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The Fundamentals. led and swayed the movement, who madè the theories that the others circulated, were strongly unbelieving. Then the higher critical movement has not followed its true and original purposes in investigating the Scriptures for the purposes of confirming faith and of helping believers to understand the beauties, and appreciate the circumstances of the origin of the various books, and so understand more com pletely the Bible? No. I t has not; unquestionably it has not. I t has been deflected from that, largely owing to the character of the men whose ability and forcefulness have given predominance to their views. I t has become identified with a system of criti cism which is based on hypotheses and suppositions which have for their object the repudiation of the traditional theory, and has investigated the origins and forms and styles and contents, apparently not to confirm the authenticity and credi bility and reliability of the Scriptures, but to discredit in most cases their genuineness, to discover discrepancies, and throw dottbt upon their authority. THE ORIGIN OF THE MOVEMENT. Who, then, were the men whose views have moulded the views of the leading teachers and writers of the Higher Crit ical school o f today? We will answer this as briefly as possible. It is not easy to say who is the first so-called Higher Critic, or when the movement began. But it is not modern by any means. Broadly speaking, it has passed through three great stages : 1. The French-Dutch. 2. The German. 3. The British-American. In its origin it was Franco-Dutch, and speculative, if not skeptical. The views which are now accepted as axiomatic by the Continental and British-American schools of Higher
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