THE CASE OF PROFESSOR ROBERTSON SMITH.
IT is a curious instance of the difference that still exists between the northern and southern parts of this island, that a case which for a year past has been followed with the greatest interest in Scotland, and is at this moment creating a wide-spread excite- ment there, should have been scarcely mentioned in an English newspaper, and certainly never reported in the London daily press. Scotch ecclesiastical affairs are proverbially incompre- hensible to Englishmen, but the questions involved in this case have nothing specially Scotch about them, but are of import- ance to all Protestant Churches alike. And in Scotland they are watched with scarcely less anxiety by members of the other Presbyterian bodies than by those of the Free Church, before whose tribunals the trial is proceeding. Looking on the matter as one of universal consequence to every Protestant Church, we propose to state shortly what are the points involved, and how they are being dealt with.
The question turns upon the limits within which enquiry is to be permitted as to the date, authorship, and historical accuracy of the writings which compose the Bible. Mr. Robertson Smith is a professor in the Free Church College at Aberdeen, and one of the Old Testament Company of Revisers of the Authorised Version, a man whose brilliant abilities and profound learn- ing are ungrudgingly admitted even by his adversaries. He is accused in respect of several articles contributed by him to the new edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," and to several reviews ; and in particular of the article, "Bible," in the " Encyclopaedia." And the main charge against him is that in these writings he has dealt with Scripture in a way which controverts the doctrines of its inspiration and infallible authority as laid down in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which, it need hardly be said, is the recognised doctrinal standard of all the Presbyterian Churches, agreeing in the main with the Confes- sions of the Calvinistic Churches of the Continent and the Articles of the Church of England. For instance, he is said to have represented the Aaronic priesthood as post-Mosaic ; to have expressed the view that the Book of Deuteronomy did not receive its present shape till long after the time of Moses, probably not till after Solomon ; to have " represented the sacred writers as taking freedoms and committing errors like other authors ;" to have denied the so-called " spiritual interpretation " of Canticles, and treated that book as only a love-poem ; to have disparaged the predictive element in the Old Testament prophecies, by laying stress rather on the spiritual insight of the prophets, and the value of their teaching as addressed to their own contemporaries ; and generally, in fact, to have applied to the Bible the same critical methods and canons of interpretation as are applied to other ancient books. To these charges Mr. Robertson Smith has replied in a printed defence of great argumentative and literary power, in which he sets out what he conceives to be the true doctrine of the Confession of Faith respecting inspiration and the authority of Scripture. He examines its terms to show that under it full liberty is left to the scholar to discuss the books of Scripture from a critical and literary point of view, and that their divine authority, as well as their practical religious and moral value, are irrespective of any conclusions which may be reached regarding their authorship, or the accuracy of such historical statements on matters of fact as they may contain. He insists, therefore, that he has not transgressed that liberty, but is really dealing with the Bible in the spirit of the older divines, those in particular of the Reformation era, and in the only spirit which is compatible with philological and historical research.
As the case is now proceeding before the Ecclesiastical Court of First Instance, whence it will no doubt be carried to the General Assembly, we do not propose to discuss the question whether his mode of handling the Bible is permitted by the standards of his own Church. It is due to every Court that matters actually sub judice should not be prejudged by the Press, which can hardly help looking at them from a point of view not strictly judicial. There seems reason to believe that he will have a fair trial, and we have little sympathy with those who hold that a clergyman who substantially and seriously disagrees with the doctrines of the Church he belongs to, as set forth in her standards, may take advantage of any technical difficulty in the way of convicting him to remain within her pale. That is a view which some of the decisions of the Privy Council have pushed further than the common-sense and general feeling of the Anglican Church approves, defensible as it no doubt is on merely legal grounds. If Professor Smith has contradicted the recognised doctrines of his Church, by all means let him be convicted and deposed. He has made a frank defence, avowing his opinions with a candour which implies that he would seek no aid from any subterfuge ; and he is not accused, or even suspected, of basing any doctrinal error upon his critical conclusions. But there is one point connected with the case to which we may with- out offence call attention, and that is the sort of sup- plemental charge made against Professor Smith's opinions, of being " in themselves of a dangerous and unsettling tendency " of displaying a " neutrality of attitude in re- lation to- the doctrines of the inspiration and truth of Scripture," and a " rashness of statement regarding the critical construction " of the Bible. These charges are, of course, alternative to the graver one of contradicting the standards, and evince the design of endeavouring to procure a conviction in an indirect way when that direct charge has failed. Now nothing can be more dangerous or unfair than a charge of " tendency." It cannot be met or refuted, because it is an impalpable kind of thing which is irreducible to logical proof, and is interpreted by every man in his own way. It is a charge which has been employed during every age in ecclesiastical controversy to discredit opinions, by representing consequences as involved in them which their holder probably repudiates and may never be led to adopt. When it is admitted, the judicial character of an ecclesiastical process disappears at once, and the trial becomes merely an appeal to prejudice and tradition, or to the momentary persuasion of a popular majority. All the greater Protestant Churches fortunately extend to their members the protection of living under ancient standards of faith which state explicitly the doctrines to be received as essential, and therefore define for a clergyman or theological professor the obligations he incurs by taking office. That protection is lost, if views which cannot be shown to contradict the standards, either in letter or in spirit, are condemned because the opinion of a par- ticular ecclesiastical tribunal finds them novel, and thinks that they disturb the conventional interpretations in which it had grown accustomed to acquiesce. Such a charge would, of coarse, fall to the ground at once in a regular Court like the Privy Council. We hope that the Scotch tribunals, which, although popular in their constitution, are not wanting in a legal habit of mind, will perceive the dangers involved in admitting it. To draw the bonds of Church authority and tradition tighter than the ancient standards have drawn them, would be to imitate the fatal policy which the Church of Rome has followed during the last three centuries and a half, without even that theoretical justification which she claims, and would go far to alienate from the existing Churches the interest and hopes of the educated laity. While a Church acknowledges certain written and formal standards, she has a right to try by them those who are accused of overstepping the limits they fix. But to set up popular opinion as a further standard would be not only to do a grave injustice to individuals, but have the most pernicious results on the future of the Church which should take such a course. Within its bounds, theological thought and learning will be reduced to silence, perhaps to hypocrisy. Able and earnest men will no longer enter its ser- vice. That notion of a necessary antagonism between criticism and Christianity which has struck such deep roots in Roman Catholic Europe, will spread into countries where Protestantism has hitherto clung to the principle that every man's duty is to seek truth by the use of the faculties he has received, and to the belief that neither the Bible nor any doctrine can suffer by the applica- tion of the recognised methods of critical and scientific inquiry. It is not too much to say that the future of theology in Scotland seems at present to depend upon the spirit in which the tribunals by whom Professor Smith is being tried approach his case.
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