Old Testament Criticism and New Testament Christianity 17 they rest and ask us to rest. The tendency of their position is certainly towards a minimizing of the supernatural in the Old Testament. Take, as one instance, the Messianic element. In sp'te of the universal belief of Jews and Christians in a person. 1 Messiah, a belief derived in the first place solely from the Old Testament, and supported for Christians by the New, modern criticism will not allow much clear and undoubted prediction of Him. Insight into existing conditions is readily granted to the prophets, but they are not allowed to have had much foresight into future conditions connected with the Messiah. Yet Isaiah’s glowing words remain, and demand a fair, full exegesis such as they do not get from many modern scholars. Dr. James Wells, of Glasgow, wrote in the “British Weekly” some time ago of the new criticism on this point: “The fear of prediction in the proper sense of the term is ever before its eyes. It gladly enlarges on fore-shadowings, a moral historical growth which reaches its culmination in Christ; and anticipations of the Spirit of Christ; but its tendency is always to minimize the prophetic element in the Old Testament.” Another example of the tendency of modem criticism to minimize and explain away the supernatural element may be given from a book entitled, “The Theology and Ethics of the Hebrews,” by Dr. Archibald Duff, Professor in the Yorkshire College, Bradford. This is his account of Moses at the burn- ing bush: “He was shepherding his sheep among 'the red granite mountains. . . . The man sat at dawn by the stream, and watched the fiery rocks. Yonder gleamed the level sunlight across the low growth. Each spine glistened against the rising sun. The man was a poet, one fit for inspiration. He felt that the dreams of his soul were the whisperings of his God, the place His sanctuary. He bowed and worshipped,”
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