Some 'Higher Critics'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 27, 2 July 1903, Page 1

Some 'Higher Critics '

The ' scientific 'obb ' recalls to our mind by an. easy association of ideas an incident in the life of the illustrious American, Benjamin Franklin. During, and for a short period after, the American War of Independence, he represented his country at the French Court. His fame as a scientist and philosopher had preceded him, and he was made welcome at the reunions of the learned, world of Paris. Some of the ' higher critics ' of the day pin-pricked him with ridicule for his defence of the

Bible, and he determined to find out how many of the scoffers were merely ' scientific 'osses.' One day he notified one of the learned bodies that he had come across a beautiful story of ancient pastoral life, and that he would like the society's opinion of it. At the next gathering of critics, Franklin read to the expectant scholars a manuscript copy of the Book of Ruth They were enraptured with it, and clamored that it should be printed. <It is printed already,' Franklin replied ' and is a part of the Bible.' On another occasion the great American statesman and philosopher exposed a different coterie of ' scientific 'o&scs ' He copied and read to an assembly of frecthinking wits a curious and venerable •ancient poem.' This gathering of 'higher critics' greeted the relic of literary antiquity with profuse admiration. Volleyed superlatives were sandwiched between oagev> inquiries as to its authorship and the place and mode of its discovery. And then the philosophic tormentor informed his conceited dupes that the ' ancient poem was the third chapter of the prophecy of Habacuc —the beautiful prayer of the seer ' for ignorances '

Edward Clodd, Grant Allen, and other voluble and dogmatic retailers of the kind of < popu. lar science ' which is unscientific romance, are not alone not original investigators themselves, but they are unacquainted with the A B C* of scientific methods. And in the same way a goodly percentage of the common or garden variety of ' higher critics ' have, perhaps, scarcely a nodding acrmaintance with the Book which they presume (at second or third hand) to tear to pieces. The true scientist is a builder-up. At each step he makes sure that his work in well and solidly laid. Your shallow critic, who traflics at second or third hand in other men's findings or fancies, has not the constructive laculty. He is a mere anarchist, a puller-dtown, and commonly fastens upon (as the pair of worthies mentioned above do) and exaggerates the most extreme forms of the shifting theories of the moment and proclaims them not as theories, but as pro\en and dead-«ure facts of science which it would be a Kishineff atrocity to question or deny.