The testimony of the psalm titles he does not regard as conclusive. He admits chronological difficulties and contradictions in the statements of historical facts. He concedes that we do not always hear God himself speaking in the Old Testament. Esther might well have been left out of the canon, and First Maccabees might have been included. If this is not criticism, what is? The case of Luther has been mentioned simply to show the absurdity of the claim that modern higher criticism is the outgrowth of German rationalism or English deism or infidelity; or that a man who pursues Old Testament study on the line of the higher criticism is necessarily an infidel, a rationalist, or a fool. True, there have been and are those out of sympathy with Christianity or the Bible who have employed critical methods in carrying on their anti-Christian warfare; but {82} such misuse of critical methods no more proves the illegitimacy of this process of investigation than the employment of a surgical instrument, which, in the hands of a skillful surgeon, may be the means of saving a diseased organism, by a murderer to carry out his destructive aim, would prove that the use of all surgical instruments is unscientific or criminal. The vast majority of the so-called higher critics do not deserve the denunciations heaped upon them by some who consider themselves sole defenders of the faith. Most of them are Christian men whose loyalty to Christ, whose devotion to the truth, and whose sincerity of motive no one has reason or right to question or doubt. It is exceedingly unfortunate that many writers have failed to recognize this fact. No one acquainted with the history of biblical criticism can accept the following as a true characterization of serious critics: "I mean by professional critic, one who spends his time and strength in trying to find some error or discrepancy in the Bible; and, if he thinks he does, rejoiceth as 'one who findeth great spoil'; who hopes, while he works, that he may succeed, thinking thereby to obtain a name and notoriety for himself."[10] In a similar spirit Sir Robert Anderson speaks of "the foreign infidel type of scholar ... as ignorant of man and his needs as a monk, and as ignorant of God and his ways as a monkey."[11] {83} Such abuse is unchristian, and no good can be accomplished by it. The truth of the matter is more adequately expressed by James Orr when he says: "There are, one must own, few outstanding scholars at the present day on the Continent or in Britain--in America it is somewhat different--who do not in greater or less degree accept conclusions regarding the Old Testament of the kind ordinarily denominated critical. Yet among the foremost are many whom no one who understands their work would dream as classing as other than believing, and defenders of revealed religion."[12] Then, after mentioning a number of scholars, he describes them as "all more or less