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lute agreement among the Evangelists as to the details o f the Lord’s earthly life, the more important o f their statements would have been rejected all the same.' V Again, let us take the agnostic, Mr. M. Arnold, with his critical pre-suppositions, as he has expressed himself in his “ God and the Bible.” The God o f the Bible is the “Eternal Power that makes for right eousness;” not personal, not a Being who thinks and loves. All that we know o f this Power “we know in the same way we know o f the force o f gravitation, by its effect upon us ; we know no more o f the nature o f one than o f the other.” Foot Note-7 (Mr. Arnold is unwilling that this Power should be called the Unknowable, for he feels the absurdity of saying: “ The Unknowable is our refuge and ¡strength, a very present help in trou ble.” “ Out o f the depths have 1 cried unto Thee, O Unknowable.” He explains the Jehovah o f the Hebrews' by affirming Him to'b e “the unconscious deification of the law o f righteousness” ). All the miraculous statements we are to regard as poetry or legend; and so; also, what he calls the materialistic features— the supernatural birth and bodily resurrec tion o f Jesus, the expectation o f a Messi anic kingdom, and o f a new heaven and earth. The fall o f man is a legend, Satan an imaginary being. “Theology goes upon data furnished by a time o f imperfect observation and boundless credulity.” There being so- little o f doctrinal and historical truth in the Bible, we ask with some surprise what Mr. Arnold can find in it to commend it to popular reading, for he tells us, “the world cannot be without it, and we desire to bring the masses to use it.” After taking away all that it teaches o f a personal God, o f His Incarnate Son, o f creation, o f sin, o f atonement, o f resur rection, o f judgment, we wonder to be told that we may still retain in the expurgated book “the elements o f a religion more serious, potent, awe-inspiring, and pro found, than any which the world has yet seen.”
UNCLASSIFIED CRITICS II. O f the critics who do not wholly deny the truthfulness o f the Bible on a priori grounds, and yet only partially ac cept its statements, no classification can be made. They are o f all shades o f opinion, according as their criticism is determined by their philosophy,- their science or their feelings. Many, coming to the Scriptures with a philosophical theory o f the order o f man’s religious development, will make this order the test o f truth, arid reject all statements that do not conform . to it. It is on the principle o f “a psychologically possible process off development” that much o f the more recent criticism o f the Old Testament is based. Some affirm that the Hebrews- could not have been monothe ists in Moses’ days, for Monotheism must have been a later development ; and that Jehovah was simply a tribal God, and' the Hebrews polytheists. Nor could the Mosaic ritual have been given so early, since ritual presupposes a long period o f religious development, and comes at its end, nof at the beginning. W e may not, there fore, speak o f “the Law and the Prophets,” but o f thè Prophets and the Law. The account o f the Covenant with the Jews cannot be true, since the selection o f one people would -be “particularism,” and make the Deity partial; and, therefore, Jewish history is no more sacred, and o f no more real importance as a revelation- o f God,' than the history o f any other people. And, in general, we may not speak o f any “ fall ing away” from a Covenant relation, of any decline from a higher spiritual condi tion to a lower; but rather o f a continual upward progress in Jewish history. In the destruction-of the first temple, and the ces sation o f its worship, the Jews suffered no loss. It was, in fact, we are told, a relig- , ious gain. They entered thereby into a larger liberty, and a more scriptural ser vice. So, also, in the destruction o f the second temple; the synagogue was a great advance upon it. Others base their criticism mainly upon scientific grounds, into which more or less pantheistic elements enter. W e are told by
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