The Fundamentals (1910), Vol.1

The History of the Higher Criticism. 119 according to Orr, the leading Orientalist in Germany, and a man of enormous learning. Sayce, the Professor of Assyriology at Oxford, has a right to rank as an expert and scholar with Cheyne, the Oriel Pro­ fessor of Scripture Interpretation. Margoliouth, the Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford, as far as learning is concerned, is in the same rank with Driver, the Regius Professor of Hebrew, and the conclusion of this great scholar with regard to one of the widely vaunted theories of the radical school, is almost amusing in its terseness. “Is there then nothing in the splitting theories,” he says in summarizing a long line of defense of the unity of the book of Isaiah; “is there then nothing in the splitting theories? To my mind, nothing at all!” ( “Lines of Defense,” page 136.) Green and Bissell are as able, if not abler, scholars than Robertson Smith and Professor Briggs, and both of these men, as a result of the widest and deepest research, have come to the conclusion that the theories of the Germans are unsci­ entific, unhistorical, and unscholarly. The last words of Pro­ fessor Green in his very able work on the “Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch” are most suggestive. “Would it not be wiser for them to revise their own ill-judged alliance with the enemies of evangelical truth, and inquire whether Christ’s view of the Old Testament may not, after all, be the true view ?” Yes. That, after all, is the great and final question. We trust we are not ignorant. We feel sure we are not malignant. We desire to treat no man unfairly, or set down aught in malice. But we desire to stand with Christ and His Church. If we have any prejudice, we would rather be prejudiced against rationalism. I f we have any bias, it must be against a teach­ ing which unsteadies heart and unsettles faith. Even at the expense of being thought behind the times, we prefer to

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