Higher Criticism by Earle Albert Rowell

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 16, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 32.

Higher Criticism

By Earle Albert Rowell

XIV. The Harvest

FALSE premises lead to false conclusions, and false principles of interpretation result inevitably in a harvest of pernicious theories. And, backed by the solemn authority and heralded by the advanced learning of honored ecclesiastics, the theories of to-day will become the practise of to-morrow.

The law of God is the great “royal law of liberty” by which His government is ruled. It was given from Sinai in impressive and awful majesty. The Christian, in reading the account, is entranced by the grandeur of the scene. Not so the Higher Critics. They regard the whole scene a fable, and the account of it a forgery. “It is the Higher Criticism that sets aside the thunder, lightning, and awful trumpet of Sinai as features that really accompanied the revelation of the Mosaic law. And if any are alarmed at this interpretation of the story, it is surely sufficient to remind them that the moral teaching of the Mosaic law remains untouched when all these picturesque elements have been stripped away. It is quite as wrong to steal and commit adultery altho the rocks of the desert never echoed to a supernatural trumpet, and murder remains a crime altho God never wrote the commandments on tables of stone. Higher Criticism is in fact the ability to distinguish between spiritual ideas and the drapery of legend, myth, and parable in which they are clothed, and which people destitute of imagination have too often mistaken for history.”—Joseph Wood, “The Bible,” page 226.

The Law and Sin

We see how the Higher Critics, in discarding the accounts of how the law was given, still try to save the law itself; but it is mainly a spectacular or rhetorical pretense on their part, to calm the fears of their readers, and mislead them as to the real issues at stake in their virtual denial of the Bible. In order to break the force of the Ten Commandments, the Critics have now found another decalogue which they exalt as of equal importance with the law of Ex. 20: 1-17. Of Ex. 34: 11-26, Briggs says, “It is now the opinion of many Critics that we have here another decalogue.”—“The Bible, the Church, and the Reason,” page 250. All this notwithstanding the Bible recognizes but one moral law. It is called “the law.” “The law is holy.” Rom. 7: 12. “For I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Rom. 7: 7. This proves that the Ten Commandments are by way of distinction “the law;” and any effort by the Critics to belittle this law is denying and defying their Lord, for He said, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law.” Matt. 5: 18. While “the Lord . . . will magnify the law, and make it honorable” (Isa. 42: 21), the Higher Critics are industriously engaged in destroying the law, and making it dishonorable.

That this is a matter of greatest importance is evident when we read that “I had not known sin, but by the law.” Rom. 7: 7. Diminish or destroy the sacredness of the law, and the “exceeding” sinfulness of sin (Rom. 7: 13) is equally diminished or as completely destroyed. And then are opened the flood-gates of sin and crime, for the only means by which sin and crime are known is the Ten Commandments.

Paul tells us that “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners.” Rom. 5: 19. And not only do we see that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6: 23), but “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Rom. 3: 23. But the Higher Critics make God “a liar” (1 John 5: 10), for they say that “the fall is a giant step in human progress.”—Joseph Wood, “The Bible,” page 113. And this leads logically and inevitably to the conclusion that “SIN IS, AFTER ALL, A QUEST FOR GOD.”—Campbell, minister of London City Temple, “New Theology,” page 151.

Now, when we find ministers of the pure Gospel of Christ standing in the pulpit and actually teaching that when a man steals or commits adultery or murder he is only engaged in a very laudable “quest for God,” need we be surprised if the world and the church reap a terrible harvest in the near future, of sin of every hue, and crime of every magnitude?

Higher Critics Are Paving the Way

for the wholesale repudiation of the Bible not only by the world but by the church. “Why should you be alarmed,” asks a Higher Critic, “at following the light within you rather than the words of a book?”—Joseph Wood, “The Bible,” page 85. In other words, when your impulses point to a sin that the Bible prohibits, follow your impulse even if it results in crime, for that is a “quest for God.” Another minister puts it stronger: “Never mind what the Bible says.”—Campbell, “New Theology,” page 199.

Henceforth crime and criminals may flourish unrebuked; for have they not the sanction and even commendation of the ministers of the popular churches? This is a terrible thing to say; but read again the words of the Higher Critical ministers above quoted, and try if it is possible to torture English into any other meaning.

The Rev. H. P. Nichols, D.D., rector of the Holy Trinity Church of New York, after telling us that the Bible “can not survive, save as an historic monument,” unless it is cut up according to his skeptical formulas, ends with this surprising statement: “Christ Himself will survive, FOR THE NEW TESTAMENT MAY BE SAID TO BE NO LONGER ESSENTIAL TO MAN’S KNOWLEDGE OF HIM.”—“The Temporary and the Permanent in New Testament Revelation,” pages 20, 21. Stopping but a moment to call attention to the absolute impossibility of knowing Christ at all when the only

means by which He is known is discarded, I wish to call attention to the fact that this minister, along with the others quoted, says to “never mind what the Bible says,” but discard it, for it is not needed for a knowledge of sin, for sin is commendable; and is not needed for a knowledge of a Christ, who saves from sin, and came to the world for that express purpose. Since “sin is a quest for God,” and Christ came to save us from sin, then the logic of Higher Criticism leads inevitably to the conclusion that He came to hinder our progress! Since “the fall is a giant step in human progress,” and Christ came to restore us to our former condition, He comes to undo all the progress man has ever made. Now, I submit if this is not the meaning and logic of Higher Criticism, it has no meaning, and there is no such thing as logic.

Decalogue Not Sacred

That such teaching is not isolated and spasmodic, but is wide-spread, and continuously and assiduously taught all over the land, is proved by the two years of investigation of Harold Bolce, reported in the Cosmopolitan: “In hundreds of class rooms it is being taught daily that the Decalogue is no more sacred that a syllabus; . . . that there are no absolute evils; that immorality is simply an act in contravention of society’s accepted standards; . . . that moral precepts are passing shibboleths; that conceptions of right and wrong are as unstable as styles of dress; . . . that the sole effect of prolificacy is to fill tiny graves; that there can be and are holier alliances without the marriage bond than within it.”

With hundreds of learned university professors and hundreds of honored divines proclaiming in every nook and corner of the land, to the innocent little boy and girl in the Sunday-school class, to the father and mother in the pew, to the young man and the young woman in the college, that “the fall is a giant step in human progress,” that “sin is only a name for a process or phase of Evolution,” or “sin is a quest after God,” and “never mind what the Bible says,” do as you please, it is impossible to do wrong, for there is no wrong — what can we expect the result to be, I ask, but the harvest of sin and crime and disease and disaster all over this fair land of ours in the near future? The wind has been sown, and we are even now beginning to reap the whirlwind in the terrible increase of murders and sins of every degree, in the multiplication of horrors on every hand.

As a result manhood is debauched, honor is sold in high places, corruption stalks through the land unrebuked save by a few who are looked upon as fanatics, sin sits in pew and pulpit, in cultured homes and in legislative halls, and reigns supreme. Theft, murder, and every hateful crime runs riot among mere children, and the Higher Critics go on preaching that “sin is a quest after God”!

The reader may well ask, What is the significance of all this? what does it portend? Does this saturnalia of crime herald the approach of the millennium?

A Prophetic Last-Day Picture

We find this condition faithfully pictured in 2 Tim. 3: 1-7: 'But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away. For of these are they that creep into houses, and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.'

This condition Christ said would be a sign of His coming. 'As were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days which were before the Flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the Flood came, and took them all away; so shall be the coming of the Son of Man.' Matt. 24: 37-39. Now let us see how it was at the time of the Flood: 'And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.' Gen. 6: 5.

Higher Criticism, then, is but one more of the great evils palmed off on the world by Satan to take the world captive, and deceive not only the world but the church as to the fact that the end of the world and the coming of Christ are near at hand and hasten greatly. Higher Criticism is but Satan in the pulpit, preaching the church-members into carnal security, and telling them that the Bible is but the historic monument of the past and of no more authority than 'the work of Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth.'—Balmforth, 'The Bible,' volume 2, page 264.

Higher Criticism is thus seen to be at once a symptom of rabid skepticism in the churches, a festering malady that afflicts society, a terrible sin that deludes the individual, and an unmistakable sign of the end of the world and the coming of Christ.

Dear reader, there are a people that believe that all phases of sin are 'exceeding sinful' (Rom. 7: 13), and exalt the moral law of God as the transcript of His character, and look to Christ as the Sinless One who is our Pattern and Saviour; and there is a church which repudiates the premises, principles, teachings, and conclusions of Higher Critics, with all their attendant deceptions and delusions; repudiates them absolutely, utterly, and stands unshaken upon the adamant foundation of the whole Bible as the inspired and infallible Word of God. In the next article, 'Higher Criticism and the Church,' we will tell you more about it.