an element of uncertainty into a great many more. Taking the Old Testament books in their traditional order, we are informed that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, nor Joshua the book that bears his name, nor David the Psalms ascribed to him, or, if any, very few,- that no more did Solomon write the Proverbs or Ecclesiastes or the Song of Songs, that Isaiah, the eighth-century prophet, wrote only a little more than half of the book that bears his name, Jeremiah less than the whole of his by the three closing chapters and no part of Lamentations, Daniel, the prophet of the captivity, no word of the prophecy ascribed to him, Zechariah a part only of the book called after him. With these negations of traditional authorship in the Old Testament, there have been as many, if not more, of dates traditionally assigned, as of the Pentateuch to the fifteenth century B.C., and Job to a much earlier time, of the Psalms to David's and the time immediately succeeding, of the books ascribed to Solomon to his time, Daniel to the later time of the captivity, and so on. There has been a movement forward all along the line, but a few centuries here, and many there. To go into particulars would be to pass from the negative to the positive aspect of the matter, and I wish to give the negative at first full force. With the New Testament it is much the same as with the Old. There, also, the movement forward of the various books from their traditional anchorage has been strongly marked, though not without occasional recession. It has carried the Synoptic Gospels to the last quarter of the first century, and Luke, perhaps, beyond; the Fourth Gospel to the second quarter of the second century; Acts, also, forward; the pastoral Epistles (to Timothy and Titus) to a much later time than Paul's, that to the Ephesians also to a somewhat later; the Epistles ascribed to Peter from twenty-five to one hundred years beyond his death. With these changes of New Testament dates, there have been as many changes as to the authorship of the different books. The degrees of certainty attaching to the critical judgments here are almost as various as the books. The

maximum of certainty is] with regard to the Epistle to the Hebrews, that Paul did not write it. That he did not write Second Thessalonians, the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, and that to the Ephesians, is less generally agreed; also, that John did not write the Apocalypse, nor Peter and John the Epistles ascribed to them. That the Synoptic Gospels, as we have them, were not written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke is well established, as it is also, we may now say with confidence, that the Fourth Gospel cannot be considered John's, the conservative critics allowing this, to all intents and purposes, as fully, if not as frankly, as the more liberal can desire in confirmation of their own amended view.

If these results were all the Higher Criticism had to show, its negative aspect would certainly deserve the contumely which its more violent opponents have heaped upon it, and the indifference and distrust of all whose spiritual appetite craves something more substantial than a mere Barmecide feast of empty names and dates. But in being emptied of the honors which they once held, these names have gained as much as they have lost; and a true date is as good as a false one for any book or circumstance, however good or bad. Moreover, one must be very dull who cannot see that the negations of the Higher Criticism are not so barren as they might be by a great deal. They are a notation by which very real values are expressed. They carry in their train a host of positive results, as much more rich and full than their unqualified simplicity as are the movements of the heavens than the algebraic x by which their unknown quantities may be expressed. The main interest of Old Testament criticism, for example, has centred in the Pentateuch. Now, what proportion to the results attained in this department is borne by the mere negation of the authorship of Moses? Is it one to a thousand or one to a million? And yet the criticism of the Pentateuch has been destructive of much more than the Mosaic authorship. It has destroyed the unity of its composition. It has made the book of Deuteronomy a book by itself, dating from the

closing years of the seventh century B.C., when Moses had been dead some seven hundred years. The four preceding books it has disintegrated into the Book of Covenants, an Elohistic and a Jehovistic document, another fusing these, a priestly code containing nearly all the priestly regulations of Exodus and Numbers and Leviticus, which was not fairly published till Moses had been dead nearly nine centuries, and certain interesting fragments antecedent to all these. This is destructive criticism, certainly; but it is the same kind of destruction that goes on when a pile of bricks and lumber, most solid and symmetrical, is made into a house which guards a living home. If we could have the Pentateuch (the Five-fold Book), which has become the Hexateuch (the Six-fold Book) by the addition of Joshua, arranged for ordinary reading, as it has been in the ideal constructions of Kuenen, Smith, and Driver, and their kind, it would have all the advantage over the present arrangement that a noble building has over the raw materials from which it is made. Thanks to the constructive achievements of the Higher Criticism here, a unity that was merely formal and mechanical has become vital and organic. Every separate part is vitally related to some stage of Israel's growth in spiritual things. It reflects a changing civilization, a deeper ethical and religious consciousness, as we pass from the "Ten Commandments," all that we have from Moses' mighty heart, to the "Book of Covenants" (Exodus xxi.-xxiii. 19), from that to the Prophetic Narratives of the Jehovistic document, the story-book of which we never tire, from that to the Elohistic document, to the fusion of this with the former, to Deuteronomy (620 B.C.) and the Deuteronomic revision, and finally to the Priests' Code, and the grand fusion of this with the rest and the redaction of the whole which brought the Pentateuch and Joshua into their present shape. Nor do the constructive achievements of the Higher Criticism end with this rearrangement of the Hexateuch even so far as the Hexateuch is itself concerned. The order thus discovered is an order like to that of a great

army, which, as it goes marching on, sweeps up into its files the wavering swarms of national allies and border States, and makes them energetic and consenting parts of its own unitary force and might. The rearrangement of the Hexateuch, far from ending with itself, furnishes a unifying principle of Old Testament relations, which brings the books of Samuel and Kings and Chronicles, the prophets in their chronologic order, the Psalms and other books, into harmo nious alliance with the Hexateuch, corresponding with and illustrating one part after another of its composite unity. Thus it appears that the books of Samuel and Kings fall into line with those eighth and seventh century portions of the Pentateuch which are strongly marked with the prophetic spirit, the prophets Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, at the same time into the same place. Not without critical insight did the Jews name the books of Samuel and Kings "the Early Prophets," so strong in them is the spirit of the early prophets. But Jeremiah's place is with the Deuteronomist, part prophet and part priest, and doing his best to reconcile the discordant elements; while Ezekiel's prophecy foretold nothing else so clearly as the priestly tendency which culminated in the priestly portions of the Pentateuch after the return from Babylon, where they had been worked out, not without much ingenious and affectionate inclusion of such ritual forms as had been generally in use or had fallen into innocuous desuetude in the hurly-burly of invasion and expatriation. The Psalmists, equally with the prophets, bring their glory and honor into the Hexateuchal evolution. In lack of all external evidence for the authorship of the Psalms, our best means for determining their chronology is their relation to that evolution. Those that are most prophetic we can, with a good deal of confidence, assign to the prophetic centuries which produced the early prophets, the prophetic narratives and histories of the Pentateuch and Samuel and Kings; those having the temper of Jeremiah and the Deuteronomist to their time; those of a priestly cast to post-exilic times, and there the most of them belong.

It is a little matter to thus determine their chronology. It is not a little matter that by this determination they become to us the voice of a great congregation, and not merely the unreal pietism of an irreligious and immoral king. It is not a little matter that to the priests, whom we have habitually despised in comparison with the prophets, we are most indebted for those parts of the Old Testament which have made it precious to innumerable hearts. To the same priests we owe the books of Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah,—as history prejudiced and imperfect, but as memoirs of their time most serviceable to its historians now. These books are on the best of terms with the priestly portions and the last redaction of the Hexateuch, as are also the prophecies of Zechariah (i.-viii.) and Malachi, while the books of Jonah and Ruth are in spirited rebellion against the narrow and exclusive policy of those who would shut Israel up in selfish isolation.

In this progressive relationship of so many books of the Old Testament to the evolution of the Hexateuch, we have a constructive achievement even greater than the rearrangement of the Hexateuch. It substitutes for a purely mechanical and irrational sequence such a relation and connection that we can say

"Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering."

Immeasurable the gain of every part in interest, in vitality, in historical and spiritual significance, because of this living spirit of the Hexateuchal evolution in the midst of the revolving wheels of various motive, passion, ardor, exaltation. And there are many incidental gains which are of great importance. Could we believe that God was ever such a one as the Deuteronomist declares him to have been, might we not well say, like Prometheus: "I reverence Thee? Wherefore?" But even so wise a scholar as Canon Driver, whose Introduction to the Old Testament Professor Briggs has just sent forth among us, tells us that neither the inspiration nor authority of the Old Testament is affected by