_"My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure." Isa, xlvi.
10._


The attitude which God's people should assume toward destructive
criticism has been questioned. It should certainly be a position of calm
patience, that can deliberately weigh valid testimony, and abide by the
decision of intelligent judgment. The history and life of the Church for
nearly two thousand years should go for something. They are not to be
swept away by the bluff, the egoism of what claims to be the only
"Expert Scholarship."

There is no occasion for a panic. Truth that has been, and has builded
noble, goodly life, is truth still, and ever will be. It is not a time
for denunciation. The assumptions of the destructive critics are so
enormous, so radically revolutionary, so directly aimed at vital truth,
that one's heart is stirred. There is danger of yielding to the heat of
a righteous indignation. It is not well to lose one's intellectual and
moral poise, even in a contest involving the honor of God and the
welfare of immortal souls. But "he that believeth shall not make haste."

The lovers of the Book that has safely passed through every storm of
antagonism that the Prince of Darkness could evoke, need not now be
moved to hasty utterance. The eternal foundations of truth, like him who
laid them, are "the same, yesterday, to-day and forever." The Book, with
all its precious doctrines, is here to stay. It can not be destroyed.
Fire has not burned it, water has not quenched it, the edicts of tyrants
and popes have not been able to break its power. The Church of God can
calmly rest on "the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." (1
Peter i. 23.) Hence we may calmly move on undisturbed in our work.