Some who have used the title "higher critic" have approached their subject in a reverent spirit and laboured earnestly in the vain hope of satisfying intellectual doubts, when the real trouble has been with the hearts of objectors rather than with their heads. Religion is a matter of the heart, and the impulses of the heart often seem foolish to the mind. Faith is different from, and superior to, reason. Faith is a spiritual extension of the vision--a moral sense that reaches out toward the throne of God and takes hold of verities that the mind cannot grasp. It is like "the blind leading the blind" for a higher critic, however honest, to rely on purely intellectual methods to convey truths that are "spiritually discerned."
As a rule, however, the so-called higher critic is a man without spiritual vision, without zeal for souls and without any deep interest in the coming of God's Kingdom. He toils not in the Master's vineyard and yet "Solomon in all his glory" never laid claim to such wisdom as he boasts. He does not accept the Bible nor defend it; he mutilates it. He puts the Bible on the operating table and cuts out the parts that he thinks are "diseased." When he has finished his work the Bible is no longer the Book of books: it is simply "a scrap of paper."
The higher critic (I speak now of the rule and not of the exceptions) begins his investigations with his opinion already formed. After he has discarded the Bible because he cannot harmonize it with the doctrine of evolution, he labours to find evidence to support his preconceived notions. In matters of religion the higher critic is usually a "dyspeptic." The Bible does not agree with him; he has not the spiritual fluids in sufficient quantity to enable him to digest the miracle and the supernatural. He is a doubter and spreads doubts.
Dr. Franklin Johnson, in Volume 2, of "Fundamentals" says (pages 55, 56, 57): "A third fallacy of the higher critics is the doctrine concerning the Scriptures which they teach. If a consistent hypothesis of evolution is made the basis of our religious thinking, the Bible will be regarded as only a product of human nature working in the field of religious literature. It will be merely a natural book."...