4o8 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



777^ SCIENCE OF BIBLICAL CBITICISM. 



A CHANGE isgraduall J coming over 

 the meaning of the word science^ 

 or, rather, tliere is a growing appre- 

 ciation of its true meaning, which is 

 of great significance. In the newspaper 

 column of " Science " we have a list of 

 results of late experiments of all kinds. 

 In looking over many scientific periodi- 

 cals it would be inferred that the term 

 is restricted to physical science. From 

 the text-books we should conclude that 

 science consists of the facts and prin- 

 ciples that have been established and 

 icollected in difierent groups under this 

 name. But it now begins to be under- 

 stood that science properly means a 

 method by which all these results are 

 produced. It is a method of thought, 

 a method of investigation, having for 

 its simple object the establishment of 

 the truths of nature. This method has 

 grown up gradually in modern times to 

 greater and greater perfection, and has 

 widened in scope, until now it includes 

 many subjects with which it was at 

 first supposed to have no relation. 



There has of course been great re- 

 sistance to this tendency. For, while 

 people admit that truth is valuable 

 and precious, they generally think that 

 they are also in full possession of it, 

 and are, therefore, in little need of 

 methods to arrive at it. Their beliefs 

 are truth, and therefore not to be dis- 

 turbed. Science doubts, with a view 

 to reinvestigation, and is hence unwel- 

 come. Especially where men band to- 

 gether in parties and sects and declare 

 their opinions, there arises at once a 

 spirit of hostility to any thorough in- 

 quiry which might unsettle the views 

 to which they are committed. Mean- 

 time, in spite of this resistance, the spir- 



it of investigation has gained strength 

 and spread rapidly in all directions of 

 research. 



The latest and most impressive proof 

 of the progress of the scientific spirit 

 is seen in the recent treatment of the 

 Christian Scriptures. Biblical criticism 

 has long been affected by the scientific 

 metliod, and is now to be controlled by 

 it. How far the critical spirit is already 

 advanced and diffused, so that the Bible 

 is regarded as a book with a human and 

 an imperfect side, and containing errors 

 that can be removed with better knowl- 

 edge, is shown by the fact that the Eng- 

 lish translation of two hundred and fifty 

 years' standing has been lately attacked 

 by a body of able and learned revisers, 

 who, after eleven years of labor, have 

 just given us a corrected edition of the 

 New Testament. This is a great step 

 in the direction of rationalism. It con- 

 cedes that the Scriptures must be sub- 

 jected to the tests of reason, and this 

 concession is due entirely to the mod- 

 ern scientific movement, which de- 

 mands higher standards of proof, and 

 more inexorable questioning as to what 

 is true. 



The revisers of the New Testament 

 have fairly and formally entered the 

 critical wedge, but the driving it home 

 is to be no holiday affair. Professor 

 Robertson Smith, one of the most 

 learned, able, and candid of Biblical 

 critics, having undertaken to treat the 

 history of some parts of the Old Testa- 

 ment in a great encyclopaedia, was met 

 by his church and silenced in his pro- 

 fessorship in the Aberdeen University. 

 But the world gains by this act of in- 

 tolerance. Professor Smith left the 

 college halls and went out to give a 

 course of popular lectures upon the 



