The Free Church of Scotland has done a very foolish
thing in suspending one of the most orthodox of Biblical scholars, Professor Robertson Smith, who is, we believe on the Re- vision Committee of the Old Testament,—from his duties as a theological teacher, by a majority of 491 against 113, till the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of his Biblical views shall have been decided on. The chief charge against him is that in the " En- -cyclopedia Britannica " he treats certain passages in the Penta- teuch as non-Mosaic in their origin, because they contain obvious traces of much later times and institutions without even pretend- ing to prophecy in connection with them ; nor will any compe- tent scholar doubt for a moment that Professor Robertson Smith is right. To maintain the strictly Mosaic origin of the so-called Books of Moses, is to maintain, amongst many other things that Moses wrote the account of his own death and burial, and that too in the most nail historical way,—an assumption much harder to believe than the assumption that much which is in the Bible attributed to Moses was not due to his lips or to his pen. The only excuse for the Assembly of the Free Kirk is that Professor Smith almost invited his own suspension,—though not till after the Free Presbytery of Aberdeen should have reduced the charges against him to the form of a libel. In fact, as it seems to us, Professor Robertson Smith played to some extent into the hands of his foes. He was right to court inquiry, but not to court suspension pending the in- quiry. That was equivalent to saying,—" Prima fade, the case -against me is sufficient, though I believe I can explain it away," —an admission which would make that case all the more difficult to explain away.
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