"The
Bible Under Trial." (1906AD.)
by
James Orr
The Present Day Trial of the Bible
IT
may be a suitable opening for these papers to consider how the case stands
to-day with the trial of the Bible as the written Word of God. There are misconceptions and alarms
prevalent which a calm outlook on the actual situation may do something to
remove and abate. I would fain speak a
word to remove the disquietude under which many labour, as if Christianity and
God's Word were at length about to be engulfed in the encroaching waves of
scepticism. There is conflict enough,
but no such consequence as this is going to follow.
"The word of the Lord," the
Psalm says, "is tried" (Ps. xviii. 30). Again, "The words of the Lord are pure words; as
silver tried in a furnace on the earth, purified seven times" (Ps. xii.
6). The Bible, least of all, need
shrink from this ordeal of trial; nor does it.
God never asks His people to put their trust in, or stay their souls on,
that which cannot endure the most searching fires of trial.
The
supremest test, of course, to which the Bible can be put is—
THE TEST OF EXPERIENCE.
Does its message commend itself on
personal trial to mind, and conscience, and heart? Does it verify itself, when
accepted, in heart and life? Does it prove able to bear the weight which
innumerable souls through long ages have rested on it? Does it show itself,
historically, possessed of the properties which, as an inspired Word, are
claimed for it—those, for example, in Ps.
xix. 7, 8, of converting the
soul, making wise the simple, enlightening the eyes; or in 2 Tim. iii.
15, 17, of making wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ
Jesus, of being profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction
in righteousness, "that the man of God may be complete, furnished
completely unto every good work." He that has this witness of God's Word
in himself (1 John v. 10) need fear no assault from without. We move here in a region high as heaven
itself above all debatable questions of science and criticism.
It is not this test of experience,
however, I mean to dwell on at present, though it will often recur in our
discussions, but rather
THE OUTWARD TRIAL,
to
which the Bible in our day is exposed—the trial of opposition, of conflict, of
controversy.
I.
And here the first thing we need to remind
ourselves of is that this trial of God's Word by outward assault is nothing
new; God's Word has been a tried word in all ages. There never has been a time in history when it has not had to
encounter fierce and persistent opposition.
If, then, we see unbelief lifting up its head in many directions in these
latter days, we need not be perplexed and dismayed, as if some strange thing
had happened to us. It lies in the
nature of things, and is God's will, that it should be so; it is part of the
fiery trial of our faith (1 Pet. i. 7), and the chief way by which the
imperishable truth of God's Word is made manifest. People are astonished that, if Christianity be true, it should be
impugned by multitudes as it is. They
forget. In Isaiah's day God declared
that the stone He would lay in Zion as a sure foundation would be "a tried
stone" (Is. xxviii. 16). God did
not anticipate that this stone, being planted there, would remain there without
being put to test or trial. It was not
a stone which God was to lay, and no one dispute the laying of it; not a stone
that God was to lay, and no one refuse to build upon it; not a stone that God
was to lay, and no one contest its right to be there. If it was a foundation stone, it was at the same time to be a
tried stone, and in the trial was to be proved to be the stone of God's laying
more clearly than ever. He who realises
this, the prophet says, "will not make haste"—will not readily be
thrown into panic or anxiety when new forms of opposition make their
appearance. As the Apostle Peter gives
the sense of the words, he will "not be put to shame" (1 Pet. ii.
16).
This fact that God's Word has been
A TRIED WORD IN ALL AGES
would
admit of easy demonstration were this the place to trace its history, and in it
lies strong encouragement for our faith to-day. The Lord Himself was continually met in the preaching of His
Gospel by the hostility and opposition of Scribes and Pharisees, who thought,
finally, they had got rid of Him by condemning Him to the Cross which proved to
be His throne of empire. The ministry
of the Apostles was a continual experience of opposition and persecution. And what of after times? We are apt to think
that in an age like ours, with its formidable new weapons of assault on
revealed truth, the conflict of faith with unbelief is far keener and more
deadly than in any previous time. But
this is largely due to lack of perspective.
Does anyone, for example, who knows the
conditions of
THE SECOND CENTURY,
think
that the sceptical and subtle pagans of that age had not their eyes on all the
weak points—or what they took to be the weak points—of our religion, when they wrote
those books and satires, some of which still remain, as clever and witty,
relatively to their time, as anything in the artillery of unbelief to-day. The second century was, indeed, to an extent
not always realised, an era of strenuous conflict for the truth. It was marked not only by the outward martyr
conflict with paganism, and by the keen literary attacks just referred to, but
by the all-pervading influences of a subtle Oriental theosophy, which, had they
prevailed, would speedily have dissipated historical Christianity into empty
phantasies. The controversy with
Gnosticism was largely a conflict about Scripture. The Scriptures were the direct object of attack—the Old Testament
in its entirety, as being, so it was held, the revelation of an inferior and
immoral deity; the New Testament in considerable part, and wholly as regarded
its historical truth. This, too, in an
age when the Church was yet young and feeble, and its Canon of Scripture only
yet in process of formation. When the
era of pagan persecution closed, it was again with a determined effort to crush
out the life of the Church by compelling the surrender and destruction of its
Scriptures.
Or glance at
THE MIDDLE AGES,
the
latter part of which witnessed the attempt of the Roman Church to suppress the
reading and circulation of the Bible among the laity. It is customary to speak of these ages of
the ascendancy of the Church as the "Ages of Faith"; but does anyone
think that there was no scepticism in Europe as the result of that great
outburst of learning and of new ideas that broke upon the world in that period?
Dr. Liddon has justly said: "It
may fairly be questioned whether the publicly proclaimed unbelief of modern
times is really more general or more pronounced than the secret, but active and
deeply penetrating scepticism which during considerable portions of the middle
ages laid such hold upon the intellect of Europe." The renaissance of
paganism in the fifteenth century literally honeycombed Europe with new and
bizarre forms of unbelief, while the Church which should have resisted it was
sunk in deadliest corruption. Yet in
pious circles the study of God's Word never wholly died out, and translations
into the speech of the people were made, and circulated, mostly secretly, in
the chief European countries. Thus was
prepared the way for the grand revival of the Reformation, flinging open once
more the gates of the knowledge of Holy Scripture; and great was the joy with
which the enfranchised Church entered on its inheritance.
But
soon the sky was again clouded.
Philosophy and science made rapid advances as the result of that very
emancipation of the human intellect which the Reformation had fostered, and ere
long the seeds of a new rationalism began to be sown in the bosom of the
Church, with effects disastrous to reverent faith in the Scriptures.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
was
the peculiar era of this older rationalism in all the countries of Europe, and,
in its various forms of a rampart Deism in England, of Voltaireism in France,
of the superficial rationalism of the "Illumination" in
Germany, it ate into the vitals of these countries, and for a time made
Christianity almost a name of mockery in cultivated circles.
What religion was in England in this
period may be learned from the often-quoted passage from Bishop Butler's "Advertisement" to his "Analogy
of Religion." "It has come," he says,
"I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that
Christianity is not so much as a subject for inquiry; but that it is now, at
length, discovered to be fictitious.
And accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an
agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set
it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were, by way of
reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world."
Will it be said by the most pessimistic
that there is anything like this among us to-day? On the contrary, we have
to-day, I dare to say, more aggressive work on the part of the Christian Church
than almost in any previous age. The
Church of Christ to-day, notwithstanding all these forces of unbelief we hear
of around us, has more members, is circulating more Bibles, is doing more good,
is extending itself more widely in the world, is cherishing in its heart, more
earnestly the dream of universal empire, than at any previous period of its
history! Only it is doing this on the ground of the old Evangel, not on the
ground of the new theories of religion and of the Bible. Let us thank God for it, and not be
downcast.
II.
In
this connection it is interesting to recall the causes which, in these
different ages, brought about
THE DELIVERANCE OF THE CHURCH
from
an enthralling scepticism and irreligion.
The present age has abounding faith in scholarship. When a scholar speaks about the Bible, let
no man peep or mutter. And I should
assuredly be the last to seem to throw any slight on sound and accurate
scholarship. Let scholars be fought by
all means with the weapons of scholars.
But it is very much to the point to
observe that it has never been by learning, by philosophy, by science, by
scholarship, that the Church has been revived and saved in eras of great
religious laxity and abounding infidelity.
When Jesus introduced His religion into the world He did not choose
"scholars," but humble, simple-minded men, attached to Himself by a
living faith, and endued with power from on high, to do it, as witnesses to His
words, works, and resurrection.
"The base things of the world, and the things that are despised,
did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that He might bring to nought
the things that are" (1 Cor. i. 28).
And what has been the verdict of history
on this method? Has it not justified it in the most emphatic way? Surely it is
the greatest thing we can say about these first disciples of Jesus—the most
convincing testimony we can bear to their own greatness—that they had the eyes
to see, that when the wise men of the world of that time were blinded, and
could not see, they had the power to discern something of the meaning, the
importance, the world-wide significance of this great appearance in their
midst; that they had the power to take, in some degree, the measure of that
great spiritual movement which the heads of the people, the Caiaphases,
Pilates, Scribes and Pharisees, Rabbis, were all blind to, and could only set
down to some passing spasm of superstition! They took in some degree the
measure of the spiritual greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ, and saw something
of what His Person and work really meant for men; saw that there was laid in
Him the foundation of a great world-wide religion; that bound up in Him were
hopes grand and glorious beyond expression for the individual and the race! This
is their eternal title to honour. By
means of it they became the instruments of a revolution which changed the face
of the world. God hid it from "the wise
and prudent," but revealed it "unto babes" (Matt. xi. 25).
So when we come to the later age of the
Reformation, what brought the remedy for the unbelief and spiritual evils under
which that age groaned? Not scholarship or science, but the discovery in
Scripture and faithful proclamation of the living Gospel of the grace of God by
Luther and his fellow-reformers, men who had felt its power in their own souls.
And once more, what rescued the Church
from the torpor and death of the negation of the eighteenth century? The
deliverance came, not from philosophy or learning, not even from the works of
able apologists like Butler, but from the tides of
THE SPIRITUAL REVIVAL
that
swept over Britain, and were felt in other lands, under the preaching of such
men as Whitefield and the Wesleys. This
it was which gave evangelism the victory once more over indifference and
unbelief, and breathed the new breath of life into society which introduced the
era of missions to the heathen, Bible diffusion, home evangelisation, and the
innumerable social reforms of the last century. It is to a like outpouring of the Spirit of God upon His Church,
and to the same divine energy manifesting itself in holy lives and practical
work, far more than to learned confutations, however valuable these may be in
their place, that we must look for the overthrow of the forms of unbelief that
lift up their heads among us to-day.
The owls vanish when the daylight reappears.
III.
THE ASSAULTS UPON THE BIBLE
which
cause most anxiety at the present hour, it will be generally agreed, are those
which come from the newer schools of Old and New Testament criticism, from a
popular monistic philosophy, from evolutionary theories in science, and from
the absorbing interest which has recently been displayed in the study of
comparative religion and mythology. The
two subjects which are most to the front are criticism and science, though
signs are not wanting that the foremost role may soon be taken by the
comparative study of religions.
Of course, it is recognised that mistakes
may be made, and old controversies on all these subjects carry in them lessons
to be wisely laid to heart by both the assailants and the defenders of the
Bible. Voltaire was confident that
Christianity would be overthrown by the discovery of the law of gravitation,
and would not survive a century. Yet
Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the law, was a humble Christian man. Strauss boldly affirmed that the Copernican
system gave the death-blow to the Christian view of the world. But what Christian to-day feels his faith in
the slightest degree affected by the discovery that the earth goes round the
sun, and not the sun, as was once believed, round the earth?
There were many vauntings that the Bible
was discredited, and many shakings of heart on the part of believers in the
Bible themselves, when geology made it certain that the world was immensely
older than the 6,0o0 years assigned to it since the creation by the current
chronology. The saintly Cowper could
poke his gentle satire at the geologists:—
"Some drill and bore
The solid earth, and from the strata there
Extract a register, by which we learn
That He who made it, and reveal'd its date
To Moses, was mistaken in its age."
But few are troubled at the present time,
or feel that even the "days" of Genesis are put in serious peril, by
the discovery, through the same drilling and boring, of the magnificent
procession of the aeons through which the work of creation actually extended.
On the other hand, as we shall see by and
by, science also has had to lay aside many extreme hypotheses, and abandon or
modify theories, which created, or seemed to create, difficulties in comparison
with Scripture.
One is taught by these things to avoid
dogmatism, and wait patiently for the progress of discovery, when many things
which present difficulty at a cruder stage of science will clear themselves up
of their own accord. Yet
THERE ARE LIMITS,
as
everyone also must admit, set by the nature of the case to this process of
conciliation. Because good Christian
men once mistakenly contended for the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel-points,
it does not follow, as seems sometimes to be argued, that the most radical
results of a destructive criticism are compatible with faith in the Bible's
inspiration and authority. Because
people once believed that the sun went round the earth, and shook their heads
in alarm at geological discoveries of the age of the earth, it does not follow
that spiritual religion—not to say Christian faith—can ever reconcile itself to
a form of theory that declares mind to be a mere function of brain, denies free
will, and pours scorn on belief in immortality. Because there are different views on evolution and creation, it
does not follow that any and every account of the mode of man's physical and
spiritual origin leaves intact the Bible doctrine of sin. There is need, I grant, for caution, and for
wise and charitable discrimination between essentials and non-essentials in
belief, as in practice. But there are
none the less great and vital issues between truth and error about the Bible
which no sophistry can obscure, and no juggling with words efface.
IV
The
church is deeply concerned at the moment with the bearings and issues of what
is called
THE HIGHER CRITICISM.
It is well to understand what the feeling
really is which lies at the bottom of this anxiety. It is not at all, in the first place, a feeling as to the general
legitimacy of criticism. I do not
believe—and the reception given to my own volume on the Old Testament confirms
me in this opinion—that any really devout student of the Bible desires to tie
up honest inquiry on any question of author, origin, date, or mode of
composition of the Biblical books, which does not involve clear contradiction
of the Bible's own testimony on these subjects. By all means, if any traditional opinion can be shown by valid
reasoning on sound data to be in error on such points, let it be corrected.
The feeling as to the type of Higher
Criticism now in vogue goes much deeper.
What is felt is that this newer school of criticism—commonly known as
the Wellhausen school from its most distinguished representative—really
subverts the basis of a reasonable faith in the Bible, and of a revelation of
God contained in it, altogether. There
are moderate and devout men in this country—men whom personally one must
honour—who seek to tone down the negations of the theory, and breathe into it a
more believing spirit; but for the exhibition of its principles one prefers to
go to the originators and accredited representatives of the school; and, even
in the works of the moderate critics, one soon discovers that the best efforts
cannot remove the taint of rationalism which inheres in its very essence.
It is not extravagant to say that, on the
MOST FAVOURABLE SHOWING
in
this theory, little is left of the patriarchal and Mosaic history; that the
Bible's own account of the origin, nature, and course of development of
Israel's religion disappears, and an entirely different account, resting on
different premises, is substituted for it; that till the times of the prophets,
at least, the supernatural recedes very much behind the natural, and miracle is
hardly recognised; that practically all the legislation is taken from Moses and
ascribed to a much later date; while the Levitical system in its main features
is held to be a post-exilian invention, imposing on the returned Jewish remnant
a code of ritual which the prophets of an earlier age, had they known of it,
would have vehemently denounced as dishonouring to Jehovah!
Those who are acquainted with the
literature of the school will admit, I think, that this is an exceedingly mild
account of its general teaching; but if it is accepted, it surely sufficiently
explains the repugnance with which the immense mass of Christian people in our
churches regard this strange method of dealing with God's Holy Word. If in their denunciation of it they
sometimes say and feel that it is really asking them to accept
ANOTHER BIBLE,
they
are not without justification for that opinion in certain utterances of the
school itself. Here is a recent
pronouncement by a distinguished representative of the more moderate wing of
the school, Prof. A. Westphal, of Montauban. "It is not in vain," he says,
"that the internal ferment provoked by the old struggles has troubled the
Church for long years. If it has not
succeeded in furnishing the theological renovation which was expected from it,
the work of dislocation of traditional ideas is none the less accomplished. Little by little the abyss has been dug
between the catechism of the Church (du temple) and the theology of the school; the day is
coming when we shall be faced with two Bibles, the Bible o the faithful, and
the Bible of the scholar."
It would be easy to multiply quotations to
the same effect, but this is sufficient at present to show the gravity of the
issue by which the Church is to-day confronted
It adds to the gravity of the case that,
according to the school itself, the "critical views" represented by
it (so writes one) are "at present all but universally held by Old
Testament scholars." This, like many other statements of the school,
requires, as we shall afterwards find, to be taken cum grano; but
there is no doubt that for many years the Wellhausen school ha been the
dominant one, and has, in more or less pronounced forms, attracted an
ever-increasing following to its banner; and that in Britain and America it is
distinctly the ruling school still.
Writers have almost ceased to argue about it; they are content to repeat
its shibboleths, and register what they are pleased to call its "settled
results." It might appear as if the representative of "the
traditional view" had nothing left for him to do but to pull down his flag
and gratefully accept what crumbs of history, law, and prophetic teaching—the
last in larger measure—the critic is able to rescue for him from the general
wreckage.
V.
Before,
however, giving way to undue alarm, the believer in the Bible, as we have been
accustomed to understand it, will do well to place before his mind
CERTAIN REASSURING CONSIDERATIONS
which
may help somewhat to modify a desponding judgment on the situation. I mention here only two or three of these,
reserving further survey of this and other forms of trial of the Bible to
succeeding papers.
(1) One preliminary consideration of some
importance is that, after all, very much in the contentions of the Wellhausen
school is not new, and what is new has not yet, as theories go, had a very long
time to
THOROUGHLY TEST AND ESTABLISH
itself. Dr.
Cheyne, in his book on The Founders of Criticism, draws attention with
justice to the great indebtedness of the earlier critical schools to English
Deism (pp. 1, 2). One is continually
struck in reading the attacks on, and defences of, the Old Testament in the old
Deistical controversy, with the surprising anticipations of the difficulties,
errors, contradictions, imperfections, immoralities served up to-day as the
newest learning in
Old Testament criticism. Not a little on these subjects in modern
books is already to be found, as vigorously stated, in Morgan, and Bolingbroke,
and Paine, and in the older rationalists like Vatke and Von Bohlen. Yet faith in the Bible withstood the shock
then—gave, more. over, exceedingly good
reasons for doing so—and is not likely to be overturned by the reproduction of
the same things now.
On the other hand, what is new in the
Wellhausen theory, particularly the post-exilian dating of the Levitical Law,
has not yet had a very long period of trial.
The critical theory, of which it is the outcome, has been maturing for
more than a century; but this part of it, though advanced tentatively by earlier
investigators, met with little or no favour till twenty-five or thirty years
ago, when, in the wake of Graf's book in 1861, it "caught on" through
the able advocacy of Kuenen and Wellhausen.
Previously to that it had been generally rejected as an incredible
folly. Kuenen himself, in 1861, spoke
of its grounds as "not worthy of refutation." While, therefore, the
Wellhausen theory has more recently had a remarkable success, it is still, as
such things go,
A COMPARATIVE NOVELTY,
and
it is quite too early yet to speak of it as "a settled result." The
history of the Tubingen school in New Testament criticism holds out, as we
shall by and by see, a warning here.
There were causes in the state of thought of our time which favoured the
rise of such a school; it was imported as a novelty, and "rushed" in
this country by certain very able scholars; adventitious circumstances gave it
an artificial eclat,
and predisposed younger scholars in a chivalrous
spirit to adopt it; as its influence spread it became a kind of tradition, a
fashion of thought, and was often assented to because scholars "said
it," without much independent examination of its grounds. Its somewhat gourd-like popularity is itself
a good reason for being chary in yielding to it an unqualified assent.
(2) There is, however, a second
consideration which strongly fortifies this moral of the first. The school in question has had an
astonishing success, but it is by no means the case that it has had all the
field to itself, or that it has it now, or has it in any increasing
degree. It is a fact that in every age
EXCESSES OF CRITICISM
tend
to work out their own cure. It was so
in the Tubingen school; and so it is proving itself to be here. Scholars may talk as they will of
"settled results," but it is undeniable that extraordinary changes
are taking place within the critical school, which augur ill for its future
ascendancy. The Wellhausen theory
applies the principle of evolution to the religion of Israel, but its own
development is a remarkable illustration of the same principle. I shall have occasion later to speak of some
of these developments; enough at present to say that they run the theory into
such excesses in multiplication of sources, minute dissection of documents,
extension of time in the process, complicated operations in combination and
redaction, that the theory literally breaks down under its own weight, and
becomes incredible to soberly thinking minds.
I have compared it in my book to the constant adding on of cycles and
epicycles in the Ptolemaic astronomer's chart, till it became a huge maze of
confusion which defied belief. The
theory, in my humble opinion, is rapidly running to seed; by its very excesses
is digging its own grave.
(3) This leads me to say, next, that, in
point of fact,
GREAT CHANGES
are
already apparent in influential quarters in the state of opinion on Old
Testament questions; and greater change., are surely imminent in the near future. I do not refer to the still powerful body of
opinion on the Continent that refuses adhesion to the Wellhausen programme—a
great deal more powerful than many imagine—or to the changes in individual
opinion that occasionally occur, though these also are noteworthy as signs of
the times. One may notice, however, as
of special significance the decisive break of leading archaeologists, as Sayce,
Hommel, Halevy, Ditlef-Nielson, with the Wellhausen theory, which most of them
had earlier accepted.
My own conviction is that there is at the
present moment a considerable and growing amount of distrust of the methods and
conclusions of the reigning critical school in the minds of both clergy and
laity in our own country. It is but a
straw showing which way the wind blows, but one cannot but be interested in the
statement made by Dr. Robertson Nicoll
in his notice of the late Dr. George
Matheson, that, after a period of sanguine acceptance of the processes and
results of the Higher Criticism, as expounded by Prof. W.
R. Smith, and of the doctrine of
evolution, "he came," in later life, "to disbelieve in the
Higher Criticism and in the doctrine of evolution—at least in its extreme
form."
It is, however, something far more
wide-reaching I have in view in the remark just made as to impending
revolutionary changes in critical opinion.
The truth is, the placards are again changing, and a new school has
already arisen—the so-called
"HISTORICAL-CRITICAL"
SCHOOL,
which
is gathering to it the younger generation of scholars, and which in its heart
regards Wellhausenism as pretty much obsolete.
It is not on that account more believing, but is in some respects more
destructive: yet its critical positions show a marked return in a conservative
direction. I might illustrate from
H. Gunkel, the influential Professor at
Berlin, but prefer to take a single example from an address delivered recently
at a conference at Eisenach, by the learned Orientalist, Hugo Winckler, a
leading representative of this tendency.
This remarkable address is nothing less than a vigorous assault on the
whole foundation of the Wellhausen theory of the religion of Israel, in its
advance from a tribal god to ethical monotheism in the age of the prophets, and
in its alleged successive stages of nomad religion, agricultural religion,
prophetic religion, and legal religion.
Winckler assails the theory root and branch, and boldly declares that
there has been no "development" of the kind. He decisively rejects the cardinal
Wellhausen tenet of the origin of the Levitical Law in the exile, and contends
that "law and prophets" must have been present from the beginning. He mentions that he also is here recanting
an earlier view. Here is a revolution,
indeed—one prophetic of much more. In
how curious a light, after such a pronouncement, appears the talk about
"settled results!"
(4) One other circumstance I would mention
as tending to a recoil in many minds from the prevalent methods in Old
Testament Criticism, and I refer to it only in a word. It is the spectacle afforded in recent works
of what these methods really mean when applied with like unflinching boldness
to the documents and history of
THE NEW TESTAMENT.
It is a remarkable feature in the existing
critical situation that the critics, having apparently sucked their orange well-nigh
dry in the Old Testament, are now precipitating themselves in increasing
numbers on the New Testament, with the result that its texts, narratives, and
portraiture of the life of Jesus and of the early Church, are being subjected
to the same treatment as had laid in ruins the patriarchal and Mosaic history.
Here, however, the matter touches the
Christian conscience too closely.
Abraham and Moses may go in fidelity to the historical method, but if
Christ is to be taken away, there is a start of shocked surprise. A halt must be called, and the methods that
lead to such a result must be carefully looked into! Here the new
historical-critical method is in its element, with its comparative mythology,
and reduction of the narratives of the Nativity and Resurrection into legends.
One is interested in this connection to
see the strenuous protest being made by so convinced an Old Testament critic as
Prof. C. A. Briggs, in defence of
the Virgin Birth. Again, perhaps, only
a straw, but a significant one. This
rejuvenation of assault upon the New Testament will also occupy us later.
SCOPE OF THE PAPERS.
The purpose and scope of the papers
collected in this volume will now, I hope, be sufficiently apparent. Written from the standpoint of assured faith
in the revelation of God in the Scriptures, they are intended to remove
disquietude, confirm faith, and set forth considerations which may serve to
show that, severe as the trial is to which the Bible is at present subjected,
it will emerge from the ordeal, as heretofore, unscathed, and may be depended
on to retain its place in the devout regard of Christian people, as the
repository of the living oracles of God for the guidance and salvation of
mankind.