p. 533 | In Too Great Haste by Observer

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1885

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 34

In Too Great Haste.

By Observer

Every now and then somebody rises to remark on the slowness of ministers and religious people generally to recognize and follow the new lights in theology. In vain have Kuenen and Wellhausen re-written the Hebrew history; our pulpits still have an unconquerable prejudice in favor of Moses and the prophets as interpreted by our Lord and his apostles. In vain has the doctrine of the divine inspiration of the sacred writers been abated of its significance until the Scriptures are put nearly upon the same level with all other religious and edifying books, and such attenuated theories of their divine authority find favor with writers of reputed orthodoxy, still in our churches generally the Bible is read and revered as the very word of God. Now this excites the impatience of some people who think that a new epoch has risen upon the churches. They gravely censure or lightly ridicule all of us who remain steadfast in our faith. A popular magazine even calls the Sunday-schools to account, insisting that they are doing mischief by teaching from the Bible precisely as if Kuenen and Wellhausen, Robertson Smith and Dr. Ladd, had not written. The writer assumes that new views must be taken, if not now, at some time in the near future, and that it is a wrong to tender minds to teach them the Bible as a book the truth of which may be depended upon!

Really, it seems to us, this is claiming a great deal. It amounts to this, that the new views of the Bible may not only be taken by those who believe in them, but must be taken, nolens volens, by those of us who think them false. We must not teach the Scriptures as we believe, but as somebody else believes. Our neologists have their own liberty, but, not content with that, condemn us for exercising the same freedom. Those who doubt the truth of the Bible may publish their doubts in season and out of season,—in theological reviews, in literary magazines and daily newspapers, in pulpits and on platforms,—but pious men and women who search the Scriptures and believe that in them they have eternal life, are reprehended for commending their faith to those who are placed under their instruction. Much good may this do the critics. They may rely upon it that in Sunday-school instruction, and in ten thousands of pulpits, the truth of the Bible will be asserted as the foundation of our immortal hopes. And this will be in no willfulness or obstinacy of spirit, but in an intelligent faith.

It has been too much the fashion with some among us to assume that the last theory of European skeptics is to be taken as “the last result of criticism.” Cavils that are as old as the history of unbelief are endowed with new life and vigor because written in the German tongue. What a Celsus or a Porphyry urged without effect is suddenly discovered to have wonderful cogency because coming from a Dutch or a Scotch university. Even if the objections are as new in substance as in form, it is too soon to yield, before one has considered the reply to them. It ought not to be necessary to say, for the hundredth time, that a theory is not a demonstration; that, with all respect for the learning and ability of the scholars who claim to have subverted the credibility of the Scriptures, it is still true that scholars as learned, as able, and as candid, give reasons for a different opinion; that an old and long-cherished belief is not necessarily incredible; and that a faith which is associated with the noblest triumphs of the gospel, has a title to respectful treatment by those who profess and call themselves Christians.—Observer.