The Fundamentals.
116
THE SCHOLARSHIP ARGUMENT. The second question is also serious: Are we not bound to receive these views when they are advanced, not by ration alists, but by Christians, and not by ordinary Christians, but by men of superior and unchallengeable scholarship? There is a widespread idea among younger men that the so-called Higher Critics must be followed because their schol arship settles the questions. This is a great mistake. No expert scholarship can settle questions that require a humble heart, a believing mind and a reverent spirit, as well as a knowledge of Hebrew and philology; and no scholarship can be relied upon as expert which is manifestly characterized by a biased judgment, a curious lack of knowledge of human nature, and a still more curious deference to the views of men with a prejudice against the supernatural. No one can read such a suggestive and sometimes even such an inspiring writer as George Adam Smith without a feeling of sorrow that he has allowed this German bias of mind to lead him into such an assumption of infallibility in many of his positions and statements. It is the same with Driver. With a kind of sic volo sic jubeo airy ease he introduces assertions and proposi tions that would really require chapter after chapter, if not even volume after volume, to substantiate. On page after page his “must be,” and “could not possibly be, and could certainly not,” extort from the average reader the natural ex clamation: “But why?” “Why not?” “Wherefore?” “On what grounds?” “For what reason?” “Where are the proofs?” But of proofs or reason there is not a trace. The reader must be content with the writer’s assertions. It re minds one, in fact, of the “we may well suppose,” and “per haps” of the Darwinian who offers as the sole proof of the origination of a different species his random supposition! ( “Modern Ideas of Evolution,” Dawson, pages 53-55.)
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