Modern Criticism And the Preaching of the Old Testament

, including in the latter His choice of Israel to be His ' Servant' to the world, His preparation for the advent of Christ, and His purposes of grace to all mankind. But in the second place, our Lord makes a great discrimination in His judgement of the Law and its ethical tempers, and teaches us to read the Old Testament as the record of a progressive revelation; while the Apostles bequeath to the Church unsolved all other problems of criticism, whether textual or historical. We must clearly recognise that our Lord did not count the whole of the Old Testament as equally Divine; that He set us an example of liberty in judging the facts whichit presents to us; and that the Criticism with which we have to deal ? whether it be the Lower Criticism or the Higher ? is not the product of the modern mind, looking at the Old Testament alone, but that some of the problems arise in Christ's own treatment of the Hebrew Scriptures, and that others leave the hands of His Apostles in an even more acute form than that in which they issue from the Old Testament itself. Starting, then, from these our chief authorities, the task of the following lectures is a double one. We have to inquire: first, how far Modern Criticism, in the use of the liberty which Christ exemplified, has succeeded in solving the problems bequeathed to the Church; and second, whether in solving them Modern Criticism tends to impair or to fortify our belief that the Old Testament contains a real revelation o... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.