(Concluded from p. 155.)

The answer given by the Modern Critics

What is called Higher Criticism has had a large place in modern theological literature; and its so-called "assured results" are now generally accepted as truth by unconverted preachers and unsaved professors.

What then is the Higher Criticism? and what has it to say in answer to the solemn query, "What think ye of Christ?"

And, in attempting to answer this in a very limited space, it may be best to explain first another kind of criticism, which no real Christian objects to if properly informed.

The lower criticism is that perfectly legitimate system of investigation for which every believer should be unfeignedly thankful, that occupies itself with determining the exact original text of Scripture. By comparing ancient manuscripts, versions, and quotations embodied in early letters and treatises, the reverent critic of the sacred text endeavors to eliminate interpolations and glosses, and to supply any lacking words or phrases. Some of the very best results of this eminently useful investigation will be found in the translations of the Bible made by J. N. Darby, and later, of the New Testament and parts of the Old by both F. W. Grant and W. Kelly, as found in the commentaries of these able expositors.

It is to this branch of criticism that men like Tregelles, Tischendorf, Griesbach, Westcott and Hort, and many others gave themselves and it is through their painstaking efforts that we now can be assured of a Greek and Hebrew text which is an almost exact counterpart of the original autographs, which have all been lost for many centuries.

But the miscalled higher criticism is something very different to this. It professes to determine by a careful examination of the language and phraseology of a given Scripture its authorship, authenticity, and time of production. It began by uniformly rejecting all that the Bible itself says on these subjects, and has been busy ever since its inception substituting ever-varying and contradictory theories of its own for the Scripture declarations.

That the Lord Jesus declared the Pentateuch to have been written by Moses, and attested the inspiration of Daniel the prophet, Isaiah, David, and indeed the entire Old Testament, has no weight with the exponents of this system whatever. Yet some of them profess to believe in Him as the sent One of God, and pretend to own His Lordship and divinity.

How then do they presume to set aside His statements. On the ground of what is called Kenoticism, based on the Greek word, Kenosis, meaning to empty.

The 7th verse of Philemon 2 declares that Christ "made Himself of no reputation," or, literally "emptied Himself." These modern critics base upon this the teaching that in assuming manhood, He divested Himself of the omniscience of deity. Hence as a Man, they hold that He was subject to all the limitations and ignorance of the men of His day. He really supposed Moses, Daniel and Isaiah wrote the books assigned to them in the Bible, but He was not a critic. His education was defective. His means for securing information were limited. Consequently He could not speak with the authority of these latter-day professors, who are by no means emptied, but filled as full of carnality and conceit as they well can be!

Others indeed unhesitatingly deny his Deity in toto and see in Him only a God-intoxicated man, who was under all the ordinary delusions of the times in which He lived. They read the Scriptures as the "best thoughts of the best men in those ancient times," but spurn the idea of definite divine inspiration in any other sense than that of a spiritual exaltedness such as characterizes some of our great poets and moralists.

But no soul subject to the Spirit's teaching would ever accept views so derogatory to the Holy Son of God. He emptied Himself of the glory that He had with the Father ere the world was (John 17:5), and of the riches which were His in heaven (2 Cor. 8:9), but He was ever God manifest in flesh, and He spake with all the authority of Deity. He who owns this in his soul is forever delivered from the pretentious blasphemies of the Higher Critics. H. A. I.