found, ready to show itself, it may be ultramicroscopically, but none the less really, and then and there begin on matter its directive energies. Is not this also a case covered by the words of an ancient collect "the tranquil operation of Thy perpetual Providence?"

THE LECTURER'S REPLY.

The LECTURER subsequently received the whole of the discussion in writing, and has been kind enough to amplify the reply which he made at the time, as follows:

In replying to the various suggestions and criticisms advanced this afternoon, it may be well that I should attempt to answer individual questions rather than to make a general statement. To begin with, however, I should like to insist on the necessity of drawing a sharp line between the somewhat rash deductions of those expounding Professor Schäfer's views and what Professor Schäfer really advanced. In adopting any scientific method of research or criticism, it is essential that we should be honest with ourselves, and, at the same time, acknowledge the honesty of others. We have to bear in mind the danger that, having once commenced to work along a certain line, we are apt to expect that it will lead us in a certain direction and to a certain point; and I agree most cordially with the Rev. Dr. Irving that it is impossible for us "to predict what we shall know before we know it." Intelligent anticipation may be permissible in helping to form a working hypothesis, but it is ever dangerous and unjustifiable when we use it to raise a hypothesis to the level and dignity of a theory. It is impossible to make good the claim for any hypothesis that it can be of the value of a theory. We may test experience by further observation; but in making observations our judgment must remain unbiassed and our mind open to all but credulity, whilst our records of these observations must be clear and honest. How long does it take us to realize that method and apparatus are of little value apart from accurate observation and sound reasoning, and that all scientific hypotheses should be in accord with ascertained facts.

It is exceedingly interesting to learn from Professor Orchard that Sir Gabriel Stokes was convinced that Lord Kelvin was entirely "jocular" in his suggestion that living matter may have been conveyed-on a meteorite-to this sphere from another world.

can only repeat that some people's jokes may have more in them than other people's solemn statements; but, jocular or solemn, we are not very much helped by it in our quest.

I should like to point out in connection with Mr. Rouse's quotation from G. P. Mudge, that contractility is to be looked upon as a function of practically all protoplasm, and that although it is highly developed in muscular tissue, we should not be astonished that it early becomes a prominent feature in the developing heart tissue, for it is a function even of the protoplasm of the embryonic cell from which that muscle has developed. This active contractility forms part of Huxley's "unbridgeable chasm between living matter and dead."

I agree with Mr. Marchant that the tracing of the origin of life to any one of the many suggested sources should not curtail, in the slightest, our belief in the existence of an Omniscient and Omnipotent God. Would it not tend rather, and has it not tended as knowledge grew, to arouse our wonder at the law and unity pervading the world as we know it? It is ever borne in on most of us more and more that our added experience and expanding knowledge have given us proof of no power greater than that which we attribute to GOD.

With full conviction that we never need fear the truth, let us face the problems of the origin of life confidently and cheerfully, not neglecting our higher and spiritual needs, needs as real as are our physical wants, at all times reading one in the light of our knowledge of the other. Above all, let us from time to time review our knowledge and our position, and apply the results of our revision to the difficult problems with which we are constantly faced. Which of us would study man merely as regards his "dead" physical basis-mere matter without soul or intellect; or which of us would study intellect in terms merely of what we now know of the physical and chemical constitution of brain-matter? As to dead matter, have we not to realize that corruption is only part of an endless chain in the transformation of matter? Matter is often endowed with life, but it may lose its endowment. As the world keeps on, living matter is always coming to the aid of living matter, lowly developed living forms helping the higher, and ultimately helping to develop the highest.

I realize, of course, that some of you will be at one with our

President. I can now but ask you to give some little further thought to this subject; many of us may be long in becoming much wiser, but I cannot help thinking that if we work and study steadily and perseveringly, neither knowledge nor wisdom will linger indefinitely and that coming they will help us to advance a step or two in spiritual development, a step or two that we might otherwise be unable to take.

546TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING,

HELD IN THE ROOMS OF THE INSTITUTE ON THURSDAY, JUNE 5TH, 1913, AT 4.30 P.M.

THE HON. TREASURER, MR. ARTHUR W. SUTTON, PRESIDED.

The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and signed. The SECRETARY announced the election of three Associates :

ASSOCIATE: The Rev. W. H. Saulez, M.A., B.D.; Professor J. Logan Lobley, F.G.S.; Mrs. Agnes H. Pelly.

The CHAIRMAN then called upon the Dean of Canterbury to read his paper.

THE POSITION AND PRINCIPLES OF THE CRITICISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By H. WACE, D.D., DEAN OF CANTERBURY.

THE

HE criticism of the old Testament is at this moment in a very interesting situation, both in England and in Germany. As usual, the movement of German thought on the subject is ahead of that of England. The leading English scholars appear perfectly contented with what they have for some time designated the "assured results" of the criticism of the last half of the nineteenth century, and have created a new conservatism in the recognition, as a final achievement, of the documents into which the Pentateuch has been dissected out. At Oxford and Cambridge, manuals are published, like those of the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, which treat the Jehovist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist and the Priestly Code as settled realities, as much as the books of the Pentateuch themselves were to our fathers; and Dr. McNeile in defending the critical theory of Deuteronomy against the able essay of Mr. Griffiths, lately published by the S.P.C.K., expresses a condescending regret that so "great and useful a Society" should have been betrayed into countenancing such a critical heresy. There are indeed some important exceptions among us to this attitude. Canon

Girdlestone continues to exhibit as quiet a confidence in the substantial truth of the traditional belief respecting the Old Testament as the critics do in their own hypotheses, and like them he for the most part reserves his fire. A Jewish barrister, Mr. Wiener, has, however, for some years been directing a vehement assault on the whole critical position, and has certainly made some important breaches in its defences. But until the last month or two the leaders of the critical school have maintained a selfsatisfied silence, as though the question were finally settled. In Germany the case has been very different. A steady resistance has been maintained by some leading scholars to various parts of the critical theory. Klostermann, in particular, rejects the whole theory of the four sources, and regards the Pentateuch as having, as it were, crystallized by gradual accretion round an original Mosaic and Sinaitic law; and Koenig, while accepting the four sources in the main, assigns to parts of them a far more ancient and historic character than is allowed by the Wellhausen school. But still more radical attacks have been initiated during the last few years. Eerdmans has started an entirely new, and, it must be said, still more improbable, theory of an original polytheistic book; which was subsequently revised in a monotheistic sense. But more serious attacks have been directed by other scholars, especially by Johannes Dahse, against the groundwork of the documentary theory, and at length a leading English critic has thought it necessary to reply to him. In the last two numbers of the Expositor, for April and May, Dr. Skinner of Cambridge has replied fully to Dahse, and perhaps successfully, so far as the efficiency of Dahse's alternative theory is concerned; but he has to make admissions which appear seriously damaging to his own position. Well may it be said by Dr. Sellin, of Rostock, one of the leading members of the moderate critical school, in his recent Introduction: "It will be seen that we are passing through a period of ferment and transition, and in what follows we present our own view as only the hypothesis which appears to us as the best founded."

It must be added that a still more strenuous opposition to the current theory is being maintained by able American scholars. Dr. Green, of Princeton, who was Chairman of the American Company of Revisers of the Old Testament, was to the last a resolute opponent of the whole " divisive hypothesis"; and his example is being followed by Dr. G. F. Wright and his co-editors in the valuable American Quarterly, the Bibliotheca Sacra. This journal has given Mr. Wiener a constant welcome,