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Religion and Modern Thought; And Other Essays
Religion and Modern Thought And Other Essays Author:T. W. Freckelton General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1893 Original Publisher: Philip Green Subjects: Apologetics History / General Religion / Christian Theology / General Religion / Christian Theology / Apologetics Religion / Christian Theology / Systematic Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. ... more »It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: GAINS TO THE BIBLE FROM MODERN CRITICISM. BY J. FREDERICK SMITH. ' No: I will retire up into the mountain, and hold secret commune with my Bible above the contagious blastments of prejudice and the fog-blight of superstition. For fear hath torment.' -- C BIBLICAL criticism is not an invention of yesterday, though as a science, and a science sanctioned and prosecuted by recognised leaders of the Jewish and Christian churches, it is modern. Jesus, according to Matt. v. 21-44; xii. 41, criticised the Law and the Prophets, while Paul and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews pronounce the Mosaic Law as at best but a temporary preparation for the Gospel. In the first centuries of Christianity the freest and boldest criticism of the Bible was employed by both orthodox and heretical Christians, either apologetically, by the most daring use of allegory, or negatively, by appeals to the higher teaching of the Spirit. With the Reformation of the sixteenth century, leaders like Erasmus and Luther amongst Catholics and Protestants, or like Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Frank amongst the sects, called in ques tion the genuineness, the inspiration, and the authority, either of passages, or of books, of the Old and the New Testaments. But it was not till the closing decades of last century that criticism became systematic,' as based on a clearly recognised principle, and followed according to strict method. The pr...« less