of no serious answer. The roots of infidelity he in the heart and will rather than in the reason and
intellect, and wilful opposition to the truth is deaf to any argument. But honest, truth-loving
scepticism always deserves regard and sympathy and demands a patient investigation of the real
or imaginary difficulties which are involved in the problem of the origin of Christianity. It may be
more useful to the church than an unthinking and unreasoning orthodoxy. One of the ablest and
purest sceptical critics of the century (DeWette) made the sad, but honorable confession:
"I lived in times of doubt and strife,
When childlike faith was forced to yield;
I struggled to the end of life,
Alas! I did not gain the field."
But he did gain the field, after all, at last; for a few months before his death he wrote and
published this significant sentence: "I know that in no other name can salvation be found, than in
the name of Jesus Christ the Crucified, and there is nothing higher for mankind than the divine
humanity (Gottmenschheit) realized in him, and the kingdom of God planted by him." Blessed are
those that seek the truth, for they shall find it.
The critical and historical rationalism which was born and matured in this century in the
land of Luther, and has spread in Switzerland, France, Holland, England, Scotland, and America,
surpasses in depth and breadth of learning, as well as in earnestness of spirit, all older forms of
infidelity and heresy. It is not superficial and frivolous, as the rationalism of the eighteenth century;
it is not indifferent to truth, but intensely interested in ascertaining the real facts, and tracing the
origin and development of Christianity, as a great historical phenomenon. But it arrogantly claims
to be the criticism par excellence, as the Gnosticism of the ancient church pretended to have the
monopoly of knowledge. There is a historical, conservative, and constructive criticism, as well as
an unhistorical, radical, and destructive criticism; and the former must win the fight as sure as God’s
truth will outlast all error. So there is a believing and Christian Gnosticism as well as an unbelieving
and anti- (or pseudo-) Christian Gnosticism.
The negative criticism of the present generation has concentrated its forces upon the life of
Christ and the apostolic age, and spent an astonishing amount of patient research upon the minutest
details of its history. And its labors have not been in vain; on the contrary, it has done a vast amount
of good, as well as evil. Its strength lies in the investigation of the human and literary aspect of the
Bible; its weakness in the ignoring of its divine and spiritual character. It forms thus the very
antipode of the older orthodoxy, which so overstrained the theory of inspiration as to reduce the
human agency to the mechanism of the pen. We must look at both aspects. The Bible is the Word
of God and the word of holy men of old. It is a revelation of man, as well as of God. It reveals man
in all his phases of development—innocence, fall, redemption—in all the varieties of character,
from heavenly purity to satanic wickedness, with all his virtues and vices, in all his states of
experience, and is an ever-flowing spring of inspiration to the poet, the artist, the historian, and
divine. It reflects and perpetuates the mystery of the incarnation. It is the word of him who
proclaimed himself the Son of Man, as well as the Son of God. "Men spake from God, being moved
by the Holy Spirit." Here all is divine and all is human.
No doubt the New Testament is the result of a gradual growth and conflict of different
forces, which were included in the original idea of Christianity and were drawn out as it passed
from Christ to his disciples, from the Jews to the Gentiles, from Jerusalem to Antioch and Rome,A.D. 1-100.