My Experience with Higher Criticism 111 It became more and more obvious to me that the movement was entirely intellectual, an attempt in reality to intellectualize all religious phenomena. I saw also that it was a partial and one-sided intellectualism, with a strong bias against the funda mental tenets of Biblical Christianity.' Such a movement does not produce that intellectual humility which belongs to the Christian mind. On the contrary, it is responsible for a vast amount of intellectual pride, an aristocracy of intellect with all the snobbery which usually accompanies that term. Do they not exactly correspond to Paul’s word, “vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind and not holding fast the head, etc.?” They have a splendid scorn for all opinions which do not agree with theirs. Under the spell of this sublime contempt they think they can ignore anything that does not square with their evolutionary hypothesis. The center of gravity of their thinking is in the theoretical not in the religious, in reason, not in faith. Supremely satisfied with its self-constituted authority, the mind thinks itself competent to criticise the Bible, the thinking of all the centuries, and even Jesus Christ Himself. The followers of this'cult have their full share of the frailties of human nature. Rarely, if ever, can a thoroughgoing critic be an evangelist, or even evangelistic; he is educational. How is it possible for a preacher to be a power for God, whose source of authority is his own reason and convictions? The Bible can scarcely contain more than good advice for such a man. I was much impressed with their boast of having all schol arship on their side. It is very gratifying to feel oneself abreast, with the times, up to date, and in the front rank of thought. But some investigation and consideration led me to see that the boast of scholarship is tremendously overdone. Many leading scholars are with them, but a majority of the most reverent and judicious scholars are not. The arrogant boasts of these people would be very amusing, if they were not so influential. Certainly most of the books put forth of late by
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