It is quite common with young scholars, when they begin to get hold of important ideas, to imagine themselves original discoverers, and they begin to pity a world which knew so little before they were born. Striking examples of this weakness are seen among the younger class of our "modern scientific critics." Here, for instance, is Mr. Rush Rhees, now president of Rochester (N. Y.) University. He has an article in the June number of the Biblical World in which he tells what historical study of the Bible has done--a kind of study that is as old as the Bible. I quote a few of his assertions:

      In the first place, modern historical study of the Bible has effected a recedence of emphasis on theories of inspiration behind the recognition of what we may call the fact of inspiration. [442] By the fact of inspiration I mean the recognition that in the Bible the human spirit finds stimulus and instruction for those deeper movements of the soul which we call religious.

      Now, reader, study that sentence carefully, and if you don't learn from it what inspiration is, confess yourself a blockhead.

      Secondly, this study has led to the recedence of the theory of inspiration, because it has shown the essential reverence of criticism.

      I suppose this means that when you see the essential reverence of criticism, your theory of inspiration will "recede;" that is, it will take a back seat. With him, however, inspiration seems not to have taken any seat--it has "skipped."

      Thirdly, the essential reverence of criticism has brought to mind the fact that Christianity is the flower of a rich growth, the growth of the religion of Israel.

      This "essential reverence of criticism" is a wonderful thing. It has brought to mind a fact which everybody in Christendom knew two thousand years before "criticism" was born.

      Furthermore, the modern historical study of the Scriptures offers the Bible as the natural text-book for religious education.

      If the gentleman had as much reverence for the Bible as he has for criticism, he would have learned that Moses offered his law as the natural text-book for religious education; that Ezra used it in this way; that the mother and grandmother of Timothy did the same; and that it was never absent from the hands of Jesus and Paul when they were engaged in the religious education of the people.

      Modern historical study, let it also be said, in offering the Bible as a text-book, calls positive attention to the fact that our religion is not the religion of a book. [443]

      Well, if by "our religion" he means the religion of himself and his fellow-devotees of "criticism," I am ready to believe that it is not the religion of the Book; but if he will examine it a little more carefully, he may find that several books, and these not the best, are responsible for it.

      Modern historical study of the Bible has discovered, however, that the religion of a book is precisely the thing which Jesus had to contend with in his controversies with the scribes.

      Before writing this the brother ought to have given the four Gospels at least one careful reading. It would have saved him from reversing the positions of Jesus and the scribes. He would have learned that the scribes contended for a body of oral traditions which had never been written in a book, while Jesus denounced them for making void the word of God by their traditions. He also demanded of them, "Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law?"

      I must admit that there is at least one passage in Matthew which our author has read; it is the remark of Jesus that "Moses for the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives." This passage, however, has been so often quoted by "the critics," and misrepresented, that the quotation of it by one of them is no proof that he has ever read it in the Gospel. He says that in this Jesus was "shattering the idol of the religion of a book"--that he "penetrated through to something underneath the letter of the book." He did no such thing. He only taught that this precept of Moses was intended to be temporary; and in the same breath he affirmed the divine authority of that same old book, by saying: "Have ye not read that he who made them from the beginning, made them male and female?" and said, "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, [444] and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall be one flesh." In this he not only appeals to the book, but he quotes its words as the words of God himself.

      Modern historical study of the Bible brings clearly to mind Jesus' constant opposition to, because of his relentless opposition by, the religion of a book.

      Here it is again. Friend Rhees is like the horse-trader who, having said that the horse was sixteen feet high, stuck to it. Not contented yet with repeating this pet assertion, he says again:

      Modern historical study of the Bible lifts its voice in protest against the conception that Christianity is the religion of a book.

      Go ahead, hard-head.

      After demonstrating, by the force of repeated and even tiresome assertions, that Christianity is not the religion of a book, our critic occupies a page or two in showing that it is a religion with a book. This is not a great compliment to Christianity; for the same may be said of Mohammedanism, of Buddhism, of Confucianism, of Mormonism, etc. Even Bob Ingersoll's religion was a religion with many books; and the religion of destructive critics is a religion with a cartload of books. Tell us something that we don't know already, and something that is true.

[SEBC 442-445]