date of Job among critics of the first rank. This is the same as

if one were unable to determine whether Columbus lived in the time of Constantine or was a contemporary

of Queen Isabella. Such are some of the results of the boasted “scientific arrangement.” But while there is

disagreement concerning the dates of the composition and the methods of production, Dr. Briggs voices the

almost unanimous sentiment of higher critics when he says that “in all matters which core within the sphere

of human observation, and which constitute the framework of divine instruction, errors may be found.” It is

the veriest commonplace of the new theology to deny utterly all historical truth to the Genesis account of

creation, Eden, the fall, the Deluge, and the Tower of Babel, which are called variously, according to the

taste or training of the critic, myth, lie, forgery, legend, or poetry - but fact never. (”Study of Holy

Scripture,” page 634.) Cain and Abel, along with Noah and Joseph, are relegated to the limbo of oblivion.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Lot and his wife, likewise even Saul, David, and Solomon, are regarded as but

myths. The vast body of laws found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, including the accounts of the

tabernacle, constitutes what the critics call the Priestly Code, designated by P. But the elaborate

descriptions of the tabernacle and its contents, the disposition of the wilderness camp, choice of the

Levites, the origin of the Passover, etc., are all a “product of the imagination.” It is claimed that when Ezra,

in 444 B. c., as related in Nehemiah 8, read laws to the people, this was their first appearance. Says

Kuenen: “They were not laws which had been long in existence, and which were now proclaimed afresh

and accepted by the people, after having been forgotten for a while. The priestly ordinances were made

known and imposed upon the Jewish nation now for the first time.” On this theory, a greater set of falsifiers

never lived than the promulgators of this code; for there never was a tithe system for support of priests and

Levites, nor sin offerings, nor trespass offerings, nor day of atonement, nor tabernacle, nor feasts, nor any

of the other numerous things mentioned! And the manufacturers of this code knew it, for they were

themselves its inventors! The giving of the law at Sinai was only the private concoction of some inventive

priest in Babylon ten centuries after it was supposed to have been given! How do they prove all this? the

reader asks. They not only do not prove it, but they do not even attempt to do so; they boldly avow that

they “infer” it. Says Wellhausen on this point: “As we are accustomed to infer the date of the composition

of Deuteronomy from its publication and introduction by Josiah, so we must infer the date of the

composition of the Priestly Code from its publication and introduction by Ezra and Nehemiah.”-”History of

Israel,” page 408. In fact, the whole history of higher criticism is little more than the account of

“inferences” which, in the effort to sustain their theories, they “must” make. In 444 B. C., for the first time,

the people hear of a day of atonement and the solemn and elaborate ritual of observance! Yet the thought

that this was never known in their history before does not occur to them! The Levites show no surprise

when they learn, for the first time, that they had been especially set apart by God a thousand years

previously, and that ample provision had then been made for their necessities, and even whole cities had

been appointed for them to dwell in! Critics can believe all of this, yet be unable to believe that Moses

wrote the Pentateuch! Not only common sense, but the evidence, is all against such a perversion of history.

The likeness, in many points, between Ezekiel 40-48 and Leviticus I7-26 was explained first by supposing

an acquaintance of Ezekiel with Leviticus. But when the critics changed their theory, they had to change

everything else; so now we are gravely informed that Leviticus is an imitation of Ezekiel! The critics’ view

of Deuteronomy is no better. In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, B.C. 622, it was found, and appeared

for the first time, say the critics. They calmly tell us that it was deliberately forged by the priests, and

hidden in the temple, to be discovered by one of themselves, and effect the very reformation it did, in order

that their power might be enhanced. Not only were the priests a set of liars and rogues, but even the

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prophetess Huldah, a woman of God, was deceived by their forgery, and thought it the word of God! (2

Kings 22: 14-16.) The reformation that the discovery of this “book of lies” wrought has been equaled only

by the discovery, twenty-two centuries later, of a Bible at Erfurt, chained to a convent wall. The critics who

believe that such a reform was founded on a forgery, have more faith in the power of lies and fraud to raise

man up and inspire him with noble ideals, than they have in the power of truth to uplift him. Those who

urge that if Deuteronomy had been known previously, it could never have been lost, forget that by the

close of the century in which Charlemagne lived, his great code was almost totally forgotten, and in

another half century, it had sunk into total oblivion, where it remained for centuries. But the fact that the

high priest Hilkiah said, “I have found the book of the law” (2 Kings 22:8), proves that there was a

knowledge of its former existence, and that he knew enough about it to know when it was discovered. The

German theologian De Wette says of Deuteronomy that it is proved “to rest entirely on fiction, and indeed

so much so that, while the preceding books, amidst myths, contained traditional data, here tradition does

not seem in any instance to have supplied any materials.” The more baseless the theory, the broader the

assertion. The higher critic’s certainty of his position is in exact ratio to his lack of evidence: the less the

evidence, the greater the certainty. The astute and learned higher critic of England, Dr. Driver, gravely tells

us that “Deuteronomy does, not claim to be written by Moses.” “Introduction,” page 89. Yet in spite of the

learned doctor’s dictum, we read in as clear language as ever was written: “And it came to pass, when

Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses

commanded the Levites, that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, saying, Take this book of the law,

and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be there for a witness

against thee.” Deut. 31: 24-26, A. R. V. See also verses 9, 22. Thus does it still witness against those who

try to overthrow the word of God with their own puny assertions; and thus will it witness against them

whenever they try to break the Scriptures, which “cannot be broken.” Cornill says Deuteronomy is “an

instructive proof that only under the name of Moses did a later writer believe himself able to reckonon a

hearing as a religious lawgiver.” Where, it may be pertinent to ask, did all of this influence come from, if

Moses was but a myth? It is amusing and almost pathetic to see with what learning and genius they first

exalt the personality and work of Moses in order to explain how all the legislation in the Old Testament is

connected with his name; and on the other hand, with what eager trepidation they hasten to accomplish the

equally necessary but exceedingly difficult feat of minimizing to a vanishing point his influence, in order to

give a semblance of sense to their theory that he actually gave Israel no laws at all, and in fact never lived.

(Wellhausen, “History of Israel,” page 432 ff.; and Kuenen, “Religion of Israel,” volume I, page 272 ff.) If,

as the critics assume, the book was written in the time of King Josiah, what earthly use could be

injunctions to “utterly destroy” the sanctuaries, altars, pillars, and graven images of the former inhabitants

of Canaan, when these had been destroyed centuries before? But especially ludicrous would be the laws to

exterminate the Canaanites, when none remained to be exterminated; and to destroy the long extinct

Amalekites. This would be like an enactment now for the defense of New York City against the Iroquois.

In fact, all evidence and everything in the book is suitable to the time of Moses, and fits it exactly, and is

out of place and completely irrelevant as a production of the age of Josiah, whether the book be considered

as forgery or fact. Of course, in the new theology Bible, Job, Esther, Ruth, Daniel, and Jonah are works of

the imagination, without a trace of history. (Dr. Briggs, “Study of Holy Scripture,” page 94.) Not only did

Ezra and Solomon not write anything, but “the wish was the father to the thought, and the thought gave rise

to the story of Ezra. Ezra was the ideal scribe, as Solomon was the ideal king, projected upon the

background of an earlier age.”-Dr. H. P. Smith, “Old Testament History,” pages 396, 397. The case of

Samson is even worse, for we are seriously asked to believe that he was a product of the imagination at

work to produce a Hebrew Hercules. (Briggs, “Study of Holy Scripture,” pages 333, 334.) So then the story

is only a recasting of the myth of Hercules! Hence Samson is only the shadow of a myth! As to the psalms,

Kuenen, Reuss, Toy, and Canon Cheyne all assert boldly, but without an iota of proof, that David never

wrote a single one of the psalms ascribed to him. (Sunderland, “The Bible,” page 113; Cheyne, “Bampton

Lectures.” “Contents of the Psalter.”) But the whole of Peter’s great Pentecostal sermon is based entirely

upon the fact of David’s authorship of the two psalms Peter quoted. If David did not write them, the higher

critics have made absurdity of Peter’s argument. That, however, is their object; for their favorite method of

discounting the Bible is to make it appear childish. To follow all the involutions and evolutions and

twistings and squirmings of the critical theories would be neither interesting nor profitable, even if it were

possible; but enough of the absurdities have been given to show how solemnly these learned men base

huge superstructures upon chimerical assertions, and rear lofty systems upon imaginary facts. It is

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sufficient to add that all the rest of the Old Testament is treated in a similar manner by these ecclesiastical

dignitaries. JESUS AND MOSES THINK not that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that

accuseth you, even Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. For if ye believed Moses, ye would believe

Me; for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words? John 5: 45-47.

Of the thousand quotations from and references to the Old Testament in the New, not one gives a particle

of evidence for any of the above critical theories; but in every case, the Scriptures are used as the infallible,

divine rule of God, which cannot be violated in a single word (John 10: 35), or pass away in one tittle

(Matt. 5: 18), or be changed one iota without judgment (Rev. 22: 19). Christ recognized not only the

existence of Moses, but his authorship of the Pentateuch; also the existence of Abraham, David, and Jonah;

also of Elijah, Isaiah, and Daniel, Noah and the Flood, besides much else familiar to every student of the

New Testament, all of which is cast aside by the higher critics, with an impatient sneer or a condescending

smile of superiority. “0 fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken ! . . . And

beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things

concerning Himself.” Luke 24: 25, 27. Those who own the authority of Christ at all must see that we are to

know that all in all the Scriptures is inspired, and concerns Jesus, our divine Saviour. And surely what

concerns Him it is suicidal to cast aside as of no importance to us, who are to be saved by Him. We would

count a captain or pilot a fool or madman who would cast overboard his compass and steer by inward

consciousness. How much more the folly or madness of the new theology which casts from the ship of

Zion God’s compass, the Bible?

6 - NEW METHODS OF INTERPRETATION

“If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Ps. 11: 3. ARE you seeking truth? Then look

not to the men, but to the teaching. This is the Bible method, and the only effectual one. “To the law and to

the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8:20.

Adopting this principle, let us fearlessly apply it to the higher criticism. The interpretation of the Old

Testament by New Testament writers is marked by their practice of seeing Christ in all parts of the Old

Testament. But the interpretation of the Old Testament by higher critics is, on the contrary, marked by their

practice of excluding Him from it entirely. Says the most recent, and, from the higher critical viewpoint,

the most authoritative history of interpretation: “There is no evidence that Jesus saw a predictive element in

the Old Testament; no evidence that, in His thought, any Old Testament author had foreseen His historical

appearance, the circumstances of His ministry, His death and resurrection.”- Dr. Gilbert, “History of

Interpretation,” page 71. What about Christ’s quoting Isaiah 61: 1, 2 in Luke 4: 17-21, and saying, “To-day

hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears”? And still further: “And beginning from Moses and from all

the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Luke 24: 27. And

yet, there is “no evidence that, in His thought, any Old Testament author had foreseen His historical

appearance”! In order to exalt their own authority and infallibility, they must first insist that Christ’s

methods of interpretation were not only faulty, but mistaken. “Of what in modern times is regarded as the

technical qualification for scientific exegesis, He had, of course, no more than the generation in which He

belonged.”- Dr. Gilbert, “History of Interpretation,” page 72. So Christ Himself is held up to ridicule

because He does not doubt His own words, because He was not a higher critic, because, forsooth, He was

not an infidel! Higher critics defend their position-by illustration. “Many people are alarmed, as if, when

we begin to remove the dirt from an old master, we were going to destroy the glorious picture itself. But

we remove the dirt which has become incrusted, that the picture may be more clearly seen and better

appreciated than before.” Joseph Wood, “The Bible,” page 12. What should we think of the student of art

who brought a microscope with him into an art gallery, and when he saw what looked like a flyspeck off in

the corner of a picture, immediately turned his microscope upon it, and lost himself in examination of that

flyspeck, and left the gallery without having even noticed the picture itself, but discoursed learnedly and

wrote profound tomes upon the chemistry, etc., of the flyspeck in the corner? But one who is not willing to

spend time in erudite investigation of supposed flyspecks, but prefers to devote it to the study of the

majesties, splendors, and unrivaled beauties of the Bible, is laughed to scorn as ignorant, if not an imbecile.

Their principles of interpretation lead the critics far astray. One of their primary principles, tacitly used or

openly avowed, is this: Given a scripture which admits of two meanings, one making sense and the other

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nonsense, choose the latter as the only meaning admissible, criticize according to higher criticism, and

eliminate from the Bible, as evidence of the ignorance of the writer, and proof that the Bible is “full of

errors, imperfections, contradictions, prejudices, passions, . . . that it had its birth in the mind of man.”

Bampforth, “The Bible from the Standpoint of Higher Criticism,” volume 2, page 263. Disagreements are

confessedly assumed, and then the whole account is discredited because of this disagreement. This is one

of the higher critical favorite methods of attack. Another principle of interpretation is one laid down by Dr.

Briggs: “The argument from silence is of great importance in the higher criticism of Holy Scripture.”-

“Study of Holy Scripture,” page 307. In this way, critics can prove almost anything. So they proceed to

build, with all gravity, massive systems of theology, or lack of theology, upon things not in the Bible or

any other book, only in their own imaginations. For instance, we are told: “From the silence of the periods

of Samuel and the kings regarding the Priest’s Code, it is reasoned that the provisions of this code were

unknown at the time; hence they were not in existence; for they must have been known if they existed;

hence the books commonly ascribed to Moses, the Pentateuch,- in which alone we have a record of the

alleged origin of the Priest’s Code,-were not in existence at the time of Samuel and kings.”-Zenos,

“Elements of Higher Criticism,” page 88. But let us admit this loss for the present, and see if it proves

anything. Says Sir James Stephen: “When the barbarism of the domestic government [under the

Carlovingian dynasty] had thus succeeded the barbarism of the government of the state, one of the most

remarkable results of that political change was the disappearance of the laws and institutions by which

Charlemagne had endeavored to elevate and civilize his subjects. Before the close of the century in which

he died, the whole body of his laws had fallen into utter disuse throughout the whole extent of his Gallic

dominions. They who have studied the characters, laws, and chronicles of the later Carlovingian princes

most diligently, are unanimous in declaring that they indicate either absolute ignorance or an entire

forgetfulness of the legislation of Charlemagne.”-”Lectures on the History of France,” lecture 4, page 94.

This case, taken together with the even more remarkable one of the utter loss and eradication from all

secular records, for over four thousand years, of the extensive laws of Hammurabi, demonstrates that it is

possible for not only the observance but all knowledge of a law to perish. Thus we see how futile is the

argument from silence in this case, even granting the premises, - that the law was forgotten during the time;

but there is no evidence that such was the case. On the contrary, there is abundant reference, in both the

books of Samuel, to the law, or code. See I Sam. 2: 28, 29; 3:3; 4:3; 7:9; 8; etc. But the most remarkable

use ever made of the argument from silence must be accredited to the Rev. Dr. Briggs: “A careful study of

all the ethical passages of the Old Testament convinces me that there is an entire absence of censure of the

sin of falsehood until after the exile; and then largely under the influence of Persian ethics.”-”Study o f the

Holy Scripture,” pages 308, 309. No censure of falsehood until after the sixth century B. C., and even then

borrowed from Persia! What does the discerning reader think of such a statement, in the teeth of “Thou

shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” “Thou shalt not take up a false report,” not to mention

the multitudes of scathing rebukes poured forth in burning eloquence by the prophets prior to the exile?

See Ex. 20:16; 23:1, 7; Deut. 5:20; 19:16-19; Judges 16:10; Ex. 18:21; et al. Dr. Briggs then pauses to

admire the results and the method of his work: “These are examples of the methods by which the evidences

of the higher criticism may be applied to Holy Scripture. They are constantly applied by scholars all over

the world, in all the ranges of Biblical literature. If carefully applied, tested, and verified, they lead to sure

results.”-”Study of Holy Scripture,” page 309. Says Dr. Briggs in another place, “Joel used to be regarded

as the earliest of the prophets; he is now commonly considered one of the latest.”-Id. This is how “sure”

their results are, himself being the judge. Another principle of interpretation is this: If two writers record

the same event in the same or practically the same language, as do Matthew and Mark, then they both

borrowed their ideas from some common source, and are not to be relied upon, because we do not know

how trustworthy that common source is. On the other hand, if two writers see the same event from different

but equally true angles, as do James and Paul, then one or the other must be wrong, probably both, and the

higher critic constructs a theory which alone can be right. If a certain event is recorded by only one writer,

it is not to be credited, because it is unsupported by other testimony! And the moment it should receive

such support, it would be ruled out of court on other grounds! But this is not all; for if a writer is silent

concerning a certain event which the higher critics think he ought to have written about, of course he is

then adjudged as ignorant of it, and held up to ridicule because of this ignorance, and branded as unreliable

in everything else. Even Christ has been denounced by higher critics because He was silent concerning a

hundred things they think He ought to have left teachings about. And because He did not, He has been

called ignorant of them. This is no trivial matter for the Christian. It strikes at the very foundations of his

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faith; for if the higher critic’s methods of interpretation are true, then every inspired writer is discredited, on

one pretext or another, as ignorant, or denounced as maliciously deceiving, and faith in the Bible is absurd,

and faith in Christ impossible, for the means for knowing Him have been destroyed. Seeing where these

principles lead us, we need no other proof that they are not only false, but the baseless figment of a

chimerical imagination. And we are led back to the consideration of the fact that the only safe, the only true

method of interpretation is that employed by our divine Lord and Master: “Beginning from Moses and

from all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Luke

24:27. Human theories of salvation are no more efficacious to save than a wreath of water-saturated

flowers. “The Everlasting Gospel” is God’s life-buoy to the soul struggling in the billows of sin.

7 - THE MATTER OF STYLE

“AS analysis has been carried gradually further, it has become increasingly evident that the critical

question is far more difficult and involved than was at first supposed, and the solutions which seemed to

have been secured have been in whole or in part brought into question again.”-Kuenen, “Hexateuch,” page

139. In their desperate effort to make their theories stand the “acid test” of common sense, the critics are

driven into difficult positions; and in their attempts to escape from a dilemma, they often flounder into

worse embarrassment, or sink into quicksands of absurdity. The whole theory is one huge absurdity; but

strangest of all is the fact that the very theories upon which they most pride themselves, and upon which

they lay the most stress, are the ones most open to exposure, and most clearly the product of baseless

imagination. Let one of their experts tell us the foundation principles of higher criticism: “Any one familiar

with literature knows how difficult it is for a well-known writer to disguise his hand. It will often be

recognized through all guises, even by those who are not expert.”-Dr. Briggs, “Study of Holy Scripture,”

page 99. It is upon stylistic differences in the various parts of a Bible book that higher criticism is based.

The whole top-heavy theory is built upon the supposed detection of different writers by a variation in style.

Says Dr. Briggs, “Difference of style implies difference of author and period of composition.”-Id., page 97.

Since “higher criticism is a science, and its results as sure as those of any other science” (Id., page 105), let

us push our inquiry a little further, and ascertain some of the scientific results of this new science when

applied to the phenomena of style. Dr. Briggs says: “It is agreed among critics that the Ephraimitic writer is

brief, terse, and archaic in style; the Judaic writer is poetic and descriptive. The Priestly writer is annalistic

and diffuse, fond of names and dates. He aims at precision and compactness. The logical faculty prevails.

There is little coloring. The Deuteronomic writer is rhetorical and hortatory, practical and earnest. His aim

is instruction and guidance.”- Id., page 301. Without inquiring too closely how he came into possession of

all this information, we are now equipped with the means for tearing assunder the books of Moses, and

apportioning to each of the above mentioned four writers his individual production. But hold! “It seems to

be evident that there were groups of earlier Ephraimitic and Judaic writers, and these were followed by

groups of Deuteronomic and Priestly writers, and the composition of the Old Testament was a much more

elaborate affair than the earlier critics supposed.”- Id., page 290. So instead of four writers, we now have

hundreds! But many of them write so much alike that they cannot be distinguished! We are now gravely

advised of this, in spite of the fact that we before were just as seriously informed that the whole theory

rests upon the “scientific” ability of the critics infallibly to distinguish all the different writers, no matter

how numerous, by their differences of style - which differences, we were told, could be detected by a

nonexpert, they were so obvious! But let us see how obvious the differences are. Says Bishop Colenso - I

prefer to let the critics refute each other: “The style of the two writers [E and J] is so very similar, except

for the use of the divine names, that it is impossible to distinguish them by considerations of style alone.”-

“Pentateuch,” volume 5, page 59. Even Dr. Driver admits the difficulty; but he is so wedded to the theory,

that he is driven to the following logic in its defense: “Indeed, stylistic criteria alone would not generally

suffice to distinguish J and E; though when the distinction has been effected by other means, slight

differences of style appear to disclose themselves.”-”Introduction,” page 126. When learned men are driven

to such absurdities of logic to defend a hypothesis, it is self-evident that they have an absurd hypothesis to

defend. Take Deuteronomy. The first four chapters are declared by most recent critics to be the work of a

different writer from the rest, though “the usage of speech is the same as in chapter 5-11″ Otelli,

“Commentary on Deuteronomy,” page 9. This unwelcome difficulty is easily overcome by the naïve

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ingenuity of another higher critic: “The great similarity of language must be explained as the result of

imitation.”- Kuenen, “Hexateuch,” page 117. How beautifully simple! It is no wonder that occasionally a

higher critic becomes so ashamed of such childish methods that he admits their absurdity. The wonder is

that more do not. Their theory is so pulverized by its own weight that Addis has to admit, after years of

study on this very subject, that “attempts have been made to separate the component documents. . . . But

the task seems to be hopeless, and there is nothing like agreement in result.”-”Hexateuch,” volume 1, page

165. This in spite of the dictum of Dr. Briggs, that it is so easy to detect differences in style that these

differences cannot be disguised from the novice. Higher critics rest their whole case upon their ability to

dissect the Bible records according to individuality of style. So sure was Canon Cheyne of his ability to do

this, that he actually published a Bible in colors, “The Polychrome,” or rainbow Bible, in which each color

represented a different author. Often a single verse was so variously colored that it looked more like the

gorgeous hues of an Indian blanket or a Turkish rug than a serious finding, of “the assured results of

scientific scholarship.” Since the leading higher critics of the world openly proclaim that their “assured

results” are based upon detected differences in style, the subject is deserving of more serious consideration

than is generally given it. In reading the productions of a higher critic, one is often led to wonder how he

knows that a certain section or verse, and in some instances a lonely word, was inserted four or five

hundred years later in such and such a country. We are told that they have such a marvelously acute literary

sensitiveness that it detects, almost automatically, any variation of authorship. That no two thus endowed

agree in results does not matter - the theory is correct anyway! Says Professor Zenos: “Critics are

accustomed to speak of `critical divination’ in a way to confuse the inexperienced layman. The phrase is an

apt one, and may be used as a very convenient designation of a power which the successful critic has or

must have.”-”Elements of Higher Criticism,” page 116. Two Selections of Different Styles from the Same

Author “Ef you take a sword an’ dror it, An’ go stick a Teller through, Gov’ment ain’t to answer for it,

God’ll send the bill to you.” -”Biglow Papers.” “Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but

record One death grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong for ever on the throne, Yet Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.” -”The Present Crisis.” With their verbal

contortions and metaphysical jugglery, they have almost deceived the public into believing that negation is

scholarship, doubt is liberal thinking, and assertion is proof. But if it is so easy to apportion to the proper

period and person fused documents two and three thousand years old, how is it that the same infallibly

delicate literary sensitiveness does not avail to discover the true author of the comparatively recent and

world-famous “Letters of Junius”? The honor has been given to no fewer than fifty-six men, by various

advocates. Why not apply some of this “critical divination” to Shakespeare’s plays, and determine for us

just what he wrote, or whether he wrote at all? And why have these gifted gentlemen not separated the

individual work of Beaumont and Fletcher? How is it, with such an infallible, literary weather vane among

us, that for two hundred years Lord Bacon was regarded as the author of a work of which he never wrote a

word? Bryant was not only a poet but a newspaper man. Yet what a “difference of style” there was between

his poetry and his editorials! Clarence Stedman was both a poet and a Wall Street banker. But who would

expect to find his commercial letters identical in style with his poetry? Who that has read Madame d’Arblay

does not know that she has not only two styles but even four? And who that has read Henry James is

unfamiliar with the vast difference between the style of his first books and his present productions? Says

Prof. John Earle: “The difference of manner in different parts of Johnson’s writings is notorious; and it is

satisfactorily explained by differences either in the circumstances of the writer, or in the occasion or

subject of his composition.”-”English Prose,” Page 468. A student of Thucydides sees that he makes an

unmistakable difference between the style of the narrative portions of his history, and the speeches which

he puts into the mouths of his characters. “And so great is this difference, that it is necessary to treat the

two separately, one might almost say, on different principles. . . . If the speeches were to be collected into

one volume under the title of `The Orations of Thucydides,’ and the history were to be put by itself, the

characteristic differences might have led the critics to ascribe the two writings to different authors.”-

Zenos, “Elements of Higher Criticism,” page 59. It is only by being untrue to their own principles that they

do not declare that the orations and the history are by different writers; for “difference of style implies

difference of author and period of composition,” as Dr. Briggs informs us. By no less a writer than Herbert

Spencer, in his famous essay on the “Philosophy of Style,” there are laid down principles and facts which

utterly demolish the higher critical analysis of the Bible: “One in whom the powers of expression fully

respond to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts,

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which art demands. This constant employment of one species of phraseology, which all have now to strive

against, implies an undeveloped faculty of language. . . . Let the powers of speech be fully developed,

however- let the ability of the intellect to utter the emotions be complete - and this fixity will disappear.

The perfect writer will express himself as Junius when in a Junius frame of mind; when he feels as Lamb

felt, will use a like familiar speech; and will fall into the ruggedness of Carlyle when in a Carlylean mood.

Now he will be rhythmical and now irregular; here his language will be plain and there ornate; sometimes

his sentences will be balanced and at other times unsymmetrical; for a while there will be considerable

sameness, and then again great variety. His mode of expression naturally responding to his state of feeling,

there will flow from his pen a composition changing to the same degree that the aspects of his subject

change.” A consideration of these facts will surely lead us, with Professor Gwatkin, to protest against “the

special pleading of a mechanical criticism, which ignores human nature in its chase after literary

possibilities, and can only make out a plausible case by first assuming unlimited falsification and then

correcting it with unlimited guesswork.”-”Knowledge of God,” volume 2, page 21. Similar absurdities are

everywhere prevalent in the new theology writings on the New Testament. I have space for but one

example. P. W. Schmiedel, professor of New Testament exegesis in the University of Zurich, in his article

on Acts in the “Encyclopedia Biblica,” begins by telling us that Acts contains “a whole series of

demonstrable inaccuracies.” Then we are informed that “no statement merits immediate acceptance on the

mere ground of its presence in the book. . . Positive proofs of the trustworthiness of Acts must be tested

with the greatest caution.” In other words, it must be regarded as a liar until proved true. With surprise we

read that “with regard to the speeches, it is beyond doubt that the author constructed them in each case are

to his own conception of the situation.” These speeches, then, are pure imagination, absolute fiction! Thus

in one sweep of the pen, the learned Bible professor throws into the wastebasket the eloquent discourses of

Paul, and the earnest orations of Peter. In consternation we may wonder what is left in Acts of value. He

tells us: “In short, almost the only element that is historically important is the Christology of the speeches

of Peter.” And we have just learned that these speeches are pure fiction! This is monstrous enough; but

further on, we reach a still more startling statement: “The value of Acts as a devout and edifying work

cannot be impaired by criticism. Indeed, the book is helped by criticism, which leads beyond a mere blind

faith in its contents.” To such lengths as this a person is always led when he casts aside the “Word of

truth,” and is “blown about by every wind of doctrine.” In the place of “sound doctrine,” we have here an

air of knowledge, a cant of advanced thought, and a sound of wisdom. The reader may be puzzled to

determine upon just what grounds the higher critics base all these unproved theories and absurd and

contradictory conclusions. Dr. Driver, one of the foremost higher critics of England, and considered

“conservative,” tells us frankly all about it “We can only argue upon grounds of probability, derived from

our views of the progress of the art of writing, or of literary composition, or of the rise and growth of the

prophetic tone and feeling in ancient Israel, or of the period in which traditions contained in the narrative

might have taken shape, or of the probability that they would have been written down before the impetus

given to culture by the monarchy had taken effect, and similar considerations, for estimating most of

which, though plausible arguments on one side or the other may be advanced, a standard on which we can

confidently rely scarcely admits of being fixed.”-”Old Testament Literature,” sixth edition, page 123. This

is what the “assured results” of “scientific criticism” amount to. Here is the whole thing summed up in one

comprehensive sentence by one of the world’s leading higher critics; and upon his own showing, we see

how utterly absurd, how absolutely flimsy, are their theories, how baseless their conclusions. This is the

boasted higher criticism, which proves the Bible to be a tissue of pious lies. It utters infidelic nonsense as

old as Celsus, with the gravity of a philosopher announcing the birth of a new and solemn truth. This is the

way scholarship of the world is blackening the Bible, and then scorning it because it looks black to them.

Are these “grounds of probability,” “plausible arguments,” which “may” be founded upon “our views”- are

such inane puerilities to be accepted in preference to the authority of Christ, one of whose words should

“not be broken,” and who, has “the bread of life”? Shall we discard our confidence in the divine Book upon

such baseless theories and pitiable logic? Shall we not the rather stand unmovable upon the eternal, fact

that “Thy word is true from the beginning”? Ps. 119:160. The most momentous conflict between right and

wrong of all the ages is just upon us; and only those who stand with both feet firmly planted upon the

Word that “cannot be broken” will endure when the coming storm bursts in all its threatened fury. The

traveler, dying of thirst in the parched desert, hoping for rain from vaporous clouds, is less to be pitiied

than the soul in the desert of sin hoping for life’s water from the modern isms. “Clouds they are without

water, carried about of winds;. . . to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.” Jude 12, 13.

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8 - HUMANIZING INSPIRATION

“THE Bible, then, does not claim to be infallible, does not claim to be exceptionally inspired. No claims

are made for it except such as are made for the scriptures of other people. The Chinese, the Hindus, the

Brahmins, the Buddhists, the Mohammedans, the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans,- almost all of the

ancient nations of the world, - the Norse people, have had their infallible scriptures. And let me tell you,

friends, they have precisely the same and as much reason for regarding their scriptures as infallibly inspired

as we have for so looking upon ours.” The Rev. M. I. Savage, “Religion for Today,” page 545. Since we

have found that the higher critics’ theories are so utterly contrary to Bible teaching and facts, we need not

be surprised if their views of inspiration are also unscriptural. They claim that mistakes are necessary,

otherwise “the writers were lifted above opinions, and were not allowed to think.”-Id., page 360. What

strange logic: The more mistakes a man makes, the better thinker he is! It is to such reasoning as this that

higher criticism is driven in defense of its basic theories. It was left for twentieth century intellectual giants

to produce such an abortion in logic. Even the words of Christ are not regarded as inspired. “The authority

and finality which they deny to the New Testament in general, they deny to Him in particular,” says

another of the higher critics.- McFadyen, “Old Testament Criticism and the Christian Church,” page 11.

They write and talk learnedly of “the mistakes of Christ.” Absolutely nothing under the sun is sacred to

them. Another reason for their denial of the inspiration of the Bible, lies in the fact that they ignore where

they do not deny the supernatural. To get rid of the miracles, the inspiration of their account must be

denied. As McFadyen says, “Its watchword is evolution, and it has no place for miracle.” Since inspiration

itself is supernatural, its existence cannot be allowed; or if admitted, it must be granted to every one, even

the enemies of God. Dr. Briggs maintains that inspired Scripture authors err in their religion, and “they err

in their morals. But errors in moral precept were such as were necessary in order to educate Israel for a

nobler time.”-”Study of Holy Scripture,” pages 643, 644. They even go so far as to assert that Bible errors

are “innumerable, and the erroneousness indefinite and indefinable, and the untrustworthiness unlimited

and illimitable.” Many persons think that higher criticism is the outcome of an honest endeavor to obtain

the truth. But the history of the movement as written by themselves dispels such a notion as a delusion. Of

Eichhorn, the real founder of Old Testament criticism, Dr. Cheyne writes that “it was his hope to contribute

to the winning back of the educated classes to religion.”-”Founders of Old Testament Criticism.” To attain

this worthy end, he set himself to eliminating everything from the Bible to which the rationalists could take

exception. With the empty covers of the Bible in his hand, he loudly proclaimed that what was left of the

Bible was divinely inspired! The views of inspiration resulting from such a position are many; but while

differing in details, they agree in the fundamentals. The most prevalent theory among higher critics is that

of Dr. G. A. Smith in his “Isaiah”: “Isaiah prophesied and predicted all he did from loyalty to two simple

truths, which he tells us he received from God Himself: that sin must be punished, and that the people of

God must be saved. This simple faith, acting along with a wonderful knowledge of human nature and

ceaseless vigilance of affairs, constituted inspiration for Isaiah.”-Page 373. He then consistently illustrates

his view by telling us that men of science, “by their knowledge of laws and principles of nature,” or some

generals, by “taking for granted” that the sun will rise, all had “the same divine movement on their

natures,” and are as much inspired as any writer of the Bible. The writings of Browning, of Carlyle, of

Ruskin, are, on this theory, as much inspired as the works of Moses, of Isaiah, or Paul. But that is by no

means the logical end of this conception of inspiration. Its consistent and inescapable conclusion has been

seen and boldly stated by America’s greatest higher critic, Dr. Briggs, when he solemnly tells us that

infidels like “Hume, Strauss, and Voltaire were guided in their attacks on the Bible by God.”-”Study of

Holy Scripture,” page 8o. Mark well that pregnant sentence, my Christian friends who are coquetting with

unbelief in the form of higher criticism. Pick up your Hume or your Voltaire. Turn to those passages which

most violently insult Christ and most openly and contemptuously degrade Him and His word, and upon

your knees, drink in their God-inspired utterances, and imbibe freely of their Heaven-sent teaching. Do not

read anything else written by these infidels except their attacks on the Bible; for they “were guided in their

attacks on the Bible by God,” but not in their other utterances! Only their infidelity is inspired! God

inspired infidelity! God rending His own word in pieces, and inspiring His enemies for that noble work!

This is the message of higher criticism’s eminent apostle, in one of the greatest theological seminaries in

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America. Mark it well, for this is the boasted new theology. Do you want inspiration pure and

unadulterated? Then cast aside your Bible, take up Strauss, feed on Hume, and drink in Voltaire; and

where they most degrade, attack, and revile Christ and the Bible, just there you have inspiration from God

in its unpolluted form! Ho, all ye infidels, come ye to the fount of infidelity, and drink of the waters of

unbelief God-given! Fling your Bibles into the gutter, all ye sin-burdened souls, and cast your reliance

upon the gospel of hate and doubt as revealed in the Heaven-inspired pages of Voltaire! Ho, all ye

Christians, spurn that deceptive and lying Book you have so long made the grounds of your hope, and feed

upon the bread of hate, and drink the waters of doubt, as found in the gospel of no-miracles, no-Christ, nosalvation,

revealed in the inspired works of St. Hume, St. Strauss, St. Voltaire! No other conclusion is

possible to the critics. They found that they were believing exactly what the infidels had been proclaiming

for hundreds of years. Then there was nothing left for them to do but step out of the Christian pulpit, and

admit themselves infidels, or proclaim that the infidels were inspired Christians. This was the alternative

before the new theology. As we have just seen, it has boldly, defiantly taken the latter course. This is

progress! This is “scientific Bible criticism”! This is the brand-new Christianity, warranted to be without

miracles, Christ, sin, repentance, atonement, or any such foolish, antiquated thing! This new theology was

born of rationalism, cradled in skepticism, nursed by infidelity, and is now baptized, and clothed in a new

suit of clothes stolen from Christianity, and adopted into the church. Strange blindness! Woeful

infatuation! Terrible will be the awakening, awful the penalty, when those who now so flippantly discard

the sacred word of God for the gutter thoughts of Voltaire, meet, in that day so soon to arrive, “the word

that I have spoken”; for “the same shall judge him in the last day.” John 12:48. When we turn to Christ,

what a difference! We find with what reverence He always quotes the Old Testament Scriptures, “which

cannot be broken”; how He pointed the sorrowing disciples for comfort to the references to Himself “in all

the Scriptures,” from Genesis to Malachi ; with what power He repels Satan’s temptations by appeal to the

Word -”It is written”; with what ease He refutes and confuses the wily Jews, always by appeal to the Word.

But when we enter the theological institutions founded in His name and established to teach His word, how

great, how infinitely sad, the change! We find there the world’s religious leaders with contemptuous

solemnity lopping off chapters and whole books, because, forsooth, they do not understand them or do not

agree with them! The very chapters and verses quoted by Christ are cast aside with a condescending smile

of superiority, and even the very words of Christ Himself are brushed into the wastebasket with an easy

wave of the theological hand. What will the harvest of this awful repudiation of God’s word be? Thank

God, a few faithful voices are lifted in clarion warning. But thousands are so poisoned by the critical opium

as to be stupefied, sunk into a spiritual lethargy, from which it seems almost impossible to awaken them.

These higher critics may be presidents of theological colleges, or pastors of renowned and influential

churches; but the humble child of God knows that “if they speak not according to this Word, it is because

there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8: 20. The Christian can never be moved who stands with both feet firmly

planted upon the Gibraltar fact that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Only a moment’s thought

is required to see the use the skeptic can make of such a gospel as the higher critic offers. He can logically

urge such questions and conclusions as the following: “If there are errors in the Bible in many things, why

not in most, why not in all? If I am told to disbelieve part of it, why should I believe any of it? Besides, by

what process am I to distinguish between the false and the true? Since you higher critical experts disagree

as to how far the unreliability of the Bible extends, by what unerring standard may I separate the wheat

from the chaff Your position so far surrenders the whole case, that there is nothing of Christianity left to

defend. It is as if an army were to hasten to defend a fort that had been captured and burned. “You assure

me that the Bible is no more inspired than the attacks of the skeptics upon it; that it contains innumerable

errors, hoary superstitions, lies, forgeries, frauds, and vice; and you expound its shortcomings so

enthusiastically that I can only express my increasing wonder that you still adhere to an exploded Book and

teach the people a religion founded upon what you now so abundantly show me is baseless authority. “I

must at least express my gratitude to you for so completely justifying my skepticism, and fully warranting

my utter rejection of a Book which you solemnly inform me teems with error, and is the product of

imposture. When you, the professed friends of the Bible, say more and harsher things against it than did

ever Celsus or Paine, we skeptics may indeed take our ease, and leave its progressive destruction to its

professed friends. We may yet, with you, in the near future, sing a requiem over the burial of an extinct

Christianity, which was palmed off upon a credulous people by the imposture of an inspired Book, and the

fiction of a divine revelation, and the delusion of an incarnate God, and the fable of a risen Christ. And

when you have omitted all the supernatural, all the miracles, all that I object to, pray what will be left that I

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do not already possess? Especially when you tell me that my own strictures upon the Bible, and criticisms

of Christ, are more inspired of God than the Book and its Author, why should I accept your decadent

religion? Why should you not instead accept my gospel of skepticism, unbelief, infidelity, atheism, which

you proclaim is more inspired than your Bible?” Reader, it is still true Jesus saves. Proud or weak or self

sufficient Peter may sink in fear; but Jesus treads the waves as though they were rock; and His outstretched

hand will save every soul in life’s turbulent sea who will cry, with Peter, “Lord save, or I perish!”

9 - THE CHURCH DEGRADING CHRIST

“I CONCLUDE, therefore, that the fate of Jesus and His gospel is in no way bound up with the fate of

miracle. It is evident, even if naturalism is to control men’s views of all history, that the really great things

in Christ and His gospel abide. . . . Only the fringe of the evangelical career is torn away. We lose the

stilling of the storm, the walking on the sea, the feeding of the multitude, the raising of the widow’s only

son and the dead Lazarus,” and His bodily resurrection.” - The Rev. G. A. Gordon, “Religion and Miracle,”

page 130. “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” Matt. 16:13, A. R. V. After dissecting the Old

Testament, the higher critics turned their scalpel upon the New Testament, and have now been dissecting it

with an ever-growing boldness, and would fain turn their weapon of destruction upon Christ Himself. Dr.

Briggs, who holds a brief for higher criticism, says that “the higher criticism of Holy Scripture is a science,

and its results as sure as those of any other science.”-”Study of Holy Scripture,” page 105. Let us see, then,

what some of the “sure results” of this “science” are when applied to Christ. “Back to Christ” has been the

cry; and so in the last fifty years, more lives of Christ have been written than in all the eighteen hundred

years previous. Having discarded most of the Old Testament as useless husk, and discredited a large part of

the New as myth and legend, the higher critics at last awoke to the realization of the fact that they were on

dangerous ground. To excuse their course, and steel their arm for further dissecting, they claimed that they

were discarding only the inconsequential husk, or outer shell, to get to the kernel - Christ. Yet in spite of

their claim to sacrifice nothing essential, they are making desperate efforts to convince themselves and the

church that they have not given up Jesus. When it is pointed out that their understanding of Him is contrary

to ours in the fundamentals, they inform us, with a pitying smile, that they have “rediscovered Jesus,” that

they have “cast new light upon His life.” When Paul or James or John contradicts their interpretation of

Him, they calmly tell us that the apostles were wrong. When the facts are against the theory, why, of

course, the facts must be altered or excluded, that the theory may stand! In short, though Christ gave His

Spirit to guide His disciples “into all truth,” these Spirit-guided disciples “misinterpreted Christ” in many

instances, falsified Him in others; and it has been left to the infallible “critical divination” of the modern

higher critic to interpret Him aright! Now let us briefly review a few points of this new interpretation,

which is casting so much “new light” on Christ, and is such an improvement over the antiquated views of

the bosom friends of Jesus. Since the critics had previously branded the fall, the Flood, the destruction of

Sodom, the exodus, and much else, as “utterly unhistorical,” and all the persons mentioned in the books of

Moses, with Moses himself, and Job, Jonah, David, Solomon, and even Ezra, as alike pure myths; when

they found that Christ, in every instance that He has occasion to refer to any of these persons or events,

invariably accepts them as actual, historical, and never as legend or myth, they were for a while staggered,

and endeavored, with a zeal worthy of a better cause, to reconcile the facts with their theory. It never

occurred to them to alter their theory to fit the facts. But they soon recognized the impossibility of such a

reconciliation, and so the inexorable logic of their theory forced them to take another step in the history of

the movement - they boldly proclaimed that Christ was mistaken in His belief in these accounts. The Rev.

Dr. Clarke tells us that He had “ideas inherited from an expiring age, existing side by side with His vision

of eternal truth,” and that He conceived “the coming kingdom in the mistaken manner of the time.”-”Use of

Scripture,” page l09. Christ, then, erred! He was deceived! And since He taught these deceptions, He was

also a deceiver! For hadn’t they, the higher critics, proved that Moses and Abraham were myths, and the

Flood and the destruction of Sodom the silliest legends? Christ believed these old legends and childish

accounts as actual history, and thus taught them; so here was an open disagreement between the critics and

Christ. The critics could not be wrong, so of course Christ must be! What a sight- a deceived Saviour still

further deceiving a deluded people! When Ingersoll lectured on “the mistakes of Moses,” the Christian

world was shocked, and held up its hands in horror; but to-day, when hundreds of professed Christian

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ministers are lecturing to professed Christian churches, from their own pulpits, on “the mistakes of Christ,”

there is hardly a whispered protest in the same churches that were so horrified by Ingersoll. Once the

attacks were made by skeptics upon despicable trivialities; but now they are made by ministers, in

Christian pulpits the world over, against the foundations of the Christian religion. Since the fall is

discarded as a legend, the fact of sin is ignored or denied; or as Campbell, minister of London City Temple,

says, “Sin is, after all; a quest for God.”-”New Theology,” page 151. But, says the Bible: “Sin is the

transgression of the law.” “He that committeth sin is of the devil ; for the devil sinneth from the beginning.”

1 John 3: 4, 8. The devil, then, was engaged in “a quest for God.” But in spite of Campbell’s dictum, we

know that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), and not, as this sugarcoated theology would have us

believe, eternal life. Since the atonement is founded upon the fact that “all have sinned, and come short of

the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and is the very heart of our redemption, and the burden of the Bible, and

the object of the gospel, we need not be surprised that their logic compels them to reject this also. Nay,

they spurn it. “The doctrine of the atonement, as popularly held,” says the Rev. R. J. Campbell, “is not only

not true, but it ought not to be true: it is a serious hindrance to spiritual religion. Why in the world should

God require such a sacrifice before feeling Himself free to forgive His erring children ?”-”New Theology,”

page 115. Such a question reveals a lamentably false conception of what the claims of justice are. But this

is the view everywhere prevalent in new theology books, and is the logical outcome of their fundamentally

infidelic theories. The prevalence of such vicious doctrines is sapping the spirituality and cutting the

sinews of faith in the Christian church. Of course, with the atonement goes the belief in the incarnation.

“The nativity stories belong to the poetry of religion, not to history. To regard them as narratives of actual

fact, is to misunderstand them.” “The simple and natural conclusion is that Jesus was the child of Joseph

and Mary.”-”New Theology,” pages 101, 102. Other exponents of the new theology, like Canon Cheyne, of

England, and Pfleider, professor of theology in the University of Berlin, carry this conception to its logical

conclusion. The latter seriously informs us that “to the men of old, the Christ of modern thought would

have been incomprehensible and therefore untrue; while to the mind of to-day, simple faith in the antique

mythical epic is no longer possible.”-”Early Christian Conception of Christ,” page 13. Having assumed that

which most needs proof, he proceeds to tell us that “an attempt has been made, by means of separating

away later accretions and by falling back upon the oldest historic sources [which sources, by the way, the

critics themselves manufacture, as we shall see later], to approach as nearly as possible to the historical

truth concerning the Founder of our religion, and to present His form in its simple human grandeur and

stripped of all mythical accessories.”- Id., pages 7, 8. Having swept away the accumulated evidences of

nineteen centuries of research, in one jaunty sentence, he then delves into the musty accounts of the hoary

myths of the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece, Persia, and India, and upon finding among the thousands

of puerile absurdities of these religions, a legend here and there remotely similar to the New Testament

accounts of Christ, he triumphantly points to it as the origin of the New Testament record. “In the history

of religion, many parallels,” he says, “are found to all these traits of the New Testament conception of

Christ as the Saviour of the world.”-Id., pages 86, 87. The stories of Christianity are dependent upon “the

myths and legends of universal history.”-Id., page 14. And so, in the teeth of all evidence to the contrary,

he pens the monstrous sentence that “all the miracles [of the New Testament] find countless parallels in the

legends of pagan heroes.”-Id., page 65. The logic of such a conception leads him, and numberless others

who hold such views, to the conclusion that Christianity “sprang up in the world of those days as the ripe

fruit of ages of development, and in a soil already prepared. Now it is of course easily comprehended that

this evolutionist method of inquiry should have a disturbing influence upon many persons, . . . because it

appears to be nothing more than a combination of ideas that had existed for ages,” in heathen and degraded

minds. (Id., pages 152, 153.) What! you exclaim. Did Christianity emanate from heathen darkness? Is our

New Testament but a garbled edition of the crudities of a superstitious people who worshiped stocks and

stones? Are the accounts of Him who calmed ‘the raging sea, spoke peace to the soul, and went about doing

good, the fruit of the immoral superstitions of a people who ate one another? No, these infidel theories are

not the ravings of a Voltaire, nor the sneers of a Paine. They are the sober and earnest statements of a

number of the greatest religious teachers of the world, standing in the van of Biblical scholarship, high in

the councils of the church. And their ideas are eagerly absorbed by thousands of young ministers, anxious

to distinguish themselves by their “broad scholarship” and “liberal theology,” and are retailed to their

congregations in graduated and sugar-coated doses. Thus hypodermic injections of spiritual poison are

given to the church by her “doctors of divinity”; and with her spiritual nerves paralyzed, she is sinking into

a deathlike lethargy, from which only the last fiery message of the Holy Spirit can arouse her. But the

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Bible, you say, teaches the deity of Christ; and He said of His own words, “Heaven and earth shall pass

away, but My words shall not pass away.” Matt. 24: 35. True; but “one of the greatest stumblingblocks in

the way of many devout and intelligent minds to-day is that of the supposed binding authority of the letter

of Scripture.” -The Rev. R. J. Campbell, “New Theology,” page 176. Then in order to excuse themselves

for casting overboard the Bible, this new theology solemnly informs us that Christ was the first to do it,

and that they are only piously following the example consecrated by Him. “The official teachers began

everything with `It is written,’ and then followed elaborate expositions. . . . Jesus simply ignored this whole

method. He did not need it for Himself; and what is more remarkable, He took it for granted that His

hearers did not need it. . . . One would have difficulty to find more complete emancipation from authority

than He represented in His own person. . In point of method, then, Jesus made as complete a break with

Scriptural authority as could well be.”-G. A. Coe, “Religion of a Mature Mind,” page 97. In like manner

says Prof. G. W. Knox : “No book, however sacred, no law, though written by the finger of God on tablets

of stone, no temple, though in its most holy place Jehovah had His dwelling, could command or silence

Him.”-”The Gospel of Jesus,” Page 82. Yet God opened the heavens to say, “This is My beloved Son: hear

Him,” Mark 9: 7. And Christ said, “The word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me;”

and : “The word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I spake not from Myself; but the

Father that sent Me, He hath given Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I

know that His commandment is life eternal; the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said

unto Me, so I speak.” John, 14:24; 12: 48-50. Again and again He meets the arch tempter and his subtleties

with “It is written.” Open your Gospels almost at random, and you will find that if one doctrine is more

prominent than another, it is that Christ was absolutely subject, in the most minute particular, to the will of

His Father as revealed in the Old Testament, and as revealed to Him from day to day in those lonely

watches on the mountain, while His disciples lay wrapped in slumber. Is it any wonder, when one reads

such open, barefaced contradictions of the Bible as just quoted, that one is led to doubt if the higher critics

read the Bible at all? While claiming to return to the historical Christ, this new theology disbelieves His

most explicit utterances, disowns His lordship over them, repudiates His claims to deity, calls His belief in

the Old Testament a snare and a delusion, rejects completely His authenticated miracles, criticizes,

discards, and even spurns much of the Gospel accounts of Him as largely fiction, and always wholly

subject to any man’s ignorant caprice. In fact, these higher critics not only exclude the supernatural, and

deny and ridicule prophecy, but hand over nature to science, relegate history to secular writers, abandon

truth to philosophy, and leave only feeling, imagination, and illusion, deception, fraud, and legends, to

religion. We are roundly told that the words of Christ recorded in the Gospel of John “are wholly

unhistorical, and existed only in the imagination of the unknown writer, who considered them necessary to

elucidate his idea of the Logos-Messiah.”- Picton, “Man and the Bible,” page 225. And other eminent

divines assert, in similar uncompromising ways, the utterly unhistorical character of the rest of the New

Testament. What emerges from this man-made chaos is not the Christianity of the apostles, nor the “mind

of the Master,” but a perversion, a miserable mongrel, that is, another gospel, which indeed is not another.

In order to evade the damaging force of their open denial of the authority of Christ, the claim is made that

while much of the Gospels is myth and legend, this is really better than if they were true history! Says the

Rev. R. J. Campbell, “Myth and legend are truer than history, for they take us to the inside of things,

whereas history only shows us the outside.”-”New Theology,” page 255. This is a most astonishing

statement. Lies and error truer than truth! Deception the core and center, and truth only the useless outside

or husk! Such a vain imagination refutes itself; but it shows to what illogical, unspeakable makeshifts the

new theologians are driven in order to defend their actual infidelity. But with it all, and through it all,

higher critics doggedly affirm that they at least have saved enough out of the wreck for salvation; that the

kernel of God’s truth imbedded in the Bible myths and legends remains untouched by their scorching fires

of criticism. But who shall say what and how much is essential to salvation? And what agreement could be

expected among the critics as to these essentials? What would be considered essential by one is rejected by

another, until the whole Bible is set aside. Their sweeping declarations of Bible imperfections, and their

constant disagreements save only in the errancy of the Scriptures, would lead to the unavoidable but

unwelcome conclusion that it is not trustworthy in anything, is not needful, and may be a superfluity. Why

bother, then, to cut out parts of the Bible- why not be consistent, and pitch the whole discredited Bible

away? That this is not a far-fetched conclusion deduced from their theories, is evident from the bold

declaration of one of the higher critical preachers already extensively quoted, the Rev. R. J. Campbell: “I

close by solemnly adding: Never mind what the Bible says, if you, are in search for truth, but trust the

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voice of God within you.”-”New Theology,” page 199. As if the truth which came direct from God through

Jesus (John 12:49, 50), who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14: 6), and who is “full of grace

and truth” (John 1:14), and who said of the Bible, “Thy word is truth” (John 17: I7)- as if this truth

contained in the Scriptures, which “cannot he broken,” could be contradicted by the God of truth speaking

in the heart! Thus are opened the floodgates for the deluge of every kind of unsanctified delusion, based

upon the “voice of God” in the heart, regardless of its agreement or disagreement with the most solemn

teachings of prophets, apostles, and Christ, who sealed their testimony with their blood. Even though “the

heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9), still this deceitful heart is to be exalted above the sublime

words of Christ, which He tells us are every one given Him by the almighty Father. Surely higher critics

“rush in where angels fear to tread.” What, then, is Christ to this new theology, which demands, in so

arrogant a manner, the obedience of the Christian church? Let one of the greatest of the “liberal Christians”

in America, the Rev. G. A. Gordon, tell us: “We have the record of His life and teaching, the record of

what He said, of what He did, of what He suffered, of what He was. But the record is simply a symbol, a

sublime memory.”-”Religion and Miracle,” page 119. That’s all - only a memory, just a mystic symbol,

merely a vague finger pointing upward! Why, Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, proclaim Him to be more than

that! We have at last reached the astounding period in the world’s history when infidels and skeptics, who

have spent their lives in deriding the Bible, and before whose scathing scorn many a Christian had

shuddered and fallen, actually have a higher regard for Christ than have the leaders of His own professed

church. But this is by no means all. Fred Cornwallis Conybeare, doctor of theology in Oxford, in his book

“Myth, Magic, and Morals” (1910), page 357, says: “The very idea of a chosen people belongs to a

forgotten mythology, and so do other cardinal notions on which Christianity reposes, such as the fall of

man, original sin, and redemption. We begin to realize that, if any one needed redemption, it was Jehovah,

and not Adam, nor even Satan. Thus the entire circle of ideas entertained by Christ and Paul are alien and

strange to us to-day, and have lost all actuality and living interest. . . . Jesus Himself is seen to have lived

and died for an illusion, which Paul and the apostles shared.” While the most rabid skeptics of all the ages,

from Celsus to Bradlaugh, bare their heads before the mighty, lovable presence of Jesus, the “doctors of

divinity” are ruthlessly stripping from Christ His kingly robes, trampling them in the mire of impious

doubt. Still the church has not aroused from its lethargy. What would the dauntless Luther say of such

sacrilege? What the gentle-souled Melanchthon? Nay, what would Christ Himself say to these modern

disciples, who, like Peter of old, repeatedly deny Him? Oh that they, like Peter, would repent, and be

converted, and strengthen the brethren! What a glorious Pentecost would follow! It is well to mine and

search, but woe to him who breaks down the supporting pillars. If the work of the higher critic is true,

Genesis and Deuteronomy are demolished, and others will follow. They are destroying the very pillars of

protection and stability, and do not know it.

10 - THE CHURCH DEMOLISHING ITS OWN FOUNDATION

WE “have a touchstone by means of which we may judge of all that does not suit the simple grandeur of

Jesus, and may assign it to a later development.” This touchstone is higher criticism; for “if we wish to

arrive at our Lord’s genuine teaching, we must submit the material transmitted in the Gospels to a careful

sifting.” More than that, “seeing that all the books of the New Testament, in so far as they were not written

by St. Paul himself, probably date from the post-Pauline period, it is difficult to work backwards from them

through St. Paul to a correct appreciation of the Lord’s teaching.”- Dr. Meyer, “Jesus or Paul,” pages 66,

63, 60. “Matthew, Mark, and Luke are compilations, which reached their present form only after several

redactions.”- Sunderland, “The Bible,” page 121. “Christianity, like every other religion, has its mythologya

mythology so intertwined with the veritable facts of its early history, so braided and welded with its first

beginnings, that history and myth are not always distinguishable the one from the other.” Dr. Frederick H.

Hedge, “Ways of the Spirit,” page 338. Having arrived at the conclusion that Christ was but a symbol, a

memory, the learned divines were now confronted with the fact that the body of the records concerning

Christ in the New Testament was diametrically opposed to their theories. Since their conclusion must not

be disturbed, no matter what the facts to the contrary, they one and all set out to manufacture the premises

on which to base their conclusions, and they were naively indifferent as to the scrap heap from which they

chose their material. In order, however, to gain a hearing, their first effort was to make great claims of

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giving “new light,” even while in the very act of extinguishing all the light they had. Says Dr. Wernle:

“What is crucial in these [the words of Jesus] is trust in God, purity of heart, compassion, humility,

forgiveness, aspiration - this and nothing else. This is the will of God, as epitomized in the Sermon on the

Mount. . . And if Christendom has forgotten, for almost two thousand years, what the Master desired first

and before all things, it shines forth upon us again out of the gospel to-day as bright and wonderful as if the

sun were but now newly risen, to drive away with its conquering beams all ghosts and shadows of the

night.”- “Sources,” Page 162. This sounds fine; but an examination of the passage shows the presumption

of stating that belief in a few passages of the ethical teachings of the Sermon on the Mount constitutes the

whole of the will of God, and that in accepting all of Christ’s teachings, instead of just these few,

Christendom for nineteen centuries has been deluded and deceived, - until rescued from this sad condition

by the newly risen sun of higher criticism. Thus we find the learned divines of the world busy at the

astonishing and rather difficult feat of endeavoring to prove that one twentieth of the teaching of Christ

contains more light than all His teaching; that one dollar is more than twenty; that the sun in nineteen

twentieths eclipse is brighter than its unobscured brilliancy at noonday. We must now choose between the

Christ of the Bible and the Christ of the critics, and the two are entirely dissimilar. According to higher

critics, a garland of legends, beautiful or absurd, according to the taste of the critic, has been wound about

His head, and must be resolutely torn away in order to find the true Christ behind. Since Paul was regarded

as the actual creator of Christianity as a world religion, and as Paul was biased by his Jewish education, he

warped the teaching of Jesus; and as it passed through the alembic of his mind, it became something

different from the Master’s message. Consequently, the critics tell us, it is only by critical processes that we

can come to a knowledge of true Christianity. So “scientific criticism” has girded itself to give us the true

religion of Jesus. Meanwhile we are to go without, till they have decided upon the question. Only the

aristocracy of culture and the hierarchy of learning understand the gospel. The higher critics make the truth

of the Bible possible only to the learned; for they claim that the Bible is not the revelation of God, but that

the revealed truth is in the Bible, buried under a mass of errors, and only a man of Hebrew and Greek

scholarship and gigantic learning can unearth it. But who has the right gospel, the genuine gospel of Christ,

Ritschl or Herrmann, Holzmann or Baldensperger, Harnack or Cheyne, Sabatier or Briggs? Must we wait

until these learned gentlemen come to an agreement before we know if Jesus be “our Lord and our God”?

Let us not, however, be alarmed by great names; but let us come to close quarters with their teachings.

Great men are not infallible. Perchance we may be allowed to exercise our own judgment on a question

which concerns our eternal welfare. The lack of agreement, the mercurial decisions, of higher critics can be

no better stated than has been done by Adolf Harnack, himself a world-famous higher critic and divine. He

says : “The common people are like reeds swaying with the blasts of the most extreme and mutually

exclusive hypotheses, and find everything in this connection which is offered them `very worthy of

consideration.’ To-day, they are ready to believe that there was no such person as Jesus, while yesterday

they regarded Him’ as a neurotic visionary, shown to be such with convincing force by His own words; and

yet the day before yesterday, none of these words were His own; and perhaps on the very same day, it was

accounted correct to regard Him as belonging to some Greek sect of esoteric Gnostics - a sect which still

remains to be discovered. Or, rather, He was an anarchist monk like Tolstoy; or, still better, a genuine

Buddhist, who had, however, come under the influence of ideas originating in ancient Babylon, Persia,

Egypt, and Greece; or, better still, He was the eponymous hero of the mildly revolutionary and moderately

radical fourth estate in the capital of the Roman world. It is evident, forsooth, that He may possibly [italics

Harnack’s] have been all of these things, and may be assumed to have been one of them. If, therefore, one

only keeps hold of all these reins, naturally with a loose hand, one is shielded from the reproach of not

being up to date; and this is more important by far than the knowledge of the facts themselves, which

indeed do not much concern us, seeing that in this twentieth century, we must of course wean ourselves

from a contemptible dependence upon history in matters of religion.”-”Sayings of Jesus,” page 13, note.

Upon what basis or principle is it possible to arrive at conclusions at once so absurd and so contradictory?

While all critics vary in their results, they are quite unanimous in their guiding principle, as stated by

Harnack: “Nothing in the Gospels strikes us as stranger than the frequently recurring stories of demons,

and the great importance which the evangelists attach to them. For many minds among us, the very fact that

these writings report such absurdities is sufficient for declining to accept them.”- “What Is Christianity?”

page 63. Paul Sabatier does not hesitate to tell us that “the miracle is immoral” (”Life of St. Francis,” page

433); and Prof. G. B. Foster proclaims that “an intelligent man who now affirms his faith in such stories as

actual facts can hardly know what intellectual honesty means.”-”Finality of the Christian Religion,” page

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132. Thus in a most arbitrary manner, contrary to all real scientific procedure, of which they boast

themselves the chief ornaments, they assume the thing that is to be proved, - that miracles are impossible, -

tear out of the Bible all accounts containing them, and brand as “immoral” and “dishonest” both the

account and one who believes it. Is this argument? Is this logic? Is this science? Yet this is higher criticism.

Another favorite method of filling the Bible with “errors” is to discredit Paul sufficiently to weaken his

truthfulness, and thus clear the ground for their own vacuous theories. Dr. Meyer says that by Paul, “we are

led so far from Jesus that it will be difficult to trace any longer the lines of connection with Him. And yet

St. Paul professes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ!” -”Jesus or Paul,” page 40. Perhaps the reader is curious

to learn by what intricate but infallible process of reasoning the doctor arrives at his astonishing results. He

very obligingly tells us in no uncertain language: “In the Christ of the first three Gospels, we are dealing

not with the historical Jesus, but with the conception formed of Him by the faith and tradition of the

primitive communitive, a conception which must have been influenced by St. Paul, seeing that it was

written after his times.”-Id., page 12. What logic! The first three Gospels simply “must” be the product of

Pauline influence, because they were written after Paul’s time! By a parity of reasoning, the Gospels would

equally be the product of Peter’s influence, for they were written after his time. In the same manner, they

can be proved to be the product of any of the other apostles. Yet it is upon such broken reeds of logic and

smoking flax of evidence that the reliability of the whole New Testament is abjured. It is upon such

baseless reasoning that Paul is made out a religious neurotic, liar, and hypocrite, founding the Christian

church upon a nightmare. The facility and agility with which the higher critical mind can leap from a pin

point of evidence to a whole encyclopedia of wild conclusions is one of the wonders of the century. The

certainty with which they proclaim the truth and infallibility of their own conclusions is in direct

proportion to the lack of evidence to support them. The words of Dr. Paul Wernle are not less emphatic in

their assumption of a complete knowledge of all the events of Christ’s time: “Christ did not discourse in the

Synoptic and also in the Johannine way. Either He spoke as a layman, a poet, a prophet, or else as a

theologian. Either He testified of the kingdom of God and the will of God, or else of His own person.

Either He looked forwards, to His return, or else backwards, to His existence in heaven. He either preached

that the doing of God’s will was the only way into the kingdom of God, or else that all depended upon

belief in His divine sonship.” -”Sources of Our Knowledge of the Life of Jesus Christ,” pages 43, 44. I

confess that I am amazed to find a man of learning seriously arguing that because one Gospel represents

Christ as speaking of His preexistence, and another of His coming again, therefore one or the other must be

false. More than that, the same Gospels speak of both. How does the fact of Christ’s having existed before

the world was created preclude His coming again? Or why is His second advent incompatible with His

preexistence? On the contrary, is not His preexistence a strong presumption in favor of His ability to come

again, and therefore its likelihood, since He tells us He will? Robert Browning was a layman, a poet, a

theologian, and many think him a prophet. But Wernle denies to the Son of the infinite God the ability to

be any more than one of these. The four Gospels, then, are unreliable! But Harnack has something better

than the Gospels of the poor deluded and deceiving apostles. He, along with other higher critics, has

constructed a Gospel of his own, actually rewriting the Gospels. This new Gospel is called “Logia,” or is

designated by the capital Q. Who or what is this Q that is so much more valuable than Matthew, Mark,

Luke, and John all together? Concerning Q, Harnack says, “The portrait of Jesus as given in the sayings of

a has remained in the foreground.”-”Sayings of Jesus,” page 250. Is this very valuable document a new

Gospel by another of the apostles -by Peter, perchance? Is it a life of Christ from the vigorous pen of Paul,

mayhap? Says Harnack, in the preface to his “Sayings of Jesus,” “In the following pages, an attempt is

made to determine exactly the second source of St. Matthew and St. Luke both in regard to its extent and

its contents, and to estimate its value both in itself and relatively to the Gospel of St. Mark.” Who then was

the author of Q? “Whoever the author, or rather the redactor, of Q may have been, he was a man deserving

of highest respect. To his reverence and faithfulness, to his simpleminded common sense, we owe this

priceless compilation of the sayings of Jesus.”-Id., page 249. Backed by the name of Harnack, this raises

great curiosity as to what this Q is. How long has it been in existence? “We cannot tell how long this

compilation remained in existence.”-Id., page 251. What! It is not in existence now? Why, then, this furor

about it? What became of it? “It found its grave in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and probably

elsewhere in the apocryphal Gospels. . . . The final blow to the independent existence of Q was dealt when

it was incorporated in the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew.”-Id. Thus we see how long this wonderful

Q was in existence. It was written, according to higher critics, only a few years before the Gospels, and

found its grave in them. Then how did they know it ever existed? - Why, by the wonderful force of their

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great reasoning powers, or by their “critical divination.” The Gospels record parallel accounts of the same

event, and therefore there must have been a common source from which they drew; and so these

omniscient critics proceed to construct that source from the Gospels, call the result Q, and then criticize the

Gospels by their own reconstructed Q. In all, Q contains only 201 verses out of the 3,779 in the Gospels, or

only one nineteenth of the whole. (Id., pages 253-271.) With this they supplant the Gospels. One may think

that these things are not important; - but when we find that so renowned a man as Henry Churchill King,

president of Oberlin College, publishes a book on “The Ethics of Jesus” (1910), and that all its data is

avowedly derived from this source, and not in any instance from the Gospels, it is high time that the

attention of the public was called to this perversion of Scripture. Dr. King, along with the other higher

critics, thinks that Q is more reliable than any of the Gospels; yet it is derived by the higher critics from the

Gospels. “It is hardly too much,” says he, “to say that in Q we probably have an even older source for the

life and teachings of Jesus than in Mark.”- “Ethics of Jesus,” page 87. So he uses Harnack’s reconstruction.

It is amusing to see how the theologians take one nineteenth of the data we possess, and then found their

life of Jesus upon this meager material, and call it “New Light on the Life of Jesus”- the title of a book by

Dr. Briggs. The New Testament is so immoral that they have written one of their own! “Luke is especially

full of teachings quite as hard for the conscience as the wonder stories of the Bible are difficult for the

reason.”-Dole, “What We Know About Jesus,” page 46. Says Dr. King: “Various attempts to reconstruct

the document Q have been made by Wendt, Resch, A. Wright, Reville, Wernle, Hawkins, Wellhausen

(1905), Harriack (1907), and B. Weiss (1908). With the exception of Weiss’s, Harnack’s reconstruction is

the most recent, and may also be regarded as the fruit of the most thoroughgoing study. . . . Our study will

be based upon Harnack’s reconstruction.”-”Ethics of Jesus,” page 10. Speaking of Q, Wernle says, “On the

whole, the historical value of these discourses is very high, higher than that of anything else.”-”Sources,”

page 138. So Dr. King accepts this as the “assured results of criticism.”-”Ethics of Jesus,” page 76. Dr.

Burkitt, however, does not accept even all of the meager Q. He selects only what he calls the “double

attested sayings,” which amount to thirty-one, and sets these up as all we know of Jesus. (”The Gospel

History and Its Transmission.”) Q contains 201 verses, but Burkitt’s reconstruction admits only one third of

this. Professor Schmiedel, the peer of Harnack as a higher critic, narrows the data still more: “I select nine

such passages [not open to question], and in order to emphasize their importance, give them a special

name; I call them the foundation pillars of a really scientific life of Christ.”-”Jesus in Modern Criticism,”

page 24. And here is the principle upon which he so arbitrarily selects them : the passages that run counter

to the exalting of Jesus. “When we first make our acquaintance with a historical person in a book which is

throughout influenced by a feeling of worship for Jesus, in the first rank of credibility we place those

passages of the book which really run counter to this feeling.”-”Jesus in Modern Criticism,” page 24. So

we find the great churchmen selecting for the life of Christ only the passages that are held in common

(Harnack’s Q), those that are doubly attested (Burkitt), and those that are exceptional (Schmiedel). We are

now reduced to just twenty-five verses, or one one hundred and fifty-first of the whole four Gospels, for a

“scientific” life of Christ. At this rate, it will not be long before the critics arrive at the conclusion that we

have no basis for a life of Jesus, and no foundation upon which to build our hopes of salvation. To the

present-day presumption of infallible and omniscient higher criticism, nothing is impossible. The ease with

which they accomplish the impossible is nothing short of amazing. In one sweeping sentence, without

reason or evidence, they disdainfully brush aside all the New Testament records of Christ, and with a

knowledge as superior to Christ’s own familiar friends as nearly two millenniums’ distance from Him can

give them, they noisily and in all seriousness sit down to write anew the gospel of Jesus, to tell us of His

words and His actions away back in distant Palestine! Wisdom, it appears, was born with the critics.

Although Christ said that the Holy Spirit would bring to the apostles’ minds all He had said, and lead them

into all truth, it appears that the poor, deluded apostles were never so led, and that Christ really meant the

twentieth century higher critics! They treat with apathetic contempt or tolerant scorn all who are simple

enough to believe the words of Christ and the records of the apostles - all who are so old-fashioned as to

believe in the exploded doctrine of salvation through the merits of and belief in Jesus, or so foolish as to

come to Him that they may find rest for their souls. The wonder is not so much that these things are said,

but that they are said by professed Christians; not in a corner, but all over the earth; not by obscure men,

but by the church’s greatest. It may seriously be doubted whether the avowed enemies of the Bible have

ever said either as many or half as harsh things against it as its declared believers are now saying under

cover of higher criticism. When Voltaire made his famous boast that though twelve men founded

Christianity, one man would serve to overthrow it, he did not dream that the theological savants of Europe,

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Asia, and America would combine in the twentieth century to aid him in his nefarious design. Neither did

Tom Paine imagine, when he vauntingly “unchained his lion,” the “Age of Reason”- which was to devour

the Bible that twentieth century “doctors of divinity” would revile the Bible in a manner to have made him

stand aghast at their bolder infidelity. Verily, higher criticism makes strange bedfellows. God’s gospel ship

has ever sailed through the troubled waters of sin, unbelief, apostasy, and persecution; and bearing that

gospel, she will enter the eternal harbor.

11 - MANUFACTURING A NEW GOSPEL

WE read that “all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but

either to tell or to hear some new thing.” Acts 17:21. As we have seen, this is the attitude of the higher

critics. Any theory, any gospel, so long as it is new! Having discarded the ancient gospel of Christ, which

“is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Rom. 1: I6), and having taught doubt as

essential to their gospel, they proceed to patch up a new gospel - an up-to-date gospel. Those critics who

place the authority of Jesus very high, immediately place their own higher. The teachings of Christ are not

often directly controverted, but they are often ignored, or treated as counsel of perfection which we are to

admire rather than to obey. Listen to Harnack and Herrmann “It is obvious that in this workaday world,

such principles are impracticable; no business can be conducted on these lines. Yet that is just what Jesus

seems to want.” “Had He meant these words to be universal rules, He would have been worse than the

rabbis whose teaching He opposed.” “The character of Jesus is made up of compassion and modesty, love

and asceticism; and consequently He is no leader for men who with the means given them in this world

wish to attain some definite object.” “With regard to the utterances of Jesus, we confess that we cannot

simply comply with them, since we do not share His conception of the universe, and so are living in a

different world. On the other hand, the mind which they reveal should be present also in us; that is, the will

to act in accordance with our own convictions.”- “The Social Gospel,” pages 1,59, 204, 212, 207. This,

then, is the new gospel. Do not follow Jesus. No matter how clearly stated is the will of Christ, “our own

convictions” are to be followed in preference, especially when from them has been eliminated compassion,

modesty, love, and asceticism. Yes, dear reader, such are the teachings of the new theology. Their words

are before you. I would fain believe that they are the sad words read in a bitter dream; but unfortunately

they are only too real. I believe that these men are better than their teachings; but the better the personal

life, the more vicious and extensive is the devastating influence of such teaching. If some drunken roué

advocated the impossibility of following Jesus, of being modest, loving, compassionate, and selfcontrolled,

those only would heed him who were more debauched than he. But when backed by the

irreproachable private life, and stated with all the profound learning and charming genius, of Harnack and

Herrmann, these restated teachings of the debauchee are enthusiastically applauded and blindly accepted.

That such teachings are neither isolated nor overstated, is evident from the bold avowals of Dr. Campbell,

England’s premier exponent of the new theology, who tells us roundly that “sin is the expansion of the

individuality.”-R. J. Campbell, “New Theology,” page 157. For fear that we may charitably mistake him,

Mr. Campbell carries his principle to its hideous conclusion, with the blind disregard for results so often

observed in higher critics: “However startling it may seem,” he says, “sin itself is a quest for God. That

drunken debauch was a quest for life, a quest for God. Men in their sinful follies to-day, and their blank

atheism, and their foul blasphemies, their trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in

this dim, blundering quest for God. . . . The roué you saw in Piccadilly last night, who went out to corrupt

innocence and to wallow in filthiness of the flesh, was engaged in his blundering quest for God.”-Id., pages

150, 151. It needs no argument to prove that if these new teachings were believed by foreign missionaries,

their work would become paralyzed, and foreign missionary work would not only languish, but would go

rapidly from apathy to stupor, and from stupor to profound coma, from which only the impending second

advent of Christ could arouse it. Is it any wonder that Christ, in looking down the stream of time to the

present, said sadly, “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” Luke

18:8. In taking stock of how much of the gospel of Jesus higher criticism has left us, and seeing how scant

it is, and how warped and corrupted even that little is, many unsettled souls are crying out, with Mary,

“They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” John 20:13. The terrible

harvest of this higher criticism is already seen in the unsettled beliefs, the destroyed faith, the multiplied

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infidels, even in the churches, the weakened and empty churches, and the consequent increase of crime and

vice. Aliens from God, outcasts from society, broken-hearted millions curse their miserable existence, and

long for death as a desired release. From Africa’s burning sands, from Russia’s frigid steppes, from India’s

arid plains, from China’s crowded lands, from the rocky cliffs of countless islands - from every land, in

every clime - the cry of human woe is ascending in increasing volume, from the destitute, the afflicted, the

diseased, and the dying. To these misery-laden souls, higher criticism can give only a gospel of scientific

doubt, a Bible of shreds and patches, a book of myths and legends - a Christless Bible. Nothing but husks

have the new theologians to offer the sin-burdened, empty-souled, world-weary child of the world. Since

the story of the curse is held to be only a voice from the realm of fable, redemption must necessarily be the

decadent fruitage of a hydra-headed myth; and a fabulous redemption from a fabulous curse is effected

only by a nebulous, mystical, and mythical Christ, the fabulous product of unscrupulous deceivers,

imposed upon an ignorant and superstitious people in an age of darkness. This theory is so prevalent

among higher critics, and is taught so assiduously, that among the laymen, theories of Christ are rife,

conclusions diverse, and faith wavering. The open or secret cry is, “We will not have this Man to reign

over us.” In this crude and mongrel system of Christianity, this incoherent conglomerate of antiscriptural

religion, false philosophy, and infidel science, all the lifeblood of Christianity has been drawn from Christ’s

gospel, all the spirituality has been evaporated from His life, all the meaning from His words, and nothing

is left us but muddy waters from the broken cisterns of ancient infidelity and modern “Christian”

skepticism.

12 - EVAPORATING THE SUPERNATURAL

WE are firmly convinced that . . . there can be no such things as miracles.”- Adolf Harnack, “What Is

Christianity?” page 28. “As soon as the drama of Calvary is thus [by higher criticism] reduced to its true

proportions, it becomes what it really was, a human historic drama. “-Sabatier, “The Atonement,” page

130. “Such a phenomenon [resurrection, etc.] is in itself so improbable that any alternative is preferable to

its assertion.” -Professor Lake, “Historical Evidence for the Resurrection,” page 267. “The questioning

spirit of to-day,” says Van Dyke, “everywhere asks for a reason, in the shape of a positive and scientific

demonstration. When one is given, it asks for another; and when another is given, it asks for the reason of

the reason. The laws of evidence, the principles of judgment, the evidence of history, the testimony of

consciousness - all are called in question.”-”Gospel for an Age of Doubt,” page 8. By the broad and liberal

man is always meant the man who minimizes or flatly denounces the miracles and all things supernatural.

He disbelieves all evidence, however well attested, that contravenes his own article of faith that “miracles

do not happen.” The higher critic, equally with the agnostic and the infidel, is bound by his theory to reject

as impossible all accounts of miracles, and endeavor to explain the recorded phenomena as either delusions

of a disordered mind, or the deliberate invention of a malicious deceiver. No matter how much in the way

of wonders may be admitted outside of the Bible, “any alternative is preferable to” acknowledging the

authenticity of the Bible miracles. The seriousness of this widespread denial of the miraculous by the

church, is recognized by a writer of high standing in the theological and learned world. Dr. G. A. Gordon

sums up the general situation, the problem, and his own position: “The significance of the new question

concerning miracles is that it comes from professedly religious men, and from men living and potent with

the Christian church. It is a new discussion we face when the disciples of Jesus Christ in this twentieth

century ask, Is miracle essential to religion? Is the essential truth of Christianity dependent upon the reality

of the miracles embedded in the evangelical history? Is the message of Jesus Christ to man separable from

the record of signs and wonders with which it is accompanied? Scientific men, in so far as they are under

the scientific spirit, see no miracles. That is, they see no violations of the order of cause and effect; they

expect no violations of their order; they believe in none. For them, the miracles of all religions are the

interesting products of the human imagination; they are a chapter in the serious fiction of the world. May a

member of the Christian church, may a preacher of the Christian gospel, in any degree sympathize with the

attitude of science towards miracle, and yet remain loyal to his great Master? These are questions working

in the religious mind wherever that mind has obtained a modern education.”-”Religion and Miracle”

(1909), pages 12, 13. Thus from the old home of American orthodoxy, New England, comes a book with

all the attestations of Bostonian culture, written by one of America’s best known divines, and its sole

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purpose is to eliminate all miracles from Christianity, in order that it may be more acceptable to the

scientist and skeptic. He continues: “I am concerned to show that where miracle has ceased to be regarded

as true, Christianity remains in its essence entire; that the fortune of religion is not to be identified with the

fortune of miracle; that the message of Jesus Christ to the world is independent of miracle…. I conceive

myself to be a genuine conservative; I am conscious that I work for the preservation of essential historic

Christianity; I consider myself to be, to the extent of my power, a defender of the eternal gospel.”-Id., page

10. Reader, consider well the above statement. Has it no significance for you? Dr. Gordon is a

“conservative,” he says. Yet he discards all the miracles of the Bible with a sweep of the hand, and along

with them, the supreme miracle of the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus. (Id., page 107.) How radical such a

position would have been in a preacher a century ago! But it is the position of “a genuine conservative”

now! How much of the Bible or Christianity would a radical leave? More than that, he proclaims himself a

defender of Christianity, of the eternal gospel, to the extent of his power. As already stated, this is the

attitude taken by higher critics the world over. They are casting overboard their chart and compass, so that

they may steer the ship better! The soldier is throwing away his sword, that he may the better defend

himself with his bare arms! The drowning man spurns the lifeline, because it would encumber him in his

efforts to save his life! This is the conservative method of defending Christianity! I come along a deserted

street at night, and spy my bosom friend in a life-and-death struggle with an assailant. I hasten valiantly to

his defense, and nobly pound him over the head, and aid his enemy, to show my friend how hard I am

“defending” him! Thus do higher critics “defend” Christianity and its Source. And they are desperately in

earnest, too. That they are inconsistent has nothing to do with their position, except that they make up in

vigor of attack what they lack in justification for the attack. Is miracle, then, rejected without evidence?

Listen: “Miracle is not part of my working philosophy of life, . . . because I cannot be sure of its reality,

and I wish to live as far as possible among things that are sure.”-Id., page 167. A “philosophy of life”

having been adopted which excludes miracles, no amount of evidence could be allowed to disturb this

precious little theory. But if being “sure” is the guiding principle of life, methinks that resting his faith

upon the changing quicksands of higher critical theories is like seeking peace and quietude in a raging

tempest. But how do the higher critics become so “sure”? “In their hands, the fate of the miraculous is a

foregone conclusion. The miraculous goes as the landslide goes. It falls as the avalanche falls. In the order

of nature, it could not be otherwise.. . . Judgment is set, and the miraculous is ruled out of court. The

question is not discussed; it is assumed as settled.”-Id., page 24. Now we see how easy it is to live among

things that are so comfortably “sure”! Just deny the existence of anything you are not “sure” of, without

troubling yourself to investigate it! “Assume” it to be nonexistent! When you have done this, you have

become a scientist and higher critic, and entered the charmed and charming circle of the learned and the

wise! Consistently with this “philosophy of life,” an axiom has been invented for the guidance of higher

critical investigation. “It has cone to be an axiom of historical criticism, that the presence of a miraculous

element in any story or record . . . casts suspicion upon it.”-Sunderland, “The Bible,” page 132. Comment

would be superfluous. The nature which the higher critics so ardently worship is unstrung and mistuned by

man’s agency in it. The nature that now is, the Bible and reflection both show, is an incomplete witness to

God. How, then, may we judge the whole from the part, and that part diseased? How do we know that the

laws we see are all the laws for God’s universe? By what process of logic can a scientist deduce from a

known law, the conclusion that God cannot have other laws operating? What man knows enough to deduce

from a few observed phenomena on this earth, which is less than a trillionth part of the universe, laws

which shall limit the Creator of the universe? St. Augustine was wiser than many moderns who boast their

attainments. He gave utterance to a wise saying concerning miracles, that present-day thinkers would do

well to consider: “We say that all miracles are contrary to nature; but they are not. For how shall that be

contrary to nature which takes place by the will of God, seeing that the will of the great Creator is the true

nature of everything created? So miracle is not contrary to nature, but only to what we know of nature.”-De

Civitate Dei, 21, 8, quoted by Sanday, “Life of Christ in Modern Research,” page 216. It should seem by

this time that scientists, and higher critics who ape their methods, would be a little more modest in their

assertions of finality in their theories. Newton honored himself as well as God when he said he had but

gathered a few pebbles on the great shore of truth. Edison likewise, after many fruitful years of study, said

that if scientific discoveries should proceed at the present rate of progress for a few thousand years,

humanity might then begin to draw a few conclusions. This is good logic and good Scripture. While God is

expressed, He cannot be measured, by His works; least of all, by nature in its present state. We can

apprehend but cannot comprehend God. The higher critics’ arguments against the miracles sound learned

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and cogent when presented with the trimmings of genius, or in the sesquipedalian nomenclature so often

affected by writers who desire to make a little thought go a long ways. But when reduced to their lowest

terms, the arguments are self-destructive. In scores of books on this subject, the corner-stone argument

supporting their structure of doubt proceeds on this wise: Some accounts of miracles in the Middle Ages

and at other times have been proved to be false. The Gospel accounts of Jesus contain certain records of

miracles. Therefore these miracles are false, and all miracles are false. One would be just as logical to

argue thus: Some books have been proved to be trash. Isaiah and John are some books. Therefore Isaiah

and John are trash, and all books are trash. To argue that all miracles are false because one is, is on a par

with the argument that because one greenback is a counterfeit, all are. Yet on the strength of such

principles of reasoning, we are asked to reject the word of the eternal God, whose “word is truth,” and trust

for guidance and salvation to the self-destructive absurdities of the new theology, or the pseudo science of

evolution, or the infidelic effusions of Hume, Strauss, and Voltaire. Shutting their eyes to the lack of

reason and evidence for the support of their shifting theories, they are not slow to denounce as hypocrites

those who still accept the Bible as the revealed will of God. That I have not exaggerated, note the

following: “How many preachers really believe the supernatural story from Adam to Christ, although they

declare it to be one consistent whole? How many trained or scholarly teachers of youth themselves believe

what they tell their pupils about Noah, and Abraham, and Jacob, and Moses, and Joshua, and Samuel, and

David? How many really hold to the virgin birth while they solemnly recount it? . . An acted part at the

altar, insincerity at the teacher’s desk, drag down the moral standard of our national life.”-Picton, “Man and

the Bible,” page 266. Here we see that the higher critic is so bent on forcing everybody to agree with him

in discrediting the Bible, and aid him in his work of destroying faith in it, that he not only doubts the

sincerity of those who do not believe as he does, but even boldly - one could hardly say, politely or

generously -calls those hypocrites and dishonest who venture to have a different opinion. The first

commandment in the higher critical decalogue is, Thou shalt have no other opinion before mine. Yet this is

the “broadmindedness” of “liberal theology.” Liberal, forsooth, when any minister who declares his belief

in the sacred Word is called a liar and a hypocrite, and the degradation of the nation is laid at his door

because of his expressing confidence in the Bible! Is it a small thing that men are called liars, and

hypocrites, and “brainless idiots,” for avowing a belief in the grand truths which our Saviour Himself

believed with all His heart, and died the death of the cross to establish eternally? Right here I take issue

with those who boast disbelief in the supernatural as any evidence of a “liberal mind” or a “free thinker.”

Since, as Gilbert Chesterton says, “a miracle is the liberty of God,” those who discard the supernatural not

only bind God, but fetter themselves to a certain contracted creed; for they are not free to believe miracles,

no matter how great the evidence for them. So, instead of disbelief in miracles being an evidence of liberty

of mind and freedom of thought, as the higher critics so loudly proclaim, it is just the reverse; for the man

whose mind is ruled by a theoretical pronouncement which he must teach in the teeth of all contrary

evidence, cannot possibly be as “free” as the man who has left his mind open to be impressed and

convinced by the weight of any and all evidence. As well might one adduce a disbelief in the existence of

the X ray, as proof of his breadth of thought and greatness of mind. The man who denies the supernatural,

is neither liberal nor logical. The moment a man admits the existence of an omnipotent power, while

denying the possibility of a miracle, he has contradicted himself; for if he binds omnipotent power, it is

obviously not omnipotent. The man in this case has conceived as impossible an idea as has the man who

asked what would happen if an irresistible force came in contact with an immovable body. Those who

accept the supernatural in the Bible do so because there is ample evidence for it. Those who deny it do so

mainly because they have swallowed a creed, usually in the form of evolution, whose very life is dependent

upon the denial of miracle. Thus the Christian, in accepting all evidence, is broad-minded; not the learned

scientist or arrogant philosopher or doubting divine who is so creed-bound he must refuse to give credence

to any evidence tending to prove the fact of miracles, declaring that “any alternative,” no matter how silly

or impossible, “is preferable to its assertion.” Hence the course of the Christian rebukes the skeptical

scientist, the doubting philosopher, and the infidelic theologian, as the narrow-minded thinkers, when not

creed-bound bigots. Renan says that “it is because they relate miracles that I say the Gospels are legends.”

This objection is by no means new. “The Jews therefore murmured concerning Him, because He said, I am

the bread which came down out of heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose father

and mother we know? how doth He now say, I am come down out of heaven?” John 6:41, 42. The

Palestinian crowd of nineteen centuries ago called Jesus a mere man, and crucified Him for His claim to

deity. Pray, why should a twentieth century ecclesiastic regard himself as an “advanced thinker” when he

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has not advanced a hair’s breadth beyond the vulgar crowds of that age? Strange indeed are the aberrations

of present-day theology. The supernatural permeates every page of the Bible. It is present in every prayer,

in every action of Jesus. Christianity without the supernatural is as impossible as Christianity without

Christ, for Christ is the supreme miracle. “The supernatural runs in the lifeblood of the New Testament;

and to get rid of it, the blood of the New Testament must be drawn out,” is the admission of a higher critic.

(The Rev. Charles E. Jefferson, in “Things Fundamental,” page 160.) The critic, with a scalpel freshly

sharpened upon the whetstone of unbelief, is slashing eagerly this way and that, and now is pressing it

upon the heart of Christianity, and measures his success as a “defender of the eternal gospel” according to

the amount of life blood he succeeds in letting. There has been one result to this criticism which the critics

did not foresee, and greatly regret, but which it is impossible to avoid; namely, that Christ can no longer be

held to be sinless, for He was deceived into believing “mistaken” things; and if deceived in these things,

why not in others? Besides, a sinless Being is as much of a miracle as anything else in the Bible, and so

must be eliminated. “Jesus well knows that none is good,” says Dr. Meyer, “not even Himself.” (”Jesus or

Paul,” page 78.) The learned divine overlooks the obvious fact that when Jesus said none were good but

God, He was endeavoring to show that He was God; for He elsewhere said that no one convinced Him of

sin. John 8:46. We have seen how desperately the new theology has labored to discredit all Bible miracles.

The very presence of the supernatural element in any section of the Bible was sufficient reason for

discarding that section. The Bible, we are told in a thousand different ways, is the product of the human

soul evolving from savagery, during which the reign of inexorable law excludes each and every Bible

miracle. Scientists and the critics had no sooner established to their entire satisfaction the absolute

“uniformity of nature” and “eternal reign of sovereign law,” and demonstrated the “utter impossibility of

miracles,” than the phenomenon of spiritism, with its claim of performing numberless miracles, arose as if

to mock their conclusions and confound their reason. Naturally they did not look kindly upon a movement

whose fundamental doctrine flatly contradicted their own basic dogma. So they turned their backs upon all

its evidence, and with the supercilious smile of arrogant superiority, dismissed spiritism’s claim to miracleworking

power, and with a contemptuous mental shrug of the shoulders cried, “Trickery! Charlatan!” But

spiritism persisted, spread, and became popular with the masses; for now, as in the time of Christ, the

populace seek a sign. The easy religious demands of spiritism, along with its novelty, gave a feeling that at

last a religion had arisen which would satisfy the desire for signs and wonders. Pseudo science and the

critics had taken away all supernaturalism, and left the people under the rigid rule of changeless, relentless

law, cruel as the juggernaut, which left only the black despair of utter annihilation for the future. Spiritism

gave the lie to this doctrine, and offered proof of its claim to all who would investigate. It offered to

demonstrate a future life by bringing back to this earth in bodily form those who had died. For a while, the

masses doubted. But they were soon convinced by its mighty wonders; and the science of new theology

that would not even investigate, much less acknowledge, the strong proofs advanced by spiritism, was

laughed at by the rapidly increasing numbers of infidels, Catholics, and Protestants who had with their own

eyes witnessed its unmistakable miracles. The clamor for investigation was fair, and was an open challenge

to the critics’ and the scientists’ boasted liberality and learning. So scores of scientists and new theologians

and other leaders of thought who denied the possibility of a miracle went blithely to the investigation,

expecting to expose the whole huge fraud in a day or two, and have the laugh on the gullible public, and

reaffirm, with more arrogance than ever, their theory that in the law of nature, all miracles are impossible.

Men the world over, eminent for their piety and renowned for their learning, began investigating the claims

of spiritism. Much fraud was detected, of course. But after they had accounted for and eliminated all fraud,

there remained so much which they could not explain on any of their favorite hypotheses, that a fear

gripped their hearts that perhaps they were wrong, and the ignorant populace right. Cautiously they

confessed themselves puzzled, but hoped with further investigation to reduce the unusual phenomena to

some “law.” Continuing their research and testing, one after another of the leading scientists and thinkers

of the world surrendered to the array of evidence. Alfred Russel Wallace voiced the opinion of all who

accepted spiritism, when he said, “No more evidence is needed to prove spiritualism, for no accepted fact

in science has a greater or stronger array of proof in its behalf.” The scientists were the first to yield to the

evidence, and they did so almost unanimously. Since the new theology had discarded all the Bible miracles

in order to come into the camp of the scientists and be considered learned and progressive, it was to be

expected that when the scientists revised their scientific creed to make it include the manifestations of

spiritism, the new theologians would hasten to do likewise. But both scientists and new theologians were

now in a painful dilemma; for they had only just discarded forever all Bible miracles, and most of the Bible

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because it was guilty of recording them, when they began to accept spiritism for precisely the reason that it

was a manifestation of miracles! They were in desperate straits indeed; for it seemed they either had to

acknowledge the miracles of the Bible - and that would destroy their most cherished theory, and put them

to shame - or deny the miracles of spiritism - and this they had tried to do, but had found impossible. How

to reconcile disbelief in the Bible miracles with belief in spiritistic miracles was the next problem to which

the modern ecclesiastic and the modern scientist addressed themselves. To reconcile the irreconcilable was

indeed a task worthy of the greatest intellect, and ho who should accomplish such an unheard-of feat might

reasonably expect honor alike from the scholar and the populace. In order to identify opposites, they had

carefully to loosen the underpinning of some of their loftiest structures. Says Dr. Gordon, in a book

devoted entirely to this feat of harmony: “Only the Infinite knows whether or not the assumption of the

uniformity of nature is valid. The mind that would sufficiently attest the idea of uniformity must know

absolutely the entire history of the cosmos in relation to man; must know, too, the law that insures, for all

time to come, an inviolable order.. . . Dogmatic denial of miracle on the ground of natural law cannot,

therefore, be justified by logic. No man knows enough to be able to make good the denial. . . . Miracles are

logical possibilities and natural impossibilities.”-”Religion and Miracle,” pages 29, 33. How different this

language from that of thirty years ago! The doctrine of the uniformity of nature, which was then the basis

of science, has now become “an assumption” that is not valid. To be sure, there is no retreat from the old

position. Oh, no! Miracles are still “naturally impossible”! But then, you see, they are “logically possible”!

Thus the retreat from the old position of the eternal uniformity of nature is made in such dignified order,

under cover of the artillery of such learned phrases, that the public in general believe there has been an

advance all along the line; for critics now begin to tell us that they have all the time been preparing the way

for the acceptance of “true miracles” by laying down the “scientific tests” by which they may be known.

The Rev. R. F, Horton thus states it “As we learn to take a true view of the Bible, the difficulty which the

modern mind feels in accepting the miraculous is considerably lessened. We are not required to believe a

miracle simply because it is recorded in the Bible. Historical and literary criticism alike teach us to

discriminate, to recognize that some miraculous stories in the Bible rest on a much stronger foundation

than do others, and that many make no claim at all to our belief as literal occurrences, but are merely

dressing and illustration of certain religious truths. A miracle in the Bible is to be treated like a miracle

elsewhere; it is to be treated, accepted or rejected, entirely on the evidence which is offered for it” “My

Belief,” page 133. Thus is opened the way for spiritism; for if evidence is the only thing required to

authenticate a miracle, spiritism is proved, and its messages bear upon their face their credentials of

authenticity. One more step was needed before the Bible miracles could be denied while spiritistic miracles

were accepted. To the Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott and Dr. G. A. Gordon belongs the unique honor of

discovering or inventing a remarkable principle: “It is clear that the unverifiable can never remain an

essential part of a reasonable faith.”- Gordon, “Religion and Miracle,” page 28. That sounds innocent

enough and reasonable enough; but apply it to the narratives of Christ’s resurrection, and what becomes of

that supreme miracle of Scripture, and how are you to verify it? On that principle, how can you verify any

miracle of the Bible? Obviously one cannot be transported back two thousand years and more to witness

the recorded Bible miracles; so, on the above principle, these necessarily “unverified miracles” “can never

remain an essential part of a reasonable faith.” In plain English, the Bible miracles are false, while

spiritistic miracles are true! But we must not overlook the fact that while the above quoted principle was

carefully formulated to exclude Bible miracles, it was just as carefully constructed to include spiritistic

miracles; for “it is clear” that any one can verify a spiritistic miracle, since all he has to do is to go to some

of their numerous and multiplying manifestations. Since, then, these spiritistic phenomena are verifiable,

they must become “an essential part of a reasonable faith.” The whole antichristian world will soon be led

by the professed Christian world into believing the miracles of Satan, spiritism, while denying those of

Christ. When this happens, Christ will come, annihilate sin and sinners, and establish His eternal kingdom

of righteousness and love on the earth so cursed with wrong and hate. That this reign of sin may soon be

over forever is the prayer of every true Christian.

13 - THE SURE WORD OF GOD

“LET intellectual and spiritual culture progress, and the human mind expand as much as it will; beyond the

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grandeur and the moral elevation of Christianity, as it sparkles and shines in the Gospels, the human mind

will not advance.”- Goethe. As Hugh McIntosh so grandly says: “A tone of authority, an air of certainty, a

breath of eternity, and a voice of God seems ever to pervade the book, and creeps around the reader’s spirit

like the speaking silence of the lonely mountains, and sinks down into the sympathetic soul as the voice of

the eternal Father - like the deep and solemn tone of the ever sounding sea.”-”Is Christ Infallible and the

Bible True?” page 11. “Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that

authority than all the powers of the human mind.”- Augustine. In previous chapters, we have examined

many of the devious methods by which higher critics attempt to make it appear that the Bible is the word of

man. Since the difficulties in the Bible are the foundation of and reason for higher criticism, I will

endeavor to show that the difficulties, so far from constituting a basis for repudiating the Bible as the word

of God, are among the best evidences in favor of the Bible as the divinely inspired book of God. The

carping of the critics seems not so much for the purpose of arriving at the truth as to muddle others; not so

much to lead others to the light as to impress them with the critics’ brilliancy. Subtlety of argument,

ingenious playing upon words, eager pursuit of startling paradoxes, seem to characterize this reckless

search for difficulties in the Bible. They treat the Bible as the Jewish spies who dogged the steps of Jesus

treated Him, “laying wait for Him, and seeking to catch something out of His mouth, that they might

accuse Him.” Luke 11:54. But they may profitably bear in, mind Christ’s fearful denunciation: “Woe unto

you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that

were entering in ye hindered.” Luke 11:52. But how strange it is to see Christian men, in the effort to

support vague theories, eagerly seeking argument where the most vitriolic foes of the faith have ever

sought to find the weapons to vent their diabolic hatred in virulent attacks upon the word of God! How

amazing to see Christian writers repolishing the old arguments of Paine and Celsus, drawn from

discrepancies, and then illogically imagine that they establish the Christianity of the Bible! Yet such is their

vaunted purpose, and such their argument to win to Christianity. This is as if an army defending a fortified

town should think to accomplish this defense the better by abandoning the city and uniting with its enemies

in their attack upon it and those who still defended it. Of course, there are difficulties in the Bible. But

since when is the difficulty of comprehending a thing proof that it is false? Shall we, because we cannot

comprehend fully the nature of electricity, conclude that to use electricity is folly, and disconnect our

houses? Because no one has explained the phenomena of sight, shall we conclude that sight has no value,

and put out our eyes? Because process by which our bodies assimilate food has never been understood,

shall we refuse to eat? The Bible, however, recognizes its own difficulties, but adds a caution in regard to

them, much needed at this time. Writing of Paul’s epistles, Peter says they contain “some things hard to be

understood, which the ignorant and unsteadfast wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own

destruction.” 2 Peter 3:16. This clearly teaches that in all the Bible there are things hard to understand.

When the infidel or the critic approaches us with difficulties, we need not be either surprised or alarmed;

for the Bible says they are there, and to say they are not would be to deny the Bible. The only thing that

concerns us is whether we wrest them to our destruction. If the words of the Bible are enshrined in the

heart and shine out in the life, it will be a savor of life unto life; but if, on the other hand, it is wrested to

support sin in the heart and iniquity in the life- if lies are dressed up as truth- it will be a savor of death

unto death, and the brilliant light will turn into denser darkness. Now, the difficulties of the Bible are of

two kinds, those made by man and those inherent in the subject. Those made by man may be removed by

man. They consist of wrong interpretations and false inferences which are charged to the Bible as

Scriptural teaching and then made the grounds for repudiating the Bible. This is the infidelic and critical

favorite method of procedure. Other difficulties arise because the language in which the Book was written

is disused. Many of the expressions, images, and thoughts are of countries, ages, and persons entirely

different from anything we see. The manners and customs it describes have largely passed away. Its history

covers thousands of years, and the greater part of the earth’s surface. Its precepts refer to both worlds, and

are necessarily expressed in terms of only one. And the whole is comprised in one brief volume. Keeping

these facts in mind, it is evident that there must be difficulties of many and various kinds. Much is made of

the historical difficulties and supposed contradictions between the Bible and other authentic records. But

the whole tendency of recent investigation, historical and archaeological, is beyond doubt to establish not

only the historicity and authenticity, but in many cases even the minute accuracy, of the Bible record. This

is shown by the vast and accumulating mass of literature by the foremost experts and highest authorities

upon the testimony of the monuments, tablets, resurrected cities, mounds, libraries, and other records of

ancient Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, Syria, Palestine, Sinai, as well as the immense amount of

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corroborative evidense from Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, etc., together with the testimony from the

literature, lands, and usages of the peoples of the East who were in touch with the people of Israel. These

discoveries have exploded many of the most confidently assumed critical theories, and shown the

baselessness of the bold assumptions upon which the critics build their imposing structures of cavil, and

have disproved many of their finespun philological theories. Since this recent knowledge has removed

many once formidable objections, it establishes the principle of vanishing difficulties, and makes possible,

if not probable, the complete removal of all such difficulties with greater research and completer

knowledge. The alleged discords between the Bible and science have arisen mainly from overlooking the

fact that the Bible is a popular book, written not in scientific terminology, but in the language of the

people. For instance, the same skeptical scientist who ridicules the Bible for unscientifically speaking of

the sun as “rising” and “setting,” invariably uses the same words when he comes to describe the same

event. His objection to the Bible, in such a case is a mere subterfuge, and should not deceive the simplest.

Concerning the common belief that science and Christianity are and have been engaged in a life-and-death

combat, it is a fact that nearly all the great discoverers and pioneers in science have been devout men, such

as Newton, Cuvier, Faraday, Herschel, Galileo, and scores of others. It is by telling the people that all

scientists are with them that the new theologists would quarantine the people - to keep them immune from

the bacillus of belief in the Bible. As to the famous differences between the records of Genesis concerning

the formation of the earth and the evolutionary doctrines of geology, botany, and zoology, it is only

necessary to say that the difficulties have been created by the evolutionists’ gigantic assumptions of

absolutely unproved theories. The whole situation simmers down to this: Shall the baseless hypotheses of

skeptics be accepted instead of God’s facts? The discoveries of science are corroborating the Bible

statements in a most wonderful manner. Difficulties that have existed for thousands of years are now

vanishing before the light of modern research, and here also the principle of vanishing difficulties is

established. The solution of these difficulties has been gradual, and for the best of reasons. Each age has

had its own difficulties to face, and has faced them with its own peculiar evidence. The gradual solution of

these difficulties has supplied each age with fresh evidence of the truthfulness and trustworthiness of the

Bible, and excited continued and increasing interest in it. Thus God has used the puzzling things in the

Bible to incite to its study and lead to new truths. The fact that the sins and immoralities of the peoples, and

even of the chosen people and their leaders, are laid bare, has been a stumblingblock in the way of many

who are accustomed to the modern panegyrics called biographies. But, as Dr. Barrows says “It faces things

as they are in a world gone wrong; and as the scenes in human life are not arranged with the elegant luxury

of a French salon, where every object attracts and pleases the sensitive and critical eye, so the Bible, the

Book of life, is not the dilettante’s book. . . . It aims not to flatter the drawing-room fastidiousness which

cares for words rather than for things, and is more shocked by a breach of conventional etiquette than by

the breaking of the statutes of Mount Sinai.”-”Christianity the World Religion,” pages 182, 183. Thus what

is advanced as a poser against it is one of its strongest claims to credence. It condemns sinful man in all his

ways, calls him a shadow, as grass that withers, as smoke that blows away, fallen, depraved, desperately

wicked, his intellect darkened, his righteousness but filthy rags. All the nations of the world are represented

as nothing, as less than nothing; and it exalts God alone, as ruler of the universe and man, and points the

only road to salvation and true greatness. Mankind, however, is so enamored of “self-government” that it

would fain silence this one troublesome Book that so insistently sounds its unwelcome claims of

sovereignty in the unwilling ears of rebellious humanity. Higher criticism has come to the aid of those who

would be free from what Dr. Gordon calls “bondage to a Book,” and in pulpit and pew, is prating of

“religious free thought,” and pointing to the mountains of stumblingblocks they have found in the Bible, as

evidence of their “Christian liberty.” Since the Bible will not be silenced, since it still proclaims man as

fallen and sinful, waxing “worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Tim. 3: 13), in desperate

need of a Saviour, and since critics and infidels claim to be risen, to be their own gods, modern ministers

now cut the knot of the perplexity by saying boldly, “Never mind what the Bible says.” Away with the old

Book anyway! We will not have this Book to rule over us. But if critics and skeptics set such store by

dilemmas, let them face the overwhelming objections and attempt to remove the monster difficulties of

their own theories, and the principle that leads them to repudiate the Bible will equally compel them to

abandon their own theories. Besides the kinds of objections mentioned above, there are difficulties as to

inspiration, prayer, miracles, the incarnation and resurrection of Christ; difficulties relating to the Trinity,

the atonement, the love of God in the midst of pain, and much else, all of which is universally discussed in

the pew and from the pulpit, and eagerly repeated by popular journals, echoed by unthinking readers,

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treasured by skeptics, and repeated by critics upon every occasion. Such difficulties as attend, for instance,

belief in the atonement of Christ are such as are inherent in the doctrine; and no amount of reasoning or

research will ever avail to remove them, any more than it could ever be possible to pour the Pacific Ocean

into a pint cup. The atonement is infinite in its meaning; and for the finite to comprehend the infinite so

that no difficulty shall exist is patently impossible. Hence the presence of perplexities concerning these

doctrines stands as a bulwark of proof that the Bible is the word of God. If anything purporting to be of

divine origin contained no mysteries, we might then wonder, and be disposed to question if such a

revelation could possibly be from the infinite God. The very difficulties of the Bible show its divinity; and

the absence of mystery would be the greatest difficulty of all, and the basis of more plausible objections

than can be made from its mysteries now. To expect the solution of every perplexity were foolish. “The last

step of reason,” says Pascal, “is to know that there is an infinitude of things which surpass it.” As we

contemplate the Bible’s many and great “mysteries of godliness,” we are led to exclaim with Paul: “0 the

depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are His judgments, and

His ways past finding out!” If we were to wait till every difficulty is removed before believing, we should

believe very little of anything. Even the primal truth of science, the law of gravitation, is not free from

grave difficulties; and the primal truth of the Bible, that God is love, is not free from the difficulties caused

by the prevalence of suffering. But these difficulties do not prevent us from believing in gravitation, nor in

God. It would be well in this connection to remember the words of an eminent scholar who spent all his

life considering the difficulties of Scripture. Says Dr. Westcott: “Even in those passages which present

greatest difficulties, there are traces of unrecorded facts which, if fully known, would probably explain the

whole. And besides all this, there are so many tokens of unrecorded facts in the brief summaries which are

preserved, that no argument can be based upon apparent discrepancies, sufficient to prove the existence of

absolute error.”-”Introduction to the Study of the Gospels,” pages 380, 400. The difficulties of the Bible, in

the purpose of God, serve high ends for the good of man. They tax our minds, and reveal our ignorance.

They teach us humility, and train us in patience. They try our faith, and in its trial strengthen it. They lead

us to a simpler dependence upon God, and thus increase our spirituality. Because of its difficulties, the

Bible has exhaustless fullness, perennial freshness, everlasting newness, infinite depth. Every Christian

finds in it something that no other has found. Every age finds it adequate to its varied demands, and every

nation finds it stored with treasures suited to its peculiar needs. Thus have the passing ages, with their

blasting criticism, and rigid tests, served only to disclose its accumulating riches; and still the mine of truth

seems to be as filled with precious metal as ever, awaiting the eager search of the honest and earnest

investigator. Besides all of this, is the evidence of the Christian who has answered the call to “taste and see

that the Lord is good.” The most prevalent evidence of the divinity of the Bible is the fruit of its teaching

when received in the heart and worked out in the life. Scores of thousands the world over are living

testimony to the divinity of the Word; and even the hypocrites who parade in the name of Christ are but

further proof of the truth of the Bible, for their existence was foretold. At once the greatest difficulty in the

Bible and the weightiest proof of its divinity is Jesus Christ. He stands out commandingly among all the

sons of men, unapproached and unapproachable. He walks down the ages with the tread of a conqueror,

while around Him shines a lonely moral splendor that has compelled even skepticism to bow the head in

hushed reverence. Yes, even the vitriolic pen of Tom Paine paused to praise Him. Upon the impregnable

Rock of Ages, all criticisms are baffled, broken, and shivered. Christ is the great spiritual magnet drawing

all men to Himself. From heaven, with the accumulated love of eternity in His heart, came this King of

kings, to be one with humanity, to suffer the vilest mockery, endure the strongest temptations, and

experience the lowest of deaths, that you and I might know what love is, that we might be reconciled to

God, be restored to Edenic innocence and happiness. Around Him, all truth clusters and revolves, as do the

planets about the sun. Roman greed and Jewish hate and Greek subtlety united to stamp out the truths

given by Him. Such a powerful combination has no parallel in history. But the banner of the cross has been

unfurled in far-off regions where even “the wings of the Roman eagle” never flew, and where the fame of

the sons of fortune never sounded. Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, those mighty empires which bore

such arrogant sway upon the earth where are they? Their glory is dimmed and their power departed

forever. The dust of centuries, the blood of millions, lie upon their well-nigh forgotten ruins. But the glory

and power of the lowly Galilean, who spoke as never man spoke, is gathering beauty and momentum with

every attack, with every age. And His word, as He foretold, is going rapidly to every nation, tongue, and

people; and wherever the Bible goes, civilization, morals, and light arise. But the devout Christian need not

be alarmed by the boastings of criticism. All he needs remember is that “Thy word is truth,” and that no

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matter what the claims of this new “science falsely so called,” nor how much like “an angel of light” its

advocates, “the Scripture cannot be broken.” Finally, in the words of Hugh McIntosh: “And so will

progress in the knowledge and experience of its infinite depths of grace and truth go on, as, through the

night of doubt and sorrow, the church of the living God is led by the providence of God, and the teaching

of the Spirit of God, into the meaning of the word of God, till the day dawn, and the day-star arise in our

hearts, amid the full blaze of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ in all

the glory of His appearing. Then, and not till then, will the written Word vanish in the light of the eternal

Word as fades the morning star into the glory of the noonday sun.”

14 - THE WITNESS OF PROPHECY

“To make thee know the certainty of the words of truth.” Prov. 22:21. PROPHECY is equivalent to any

miracle, and is itself miraculous. Alexander Keith, in “Evidence of Prophecy,” page 13, truly says: “If the

prophecies of the Scriptures can be proved to be genuine; if they be of such a nature as no foresight of man

could possibly have predicted; if the events foretold in them were described hundreds or even thousands of

years before those events became parts of the history of man; and if the history itself correspond with the

prediction, then the evidence which the prophecies impart is a sign and a wonder to every age; no clearer

testimony or greater assurance of truth can be given; and if men do not believe Moses and the prophets,

neither would they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” If the prophecies were false, nothing

could admit of easier detection; if true, nothing could be more impossible to have been conceived by man.

Time infallibly must refute or realize them. Of the thousand predictions made in the Bible, some eight

hundred have been fulfilled, and others are fulfilling now. Some prophecies are admittedly symbolic, and

therefore not easy of interpretation. Men who desire to discredit the Bible prophecies refer to the symbolic

utterances as not clear, and use them to discredit the prophecies known as literal. But such a proceeding is

neither honest nor scientific. In science, we always proceed from the simple to the complex, from the easy

to the difficult. The study of prophecy would fill many volumes like this. However, a few proofs may be

given of the many that might be given, any one of which establishes the divine authority of the Scriptures.

The wisest of historians admit that no human can foretell the future. John Clark Ridpath, in Christian

Work, December 27, 1894, said: “There is not a philosopher in the world who can forecast the historical

evolution to the extent of a single day. . . . The tallest son of the morning can neither foretell nor foresee

the nature of what is to come in the year that already stands knocking at the door.” It is to be expected,

however, that the higher critic will sneer at “arguments from miracles and prophecies which offend rather

than impress the modern mind.”-”Program of Modernism,” page 98. This attitude reminds us of that of the

Jews: “For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of

the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning Him.” Acts 13:27.

The “arguments from miracles and prophecies” offended the “modern” Jewish mind of the first century

even more than it offends the minds of our higher critical friends of today. And no wonder the critics are

offended by arguments from the prophecies; for the prophecies prove the utter foolishness of their critical

fancies, and establish firmer than the foundations of the earth the eternal infallibility of the Bible. In the

uncertainty which prevails everywhere, in the paralyzing dread of some sudden and crushing catastrophe,

men naturally desire and frantically seek some grounds of certainty with reference to the future. They feel

that this soul-harrowing suspense is worse than certainty of even misfortune. The swelling cry is for surety.

We have seen that it certainly is not in man and his isms; that it resides only in God’s word. And here is

where we shall seek it. Man is not alone in seeking to learn of the future, for we find that there are “things

the angels desire to look into.” I Peter 1:12. They might well search the Scriptures along with man; “for no

prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter

1:21. Coming from such a source, the prophecies are to be accepted as trustworthy. “And we have the word

of prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark

place.” 2 Peter 1:19. Even “the prophets sought and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that

should come unto you: searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them

did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow

them. To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto you, did they minister these things.” I

Peter 1:10-12. And we are told that “God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the

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world began.” Acts 3:21. A few of the more direct and literal prophecies will now be briefly considered.

Not one of them has ever been disproved. Leading writers of all denominations are agreed as to the facts.

And if these prophecies are true, both the unbelief of infidels and the cavilings of higher critics are forever

discredited. Nineveh and Assyria bulk large in the history of ancient times. In a few simple words, the

Bible tells the whole story: “And He will stretch out His hand against the north, and destroy Assyria, and

will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like the wilderness. And herds shall lie down in the midst of her,

all the beasts of the nations: both the pelican and the porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof; their

voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds. . . . This is the joyous city that dwelt

carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none besides me: how is she become a desolation, a

place for beasts to lie down in!” Zeph. 2:13-15. True to the prophetic Word, Nineveh has lain in desolation

for ages, her very site forgotten for centuries. The one who wrote that, be he who he may, made a

remarkable prediction, which history has proved to be in every detail true. How did he know? Was it a

clever guess? Much is said regarding Tyre in Ezekiel: “Behold, I am against thee, 0 Tyrus, and will cause

many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. And they shall destroy the

walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top

of a rock. . . . And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall

break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy

dust in the midst of the water. . . . And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to

spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God.” Ezek.

26:3, 4, 12, 14. Nebuchadnezzar soon took the city and spoiled it. The sound of her harps was no more

heard (verse 13), the sound of her songs had ceased, and the great and joyous city was desolate. The

remaining inhabitants removed to an island half a mile from shore, and here built a new city. The ruins of

the old city still remained. The prophecy had declared that the timbers and the stones and even the very

dust should be cast into the sea, leaving a bare rock. These words were not fulfilled, and it seemed

improbable that they ever would be; for if Nebuchadnezzar, in his anger, had taken a full vengeance, and

had not thought of this, who was likely to care enough about the ruins of the city to wreak such a

vengeance? It would be the very frenzy of madness. But meanwhile there the words stood in the Book of

which Jesus said that not one word should be broken. Two and a half centuries passed away, and still the

ruins stood, a challenge to the accuracy of prophecy. Then through the east the fame of Alexander the

Great sent a thrill of terror. He marched to the attack of Tyre. Reaching the shore, he saw the city he had

come to take, with half a mile of water between them, built upon an island. Alexander’s plan of attack was

speedily formed and executed. He took the walls, towers, timbers, and ruined houses and palaces of the

ancient city, and with them, built a solid causeway through the half-mile of sea to the island city. Even her

mounds of ruins were carried away; and so great was the demand for material, that the very dust was

scraped from the site and laid in the sea. The city was to be built no more. This divine sentence of

judgment has for centuries been a challenge to all time. It is unanswered still. Take Babylon. “And

Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, shall be as when God overthrew

Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to

generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down

there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and

ostriches shall dwell there, and wild goats shall dance there. And wolves shall cry in their castles, and

jackals in the pleasant palaces.” “I will also make it a possession for the porcupine, and pools of water: and

I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith Jehovah of hosts.” Isaiah 13:19-22; 14:23. “Behold, I

am against thee, 0 destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and I will stretch out

Mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain. And they

shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate forever,

saith the Lord.” Jer. 51:25, 26. Here is no ambiguity, no stammering. Here we find a man who was able to

write, twenty-five hundred years ago, a history which has been true for all ages, and is undeniably true today.

No writer of the present time could in so few words, with all the records of twenty-five centuries in his

hands, write a more accurate account of Babylon. Hundreds of years passed after that prophecy was

uttered, and there seemed to be no signs of its fulfillment. When captured by Alexander, Babylon was still

so great that he contemplated making it his capital. At the beginning of the Christian era, the work of

destruction was visible; but a small part of the ancient city was still inhabited, and the prophecy was not yet

fulfilled. In A. D. 40, Caligula still further reduced its inhabitants by persecution. In 460, Theodoret tells us

that only a few Jews had their habitations scattered among the ruins. The ocean of human life was

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gradually receding from this immense city. Still the prophecy was unfulfilled, for the city was inhabited. In

the twelfth century, however, Benjamin of Tudela passed the utterly desolate site of Chaldea’s ancient

capital, but was unable to investigate the ruins, because of the prevalence of vast numbers of scorpions and

serpents. Other cities in prophecy became folds for flocks, but this one was not to have any such history.

But, as Rawlinson says, “On the actual ruins of Babylon, the Arabian neither pitches his tent nor pastures

his flocks- in the first place, because the nitrous soil produces no pasture to tempt him; secondly, because

an evil reputation attaches to the entire site, which is thought to be the haunt of evil spirits.”-”Egypt and

Babylon,” page 206. “There is one fact,” says Mr. Rassam, “connected with the destruction of Babylon and

the marvelous fulfillment of prophecy, which struck me more than anything else, which fact seems never to

have been noticed by any traveler; and that is the nonexistence, in the several modern buildings in the

neighborhood of Babylon, of any sign of stone which had been dug up from its ancient ruins. It seems that

in digging for old materials, the Arabs used the bricks for building purposes, but always burnt the stone

thus discovered for lime, which fact wonderfully fulfills the divine words of Jeremiah, namely, `And they

shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be desolate forever,

saith the Lord.”‘ Turn to the records of historians, and their accounts teem with records of wild animals and

wild birds and pests that infest the ruins of Babylon, and of the lagoons of stagnant water. “Thou shalt be

desolate forever,” was the verdict written by the divine hand over its ruins; and many centuries she has

been desolate, her very site a matter of speculation. Why have not the infidels, whether in the church or

out, who are so eager to disprove God’s word, gone and inhabited Babylon? God’s very words on

multiplied millions of Bible pages stand a challenge to them to prove that the verdict passed on Babylon is

untrue. But despite the pratings of those who say prophecy is history written after the event, no one has

ever yet claimed that this prediction was written in this century; yet if their contention be true, the prophecy

of the desolation of Assyria and Babylonia must have been written in recent years. Notwithstanding the

blind cavils of unbelievers, there lie the ruins of two magnificent world-ruling empires as impregnable

proof of the divine foresight given the writers of these prophecies. Or do the higher critics prefer to

account for the remarkable fulfillment of these predictions on the score of clever guessing? It is not the

fulfillment they deny - that is unquestionable; but they deny that the writers had the wisdom to foretell.

Hence the fulfillment was all accident! Let us turn to another of the more ancient kingdoms. Of the

destruction of Egypt’s two ancient capitals, Thebes and Memphis, we read in Ezek. 30:13, A. R. V., “I will

also destroy the idols, and I will cause the images to cease from Memphis.” Memphis was founded by

Menes, and Brugsch Bey speaks of it as “the great temple city of Egypt.” In the course of the centuries,

Thebes was reduced to ruins, but Memphis retained her glory. At the beginning of the Christian era, the

fulfillment of this prophecy seemed more improbable still; for not only were images to be found all over

Egypt, Thebes, though in ruins for centuries, being no exception, but Strabo found Memphis “large and

populous, next to Alexandria in size,” and tells us of its gods and temples and statues. Even as late as the

seventh century, it was the residence of the governor of Egypt. But there remained on the pages of

prophecy the assertion that though the idols and images of the other cities of Egypt would not be destroyed,

those of Memphis would be. How the skeptic of that day might have sneered at the prediction, and taunted

the Christian with his fallible Bible and failing prophecies, since there stood Memphis in power and glory

nearly fifteen hundred years after its predicted destruction! Even in the thirteenth century, its ruins struck

the beholder with admiration. But today? Let the “Encyclopedia Britannica” tell us: “Now the ruins of the

city, the great temple of Ptah, the dwelling of Apis, and the palaces of the kings, are traceable only by a

few stones among the palm trees and fields and heaps of rubbish.” Eleventh edition, article “Memphis.” But

where are her idols and images and gods and statues? “This is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of

cities,” says Miss Amelia B. Edwards,- “a few large rubbish heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a

name. One can hardly believe a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have

been effaced so utterly.”-”A Thousand Miles up the Nile,” pages 97-99. The prophecies concerning Egypt

itself were abundant and minute, and a detailed application of them is fascinating; but only a few of them

can be admitted here, illustrative of the character of the rest. It was foretold that the canals of Egypt should

be dried up, and the rivers be wasted and stink. Ezek. 30:12; Isaiah 19:5, 6. “The entire river became a

marsh, through which, by the great pressure of water, the stream oozed through innumerable small

channels. In fact, the White Nile had disappeared.”-”Encyclopedia Britannica,” article “Nile.” “The great

difference between the Nile of Egypt in the present day and in ancient times is caused by the failure of

some of its branches. . . . The river was famous for its seven branches; and under Roman dominion, eleven

were counted, of which, however, there were but seven principal ones. . . . Now, as for a long period past,

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there are no navigable and unobstructed branches but those two that Herodotus distinguishes as the work of

man.” Reginald Stuart Poole, “Egypt as It Is,” page 5. Wilkinson speaks of the “noxious vapors that rise

when the water has retired and left a bed of liquid mud.” Concerning the canals, Mr. Villiers Stuart, who

was deputed by the British government to examine into the state of Egypt, says “Canals exist, but many

have been allowed to silt up. They all want deepening, and they ought to be connected together on a

scientific system.”-”Egypt After the War,” page 241. “The reeds and flags shall wither away. The meadows

by the Nile, by the brink of the Nile, and all the sown fields of the Nile, shall become dry, be driven away,

and be no more.” Isaiah 19:6, 7. At one time, the papyrus and the lotus were so abundant that they were

symbols respectively of Upper and Lower Egypt. Even till the seventh century, papyrus was found in its

ancient home. But the prophecy said it should be no more; and today we read that “the plant is now

unknown in Egypt,”- Wilkinson, “Ancient Egyptians,” volume 2, page 97. Says another writer: “It is a

curious fact that no water plants or weeds grow on the banks of the Nile. A sedgy margin is never to be met

with in this country.” “The fishers shall lament, and all they that cast angle into the Nile shall mourn, and

they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.” Isaiah 19:8. For many hundred years, fish was the

food of the poor, and was caught in such abundance that from Lake Morris alone the Pharaohs derived a

revenue of five hundred thousand dollars a year. But today, Poole tells us, “the fisheries are scarcely of any

moment.” But worst of all: “Moreover they that work in combed flax, and they that weave white cloth,

shall be confounded. And the pillars of Egypt shall be broken in pieces; all they that work for hire shall be

grieved in soul. . . . Neither shall there be for Egypt any work, which head or tail, palm branch or rush, may

do.” Isaiah 19:9,10, 15. The arts and industries of Egypt were her chief glories. The combed flax sold for

its weight in gold. The other products of Egypt were famed as the best in the world. It would seem that if

all the industries of Egypt passed away, so that there was no work of this kind left for high or low to do,

the kingdom could not continue. But the prophecy says only that they shall be grieved in soul. As the

centuries passed, these words seemed unlikely of fulfillment. When Alexander conquered Egypt, new

markets were opened up, and the destruction of Tyre and Sidon gave new life to her industries. Pliny, a

hundred years after Christ, still speaks of the arts and commerce of Egypt as at their height. But today

agriculture is her one stay and employment, and it is so unskillfully carried on as to awaken the scorn and

pity of the nations. “And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will

make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the Lord have spoken it.” Ezek.

30:12. Thus in one brief sentence is summed up the whole history of Egypt since the occupation of the first

conquerors, Volney called it a country “of slavery and tyranny.” Malte-Brun speaks of “the arbitrary sway

of the ruffian masters of Egypt.” Much as the Egyptian hated the foreigner and his ways, it seems a poetic

punishment that Egypt, the land that oppressed God’s people for hundreds of years, should be oppressed in

turn by strangers. Egypt has been treated, for two thousand years and more, as she treated her slaves. The

hand of the wicked stranger has made Egyptian history for ages, as the prophet declared. “It shall be the

basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it any more lift itself up above the nations: and I will diminish them,

that they shall no more rule over the nations.” “And there shall be no more a prince from the land of

Egypt.” Ezek. 29:15; 30:13. And what has history to say? Assyria and Babylonia have been destroyed as

the prophecy said; but this kingdom was not to be destroyed, but degraded, debased, the oppressed land of

rapacious tyrants during all the rest of her history. For two millenniums, she has been subject successively

to the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantine Greeks, the Saracens, the Turks, the French, and the

British. Not once in that time has one of her own princes risen to power. “They shall cry unto Jehovah

because of oppressors, and He will send them a savior, and a defender, and He will deliver them. . . . And

Jehovah will smite Egypt, smiting and healing; and they shall return unto Jehovah, and He will be entreated

of them, and will heal them.” Isaiah 19:20-22. Since the English occupation, thirty years ago, the

population of Egypt has doubled. The land under cultivation has doubled in area, as well as increased in

productiveness, owing to the modern scientific system of irrigation. Manufactures have multiplied,

commerce has increased, schools have been established, Christianity is spreading fast. In fact, “the

prosperity of the country became more manifest each succeeding year.”-”Encyclopedia Britannica,” article

“Egypt.” Suppose the ancient prophets of the Old Testament, in making their predictions concerning

Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, had by any accident transposed their predictions - that we were told Egypt

should never be inhabited, but should remain desolate forever, while Babylon was to be degraded, and her

people were to continue subjects of a foreign power. How quick the critics would be to bring forward the

fact of non-fulfillment of prophecy! But when history teems with facts which attest the accuracy of

predictions made, even, as we have seen, when they extend more than two thousand years beyond the time

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in which even the most rabid critic claims they were written, he shuts his eyes to the facts, and talks

learnedly of prophecy’s being history written after the event! How can man, without divine aid, foretell the

future for ten years, not to say twice ten centuries? Who, in 1905, dreamed of the revolution in Turkey?

Who, in 1900, could have foretold the lightning-like rapidity of the revolution in the most sluggish and

cumbersome of all nations -who, in short, could have foreseen a Chinese republic? Who, in July, 1914,

foretold the beginning, in a few days, of the world’s most awful war? But in the Bible, we have not one

instance of such foresight, but hundreds, reaching not ten years into the future, but thousands. If those who

foresaw these things were not prophets with divine foresight, those ancient writers are a far greater miracle

than we claim for them, and it will tax the acutest ingenuity of the most ingenious critics, whose whole

lives are an effort to explain away the truths of the Bible by ingenuity - it will, I say, tax to the utmost all

their cautious cunning to explain as guesswork such stupendous foresight.

15 - WITNESS OF PROPHECY - GOD’S PEOPLE

“Behold, I have told you beforehand.”-Jesus. NOT only is the history of the heathen nations foretold, but as

might be expected, the fortunes of God’s people have been faithfully delineated. Nearly thirty-five

centuries ago, Moses outlined the history of the Jews to the close of time: “And I will destroy your high

places. . . . And I will make your cities a waste, and will bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will

not smell the savor of your sweet odors. And I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies that

dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And you will I scatter among the nations, and I will draw out the

sword after you: and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.” Lev.26:30-33. In

their stubbornness of heart, the Jews crucified the Saviour, and brought all this woe upon their head. No

one can deny that the sanctuaries of the Jews were destroyed, the temple demolished, and the people

themselves scattered, “rooted out” of their own land, as Moses said they would be. “Then men shall say, . .

. The Lord rooted them out of their land in anger.” Deut. 29:25, 28. Not only were they to be deprived of

their land, but their enemies should dwell in it. Still the land and the cities were to be desolate and ruined.

Dean Stanley is convinced that “above all other countries in the world it is a land of ruins.”-”Syria and

Palestine,” It is a strange fact of history that a land so filled with ruins should be inhabited, or being

inhabited, the ruins should not have been utilized or removed. Moses foresaw, and so stated the fact. The

land flowing with milk and honey became desolate. Dr. Olin remarks: “The very labor which was

expended on these sterile hills in former times has increased their present sterility. The natural vegetation

has been swept away, and no human cultivation now occupies the terraces which once took the place of

forests and pastures.” Speaking of the district about Lake Huleh, Mark Twain said: “It is seven in the

morning; and as we are in the country, the grass ought to be sparkling with dew, the flowers enriching the

air with their fragrance, and the birds singing in the trees. But alas, there is no dew here, nor flowers, nor

birds, nor trees. There is a plain and an unshaded lake, and beyond them some barren mountains.”-”The

New Pilgrim’s Progress,” page 124. Though ruined, desolate, bereft of her own people, Palestine was

nevertheless to be preeminently a land of pilgrimages; for Moses said that attention should be called to the

condition of the country by “the foreigner that shall come from a far land.” Deut. 29:22. There was to be no

wealth to allure, no beauty to attract; still it was to be the land to which the stranger from afar should come.

To-day fifty languages are spoken in Jerusalem alone, so numerous are the different peoples represented.

(”Encyclopedia Britannica,” eleventh edition, article “Palestine.”) “And Jehovah will scatter thee among all

peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth. . . . And among these nations,

shalt thou find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot. . . . And thy life shall hang in

doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have no assurance of thy life.” Deut. 28:64-

66. There is nothing in all history so pathetic and so terrible as the tale of the Jews. Two millions were

killed or starved to death or sold into slavery worse than death in A. D. 70. Over half a million more were

slaughtered by the Romans sixty years later. The history of the Jews has been but the record of the

slaughter of a nation, extending over nineteen centuries. “No fanatic monk,” says Milman, “set the

populace in commotion, no public calamity took place, no atrocious or extravagant report was propagated,

but it fell upon the heads of this unhappy caste. In Germany, the black plague raged in all its fury; and wild

superstition charged the Jews, as elsewhere, with causing and aggravating the misery, and themselves

enjoying a guilty comparative security amid the universal desolation. . . . The same dark stories were

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industriously propagated, readily believed, and ferociously avenged, of fountains poisoned, children

crucified, the Host stolen and outraged. . . . Still, persecuted in one city, they fled to another, and thus

spread over the whole of Germany, Brunswick, Austria, Franconia, the Rhine provinces, Silesia,

Brandenburg, Bohemia, Lithuania, and Poland. Oppressed by the nobles, anathematized by the clergy,

hated as rivals in trade by burghers in commercial cities, despised and abhorred by the populace, their

existence is known by the chronicle, rarely of protective edicts, more often of their massacres.”-”History of

the Jews,” volume 3, pages 222, 223. Strange as it seems, rooted out of their own land, without central

government, without ruler, scattered over the whole earth, they have nevertheless been preserved.

“Massacred by thousands, yet springing up again from their undying stock, the Jews appear at all times and

in all regions. Their perpetuity, their national immortality, is at once the most curious problem to the

political inquirer; to the religious man a subject of profound and awful admiration.”-Milman, “History of

the Jews,” volume 2, pages 398, 399. Even to-day we are often startled and shocked by the news of some

dread and sudden massacre of the Jews in foreign lands, reminding us that the sword is still drawn out after

this unfortunate people. But that is not all. “Jehovah will bring thee, and thy king whom thou shalt set over

thee, unto a nation that thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers; and there shalt thou serve other gods,

wood and stone.” Deut. 28:36. In verse 64, the same doom is repeated when they shall be scattered over the

earth. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and the temple of Jerusalem were destroyed the same day. The

temple tax of half a shekel paid by every Jew for the maintenance of their temple was after this, used to

help rebuild the Roman temple. In vain they refused to pay. They were compelled to lay their offering on

the altar of Jove. Not only were they thus obliged to worship the idols of heathen Rome, but papal Rome

exacted a greater toll from them, forcing thousands of them to build for her houses of worship, and to

supply the money for the adorning and worshiped images; and many of the Jews were compelled to

worship these images on pain of death. Thus they worshiped gods, which neither they nor their fathers had

known. Still further, “The children of Israel shall abide many days without king, and without prince, and

without sacrifice, and without pillar, and without ephod or teraphim.” Hosea 3:4. As we know, the last king

perished in the first century; but a prince of the captivity was honored for centuries. The last prince of the

captivity perished on the scaffold in the eleventh century. And they have now been “many days without

king, and without prince.” They were to be “without sacrifice, and without pillar.” The pillar has reference

to even the rudest holy place for sacrifice. For eighteen centuries, there has been neither sacrifice nor holy

place to Israel an almost unbearable punishment. They were likewise to be “without ephod or teraphim.”

These were used in the priestly ministrations in the endeavor to learn the mind of God. In the destruction of

Jerusalem, the entire priesthood perished. (Milman, “History of the Jews,” volume 3, page 414.) The rabbi

has taken the place of the priest, and the synagogue has succeeded to the sacred service of the holy temple.

The critics, who endeavor to account for these phenomenal forecasts on the supposition of guesswork or

accident, are more credulous than the Christians, who believe the obvious fact that the prophecies were

inspired - history written in advance. The critics rather elude than elucidate the facts. If men are such good

guessers, how does it happen that only in the Bible have we accounts of the successful guesses of men? If

Plato, for instance, had accurately forecast the history of Greece for a hundred years, not to say two

thousand, how eagerly the unbelievers would have seized upon the fact to exalt Plato! Even as it is, this

heathen philosopher is lauded as inspired. But the Bible has foretold the history of all the great nations of

the world, not merely for a hundred years, nor for a thousand, but for all time. The historians can add only

the details of fulfillment of the prophecies. Puny man, who cannot himself tell what a day will bring forth,

calls this guesswork. Such arrogance and willful ignorance stand rebuked before the fact that the men who

so confidently exclaim, “Mere guessing!” are themselves unable to predict a single event, not to mention a

whole series of them, all contrary to probability- for nothing seemed more improbable than that a nation

could be scattered to every nation on earth, hated and killed by them all, yet remain for two thousand years

distinct. In pronouncing judgment upon the last king of Israel, Ezekiel also outlined, with a few epic

strokes of the pen, the whole history of the world till the second coming of Jesus: “Thus saith the Lord God

; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown : . . . exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will

overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until He come whose right it is; and I will give it

Him.” Ezek. 21:26, 27. The crown thus removed from Israel passed successively to Babylon, Medo-Persia,

Greece, and Rome, Note the historic truth of prediction. Babylon was conquered by Medo-Persia, Medo-

Persia by Greece, and Greece by Rome; but concerning Rome, the prophet says, not that it shall be

“overturned” by another power, but “it shall be no more,” it shall fade away, and there shall be no other

universal kingdoms until Jesus, the King of kings, shall come, In the brief space of five hundred years, four

The Bible In The Critic’s Den

43

universal kingdoms successively bore undisputed sway, as prophecy had said; but in all the two thousand

years since the establishment of the universal empire of Rome, there has been no successor to the mighty

four. Contrary to all human analogy and reason, four universal empires in five centuries have been

followed by twenty centuries in which, instead of sixteen more universal kingdoms, there has been not so

much as one set up, despite the desperate attempts of ambitious Napoleons. The history of the Christian era

is an almost uncanny commentary upon the words, “It shall be no more, until He come whose right it is.”

Babylon’s golden pomp, Persia’s innumerable hosts, Greece’s brilliant sway, Rome’s invincible might -

where are they all? These world powers, which seemed destined to rule forever - where are they? -

Vanished into the dim mists of long ago, sunk into the oblivion of dust-covered antiquity. All that is left of

their once proud power is a few moldy ruins and a name. As “the flower of the grass” they have perished,

and only the ashes of their former greatness remain to attest the eternal truth of the inspired record, and to

comfort us with the increasingly evident truth that “surely the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, except He

reveal His secret unto His servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7. “God hath spoken by the mouth of all His

holy prophets since the world began.” Acts 3:21. Since we find such unequivocal testimony to the

truthfulness and inspiration of Old Testament prophets, let us turn to the New Testament prophets. We

should expect at least equal authority for them. Let us pass directly to the greatest of all prophets - Jesus.

“For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your

brethren, like unto me; Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever He shall say unto you. And it shall come

to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.” Acts

3:22, 23. From all who recognize any authority whatever in the Bible, such inevasible testimony

commands attention. Let us listen to His words where He explicitly claims the prophetic gift: “Behold, I

have told you beforehand.” Matt. 24:25. In answer to the disciples’ anxious request that He tell them when

would be the destruction of Jerusalem, and the sign of His coming and of the end of the world, Jesus told

them, in a few graphic sentences of awful significance, the punishment that would befall those who were to

utter those historic words, “His blood be on us, and on our children,” and the tribulation of the faithful,

down the ages to the end of time. Christ said that when Jerusalem was overthrown, not one stone of the

temple should remain on another. After the most horrible siege in all history, in which a million Jews

perished, Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus in A. D. 70. Later the Jews began to return; and sixty years

after the destruction of the city, all the Jews were banished, and the site of the temple was plowed up.

(Angus, “Encyclopedic Handbook of the Bible,” page 285.) Thus were literally fulfilled not only the

Saviour’s words, but also Micah’s, spoken eight hundred years previously: “Therefore shall Zion for your

sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps.” Micah 3:12. Then in a few terse sentences,

bursting with meaning, Jesus foretold the history of the world from the time when Rome was to “be no

more,” “for nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and

earthquakes in divers places.” The political history of the world was not, as before, one universal kingdom

following another, nor even one kingdom ruling another; but “kingdom against kingdom” was the divine

phrase which foretold nineteen hundred years of bloody warfare. In no other instance was so much political

history ever embodied in so few words. With awe and amazement we read, on the pages of history, the

accounts of a thousand such movements of kingdom against kingdom; and the end is not yet. Nineteen

centuries are but one long commentary upon Christ’s words. So much for the civil history of the world.

Christ next outlined as graphically the religious history of all time: “Then shall they deliver you up unto

tribulation, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all the nations for My name’s sake. And then shall

many stumble, and shall deliver up one another, and shall hate one another.” Again let history speak. Have

Christians been in tribulation? Let the unanimous reply of historians from Tacitus the heathen to Gibbon

the infidel tell us. Have Christians been killed? Let the blood of millions of martyrs testify. Have the

nations hated the Christians? Again let the pages of the past bear witness to the universal execration in

which they have been held. But saddest of all, besides being hated of nations and killed by hostile powers,

have Christians hated and betrayed one another? What infidel does not taunt the Christian with the

obvious, infinitely sad fact? What Tom Paine lets slip an opportunity to ridicule, denounce, revile, and hold

up to fiendish contempt the Christianity that saturated the soil of Europe with the blood of its professed

brothers, in the name of the gentle Jesus? How strangely true, in the light of history, are those mysterious

words of Jesus, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” But let not the Christian’s faith in Christianity

falter and faint when some all too ready skeptic, whether in the church or out, sneers at Christianity

because of Christians’ betrayal and slaughter of one another; but let him see therein only one more

evidence of the exact truthfulness of the Scriptures. Every taunt of the unbeliever against Christianity,

The Bible In The Critic’s Den

44

based upon the grounds of its bloody past, is an unconscious, unwilling, and therefore valuable testimony

to the unaltering fact that the Bible is not only true in its accounts of the past, but minutely accurate in its

forecast of all ages. The Christian may well blush at the fierce hatred displayed by his ancestors toward one

another; but when mocked with it, he should rejoice that in the very fact of Christianity’s greatest shame

lies one of the most impregnable proofs of the divine origin of the Christianity that is derided - a proof

which even his enemies never tire of thrusting into his face. Instead of blushing and stammering and

apologizing, then, let him arouse, and grasp firmly the proof so openly offered by his enemies, of the truth

of Christianity, and upon the impregnable rock of the Saviour’s fulfilled words build a victorious faith. Let

him grasp firmly, gladly, aggressively the weapons thus put into his hands by the enemies of the gospel.

Let him rejoice whenever higher critics or infidels pile up books telling of the world’s hatred of Christians,

of the Christians’ hatred of one another; for they are only adding proof upon proof that as Jesus said upon

this very occasion, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” Thus what the

unbeliever in his blindness thinks is a weapon to demolish Christianity and the Bible will prove to be but a

boomerang that will in time destroy him and his puny power. That Christ’s words shall not pass away He

tells us in even more unequivocal language: “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole

world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.” For hundreds of years, nothing

seemed more unlikely than the spreading of the gospel to all nations of the earth. For fourteen hundred

years, no headway was made. In fact, ground was lost. Then a new continent, doubling the size of the

known world, was discovered, making the prospect of the fulfillment of Christ’s prediction recede into the

remote future. Well might the skeptic of that day laugh at the simplicity of the Christian who believed

Christ’s prediction. Yet in God’s own good time, a missionary zeal stirred the hearts of His faithful

children, and the Reformation was born in a travail of blood. And what do we see now? - The Bible, which

was nearly extinct in the Middle Ages, printed by the hundreds of millions in half a thousand languages

and dialects, carried and taught by missionaries in every nation under the sun. All the rest of Christ’s

prophetic forecast has been fulfilled. The next event, according to the divine Word, which “cannot be

broken,” is the end of the world, and the coming of Christ Himself in the clouds of heaven, to gather His

elect, to reward His faithful of all ages. In addition to all of this, archaeology has in late years been pouring

an abundance of light upon the past, all proving the divinity of Scripture. As Archibald Sayce, the world’s

leading archeologist, puts it, “Every turn of the spade has furnished corroborative evidence of the minute

truthfulness of Scripture history.” The points where archeology has corroborated the Bible would fill a

large volume, One instance is all we have space for: In Joshua and Kings are many references that imply

the existence of a very powerful Hittite empire north of Palestine. Nowhere in all the world outside of the

Bible was there a single reference to this nation. Yet it was represented as equal in power with Egypt.

Naturally here was matter for the derision of the higher critics. When they will not believe Bible statements

which are supported by abundance of secular evidence, surely we would not look for faith in the

unsupported statements of Scripture. So we find them sneering at the Bible account, jeering at those who

were simple-minded enough - feeble-minded enough, they called it - to believe that such an empire ever

existed. Why, the very fact that the Bible related such a preposterous history of a nation that never existed,

was in itself all the proof needed to blast forever the foolish, grandmotherly notion that unsupported

statements of the Bible should receive a grain of credence! For hundreds of years, skeptics made merry

over the deluded Christians who believed in the former existence of the Hittites. The higher critics copied

their arguments, seasoning them with a few eloquent phrases of learned scientific ignorance, and with

condescending pity for the abysmal stupidity of the Christian believer. They condescended to show him

how “unscientific” it was to believe that a nation so powerful and long-lived as the Bible represented the

Hittites to be, could possibly have escaped record in secular history. They demonstrated their position with

all the mathematical precision of Euclid; and then, when the Christian still maintained that because the

Bible said the nation existed, he would believe it in spite of all their proof, they lost patience, and called

him a fool, and other names not altogether conducive to harmony. But now, from both Egyptian and

Assyrian inscriptions, we learn that the Hittite empire for a thousand years was a great power in Syria and

western Asia, and was as extensive and as powerful as either Egypt or Assyria, and its history now fills

volumes. It is found to be even stronger and more extensive than the Bible led us to believe. To human

reasoning, it seems impossible that so vast and so mighty a nation could exist for ten centuries - seven

times as long as the United States - and escape completely all profane record. Yet we know such to be the

case. Thus is the Christian’s faith in his Bible vindicated where there seemed least likelihood that it could

be. The Bible prophecies relate not to things done in a corner, but to the mightiest nations of earth.

The Bible In The Critic’s Den

45

Alexander Keith, in “Evidence of Prophecy,” pages 17, I8, sums up a few of the leading events that have

been foretold and fulfilled: “Jerusalem was destroyed and laid waste by the Romans; the land of Palestine,

and the surrounding countries, are now thinly inhabited, and, in comparison of their former fertility, have

been almost converted into deserts; the Jews have been scattered among the nations; and remain to this day

a dispersed and yet a distinct people; Egypt, one of the first and most powerful of nations, has long since

ceased to be a kingdom; Nineveh is no more; Babylon is now a ruin; the Persian empire succeeded to the

Babylonian; the Grecian empire succeeded to the Persian, and the Roman to the Grecian; the old Roman

empire has been divided into several kingdoms; Rome itself became the seat of a government of a different

nature from any other that ever existed in the world; the doctrine of the gospel was transformed into a

system of spiritual tyranny and of temporal power; the authority of the pope was held supreme in Europe

for many ages; the Saracens obtained a sudden and mighty power, overran a great part of Asia and of

Europe, and many parts of Christendom suffered much from their incursions; the Arabs maintain their

warlike character and retain possession of their own land; the Africans are a humble race, and are still

treated as slaves; the Turkish empire attained to great power it continued to rise for the space of several

centuries, but it paused in its progress, has since decayed, and now evidently verges to its fall. “These form

some of the most prominent and remarkable facts of the history of the world from the ages of the prophets

to the present time; and if to each and all of them, from the first to the last, an index is to be found in the

prophecies, we may warrantably conclude that they could only have been revealed by the Ruler among the

nations, and that they afford more than human testimony of the truth of Christianity.” God has so filled

earth, sea, sky, and history with the proofs of His word, has buried in the earth for centuries so many

wonderful proofs that the Bible is the infallible word of the living God, that only those who are determined

not to accept evidence, can remain unconvinced. All through the New Testament are scattered multiplied

prophecies, giving many different signs of the imminent second coming of Christ. This is the one great

event of prophecy toward which all events trend, to which all prophecies point, for which the church has

for ages hoped. “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.” “Even so, come, Lord

Jesus.”

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The Chronology of Ezra 7

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THE CHRONOLOGY OF EZRA 7

A REPORT OF THE HISTORICAL RESEARCH COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL CONFERENCE

OF SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS

1953

Prepared for the Committee by

SIEGFRIED H. HORN, Ph.D.

Professor of Archeology

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

and

LYNN H. WOOD, Ph.D.

Sometime Professor of Archeology

Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary

Review and Herald Publishing Association

Washington, D.C.

Preface

SOME YEARS ago the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists set up a committee, later called the

Historical Research Committee, to study certain problems of historical dating that relate to prophetic

periods, and to engage in scientific research where it seemed necessary. One of the problems studied by the

committee was the date for the seventh year of Artaxerxes. The evidence secured, as set forth in the

following study, furnishes indisputable proof that the date accepted by the early pioneers of the Advent

message was accurate from a scientific as well as from a Biblical viewpoint.

Since the committee members were occupied with regular denominational responsibilities, the

work was necessarily carried on intermittently, with intensive work done by a few from time to time.

Special tribute should be paid to Lynn H. Wood, a charter member of the committee, who has done most of

the basic research on the problems involved in this report. He has contributed very important principles and

calculations, and has indicated the direction the research should take and the probable methods by which

the solutions might be found. Grace E. Amadon, who passed away in 1945, contributed also to the early

studies, especially in Jewish calendars.

At the request of the committee this report has been written by Siegfried H. Horn, by whom two

recently discovered source documents have been brought to bear on the problem. He was ably assisted in

this task by Julia Neuffer. However, the report is based on the work of all the members, and the final

product represents the united conclusions of the committee.

A word of thanks is due Edwin H. Thiele, professor of Bible and religion, Emmanuel Missionary

College, for his critical examination of this report and his concurrence in the conclusions reached.

During the years this committee has been functioning, its personnel has changed from time to time

on account of routine assignments to other duties, retirement from active service, and death. Special

mention should be made of LeRoy E. Froom, who served as chairman from 1939 to 1943; and Milton E.

Kern, who served as chairman from 1943 to 1950. Under their able direction the committee did a large

share of its work.

It is with some measure of satisfaction, and a feeling of gratitude to God for His blessing upon our

labors, that this report on the basic date of the 2300-day prophecy is presented.

THE HISTORICAL RESEARCH COMMITTEE OF THE GENERAL CONFERENCE OF SEVENTHDAY

ADVENTISTS.

Walter E. Read, chairman;

Merwin R. Thurber, secretary;

LeRoy E. Froom,

Siegfried H. Horn,

Milton E. Kern,

Frederick Lee,

Julia Neuffer,

Denton E. Rebok,

W. Homer Teesdale,

Lynn H. Wood,

Frank H. Yost.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

1. DIFFERENT DATING SYSTEMS

2. ANCIENT CIVIL CALENDARS

3. THE PRE-EXILIC HEBREW CALENDAR

4. THE POSTEXILIC JEWISH CALENDAR

5. THE CHRONOLOGY OF EZRA 7

6. SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS

APPENDIX. The Fifth Century Jewish Calendar at Elephantine

BIBLIOGRAPHY

REFRENCES

TABLES

1. The Jewish Ecclesiastical and Civil Calendars

2. Summary of Fourteen Double-dated Papyri

FIGURE

1. Accession-year and Non-accession-year Systems

2. The Seven Years of Solomon’s Temple Building

3. The Difference Between Persian and Egyptian Reckoning Illustrated by Papyrus

AP 28

4. The Use of the Jewish Fall-to-Fall Calendar Illustrated by Papyrus Kraeling 6

5. From the Twenty-first Year of Xerxes to the Seventh Year of Artaxerxes 1

6. The First and Seventh Year of Artaxerxes 1

7. The Differences in the Julian, Egyptian, and Jewish Days

8. The Two Possible Dates for a Double-dated Papyrus Illustrated by Papyrus AP 5

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AJSL The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures.

AP 1, 2, etc. Papyri in Cowley, A. Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century BC.

BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

CAH The Cambridge Ancient History.

JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

Kraeling 1, 2, etc. Papyri in Kraeling, Emil G. The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic

Papyri.

sr-sr Sunrise to sunrise.

ss-ss Sunset to sunset.

Introduction

THE PURPOSE of this study is to examine the chronological basis of the time prophecy of the

2300 days of Daniel 8:14. Seventh-day Adventists for over one hundred years have given an important

place to the prophecy of the cleansing of the sanctuary in the time of the end (Dan. 8:14, 17), after 2300

prophetic days. They have identified the starting point with the beginning of the seventy weeks (Dan. 9:24-

27), at “the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem,” and like many prophetic

expositors before them, located this in the time of Ezra, who journeyed from Babylon to Palestine “in the

seventh year of Artaxerxes the king- (Ezra 7), an event that had long been dated in 457 BC. by Biblical

expositors generally.

The fall of 457 was taken as the time when this decree of Ezra 7 became effective, hence the point

of origin from which the 2300 years were reckoned. Seventh-day Adventists had originally taken over the

dates (though not the interpretation of the closing events) of the 2300-year prophecy from the Millerites

and other earlier expositors, and so have continued to use them.

But since that time, particularly in recent decades, notable advances have been made in the

knowledge of ancient times. Thousands of original documents have been unearthed, many of which bear

witness to historical narratives of the Scriptures and throw light on Bible chronology. A much more exact

knowledge of ancient calendars and dating systems has been derived from dated business documents—

contracts, deeds, receipts, et cetera-written on clay tablets in Babylonia and on papyri in Egypt. As a result,

many uncertain points of chronology have been cleared up.

Since the historical and chronological basis for explaining dates used in connection with

prophecies was derived from older authorities, standard in their day, but now rendered obsolete by newer

discoveries, it has become necessary to examine ancient documents now available that might throw light on

the Biblical history and chronology, in order to have the benefit of the most recent and reliable information.

This study is concerned with the examination of the basic date of the prophetic 2300-day period

and 457 BC in the light of this new evidence. Most currently used Bible commentaries and works on

ancient history that date Ezra’s return from Babylon give 458 instead of the older 457 BC. To present the

results of this investigation, which show that our dating of this event has been correct, is the purpose of the

present work.

But before the reader can understand the application of the chronological data to the problem, or

evaluate the conclusions drawn, he must become acquainted with the basic elements of the ancient methods

of dating, which are different from our own.

In order to proceed from the known to the unknown, let us begin with a look at our own dating

system. The month names January, February, March, and so on, are Roman, and the 365-day year was

introduced into Europe from Egypt by Julius Caesar, who added the leap-year feature. This Julian calendar,

inherited by the nations which succeeded the Roman empire, has come down to us in a slightly corrected

form called the “Gregorian” calendar. This, along with the B.C-AD. system of year numbering, originating

in medieval times, has spread over the globe with the European expansion until it has become familiar even

in remote countries that have entirely different calendars of their own.

Thus a large part of the world today is accustomed, not only to the dating of modern happenings in

terms of the Gregorian calendar and the Christian era, but also to the historical dating of all ancient events

as if the Julian calendar and the BC. scale of years extended backward indefinitely into the remote past. We

say, for example, that Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC., that Cyrus died in August, 530 BC.,

and that Alexander the Great died in June, 323 BC. Having become accustomed to such a system of dating,

we find it hard to realize that the original records from which we learn about these and other ancient events

are given in various dating systems quite different from ours.

Let us briefly review the evidence for the three mentioned dates and see how each one is based on

chronological evidence different from the others. For the fall of Jerusalem we have the Bible statements

dating it in the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar and the 11th year of Zedekiah. Nebuchadnezzar’s 19th year

happens to be more easily located than many others, because archeologists have found a document from the

time of Nebuchadnezzar giving a series of astronomical observations for his 37th year that locate that BC.

year unmistakably, and therefore also the 19th year. However, we must also know the relationship between

Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian years and Zedekiah’s Jewish years in order to be sure of the date for the fall

of the city. For the death of Cyrus the Great we have Ptolemy’s Canon and a contemporary eclipse record

which necessitate placing the first year of his successor, Cambyses, in the spring of 529 BC. following

Cyrus’ 9th Persian year. Other Babylonian tablets indicate the time of year at which his reign ended. For

Alexander’s death a record exists that dates the event in the 1st year of the 114th Olympiad, a Greek dating

used in the classical period.

Such various types of dating formulas in different calendars, often more variable and less exact

than the ones mentioned, must be pieced together by careful and sometimes laborious methods in order to

date ancient events. Some can be located exactly in the BC. scheme of dating, and others only

approximately.

The necessity of understanding these problems becomes obvious when we consider the case of the

historical events connected with the starting point of the prophetic 2300-day period: Ezra’s journey to

Jerusalem lasting from the 1st to the 5th month of “the seventh year” of the reign of Artaxerxes. The date is

given in terms of a reigning year of a Persian ruler as reckoned by a Jew from Babylon who was writing,

for Palestinian Jews about events connected with Palestine. In order to assign these events with certainty to

a BC date, we must answer a number of questions: What did Ezra mean by the 1st and the 5th month, and

what kind of calendar did he use? What did he mean by dating his return to Jerusalem in the 7th year of the

reign of King Artaxerxes? Did he reckon it from the date of accession or by calendar. years? If the latter,

did he use Persian or Jewish years, and if Jewish, which of the systems known to have been used by the

Jews? Such varied elements enter into the problem of locating ancient events in the BC.-AD. scale.

Therefore the first four chapters will be devoted to a basic explanation of the necessary facts about ancient

dating methods that are essential for a correct interpretation of Biblical dates in general and those

connected with the 2300-day prophetic period in particular.

A careful study of the first two chapters is therefore indispensable for an understanding of chapters

3 to 5 dealing with the specific problems of the Jewish calendar and the chronology of Ezra 7, and the

Appendix presents a detailed discussion of some extra-Biblical Jewish documents of the 5th century BC. by

which the correctness of the conclusions reached in chapter 6 is established. For an understanding of the

solution of the problem discussed, a reading of the Appendix is not essential, but this material is included

for those who want to have all the evidence on which our knowledge of the Jewish calendar of the 5th

century BC. is based.

1. Different Dating Systems

THE NECESSITY of dating certain events was felt from very early times. Thus we find not only

in the early records of the Bible, but also in those of other ancient nations, various means employed to date

events. The most ancient records of Mesopotamia reveal that economic reasons were responsible for the

invention of systems by which time could be fixed. For instance, to determine how much rent had to be

paid for the loan of an animal for a certain period of time, or for the rent of a house, et cetera. However, the

ancients did not know how to reckon time according to an era, as we moderns are accustomed to doing, an

era that has a fixed point of departure (as the birth of Christ in the Christian era), and that assigns to each

new year a new number without any interruption and without regard for events.

Lists of Year Names

The earliest known way of fixing a chronology, as practiced by the ancient Sumerians and

Babylonians, was to give a name to each year, the name of the most conspicuous event of the previous

year. In this way the 7th year of Hammurabi, for example, was called the year Uruk and Isin were taken,

[1] and the 10th year of his reign was called the “year the army and people of Malgu were destroyed,

although in both cases the actual events referred to had happened in the respective preceding years. In the

various offices and cities were kept complete lists of all year names covering a reasonable period, so that it

could be determined how many years had passed if a man claimed, for instance, that someone owed him

rent for a piece of land from the “year Uruk and Isin were taken” to the year the army and people of Malgu

were destroyed. From such lists it could be determined that between the two aforementioned years lay the

two following ones: (1) the year the land of Emutbal (was?) [destroyed], and (2) the “year the canal

Hammurabi-hegal (was dug).” Although such reckoning of time seems very cumbersome to us moderns,

who without a moment’s hesitation know how many years lie between 1950 and 1953, this reckoning

according to year names was practiced for many centuries in Mesopotamia.

Eponym Canons

Another method of fixing years was introduced by the Assyrians. A high official, including the

king, was appointed once during his life, to serve for one year as limmu, which was an honorary office

requiring the performance of no duties, but merely giving his name to the year in. which he was limmu.

The Greek equivalent of the Assyrian limmu is the word “eponym”; hence the chronological lists

containing the names of the limmu are called Eponym Canons. [2] Thus we find in the year when king

Sargon II came to the throne an eponym by the name Nimurta-ilaia, and all the documents were dated

during that year in “the year Nimurta-flaia.” This eponym was followed the next year by Nabu-taris, and

every dated document bore the entry “the year Nabu-taris.”[3] Lists of the eponyms, like the lists of the

year names in early Babylonia, had to be kept for business or legal purposes. This system of time reckoning

was employed by the Assyrians from about 2000 BC. to the end of the empire’s existence in the late 7th

century BC.

Regnal Years

In Egypt dating was done, from the earliest historical times, according to years of the reign of each

king, called reigning years. This system was also introduced in Babylonia by the Kassite rulers in the

middle of the second millennium BC. Since this form of time reckoning is the one encountered in the

documents, Biblical and extra-Biblical, with which this study is concerned, this system has to be explained

in somewhat greater detail than the previously mentioned systems, which have no bearing on the subject

under discussion.

To the average person today the expression “first year of Darius” would naturally mean the first

twelve months of his reign, beginning from the date of his accession to the throne. Indeed, in this way

counting by anniversaries of the accession-the years of the British rulers are reckoned, and by such reigning

years the laws of the empire are dated. [4] But in everyday life it is much more convenient to date by

calendar years that always begin on the same date, and are numbered by a long-term scale, like the

Christian era.

During the period of the Babylonian and Persian kings with which the first part of this study deals,

formulas such as the following are found: “in the month Nisan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the

king- (Neh. 2:1). But the ancients had two methods by which they avoided the troubles inherent in counting

years by each ruler’s anniversaries. Disregarding the varying dates of the actual accessions, they reckoned

all reigns so as to make the reigning year coincide with the calendar year. The difference between the two

methods by which this was done was in the treatment of the interval between the day of a king’s accession

to the throne and the next New Year’s Day.

Accession-year reckoning (postdating)—Under the accession-year system of counting reigning

years the unexpired portion of the calendar year in which a king’s reign begins is called his accession year.

Then his first full year, coinciding with the next calendar year, is numbered “year L” The Assyrians, the

Babylonians, and the Persians after them, used the accession-year system. [5] Some of the Hebrew kings

also employed it, as can be determined by synchronisms between the years of contemporary kings of Israel

and Judah.

To illustrate this method, let us suppose that a Babylonian king (A) dies in the 5th month of the

20th year of his reign, and is succeeded by his son (B). Archeologists have found dated contracts, letters,

and other documents, written on clay tablets, covering this period. The documents of the first five months,

up to the time of the king’s death, are dated in the 20th year of King A. But a receipt, let us say, signed in

the 6th month, will be dated “in the 6th month of the accession year (literally “the beginning of

kingship”)[6] of King B. During all the rest of that calendar year the scribes will be dating documents in the

accession year of the new king. Then on the first day of the new year they change to a date formula which

reads, “in the 1st month of the year 1 of King B.”[7] The use of the designation “year I” has been deferred

until the New Year’s Day following the accession.

This system, often called postdating because the beginning of the 1st reigning year is being

postponed, makes the reigning years coincide with the calendar years and avoids giving two numbers to the

year in which the accession takes place. Thus the calendar year which has begun as the 20th of the father is

followed by the year 1 of the son. The distinguishing mark of this system is the term “accession year,”

applied to the interval lying between the accession of a king and the first New Year’s Day, after which his

nominal 1st year begins.

Non-accession-year reckoning (antedating). The opposite method of counting reigning years,

employed at times in Egypt, [8] and also indicated in the Bible, has no “accession-year” designation.

Documents written in the unexpired portion of King A’s last year begin immediately to be dated in King B’s

“year 1” and on the first New Year’s Day the dating changes to the year 2 of the reign. This method has the

disadvantage of causing an overlap in numbering, a double dating for the year in which the reigns change,

for that year bears the last number of the old king and also the number 1 of the new one. This system is

often called antedating.

Therefore, if the same reign is reckoned by different chroniclers using the two systems-as is

sometimes the case in the records of Judah and Israel [9], the year numbers as recorded in the accessionyear

system will run a year later than those reckoned according to the non-accession-year system, as Figure

1 will show.

Further, it should be noted that in totaling a list of reigns reckoned according to the accession-year

system the sum of years recorded for each king is the same as the actual number of years elapsed, whereas

in adding a succession of reigns reckoned according to the non-accession-year system. A year must be

subtracted for each king, because the last year of one reign and the first of the next are really the same.

In dealing with Biblical records, it is necessary to know in each case which of these two reigning

systems is used the accession or non-accession-year systems.

A clear case of reckoning a king’s reigning years according to the accession-year system is given

in 2 Kings 18:1,9,10. After having stated that Hezekiah came to the throne in the 3rd year of Hoshea, the

writer declares that the siege of Samaria began in the 4th year of Hezekiah, which was the 7th year of

Hoshea, and ended three years later in the 6th year of Hezekiah, which was the 9th year of Hoshea. The two

possible reckonings of Hezekiah’s reign would give the following results:

1. According to the non-accession-year system (antedating):

Year 1 of Hezekiah Year 3 of Hoshea

Year 2 of Hezekiah Year 4 of Hoshea

Year 3 of Hezekiah Year 5 of Hoshea

Year 4 of Hezekiah Year 6 of Hoshea

Year 5 of Hezekiah Year 7 of Hoshea

Year 6 of Hezekiah Year 8 of Hoshea

2. According to the accession-year system (postdating):

Accession year of Hezekiah Year 3 of Hoshea

Year 1 Year 4

Year 2 Year 5

Year 3 Year 6

Year 4 Year 7

Year 5 Year 8

Year 6 Year 9

From this it can be easily seen that Hezekiah must have used an accession-year system. On the

other hand, a clear example of non-accession-year reckoning is the reign of Nadab of Israel, who came to

the throne in the 2d year of Asa of Judab. Nadab reigned two years, and was killed in the 3d year of Asa (1

Kings 15:25, 28). The two possible reckonings of his reign would run thus:

1. According to the accession-year system (postdating):

Accession year of Nadab Year 2 of Asa (latter part)

Year 1 Year 3

Year 2 Year 4

2. According to the non-accession-year system (antedating):

Year 1 of Nadab Year 2 of Asa (latter part)

Year 2 “ Year 3

Obviously the non-accession-year system, and not the other, fits the record; for after having come

to the throne in Asa’s 2nd year, the king reigned two years that is, his death occurred in his 2nd year-and

died in the 3d year of Asa. A chronicler who recorded Nadab’s accession in the 2nd year of Asa could not

consistently have given him an “accession year,” a “year l,” and a “year 2,” in two consecutive years. There

are other similar examples of non-accession-year reckoning in the Bible. [10] These examples and others

that could be cited show that the Hebrews used both systems at different times. [11]

It is necessary to know which system is involved if a reigning date of any king is to be located in

the BC scale of the Julian calendar. This is so because, even if the exact BC date of a king’s accession is

known, his reigning-year numbering will run one year later if reckoning is made according to the

postdating or accession year system than if it is done according to the antedating or non-accession-year

system. These differences between the types of reigning-year reckoning in relation to the accession date

must be understood in order to interpret correctly the dated source documents of the reigns of Xerxes and

Artaxerxes. Three other types of year numbering, less important to the problem than the contemporary

reigning-year dating, have been used by later writers in connection with the accession of Artaxerxes-the

Greek archonships and Olympiads and the Roman consular dating. [12]

Archon List

Among the Greeks the various city states had no more uniformity in their respective calendars

than they had political unity. The Athenians designated each year by the name of the archon, or chief

magistrate, for that year. [13] They used their archon list as the Assyrians used their Eponym Canon, but a

difference existed between the archons of Athens and the Assyrian eponyms, because the former always

held the same office, whereas the latter consisted of various dignitaries of the Assyrian Empire, for whom

the office of eponym was an honorary one.

Olympiads

Besides the Athenian scheme of reckoning, there was another, used by all the Greeks - the

Olympiads, the four-year periods between the Olympic games. The sacred festival at Olympia, celebrated

once every four years, was the one occasion when all the Greek states put aside their feuds and united in

joyous celebration. Thus the dating of the Olympic games was important to all, and eventually the practice

arose of dating an event in a certain year of a certain Olympiad. It should be noted that the 1st year of the

1st Olympiad is 776/775 BC, from midsummer to midsummer, [14] since, traditionally, the first Olympic

games were held in the summer of 776 BC. The fact that this date is only traditional [15] does not impair

the usefulness of the chronological scale any more than the error of a few years in the actual birth date of

Christ affects the value of the Christian era for dating purposes. Olympiad dating was used by Greek and

Roman classical writers, and also by Josephus. The formula “in the 4th year of the 85th Olympiad is

sometimes abbreviated to 01. 85. 4.

Consular List

The Romans most often used for dating purposes the method of designating the year by the names

of the two consuls, the highest Roman officials, appointed annually by the Senate. [16] “In the consulship

of Lepidus and Arruntius” literally “Lepidus and Arruntitis being consuls” - was the official Roman

formula, although in the time of the empire the eastern provinces applied their older reigning-year system

also to the emperors. [17] In the later Roman period Fasti, or lists of officials, including the consuls [18]

became standard chronological scales like the archon list of Athens.

Era of the Foundation of Rome

The Romans also developed a true historical era beginning with the traditional founding of the

city, generally placed at 753 BC. [19] This reckoning ab urbe condita, or anno urbis conditae, abbreviated

to A.U.C., is sometimes counted from April 21, which came to be celebrated as the birthday of Rorne, [20]

though at times from January 1, the beginning of the ordinary Roman calendar. [21] It was used less often

for dating purposes than the consulship formula. Although the era ran theoretically from 753 BC, it was not

the oldest continuous era in length of use.

The Seleucid Era

One of the first eras actually used was that of the Seleucids, which was widely found throughout

the Near East during the last three pre-Christian centuries. It began with Seleucus 1st reign, reckoned from

312 BC, and its years were continuously counted through—at least in some Eastern countries outside the

Roman Empire-until the first Christian century. In the Macedonian calendar the years of the Seleucid era

began in the fall, the 1st year having its beginning Dios 1 (October 7), 312 BC. However, in the Babylonian

calendar the years of the Seleucid era had their beginning in the spring, the first year having started Nisanu

1 (April 3), 311 BC. [22] But these earlier eras were only forerunners of the Christian era, which is the

basis for the modern dating that has spread over much of the globe. It is important to this study, because

from its starting point modern historians reckon not only subsequent events but also, in the other direction,

all past history in the BC dating scale. It is in terms of BC years that the reigning years of Artaxerxes and

other Biblical date formulas are made understandable.

The Christian Era

In the earlier centuries of the Christian church much dissension was caused by the various

attempts to work out a satisfactory method of calculating the date of Easter. In the year now called AD 525,

a monk named Dionysius Exigutis made a new 95-year Easter table to continue a current table that was

soon to expire. He copied the last years of the other table, which were numbered by the era of the Emperor

Diocletian, but being unwilling to preserve the memory of a notorious persecutor of the Christians, he

labeled the first column of his continuing table “Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi,” and numbered the first

year 532. [23] From this came the dating formula “in the year of our Lord 532,” etcetera (Latin, Anno

Domini. abbreviated to AD).

Dionysius did not explain how he arrived at this particular year. Evidently he accepted a date for

the birth of Christ that was already current, for it agrees with that given in the consular list contained in a

Latin chronological work of the year 354, which puts Christ’s birth in the consulship of C. Julius Caesar

Vipsamus and L. Aemilius Paulus, or AUC 754. (This consular year is AD 1) [24]

The English historian Bede (AD 673-735) adopted this dating in his improved Easter tables, which

became the standard basis for dating purposes in annals and histories. Then the Frankish rulers and later the

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