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Whichcote, 'the Scripture is clear and full.' And if the Scripture is sometimes ambiguous, Locke has told us with his serene wisdom that 'he who makes use of the light and faculties which God hath given him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth by those helps and abilities, will not miss the reward of truth. He that doeth otherwise transgresses against his own light.'

13. God everlastingly reveals Himself to earnest souls.1 'It is,' says Mr. Ruskin, 'a grave heresy (or wilful source of division) to call any book, or collection of books, the Word of God. By that Word, or Voice, or Breath, or Spirit, the heaven and earth and all the host of men were made, and in it they exist. It is your life and speaks to you always as long as you live nobly; dies out of you as you refuse to obey it; leaves you to hear and be slain by the word of an evil spirit instead of it. It may come to you in books, come to you in clouds, come to you in the voice of men, come to you in the stillness of deserts. You must be strong in evil if you have quenched it wholly, very desolate in this Christian land if you have never heard it at all.'2

The Rabbis were right in the Haggadah, which told that the voice of God reached the people of Israel, but they could not find exactly whence it came by turning either to the north or south, or east or west, or to the depths of the earth. The voice of God speaks to us out of Holy Writ, far more intensely than out of any form of human speech,

1 When Melanchthon asked Luther the meaning of the prophetic formula 'Thus saith the Lord,' Luther answered that 'because the Prophets were holy and serious people, therefore God spoke with them in their consciences, which the Prophets held as sure and certain revelations.' Table Talk, 549 (Sanday, Oracles of God, p. xii.). 2 Fors Clavigera.

and, if only we have the courage to be sincere, it will always speak directly and unmistakably to our inmost hearts and consciences. We shall hear it each according to our capacity and our power to receive it, and we shall hear it all the more surely in exact proportion to the measure in which we have arrived at 'truth in the inward parts.'

CHAPTER IX

THE HIGHER CRITICISM.

"True faith and reason are the soul's two eyes.'-QUARLES.

I WILL pause here to say a few words about what is known as 'the Higher Criticism,' which has caused such needless alarm, and of which even the most certain results-such as the composite character of the Pentateuch, and the late origin of the Book of Daniel in its present form-are still resisted, with bitter attacks on those who feel that by refusing to accept its main conclusions they would be fighting against God and offering to Him the unclean sacrifice of a lie.

1. The 'Higher' criticism is not, as many imagine, an arrogant and self-laudatory title. It merely means the criticism which is not purely linguistic or philological, but also takes into account the discoveries of history and archæology, the teachings of comparative religion, and the

1 The name was invented by Eichhorn when the researches of many such scholars as Morinus, Walton, R. Simon, Kennicott, Mill, Bentley, Griesbach, &c., had made textual criticism the almost exclusive method. The term merely implies that 'the study of the contents of a book is a higher study than that of the words in which the contents are expressed' (Dr. Cave, The Battle of the Standpoints, p. 8).

consideration of the ordinary laws of evidence, of documentary transmission, of psychology, and of human literature.1

2. The arguments on which the main conclusions of the Higher Criticism are based are so strong that, as a simple matter of fact, they have convinced nearly all the leading theologians of Germany. I could not refuse to recognise their cogency without the wilful abnegation of the divinest of our natural prerogatives. No consensus of popular opinion can have the smallest weight against the truths which the heaven-directed advance of knowledge reveals. This has ever been the view of our soundest and most orthodox divines.

"That authority of men should prevail with men,' says Hooker, 'either against or above Reason, is no part of our belief. Companies of learned men, be they never so great and reverend, are to yield unto Reason.'2

3. Let us recapitulate a few obvious and undeniable facts. No one will deny

(a) That to millions of mankind the Bible never has been nor can be known except in translations.

(b) That, from the nature of things, no translation can be perfect, because language, with all its subtle mystery, is but an imperfect vehicle of thought, and the different connotation of words in different languages renders it impossible to secure the minutely exact transfusion of thought from one tongue into another.

(c) That, as a matter of fact, there is not a single trans

1 'The Higher Criticism is but a name for scientific scholarship scientifically used. If the Scriptures are fit subjects for scholarship, then the more scientific the scholarship the greater its use in the field of Scripture.'-Dr. Fairbairn.

2 Ecclesiastical Polity, Book II. ch. vii. 6.

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lation of the Scriptures which does not contain errors. The Septuagint, the Vulgate, Luther's Bible, our Authorised Version, the Douai Bible, and every other known translation contains grave and numerous errors of translation. Our Revised Version, which has utilised the knowledge and research of all the ages, is probably the most correct translation of the Bible in existence, yet even our Revised Version is by no means exempt from imperfections. Thousands of years ago it had been recognised that 'the same things uttered in Hebrew and translated into another tongue have not the same force in them; and not only these things, but the law itself and the prophets, and the rest of the books, have no small difference when they are spoken in their own language.'2

(d) Alike in the Old and the New Testament there are thousands of various readings; important variations occur in the oldest MSS. and versions; in some books of the Sacred Writings the genuine text is uncertain, inaccurate, interpolated, and in a few verses absolutely irrecoverable.3

(e) When we have obtained the best text at our disposal, 'the form in which the revelation has come down to uswhat seem gaps on the one hand and repetitions on the

1 Consider even the theological importance of the inaccurate renderings in our Authorised Version in Matt. vi. 13, Mark vii. 19, John x. 16, xiii. 10, Rom. iii. 25, xii. 16, Gal. ii. 16, Eph. iv. 32, Phil. ii. 6, Col. ii. 23, Jas. ii. 14, 1 Tim. vi. 10, 2 Tim. ii. 26, iii. 16, iv. 14, Heb. i. 1, Jude 22, and many more passages. Our O.T. version of Ex. xxxiv. 33, Deut. xxxiii. 6, Is. vi. 13, xviii. 2, xxi. 7, xxx. 7, Dan. vii. 9, and in many passages of the Psalms is obscured by errors. The meaning of the magnificent passage Is. ix. 1-5, which forms our First Lesson for Christmas Day, is in our A.V. almost reversed.

2 Prologue to Ecclesiasticus.

3 As single specimens take the doubt as to the reading povoyεvis Oɛóç in John i. 18.