66 THE EEY. J. J. LIAS. M.A., ON THE UNITY OF ISAIAH. 



supported by arguments so cogent could possibly have been 

 transmitted on insufficient authority. If God. they say, has 

 revealed the secrets of His will to mankind,, no doubt He has 

 also taken care that this revelation shall have been unmistak- 

 ably proclaimed by competent witnesses. But. on the other 

 hand, we have to remember that the prominence which the 

 criticism destructive of the testimony of those witnesses has 

 attained has been reached by ignoring that testimony and by 

 attaching undeserved importance to a number of minute details 

 lying in quite a different plane from the great and important 

 arguments above referred to. That prominence cannot be 

 safely ignored. Investigation along these lines of secondary 

 importance has obtained control of the universities and great 

 public schools, and is still spreading. I fear that it cannot be 

 prevented from spreading still further, unless it is met upon its 

 own ground. 



One point comes to the front when we study this criticism. 

 It takes high ground. It declares that its conclusions are 

 " irreversible/' and that they are " scientific." But they are 

 reached through the medium of history and literature, and it is 

 only fair to ask whether, in the strict sense of the word, 

 historical and literary criticism can really be scientific. Science 

 means knowledge involving exactness in the comprehension of 

 facts. In historical and literary criticism there is large room 

 for the influence of mere opinion. Scientific certainty is far 

 from being attained in those lines of research. The critic's 

 conclusions are at best only probable, and " probability " does 

 not mean certainty. 



One more preliminary observation. "What are the methods of 

 the literary and historical criticism .which has thus seated itself 

 in the chair of infallibility \ They are these. Certain prin- 

 ciples are laid down and conclusions drawn from them. But 

 these conclusions are at variance with the facts, as those facts 

 have been handed down to us. To the ordinary mind, and 

 much more in the case of the scientific inquirer, this would 

 seem to invalidate the conclusions. Xot so to the critic : Taut 

 pis pour fa i ts. he replies, and proceeds to strike out of his 

 documents everything which conflicts with them, and to assign 

 it to authorities of a later date. 



This method proves too much. On such hues the earth 

 could be proved to be flat or the sun to revolve round it. Yet 

 this, and this only, as the works of the critics themselves 

 demonstrate, is their method of M scientific " investigation — a 

 method received in so many quarters as irrefragable. 



