THE lectures on the Book of Daniel were taken in shorthand and printed first some forty years ago, with a very slight correction in a later edition. It would be easy to fill up details and to improve their literary form. But as they are, they have helped not a few souls, and not least since Great Britain and the United States have been beguiled into their growing pursuit of that guilty and withering craze which calls itself cite “Higher Criticism.” What is it in the main but a revival of older British Deism, aided by devices of foreign unbelief, and decorated with modern German erudition or its home imitation? Vet all fail to conceal hostility to God's inspiration, and ceaseless effort to minimize real miracle and true prophecy, where, as in this country, they dare not yet deny them altogether.
The notorious Oxford Essays, which roused strong feeling in a former generation, are quite behind. Dissenters vie with Nationalists (Episcopalian or Presbyterian), Methodists with Congregationalists, and of late Ritualists with avowed Rationalists, in showing themselves up to date in freethinking; as if the revealed truth of God were a matter of scientific progress. What joy to all open infidels, who cannot but hail it as the triumph of their contempt for His word! It is not now profane men only, as in the eighteenth century, but religious professors, ecclesiastical dignitaries in the various bodies or so-called “churches” of Christendom, and particularly those who hold theological and linguistic chairs in the Universities and Colleges all over the world, who become increasingly tainted with this deadly infection. Alas! it is the sure forerunner of that “apostasy” which the great apostle, from almost the beginning of his written testimony, said must “first come” before the day of the Lord can “be present.”
Take, as a recent instance (and it is only one out of many in the conspiracy against Scripture), the present Dean of Canterbury's contribution on the Book of Daniel to the Expositor's Bible. Self-deception may hide much from its victims; but no believer should hesitate to say, “An enemy hath done this.” While claiming for the Book an “undisputed and indisputable” place in the Canon, think of the infatuation of denying openly and unqualifiedly its genuineness and its authenticity! “It has never made the least difference in my reverent (!) acceptance of it that I have for many years been convinced that it cannot be regarded as literal history or ancient prediction.” Yet such persons assume to be actuated simply by the love of truth; for this they confound with the counter-love of doubting. Alas! they are under “the spirit of error” (1 John 4:66We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:6)); or, as Jude so warns, “These speak evil of the things which they know not: but what as the irrational animals they know, in these things they corrupt themselves.” May the Christian keep Christ's word, and not deny His name! W. K.