(Continued from p. 418.) The Higher Criticism and its Fruits

There are two scriptures which should be before every believer in Christ in these days which we know by the Second Epistle to Timothy are the last and difficult days. One of these is Christ's warning as to false teachers in Matt. 7:15-20, especially verse 15:"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." The second is 1 Cor. 2:14:"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Every word of these passages has had meaning for the Lord's people since they were written, and they explain many facts which have, and still do, puzzle and trouble believers. The Lord spoke and Paul wrote for the Church all down the ages, but spiritual believers know that we are living in what Paul termed "the last days," and all who will live godly in Christ Jesus experience that the present time is exceedingly difficult.

We know that the worst enemies of the Church are within her borders, that the most persistent attacks upon the truth are being made from within, and it is this which is met by the scriptures noted above.

The weapons now being used within against the truth were forged by those without. With one exception, all who were leaders in the early days of Higher Criticism were avowed unbelievers, open rejectors of the doctrines of Christianity. The one exception was Ewald, of whom it is said that, "He held to the unique divinity of Christ, and…. looked upon Jesus as realizing in a very special manner the prophecies and types of the Old Testament. He believed in the sinless life, in the all-availing death, in the literal resurrection, and in the eternal glory of Him who was born in Bethlehem." Yet of him it is also said that, "The traditionalists of his day regarded him as an enemy of the faith, which shows that he was at least in bad company.

The great name among German higher critics is that of Wellhausen, who was a thorough-going unbeliever, having broken with the evangelical church and with Protestantism. The critic he followed most closely was Vatke, of whom it is said that he "rejected miracle and the personality of God." Such were the men who originated the doctrines advocated by so-called Modernists.

We need always to remember the Lord's words as to false prophets. If they came as wolves, their character would be known, so they wear sheep's clothing. So it was with the work of the German critics, especially Wellhausen. When his work was translated into English a very prominent scholar of Great Britain wrote the preface of the volume; this ensured its acceptance by a large section of the English public, and it was hailed as a great advance in Bible study. It is strange that these people did not see that the German views would destroy all real faith in God and His Word, and 1 Cor. 2:14 gives the only explanation of this movement. It was the old story of a mass of unsaved people within the professing Church, in its ministry and its schools, bringing in teachings which have effectually destroyed the spiritual power and understanding of all who come under its influence.

The method of Wellhausen and his school is to take from the historical books of the Old Testament whatever supports (or what they think supports) their imaginary views, and then to reject any passages which contradict their theories. Of Wellhausen's English book it has been well said:"We find in it a never-ending tissue of assumptions, and of dogmatic revelations, but we hardly ever come to a grain of solid proof on which to rest them; we find a profession of founding their theories on Jewish history, associated with a claim to mutilate and contradict that history (without a shred of proof) at will:we find the theories so loosely constructed, that it is a constant experience to be able to confute one page by a contrary page not far off:we find the origination of three contradictory Israelitish Laws to be an unproved and an utterly improbable imagination" (W. L. Baxter in Sanctuary and Sacrifice:A Reply to Wellhausen, p. 10).

Such a book could never have attained the influence it did unless the soil had been industriously prepared for it by the propagation of many forms of attack upon the Scriptures extending over many years. It was the "natural men" in the places where spiritual men should have been who opened the gates to this flood of unbelief. What impresses us is the wholly deceitful nature of these attacks. They are scientific in no real sense. Take, for instance, Colenso's attack upon the journeyings of the Israelites from Egypt. There is no evidence that he ever visited Egypt, the desert, or Palestine, or that he ever consulted writers giving an accurate account of desert life. He wrote with a vivid and prejudiced imagination, yet his work was one of the foundations of destructive criticism.

It is a real relief to turn from such exhibitions of spiritual blindness to the work of those who are walking in the light of grace and truth, men who are the equals and the superiors in scholarship of the critics, and who also, have been taught of God. For this another article is purposed, J. W. Newton

(To be continued, D. V.)