Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 28, 1906

The matter of discrediting some of the writings as being unreliable, while professing to have confidence in other writings from the same source as being authoritative, is handled in a simple but convincing manner by a member of the legal profession who was one of a committee seeking a pastor for their church, and to whom a candidate suspected of sympathy with the higher criticism had been recommended. We quote as follows:—

Allow me to dispose of this whole question by a simple illustration. I am an attorney. In the argument of their cases attorneys refer to and rely upon text-books and adjudicated cases as an authority upon which they ask the courts to decide cases. What success could an attorney expect if he should, in citing an authority, say: “If your Honor please, I refer you to the second chapter of the first volume of Kent’s Commentaries (or any other authority relied on), where the law is laid down as I contend it is; but I am free to say I consider that other chapters or parts of this authority on which I rely, are spurious, interpolated, or are contrary to reason, and so much so that I would not ask you to accept their teaching.”

When any minister assails the Bible and denies its authority, because its teachings as to a particular subject do not commend themselves to his reason or judgment, he discredits the Book, and invites his hearers to reject any other part, or the whole of it, when it does not meet their views. In the case supposed as to an attorney, I do not hesitate to say that any intelligent court would regard the attorney as either insane or unfaithful to his client, intending to betray him under the guise of serving him.

The sound principle here laid down applies with equal force in the treatment of the Testimonies. No man can assail some of the Testimonies and prove them to be unreliable without discrediting the Testimonies as a whole, and without inviting others to reject such Testimonies as do not harmonize with their views of things. We are opposed to the principle of the higher criticism, whether advocated within or without the denomination.