This is the title of the leading article in the Homiletic Review for April. It is from the pen of Professor Osgood, of Rochester Theological Seminary. The author's name and reputation as a scholar are well known to the readers of this page. The article is so timely and so strongly written that I give the greater part of my space for this week to an abstract of it:

      After all the discussion, the whole Bible is still before us. It was given to each man, to whom it comes for his decision. He is responsible for that decision. He can not put it off on the decision of any other man. When great schools, proud and pretentious of their learning, were found in Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor and Europe, the Saviour constantly asked those whom he addressed, whether peasant, fisherman, priest or scribe, "Have ye not read?" "Did ye never read?" "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" And as this same Saviour is the final and universal judge of men, these questions take on the awful solemnity of the last dread decision. Each one of us must decide for ourselves what is and shall be our relation to the Bible when we stand before the Lamb in the midst of the throne to render our final account.

      For some years past a criticism of the Bible has been brought into our land from Germany and Holland, that tells us that the Bible is a purely human book, filled with contradictions, and of value only as a record of the evolution of human thought. Those who champion it among us tell us that this criticism has received the suffrages of all the scholars; that if [196] any voice is raised against it, that voice betrays ignorance and want of true scholarship.

      When we ask, Who are all these scholars? we are told, All the professors in Protestant universities in Germany, very many in England, Scotland and the United States. And how many of these scholars are there? Some fifty or sixty. Are they all scholars of the first rank? No. A few are men of great natural abilities, supplemented by large learning; but the majority are men of very moderate ability, who follow the leaders, and make up in sound what is wanting in weight. As the personal equation is of decisive force in the determination of all questions involving religion and morals, we ask, What do the authors and leaders of this criticism believe as to God and Christ and sin and salvation? These authors and leaders are not slow to tell us that they do not believe in a God who has made any written revelation of himself, or in Christ as anything more than a man. Of sin and salvation they never say anything. One of these authors and leaders believed so little in God that he did not mention him except as spoken by others, and another of these chief authors proclaims himself a polytheist.

      And who say that these are the great scholars, and all the scholars of the world, in the matter of the Bible? Only the men of their own party, who seldom read works written by opponents, and deny all scholarship to men who will not accept their premises and conclusions. Believers are called to stand and deliver up their faith in God, in Christ, in sin, in salvation, in God's revelation of himself, on the authority of this band of fifty or sixty, led by unbelievers. That does seem rather pretentious and supercilious, seeing that if these fifty or sixty were swept away from their chairs thrice a year, their places could be readily supplied with just as good scholars from believing Christian ministers at home or in the mission field.

      The line between "real scholars," "all the scholars," and "non-scholars," "no scholars," has been accurately drawn by an adherent of "all the scholars" in a critical journal: "We have no taste for evangelical criticism, and no confidence in an author's critical power whose argument is derived from the authority of the New Testament." "There can be no argument between those who thus think and historical critics of any school who do not accept their theological and critical postulates." All who bow to the supreme authority of God, of Christ, are thus [197] waved off from an appreciation which they never sought, and would not have if it were laid in their hand. They divide at Christ.

      The only persons, then, who, according to this school, are real scholars and competent to pass an opinion on their views, are men of their own band. Let us see, then, what two leaders of this criticism say of the whole method of criticism pursued by the other. Dillmann and Kuenen were men of real ability, of great learning, of unceasing labor. They were the leaders of the two wings of precisely the same general anti-Biblical criticism. By some sciolists in our land, Dillmann has been regarded as more orthodox than Kuenen; but his premises and conclusions are just as anti-Biblical as Kuenen's, and they just as effectually would sweep away all belief in the Bible as a revelation from God. There is no discount, therefore, to be placed against Dillmann because of Biblical or orthodox views. He criticizes the whole method of Kuenen as false from the beginning (Num. Joshua, p. 597, f.). And Kuenen replies that Dillmann pursues just the same course (Theol. Tijdschrift, v. 22, p. 23 f.). But lest I seem to mistake the facts, one of "all the scholars" shall state them for us. In the French review of the "History of Religions," we are told: "Kuenen reproaches Dillmann with considering the question of the origin of the Hexateuch from a purely literary point of view, and without considering the relations between the documents analyzed and the history. The difference in the method is striking. Dillmann accuses the critics of the school of Reuss and Kuenen of imagining a priori a regular religious evolution in the midst of the people of Israel, and of resting upon these premises to determine the succession of the documents combined in the extant Hexateuch. Kuenen shows Dillmann that he does the same thing, and that it is impossible to follow another method, unless we accept the history as given by the authors of the Old Testament." Kuenen says that Dillmann, by refusing to consider the history, and relying only on the literary points, reaches false results. His method is false; his conclusions are false. Dillmann says that Kuenen's method begins in pure imagination of an evolution of religion, and ends in his false conclusion. Kuenen acknowledges that he does just what Dillmann says--imagines the evolution of religion, and fits the history to this imagined religion; and be also says and proves that Dillmann does the same thing: or that, when [198] both of them refuse to believe the history given in the Old Testament, there remains no other course but an imagined religion to which to fit an imagined history. If an outsider--one of the "non-scholars"--had brought these charges, they would be met with denial, because he could not understand the "only scholars." Both the witnesses are true against each other. The method on both sides is false, and the result of this "supreme scholarship" is just as false--an imagined religion framed in an imagined history. And yet it is to this scholarship that Christians, who know what they believe, and why they believe it, are called to surrender on authority and demand. According to these two chief witnesses, behind the dark curtain on which is inscribed "all the scholars," there is nothing for a believer in God and Christ and his word to fear, since the space is, confessedly, filled only with imagination.

[SEBC 196-199]