"I am…the truth." "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?

The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself."

"The word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father’s which sent Me." John 14:6, 10, 24

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away." Matthew 24:35

HERE are two sources to which we can look for light as to the character and ways of God - Nature and Revelation. If God has spoken - if the Bible be what the Master declared it to be - the Divine light of Nature must pale before it, and we need no other guide. But if the new and seemingly popular estimate of the Bible be accepted, it is blindly stupid to appeal to that sort of book against the clear testimony of Nature. And what will Nature tell us about God? Trumpet-tongued it will proclaim His goodness and His severity. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." His existence Nature proclaims, and Revelation assumes. "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." In his heart, mark, he whispers it to himself in secret. The crass folly that would announce it openly is not even contemplated. There is no darkness like that which covers us when a strong clear light is quenched. And the only atheists are the apostates, men who have turned away from Christianity.

But the teaching of Nature is that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him. His goodness is for those who merit it; for the rest there is nothing but severity. As an infidel writer puts it, "Nature knows no such foolery as forgiveness of sins." Nature is stern, unpitying, remorseless in punishing. And Nature is but another name for God.

If any one disputes this, it is easily put to the test. Outrage the laws of health, and you will suffer to your dying day. Inflict a wound upon your body, and you will carry the scar to your grave. Seize the hot bar of the fire grate, and as you writhe in pain go down upon your knees and with deepest penitence and agonized earnestness make your prayer to Nature’s God. Your prayer will bring you no relief. You have sinned against Nature and you will seek forgiveness in vain, for Nature is relentless. But you exclaim, "This is not my God." Are there two Gods then? The God - by whose inexorable laws your burnt hand will cause you excruciating pain, and bear wound-marks while you live - is the same God who rained fire and brimstone upon the Cities of the Plain; Who gave up the old world to the destruction of the Flood; Who, because of a single sin, passed the awful death-sentence under which the teeming millions of earth still groan. There is but one God. The God of the Bible is the God of Nature.

"But," you say, "the Bible speaks of His infinite love and mercy, and His readiness to forgive." Yes, but Nature has no such voice; and I ask again, what is the Bible to which you appeal? Is it the Christianized sceptic’s book of piety or is it the Scriptures which the Lord Jesus described as "words proceeding out of the mouth of God"?

You will plead, perhaps, that it is upon the New Testament you rely, whereas this teaching of Christ related to the Hebrew Scriptures, and belonged to the ministry of His humiliation, when He had so "emptied Himself" that He spoke only as a man. But your allegation of fact is entirely contrary to fact. In His ministry after the resurrection, and on the eve of His ascension to the right hand of God, the Lord Jesus, speaking with full Divine knowledge, accredited the Hebrew Scriptures in the plainest and fullest way. The old Kenosis heresy, therefore, is of no avail whatever here.

The following is the record and description of His ministry after He was raised from the dead. Referring back to His teaching in the days of His humiliation, when, according to the critics, He spoke as a blind and ignorant Jew, He said to the disciples,

"These are My words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, how that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me." (Luke 24:44.)

And the record adds, "Then opened He their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures." The Epistles of the New Testament give proof that He taught them to accept and revere the Books of Moses as Godbreathed Scripture; and, as the result of their teaching, every Christian Church for eighteen centuries thus accepted and revered them. But the Higher Critics tell us that His teaching was false, and that these beliefs of His disciples were a delusion.

Now mark what this involves. Evidence, whether of witnesses or of documents, is tested before we accept it. To require confirmation of every statement would, of course, be unreasonable. For if every statement could be proved independently, further evidence would be unnecessary. But we deal with such portions as admit of being tested, and if these prove unreliable we reject the whole as worthless. Yet the critics tell us that in the sphere in which alone the Lord’s teaching admits of being thus tested, it is unreliable and false; and yet they call upon us to accept His teaching in the sphere of transcendental truth.

Take the case of the Pentateuch, for example. The Lord spoke of forgiveness and life for sinful men. But these blessings were declared to be dependent on His Person and work, as the anti-type and fulfillment of "all that Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write." Therefore, to reject the scheme of redemption by blood, as unfolded in the Books of Moses, and yet to believe in redemption by Christ, is intellectually contemptible. And remember the Lord’s teaching about the Books of Moses is opposed merely to the theories and assumptions of the critics; whereas, His teaching about forgiveness is opposed to the clear and emphatic testimony of Nature; and Nature is a synonym for God. For the great wonder - the mystery - of the Christian faith is not punishment, but pardon.

And yet this is the attitude of many an eminent scholar, and the testimony of many a popular pulpit, in these strange days of intellectual conceit and spiritual apostasy. If the "critical hypothesis" is wrong, the rejection of one important part of the Lord’s teaching is sheer blasphemy; if it be right, the acceptance of the other part of His teaching is sheer credulity. For the test of credulity is not the truth or error of what is believed, but the grounds on which the belief is based. I repeat, therefore, that if the Lord was deceived in relation to matters within our competence to test, it is folly to accept His teaching in a higher sphere. Here, as in mechanics, nothing is stronger than its weakest part. Judged out of their own mouths, the "Higher Critics" are chargeable either with blasphemy or credulity. Just as with the old apostasy of Christendom, so is it with the new; its most successful champions are men whose piety and zeal command respect. But the Christian who knows "the fear of the Lord," and who looks forward to the judgment-seat of Christ, will not be betrayed by Church ties or personal influence into acknowledging the ministry of any man who is on the side of either apostasy.

And in writing thus I am not unmindful of the difficulties which beset the student of Scripture, difficulties, some of which are as perplexing as those which mark the ways of God in nature. The question at issue, moreover, is not whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch in the sense in which Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans, or whether earlier documents may not have been incorporated. These are questions within the legitimate scope of criticism, and I am neither an enemy of criticism nor a champion of traditional "orthodoxy."

But in spite of the continually accumulating mass of evidence in favour of their authenticity, "the Mosaic Books" are held to be literary forgeries of the Exilic era. In proof of this the German rationalists have put together evidence which is deemed full and clear, and their English disciples assume that therefore it must be true. But no one who has any experience of proceedings in our courts of justice - no "man of affairs," indeed - could be duped by a blunder so puerile as that of supposing that a case is necessarily true because evidence which is full and clear can be adduced in its support. The genuineness of the Pentateuch is clearly established by positive proofs which are incontestable; and the "critical hypothesis" of its origin not only dislocates the whole framework of Scripture, but is utterly destroyed by the single fact that the Books of Moses constituted the Bible of the Samaritans.

This so-called "Higher Criticism," indeed, outrages every principle of true criticism. Most of its English exponents limit its operation to the Hebrew Scriptures, but Professor Cheyne’s Encyclopedia Biblica gives proof of what Baur established half a century ago, that it is equally successful when applied to the New Testament. As for Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, the organ of the Driver School, the book has not even the merit of consistency. For while in its contemptuous repudiation of the teaching of our Divine Lord it is as profane and evil as the Encyclopedia, the unwary are deluded by the quasi-Christian tone which pervades it. It is a stupid and impossible compromise between rationalism and faith.

The consistent rationalist is entitled to respect, for his position is intellectually unassailable. But those who accept the rationalist’s estimate of the Bible and yet maintain its inspiration are deficient either in honesty, in courage, or in brains. "In the hands of Christian scholars," Professor Driver tells us, "criticism pre-supposes the inspiration of the Old Testament." But criticism is unprejudiced. It pre-supposes nothing. Men who have reached faith through scepticism counted the cost when entering the path of criticism. But men who pose as critics and yet pre-suppose the Divine authority of the Bible, are like fraudulent company promoters, who lead the public to believe their fortune is staked upon the venture, when, in fact, they are insured against the risks of it. Their attitude betokens the weakness of superstition, rather than the fearlessness of criticism.

One writer holds Oliver Cromwell to have been a saint, another holds him to have been a fraud, but what would be thought of a writer who maintained that he was both! And from an intellectual point of view, the position of the Hastings’ Dictionary school of critics is equally impossible.

And it is not as though these men had the field to themselves. They have been refuted again and again by scholars as competent as themselves - Hebraists, archaeologists, theologians. No one who has studied the Divine scheme of prophecy or the typology of Scripture, no one who is versed in the science of evidence, would accept the "critical hypothesis" of the Pentateuch. But, like the Jesuits, the critics never discuss, never reply. They ignore everything that is urged by their opponents; and, with the dull tenacity of fetish worshippers, they keep to reiterated appeals to "modern criticism." We can understand why Paul wrote of the critics of Apostolic days: "Professing themselves to be wise they became fools!" But some who will read these pages will plead that they have not the opportunity, and possibly not even the capacity, to master this controversy.

And to such I would address myself briefly in conclusion. In writing these pages I have used the Pentateuch as a text-book. And if the "critical hypothesis" be right, this is altogether ignorant and wrong. But in this I have followed the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the suggestion that He can have deceived and misled me is profane. For the allegation that it was only during His humiliation that He accredited the Books of Moses is, as we have seen, a sheer mis-statement. In none of His teaching, moreover, was He retailing "current Jewish notions"; but, as He declared again and again with extreme solemnity, He was uttering words which God had given Him to speak. And after the Resurrection He repeated and enforced the teaching of His earthly ministry, and sent out His disciples to proclaim it to the world.

Indeed, these Kenosis theories are merely the sophistry of German controversialists, adopted blindly by their English disciples, to conceal the mingled weakness and profanity of their scheme. This being so, I make nothing of such facts as that the "Higher Critics" are in a minority, and that no English theologians of the first rank have declared upon their side. For it may be that, in "the deepening gloom" of this infidel apostasy all "the wise and prudent" may yet fall to the side of error. The boast of the critics that all scholarship is with them is glaringly false; but let us suppose that it were true. I appeal to the humblest Christian who reads these pages to face the question fearlessly, with a mind steeped in the spirit of the words "Let God be true, but every man a liar."

Every man. Suppose the whole apparatus of organized Christianity - every scholar and ecclesiastic and minister in Christendom - should yet be ranked on the side of the critics. What then? In darker days now past, the whole apparatus of organized Christianity was upon the side of the religious apostasy of Christendom. And in those evil days the children of truth were confronted by persecution full-fraught with all the terrors that religious hate could devise, whereas to us the word comes aptly, "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood."

What then shall be our attitude toward this new apostasy? Shall the nominal roll of its adherents decide the measure of our confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ as a Teacher?

We have reached a crisis where the ways divide. In many a congregation, and in every Church, the Christian needs to be reminded of the forgotten realities of the judgment-seat of Christ. Recalling the Master’s words, "If ye believed Moses ye would also believe Me, for he wrote of Me," let him remember also the solemn warning, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father." It is not as though the Lord’s teaching on this subject were matter of controversy or of doubt. The "Higher Critics" admit without reserve that He believed that "Moses wrote of Him"; but they declare, as "an assured result of modern criticism," that in this the Lord was deceived and in error. Let the Christian then, as he shall give account at the judgment-seat, fearlessly, and without one lingering thought of unbelief, denounce this "assured result of criticism" as a profane falsehood. "Let God be true, but every man a liar."

If a gulf separates us from the Roman Catholic, it is not because we would "un-Christianize" him. Neither is it because there is error in his creed; for creeds are human, and all of them are marred by error. But it is because the distinctive errors of the Church of Rome directly touch the honour of the Lord Jesus Christ. And for precisely the same reason, a gulf as wide separates us from the "Higher Critic."

The critic and the Christian have not the same Christ. The Christ whom the Christian worships is He Who was God, and yet became Man; Who "counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself." So emptied Himself that He did not even claim a man’s liberty, but subjected His own will to the will of God. Subjected it so unreservedly, that even the words He uttered were not His own, but the words of the Father Who sent Him. And to silence every possible plea for unbelief, we are Divinely told that "to Him the Spirit was given without measure."

But the mythical "Jesus" of the "Higher Critic" was one whose lips gave out Divine truth and human error in an undivided stream; one who was so entirely wanting in spiritual intelligence that he believed the error to be truth, and in words of solemn warning and command claimed acceptance of it as Divine.

In all the sad and evil history of the professing Church, no profaner heresy has ever arisen. It is practically a denial of "the Deity of Christ." It is absolutely anti-Christian.

Neither learning nor logic, therefore, is needed to make the true-hearted disciple turn from it with abhorrence. For it outrages all his spiritual instincts. To these instincts it is that, in view of kindred errors in the infant Church, the Apostle makes appeal, "These things," he says, "have I written unto you concerning them that would lead you astray. And as for you, the anointing which ye received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you." Reason is always on the side of truth. But when the honour of the Lord is in question, spiritual instincts are a safer guide even than reason.

THE END