RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC
CRITICISM.
For all this dissolving away of traditional opinions regarding our
sacred literature, there has been a cause far more general and
powerful than any which has been given, for it is a cause
surrounding and permeating all. This is simply the atmosphere of
thought engendered by the development of all sciences during the
last three centuries.
Vast masses of myth, legend, marvel, and dogmatic assertion, coming
into this atmosphere, have been dissolved and are now dissolving
quietly away like icebergs drifted into the Gulf Stream. In earlier
days, when some critic in advance of his time insisted that Moses
could not have written an account embracing the circumstances of
his own death, it was sufficient to answer that Moses was a
prophet; if attention was called to the fact that the great early
prophets, by all which they did and did not do, showed that there
could not have existed in their time any "Levitical code," a
sufficient answer was "mystery"; and if the discrepancy was noted
between the two accounts of creation in Genesis, or between the
genealogies or the dates of the crucifixion in the Gospels, the
cogent reply was "infidelity." But the thinking world has at last
been borne by the general development of a scientific atmosphere
beyond that kind of refutation.
If, in the atmosphere generated by the earlier developed sciences,
the older growths of biblical interpretation have drooped and
withered and are evidently perishing, new and better growths have
arisen with roots running down into the newer sciences. Comparative
Anthropology in general, by showing that various early stages of
belief and observance, once supposed to be derived from direct
revelation from heaven to the Hebrews, are still found as arrested
developments among various savage and barbarous tribes; Comparative
Mythology and Folklore, by showing that ideas and beliefs regarding
the Supreme Power in the universe are progressive, and not less in
Judea than in other parts of the world; Comparative Religion and
Literature, by searching out and laying side by side those main
facts in the upward struggle of humanity which show that the
Israelites, like other gifted peoples, rose gradually, through
ghost worship, fetichism, and polytheism, to higher theological
levels; and that, as they thus rose, their conceptions and
statements regarding the God they worshipped became nobler and
better—all these sciences are giving a new solution to those
problems which dogmatic theology has so long laboured in vain to
solve. While researches in these sciences have established the fact
that accounts formerly supposed to be special revelations to Jews
and Christians are but repetitions of widespread legends dating
from far earlier civilizations, and that beliefs formerly thought
fundamental to Judaism and Christianity are simply based on ancient
myths, they have also begun to impress upon the intellect and
conscience of the thinking world the fact that the religious and
moral truths thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and legend
are all the more venerable and authoritative, and that all individual
or national life of any value must be vitalized by them.
If, then, modern science in general has acted powerfully to
dissolve away the theories and dogmas of the older theologic
interpretation, it has also been active in a reconstruction and
recrystallization of truth; and very powerful in this
reconstruction have been the evolution doctrines which have grown
out of the thought and work of men like Darwin and Spencer.
In the light thus obtained the sacred text has been transformed:
out of the old chaos has come order; out of the old welter of
hopelessly conflicting statements in religion and morals has come,
in obedience to this new conception of development, the idea of a
sacred literature which mirrors the most striking evolution of
morals and religion in the history of our race. Of all the sacred
writings of the world, it shows us our own as the most beautiful
and the most precious; exhibiting to us the most complete religious
development to which humanity has attained, and holding before us
the loftiest ideals which our race has known. Thus it is that, with
the keys furnished by this new race of biblical scholars, the way
has been opened to treasures of thought which have been
inaccessible to theologians for two thousand years.
As to the Divine Power in the universe: these interpreter's have
shown how, beginning with the tribal god of the Hebrews—one among
many jealous, fitful, unseen, local sovereigns of Asia Minor—the
higher races have been borne on to the idea of the just Ruler of
the whole earth, as revealed by the later and greater prophets of
Israel, and finally to the belief in the Universal Father, as best
revealed in the New Testament. As to man: beginning with men after
Jehovah's own heart—cruel, treacherous, revengeful—we are borne
on to an ideal of men who do right for right's sake; who search
and speak the truth for truth's sake; who love others as
themselves. As to the world at large: the races dominant in
religion and morals have been lifted from the idea of a "chosen
people" stimulated and abetted by their tribal god in every sort of
cruelty and injustice, to the conception of a vast community in
which the fatherhood of God overarches all, and the brotherhood of
man permeates all.
Thus, at last, out of the old conception of our Bible as a
collection of oracles—a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful in
wrangling interpretations, which have given to the world long and
weary ages of "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"; of
fetichism, subtlety, and pomp; of tyranny bloodshed, and solemnly
constituted imposture; of everything which the Lord Jesus Christ
most abhorred—has been gradually developed through the centuries,
by the labours, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of a long
succession of men of God, the conception of it as a sacred
literature—a growth only possible under that divine light which
the various orbs of science have done so much to bring into the
mind and heart and soul of man—a revelation, not of the Fall of
Man, but of the Ascent of Man—an exposition, not of temporary
dogmas and observances, but of the Eternal Law of
Righteousness—the one upward path for individuals and for nations.
No longer an oracle, good for the "lower orders" to accept, but to
be quietly sneered at by "the enlightened"—no longer a fetich,
whose defenders must be persecuters, or reconcilers, or
"apologists"; but a most fruitful fact, which religion and science
may accept as a source of strength to both.