The Capacity of Criticism
The discussion of the results of criticism on its own ground properly belongs to the learned only. But if few comparatively are able to handle the details of criticism from an independent stock of knowledge, every plain man is as competent as the most acute critic to form a judgment as to whether the criticism of the critic falls within the limit his capacity prescribes.
The knowledge which has given the critic his position in one sphere will tempt him to assume the capacity of a critic in all. But criticism attempted beyond that for which there is capacity witnesses only to its own incapacity, and is no longer criticism but ignorant pretension. To borrow an illustration from another: “With all respect for their skill in what mentally is very interesting, if they go beyond it they are simply sutor ultra crepidam. I suppose for some I must translate the rebuke given by the Rhodian sculptor to the cobbler who could show that the shoe on the statue was not rightly made, and famous by correcting. the work of a renowned artist, would go further and judge, the work, but was only the cobbler beyond his last. With the existence of creation or of the laws which govern it, they have nothing to do. They may investigate these laws where they exist; if they go beyond them, I say, Ne sutor ultra crepidam."
These are the confines to the judgment of the critic, beyond which he cannot without exposing his ignorant pretension assay to judge. And it is to these fixed limits to the validity of the judgment of the critic that we would seek to direct attention.
Can the line be drawn, we would inquire, to which, criticism is just and valid, and beyond which it becomes self judged? The answer must be, Certainly, if the sphere of the knowledge which is made the basis of judgment is defined, and the quality of that which it assays to criticize is absolutely determined.
If the Scriptures prove themselves to be God's word, a profession of inability to receive or appreciate them as such, witnesses to no more than this,—that he who urges such inability proclaims his own blindness and incapacity of heart and mind to know that which is divine.
We may consider then (1) the province within which the exercise of the critic's judgment may be fully recognized, (2) the evidence that the Scriptures contain within themselves the proof that they do possess communications that are indisputably divine, and (3) that upon which the recognition and appreciation of that which is divine depends.
The criticism that the contents of Scripture meet may with advantage be considered under three divisions, (1) scholastic, (2) textual and (3) higher criticism, according to the kind of researa that is used as the basis of criticism.