III. After years of familiar acquaintance with Dr. Briggs

and his teaching, we are moved to utter our emphatic pro- test against the spirit and language with which, in so many cases, he has been assailed. If, in any of his writings, Dr. Briggs, as is charged, has wantonly offended the honest con- victions of good men, or has in any other way sinned against the ethical code of Christian scholarship laid down in the New Testament, it is not our business to defend him therein. He must answer for it to his own conscience and to God. But in the public discussion of matters of opinion, it is nei- ther right nor decent that an earnest, learned, devoted scholar and faithful teacher, even though mistaken, should be at- tacked with virulence, contemptuous flippancy, and imputa- tions of unworthy motive. In too many instances it seems to have been assumed that all the sacredness of personal con- viction is upon one side ; that a higher critic can have no convictions or rights which the lower critic or the uncritical censor is bound to respect ; and that the fact of his differing with them justifies his opponents in laying aside in discus- sion the character of Christian gentlemen.
"We know Dr. Briggs to be an earnest Christian, a devout student of the Bible, an indefatigable teacher and worker, and one who holds the standards of the Church with an in- telligence based on an exhaustive study of their history and literature. The numerous testimonies of his students during seventeen years prove that he inspires them with a deep reverence and enthusiasm for the Bible.
In like manner we protest against the matter and temper of the assaults on Union Seminary. By its history of over half a century, by the character, standing, and services of its graduates, and by the amount and value of its contributions
APPENDIX. 143
to Christian Literature, this Institution should be insured against such assaults. Its value to the Presbyterian Church needs no demonstration. From the days of Edward Bobin- son, the pioneer of Palestine exploration and the founder of American Biblical Lexicography, Union Seminary has stead- ily pressed forward on the lines of advanced Biblical study. Its Professors, in subscribing to the Westminster standards, have always been understood to do so with the concession of that measure of freedom which is the right of every Chris- tian scholar. They honor the venerable Confessions of past ages, but they place the Bible above the Confessions, and hold themselves bound, by their loyalty to Christ and to His Church, to follow the truth whithersoever it maj lead them. We assert and must insist upon the liberty exercised by the Keformers and by the early Church, to discuss the Scriptures freely and reverently and to avail ourselves of all the light which may be thrown upon them from any source. It is in the interest of God's truth to set forth Scripture as it is, and not to expose its friends and teachers to humilia- tion and defeat by claiming for it what cannot be substan- tiated. In the words of Ullmann, " Not fixedness nor revolu- tion, but evolution and reform, is the motto for our times." We maintain that human conceptions of the Bible and of its inspired teachings are subject to revision. To grasp the results of deeper research, and to apply them with caution, reverence, and boldness to the examination of Scripture is not only our privilege, it is our solemn duty in the discharge of the sacred trust committed to us by Christ and His Church. More light is yet to break from God's Word. We would be found ever upon the watch-towers to catch and to transmit its rays. No theological school can take any other attitude without neglecting its duty to the present age and losing its hold upon the rising generation of Biblical students. That such a method may dissipate or modify certain tradi- tional views as to the origin or date of the Books of Scrip- ture ; that it may expose and correct certain long-established
144 APPENDIX.
errors of interpretation ; that it may modify certain theo- logical dogmas, is only what is to be expected from similar results in the past. But we have no fear for the Bible. The Word of God will come forth from the fire of reverent criticism as fine gold, with a new accretion of testimony to its divine origin, and a new power of appeal to the world.
(Signed),
Thomas S. Hastings {President), Philip Schaff, George L. Prentiss, Marvin R. Vincent.
(Professor Francis Brown is at Oxford, superintending the publica- tion of his Hebrew Lexicon.)
THE AGREEMENT
BETWEEN
UNION SEMINARY AND THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
A CHAPTER SUPPLEMENTARY TO " FIFTY YEARS OF THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK.
BY
GEORGE L. PRENTISS,
Professor in the Institution.
NEW YORK: ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY,
38 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET.
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