Those who reject the Bible even disparage the testimony which the Saviour bore to the inspiration of the Old Testament, and yet what could be more explicit than His words?  “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).

As Canon Liddon says: 

“For Christians, it will be enough to know that our Lord, Jesus Christ, set the seal of His infallible sanction on the whole of the Old Testament.  He found the Hebrew canon as we have it in our hands to-day, and He treated it as an authority which was above discussion.  Nay, more; He went out of His way—­if we may reverently speak thus,—­to sanction not a few portions of it which modern scepticism rejects.”

Besides open enemies, the Bible has enemies who are less frank—­enemies who, while claiming to be friends of Christianity, spend their time undermining faith in God, faith in the Bible, and faith in Christ.  These professed friends call themselves higher critics—­a title which—­though explained by them as purely technical—­smacks of an insufferable egotism.  They assume an air of superior intelligence and look down with mingled pity and contempt upon what they regard as poor, credulous humanity.  The higher critic is more dangerous than the open enemy.  The atheist approaches you boldly and tries to blow out your light, but, as you know who he is, what he is trying to do and why, you can protect yourself.  The higher critic, however, comes to you in the guise of a friend and politely inquires:  “Isn’t the light too near your eyes?  I fear it will injure your sight.”  Then he moves the light away, a little at a time, until it is only a speck and then—­invisible.

Some who have used the title “higher critic” have approached their subject in a reverent spirit and laboured earnestly in the vain hope of satisfying intellectual doubts, when the real trouble has been with the hearts of objectors rather than with their heads.  Religion is a matter of the heart, and the impulses of the heart often seem foolish to the mind.  Faith is different from, and superior to, reason.  Faith is a spiritual extension of the vision—­a moral sense that reaches out toward the throne of God and takes hold of verities that the mind cannot grasp.  It is like “the blind leading the blind” for a higher critic, however honest, to rely on purely intellectual methods to convey truths that are “spiritually discerned.”

As a rule, however, the so-called higher critic is a man without spiritual vision, without zeal for souls and without any deep interest in the coming of God’s Kingdom.  He toils not in the Master’s vineyard and yet “Solomon in all his glory” never laid claim to such wisdom as he boasts.  He does not accept the Bible nor defend it; he mutilates it.  He puts the Bible on the operating table and cuts out the parts that he thinks are “diseased.”  When he has finished his work the Bible is no longer the Book of books:  it is simply “a scrap of paper.”