The Bible and the Child Author:Washington Gladden, Lyman Abbott, F W Farrar Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. By Walter F. Adeney, M.a., PBOFESSOE OP NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS, HISTORY AND CRITICISM AT NEW COLLEGE. I Have no doubt that to many readers th... more »e suggestion that the Higher Criticism should be brought into any connection with the teaching of children must seem about as absurd as a proposal that Quain's " Anatomy" should be made up into reading-lessons for an infant class. The very association of the phrases is painfully incongruous. It should be remembered, however, that when we refer to the teaching of children we are not always thinking of the ABC lessons of lisping babes. There is more difference in mental grasp between a child of four years and a boy or girl of fourteen than there is between the latter and a man or woman of forty. Even young children have an awkwardhabit of springing upon us, in the most unconscious innocence, questions which persons who are acquainted with the results of the latest research can only answer honestly in the light of that research. This is the point. It is not to be supposed that any sensible people are eager to transform the rising generation into an army of critics. The judgment is the latest faculty to ripen ; with some of us it seems to remain green for a lifetime. To urge the exercise of it prematurely is only to rear an ugly crop of prigs. What, then, have children to do with the Higher Criticism ? I should say that their relation to it is concerned with the results rather than with the processes. Let us clearly understand what we mean by this often-repeated phrase, "the Higher Criticism." The angry style in which it is handled by the more ignorant ofthose people who take upon themselves to heap indiscriminate denunciation upon it would seem to imply that it is simply an indication of the self-conceit of its authors, wh...« less