Excerpt from The Newer Criticism and the Analogy of the Faith: A Reply to Lectures by W. Robertson Smith, M.A., On the Old Testament in the Jewish Church It is true the author of these lectures claims it as the great value of historical criticism that it makes the Old Testament more real to us but if the reality be as it is represented in this outline, we are brought face to face with the fearful alternative of accepting as the word of God a palpable forgery claiming to be divinely inspired, or of rejecting it as a mockery and a fraud. To use the language of the author (p. 309) in reference to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, if we are shut up to choose between such a theory of the origin and composition of the books of the Bible, and the sceptical opinion that the Bible is a forgery, the sceptics must gain their case. The fact is, the theory leaves no room for choice; for, as it is set forth in these lectures, it is simply an elaborate and detailed account of the way in which a guild of men availed themselves of a meagre historical outline to give an air of antiquity and authority to practices and doctrines which were either unknown and unheard of within the historical limits to which they have been fraudulently referred, or were, in ruder forms, denounced by the prophets of Jehovah, who, after authorizing His prophets to utter the denunciation, reversed His judgment, and gave his sanction to the doctrines and practices previously denounced'

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