Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, one of the great preachers of the last generation, thus speaks of the higher critics: 

“When I see ministers of religion finding fault with the Scriptures, it makes me think of a fortress terrifically bombarded, and the men on the ramparts, instead of swabbing out and loading the guns and helping to fetch up the ammunition from the magazine, are trying with crowbars to pry out from the wall certain blocks of stone, because they did not come from the right quarry.  Oh, men on the ramparts, better fight back and fight down the common enemy, instead of trying to make breaches in the wall.”

It is a deserved rebuke.  The higher critics throw ink at a Book that has withstood the assaults of materialists for centuries, and are vain enough to think that they can blot out its vital truths.  Although their labours against the Bible have consumed years, they expect the public to accept their conclusions at sight.  If they require so much time to formulate their indictment against Holy Writ, surely the friends of the Bible should be allowed as much time for the inspection of the indictment.

The destructive higher critic is, as a rule, opposed to revivals; in fact, it is one of the tests by which he can be distinguished from other preachers.  He calls the revival a “religious spasm.”  He understands how one can have a spasm of anger and become a murderer, or a spasm of passion and ruin a life, or a spasm of dishonesty and rob a bank, but he cannot understand how one can be convicted of sin, and, in a spasm of repentance, be born again.  That would be a miracle, and miracles are inconsistent with evolution.  It shocks the higher critic to have the prodigal son come back so suddenly after going away so deliberately.

Most of the higher critics discard, because contrary to the doctrine of evolution, the virgin birth of Jesus and His resurrection, although the former is no more mysterious than our own birth—­only different, and the latter no more mysterious than the origin of life.  The existence of God makes both possible; and the proof is sufficient to establish both.

If the higher critic will but come into the presence of Christ and learn of Him he will express himself in the language of the father (whose son had a dumb spirit), who, as recorded in Mark (9:24), “cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

If he would only mingle with humanity he might catch the spirit of the Master; if his sympathies were broad enough to take in all of God’s people, he would be so impressed with the religious needs of sinful man that he would hasten to break to him the “Bread of Life” instead of offering him a stone.  The Bible, as it is, has led millions to repentance and, through forgiveness, into life; the Bible, as the higher critics would make it, is impotent to save.

Enemies of the Bible have been “blasting at the Rock of Ages” for nearly two thousand years but in spite of attacks of open and secret foes, God still lives, and His Book is still precious to His children.