Holy Scripture and Modern Negations 99 limitations in His conceptions and j udgments. Paul is al leged to be still largely dominated by his inheritance of Rab binical and Pharisaic ideas. He had been brought up a Pharisee, brought up with the rabbis, and when he became a Christian, he carried a great deal of that into his Christian thought, and we have to strip off that thought when we come to the study of his Epistles. He is therefore a teacher not to be followed further than our own j udgment of Christian truth leads us. That gets rid of a great deal that is incon venient about Paul's teaching. THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS If these things are done in the "green tree" of the New Testament, it is easy to see what will be done in the "dry tree" of the Old. The conclusions of the more advanced school of critics are here generall y accepted as once for all settled, with the result-in my j udgment, at any rate-that the Old Testament is immeasurably lowered from the place it once held in our reverence. Its earlier history, down to about the age of the kings, is largely resolved into myths and legends and fictions. It is ruled out of the category of his tory proper. No doubt we are told that the legends are j ust as good as the history, and perhaps a little better, and that the ideas which they convey to us are just as good, coming in the form of legends, as if they came in the form of fact. But behold, its laws, when we come to deal with them in this manner, lack Divine authority. They are the products of human minds at various ages. Its prophecies are the utter ances of men who possessed indeed the Spirit of God, which is only in fuller degree what other good men, religious teach ers in all countries, have possessed-not a spirit qualifying, for example, to give real predictions, or to bear authoritative messages of the truth to men. And so, in this whirl and confu sion of theories-you will find them in our magazines, you will find them in our encyclopedias, you will find them in our re-
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