Let no one be deceived by this cry when it comes from rationalistic sources. There is a meaning in it quite different from that which we are apt to attach to it. We are apt to suppose that it means back of all human creeds and rules of discipline to the teaching of the apostles and of Christ. But it does not stop there. It means, also, back of the apostles, so that their teaching is to be set aside when it does not seem to be supported by the personal teaching of Jesus. Neither does it stop at the four Gospels and their representation of what Christ taught. It discriminates between what they have incorrectly reported from the lips of Christ and what he actually said. By powers of discernment which none but an expert modern critic boasts of possessing, all of the reported sayings of Christ are sifted, the accretions and misconstructions of the Gospel writers, and the traditions which they followed, are cast aside, and the residue is the teaching of Christ. The cry is, back to that; and back to that is infidelity and religious anarchy.

      Dr. James Stalker has well expressed the essential part of the sentiment in the opening paragraph of the leading article of the June Expositor. He says:

      "Back to Christ!" is the watchword of theology at the present time; and there can be little doubt that the question, what precisely was taught by Christ, will be the most burning theological topic of the first decade of the twentieth century. It seems an easy thing to discover what Christ taught, for in the four Gospels all his words are contained in a very narrow compass. . . . The question, however, has been raised, Are we sure [148] that all the words attributed to our Lord in the Gospels are really his; or, as we read, do we require to exercise caution and criticism?

      If we once cast aside the inspiration which Christ promised his apostles, if he did promise it, if those promises of it are not spurious additions to his words, and if we also cast aside their claim of an infallible inspiration, as has now become the fashion, what have we left to guarantee the certainty that anything quoted from him in the Gospels actually came from his lips? Nothing, absolutely nothing, except the judgment of the modern critic, and that, in such a connection, is not worth a snap of my finger.

      Back to Christ let us go; but let us not forget that when we reach the writings of his apostles, whom he authorized to speak in his name, and qualified to speak with absolute authority, we have gone back to him.

[SEBC 148-149]