science. Though no one is obliged to accept the conclusions of, say, Lord Haldane, in his Reign of Relativity, Bishop Gore in his Belief in God, or Lord Balfour in his Theism and Thought, it is undeniable that there is something to be said in favour of the possibility of a Divine revelation, and the fact of the Bible claim remains to be at least discussed. In the absence of any such attempt, it is grossly unfair to assume its impossibility, and to seek by underhand means tacitly to sap the foundations of all evidence of such revelation. Honest criticism ought, above all things, to be frank. I maintain, therefore, that this foundation of such criticism is radically unsound and unscientific.

It would take far too much space, and it is not to my present purpose, to go into the details of the numerous transgressions of the canons of true criticism.* Here I can only attempt to show in broad outline that any possible other side to the question of Divine revelation is not only ignored, but is treated as mere traditional obscurantism. All serious work demonstrating the unsoundness of the rationalistic methods is dismissed in a contemptuous footnote, if it is noticed at all, and nothing is considered but the arguments of rationalists, mostly German, in favour of the thesis. Occasionally "conservative" writers are cited, in order to give an air of impartiality, but it is invariably the most feeble that are chosen for the purpose, like skittles put up to be knocked down again.

I have already alluded to the unscrupulous use made of a faulty textual criticism to force the text into the support of the rationalist theory; a large part of present-day Biblical scholarship is entirely taken up with this illegitimate labour. Liberal use is made of "probability" and the "argument from silence ”—the latter, in most cases, founded solely on our ignorance. These critics arrogate to themselves an extraordinary ability to penetrate into an author's mentality and inner convictions and purposes, as also into the circumstances of his supposed times; these are substituted for his declared aims and opinions. The Prophets are reduced to politicians and religious sectarians.

A good example of the shifts to which the system is driven in order to get rid of the prophetical element in the Bible is to be found in the two appendices to Dr. Skinner's "Isaiah XL to LXVI” (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges). In these long and

*For a discussion of some of these, the above-named work of Mr. Arthur Phillips may be consulted with advantage.

involved arguments the various views of a great number of rationalistic advocates are reviewed for the sole purpose of finding a means to apply the 53rd chapter to some other end than a prophecy of the atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, Dr. Skinner gives the case away in the following significant words (p. 278): "To suppose that the prophet transports himself in imagination to a point in time when the sufferings of the Messiah were over and His glory not yet revealed would be to abnegate the task of historical exegesis, and take refuge in a mechanical view of prophetic inspiration." (The italics are mine.)

Now there is another side to the question, and true criticism cannot but take it into account.

The entire Bible is taken up with one fundamental problem, the salvation of mankind from sin. "Yahwism" is not a petty monotheism. The Jehovah of the Bible is the Author and Upholder of universal and inexorable Law, moral and material. But He is also the God of Love, Mercy, and Grace. In his wisdom He made man with a free will, and gave him the unrestricted exercise of it, with one simple and easy test of submission. If man had used this freedom so as to co-operate with the Love and Goodness of God, this would have given to His Creator a glory and satisfaction which nothing else could do.

Man chose to transgress God's Law, and forthwith the law of the conservation of energy came in to make this transgression both irremediable and progressively destructive. But the God of Love, Mercy, and Grace had no intention of allowing His creatures thus to perish through His own gift, and His purpose thus to be frustrated. The problem, then, was to combine the justification and the carrying out to the full of the Law in all its rigidity, for man's own good, with the Mercy and Love which should save him from the inevitable consequence of his constant transgression of it, and, after all, to bring man back to that communion with the Holy God for which he was created. This is the essential subject of the Bible from beginning to end, and it underlies every subject treated in the various Books. It is true that this purpose does not become clearly apparent until we reach the New Testament, and especially the closing part of it. But in the light of the later Revelation we can see that this is the key-note of the whole Book.

How petty, then, is the idea of an imaginary strife of interests between Priests and Levites on the one hand, and between Priests and Prophets on the other, which is made the basis for

the elaborate dissection of the documents of the Old Testament! And how foolish the twisting of a few expressions of Amos, Hosea, and Micah into an indication of a late date for the sacrificial system of Israel, and the building up, on this false supposition, of a great scheme of "reform," to which the redaction of the Pentateuch is ultimately to be attributed !

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We want a sane, honest, and fearless criticism of the Bible, as it stands, on the lines indicated at the beginning of this paper, with no axe of its own to grind, up to date in its international history, chronology and archæology, and in its science, Semitic comparative philology and psychology. It is a great task, and it has not been done.

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DISCUSSION.

The Rev. A. H. FINN (Chairman) said: It so happens that, before I saw Mr. Michell's paper, I was engaged in writing a reply to an article on Criticism," which contained Professor Robertson's definition: "All criticism is really an application of the principles of common sense by a person provided with the requisite knowledge of facts." On this I ventured to comment: 'That, no doubt, is what true criticism should be, but it is to be feared that a good deal of what passes for criticism is no better than a prejudiced advocacy of views based on an imperfect survey of the facts," thereby somewhat anticipating Mr. Michell's description on p. 21.

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When, a good many years ago, I first began to look into the "Higher" criticism, I can honestly say that I approached it with a fairly open mind, but was soon repelled by the clearly unfair presentation of the evidence, and the further I have gone into it the worse have appeared the arguments.

For a long time past I have been at work on a task, not exactly "Textual" criticism, but rather furnishing materials for it, namely a minute comparison of the texts of the Pentateuch. On this comparison was based my little work, The Starting Place of Truth, alluded to by Mr. Michell. Of the conclusions set forth in that book I will only touch on the most important. For the Pentateuch we have what we have not for any other ancient document, three witnesses, the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint. Now

Still

the Samaritan and the LXX differ from the Hebrew Massoretic text in a very great many places, but in most of these the Samaritan contradicts the LXX, or the LXX contradicts the Samaritan. there are many passages where the Samaritan and the LXX agree against the Hebrew, and these are sufficiently numerous and remarkable to show that they cannot have been arrived at independently but must have been drawn from some common source, as, for instance, when they insert a long paragraph in Leviticus identical in every word. To have affected the Samaritan, this source must have been an earlier Hebrew text, and the Samaritan probably goes back to the time of Hezekiah, if not still further back to the time of the separation of the Northern ten tribes from the Southern two. Then when it is simply a case of one Hebrew text against another, it is allowable to weigh one against the other, and I think I have shown reason for concluding that the Hebrew text underlying the Samaritan and LXX is less reliable than the Massoretic. Even if it were not so, if we had to adopt every one of the variations in which the Samaritan and LXX agree against the Hebrew, it would not alter a single historical incident or modify a single precept of the Law.

The real importance of testing the higher critical theories lies in this, that if the Higher critical methods are sound about the Old Testament, we cannot logically refuse to apply them to the New Testament as Modernists do. That means that we should have to consider the greater part of the New Testament unreliable. It is asserted that many acts and utterances have been attributed to our Lord which He never did or said. Also that much of the Apostolic teaching is not really Christian, being derived from pre-Christian Jewish erroneous ideas, or from Greek pagan mystery religions, and therefore not binding upon the " modern believer."

The subject of Mr. Michell's paper may seem somewhat uninviting, but it is of immense importance as showing how unreliable and unsound the higher critical methods are. For this reason I consider it a privilege to have been invited to take the Chair at this Meeting, and feel sure that all present will join heartily in the vote of thanks to Mr. Michell for his valuable paper, which I have now the honour to propose.

Mr. CHARLES MARSTON expressed his great approval and appreciation of the paper. He pointed out that the assumption underlying

the criticism of the Bible was that Humanity now possessed a fairly complete knowledge of History and the Laws of Nature which of course was absurd, yet one Bishop had gone so far as to say that the Scientific criticism of the Bible was now practically an exact Science! How could this be so when Science was continually changing its outlook? The so-called Supernatural or Supernormal was a special stumbling-block of the critics; they based their criticisms on the denial of its existence. Yet it was attested to throughout history, both Pagan as well as Christian. No fairminded man could possibly ignore the conclusions of Sir Oliver Lodge on the subject of Spiritualism; they would soon receive general acceptance, and must change the whole critical attitude to the Bible. Sir Oliver Lodge's latest book, entitled Ether and Reality, had an important bearing on the subject of the Unseen.

Mr. THEODORE ROBERTS wished that the Chairman's comparative recensions of the Hebrew, Samaritan, and Greek versions of the Pentateuch might be published, if necessary by subscription.

The lecturer's claim that his experience in investigation as a Government official qualified him to judge the work of Higher Critics reminded him of Sir Robert Anderson's similar claim in his Daniel in the Critics' Den on account of his legal experience as an investigator rather than an advocate, in which he (the speaker) likewise shared. The Higher Critics so specialized by the midnight oil that they seemed to have no experience of the ordinary facts of life.

He pointed out that Mr. Michell had confined himself to the oriticism of the Old Testament, and suggested that, while the official custody it had enjoyed had guarded its text from the numerous variations of the New Testament text, this advantage was more than countervailed by the much greater number of New Testament manuscripts which had been preserved, a comparison of which ensured the ascertainment of the true text.

But he believed the basic error of the Higher Critics was their exclusion of the possibility of Divine intervention, whether it took the form of miracles or prediction. He pointed out that we found no "sign" miracles in the book of Genesis, which, as professing to give the earliest records, might be expected to contain the most incredible marvels if we followed the analogy of other religions.

In conclusion, he called attention to the Bishop of Salisbury's article in last Saturday's Times, which showed that while in the