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The Fundamentals. is, after all, one book. But the limits of the Old Testament have long since been overpassed by the higher critics, and it is demanded of us that we abandon the immemorial teaching of the church concerning the entire volume. The picture of Christ which the New Testament sets before us is in many respects mistaken. The doctrines of primitive Christianity which it states and defends were well enough for the time, but have no value for us today except as they commend themselves to our independent judgment. Its moral precepts are fallible, and we should accept them or reject them freely, in accordance with the greater light of the twentieth century. Even Christ could err concerning ethical questions, and neither His commandments nor His example need constrain us. The foregoing may serve as an introductory sketch, all too brief, of the higher criticism, and as a basis of the discussion of its fallacies, now immediately to follow. FIRST FALLACY: THE ANALYSIS OF THE PENTATEUCH. I. The first fallacy that I shall bring forward is its analy sis of the Pentateuch. 1. We cannot fail to observe that these various documents and their various authors and editors are only imagined. As Green* has said, “There is no evidence of the existence of these documents and redactors, and no pretense of any, apart from the critical tests which have determined the analysis. All tradition and all historical testimony as to the origin of the Pentateuch are against them. The burden of proof is wholly upon the critics. And this proof should be clear and convinc ing in proportion to the gravity and the revolutionary char acter of the consequences which it is proposed to base upon it.” 2. Moreover, we know what can be done, or rather what cannot be done, in the analysi.3 of composite literary produc tions. Some of the plays of Shakespeare are called his “mixed plays, because it is known that he collaborated with another *“Moses and His Recent Critics," pages 104, 105.
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