I think that all who read the extracts published last week from the pen of Mr. Hastings, will excuse me for devoting my space once more to some of his spicy utterances in "The Higher Critics Criticized." Speaking of the improbability that these critics will be able to turn the masses of the people away from their old-time faith in the Bible, he says: [104]

      Inertia is said to be one of the properties of matter. It is probably also one of the properties of mind. Large bodies move slowly, and sometimes do not move at all. The best of men, with the best of causes and the clearest of arguments, have sometimes found that trying to change the minds of the mass of a community is much like kicking a dead elephant; and men who have no higher mission than to pull the Bible to pieces, may find that the old Book will stand a good deal of rough usage, and not be much the worse of wear (p. 18).

      The parade that is often made of great names, and the effort to scare men into the acceptance of critical theories lest they should be left behind in the progress of knowledge, is touched up in the manner following:

      We are informed that all the learned believe this, and all the critics believe that, and only a few belated, old-time bigots maintain the traditional view. And yet there are men who have given thought and study to these questions before the most of the higher critics were born, and who examined these difficulties while some of these learned gentlemen were in their swaddling-clothes, and they are not at all certain that wisdom is likely to die with a lot of German Doctors, who, over their pipes and beer, discuss and everlastingly settle these questions beyond the possibility of doubt or appeal, and make their conclusions the end of the law regarding this matter (p. 30).

      In the course of a series of facts which show that adverse criticism of the Bible is a very ancient business, and always an unsuccessful one, he cites two prominent illustrations in the following words:

      Jehoiakim, with his penknife, was as free a critic as can easily be found at the present day; but after he had cut the prophecy of Jeremiah in pieces and flung it in the fire, it came back to him improved and amplified, and was eventually fulfilled (Jer. 36:23-32). Zedekiah was an astute critic; for while one prophet declared that he should go to Babylon and die there, and another informed him that he should not see Babylon, he, in the exercise of the critical faculty, concluded that since the prophets disagreed with each other, it was safe to disbelieve them both. But when Zedekiah was captured, his sons slain [105] before his face, his eyes put out, and he taken to Babylon to die there, he learned that a man might go to Babylon and yet not see Babylon (p. 31).

      It is well known to men who are acquainted with old-time infidel literature that a very large part of the historical and literary criticism which fills up modern books on the subject are but reproductions from the old infidels back as far as Celsus and Porphyry. Even those who are familiar with no more of this literature than Paine's "Age of Reason" have observed this. Mr. Hastings copies from the Christian Register of June, 1891, on this point:

      Thomas Paine, though stigmatized and set aside as an infidel, finds reincarnation in the modern Biblical critic. Paine pointed out the contradictions in the Bible, which render impossible the claim that it is an infallible book. He lived, too, far in advance of his age. The spirit of modern scientific criticism had not yet come. . . . And now it is interesting to find that with a different spirit and with different tools, and bound by certain traditions from which Paine was free, the professors in our orthodox seminaries are doing again the work which Paine did, and, like him, in the interest of honesty and truth (p. 34).

      The right attitude of believers to these critical theories is happily set forth in these few words:

      Truth courts investigation. Candid men are not afraid to consider difficulties which occur in the Hebrew Scriptures; but when such difficulties are invented or exaggerated, they indicate the errancy of the critic rather than that of the book he criticizes. Intelligent, careful, honest criticism is legitimate and welcome; but carping criticism is not legitimate criticism (p. 35).

      On the same page he shows what a variety of characters is represented under the name of "Higher Critic":

      The phrase "Higher Critic" is an indefinite one, as indefinite as the term "reptile," which may mean either a crocodile, a mud-turtle, a lizard, or a striped snake; or the word "animal," which may be a mouse, a mammoth, a pussy cat or a bengal tiger. So [106] there are critics and critics, of every variety, from the mildest grade of perplexed doubters to the outspoken type of skeptics and unbelievers. Names and brands signify little now; every parcel must be examined.

      Under the heading, "Jesus of Nazareth as a Higher Critic," and with the purpose of preparing the way for his testimony respecting Old Testament books, our author lays aside, for argument's sake, the claim for Jesus of supernatural knowledge, and considers his opportunities for knowledge on the subjects as if he were a mere man. In setting forth these opportunities, he shows a freshness and originality of treatment more striking than aught else in his part of the volume. I will quote only some of his more striking sayings:

      His knowledge of the Hebrew and Syriac tongues was not acquired under the weekly lessons of a Gentile professor during a three years' course in the theological seminary. He had been brought up where these tongues were the language of common life, and had learned them from his mother's lips. He was not in a land of uncultured barbarians: there were schools and books around him. Foreign languages were also spoken, so that in the metropolis it was deemed necessary by the authorities to inform passers-by of the crime of an executed malefactor by inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. . . . His knowledge of Jewish antiquities was not derived from books and libraries, but from personal acquaintance and investigation. His acquaintance with Jerusalem and Judæa and the land of Israel was acquired, not in a trip of two or three weeks with a dragoman to ask him questions, and a Turk to answer them, and a company of soldiers to keep him from being knocked in the head and robbed by wandering Bedouins; but he has probably made a hundred journeys to and from the Sacred City. . . . He had no occasion to hunt through lexicons, concordances and grammars to master the mysteries of Hebrew lexicography, the subtilties of Hebrew grammar, or the idiomatic structure of the sacred tongue. There were men all around him who were experts in all these departments. . . . Trained under such circumstances and influences, Jesus of Nazareth had great [107] opportunities for familiarizing himself with the Semitic language and literature. He was familiar with the Syriac tongue, the language of common life. . . . He had undoubtedly read Hebrew at an age when most of the higher critics did not know the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. He could stand up before a public assembly of Jews and read a Hebrew manuscript at sight, and pronounce his words correctly. How many higher critics could do that to-day? He had access to Hebrew manuscripts in all the synagogues in all Palestine, besides copies in private hands; and every one of those manuscripts was hundreds of years more ancient than any Hebrew manuscript that any higher critic ever saw or ever will see. His discourses show that he had diligently read those books, and was familiar with their contents. There are probably not more than a dozen higher critics on earth who would set themselves above him in native abilities, mental grasp and intellectual acuteness. He could sing and preach and pray in Hebrew as well as ordinary critics can in English or in German, and in all his references to the Hebrew Scriptures we do not recall a single palpable error or a blunder; and upon purely literary grounds his position as a critic must be infinitely higher than that of any man on earth to-day. He was nearer to the days of Ezekiel and Daniel than we are to the times of Wickliffe, our oldest translator of the Bible. He was nearer the time of the origin of large portions of the Scripture, according to the higher critics, than we are to the Pilgrim Fathers, and about as near to what they call the actual close of the canon as we are to the Revolutionary War and the battle of Bunker Hill. . . . He was in a position to speak impartially concerning these matters. He was neither a priest nor a Levite, and did not subsist on the tithes and offerings of the people, and so had no pecuniary interest in the national religion. He was not a scribe or a lawyer, nor was he a theological professor, bound by his position, his vows, or his salary, to study the law and defend and proclaim it, however be might doubt its authority. He was untrammeled by creeds, confessions and sectarian bands. . . . If, therefore, we may not cite the testimony of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Son of God, perhaps we may ask the opinion of Jesus of Nazareth, the higher critic, who, from his acquaintance with Biblical antiquities, Hebrew idioms and textual criticisms, was in a position to give lessons to every higher critic now on the face of the earth: and whose [108] personal independence, conscientious truthfulness, mental grasp, and intellectual acumen, give his words a weight not possessed by those of many of the critics of to-day (pp. 40-44).

      Those who cling tenaciously to the old belief in the Bible are constantly charged by the "critics" with bibliolatry--with making a "fetish" of the Bible. Mr. Hastings gives us a lively page or two on this subject, from which I can extract only a few lines:

      According to some of the wise and prudent critics of the day, there is great danger that the Bible will be regarded as a kind of fetish like those which are worshiped by the lowest idolaters, who tie bags of rags, snake skins, dried toads, and other trumpery, about them, and make them objects of adoration. And there seems to be a fear that the civilization and advancement of the age will be imperiled by people who look on the Holy Scriptures with superstitious regard as a fetish, and, consequently, when critics who have been emancipated from this form of fetish worship by finding out that the Bible is nothing but an ordinary book, full of errors, blunders, misstatements, fictions, falsehoods and forgeries, they at once become enamored of its beauty, and prize it far more highly than they ever did when they regarded it as a fetish. . . . One thing to be noted is, that while other fetishes are manufactured by old women, medicine men and magicians, in dim corners and in dark ages and dark places of the earth, the manufacture of this particular fetish has flourished most in the centers of education, intelligence and civilization; and since the year 1804 a single society organized in London, the commercial and literary metropolis of the world, has produced 135 millions of these fetishes, in 318 languages, 262 of which have been translated between 1883 and 1892; more than four millions of them having been sent forth during the year 1892-3. And though there have been more books written against this fetish, more laws made prohibiting it, more men persecuted and slain for having it, than any other fetish that the world has ever known, yet there are to-day ten times as many of those fetishes in existence as there are of any other fetish known to men (pp. 51-53). [109]

[SEBC 104-109]