Excerpt from Christ's Testimony to the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch: Inaugural Address Delivered September 19, 1883

It is not out of place to assure the Directors and friends of the Seminary that I take up these duties with some adequate concep tion of what lies before me. To exaggerate the importance of the studies embraced within the scope of Biblical Literature, would scarcely be possible. It deals with the foundations and gives the principles of any Christian theology which has a right to the name. The Canon, Biblical Criticism, Exegesis, with all that these imply, are the subjects of this chair. In accordance with the Protestant principle of the absolute dependence of theology, in all its phases, on the Scriptures, these studies are, at any time, essential, but they now have a special importance. It is well known that controversies of vast import to the Christian religion now traverse the field of this department, and it is probable that conflicts, of which only faint echoes have heretofore reached us, will rage for some time within the English, Scotch, and American Churches. Dr. Green of Princeton, who is by no means an alarmist, has recently said that all the signs of the times indi cate that the American Church, and, in fact, the whole of English speaking Christendom, is upon the eve of an agitation upon the vital and fundamental question of the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible, such as it has never known before. Every one may detect symptoms of this agitation in books recently pub lished, and in articles in reviews and newspapers, dealing with the critical study of the Scriptures. To meet the exigencies of this critical study of the Bible calls for such scholarship. Such piety, such judgment, that I may be. Pardoned for expressing my own sense of deficiencies for the work intrusted to me.

With God's help I shall earnestly and faithfully seek to instruct my pupils in the truth, and provide them with the means of de fending the word of God.

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