enrich their minds with all available mental furniture, and drink deep and continually at the fountains of sacred lore; and these shall be as inspiration for their calling, armor for their warfare, and holy strategy in winning triumphs for their Master. Pretension and superficial knowledge may be proud and pedantic, but thorough learning is ever humble and Christlike. Boldness blending with simplicity and catching the Spirit's fire and influence, shall make the true heralds of the cross apostolic in their popularity and success. All their opportunities, studies, and attainments, sanctified by ceaseless prayer, earnest faith, and heavenly ardor, shall lead them more and more into likeness, oneness, and identity with Christ; and like him they shall attract the multitudes to hear the Gospel message with gladness, and hearing, their souls shall live.

ARTICLE VI.

THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE JEWISH CHURCH.*

BY PROFESSOR O. S. STEARNS, D. D.

It is a significant fact, that when these lectures of Professor Smith were delivered before large and intelligent audiences in Edinburgh and Glasgow, they were responded to with great enthusiasm. It is a fact equally significant, that when they appeared in print, so strong was the demand for them in Great Britain, they soon passed through several editions, and so popular did they become in the United States, they warranted a twenty-cent edition in the Seaside Library. It is a more significant fact, that the religious press in the mother-land and in our own land, with rare and very recent exceptions, has commended them as worthy of careful and reverent examination, and as a stimulus in the right direction. This cordial welcome starts the suspicion that there is a public craving for that kind of Biblical criticism, sometimes termed "the higher criticism," or "the school of advanced thought," a specimen of which is found in these lectures of Professor Smith, which seeks to undermine the old foundations of the Christian Church and demolish the righteous demands of the Word of God. It may be that this craving is for the pure light of pure truth. If so, we rejoice and will rejoice; but we doubt the asserted fact.

Before we attempt a summary review of these lectures, allow us to express our surprise that they seem to have been received thus cordially because believed to contain

"The Old Testament in the Jewish Church." Twelve lectures on Biblical Criticism. By W. Robertson Smith, M. A. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1881.

what was emphatically new. We do not refer to the public estimate, but to the chariness with which they have been handled by Biblical critics in some of the leading reviews. The general public may be expected to deem that new and strange, and perhaps unanswerable, which comes from a scholar of eminence and notoriety, but for scholars to be startled by such a portraiture of Biblical criticism is at least a criticism on their scholarship. Any one who has read Kuenen's "Religion of Israel," or who has looked through Wellhausen's "Geschichte Israels," will find the substance of every thought which Professor Smith, in these lectures, has elaborated and popularized. Indeed, comparing the tendency of the works mentioned with his own, we honestly believe theirs to be less harmful than his; and we would much prefer to place their books in the hands of a skeptic than his. For, while he admits much which they deny, while he claims a reverence for the Scriptures and a belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures, matters which do not hamper their conclusions, his method is so seductive as to lead his readers astray by their faith in his Christian honesty and his Christian learning. He claims as his purpose an unfolding of modern "progressive Biblical science," "the legitimate interpretation of historical facts pertaining to the Old Covenant, and a rescuing of such exegesis from the hands of unbelievers;" he works out his result with great skill, in a style peculiarly attractive, and with a form of argument so crowded with learning as to appear unanswerable; yet a third reading has discovered to us no one new thought, while the school of critics to which he refers as authority, with a single exception, belongs to the class generally termed rationalistic. A candid criticism of the Word of God by a believer in the Word as God's, when it looks into the ark of God, would seem to demand some reference to those who have written in defense of it as well as to those who would steady it. But, in his "notes, Nöldeke, Colenso, Graf, Kuenen, Lagarde, and Wellhausen are the writers on Old Testament criticism with whom he

seems to be in the warmest sympathy, and whose decisions he seems to indorse. This may be breadth, but to us it is like determining the area of a triangle by surveying one side of it. This may be called liberal, but to us it is the liberality of dogmatic negation. This may be ingenious, but is it ingenuous?

With Professor Smith, as on trial for heresy, we have nothing to do. Our purpose is to use these lectures as the basis of a brief examination of the main positions now taken in behalf of the theory which is called "The historical development of the Jewish Church as taught in the Old Testament." We shall use our author so far as we can-it is no small task to discern his purpose in several of his lectures-as an illustration of the strongest arguments to be employed for the theory, by one who claims to be an evangelical critic.

In order to execute our purpose fairly, it is requisite, first of all, to state what the so-called development theory is. This is no easy task. No two advocates of it agree in minute particulars. As given by Kuenen it is substantially as follows: The religion of Israel, like every other religion, is the result of natural development. The Israelites, like other nations, passed through various forms of fetichism and gross idolatries until they became strict monotheists. All their historical records, until the period of the prophets, about the middle of the eighth century B. C., is a mass of untrustworthy tradition, subsequently arranged and colored and made fictitiously authoritative, but containing little, if any, historical foundation. For trustworthy information we must go to the prophets. Moses may have been the author of the Ten Words, but probably not in their present form. The patriarchs, to whom such constant reference is made, were not historical personages, but merely representative ideas. Perhaps the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, and perhaps they were set free by Moses, but the number who left Egypt, were there any, was much smaller than the record asserts. As to the VOL. IV, No. 14-15

twelve tribes who are represented as constituting the nation, they were not descendants of the patriarch Jacob, but were a conglomerate from the surrounding nations; the so-called twelve patriarchs being an after-thought of the later centuries. The oldest collection of laws for this people is "the book of the covenant," Exodus xxi-xxiii. Deuteronomy was written 625 B. C., perhaps by Hilkiah, and foisted upon Moses as its author, though he was not its author, nor does it rest upon trustworthy tradition. The priest codex, as Wellhausen calls it, Leviticus xviii-xxvi, others xvii-xxvi, others xvi-xxvi, was composed by Ezekiel, the last part of whose prophecy forms the bridge, as Professor Curtiss calls it, "between Deuteronomy and the so-called middle books of the Pentateuch-Exodus, Numbers." These middle books were the product, probably, of Ezra's mind, the Elohist, about a century later than the time of Ezekiel. The prophet's voice had then ceased to be heard. The ceremonial observances of the Pentateuch then began to bear their legitimate fruit, the harvest of which we have in the Mishna. By a pious fraud this priestly legislation became Mosaic, and the theocracy under royalty was "re-written by the Chronicler long after Ezra, to illustrate the working of this legislation." Summarily, miracles are an impossibility, inspiration is a dream, the history of the Jews as found in the Pentateuch, and the historical books of the Old Testament, is a series of traditional lies. The history of the Jews when truthfully wrought out must be wrought out according to a priestly programme, and that programme, so far as the books of the Old Testament are concerned, demands for their order as to date, Deuteronomy, Leviticus xvii-xxvi (Exodus, Numbers), Chronicles; and as to authorship, so far as it can be affirmed with some probability, Hilkiah, Ezekiel, Ezra, and the unknown Chronicler. The Pentateuch is a forgery. The prophets were good teachers. but had no written law-book to guide them. The real and reliable history, First and Second Chronicles, confining itself so emphatically to the history of the Southern kingdom,