DR. BAXTER has done well in reprinting this able exposure of the Higher Critics. Its re-issue, in pamphlet form, gives an opportunity for its circulation among those who have specially to deal with the religious instruction of the young. The self-assured way in which the advocates of German unbelieving criticism have presented their teaching to the young is one of the most disconcerting features of a concerted conspiracy to undermine the authority of God’s Word. Dr. Baxter has done excellent service to the cause of truth in exposing the Syllabus of Religious Instruction for Schools. We cannot do better than quote what he has to say about this notorious Syllabus, to which attention has already been directed in our pages. It is “published by the Youth Committees of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland.” The Syllabus, he says, spreads the “Lessons” over twenty-five pages, which the children, at successive stages and ages, are supposed to overtake in thirteen years. . . . After this painful exertion they [the authors] perambulate over other thirteen pages, with an Annotated Bibliography—consisting of a catalogue of about 200 volumes, explanatory of Scripture, and embracing brief annotations indicating the comparative worth of the various volumes. It is on these annotations we fix, as showing ‘the wolf in sheep’s clothing,’ as a most cunning attempt to mislead all the teachers and all the Education Authorities of Scotland as to the origin and as to the authority of Scripture. . . . By what is said, and still more by what is left unsaid, all educationists throughout Scotland are invited to offer themselves as a palatable morsel to the maw of the Higher Critics. Standard works, that uphold the integrity and trustworthiness of Scripture, as these have been most warmly cherished by the ministers and members of the Church of Scotland, are studiously ignored: quite recent works, that proclaim the dismemberment of Scripture, that treat its manifold asseverations as little else than a manufactory of fiction, are warmly pressed, on the belief of those by whom the religious views of the youth of Scotland are henceforth to be mainly moulded.” Dr. Baxter then proceeds to point out the gross unfairness of completely ignoring the work done by conservative scholars; so completely is it passed over by those responsible for drawing up the Syllabus that no one would ever imagine that anything had been written in recent years by scholars of the first rank in Assyriology, Egyptology, the Semitic languages, and Biblical Archaeology, to combat the higher critical positions. It would be a great service to the truth that this able exposure would be placed in the hands of all teachers and all members of Education Authorities who have adopted the Syllabus for a guide to the religious instruction given in the day schools. The main part of the pamphlet is taken up with an exposure of the Higher Critic’s treatment of the Scriptures. Dr. Baxter has no difficulty in showing that the “assured results,” of which one hears so much, have no existence except in the imagination of the individual Higher Critic; for while he is busily proclaiming to the world that such and such a position is now accepted by all scholars, another brother of the same erratic school is setting forth a new hypothesis, which fortunately has as sandy a foundation as its predecessor. One can only hope that this reprint will have a wide circulation, especially in quarters where there is much need for enlightenment.
Greyfriars Covenanting Memorial Service.
We are pleased to notice that Mr. Forbes Moncrieff, notwithstanding the infirmities of advancing years, still wields his pen with the old vigour. One of his latest protests is against the hollow mockery of the Covenanting Memorial Service, held in Greyfriars Churchyard on Sabbath, 19th June. In the July-August Bulwark, he writes:—”Among those who took part on this occasion were the Band and Pipers of the Comrades of the Great War and Massed Choir from city churches, assisted by members of Edinburgh Royal Choral Union. Boys’ Brigade lads were employed selling programmes, and motor buses were depositing passengers at the gate; and all this on the Lord’s day. Surely the Covenanters would have been horrified with such a service, which, more honestly, might have been called an entertainment; and it must have deeply pained all who are concerned for the preservation of purity of worship and the sanctity of the Sabbath. Such sensuous services are, alas, all too common in these days, and the Churches seem more and more bent on pandering to the tastes and desires of worldly people.”