Baxter's review of Wellhausen's "Prolegomena" has occasioned quite a controversy between him and a gentleman named Peake, of Manchester, England. In the December number of the Expository Times, the [167] periodical in which the discussion has been published, there appears a short letter from Wellhausen in regard to it, which reads as follows:

      I feel that I am doing what is quite superfluous in stating that Professor Peake has correctly interpreted the aim of my "Prolegomena," and that Dr. Baxter has not. Baxter's object is not to understand, but to refute, me. In this endeavor he can count upon a circle of readers who detest me, and never soil their hands with any book of mine; who have no wish to learn to know me, but would gladly see me crushed. What a pity that in the present age I can no longer be burned at the stake! In any case the truth would not be burned with me.

GOTTINGEN, NOV. 13, 1896.

PROF. J. WELLHAUSEN.

      This note very clearly shows that Baxter's review, of which Mr. Gladstone said that, if Wellhausen did not make a successful defense against it, his reputation was ruined, has struck Wellhausen in a very tender spot, and has stirred him up to wrath, though not to a reply. His allusion to being burned at the stake is a "chestnut." It is the old cry of every man who, by false teaching, excites the disgust of earnest men. But he and all others who, while professing to teach religion, deny the Lord who bought them, ought to remember that, while the fires of persecution are quenched, there is another fire that is not quenched, and never can be. He says, "In any case, the truth would not be burned with me;" and we can, fortunately, say, No, not a particle of truth. Unfortunately, however, not even the errors that he has taught will be burned with him. They will live on to curse his admirers long after he shall have gone to his final account.

      Men of this type do not talk of being crushed until some close shave has suggested the possibility of it, and then, by a subterfuge as ancient as it is transparent, they assume that their opposers are enemies of truth. [168]

[SEBC 167-168]