victories, his victories." In this, Moses was successful, as the subsequent history of Israel shows, but the subsequent history also shows that Moses could have given to Israel no such elaborate religious system as the Priestly Code depicts; this was the work of a later age, an age in which Israel's law-makers may have borrowed ritual emblems and practices from Babylon and Egypt, as well as from Phoenicia.

Here I think I may bring this inquiry to a close. I am fully conscious that much more might have been said on the many points I have touched upon; yet I think I have said sufficient to show that the popular idea, that Israel was seduced into lower religious standards by the Canaanites, is utterly without warrant. When they settled in Canaan, they found a religion practiced there which was theirs, which had been their fathers' before them, and to which they in their hearts adhered more than to the purer henotheism upon which Moses had endeavored to found them as a nation. That they adopted in preference the religion of the Canaanites rather than the higher conception of Moses, was but natural; at the same time, their success achieved under the guidance of Moses was so complete that they never forgot his conception and representation of their national God, Jehovah. In the days of their prosperity he was neglected for their older and still dearly cherished belief; while in the days of their distress they invoked the aid of Him who had so successfully led them out of their Egyptian bondage. The solidarity of movements and executions which this unity of belief gave them, invariably brought success to their cause. To the average

Israelite, that is to say to the unobservant, which must have formed the far larger part of their nation, the cause of this success was little comprehended. Not so, however, did these things strike the devout and thoughtful minds

1 Moore, Judges, p. 134.

amongst them. These, ever prompted and encouraged by the Spirit of God, saw in these results the manifestations of God's ever-watchful and ready Providence. The bringing of these lessons home to the hearts of the people was the work of these devout souls, who are better known under the term of the Hebrew prophets. At this work they labored in spite of the continued opposition of the entire people. Laboring in the cause of God, they themselves gradually acquired higher and more accurate conceptions of him. In this way they were enabled to correct many of their own utterances which they had given in the name of God. This is how it came about, that, whereas in earlier days they declared that children would be held as morally guilty for the sins of their parents, in later days they de clared that the soul which sinned, that soul only should die (Ex. xx. 5; Ps. lxxix. 8; cix. 14, R. V.; cf. Ezek. xviii. 1-4, 20). That the work of the Hebrew prophets evidences a greater inspiration by, and revelation from, God than the work of any other community of human teachers, must, I think, be evident to any candid reader of the Old Testament. But I believe, however, that the method and results of this inspiration have been wrongly conceived and judged by the traditional school of Old Testament critics. The conclusions of this school leave the Old Testament full of perplexities incapable of solution. The conclusions of the modern school of critics remove at once these perplexities, and, while they show a different method of inspiration in the Old Testament, they show an inspiration more rational than does the old method, more in harmony with the facts of modern research, and more in keeping with the love and grandeur of the one God we all adore.1

Since the above article was written, two books have appeared which deal with two of its main contentions. In the first place, Professor Sayce, in his "Early History of the Hebrews," published at the close of

1897, maintains, as I have here done, that Canaan before the conquest by the Israelites "was,” to use his own words, “inhabited by a Hebrew people" (p. 6). Again, referring to the term "Hebrews," he says, "It would seem, therefore, as if it were the name by which the people of Canaan, and more especially the Israelites, were known to the Egyptians " (p. 2). Other proofs are furnished by Professor Sayce to which I also have referred in my article, and, as I have said, since it was written before I had seen Dr. Sayce's book, it was no little gratification to me to find myself in agreement with so distinguished a scholar.

The second book is Mr. Andrew Lang's "The Making of Religion." To my regret this eminent anthropologist and archæologist accepts "the old degeneration theory" to explain Israel's repeated desertion of Jehovah, a contention opposed by the whole drift of my article. It is with considerable relief, therefore, that I notice a reviewer in The Guardian for June 29, 1898, opposes Mr. Lang in what the former calls, "the old degeneration theory." Again, this reviewer says, "It is equally unhistorical to credit the pre-Mosaic Israel with a rudimentary theism. Apart from the appearances of God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our oldest document is Joshua xxiv., where it is plainly stated that the people and their fathers had served other gods in Egypt and beyond the river.”

Now this statement more immediately bears out my contention in a MS. recently accepted by the Biblical World, and entitled, “Were the Israelites ever Polytheists?" but it supports as well my contention in the present article, viz., that Abraham and his immediate descendants were not monotheists, but, at the best, henotheists; while, apart from the three great patriarchs, it further strengthens my contention that their respective immediate descendants were even more polytheists than henotheists.

VOL. LV. No. 220. 5

BY EX-PRESIDENT SAMUEL COLCORD BARTLETT, D.D., LL.D.

IT is a fortunate thing to have a scheme or speculation that is claimed by its friends to be revolutionary presented in its most favorable aspect by a cautious and reputable advocate. This good fortune in regard to the so-called Higher Criticism is secured in a series of seven articles by Professor S. I. Curtiss of Chicago, an active Christian worker, a Hebrew scholar and teacher in a hitherto conservative institution established by an intelligent body of evangelical churches, and himself a pupil, admirer, and to some extent a follower of Delitzsch. The series was prepared for, and pre-announced and commended by, a denominational paper of wide circulation, expressly to "furnish information," although it is curiously added by the journal, "he has not appeared as an advocate," when he has done little else. His long explanatory introduction is conciliatory; he avoids the offensive tone of Wellhausen; does not definitely commit himself to the "refinements" of Cheyne, nor distinctly allude to the extreme views of Cornill, or even the more moderate ones of Briggs. He substitutes the words "purely subjective" for the terms "unhistorical," "fiction," "altogether false," applied by other writers of this school to the Scripture accounts; speaks of "putting a discount on the 'harratives," rather

1 A series of seven articles by Professor S. I. Curtiss in the Congregationalist, from April 14 to June 2, 1898, on the Higher Criticism: what it is; its method; its problem; its conclusions on the authorship, interpretation, and authority of the Old Testament.

than of openly denying them; and the process which Kuenen (as he mentions) calls "a pious fraud," he terms "the literary resurrection of Moses to speak words which he would have spoken if living"-which, however, according to the theory, he never did speak. He also remarks, concerning the attempt of "many critics to deny historicity [that is, historic truth] to the stories of the patriarchs," "We can simply say, 'Not proven."" So this is all that can be done for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: their lives are saved to history and the world, at least for the present, by the Scotch verdict that their non-existence is "not proven." This notwithstanding the Saviour's emphatic saying concerning the three, that God "is not the God of the dead, but of the living."

Indeed, the cautious reserve in the formal statements of his positions constitutes the chief difficulty in examining them. The characteristic and distinctive views of the modern school of higher critics, and of the author himself, are to be found more in the illustrations, subordinate remarks, and ultimate disclosures, than in the main propositions advanced. These last are to a considerable degree so general as to include the principles of all intelligent modern expositors, or so generalized as not to present in clear light the full characteristics of this particular school. Earnest eulogiums on the study of the Bible as literature, on the scholarly examination of its phraseology, with the added aid of the cognate tongues, on the reproduction of all the environments, and on the help of archæological explorations, belong to all modern schools alike. Edward Robinson, Moses Stuart, and Bela B. Edwards were quite as ardent in these matters in the first part of this century as any scholars in the last part, although of course the external aids were less.

This indefiniteness is also attended, as we shall see, with incautiousness of statement, which appears early and