ON MODERN UNREST AND THE BIBLE. 



347 



been subjected to such tremendous and increasing attack as has 

 assailed the Book of Genesis within the last half-century. 'No 

 book lias had hurled against it, in such rapid succession, such a 

 hail of volumes designed by the best brains. There are those 

 who man the walls of The l^ew Testament, who regard Genesis 

 as a negligible outlier, too remote for its capture to affect their 

 position. But if tlie account of Eden is a fable, then the 

 declaration that the seed of the w^oman shall overcome the 

 Serpent is transferred from fact to fiction. If Abraham is 

 mythical and eponymous, then the promise that in his seed all 

 nations shall be blessed, disappears. While the argument that 

 the Lord Jesus is a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek 

 is shattered. Our Lord's own words fare no better : " Your 

 father Abraham rejoiced to see my day." " God is not the God 

 of the dead, but of the living." Where there is no promised 

 seed, there is no Christ to preach. 



For the same reason, of all the Psalms, the 110th Psalm is 

 the one against which the heaviest guns are trained. It seems 

 almost immaterial who wrote it, till it is recollected that on its 

 authorship Jesus bases the proof that " the Christ " must be at 

 once the Divine Lord and the human Son of David, and Peter 

 bases his assertion, in the Pentecostal Sermon, that Jesus is 

 both Jehovah and Christ. 



The material of the Higher Criticism was originally manu- 

 factured in Germany. The intention was to destroy Christianity, 

 and action began by a masterly flank movement against the trust- 

 worthiness of the history of the Old Testament. The rise of 

 criticism is synchronous with the renew^ed activity of Missions 

 to the Jews, and doubtless there is urgency to damage the 

 doctrine that Jesus is " the Christ " before the Jews get hold of 

 so potent a truth. Now the stronghold of the Bible is England, 

 and the strength of England is the Bible in the hearts of the 

 people. It w^as easy to trace the leakage of French vitality to 

 the writings of Voltaire and Eousseau, and to decide that the 

 solid British character would resent the scoffer, but might fall 

 an easy prey were he disguised as the scholar. The ammu- 

 nition was shipped to this country in ponderous cases, marked 

 for scholars only." The stratagem, unless we awake to our 

 danger, bids fair to be as successful as when the Trojans dragged 

 the Grecian horse within their walls. Already the results are 

 sufficiently startling. The Bible has not been injured. Possibly 

 critics may not be conscious of any damage to themselves. But 

 faith in the Bible of the man in the street as the standard of 

 right and wrong — the nominal Christianity of the masses — is 



