ON 28th October, the Rev. Professor Charteris opened the Biblical Criticism class in Edinburgh University with a lecture in which he reviewed the present position of New Testament criticism. There could, he said, be little doubt that not only had the tide of battle ebbed away from the shores of the New Testament canon, but that during its flow no serious injury had been done to the territory occupied by the Christian sacred books. The assault of the Tübingen school upon the Epistles and Gospels had spent its strength, and had shown more clearly than ever how ample was the historical evidence on which the books were accepted by the Church. They might stand upon the battlefield and see the forms of the Tübingen critics retreating into the far distance, while critical Christendom, like their simple-minded fathers, was sitting at the feet of the four Evangelists to hear what they had to tell of the Son of Man. Not only the Gospels, but the other historical book of the New Testament had been delivered from the bondage of suspicion. It had been proved by a Scottish professor that the book of the Acts found only confirmation, as regarded St. Paul’s Travels, from his scholarly and long-continued investigations in Asia and Syria. Many causes had concurred in leading up to the conservative conclusion regarding the New Testament books. The critics were met on their own ground, and their arguments were weakened; new discoveries had strengthened the hands of the defenders; and these things had their due effect. But it was, he thought, from the heart of the Church itself that the real and effective defence was furnished. The Christian conscience felt that those theories of the assailants of the canon, even taken at their best, were entirely inadequate to account for the facts with which they were dealing. The ultimate facts with which they had to deal were Christendom, Christianity, and Christ Himself, and it was impossible to account for any one of them on the ground chosen by the critics. There had come up in their day two controversies which, if not new in themselves, were at all events specially prominent and important before their eyes. The one referred to the Gospels as records of fact, and the other to the relation between the Gospels and Epistles, between the Master and the disciples. Those who denied that there was anything supernatural in the birth and death and life of Christ’s human body, but yet clung to the faith of Christendom, seemed to him to have sown the branch between themselves and the tree; and if they looked up from the ground where they contentedly sat, and said they had not fallen, he was compelled to doubt whether they and their branch were ever off the ground. (Applause). Another
remarkable feature of their time was that there were some who minimised the doings of Christ, and magnified His teaching, in order, as they believed, to prevent St. Paul from having too high a position in Christian theology. They thought that the Master had been neglected for the disciple ; they, as a rule, attached little or no sacrificial importance or atoning significance to the Saviour’s death, which was the keystone of St. Paul’s system. Anyone who took our Lord’s own teaching as containing the whole of Christian theology, was under necessity to dwell little upon His death ; and he was under necessity, or always seemed to feel bound, to magnify the significance of the sermon on the mount. Those, however, who took all their theology from the sermon on the mount and forgot the teaching of the later parables, and of the closing chapters of St. John, which promised the Comforter to lead the faithful followers into higher truth than they could bear while the Lord lived, were going back from Christian liberty into a certain legalism. They were not advancing. Another thing which they seemed to him to overlook was that in the Epistles there was no doctrine or truth which was not in the Gospels. Recent careful study had convinced him that one evidence for the Gospels was the wonderful way in which they found they contained all the articles of the Christian creed, so that to the apostles was only left the exposition and enforcement of those articles. Yet those who wished them to find all their Christianity in the Gospels, and especially in the words of Christ, had hold of only half a truth ; and the half which they neglected contained the key to the understanding of the other half. The mission of the Holy Ghost was deprived of its great significance, and it was practically denied that when He came He guided the disciples into the full understanding of all the truth which their Master had so patiently laboured to teach. New Testament theology was robbed of much when it was confined to an exposition of the Gospels. This was a weakness which marked many modern books. Let them take one, “The Mind of the Master,” by Dr. John Watson. . . . “The Mind of the Master” was a disappointing book. It was full of power and definite purpose—sometimes rose into eloquence, or crystallised in epigram ; but it was without perspective, and was innocent of all historical theology. To accept it one would have to make several great admissions which were profound mistakes—(1) that the doctrines of the rest of the New Testament were not those of the Gospels ; and (2) that St. Paul in particular altered the Gospel teaching. They should also have to believe, he thought, that the words of Jesus were more important than His doings and sufferings.
When, seeking soul, did you find Christ ? Was it not when you thought you would never find Him ? And when did you lose Him ? Was it not when you knew you had Him ?—John Grant.