“In fact, the Bible is a mixture of truth and error, good and bad, wise and unwise. It contains myths, legends, and fables, just as all the so-called sacred books of the world religions contain such a mixture. The Bible must in many cases be interpreted allegorically and figuratively, deducing only moral and spiritual lessons. You must not swallow everything in the Bible as true, but must make careful discrimination. You must separate what is true from what is untrue, and what is good from what is bad. You must search and find out for yourself what part of the Biblical history is authentic, and what part of it is not, who are the true persons, and who are the imaginary ones, using reason and common sense, just as when reading all other books written by men.” This is what I was taught by Higher Criticism and New Theology. According to my orthodox faith I had looked upon the Bible as the perfect, revealed Word of God, and as a supreme Judge sitting on the bench giving an infallible judgment upon all matters pertaining to the spiritual as well as the moral welfare of man. This judgment I had looked upon as final, with no one to dispute it. I sat before the Bible as a client or petitioner waiting for a final decision. Now came Higher Criticism and turned everything upside down and said, “No, you are not the petitioner, you yourself are the judge. You must sit upon the bench of the supreme judge and pronounce your judgment upon the contents of the Bible, as to whether it is true or untrue, good or bad, applicable or inapplicable. The Bible, as all other books, must become a petitioner before you, and your reason.” So you see the Bible was in this way dragged down from the seat of the supreme judge to the place of the petitioner, and man with his reason and common sense was exalted to the seat of the judge. What authority can such a Bible have over a man when he has to choose from its contents whatever seems good or suitable for his purpose, and whatever does not seem so he has a right to discard? Do you think such a Bible can command us to “meditate therein day and night,” and “turn not from it to the right hand or to the left”? What becomes of those precious promises of God in the Bible if they are not the word of God in a true and exact sense? In the Old and New Testaments there are more than thirty thousand promises, and they have been life and joy and strength to Christians for nineteen centuries. But if these are not really the promises given by God himself, but only the opinions and conjectures of human beings, how can we trust them? Do you think we can build the absolute religion of the world upon so fickle and unstable a foundation as this? The Bible of the Higher Critics is not rock, but sand, and a house built upon it must fall, and great will be the fall thereof.