Language is one of our most precious possessions, and, like many other of our precious possessions, we have, alas, learned how to subject it to considerable abuse. Why is language so precious? Because it is the principal means by which we come to know the full truth of things. Language was created to be the bearer of truth. What a profanation of language, then, if it is used for any other purpose than that for which it was created!

The movement which was known as the Higher Criticism represented a particularly serious—perhaps we should say, the most serious—attack on language, understood as the bearer of truth, because the movement had the temerity to call into question the integrity of the Bible. Knowing as we do by our faith that the author of the Bible is no other than God Himself, it would be no exaggeration to say that the whole approach of the movement amounted to an elaborate exercise in something very much like blasphemy.