The Bible and Modern Criticism 83 heretics, such as Arius (317 A. D.), who denied the divinity of Christ, and Pelagius in the fifth century, who rejected the doctrine of original sin. Indeed this exceedingly new theology adopts even the unbelief of those old Sadducees who said “there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit” (Acts 23:8), and whom Christ reproved with the words, “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29), I t certainly does not argue for the spiritual progress of our race, that such a threadbare and outworn unbelieving kind of science should again, in these days, deceive and even stultify thousands of people. NO AGREEMENT AMONG THE CRITICS Do these critics then, to ask the least of them, agree with one another? Far from it. To be sure, they unanimously deny the inspiration of the Bible, the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, the fall of man and the forgiveness of sins through Christ; also prophecy and miracles, the resurrec tion of the dead, the final judgment, heaven and hell. But when it comes to their pretendedly sure results, not any two of them affirm the same things; and their numerous publica tions create a flood of disputable, self-contradictory and mutually destructive hypotheses. For example, the Jehovah of the Old Testament is made to be some heathen god, either a nomadic or steppe god, the weather-god Jahu, or the god of West-Semitism. I t was David who first introduced this divin ity; and according t© some authors the peculiar worship of this god was, with its human sacrifices ( !), only a continuation of the Baal-Moloch worship! Of Abraham it is sometimes affirmed that he never existed, but at other times that he was a Canaanite chief, dwelling at Hebron. No! he is the myth of the Aurora; and Sarah, or Scharratu, is the wife of the moon-god Sin, and so on. The twelve sons of Jacob are very probably the twelve months of the year. As to Moses, some teach there never was such a man, also that
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