was under the instruction of that grand man, Dr. William Henry Green, who, in my estimation, stands at the head of Hebrew scholarship in this country, and is one of the grandest Christian men I ever knew. We had criticism. We did not call it Higher Criticism in those days, but our teacher went over this whole range of German thought and criticism, entered into all the theories and discussed them with our class, and presented the grounds and the conclusions, and we had the benefit of his wise thought upon them. He met all these points that are being made still. There was another way of explaining them.

But I say there is this kind of criticism which is biblical criticism in its proper form. We call it, perhaps, historico-grammatical or grammatico-historical. It is criticism which takes the Bible with grammar and history, and seeks to get at the meaning of it. It begins reverently, accepting the great mass of evidences with which you come to the Bible, the evidences of Christianity which are sufficient with the average man to predis pose him to at least a friendly reception of the Bible as it is presented to him. There is this kind of criticism which has had grand results, but there is another kind of criticism, and that is the Rationalistic Higher Criticism. Now, I am in favor of the Higher Criticism which I call Rational Higher Criticism, but I have no patience with the Higher Criticism which I call Rationalistic Higher Criticism—the Higher Criticism that assumes that there is nothing supernatural in the Bible, or if there be a supernatural in the Bible you must leave it out in your study of the Bible. Now, no Christian who has accepted the evidences of Christianity, who has given any adequate thought or study to the subject of the evidences, can come to the Bible and say, I am going to ignore all that is supernatural in it, and I am going to take what I find left after that.

When a man takes the Bible in that way and starts out with Genesis, he reads: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That is supernatural. Leave that out. So he goes on down through and he will find by the time he gets to the end he has left out pretty much everything—lost it on the ground that it is supernatural. It involves God, it involves miracles, it involves prophecy, it involves something that

is supernatural, that rests on the supernatural. This Rationalistic Higher Criticism, which assumes that we can take the Word of God and take it without any reference to the great range of Christian evidences and deal with it just as you would deal with Robinson Crusoe, I do not expect any high results from. There have been grand scholars in Germany who have taken that other view. They assume in the Pentateuch, when they come upon two things that can posssibly be tortured into contradictions that they are difficulties, and they set to work to see if those difficulties can be reconciled, and they succeed in reconciling them, I think; at least they succeed to the satisfaction of many of the ablest men that I know, and the ablest thinkers in reconciling all these contradictions, or apparent contradictions.

Just as in the New Testament, you can start out in the Gospels and say, Here Matthew differs from Luke so and so. Here's a difficulty, contradiction, discrepancy, and that very soon passes into a contradiction. You say, Either this one told the truth or this one did. Here's this genealogy in Matthew: If that is correct, that one in Luke is not correct. There is a perfectly simple way of reconciling the two. There are two different genealogies, as every one has. If you take the rational way and study the rationalistic way, it is a very easy matter to reconcile them. Just so in the Pentateuch. The connection of the first chapter and the paragraph up to the fourth verse in the second chapter is all very plain to Prof. Wright, and very plain to me and Dr. Green, and hundreds of men whom I know, men who have been able to look into the subject and who have looked into it with. as much scientific acumen and patience as any men who have reached the other conclusion. Now, I say, on the basis of the evidences of Christianity in favor of the Bible, the attitude of the Christian Church and the Christian man should always be that this Bible is proved by these evidences to be the Word of God. The presumption is against contradiction. It is against error, until error is absolutely proved, and the great objection that I have to all the adverse criticism of the New Testament and to the adverse criticism of the Old Testament is, that they exalt simple difficulties into the place of absolute contradictions. There are myriads of difficulties in the work of creation which

the scientists have never understood as yet, but they do not pretend to say that these are contrary to law. They are trying to find what the law is under which they all come. And I believe that there is a great divine law running through the Bible by which all these discrepancies are being reconciled.

By W. W. MCLANE, D.D., Ph.D., New Haven, Conn.:

I suppose that the sympathy of this meeting is probably very generally with the position of the gentleman who wrote the paper. I happen to be a preacher and not a professor. I don't personally like much of the Higher Criticism, because it is not the method of study which fits a man particularly for preaching. I find that I must read the story of Joseph, not to find out whether it is one story or two traditions woven in one story, but to find, as Prof. Curtis has said, what it teaches in regard to loyalty to God and God's care of man. I must study the Bible in that way or I do not help the people in preaching.

Q. Do you find that you can study it the other way and keep your faith in it?

A. My friend, Professor Curtis here, is a teacher. He is a good preacher, I have no doubt; but he is a teacher. He is obliged to teach the literature of the Old Testament and he arrives at certain conclusions. I want to call the attention of the audience to one thing which I do not think many people think of. Many people confound revelation and inspiration, and do not distinguish between the revelation of a truth to the mind of man by the Spirit of God, and the mere presence of the Spirit of God which may direct men in the writing of historical facts. You must distinguish between revelation and inspiration. I arose, however, because one gentleman back here referred to the injurious effect of the teaching of the age. I am not proposing to stand here to say what may have been the effect, one way or another, of all the teaching that may have been connected with the University. I do not know how far the influence of Prof. Harper may go one way or the other. Prof. Curtis came from a Seminary where he has done good work. He is now teaching

in Yale Divinity School, and when his students come into my prayer meeting, holding some of these positions which I know he holds, and manifest themselves to be profoundly full of faith in the Bible and full of loyalty to Jesus Christ, I must recognize that fact. When one of his students said to me, "The influence of Prof. Curtis is especially spiritual and helpful to the students," and when I can testify to the fact that when he appears before us ministers, to read a paper to us, or anything of that kind, I can speak not for myself, but for them also, to say that he makes the same impression; we must recognize that fact, andI think it is due to such men as Prof. Curtis and Prof. Mitchell, to recognize that they stand as Christian men who have a personal interest in this matter, and who are not antagonizing Christianity, but are honestly seeking after truth. And we must be careful in our remarks not to affirm that they are doing detriment where they are not. And that is the reason I made this remark to say that so far as Prof. Curtis's influence in the Seminary of Yale is concerned, I know it is on the side of the Bible, faith in the Bible and in Christ.

CHRIST AT THE BAR OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM.

[Prepared for the Summer School of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, July, 1893.]

BY DAVID JAS. BURRELL, D.D.,

Pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church, of New York.

[The writer of this paper is well aware that it is liable to misconstruction. He believes, however, that the false methods of the Higher Criticism are so pernicious in their results as to warrant a bold attempt at reductio ad absurdum. It would appear that this can be best accomplished by a frank and fair application of those rules to the doctrine of the Incarnate Word. If this shall seem irreverent, let the blame be laid where it belongs.]

IN

N this year of our Lord, 1918, all followers of Christ have reason to congratulate themselves on the prevailing freedom of thought and discussion. It is scarcely believable that only twenty-five years ago the friends of the Higher Criticism were under reproach by reason of their courageous opposition to narrow and antiquated views of Inspiration. At that time it was as much as a minister's good and regular standing was worth to breathe a word against inerrancy. But truth, as ever, gained the upper hand. Inerrancy, riddled by the running fire of hon est scholarship, died the death; and the Bible was reduced to its proper place as a doctrinal and ethical thesaurus, a venerable landmark of literature, an indispensable Book among books. Toward the consummation of that desirable end the friends of progress were enabled to help themselves greatly by insisting that Christ and not the Bible must be kept upon the throne. The word "Christo-centric" was made to answer a most useful purpose. The vice of bibliolatry ceased and the heart of the Church was centred on Jesus Christ. But words are like wearing apparel; they serve their time; and afterwards are better honored in the breach than in the observance. Thus the word "Christo-centric" has served its day. The Written Word having now been adjusted to its proper place, it has seemed only meet and proper that scholarship should turn its attention toward