Criticism," published in this volume. There I ⚫ maintain that "the Gospels stand towards the Creeds as the volumes of evidence towards a Report. The one is valuable and authoritative, precisely in so far as it is a faithful summary and interpretation of the other. The Creeds have no independent authority; they add nothing to our knowledge about the Lord; they help us only by officially stating what the New Testament contains; but the spiritual worth of the statement depends wholly on its fidelity to the documents." 1

2. I have maintained that the New Testament, equally with the Old, must be subjected frankly to the normal methods of criticism and interpretation. In the article on "The Future of the Bible," in the Contemporary Review, I said frankly: "For obvious reasons the Old Testament has been first surrendered to the critics, but it must be evident to every thoughtful and unprejudiced man that the attempt to arrest the advance of criticism precisely where the line falls between the Jewish and Christian Scriptures cannot possibly succeed." I do not suppose that this proposition will be seriously contested by any one who admits the legitimacy of applying historical criticism to the Old Testament; but it is certainly the case that many religious people, who acquiesce without difficulty in a frank critical treatment of the older Scriptures, manifest considerable resentment when the process is carried on to the later. Yet it may fairly be argued that if any exemption could be pleaded for either Testament, it would be 1 Infra, p. 70.

the Old rather than the New which could best For the Old Testament is received

justify the plea. by the Church on the supreme authority of Christ Himself; every reference to the Scriptures in the writings of the Apostles and their immediate successors applies solely to the Old Testament. Even those who, with the present writer, dissent from the view therein so solemnly expressed, can feel the weight of such language as this which I borrow from the great Charge in which that learned prelate, the late Bishop of Oxford, condemned the views with respect to the Incarnation which had recently been set forth by one of his clergy, the present Bishop of Worcester.

"With this belief" (viz. that Christ's Omniscience is of the essence of the personality in which manhood and Godhead united in Him), said Dr. Stubbs, "I feel that I am bound to accept the language of our Lord in reference to the Old Testament Scriptures as beyond appeal. Where He says that Moses and the Prophets wrote or spoke of Him, and the report of His saying this depends on the authority of His Evangelist, I accept His warrant for understanding that Moses and the Prophets did write and speak about Him, in the sense in which I believe that He means it. Where He speaks of David in spirit calling Him Lord, I believe that David in spirit did call Him Lord, and I am not affected by doubts thrown on the authorship of the 10th Psalm, except so far as to use His authority to set those doubts aside." 1 It is

1 Visitation Charges, p. 151.

impossible not to venerate the devotion to the Divine Lord which inspires such language; and without question, if learning and character could ever authenticate opinions to men's acceptance, the opinions expressed by Bishop Stubbs possessed such authentications; and yet, where are the scholars who would endorse those opinions to-day? Where are the Universities in which the Professors would accept Bishop Stubbs's doctrine as to the limits imposed by the New Testament on the criticism of the Old ? In the case of the New Testament this solemn and difficult issue of the authority of Christ's usage and that of the usage of the Apostles does not arise. The documents which form the New Testament come to us with the inferior sanctions of ecclesiastical acceptance registered by ecclesiastical decisions. It cannot be reasonable to distinguish between the Testaments, permitting a critical handling of the more authoritative, and prohibiting a critical handling of the less.

If I seem to dwell at excessive length on a point which might be supposed to be the very postulate of the learned labours of our critical scholars, and not less of all the modern exegesis which has any recognised value, it is because on this point depends the whole case which I defend. It will suffice to quote and endorse the language of the author of an excellent and most helpful book which I rejoice to see in a second edition- -The Historical New Testament, by James Moffatt, B.D. After dwelling on the progress made in criticism of the New Testament, and the prospect of a "practical unanimity

among competent scholars being reached on many long-debated issues, the author proceeds:—

"The prospects of such a healthy state of matters in New Testament criticism depend, however, upon the straightforward rejection of any eirenicon like that which is occasionally offered in this country by some influential writers, who, conceding the rights of criticism within the province of the Old Testament, decline to admit the legitimacy of similar historical research in the New Testament literature, upon the ground either that the latter collection possesses certain qualities of finality and authority which exempt it from being judged by the canons of ordinary treatment, or that it was 'produced under very different historical conditions.' This rôle of the theological Canute is due to excellent motives; but it must be pronounced not merely indefensible but injurious to the best interests of faith and truth. The compromise rests on a misapprehension, and is as unnecessary as it is illegitimate. It has no basis in the facts which come under discussion. The condition of early Christianity in the first and second centuries, it is true, was such as to render the limits within which tradition could be modified considerably less than in the older Semitic literature. In the latter we often deal with centuries where in the former the unit is a decade. Besides, the contexture and vitality of the early Christian communities naturally made testimony upon the whole less ambiguous and remote than in the long spaces of Hebrew development. But the comparative brevity of this period and its internal excel

lence do not imply that its record must ipso facto be strictly historical, nor do they absolutely preclude the activity of such influences as elsewhere modify, develop, and transmute existing traditions under recognised tendencies of human life. As any tyro in New Testament criticism is aware, during the period between 30 and 130 A.D. such influences were particularly keen, owing to the mental atmosphere of the time, and the religious ferment excited by the new faith. Between the quality of the testimony in the Old Testament and that of the New Testament the difference is patent and material ; still, it is a difference not of kind but of degree. The principles and standards of historical proof are the same, whatever literature be the subject of inquiry, although the scale of application naturally varies in proportion to the character of the materials. Early Christianity does not indeed require the same elaborateness or methods of literary science as are demanded by the condition in which the Old Testament documents have reached the modern scholar; but unless the character of the first and second centuries A.D. be estimated by historical methods, in as thorough and free a spirit as the age of Samuel or Isaiah, it will continue to remain a province for arbitrary guess-work, and to present the average reader with a series of writings whose sense and connection lie at the mercy of dogmatic or devotional fantasy. Similarly, to hold that the religion enshrined in the New Testament is final in substance and supreme in quality, does not require its adherents to rail off that literature nervously and