THE following letter by the Rev. D. K. Auchterlonie, Craigdam, Aberdeenshire, appeared some time ago in the Glasgow Herald, and is, we think, the best letter on the relation of the United Free Church to the Higher Criticism that has yet appeared from any of her ministers. We earnestly wish more light and power to Mr. Auchterlonie, and trust he may soon be led to take a more decided stand against the Church’s toleration of this infidel criticism than ever he has done in the past. We fear he still entertains a too favourable view of the faithfulness to truth of “the respected leaders” in the Church, and that much disappointment awaits him in the future. In the present state of things separation is the only adequate testimony.
IS THE HIGHER CRITICISM SANCTIONED BY THE U.F. CHURCH?
(To the Editor of the Glasgow Herald.)
Sir,—I see in the Missionary Record of the U.F. Church a notice of the recent meeting of the “Bible League” in Scotland. In that notice the editor commends the statement of my friend, Dr. Whitelaw, to the effect that the Assembly of the U.F. Church does not sanction nor authorise the teaching of the Higher Criticism. And no doubt, in the strict formal meaning of the Assembly’s decision, it is as Dr. Whitelaw says.
But everyone knows that under certain circumstances toleration is little better than sanction. An instance in point occurs to me. I think it was about the year 1850 that the Synod of the U.P. Church passed a law restraining all ministers of the Church from reading their sermons. Next day, I think, Dr. William Anderson, of Glasgow, appeared at the Synod, and told them that he had read his sermons since his ordination, and that he proposed to continue doing so, and asked them, in view of their decision, to say how they were to determine his relation to the pulpit of John Street Church, Glasgow. The brethren were startled, they looked up and looked around, but “nothing was done and nothing was said,” and everyone knew that in letting the thing go sub silentio, the reading of sermons in the pulpit of the U.P. Church was tacitly sanctioned everywhere.
But I fancy that the toleration of the wretched imposture called the Higher Criticism by the Assembly is, as in the case assigned, its practical sanction in the chairs and pulpits of the U.F. Church. And the Higher Criticism is not only tolerated, but, I am sorry to say, it is encouraged in the official literature of the Church. In Aberdeen last year there was held a summer school of theology under the auspices of the U.F. Church. It was advertised in the little syllabus of Scripture reading, circulating in tens of thousands throughout the whole Church. The men chosen to lecture at this summer school of theology were nearly all known to be favourable
to the Higher Criticism. Scholars opposed to it were carefully excluded from the programme. Lectures were given advocating the Higher Criticism views in some of its extremest and most preposterous aspects. One learned professor lectured on the spiritual significance of the Tabernacle, and was careful to inform his hearers that there never was a Tabernacle. We had also Ritschlianism in full blast. Of this summer school there appeared an account in the Missionary Record of the Church, filled with glaring and most indiscriminate laudation. There was not the faintest suggestion that there had been brought forward any doctrine which the Church had not sanctioned. And when a protest was entered on behalf of those who regard the doctrines of the Higher Criticism with well-grounded disapproval, it was refused insertion in the Record, and treated with the most discourteous contempt.
And the whole history of the case is very significant of the sense in which U.F. officialdom interprets the finding of the Assembly in regard to the Higher Criticism. When the official magazine of the Church lends itself to the extreme laudation of congresses for the dissemination of this heresy, when the publications of the Church Committee are used for advertising these Higher Criticism juntos, and when all protest against this perversion of our Church literature is refused, we have evidently got a step or two further than the mere toleration of this great evil. I believe, with Lord Overtoun, that the Christian democracy of the U.F. Church is sound on this question. But as our political democracy expects its representative leaders to give expression to its mind in the Parliament of the people, so our Christian democracy looks to Lord Overtoun and its other respected leaders to have its opinions and beliefs in this vital matter expressed and formulated in our spiritual Parliament—the General Assembly of the Church—in such a manner as that we shall have a conclusive deliverance from this destructive plague.
Until this is done we shall get, as some of us are getting, the full measure of scorn and contempt of those that are “making void God’s law,” and, indeed, if we do not take decided and earnest action, we shall almost deserve this scorn, and shall be guilty of condoning what is certain to be, if tolerated, an irreparable mischief to the life of the Church.—I am, etc.,
D. K. AUCHTERLONIE.