HIGHER CRITICISM by Dr. Howard Crosby

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 19, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 40.

HIGHER CRITICISM.

By Dr. Howard Crosby

Higher criticism ought to be very modest. It is a criticism from very vague data. It is a criticism, not of the text, but of the mind and purpose, time and circumstances, methods and authority, of the sacred writers. In such a criticism the subjective is ever tempted to take the lead, and the imaginative to create the facts. Invention and ingenuity take the place of sound judgment, by reason of ignorance of the factors that produced the result.

In such a field theorists spring up like mushrooms, and instead of modestly proposing a theory, they dogmatize with contemptuous sneers at all conservative scholars as ignoramuses. The higher criticism, which at the very best is but surmising, is conducted as if it were an exact science, and the dicta of its apostles to be accepted as the plainest truth of the multiplication table.—Dr. Howard Crosby.