GAINS TO THE BIBLE FROM MODERN CRITICISM.* BY J. FREDERICK SMITH. Biblical criticism is not an invention of yesterday, though as a science, and a science sanctioned and prosecuted by recognized leaders of the Jewish and Christian churches, it is modern. Jesus, according to Matt. v. 21-44, xii. 41, criticised the Law and the Prophets, while Paul and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews pronounce the Mosaic Law as at best but a temporary preparation for the gospel. In the first centuries of Christianity the freest and boldest criticism of the Bible was employed by both orthodox and heretical Christians, either apologetically, by the most daring use of allegory, or negatively, by appeals to the higher teaching of the Spirit. With the Reformation of the sixteenth century, leaders like Erasmus and Luther among Catholics and Prostestants, or like Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Frank among the sects, called in question the genuineness, the inspiration, and the authority, either of passages or of books, of the Old and the New Testaments. But it was not till the closing decades of last century that criticism became systematic, as based on a clearly recognized principle, and followed according to strict method. What, then, has this scientific criticism of the Bible done for it? Undoubtedly, it has revolutionized men's views of the book. To be sure, the lover of truth would have to be quite content if the clear result had been wholly unfavorable to its historical, religious, moral, and literary reputation and influence. He cannot love the Bible more than the truth. But, as a fact, the result is not of this kind. The Bible certainly loses much in some respects, but it gains more in others; and its losses are, for the most part, real gains. 1. First of all, criticism brings with it a certainty of its own such as was, after all, quite unknown in pre-critical times. Obviously, if the Bible is to tell us its message, From a series of "Theological Essays," published by the British and Foreign Unitarian Association of London, England. whether authoritatively or not, we must first have in our hands as pure a text as possible. Nothing but the criticism of manuscripts, versions, and so forth, can supply this text. Now, it is well known that the texts of both Old and New Testaments, which before the age of modern criticism were relied upon as the infallible Word of God, abounded in false readings.* The only certainty which people could feel as to their correctness reposed on the fond superstition that God had miraculously preserved the purity of the letter of his Word. The preliminary service which criticism has already rendered, and is seeking still further to render, is that of putting us into the possession of a text which may be deemed as nearly authentic as the text of ancient writings can be reasonably expected to be. This increased certainty which criticism confers attaches in a higher degree still to the interpretation of the Bible. The interpretation of sacred books has been everywhere and always a scandalous satire upon the dogma of their infallibility. Notoriously, the interpreters of these books have made them mean everything, and so practically nothing certainly. There is nothing too absurd or too degrading or too unjust, to protect the Bible from prostitution to its proof. Every church, every sect, every enthusiast, with its dogmas, its heresies, its extravagances, has quoted from Scripture and twisted Scripture in its own defence and to the discomfiture of all antagonists. The various pre-critical systems of Biblical interpretation all united in the one effort of converting the desired safe and sure anchorage of Scripture into the most instable and dangerous of quicksands. To all this unfixity of meaning criticism opposes the same measure of reasonable certainty as books generally, a measure of certainty belongs to the interpretation of ancient which is infallibility itself compared with the appalling vagaries and wild guesses of pre-critical interpreters. This service criticism has rendered by first of all putting an end to false and misleading theories as to the unique character and origin of the Bible, and to the authority of dogmatic systems in relation to its contents. Having established for the interpreter this freedom, *The margin of the revised English Bible, etc. it has gone on to apply the same principles of exegesis which have to be used to discover the meaning of the Vedas or Homer or Shakspere. By this means it has taught the Biblical student to think over again the thoughts and feel afresh the inspiration of the prophets, the psalmists, and the sages of Palestine. In pre-critical times, not only was the Law of Moses, but the whole Bible, a veil over men's minds, hiding from their view the great world of truth; and their own preconceived notions and absurd methods of interpretation, even a yet thicker veil over the face of the Bible. Criticism has taken both veils away, letting us see the beauty and glory of both the truth and the Bible. 2. Criticism has proved a better defence of the Bible than the ablest apologies in view of very serious charges against its historical, moral, and religious character. Beyond doubt there are passages and even whole books of the Bible which fall far below the highest standard of present morality and religion (e.g., Gen. xxxviii.; Num. xxxi.; 1 Kings i. and ii.; Psalm cxxxvii. 8, 9; Esther; Revelation ii. 26, 27, vi. 10, viii., ix., Matt. viii 28-33, xiii. 38-43; Mark ix. 42-48; Luke xvi. 1-12, 19-31, xviii. 1-8). It is also certain that the cosmography of the Old and New Testaments is hopelessly pre-scientific, and was, as a fact, for long a serious hindrance to the progress of science. Besides, it is too true that neither the Old nor the New Testament sufficiently appreciates the love of truth and knowledge for their own sake.. Consequently, enlightened and progressive minds, reading the Bible under the influence of pre-critical theories of its unity and general infallibility, have often assailed it with open hostility or contemptuously turned from it. They thereby saved their own souls, but with needless loss in manifold forms; and they wrong the Bible cruelly. The wrong and the loss it is the mission of criticism to prevent in future. By separating distinct documents and strata of tradition, by tracing the successive stages of moral and religious and social progress, and by estimating every moral and religious and every cosmographical view in accordance with the conditions of the time and place, Biblical "offences" of this nature practically cease. Nowadays we no more dislike the Bible than we dislike Homer on their account; and we are able to enjoy and profit from the high and perfect things on its pages in proportion as criticism enables us to distinguish and separate them from what is of inferior moral and religious value. For instance, in the two accounts of the creation we can drop the science of the Elohist, Gen. i. 1-ii. 4a, or of the Jahvist ii. 4b-25, and retain the religion and humanity of both. We can admire the story of David's patriotism, magnanimity, romantic heroism in Samuel, and yet condemn the implied standard of his morals and the superstition of his religion. We can place some Psalms or part of Psalms in our Prayer Books, and assign others their place among the records of the past. We may find in Luke's Gospel an Ebionite “source,” and so avoid laying to the charge of Jesus some questionable ethics and theology; we can appropriate the eternal truth (“God is love"), and pass by the temporal error ("We are of God") of such a chapter as 1 John iv.; we can do as Luther did, remove certain books from the position they once occupied in the Bible to a less honorable one at the end. So criticism really saves the Bible from rejection, and secures for what is religiously and morally best in it a lasting place in our reverence and affection, and for what is æsthetically venerable, natural, strong, and interesting in it an assured place in immortal literature. Henceforth it is a great and dear treasure. We may compare it with other sacred books, if we like, and even with other literatures generally, and see in what respects it is equal or inferior or superior to them. But such comparison ought never to be made with the view of depreciating other books and exalting it at their cost. Religions and literatures are not rivals, but allied revelations of God and man, having all alike their own peculiar defects and their own peculiar excellences. There are passages in the Bible which Plato could not have written, and passages in Plato quite beyond the reach of Hebrew or early Christian thought and aspiration. What in literature is good is good in itself, and not in rivalry with anything else. The great things in Isaiah, Job, the Psalms, Paul, and the Gospels, may indeed eclipse less perfect ones within the same books; but they do not come into competition with things on the same high level either within the Bible or in other ancient or modern writers. Pefect things are divine; and divinity knows no degrees, and, above all, knows no jealousy. honor and revere the greatest writers of the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures in a nobler way than our forefathers could do, and at the same time our own souls are set at liberty and elevated to a free spiritual communion with them on the heights where God and man are wont to meet. 4. By criticism, again, the literary characteristics and rank of the Bible have been ascertained and fixed. Previous to its labors, what is really a great literature and library was ignorantly lumped together as one book, or at most as two. Even the broad distinction between poetical and prose compositions was overlooked. The various forms of poetry and prose, of which the Hebrew half of the library preserve such fine, and in some cases unique, specimens, were not perceived. Lyrics, didactic poems, dramas, proverbs, were classed together, and were read without any regard to the special features, art, and purpose of these distinct kinds of poetry. The prose writings fared no better. The various forms of historical writing-chronicle, legend, prophetic or priestly story, or apocalyptic drama—were not recognized. The distinctive form and style, the origin, the collection, the transmission, of the oral addresses and the writings of the prophets of the Old Testament, are points of vital importance in their interpretation; and yet until modern criticism began its work no serious attention, was paid to them. The consequence was necessarily that the high literary qualities of Hebrew literature remained unrecognized, and one of the essential conditions of a true interpretation of it was unfulfilled. It was criticism in the hands of Lowth, Herder, Eichhorn, and Ewald which first fully brought out the distinctive features of the various classes of Hebrew literature, discovering the literary canons followed by each, and setting in a clear light the high excellence attained in most of them. By this means the exclusion of the Biblical books from the great life of human literature ceased; and they took their honored place among the treasured works of the world's poets, orators, sages, historians, novelists, and saints. 3. Criticism has recovered for the Bible its proper dignity and spiritual power by rescuing it from the debasement of an idol or fetich, and restoring it to its original human and divine form. The pre-critical notion of the Bible as throughout the inspired and infallible word of God converted, as Coleridge says, "this breathing organism, this glorious panharmonicon which I had seen stand on its feet as a man, and with a man's voice given to it, at once into a colossal Memnon's head, a hollow passage for a voice,―a voice that mocks the voices of many men, and speaks in their names, and yet is but one voice and the same; and no man uttered it, and never in a human heart was it conceived." To make anything, but especially a beautiful thing, an idol, is to debase it, and to make it what it is not, to use it for offices which it cannot perform, to disregard its proper qualities and functions, and all to the unhappy end of degrading mentally and morally the superstitious worshipper also. The degradation and wrong are immeasurably sad when a noble literature, "the precious life-blood of a glorious line of master-spirits, embalmed and treasured up to a life beyond life," is the victim of this superstition. Such bibliolatry commits the crime of which Milton speaks: "Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye." In saddest reality, pre-critical bibliolatry, by changing the books, "the precious lifeblood" of Hebrew prophets and psalmists, wise men and historians, and early Christian evangelists and apostles, into the automaton vehicles of superhuman and unearthly communications, killed the reason and the image of God therein reflected. Criticism has restored to life Isaiah and Job, Jesus and Paul. Once more we read their thoughts in their own language. They speak to us, and with us as living men speak to living men, and bring us into free spir- 5. By all this work upon the Bible critiitual communion with their God and ours cism has opened a way for it into the hearts in the truth and freedom of common sons of those whose finest instincts and deepest of God. By this restoration we come to convictions must be more or less hurt by the claims which were made on its behalf in pre-critical times. Happily, we have now very generally come to regard the love of the true, the beautiful, and the good, as the highest life of the soul, as spiritual religion. Nor can we any longer doubt that there is much in the Bible which is neither true nor beautiful nor good; and still less is it doubtful that to accept the claim once set up for it that it is the one perfect, infallible, and final revelation of what we must worship as true, beautiful, and good-involves the degradation and death of these ever-growing human ideals. So that, under pre-critical views of the Bible, it had already come to this, and must now have increasingly come to this, that the lover of the highest human ideals must either hurt his best life or hate the book which offends it. It was once dangerous for any, and is still inconvenient to many, to say they hate a sacred book; but, clearly, the open or veiled unsympathetic attacks upon the Bible which were SO common in the last century in England and Europe were inspired by a deep conviction that the book stood in the way of human progress toward truth, freedom, humanity, beauty. The man who loves these things better than books will honor the hatred that rose out of that conviction. But, happily, criticism has shown that the Bible did not deserve this hatred. It was only a pre-critical mistaken view of the nature and claims of the book which brought it into collision with human progress in all that is highest. So now, when criticism has taught us what Old and New Testaments are, and what can be rightfully claimed for them, it is only ill-informed people, who do not know the work of criticism, who dislike them. To Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, Matthew Arnold, all of them great leaders of thought and culture,—the Bible was dear for the truth, the beauty, the goodness, which it sets forth, and valued as one of the most powerful agents of human progress. Compare their attitude toward it with that of the English Deists, of the French Encyclopædists, and of the German Illuminists, or of Samuel Reimarus or Thomas Paine. The great representatives of the nineteenth century love the book, while the representatives of the eighteenth hated it: the first came after criticism had been at work, the latter just as it was beginning. As soon as the Bible was allowed to take its proper place in the great Bibliotheca of the world's literature,-that vast holy temple in which the divine voice speaks through all great souls and in all languages,-the ears and hearts of all lovers of truth and righteousness and greatness and tenderness were glad to receive its best words. The feud between man's best and its imperfections ceased. So it is now on the way once more to become "the Bible" of the highest culture, the collection of books which we could least well spare; though, thank God, the literatures of the world are not to be reduced to one, to the sad diminution of our means of grace. THE KINDERGARTEN IN THE SUNDAYSCHOOL.* BY CLIFTON HARBY LEVY. The feeling has been general among the superintendents of Sunday-schools that the methods of instruction in vogue are far from being effective. In no department has this been more keenly felt than in that devoted to the instruction of the youngest children. They attend the school with more or less (generally less) regularity; but what do they carry home with them? How little is only too evident to the teachers of the higher classes to which these children are sent later. It was from a consciousness of this fatal weakness in religious instruction, at the very point at which it should be strongest, that I determined to find some sane and natural mode of operation. Surveying the field of pedagogy, I found not a little upon the subject of the psychology of childhood; but nothing was more striking than that little book by G. Stanley Hall on the contents of the child's mind. It seemed to suggest the cause of our failure in religious instruction as clearly as it demonstrated the defects of our secular schools. The Sunday-school pupil is taught names and words, not thoughts. Every superintendent who is frank enough to tell himself the truth, has been often discouraged by the lack of effi *From the Outlook of Sept. 12, 1896. ciency on the part of his teachers, even after he had devised the very best methods. The problem then became twofold. Wanted, teachers and methods by which the dawning consciousness of childhood should be properly dealt with. The teachers of public schools were not what was required; for they are apt to bring into the Sundayschool the dry-as-dust, mechanical methods so generally employed in their daily work. They have given as little attention to the study of child nature and the avenues by which to reach it as most of the very willing and gushing maidens who would "so love to teach the little darlings" what they don't know themselves. Only one class of teachers appeared to fill the requirements as to methods of instruction and understanding of the nature of children, and that was the "kindergartner.” It is conceded by the most advanced of our pedagogues that Froebel was inspired by the true principles of teaching, and those trained according to his ideas are best equipped for instructing the very young. I was fortunate enough to find two trained kindergartners willing to attempt the work of applying their methods to religious teaching. Several young ladies of intelligence were secured as assistants, on account of the large number of children in the primary department. No attempt was made to transplant the "day kindergarten" into the Sunday-school room. These ladies had sufficient adaptability to utilize their mode of teaching upon newer material. Still there was no great rupture between the secular and religious instruction. It was but another proof of the soundness of Froebel's method that it was just as good on Sunday as on Monday, and required only some very simple additions. A Miss Beard had contributed a series of articles upon the "Kindergarten Sundayschool" to the Kindergarten Magazine, and republished the matter in book form; but this work was not found very helpful, attempting, as it appeared to us, to do too much. The announcement was made from the pulpit that a Sunday kindergarten would be opened; and a large number of children, ranging in age from four to six years, were registered upon the Sunday following. The teachers met together and arranged the lessons, the songs to be sung, the stories to be told, and the games to be played each week. It was thought best to retain the games as a very important element of the system, making the work attractive to the children. Such was proven to be the fact, for parents reported that, whereas they had to use no little persuasion upon the older children to attend regularly, the little ones were eager to come, and could hardly be kept at home in the stormiest winter weather. Thus the first obstacle to progress was overcome, and we had the class present with remarkable promptness and regularity. Every one who has given the matter any serious thought will gladly admit the good influence in training accomplished by this simple device. Naturally, the quietest games were used, and those having a close connection with the lessons taught. The kindergarten work was not attempted in the Sunday-school; but perforated cards were distributed each Sunday, bearing upon some special topic of the day, and returned worked in worsted on the following Sunday. The first effort made was to rouse the intelligence of the child, to make it think,-and not merely learn "golden texts." We wished to show it the golden texts of nature, that it might in later years be able to comprehend the words of the Bible. The regular kindergarten method of drawing out the child by question and answer was freely used; and we determined to teach it the first great law of religion, "God is love." It would have been very easy to have the words repeated so often that they became sounds, et praeterea nihil; but we desired to make them instinct with meaning. First the teachers drew out of each child what it knew or had heard about God, where he was, what he did for man, until they had sounded the childish mind, and had it eager for something more. Then the attempt was made to teach in the natural method, by induction. Seeds were brought to show the origin of plants, winged seeds illustrating the wonderful device for their dissemination. A bean which had been planted and allowed to sprout was brought to illustrate the act of growth; and the wonderful provisions of nature were explained in the utmost detail. This received careful attention, the development of details. It is not true that a child cannot appre |