makes himself known to Noah in the flood, and to the patriarchs by personally directing their steps and giving them enlarged promises of forgiving love for their children, and for "all nations." Through Moses he works stupendous miracles, thereby giving the Hebrews national existence. Through the prophets he predicts the destiny of great nations, the coming, the character, the mission of Jesus Christ, and the final triumphs of the Messianic kingdom. Thus the supernatural stands out everywhere in Old Testament story as distinctly as a tower on the summit of a hill, which is a fact of immense importance in the conflict between Christianity and materialistic skepticism. For it shows that so far as it is supernatural "Christianity is as old as the world."

"A miracle is contrary to experience," says Hume, the philosophic skeptic; he therefore proceeds to argue that Christianity, which is based on the supernatural, is not true. To this the Christian apologist confidently responds: "To be accepted this assumption must include universal experience unbroken by a solitary authenticated fact, which it cannot be made to do." Moreover it is flatly contradicted by the historic evidence contained in the Old Testament, which, as we have just seen, testifies that God by divers miracles did actually touch the lives of a "cloud of witnesses," from the birth-hour of the human race through all the ages down to the coming of Him whose person was itself a miracle and whose wondrous deeds demonstrated his divinity. But for these supernatural experiences of their ancestors the Jews might have "resented the miracles of Christ as an anomaly in human history," as violating "the natural order which is transcended," and therefore as being "too supernatural," at least in seeming, to be believed. This, however, they could not do without abandoning belief in their Scriptures. Hence, while they could not deny the presence of a supernatural force working with the Christ, they blasphemously claimed that it was diabolical and not divine. It was not their reason, therefore, but the perversity of their will, which rejected the Christ, as he charged when he said to them, "Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." They would not accept him because he did not fill their preconception of the Messiah. In the Spirit of these Jews our modern skeptical critics* bring to their examination of Holy Scripture a preconception concerning the impossibility of miracles which blinds their eyes to that beautiful coherency between both Testaments which makes them explanatory and confirmatory of one another, and commends them both to honest and unbiased minds as books bearing the stamp of divinity.

The Old Testament, by its faithful and minute delineation of Hebrew

It is due to some scientific skeptics to say that they abandon the position of the old deists, saying with Mr. Huxley, that "the question of miracles seems now to be admitted on all hands to be simply a question of evidence." To this the Christian thinker needs only to ask if there be any historical fact supported by stronger and more abundant evidence than that of the supernaturalism of both the Old and New Testament.

character, furnishes indirect though strong testimony to the divine character of the Lord Jesus. Compelled, in spite of their prejudices, by evidence they cannot repudiate, to admit the historic reality of Christ, his unique, morally grand, life is both an object of admiration and a stumblingblock to our deistic critics. His perfect humanity, his unprecedented moral perfection, undefaced by a solitary blemish, his commanding yet gracious dignity, his charming simplicity, his peerless humility, his exquisite tenderness, and his sublime self-sacrificing beneficence force them to see that he fills their highest conception of the ideal man, in whom all the virtues possible to a man were harmoniously combined. This peerless character compels their admiration, but how to account for it while denying as they do his claim to be the Son of God, one with the Father, is a problem they cannot solve. Some of them attempt its solution by asserting it to be the result of "a fusion of Greek and Jewish influences in a Galilean medium." Yet they fail to show how Greek influences could have touched him, seeing that his environments and education were from his infancy exclusively Jewish. Neither can they explain how the influences of his Jewish mother, of his Jewish home, and Jewish instruction could have produced in him that sublime purity and exceptional greatness of character which transcended the highest types of Jewish sainthood, and which excelled in traits almost wholly lacking in the race from which he sprang. Skepticism cannot solve the problem thus. Neither can it be solved except by admitting that while he was the Son of man he was also the Son of God. He was the crowning glory of humanity because he was also "the brightness of the Father's glory.”

At this point one sees the value of the testimony of the Old Testament to the Christian concept of Christ. These old Scriptures ascribe traits of character to the Hebrew nation which make it logically impossible to trace the exalted life of Jesus to Jewish influences. Ebrard, in the third volume of his Christian Apologetics, treats this point, if not exhaustively yet quite conclusively. After showing that the Semitic nations were notably inferior to the Japhetic in purely human nobility, in humanity, in æsthetic and social conscience, and in their sense of honor, he claims that the Jews, excepting some individuals of nobler character, were as a nation marked by a huckstering spirit, by a lack of natural magnanimity, and of a high sense of honor. They were characterized by "shamelessly selfish desire, by shameless pride, and self-righteous stubbornness." Nothing but "the checks of old Testament revelation," he thinks, "kept them within the limits of possible redemption." When Christ was born among them, he was therefore "a great light" to "the people that sat in darkness. " But he had not "in himself a fiber of their peculiarly Semitic charHe became not a Semite but a man " in whom all "that is noble in man most harmoniously developed is in comparison with him like pale moonlight before the clear shining of the sun." "This alone,” Ebrard fitly concludes, "should suffice to prove the truth of the incarnation. Jesus Christ is no product of humanity." Thus it becomes apparent, in the light shed by the Old Testament upon Jewish character, that he who

acter.

was in every respect immeasurably superior, both to his own and to all other races of mankind, must have been "the Word made flesh" filled with the glory of the Father, "full of grace and truth." The corruption of his ancestral race, as described in Hebrew history, thus becomes a dark background to the unexampled light which gleamed so effulgently from the person and teaching of the Redeemer.

In view of these and other relations which indissolubly unite the two Testaments the best Christian scholarship of to-day, both in Europe and America, despite the exegetical skill, learning, and perverse ingenuity of destructive critics, confidently accepts the position of Canon Liddon. when he says: "The trustworthiness of the Old Testament is in fact inseparable from the trustworthiness of the Lord Jesus." And the number of profoundly learned Christian scholars entering the lists against the destructive critics is constantly increasing. Take, for example, three recent issues of the British press, namely, 1. Principal Cave's paper in the Contemporary Review entitled "The Old Testament and the Critics;" 2. Dean Chadwick's thoroughly orthodox commentary on The Book of Exodus;" and, 3. "The Servant of the Lord, in Isa. xl, 66," by the learned and venerable Dr. John Forbes, Emeritus Professor of Oriental Languages, Aberdeen. These writers grapple the theory of two Isaiahs, the arithmetical and physiological notions of Bishop Colenso, and the heterodox objections of Professor Cheyne and Canon Driver with a force that practically puts those plausible critics hors de combat. It is becoming evident that the violence of the storm of skeptical criticism is gradually blowing itself out, and that the best Christian learning of the age is enlisting in defense of an orthodox interpretation of both the Old and the New Testaments. For this cheering aspect of the hour the learned and the unlearned Christian will alike thank God, take courage, and confidently feast on every word of God suited to their needs whether it be written in Genesis or Revelation. From cover to cover they will esteem and love the Bible as the word of the Lord, and hesitate more and more to turn away from those historic antecedents of the true faith by the tempting suggestions of a well-clothed but specious criticism. The fear of any successful assault upon the temple of truth is overpast. The position of the critics is reversed in this, that whereas a few years ago the negative critics were plaintiffs and the conservative critics defendants, the conservative critics are now the plaintiffs and the rationalistic critics are the defendants. This means a speedy verdict of the whole case.

THE CRIME OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM.*

The home of the "higher criticism" is Germany. It has residences in France, Switzerland, Austria, England, Scotland, and the United States; but if one would study it in its original aspects, and discover its power of metamorphosis to suit its necessities, one must visit the German universities and confer with those critics who are recognized as leaders both in the assault upon, and in the defense of, the word of God. In a qualified sense we have a profound respect for the German scholars who are theorizing out of existence the historic standards of the Church; they are erudite, patient, devoted to method, and self-sacrificing in their labors; and, what is more to their credit, they are original, disdaining to be borrowers or tinkers of other men's ideas. Of Rénan in Paris, Kuenen in Leyden, and a few others in other lands, we may write the same commendation; but, as a class, the higher critics of other countries are wholesale borrowers of German theories, arguments, and speculations. It is this fact that leads us to deride the so-called scholarship of other countries in its defense and elaboration of negative criticism. It walks on stilts and shouts through a German tube, causing even the Germans to laugh at the dwarfs who wish to be taken for giants in the great conflict between truth and error.

Granting to German criticism an originality that dignifies it, an intensity that guarantees it wide-spread influence, and a scholarly force that lifts it above cheapness and vulgarity, we have some things to write against it; or rather we prefer to say that as we have studied it in the presence of its leaders we have discovered in their methods and purposes some things that from an evangelical view-point cannot be justified or even explained. The testing-time has not yet fully come, but it will come. If it shall be shown in the future that the higher criticism has been dishonest in its methods and disastrous in its results, it will have a terrible responsibility to render to the truth; but if, on the other hand, it can sustain itself, it may boast of having rendered some service to human thought and some aid to theology and religion. We shall endeavor in this article to exhibit its spirit, its methods, and its conclusions, leaving the reader to infer whether its work is in the evangelical line or contrary to those historic conclusions that the Church for ages has accepted.

*It may not be improper to state that last summer we visited Europe chiefly for the purpose of investigating the critical biblical questions that have been and are still in discussion between conservative and rationalistic critics. We were favored with extended interviews with thirty-one of the prominent professors in Germany and eight professors in England, besides numerous interviews with other scholars in those countries and in Scotland and France. We have been amply rewarded for the effort made to gain a personal knowledge of the critics and of the arguments upon which their theories are based. In this and succeed. ing articles we shall avail ourselves of the rich material obtained in this way.

We now observe, that the radical critic has worked without any sense of barrier, either as to his method or conclusions. He seems to have forgotten that he was under any obligation to respect the laws of literature or the spirit of religion. He commenced his investigations as an Ishmaelite, warring against all views merely because they had regulated the faith of mankind, and contradicting the essentials of history because they were authentic and all-powerful. He was reckless beyond description, and theoretic even when facts warned him against speculation. He never acknowledged the restraints of law, religion, or the literary spirit, and worked as if he had a divine commission to uproot what the Church had planted. He was irreverent from choice, and ridiculed when silence would have dignified his negativism. He went forward, therefore, in an irreverent, reckless manner, reaching inconclusive results, and standing for them as if they had behind them the demonstration of irrevocable certainties.

In no department of literature has there been such an exhibition of irreverence toward facts, of recklessness of method in investigation, and of obstinacy for ill-founded conclusions as has occurred in the realm of German criticism. Gibbon was not as ferocious as Graf, Hume not as illogical as Wellhausen, Bolingbroke not as circumscribed as Pfleiderer, Porphyry not as unreasonable as Socin and Stade. We cannot appreciate the irreverent and reckless methods of the crities by a generalization, nor does space allow particulars to any great extent; but it will assist the reader in his study of the subject if we remind him that they have been entirely unscrupulous in regard to fixed points of sacred history, and totally blind as to the facts of sacred biography. They commence in their investigations as their fancies or theories require, perfectly oblivious of the dates, epochs, books, and Hebrew leaders who may have been associated with the great events of the Jewish cycles. They handle the Bible in the interest of their theories, and every thing in it is made to support them or is rejected. It is the deceitful investigation of the Bible that is a characteristic of the higher criticism. Pfleiderer commences his History of Israel with Samuel, repudiating all the Pentateuchal history as either legendary and delusive, or at the most uncertain and improper in national annals. Stade repudiates the pre-Mosaic history and denies the historical character of Abraham. Wellhausen builds upon the seventh century and upon a single alleged fact in Israel's career a theory that compels in his judgment the late origin of the biblical books. Socin denies the truthfulness of the book of Exodus. And Dillmann, urging that writing was unknown in the time of Moses, a view overthrown by Ewald, and recently proved fallacious by the late Professor Wright of Cambridge, and Professor Sayce of Oxford, insists that he wrote no portion of the Pentateuch. Nearly every critic holds a different view and has a different startingpoint. He may begin à priori, or à posteriori, anywhere, any time, with any body in Israel's history, tear down, pluck out, or do any thing that his preconceived theory requires. If he does nothing else he indulges in what Job says he could gather, a "heap of words." Hitherto there has been no