Higher Criticism by Earle Albert Rowell

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 30, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 34.

Higher Criticism

By Earle Albert Rowell

XV. Higher Criticism and the Church

The church is at the parting of the ways. In the ages past it has been called upon to face many a crisis, but the most important of its history is right upon it. The crisis is not only real and well defined, but its consideration by all who have the welfare of the church at heart is urgently demanded at this time.

“Every competent scholar knows that the ‘sober’ criticism of to-day was considered ‘extravagant’ yesterday,” says Cheyne in “Bible Problems,” page 54. And the inference is that the “extravagant” criticism of to-day will be considered “sober” to-morrow. Such indeed is the danger, as shown in these articles. Where then will the church be? Where is it even now? Let some of her ministers say.

Concerning the term “Liberal Orthodox,” M. J. Savage says, “It means, when you interpret it and put it in straight English, that they have given up the old-time belief in almost every single one of the points that used to be regarded as absolutely essential.”—“Religion for To-Day,” page 11.

Professor Jordan, of Kingston, says: “It is no use attempting to minimize the difference between the traditional view and the critical treatment of the Old Testament. The difference is immense; they involve different views as to the course of Israel’s history, the process of revelation, and the nature of inspiration.”—“American Journal of Theology,” January, 1902, page 114.

Dr. Hazard claims that the two views “are nothing short of mutually destructive.”—“Reasons for Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch,” page 17.

The Rev. Isaac Gibson says, “The traditional and critical views are face to face in open antagonism.”—Id., page 100.

McFadyen sums up the situation clearly: “Almost every representative of both parties . . . stands within the church; and that is what constitutes the real pathos of the whole situation. If the Critics were all without the church, careless of her interests and indifferent to her Lord, while their opponents were all within the church, alone in their devotion to the service of Christ, the situation might be easily and plausibly explained. But it is not so.”—“Old Testament Criticism and the Christian Church,” page 313.

Indeed, it is not so. The professional skeptic has ceased to exist, for the minister has usurped his position, and rivals, nay, excels him at his nefarious trade of traducing the Holy Scripture. And this situation the church has to face and answer. Will it lower its ideals to include in its fold those who practise “sin as a quest for God,” or will it raise still higher its standard of faith and practise as its increased light demands that it should, to meet and conquer the last mighty efforts of Satan to delude the world and the church to destruction?

Shortly after the crucifixion the banner of faith and practise was held high by the church, in spotless purity. Soon some of the leaders reasoned that the pure religion of Christ would be more successful and popular if its demands were not so stringent. Sad was the day for humanity when such a diabolical idea was ever advocated, and sadder yet the day when it was carried into practise. In the black records of the Dark Ages are written the sad facts of that fatal defection from the high standard of Christ. Terrible was the delusion, blind the reasoning, that led to such a course, and awful was the penalty.

Once again, after a thousand long, black years of blood-written history, the church shook itself from its lethargy, grasped again in firm hand the banner of Christ, and lifted it higher and yet higher, till all the world saw that Christianity consists not of forms and ceremonies, but in living godly in Christ Jesus.

Bartered to Expediency

But it is with sadness that I am compelled by the stern facts of history to write that soon the glorious victories won by the heroes of the Reformation were again sacrificed on the altar of expediency, bartered for popularity, sold for position. One writer, after fifty years of study of this question, sums the situation up with trenchant pen:

“Many who call themselves Christians are mere human moralists. They have refused the gift which alone could enable them to honor Christ by representing Him to the world. The work of the Holy Spirit is to them a strange work. They are not doers of the Word. The heavenly principles that distinguish those who are one with Christ from those who are one with the world have become almost indistinguishable. The professed followers of Christ are no longer a separate and peculiar people. The line of demarcation in indistinct. The people are subordinating themselves to the world, to its practises, its customs, its selfishness. The church has gone over to the world in transgression of the law, when the world should have come over to the church in obedience of the law. DAILY THE CHURCH IS BEING CONVERTED TO THE WORLD.”—White, “Christ’s Object Lessons,” pages 315, 316. And further: Satan’s “working is plainly revealed by the rapidly increasing darkness, the multitudinous errors, heresies, and delusions of these last days. Not only is Satan leading the world captive, but his deceptions are leavening the professed churches of our Lord Jesus Christ. THE GREAT APOSTASY WILL DEVELOP INTO DARKNESS DEEP AS MIDNIGHT, IMPENETRABLE AS SACKCLOTH OF HAIR.”—Id., page 414.

These are terrible statements, and if true should arouse every earnest and faithful Christian to the defense of his imperiled faith. That these awful indictments of the churches are true the former articles have shown, for in them we have seen that Higher Criticism is the pampered child of the church, and invokes the aid of skepticism, panders to the passions of men, by telling them that “sin is a quest for God.”

Just as the Bible foretold the condition of the church in the Middle Ages, so it foretells its condition in the present age. The prophet John, in looking down the ages to the present, described the condition of declining Christianity in these attention-arresting words: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become a habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird.” Rev. 18:2.

Babylon (apostate Protestantism) has indeed fallen, and has indeed become the habitation of everything hateful. Within its ranks we now have various “sciences” “falsely so called, Spiritualism, and Higher Criticism, all of which are but the hideous skeleton of Satan enveloped in the robe of Christianity. The pulpits of Christendom are more and more devoted, not to the promulgation of the teachings of Christ, but to the impious blasphemy of contradicting His plainest teachings, and heralding abroad the Satan-inspired infidelity of Higher Criticism. Churches are now turned into theaters, and pool-rooms, and smoking-rooms, eating-houses, and kissing parties. They are fast becoming the playgrounds of sinful revelry. How can it be otherwise when they are taught by practise and precept that “sin is a quest for God”?

“Come Forth, My People”

But, dear reader, you who have seen some of these things, and whose soul has been pained by the worldiness of the church and yearns for something better, there is a people in whose ranks there is no preaching of Higher Criticism, where the hateful thing is branded that as a child of Satan; there is a church which is never turned into a theater, or a pool-room, or a dance-hall, or an eating-house, or polluted with the foulness of a “smoker,” or desecrated by the selling of kisses to raise funds. There is a church that has no place for the satanic delusions of Spiritism, or of Christian Science, or of any of the numerous isms that parade in the name of Christianity. There is a church that places the authority of the Bible above every other authority, and brings all doctrines and teachings, no matter by whom advocated, to the test of the Word of God, and accepts or rejects them as they agree or disagree with the Word.

Who compose this church? you inquire. (Continued on page 8)

Higher Criticism and the Church

(Continued from page 5)

Those who have heard the call from heaven concerning the fallen or apostate church to “come forth, My people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues: for her sins have reached even unto heaven.” Rev. 18:4, 5. Those who heed this call are those of whom it is said, “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12.

Seventh-day Adventists keep the law of God, and not some man-made substitute which is a perversion and contradiction of God’s holy law. They keep the part which says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” They keep the whole law; “for whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all. For He that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou dost not commit adultery, but killest, thou art become a transgressor of the law.” James 2:10, 11. And likewise it is equally true He that said, “Do not kill,” said also: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the SEVENTH DAY [not the first day] is a Sabbath unto Jehovah thy God.” Hence one who does not kill, but transgresses the SEVENTH DAY, is a transgressor of the law. If one line of reasoning is true, the other is equally true, for that is what the Bible says. And it is for this reason that this people keep God’s holy Sabbath (Isa. 58:13), the seventh day, in preference to Satan’s substitute, the first day. They teach that it is because God’s law is holy and unchangeable that Christ died to save man from the penalty of his transgression. And as Christ had faith in the Word, so this people have the faith of Jesus, for they have unshaken faith in the same Word. It is the fact of such teachings as Higher Criticism being rampant in the very pulpits of the churches, that has led them to withdraw from the churches in which the infidelity of Voltaire and Paine and Ingersoll was the message of salvation. They have heeded the warning cry to “come out from among her, My people, and be ye separate.”

And will you not, dear reader, weigh carefully the facts brought out in these articles, and consider prayerfully the course you should take in face of such facts? The pure Gospel of Christ, unmixed with infidelity of any kind, is heralded to the world by a people who stand upon “the Bible and the Bible only” as the text-book of faith and the rule of practise. Does not your heart yearn to be at one with them in this divinely appointed work? — ★★ —