Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 59:234 (Apr 1902)
Article: The Case Of Professor Pearson.
Author: Anonymous

BSac 59:234 (April 1902) p. 379

The Case Of Professor Pearson.

The resignation of Professor Charles W. Pearson from the chair of English Literature in Northwestern University (Methodist Episcopal), at Evanston, III., is worthy of more than a passing notice. Professor Pearson had been brought up in the faith of the church which he was serving, and it had not been known that his faith was being undermined, until the publication of an extended communication, announcing the fact, in the Evanston Index of January 18, 1902. In this he states, that, while the Bible is to him still the “most precious of all books,” he has been led, with Hume and Strauss, “to recognize the mythical character of the biblical miracles,” and to regard the present preaching of his ministerial brethren as “evasive,” and present Sunday-school teaching as “inadequate and almost farcical.”

The apparent honesty and sincerity of Professor Pearson at once attracts attention and arouses sympathy, while the weakness of his position illustrates the danger which besets multitudes of sincere believers who have far less intellectual training than he. The network of errors and misconceptions in which he has become entangled can best be unraveled by starting from the opposite end of the problem from that at which he begins.

According to a most common error, Professor Pearson begins his consideration of the credibility of miracles with those which are least capable of direct proof, and which in themselves receive least support from the general presumptions of the case. The few examples of “tares among the Bible wheat” which he adduces begin with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and include the story of Elijah’s being fed by ravens, of Elisha’s making the ax to swim, and his multiplying the widow’s pot of oil and barrel of meal, of Peter’s deliverance from prison, of Jesus’ walking on the water, and his raising the son of the widow of Nain. All the Old Testament miracles he declares to be legendary and not historic, and reaches the conclusion that “it is impossible to draw any dividing line between the alleged miracles in the Old Testament and similar accounts in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.” He does not expressly deny the resurrection of Christ, but that miracle would logically be included in his general statements of denial.

It is easy to see that this method of approach is the reverse of the logical and natural order, and is calculated to obscure the force of the weightiest and most convincing arguments. The point at which Christian faith almost universally begins is at the resurrection of Christ, which is both the most stupendous and the most fully proved of all the miracles. It is proved, not only by the superabundant documentary evidence, but by its correlation to the deepest wants of the h...