Professor Sanday, of Oxford, is one of the most cautious and conservative of the English scholars who have accepted the leading results of advanced criticism. He is also one of the most perspicuous writers of the whole class. It is a pleasure to read what he writes even when you can not agree with him. He has published, in a small volume under the title "The Oracles of God," nine lectures chiefly devoted to the subject of Biblical inspiration, and I call attention to it because it illustrates the inconsistencies and the evil tendencies of the criticism which he has espoused, even in its mildest form.

      Critics of this class are forced into inconsistencies by the effort to maintain their old faith while avowing convictions which they vainly try to reconcile with it. Here, for instance, is an extract from the fifth of these [51] lectures, which one might credit to Bishop Ellicott or Professor Green:

      The Biblical writers themselves were convinced that the words which they spoke were put into their mouths by God. They speak in accents of perfect confidence and perfect sincerity. There is none of the straining of personal assumption about them. They take no credit for it. In the most conspicuous instances there is not only no eagerness to claim inspiration, but a positive shrinking from it. Their reluctance is in each case overborne by a Power which the writer feels to be outside himself. The Spirit of the Lord took hold of them and made them for the time being its organs. This was their own belief. And looking back upon their words in the light thrown upon them by history, we can not think they were wrong (p. 62).

      How easy it would be, if a man were interested in showing that criticism as understood by this writer is thoroughly harmless, to quote this passage in proof, and declaim against those who oppose it, but now turn a few pages and see what this author says in another lecture:

      In all that relates to the revelation of God and his will, the writers assert for themselves a definite inspiration; they claim to speak with an authority higher than their own. But in regard to the narrative of events, and to processes of literary composition, there is nothing so exceptional about them as to exempt them from the conditions to which other works would be exposed at the same time and place (p. 75).

      I know nothing which would mark off these merely as narratives from others of the same kind outside the Bible. I know of nothing which should isolate them, and prevent us from judging them as we should other similar narratives. Their authority must needs rise or fall according to the relation of the writer to the events; some will rank higher, some lower; some will carry with them better attestation than others. But so far as the Bible itself instructs us on the point, I do not see how we can claim for them a strict immunity from error (p. 70).

      Its text is not infallible; its grammar is not infallible; its science is not infallible, and there is grave question whether its history is altogether infallible (p. 36). [52]

      Put these last extracts side by side with the first, and the inconsistency is most glaring. Moreover, while the statements in the first are based on the express declarations of the Bible writers, who there receive full credit for what they claim, there is no citation of a Bible writer in support of anything said in the latter. Why did not Professor Sanday quote something from a prophet or an apostle which declares that when writing on one subject they wrote by inspiration, but that when writing mere narrative they were no more exempt from error than other writers? He has searched the Bible; he knows its contents well; and surely he would have supported his assertions on this point by some Scripture statement, if such can be found. The truth is that such a distinction is never hinted at by an inspired writer. It is a figment of the imagination devised for the support of a destructive theory. The only passage in the Bible which, misconstrued and misapplied, is claimed as making some such distinction, is the seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, and this passage is not a narration, but a solemn setting forth of doctrine on the all-important subject of marriage.

      Now a word in regard to the tendencies of this kind of criticism even in the hands of such cautious and conservative men as Professor Sanday is known to be. In the first of these lectures he speaks of the disquietude and anxiety of good people which have been excited by the writings of such critics as himself, and the purpose of the lecture is to remove these feelings from his readers. Here he candidly says:

      This uneasy feeling is not lessened by the fact that the expressions of opinions by which it has been excited have not had anything of the nature of an attack. They have not come from the extreme left or from the destructive party in [53] ecclesiastical politics and theology, but they have come from men of known weight and sobriety of judgment, from men of strong Christian convictions, who, it is felt, would not lightly disturb such convictions in others; men, too, of learning, who do not speak without knowing what they say (p. 5).

      Here by the expression, "the extreme left," is meant the rationalistic critics of Germany, whom he also styles "the destructive party in ecclesiastical politics and theology." He evidently expects to receive some credit with Englishmen because he is not of that party. But in the sixth lecture, where he sets forth the gain secured by the results of criticism, he says:

      Of course I do not mean that we shall grasp the whole amount of this gain at once. This, too, like all other processes, must be gradual. But it is a process on which, as it seems to me, we are well launched. The Continent is ahead of us at present. In Germany especially the results of criticism have been more fully assimilated, but I believe that we shall soon do more than make up for lost time. As the scholars of our own, in whose hands the working out of these problems lies, are distinguished by a peculiarly happy balance between the interest of religion and of science, we may be sure that the one will not be sacrificed to the other (p. 83).

      Here there is an indirect admission that English critics are well launched on the process on which the Continental, and especially the German critics, are already ahead of them, and there is a confident hope that they will soon more than make up for lost time. True, there is an expression of hope that they will not, as the others have done, sacrifice religion to science, but how can they avoid this, if they follow hard after those who are before them in the race? And how can this hope be entertained, when to the full extent of the following thus far the effects upon the faith of the people are the same?

      This evil tendency is also plainly seen in Professor [54] Sanday's treatment of another theme which he introduces in the course of his lectures, the relation of the religion of the Bible to those which, in the Bible, are everywhere referred to as false religions. It is a common characteristic of the advocates and exponents of destructive criticism to minimize the difference between the true religion and heathenism, and to give to the latter a credit which is utterly denied in the Bible. A few extracts will show this characteristic of the lectures before us:

      No doubt there is a relative justification, similar in kind to that which has just been urged in this lecture, for other religions besides Christianity. Mohammedanism we need not count, because its best elements are common to Christianity and derived from it or from Judaism. But Buddhism may allege with good reason the number of its votaries. It is impossible to read the life and teaching of Gautama without feeling that he too had an impulse from the Holy One. It would be little in accordance with Christian doctrine to maintain that the divine influences which were vouchsafed in so large a measure to select spirits in Palestine were wholly wanting in India or Greece (p. 46, note).

      I can not bring myself, and there is really nothing in the history of Christianity to compel me to bring myself, to divide religious absolutely into true and false. From the first days of Christian teaching down to our own there has not been wanting a succession of men who have seen and rejoiced in the elements of good in creeds which we have not subscribed. Take a phenomenon like the oracle at Delphi; take that most touching account which Plato gives of the daimonion of Socrates; take the teaching of Gautama (Buddha); analyze the character of Mohammed--shall we say there is no spark from heaven in these (p. 94)?

      Enough for the present--enough to show that the most conservative class of the advanced critics are "well launched" on the stream which has floated German theologians into blank unbelief, and which has so [55] adulterated the pure gold of the Bible as to make it distinguishable only in degree from the heathenism of ancient Greece and modern India. Let young men who have had thought of launching their little barks on the same waters take notice and think before they act.

[SEBC 51-56]