These four were accepted by common consent by the voice of the Church, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit (as we believe); accepted and handed down to future generations as embodying the faith once delivered to the saints. But it is probable that the earliest of these Gospels was not written until some thirty-five years after the Crucifixion. And though we believe the author to have been moved by the Holy Ghost to undertake his work, and though we rely on the Divine guidance in his presentation of the Gospel of Christ, we do not regard him as an infallible annalist. He had to use the materials that came to his hand, he had to piece them together with such skill as he possessed, and to reconcile as best he might the discrepancies of existing documents. However well he did his work, we need not be surprised if details are out of place. We are quite prepared to find in his records such inaccuracies as Mr. Mallock refers to. Yet we are not disquieted. We welcome the assistance of scholarship, criticism, and of commonsense, yet we continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and are not moved away from the hope of the Gospel which we have received. All Saints' Vicarage, Margaret Street. W. ALLEN WHITWORTH. 3 D VOL. LVI-No. 333 MR. MALLOCK AND THE BISHOP OF WORCESTER [To the Editor of the NINETEEnth Century. Dear Sir JAMES,—I have seen an article in the NINETeenth Century for September on Free Thought in the Church of England.' It gives so strange a misrepresentation of my teaching and views that it appears to be doing mischief. A capable clergyman in this diocese, used to literary work, the Rev. H. MAYNARD SMITH, Shelsley-Beauchamp Rectory, Worcester, proposes to compile a brief article, chiefly, he tells me, consisting of extracts, showing that my teaching is something quite different. I would venture to ask that you should admit such an article. Bishop's House, Worcester, I. MR. MALLOCK'S ARTICLE C. WIGORN. MANY of the unlearned have been shocked beyond measure in reading Mr. Mallock's article on 'Free Thought in the Church of England.' They know but little of the Bishop of Worcester. Those acquainted with his writings have been shocked also. Mr. Mallock's article fills them with amazement. The more charitable suppose that he has not read the works he professes to criticise, and built up his theories as to what the Bishop believes from isolated sentences supplied to him by another. We have long been accustomed to the way in which some Biblical critics make an arbitrary selection of a certain number of texts, reconstruct history from them, and assume that all which does not square with their theories must needs be spurious. The methods that have proved so destructive (?) to the works of dead Evangelists Mr. Mallock has been bold enough to apply to a living Bishop. He has selected, or been supplied with, a few texts; he has fabricated his theories. But is he prepared to go on, and contend that the fifteen volumes and more that bear the Bishop of Worcester's name are not of his writing and do not represent his opinions? If not, we will proceed to show that Mr. Mallock has been the victim of a most delusive method. II. MR. MALLOCK'S METHOD The right to handle quotations freely and quite apart from their context is largely exercised by subjective critics; and of this right, or supposed right, Mr. Mallock has availed himself. He gives no references; but on p. 249 of Lux Mundi1 I stumbled on the following sentence: All that is necessary for faith in Christ is to be found in the moral dispositions that predispose to belief, and make intelligible and credible the thing to be believed: coupled with such acceptance of the general historical character of the Gospels, and with the trustworthiness of the other Apostolic documents, as justifies belief that our Lord was actually born of the Virgin Mary, manifested as the Son of God' with power according to the Spirit of holiness,' crucified, raised again the third day from the dead, exalted to the right hand of the Father, the Founder of the Church and the source to it of the informing Spirit. ~ Such a sentence, apart from its context, is, we must admit, hard to understand. We will hope that Mr. Mallock did not refer to such context. He treats it in a way that would do credit to a professor of exegesis in a Dutch university. He takes it to pieces, quotes it in bits, builds up a theory, and arrives at a conclusion that is utterly subversive of the Bishop of Worcester's teaching. Keeping this sentence in mind, let us follow Mr. Mallock's argument. He maintains that, according to the Bishop of Worcester, all the New Testament miracles may be explained away as 'ideas not coincident with fact,' four only being excepted and placed on a different footing. These are Christ's Virgin Birth, His Divinity, His Resurrection, and Ascension. (The reader will discover in a moment Mr. Mallock's authority for this statement.) He goes on: The belief in the objective reality of these four miracles, which are for them (Drs. Sanday and Gore) the irreducible and distinctive essence of Christianity, has, they say, no direct dependence on the evidence of the Gospels whatsoever. Belief in them rests primarily to quote the Bishop of Worcester's words—'on certain moral dispositions which predispose to belief, and make acceptable and credible the thing to be believed.' There for the present Mr. Mallock stops short, for to quote the clause coupled with' the one he has quoted would nullify his interpretation of the Bishop's meaning. According to Mr. Mallock the Bishop's words refer to the four miracles. As a matter of fact, the Bishop is in a periphrasis describing what St. Paul summed up in the one word 'faith.' No matter! By changing the subject of the clause, and by isolating it from the rest of the sentence, Mr. Mallock has a text; from it he elaborates an apology for miracles, and attributes it to the Bishop. He proves it to be absolutely absurd-as it All the quotations are from the twelfth edition. is; but he lets the Bishop down lightly-it is 'less absurd than it looks.' When Mr. Mallock has time he may read Dr. Gore's second Bampton Lecture, and compare the Bishop's apology for miracles with the one he has so obligingly invented for him. But if Mr. Mallock has made much out of the wording of the first clause, he does better with the rest of the sentence that should have been coupled with it.' He represents the first clause as the Bishop's apology for miracles, and quotes a part of the second clause as if it were the conclusion of the Bishop's argument: The Bishop of Worcester [he writes] will not allow it (the Christian faith) to be tampered with; it simply means, he says, after all-what? Nothing more than 'such an acceptance of the Gospels, and the trustworthiness of the Apostolic documents, as justifies the belief that our Lord was actually born of the Virgin Mary, manifested as the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, crucified, raised again the third day, and exalted to the right hand of the Father.' It will be noted how the purport of the sentence has been altogether altered by the adroit insertion of the words 'nothing more than.' It is an artistic triumph in the way of misrepresentation! By the insertion of these three words he commits the Bishop to the statement that neither Gospels nor Apostolic documents are trustworthy, except in as far as they justify what he calls the four miracles' and the Crucifixion. It will be noted, also, that he omits to quote the conclusion of the sentence. Why? Because it would prove the Bishop to believe in six miracles, and not in four. Would the reader be surprised to learn that Mr. Mallock has no other authority for saying that the Bishop only believes in four miracles than this sentence that he has so skilfully misquoted? Yet such is the case. Would the reader be surprised to learn that the sentence we have been considering has no reference to any argument as to miracles at all? Yet that is the case too. The Bishop is attempting to determine the relation of Inspiration to the other doctrines of the Christian faith. He maintains that the doctrine of Inspiration is not among the bases' of the Christian religion. The bases are faith in Christ (Clause 1), and an acceptance of the historical character of the fundamental facts of the Creed (Clause 2). It is not, the Bishop argues, until a man has got so far that he will be interested in determining the mode in which the Holy Spirit has worked to present and to preserve the evidence. I have lingered rather long over this quotation; but it is pleasanter to trace the method of these 'critical' ingenuities than to deal with crude statements in flat contradiction to the truth. Alas! to such we must come before we close. 2 The italics are mine. III. THE BISHOP'S BELIEFS Having given an example of Mr. Mallock's critical method, let us go on to test how far he fairly represents the Bishop's views on (1) the Old Testament, (2) the Fall, (3) the Gospels, and (4) the Miracles of our Lord. 1. Here is Mr. Mallock's summary of the Bishop's views on the Old Testament. It begins with mere myths and legends, and then develops into very inaccurate history, associated with a series of doubtful and negligible prodigies and prophecies, "whose (sic) inspira❤ tion is consistent with erroneous prediction." This sentence does not express the Bishop's views as he would like to have them stated; but coming, as it does, from an unfriendly controversialist, anxious to score points, it is only unfair, and not untruthful. Mr. Mallock has only tampered with one word—the most important—in making his short quotation. The word 'prediction' is a substitution by Mr. Mallock. The reader, however, may be advised to consult the essay on Inspiration in Lux Mundi if he wishes to see how the Bishop defines a myth (p. 262), how far the Bishop admits of inaccuracy in the history, and what the Bishop means when he says, 'prophetic inspiration is consistent with erroneous anticipations as to the circumstances and the opportunity of God's revelation, just as the Apostolic inspiration admitted of St. Paul expecting the coming of Christ in his own lifetime' (p. 254). The reader would also do well to read the Bishop's preface to the tenth edition of Lux Mundi, where he states his 'conviction that it was with the more conservative of the recent critics, and not with the more extreme, that the victory would lie' (p. xvi). It is also well to remember that these words were written in 1890, and that critics whom the Bishop then condemned for 'controversial arbitrariness and irreligious insolence' are now looked on in advanced circles as very moderate men. Has Mr. Mallock any evidence to prove that the Bishop's views on Old Testament criticism have advanced with the advancing years? ... The following quotation may be of interest: The revelation of God was made in an historical process. Its record is in large part the record of a national life: it is historical. Now, the inspiration of the recorder lies . . . primarily in this, that he sees the hand of God in history and interprets His purpose. Further, we must add that his sense of the working of God in history increases his realisation of the importance of historical fact. Thus there is a profound air of historical truthfulness pervading the Old Testament record, from Abraham downward. . . . But does the inspiration of the recorder guarantee the exact historical truth of what he records? And in matters of fact can the record, with due regard to legitimate historical criticism, be pronounced true?' To the latter question the Bishop replies, 'yes,' to the former, 'no,' because 'inspiration did not consist in a miraculous communication of facts' (Lux Mundi, pp. 258, 259). |