THE BISHOP OF WELLINGTON ON THE HIGHER CUITICISM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11277, 22 November 1898, Page 6

THE BISHOP OF WELLINGTON ON THE HIGHER CUITICISM.

The" "Proceedings of . Synod, Wellington Diocese, 1896," contain some interesting remarks by Bishop Wallis on " Old Testament Criticism." After referring to the subject as one "which has caused, and may yet cause, perplexity to devout .minds," he said: — . "Now such inquiries as these are perfectly legitimate, provided that they are conducted on sound principles, and limited to their proper province. They, may be uncongenial to ourselves, but we have no.right to forbid them to others, or to be frightened of smy results.to which the exercise of historical criticism—one of God's gifts to this age—may lead. Our forefathers condemned the dissection of human bodies, as a profane insult to the Holy Ghost,. Whoso temples they are: yet that dissection, while it has loft'the mystery of life, the whence and the whither, as profound as ever, it was, has taught us unexpected lessons of the infinite wisdom and marvellous resourcefulness of our Maker. We may look for like results from the minute and scholarly investigation of tho structure of ,our sacred writings. "To such investigations I can lay no claim whatever. But one privilege has been granted to me, which no other man in this colony hus enjoyed—that of an intimate, almost daily, intercourse for U years with some of the leading English representatives of .the Higher Criticism. It is because 1 know the accuracy of their scholarship, tho sobriety of their judgment, the intensity of their.reverence, and— if I may dare to speak of the inner life of mou who are immeasureably superior to myself—the strength and reality of their Christian faith, that I ask your sympathy for those whom God has called to what must necessarily be an uupopular work. It was an unspeakable comfort to me to know that our undergraduates at Cambridge, many of . whom I loved as if they had been my own brothers, wore learning the results of Biblical criticism from friends, and not foes, to the Christian faith. In these and other English critics, inferior often to the Germans in microscopic industry, but their superiors in historic sympathy, or the power of entering into and appreciating the life of other days—in these critics wo do uofc find men for whom an apparent prediction stands pelf-condemned as having been written after the evont, or to whom the presence of a supernatural element proves the falsity of the narrative in which it is found. But even if the wildest conjecture of the most extravagant critic proved to be correct, it would not affect a single syllable of tho articles of our Christian creeds. ; "Tho last word on many of the questions which have been • raised has not yet been spoken. But, as has been said by others, the temper with which we approach these questions is of infinitely greater importance than their solution. Tlie Spirit of God is still guiding the Church into all truth : we have to follow His leading faithfully and patiently: wo do wrong to be panic-stricken if some favourite theory of ours is overthrown ; we do worse to commit ourselves to a choice between ' All or nothing,' or to tell other men ' You must choose between Christ and criticism,' an awful dilemma, which unbelievers are . ready to applaud, but which will ' subject the fnith of the younger generation to a strain which the teachers who have presented us with this dilemma can scarcely have realised.' "* * See Professor Kirkpatriek's " The Divine Library .of the Old Testament" (Macmillan); a book which I heartily recommend to those who wish to begin a study of this subject. I desire also to echo tho Bishop of Salisbury's recommendation of " Dean Church s Discipline of the Christian Character " (also published by Maomillan), for giving a helpful sense of the religious significance of the Old Testament: At the Church Congress held in Bradford last month tho two archbishops- and many bishops and clergy being present, the Bishop of Manchester (Dr Moorhouse, formerly of Melbourne) read a paper on "The Intellectual Unrest of the Age," in which he touched on the above subject. Ho said :—" Can any reasonable person find rest to-day in tho theory of verbal dictation ? No doubt ignorant enthusiasts arn still to be found who rai=e the old cry—'All -or nothing—the equal authority of every word and letter, or no inspiration at all—the infallibility in every sentence or no revelation from God.' , But these men are merely belated survivals, to whom none but the very ignorant listen. The nropress of sound and reve'rbiH' cr'it'icisrii has convinced every thinking man that there is a. human element in the Bible, that many portions of ths Old Testament were neither written by the authors whose names they bear, nor at the times to which they have been- traditionally assigned—above all, that revelation has been progressive, and that the relicrious teaching which was useful and necessary in the earlier ageß of the Jewish Church is no longer adapted to the larger thoughts and deeper needs of the Church of Christ. Intellectual rest is not to be gained by deuyiniv conclusions which are clearly established, or by requiring tho intellect to ignore what it knows. The only secure foundation for rest is truth."