Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

3IO FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.
with the Son of God?" They then shut their gates, defy-
ing patriarch, council, and Czar, until, after a struggle lasting
seven years, their monastery was besieged and taken by
an imperial army. Hence arose the great sect of the " Old
Believers," lasting to this day, and fanatically devoted to the
corrupt readings of the old text.*
Strange to say, on the development of Scripture inter-
pretation, largely in accordance with the old methods,
wrought, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, Sir
Isaac Newton.
It is hard to believe that from the mind which produced
the Principia, and which broke through the many timehonoured
beliefs regarding the dates and formation of scriptural
books, could have come his discussions regarding the
prophecies ; still, at various points even in this work, his
power appears. From internal evidence he not only discarded
the text of the Three Witnesses, but he decided that
the Pentateuch must have been made up from several books ;
that Genesis was not written until the reign of Saul ; that
the books of Kings and Chronicles were probably collected
by Ezra ; and, in a curious anticipation of modern criticism,
that the book of Psalms and the prophecies of Isaiah and
Daniel were each written by various authors at various
dates. But the old belief in prophecy as prediction was
too strong for him, and we find him applying his great
powers to the relation of the details given by the prophets
and in the Apocalypse to the history of mankind since
unrolled, and tracing from every statement in prophetic
* The present writer, visiting Moscow in the spring of 1894, was presented by
Count Leo Tolstoi to one of the most eminent and influential members of the sect
of " Old Believers," which dates from the reform of Nikon. Nothing could ex-
ceed the fervor with which this venerable man, standing in the chapel of his superb
villa, expatiated upon the horrors of making the sign of the cross with three fingers
instead of with two. His argument was that the two fingers, as used by the " Old
Believers," typify the divine and human nature of our Lord, and hence that the
use of them is strictly correct ; whereas signing with three fingers, representing the
blessed Trinity, is " virtually to crucify all three persons of the Godhead afresh."
Not less cogent were his arguments regarding the immense value of the old text of
Scripture as compared with the new. For the revolt against
Nikon and his re-
forms, see Rambaud, History of Russia, vol. i, pp. 414-416 ; also Wallace, Russia,
vol. ii, pp. 307-309 also ; Leroy-Beaulieu, HEmpire des Tsars, vol. iii, livre iii.