Old Testament Criticism and New Testament Christianity 13 the compatibility of the new views with a belief in the Divine authority of the Old Testament, and so far as they themselves are concerned we of course accept their statements ex animo. But we wish they would give us more clearly and definitely than they have yet done, the grounds on which this compati- bility may be said to rest. To deny historicity, to correct dates by hundreds of years, to reverse judgments on which a nation has rested for centuries, to traverse views which have been the spiritual sustenance of millions, and then to say that all this is consistent with the Old Testament being regarded as a Divine revelation, is at least puzzling, and does not afford mental or moral satisfaction to many'who do not dream of questioning the bona fides of scholars who hold the views now criticized. The extremes to which Dr. Cheyne has gone seem to many the logical outcome of the principles with which mod- ern criticism, even of a moderate type, starts, Facilis descensus Averno, and we should like to be shown the solid and logical halting-place where those who refuse to go with Cheyne think that they and we can stand. Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, commenting March 12, 1903, on a speech delivered by the then Prime Minister of Great Britain (Mr. Balfour) in connection with the Bible Society’s Cen- tenary, made the following significant remarks: “The immedi- ate results of criticism are in a high degree disturbing. So far they have scarcely been understood by the average Christian. But the plain man who has been used to receive everything in the Bible as a veritable Word of God cannot fail to be per- plexed, and deeply perplexed, when he is told that much of the Old Testament and the New is unhistorical, and when he is asked to accept the statement that God reveals Himself by myth and legend as well as by the truth, of fact. Mr. Balfour must surely know that many of the higher critics have ceased to be believers. More than twenty years ago the present writer, walking with Julius Wellhausen in the quaint streets of Greifswald, ventured to ask him whether, if his views were
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