amount of this is increasing villi N m .--tudy
and research; and the .signilic .inc.- ■:rnri;Uly attached to affinities between ininiiiiM ( lnisti- anity and other civilizations or rclitiionN i< ,iIso on the increase. (2) Tlie most manifest result of study in the field of history is to give a better knowledge of detail. But we must not allow ourselves to suppose that events occur disconnectedly, one by one, and that the mind of the scientific thinker imposes connexions upon them. Science does not create, it elicits the hidden law ; and anything that gives us greater knowledge of events increases
our knowledge of the relations in which they stand to each other. Facts ^-ithout theory are ' blind,' if theories without fact are 'empty.' The ideal goal of liistorical study, never, of course, to be reached, would be a scientific grasp of every past event in its full significance — reality completely reproduced in the historian's intelligence, tor the facts with which history deals are intelligent acts and intelligible processes. True, the unconscious tendency of the times may count for more than the conscious, perhaps selfish, ettbrt of the great man. Or what he does unwilluiglj-, as the execu- tive of Providence and the Zeitgci.it, may be the most significant and durable of all his acts. Yet history is man's story ; surely, then, man can read it !
3. The Christian study of Bible documents moves for great part of its way, though hardly to the very end [see below], upon historical lines. (1) Its admitted hermeneutioal ])rincii)le, since the days of Enie^ti (Instil „tio jHlrrpirtisXT, 1761), is tile 'gT.uniii.itiro-hi>torii;il ' -/.. . lilrnil and historical — nictliuil. Stri'-lly. r.-irli ^rntF-m-e has one mean- ing, and (iiily one— the iiii/.-niing its human author designed ; the meaning its first readers would naturally apprehend. This principle had to be laid down in face of the Church's age-long hanker- ing aft€r ' mystical ' interpretation. If the Scrip- tures may be allegorized, theology and faith itself rest upon a (juicksand. (2) Criticism of the text, by all its methods, aims at dis- covering, with as much probability as can be attained, the original form of words used by the writer in each passage. It has nothing to do — unless with supreme caution, as possible evidence to the fact — ^witli the question, which words appear to the student most seemly or most telling. Niiy, there is a recognized principle that 'the harder reading is probable ' ; thougli we must be able to discriminate the sort of ' difficult ' reading which suggests a powerful while perhaps erratic mind, from that which rather suggests a blundering copyist. (3) Careful study of the text leads to a further set of inferences, chiefly or entirely drawn from internal evidence, regarding probable date and probable authorship. This is the Higher Criticism — 'higher' because dealing with larger questions than those of the text. (4) Even in Biblical Theology ^^■e are still occupied with the historian's business. Before all things, we are re- producing past facts. Scripture includes great masses of doctrinal teaching ; the Biblical Theo- logian seeks to put these in shape, as they stand — the affirmations of such and such books, or teachers, or ages. The result aimed at is not Divine truth as such, but various Biblical teachings about the truth ; not a normative statement regarding reali- ties which are real, but a historical statement regarding what was held or announced to be spiritual reality ; historical, not dogmatic
i. An attempt was made by a great theological leader, Schleiermacher, to bring even dogmatic theology under the same rubric. It was to be a branch of Historical Theology. Ceasing to be (prim- arily) a statement of truth, it was to be a state- ment of what a certain Church in a certain age has come to hold for true. The suggestion was in- genious, and avoided certain difficulties ; but it led to other and worse difficulties. If Christian theology, in its central department, cannot pretend to set forth truth, it pruchiims it-t-lf bankrupt. It can live upon notliiiiu lr~> th.in ihr truths regard- ing God and lli> i.uip.i.,-, «lii(h He has been plea.sed to make know n to \i>.
5. What shall we say, then, of the remainder of the Biblical territory ? We were dealing, until the last paragraph, with stages in a process of historical study. We found that even doctrine was treated
HISTOEICAL
HISTORICAL
in Biblical Theology as a historical study, although on the systematic or dogmatic side it required us to occupy a different point of view from the historian's. But what are we to say regarding the history of Israel ? Or— coming closer to our ground — regarding the lifp ;is distim-t fmrn the tfar-hing of Jesus? Or, ill -.mh'I-:iI, n-nnlin-j; tlir ovi-ins of Christianity? I'lint whirl, \.,;,, liijhcr tliini man or than history li.-i^ appiariMl onn- h.r all iipoiL tlie plane of human history. Tin- Word brraiiic Jlcsh. Unless this be denied, we have come to a point where the contents of our study burst the bonds of ordinary historical investigation. Difficulty arises in two forms. First, there is the minor difficulty connected with physical miracles. Can history adjust itself to them ? If so, how ? If not, what are we to conclude? But, in the second place, substantially the same question, issuing in sub- stantially the same alternatives, repeats itself as regards the very kernel of the Christian faith. Have we in Christ, and, to a lesser decree, in His antecedents and enviroiuin'iit, a unic[ue Divine revelation, a unique Divine iiiliiii|>ti(in? Then how is the historian to di-al with i hi i^t '.'