JAMES K.MOFFITT 
 
 PAULINE FORE MOFFITT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY 
 
/^ 
 
 \l 
 
170 
 
 THE 
 
 IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 OF 
 
 HOLY SCRIPTURE 
 
THE 
 
 IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 OF 
 
 HOLY SCRIPTURE 
 
 BY THE RKJHT HON. 
 
 W. E. GLADSTONE M.P 
 
 IReviscD anD EnlarcjeD from **(3oob 'ailor&6' 
 
 LONDON 
 Wm. ISBISTER Limited 
 
 15 & 16 TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN 
 1890 
 
GIFT 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 I. FIRST VIEW OP THE IMPREGNABLE EOCK 
 
 OP HOLY SCRIPTURE I 
 
 II. THE CREATION STORY 29 
 
 III. THE OPPICE AND WORK OP THE OLD 
 
 TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE 81 
 
 IV. THE PSALMS 
 
 123 
 
 V. THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION 167 
 
 VI. ON THE RECENT CORROBORATIONS OP 
 SCRIPTURE FROM THE REGIONS OF 
 HISTORY AND NATURAL SCIENCE . . . 213 
 
 VII. CONCLUSION 
 
 251 
 
 315 
 
PREFATORY NOTE, 
 
 The additions, which in the course of revision 
 have been made to these Essays, are in the 
 nature of amplified or newly supplied argument, 
 and do not affect their general tenour. 
 
 In the Jeiuuh Chronicle of September 12, 1890, 
 I find a paragraph which appears to approve 
 the general argument of my article on " The 
 Mosaic Legislation,^' but impugns the statement 
 that the Massorites were a body without a parallel 
 in history, and that the Hebrews were alone in 
 building up a regularly scientific method of 
 handling the material forms of their sacred 
 oracles. I have not the slightest pretension to 
 speak with authority upon this subject, and I 
 did no more than endeavour to report faithfully 
 what I gathered from trustworthy sources. But 
 I have no reason to believe that my readers 
 
^J 
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 have been misled. As regards the Hindus, I 
 understand it is stated that they counted verses, 
 words, syllables, and letters ; but it does not 
 appear that this statement is one historically 
 authenticated. Even if it were so, and if we 
 add that the Samaritans imitated the proceedings 
 of their Jewish brethren, and that similar enumera- 
 tion was made by Syrians or others, yet the 
 answer remains that such a computation is a 
 very small component part of the Massorah, and 
 can no more be called an equivalent to it than 
 a human limb can be called a human body. To 
 the Massorah, so far as I can learn, there is 
 nothing approaching an equivalent. As resjoects 
 the Greeks, they had no sacred writings at all ; 
 and I am unaware of their having used, in any 
 case, any such method as is here in ^nestion. 
 
 Hawarden Castle, 
 
 Nocemher 1890. 
 
fivst Diew of the 3mpregnable 1RocF? 
 ot 1bol^ Scripture* 
 
3ftr5t IDtew ot tbe impregnable IRocI^ 
 ot Ibol^ Scrlptute, 
 
 It is a serious question how far one ignorant, like 
 myself, of Hebrew, and having no regular practice 
 in the study and explanation of the text of the 
 Old Testament, is entitled to attempt representations 
 concerning it, which must present more or less the 
 character of advice, to any portion of his fellow- 
 countrymen. It is clear that he can draw no 
 sufficient warrant for such a course from the mere 
 warmth of his desire to arrest a prevailing mischief, 
 or from his fear lest any portion of the British 
 public should lose or relax unawares their hold upon 
 the Book which Christendom regards as an inesti- 
 mable treasure, and thereby bring upon themselves, 
 as well as others, an inexpressible calamity. But, 
 on the other hand, he has some better pleas to 
 urge. The first is, that there is a very large 
 
4 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 section of the community whose opportunities ot 
 judgment have been materially smaller than his 
 own. The second is, that though he is greatly 
 wanting in the valuable qualifications which grow out 
 of special study in this field, he has, for more than 
 forty years (believing that change of labour is to a 
 great extent the healthiest form of recreation), 
 devoted the larger part of all such time as he could 
 properly withdraw from political duties to another, 
 and in several respects a similar, field of specialism ; 
 namely, the earnest study of prehistoric antiquity 
 and of its documents in regard to the Greek race, 
 whose destinies have been, after those of the Hebrews, 
 the most wonderful in themselves, and the most 
 fertile of results for us, among all the races of man- 
 kind. As between this field, which has for its 
 central point the study of Homer, and that of the 
 early Scriptures, which may in the mass be roughly 
 called contemporary with the Homeric period, much 
 light is, and with the progress of research more can 
 hardly fail to be, given and received. Moreover, I 
 have there had the opportunity of perceiving how, 
 among specialists as with other men, there may be 
 fashions of the time and school, which Lord Bacon 
 called idols of the market-place, and currents of pre- 
 judice below the surface, such as to detract somewhat 
 from the authority which each inquirer might justly 
 claim in his own field, and from their title to impose 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE, 5 
 
 their conclusions upon mankind. As a judicious 
 artist likes to know the opinion even of one not 
 an expert on his picture, and sometimes derives 
 benefit from it, so in all studies lights may be 
 thrown inwards from without ; and this in far the 
 largest degree where the special branch deals with 
 a subject-matter that both takes deep root in our 
 nature, and is the source of profoundly interesting 
 controversies for mankind at large. Yet I do not 
 feel sure that these considerations would have led 
 me to make the present attempt, were they not 
 capped with another of great importance. It 
 appears to me that we may grant, for argument's 
 sake, to the negative or destructive specialist in the 
 field of the ancient Scriptures all which as a 
 specialist he can by possibility be entitled to ask, 
 respecting the age, text, and authorship of the 
 books, and yet may hold firmly, as firmly as of old, 
 to the ideas justly conveyed by the title I have 
 adopted for these papers, and may invite our fellow- 
 men to stand along with us on " the impregnable 
 rock of Holy Scripture.'"' 
 
 These words sound like a challenge. And they 
 are a challenge to some extent, but not in the sense 
 that might be supposed. They are a challenge to 
 accept the Scriptures on the moral and spiritual and 
 historical ground of their character in themselves, 
 and of the work which they, and the agencies 
 
-.^t) 
 
 6 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 associated with them, have done in the world for 
 some thousands of years, and are doing still. We 
 may, without touching the domain of the critic, 
 contend for them as corresponding by their contents 
 to the idea of a Divine revelation to man. We are 
 . 'V'^ entit led to attempt to show that they afford that 
 kind of proof of such a revelation, which is^ nalogous 
 to the known divine operations in other spheres ; 
 which binds us as to conduct; and which in other / 
 
 matters, from the simple fact that we are rational ^^^ ,^ 
 beings, we recognise as entitled so to bind us. And <-ua^ . 
 again, we may legitimately ask whether they do not y^fLJ^"""^^^ 
 /j^^S^ differ in such a manner from the other documents ^A^"^^ 
 ^jr^^'^'^o^ historic and prehistoric religions, while these too !p^ i, 
 ^ju" are precious in various ways, as to make them Jt^^ 
 yv-^ witnesses and buttresses to the office of Holy ^ '^^' 
 31^ '^T'"^ Scripture, rather than sharers in it, although in P^'^^) 
 ^ oX^ their degree they may be this also. ^ ;^ >' 
 
 I But all these assertions lie within the moral and ^ 
 
 "-^^ -jC^^ spiritual precinct. No one of them begs any / < '' 
 "^^^^ y/i. literary question of Old Testament criticism. They rj^J - 
 ^ I O^e/leave absolutely open every issue that has been or . , -xJ^ 
 -^^\*/caai be raised respecting the origin, date, authorship 
 ^ .J^hnd text of the sacred books, which for the present 
 VTaj^^^ purpose we do not require even to call sacred. 
 y^ ^ Indeed it may be that this destructive criticism, if 
 entirely made good, would, in the view of an 
 ^iuquiry really searching, comprehensive, and philo- 
 
 
 ,3 
 
 ^C^,. V ^\- ,^ 
 
 r^' 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 7 
 
 sophical, leave as its result not less but greater reason 
 for admiring the hidden modes by which the great 
 Artificer works out His designs. For, in proportion 
 as the means are feeble, perplexed, and to all appear- 
 ance confused, is the marvel of the results that are 
 made to stand before our eyes. And the upshot 
 may come to be, that, on this very ground we may 
 have to cry out with the Psalmist"^ absorbed in wor- 
 shipping admiration, " Oh, that men would therefore 
 praise the Lord for His goodness, and declare the 
 wonders that He doeth for the children of men ! " 
 For "How unsearchable are His judgments, and 
 His ways past finding out." For the memories of 
 men, and the art of writing, and the care of the 
 copyist, and the tablet and the rolls of parchment, 
 are but the secondary or mechanical means by which 
 the Word has been carried down to us along the 
 river of the ages ; and the natural and inherent weak- 
 ness of these means is but a special tribute to the 
 grandeur and vastness of the end, and of Him that 
 wrought it out. 
 
 So, then, these high-sounding words have been, 
 placed in the foreground of the present observations, 
 because they convey in a positive and definite 
 manner the conclusion which the observations them- 
 selves aim at sustaining, at least in outline, on 
 general grounds of reason, and at enforcing as a 
 * Ps. cvii. 8. 
 
8 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 commanding ralo of thought and life. They lead 
 upwards and onwards to the idea that the Scriptures 
 are well called Holy Scriptures ; and that, though 
 assailed by camp, by battery, and by mine, they are 
 nevertheless a house builded upon a rock, and that 
 rock impregnable ; that the weapon of offence, 
 which shall impair their efficiency for aiding in the 
 redemption of mankind, has not yet been forged ; 
 that the Sacred Canon, which it took (perhaps) two 
 thousand years from the accumulations of Moses 
 down to the acceptance of the Apocalypse to con- 
 struct, is like to wear out the storms and the sun- 
 shine of the world, and all the wayward aberrations 
 of humanity, not merely for a term as long, but 
 until time shall be no more. 
 
 And yet, upon the very threshold, I embrace, in 
 what I think a substantial sense, one of the great 
 canons of modern criticism, which teaches us that 
 the Scriptures are to be treated like any other book 
 in the trial of their title. The volume, which is put 
 into our hands when young under that venerated 
 name, is, like any other volume, made with paper, 
 types, and ink, and has been put together as a 
 material object by human hands. The many and 
 diversified utterances it contains proceeded from the 
 mouth or pen of men ; and the question, whether 
 and in what degree, through supernatural guidance, 
 they were, for this purpose, more than men, is to be 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 9 
 
 determined, like other disputable questions, by the 
 evidence. The books have been transmitted to us 
 from their formation onwards in perishable materials, 
 and from remote dates. They were so transmitted, 
 until four hundred years ago, by the agency of 
 copyists, as in the case of other literary productions, 
 and presumably with a like liability to casual error or 
 to fraudulent handling. That in some sense the Holy 
 Scriptures contain something of a human element is 
 clear, as to the New Testament, from diversities of 
 reading, from slight conflicts in the narrative, and 
 from an insignificant number of controverted cases as 
 to the authenticity of the text. We have also the 
 Latin Vulgate partially competing with the Greek 
 original, on the ground that it has been more or 
 less founded on m.anuscripts older than any we now 
 possess. As regards the Old Testament, we find 
 the established Hebrew Text to be founded on 
 MSS. of a date not earlier than (I believe) the tenth 
 century of our era. It is^ moreover, at variance in 
 many points with the Greek version, commonly 
 termed the Septuagint ; which is considered to date 
 wholly or in the main from the third century before 
 the Advent of our Saviour, and the framers of which 
 had before them copies older by more than a thousand 
 years. Thus the accuracy of the text, the age and 
 authorship of the books, open up a vast field of purely 
 literary controversy ; and such a question as whether 
 
lo THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 the closing verses of St. Mark's Gospel* have the 
 authority of Scripture must be determined by lite- 
 rary evidence, as much as the genuineness of the 
 pretended preface to the ^neid, or of a particular 
 stanza which appears in an ode of Catullus. f 
 
 Towards summing up these observations, I will 
 remind the reader that those who believe in a 
 Divine Revelation, as pervading or as contained in 
 the Scriptures, and especially those who accept the 
 full doctrine of literalism as to the vehicle of that 
 inspiration, have to lay their account with the 
 following (among other) considerations, which it is 
 hard for them to repudiate as inadmissible. There 
 may possibly have been 
 
 1. Imperfect comprehension of that which was 
 divinely communicated : 
 
 2. Imperfect expression of what had once been 
 comprehended : 
 
 3. Lapse of memory in oral transmission : 
 
 4. Errors of copyists in written transmission : 
 
 5. Changes with the lapse of time in the sense 
 of words : 
 
 6. Variations arising from renderings into dif- 
 
 * I have never seen a confutation of the reasonings of Dean 
 Burgon in his treatise on this subject. He : upports the text as 
 it stands. The marginal note in the Revised Version is surely- 
 unsatisfactory, for it does not tell the whole case, but only a 
 part, about the manuscripts. 
 
 I Carm. LII. 13-16. 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. ii 
 
 ferent tongues, especially as between the Hebrew 
 text and the Septuagint : 
 
 7. The inspired writers of the New Testament 
 varied in the text they used for citations from 
 the Old Testament, and did not regard either the 
 Hebrew or the Greek as of exclusive authority : 
 
 8. There are three variant chronologies of the 
 Old Testament, according to the Hebrew, the 
 Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch respec- 
 tively ; and it would be unwarrantable to claim for 
 any one of them, as against the others, the absolute 
 sanction of a Divine revelation : while an historical 
 argument of some importance may be deducible, 
 on the other hand, from the fact that their varia- 
 tions lie within certain limits. 
 
 No doubt there will be those who will resent any 
 association between the idea of a Divine revelation 
 and the possibility of even the smallest intrusion of 
 error into its vehicle. This idea, however, is by no 
 means altogether a novelty. It is manifestly in- 
 cluded as a likelihood, if not a certainty, in the fact 
 of continuous transmission by human means, without 
 continuous miracle to guarantee it. But further, 
 ought they not to bear in mind that we are bound 
 by the rule of reason to look for the same method 
 of procedure in this great matter of a written pro- 
 vision of Divine knowledge for our needs, as in the 
 other parts of the manifold dispensation under which 
 
12 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 Providence has placed us. Now that method or 
 principle is one of sufficiency, not of perfection ; of 
 sufficiency for the attainment of practical ends, not 
 of conformity to ideal standards ; and the question 
 what constitutes that sufficiency is a matter no 
 more to be judged of by us in relation to the Scrip- 
 tures, than in relation to any other part of the 
 Divine dispensations, on all of which the Almighty 
 appears to have reserved His judgment to Himself. 
 Bishop Butler, I think, would wisely tell us that 
 we are not the judges, and that we are quite unfit 
 to be the judges, what may be the proper amount 
 and the just conditions of any of the aids to be 
 afforded us in passing through the discipline of life. 
 I will only remark that this default of ideal perfec- 
 tion, this use of twilight instead of a noonday blaze, 
 may be adapted to our weakness, and may be among 
 the appointed means of exercising, and by exercise of 
 strengthening our faith. But what properly belongs 
 to the present occasion is to point out that if proba- 
 bility, and not demonstration, marks the Divine 
 guidance of our paths in life as a whole, we are not 
 entitled to require that when the Almighty, in His 
 mercy, makes a special addition by revelation to 
 what He has already given to us of knowledge in 
 Nature and in Providence, that special gift should 
 be unlike His other gifts, and should have all its lines 
 and limits drawn out with mathematical precision. 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 13 
 
 I have then admitted, I hope in terms of sufficient 
 fulness, that my aim in no way embraces a contro- 
 versy with the moderate, or even with the extreme, 
 developments of textual criticism. Dr. Driver, the 
 Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford,* personally 
 as well as officially a champion of the doctrine that 
 there is a Divine revelation, has recently shown with 
 great clearness and ability that the basis of such 
 criticism is sound and undeniable, whatever be its 
 liability to aberration either in method or in details. 
 It compares consistencies and inconsistencies of text, 
 not simply as would be done by an ordinary reader, 
 but with all the lights of collateral knowledge. It 
 pronounces on the meaning of terms with the 
 authority derived from thorough acquaintance with 
 a given tongue, or with language at large. It 
 investigates and applies those laws of growth, 
 which operate upon language as they operate in 
 regard to a physical organism. 
 
 It has long been known, for example, that por- 
 tions of the historical books of the Old Testament, 
 such as the Books of Chronicles, were of a date very 
 far later than most of the events which they record, 
 and it is widely believedf that a portion of the 
 prophecies included in the Book of Isaiah were later 
 
 * Contemporary Review, February, 1890, pp. 215-231. 
 
 f I am not aware, however, what is the reply to the arguments 
 of Mr. Urwick, who contends for the unity of authorship. (" The 
 Servant of Jehovah." Edinburgh: Clark. 1877.) 
 
14 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 than his time. It is now pressed upon us that, 
 according to the prevailing judgment of the learned, 
 the form in which the older books of the Old Testa- 
 ment have come down to us does not correspond as a 
 rule with their titles, and is due to later though still, 
 as is largely held, to remote periods ; and that the 
 law presented to us in the Pentateuch is not an enact- 
 ment of a single date, but has been enlarged by a 
 process of growth, and by gradual accretions. To 
 us who are without original means of judgment 
 these are, at first hearing, without doubt, disturbing 
 announcements. Yet common sense requires us to 
 say, let them be fought out by the competent, but 
 let not us who are incompetent interfere. I utterly, 
 then, eschew for myself the responsibility of conflict 
 with these properly critical conclusions. 
 
 But this acquiescence is subject to the following 
 remarks. First, the acceptance of the conclusions of 
 the critics has reference to the present literary form 
 of the works, and leaves entirely open every question 
 relating to the substance. Any one who reads the 
 books of the Pentateuch, from the second to the fifth, 
 must observe how little they present the appear- 
 ance of consecutive, coherent, and digested record. 
 But their several portions must be considered on the 
 evidence applicable to them respectively. And the 
 main facts of the history they contain have received 
 strong confirmation from Egyptian and Eastern 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 15 
 
 research. With regard to the Book of Genesis, the 
 admission which has been made implies nothing 
 adverse to the truth of the traditions it embodies, 
 nothing adverse to their antiquity, nothing which 
 excludes or discredits, as to the older among them, 
 the idea of their having originally formed part of 
 a primitive revelation, simultaneous or successive. 
 The forms of expression may have changed, yet 
 the substance may remain with an altered literary 
 form ; as some scholars have thought (not, I believe, 
 rightly) that the diction and modelling of the Homeric 
 Poems is comparatively modern, and yet the matter 
 they embody may belong to a remote antiquity. It 
 is also conceivable that the diction of Chaucer, for 
 example, might be altered so as to conform to the 
 usage of the nineteenth century, and to leave little 
 apparent resemblance to the original, and yet the 
 whole substance of Chaucer might remain. 
 
 Further, our assent to the conclusions of the 
 critics ought to be strictly limited to a provisional 
 and revocable assent ; and this on practical grounds 
 of stringent obligation. For, firstly, these conclu- 
 sions appear to be in a great measure floating and 
 uncertain, to be the subject of manifold controversy. 
 Secondly, they seem to shift and vary with rapidity 
 in the minds of those who hold them. In editing 
 and revising the work of Bleek,* Wellhausen 
 * " Einleitung in das Alte Testament," Haupttheil I., C. Die 
 
i6 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 accepts in a great degree the genuineness of those 
 Davidic Psalms which are contained in the First 
 Book of the Psalter. But I have been told that 
 this position has been abandoned, and that, standing 
 as he appears to do at the head of the negative 
 critics, he now brings down the general body of the 
 Psalms to a date very greatly below that of the 
 Babylonic exile. It is certainly unreasonable to 
 hold a critic to his conclusions without exception. 
 But, on the other hand, it may be asked whether, 
 in order to warrant confidence, they ought not 
 to exhibit some element of stability ? The open- 
 ing of new sources of information may justify 
 all changes fairly referable to them ; and in minor 
 matters the finer touches of the destructive, as well 
 as the constructive, artist may be needed to com- 
 plete his work. But if reasonable grounds for 
 change do not determine its bounds, there must be 
 limits on the other hand to the duty of deference 
 and submission on the part of the outer and un- 
 instructed world, with respect to these literary con- 
 clusions. It seems doubtful how far they present 
 to us that aggregate continuity and progression, 
 
 Psalmen. [The edition published and adopted by Wellhausen, 
 to which I refer, is dated 1878 ; but the book had been published 
 in i860.] So recently as in the fifth edition (Berlin, 1886), the 
 Bleek-Wellhausen work assigns much weight to the Davidic 
 titles ; gives to David nearly fifty Psalms ; and holds that there 
 is no Psalm later than Nehemiah, few so late. (Sections 220-22, 
 pages 457-464, of the Einhitung. 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 17 
 
 which the whole world recognises in the case of the 
 physical sciences ; and the most liberal estimate 
 can hardly carry them farther than this, that we 
 should keep an open mind till the cycle of change 
 has been run through, and till time has been given 
 for the detection of flaws, and for the hearing of 
 those whose researches may have led them to 
 different results. 
 
 In the present instance we have an example, 
 which may not be without force, in support of this 
 warning. Mr. Margoliouth, the Laudian Professor 
 of Arabic at Oxford, and a gentleman of early 
 academical distinctions altogether extraordinary, has 
 published his Inaugural Lecture,* in which he states 
 his belief that, from materials and by means which 
 he lucidly explains, it will be found possible to 
 reconstruct the Semitic original, hitherto unknown, 
 of the Book of Ecclesiasticus. It was written, as he 
 states, by Ben Sira, not in the Hebrew of the 
 Prophets, but in the later Hebrew of the Rabbis 
 (p. 6). I understand that there are three great 
 stages, or states, of the Hebrew tongue : the 
 Ancient, the Middle, and the New; and that of 
 these the earlier or classical Scriptures belong to 
 the first, and the Book of Nehemiah (for example) 
 to the second. The third is the Rabbinical 
 
 * " On the place of Ecclesiasticus in Semitic Literature."' 
 Clarendon Press, 1890. 
 
 B 
 
i8 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 stage. The passage from one to another of these 
 stages is held, under the laws which determine 
 the movement of that language, to require a 
 very long time. Professor Margoliouth finds that 
 Ben Sira wrote in Rabbinical Hebrew, and the 
 earlier we find Rabbinical Hebrew in use, the 
 farther we drive into antiquity the dates of books 
 written in middle and in ancient Hebrew. 
 Suppose, by way of illustration, that Professor 
 Margoliouth shows Rabbinical Hebrew to have 
 come into use two hundred years earlier than had 
 been supposed, the effect is to throw back by two 
 hundred years the latest date to which a book in 
 middle or in ancient Hebrew could be assigned. 
 No wonder, then, that Professor Margoliouth 
 observes (p. 22) 
 
 " Some students are engaged in bringing down 
 the date of every chapter in the Bible so late as to 
 leave no room for prophecy and revelation." 
 
 But he goes on to add that if, by the task which 
 he has undertaken, and by those who may follow 
 and improve upon him^ this Book shall be properly 
 restored, 
 
 " Others will endeavour to find out how early the 
 professedly post-exilian books can be put back, so as 
 to account for the divergence between their awkward 
 Middle- Hebrew and the rich and eloquent New- 
 Hebrew of Ben Sira. However this may be, hypo- 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 19 
 
 theses, which place any portion of the classical or 
 Old-Hebrew Scriptures between the Middle-Hebrew 
 of Nehemiah and the New-Hebrew of Ben Sira, will 
 surely require some reconsideration, or at least have 
 to be harmonised in some way with the history of 
 the language, before they can be unconditionally 
 accepted." 
 
 Hence the spectator from without, perceiving that 
 there is war, waged on critical grounds, in the 
 critical camp itself, may surmise that what has been 
 wittily called the order of disorder is more or less 
 menaced in its central seat ; and he may be the 
 more hardened in his determination not to rush 
 prematurely to final conclusions on the serious, 
 though not as I suppose vital, question respecting 
 the age and authenticity of the early books of the 
 Old Testament in their present literary form. 
 
 There is such a thing as mistaking the indifferent 
 for the essential, and as a slavish adherence to 
 traditions insufiiciently examined. But the liabilities 
 of human nature to error do not all lie on one side. 
 It may on the contrary be stated with some confi- 
 dence that, when error in a certain direction after a 
 long precedence is effectively called to account, it 
 is generally apt, and in some cases certain, to be 
 followed by a reign of prejudices, or biassed judg- 
 ments, more or less extended, and in a contrary 
 direction. There is such a thing as a warping of the 
 
20 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 mind in favour of disintegration. Often does a 
 critic bring to the book he examines the conclusion 
 which he believes that he has drawn from it. 
 Often when he has not thus imported it, yet the 
 first view, in remote perspective, of the proposition 
 to which he leans will induce him to rush at the 
 most formidable fences that lie straight ahead of 
 him, instead of taking his chances of arriving at 
 it by the common road of reason. And often, 
 even when he has attained his conclusion without 
 prejudice, he will after adopting defend it against 
 objectors, not with argument only, but with all 
 the pride and pain of wounded self-love. And 
 every one of these dangers is commonly enhanced 
 in something like the same proportion, in which 
 the particular subject-matter embraces the highest 
 interests of mankind. 
 
 What I would specially press upon those to whom 
 I write is, that they should look broadly and largely 
 at the subject of Holy Scripture, especially of the 
 Scriptures of the older dispensation, which are, so 
 to speak, farther from the eye, and should never 
 allow themselves to be won away from that broad 
 and large contemplation into discussions which, 
 though in their own place legitimate, nay, needful, 
 yet are secondary, and therefore, when substituted 
 for the primary, are worse than frivolous. I do not 
 ask this from them as philosophers or as Christians, 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 21 
 
 but as men of sense. I ask them to look at the 
 subject as they would look at the British Constitu- 
 tion, or at the poetry of Shakespeare. If we were 
 pressed by the apparent absurdity that any one 
 branch of the British Legislature can stop the pro- 
 ceedings of the whole, or that the House of 
 Commons can reduce to beggary the whole Army, 
 Navy, and Civil Service of the country, and that 
 neither law nor usage makes any provision for meet- 
 ing the case, and this although there would ensue 
 from it nothing less than a frustration of the purposes 
 for which men join together in society, still there are 
 probably not ten men in the country whose estimate 
 of the Constitution they live under would be affected 
 by these supererogatory objections. And if we are 
 in any measure to grasp the office, dignity, and 
 authority of the Scriptures, we must not suppose 
 we are dealing adequately with that lofty sub- 
 ject by exhausting thought and time in examining 
 whether Moses either edited or wrote the Pentateuch 
 just as it stands, or what was the book of the law 
 found in the temple in the time of Josiah, or whether 
 it is possible or likely that any changes of addition 
 or omission may have crept into the text. If the 
 most greedily destructive among all the theories of 
 the modern critics (rather seriously at variance with 
 one another) were established as true, it would not 
 avail to impair the great facts of the history of man 
 
22 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 with respect to the Jews, and to the nations of the 
 world ; nor to disguise the light which those facts 
 throw upon the pages of the Sacred Volume ; nor 
 to abate the commanding force with which, bathed, 
 so to speak, in the flood of that light, the Bible 
 invites, attracts, and commands the adhesion of man- 
 kind. Even the moral problems, which may be 
 raised as to particular portions of the volume, and 
 which may not have found any absolute and certain 
 solution, are surely lost in the comprehensive con- 
 templation of its general strain, its immeasurable 
 loftiness of aim, and the vastness of the results 
 which it, and its immediate accompaniments in 
 institution and event, have wrought for our prede- 
 cessors in the journey of life, for ourselves, and for 
 the most forward, dominant, and responsible por- 
 tions of our race. 
 
 In a passage which rises to the very highest level 
 of British eloquence. Dr. Liddon,* exhausting all 
 the resources of our language, has described, so far 
 as man may describe it, the ineffable and unapproach- 
 able position held by the Sacred Volume. It is too 
 long to quote, too special to appropriate ; and to 
 make extracts would only mangle it. The com- 
 manding eminence of the great preacher of our 
 
 * Sermon preached at St. Paul's on the Second Sunday in 
 Advent, December 1889, pp. 28-31. [Since this was written, 
 death has extinguished in Dr. Liddon a light of the English 
 Church, singularly bright and pure.] 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 23 
 
 metropolitan Cathedral will fasten the public atten- 
 tion on the subject, and powerfully serve to show 
 that the Scriptures, in their substantial tissue, rise 
 far above the region of criticism, which shows no 
 sign of being about to do anything permanent or 
 effectual to lower their moral and spiritual grandeur, 
 or to disguise or intercept their gigantic work. 
 
 I turn to a cognate topic. The impression pre- 
 vails that, in this and other countries, the operative 
 classes, as they are termed, have at the great centres 
 of population, here and elsewhere, largely lost their 
 hold upon the Christian creed. There may be 
 exaggeration in this belief; but, all things taken 
 together, there is evidently a degree of foundation 
 for it. It does not mean, at least among us, that 
 they have lost respect for the Christian religion, or 
 for its ministers ; or that they desire their children 
 to be brought up otherwise than in the knowledge 
 and practice of it ; or that they themselves have 
 snapped the last ties which, on the cardinal occasions 
 of existence, associate them with its ordinances ; or 
 that they have renounced or modified the moral 
 standards of conduct, which its conspicuous victory 
 after an obstinate contest of many centuries, and its 
 long possession of the social field, have established. 
 It means no more, but also no less, than this, that 
 their positive distinct acceptance of the articles of 
 the Creed, and their sense of the dignity and value 
 
24 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 of the Sacred Eecord, are blunted, or in some cases 
 even effaced.* 
 
 In passing I may be permitted to observe that 
 if assent be more or less largely withheld by the 
 less well-to-do segment of society, it is still, not- 
 withstanding the sceptical movement of the day, 
 very generally yielded in this country by the 
 leisured and better provided classes in most, 
 though not all, of their branches. I simply state 
 this as fact, without drawing, in this case, any in- 
 ference. 
 
 There seems thus to be, within certain limits, an 
 approach to a reversal of the respective attitudes 
 which prevailed in the infancy of our religion. 
 Then the " poor" were the principal objects of the 
 personal ministry of Christ Our Lord, and it was 
 their glory to be the readiest receivers of the Gospel. 
 They were then, " the poor of this world, rich in 
 faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath pro- 
 mised to them that love Him." t They had fewer 
 obstacles, especially within themselves, to prevent 
 their accepting the new religion. It was less hard 
 
 * As 1 write in the general interests of belief, and on no 
 narrower ground, it is with deep regret that I extract the follow- 
 ing statement from the excellent compilation of Messrs. Mac* 
 millan, termed the Statesman's Year-Booh, for 1890. In France 
 account is taken at the census of religious belief, and in 1881, 
 for the first time, a column was provided for those who declined 
 to make any declaration of belief. The number of persons re- 
 turned under this head is no less than 7,684,906. 
 
 t James ii. 5. 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 25 
 
 for them to become " as little children." They had, to 
 all appearance, more palpable interests in the promise 
 of the life to come, as compared with the possession 
 of the life that now is. The seeming change in 
 their comparative facility of access to the Saviour, 
 as respects belief, is one to afford much matter for 
 meditation. The present purpose is to deal, in 
 slight outline at least, with one of its causes. For 
 one such cause certainly is the wide, though more 
 or less vague disparagement of the Holy Scriptures 
 recently observable in the surface currents of pre- 
 valent opinion, as regards their title to supply in 
 a supreme degree food for the religious thought of 
 man, and authoritative guidance for his life. 
 
 Amongst the suppositions, I believe erroneous? 
 which tend to produce this disparagement are the 
 following. 
 
 I. That the conclusions of science as to natural 
 objects have shaken or destroyed the assertions of 
 the early Scriptures with respect to the origin and 
 history of the world, and of man, its principal in- 
 habitant. 
 
 II. That their contents are in many cases offensive 
 to the moral sense, and unworthy of an enlightened 
 age. 
 
 III. That our race made its appearance in the 
 world in a condition but one degree above that of 
 the brute creation, and only by slow and painful 
 
26 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK 
 
 but continual progress has brought itself up to the 
 present level of its existence. 
 
 IV. That men have accomplished this by the 
 exercise of their natural powers ; and have never 
 received the special teaching and authoritative guid- 
 ance, which is signified under the name of Divine 
 Revelation. 
 
 V. That the more considerable among the differ- 
 ent races and nations of the world have devised, 
 and established from, time to time, their respective 
 religions ; and have in many cases accepted the pro- 
 mulgation of sacred books, which are to be con- 
 sidered as essentially of the same character with 
 the Bible. 
 
 VI. That the books of the Bible, in many most 
 important instances, and especially those books of 
 the Old Testament which purport to be the earliest, 
 so far from being contemporary with the events 
 which they record, or with the authors to whom 
 they are ascribed, are comparatively recent compila- 
 tions from uncertain sources, and are therefore 
 without authority. 
 
 Most of the foregoing remarks relate to the last 
 of these assumptions ; and I shall proceed to observe 
 upon others among them. 
 
 There are propositions wider still, but wholly 
 foreign to the present purpose ; such as that God 
 is essentially unknowable, that we have no reason- 
 
OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 27 
 
 able evidence of a life beyond the grave, and that 
 rational certainty is confined to material objects and 
 to the testimony of the senses. Passing by these 
 propositions, I confine myself wholly to what pre- 
 ceded them ; and I shall endeavour, from some points 
 of view, to present an opposing view of the spiri- 
 tual field. Moreover, as each of these is the subject 
 of a literature of its own which may be termed 
 scientific, I here premise that what I have to say 
 will, though I hope rational and true, be not sys- 
 tematic or complete, but popular and partial only ; 
 and will have for its immediate aim to show that 
 there are grave reasons for questioning every really 
 destructive proposition that has been advanced, and 
 for withholding our assent from them until these 
 reasons (and, as I conceive, many others) shall be 
 confuted and set aside. 
 
 I shall, however, as being in duty bound to follow 
 the truth so far as I can discern it, have to make 
 many confessions in the course of my argument to 
 the prejudice, not as I trust of Christian belief or of 
 the Sacred Volume, but only of us, who as its 
 students have failed gravely, and at many points, in 
 the duty of a temperate and cautious treatment of 
 it ; as unhappily we have also failed, and often njore 
 grossly failed, in every other duty. But, as the 
 lines and laws of duty at large remain unobscured, 
 notwithstanding the imperfections everywhere dif- 
 
28 THE IMPREGNABLE ROCK, ETC. 
 
 fused, so we may trust that sufficient light yet remains 
 for us, if duly followed, whereby to establish the 
 authority and sufficiency of Holy Scripture for its 
 high moral and spiritual purposes. For the present, 
 / 1 have endeavoured to point out that the operations 
 ' of criticism properly so called, affecting as they do 
 the literary form of the books, leave the questions of 
 substance, namely, those of history, miracle, and 
 revelation, substantially where they found them. I 
 shall, in several succeeding papers, strive to show, at 
 least by specimens, that science and research have 
 done much to sustain the historical credit of the 
 Old Testament : that in doing this they have added 
 strength to the argument which contends that in 
 them we find a Divine revelation : and that the 
 evidence, rationally viewed, both of contents and of 
 results, binds us to stand where our forefathers 
 have stood, upon the impregnable rock of Holy 
 Scripture. 
 
II. 
 
 XLbe Creation Stor^. 
 
II. 
 ITbe dreatton Storp* 
 
 "The rising birth 
 Of Nature from the imapparent deep." 
 
 Par. Lost. B. vii. 
 
 In recent controversies on the trustworthiness of 
 the Scripture record, much has been thought to 
 turn on the Creation Story ; and the special and 
 separate importance thus attached to it has given 
 it a separate and prominent position in the public 
 view. This constitutes in itself a reason for 
 addressing ourselves at once to the consideration 
 of it, apart from any more general investigation 
 touching either the older Scriptures at large, or 
 any of the books which collectively compose 
 them. 
 
 But there are broader and deeper reasons for 
 this separate consideration. It is suggested, first, 
 by the form which has been given to the relation 
 
32 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 itself. The narrative, given with wonderful suc- 
 cinctness in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, 
 and in the first three verses of the second chapter, 
 stands distinct, in essential points, from all that 
 follows in the Scriptures. It is a solitary and 
 striking example of the detailed exposition of 
 physical facts. For such an example we must 
 suppose a purpose ; and we have to inquire what 
 that purpose was. Next, it seems as it were to 
 trespass on the ground of science, and, indepen- 
 dently of investigation and of evidence, to assert a 
 rival authority. And further, forming no part, 
 unless towards its close, of the history of man, and 
 nowhere touching directly on human action, it severs 
 itself from the rest of the Sacred Volume, and 
 appears more as a preface to the history, than as 
 a part of it. 
 
 And yet there are signs, in subsequent portions 
 of the Volume, that this tale of the Creation was 
 regarded by the Hebrews as both authoritative and 
 important. For it gave form and shape to portions 
 of their literature, in the central department of its 
 devotions. Nay, traces of it may, perhaps, be found 
 in the Book of Job (xxxviii.), where the Almighty 
 challenges the patriarch on the primordial works of 
 creation. More clearly in Psalm civ., where we 
 have light, the firmament, the waters and their 
 severance and confinement within bounds ; a sue- 
 
THE CREATION STORY. ^2> 
 
 cession the same as in Genesis. Then follow mixedly 
 the animal and vegetable creations, and man as the 
 climax crowns the series in ver. 23. So in Psalui 
 cxlviii. we have first (1-6) the heavens, the heavenly 
 bodies, and the atmosphere ; then, again mixedly, 
 the earth and the agents affecting it, with the ani- 
 mate population (7-10), and lastly man. If there 
 be some variation in the order of the details, still 
 the idea of consecutive development, or evolution, 
 which struck so forcibly the intelligence of Haeckel, 
 is clearly impressed upon the whole. At a later date, 
 and only (so far as is known) in the Greek tongue, 
 we find a more nearly exact resemblance in the Song 
 of the Three Children. The heavenly bodies and 
 phenomena occupy the first division of the Song ; 
 then the earth is invoked to bless the Lord, with its 
 mountains, vegetation, and waters ; then the animate 
 population of water, air, and land, in the order pur- 
 sued in the first chapter of Genesis, and with the 
 same remarkable omission of the great kingdom of 
 the Reptiles at their proper place. Then follow the 
 children of Men ; and these fill the closing portion 
 of the Song. The most noteworthy differences 
 (which, however, are quite secondary,) seem to be 
 that there is no mention of the first beginnings of 
 vegetation, and no supplemental notice, as in Gen. i. 
 24-30, of the reptiles. 
 
 c 
 
34 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 But also the sun, moon, and stars, which are 
 categorically placed later in Genesis than vegeta- 
 tion, precede in the Song any notice of the earth. 
 Let not this difference be hastily called a discre- 
 pancy. Each mode is to be explained by consider- 
 ing the character and purpose of the composition. In 
 Genesis, it is a narrative of the action ; in the 
 Song, it is a panorama of the spectacle. Genesis, 
 as a rule, refers each of the great factors of the 
 visible world to its due order of origin in time ; 
 the Song enumerates the particulars as they are 
 presented to the eye in a picture, where the tran- 
 scendent eminence of the heavenly bodies as they 
 are, and especially of the sun, gives to this group 
 a proper priority. 
 
 But this Creation Story may have an importance 
 for us even greater than it had for the Hebrews, or 
 than it could have in any of those ages when all 
 men believed, perhaps even too freely, in special 
 modes of communication from the Deity to man, and 
 had not a stock of courage or of audacity sufficient 
 to question the possibility of a divine revelation. 
 For we have now to bear in mind that the Book of 
 Genesis generally contains a portion of human 
 history, and that all human history is a record of 
 human experience. It is not so with the intro- 
 ductory recital ; for the contents of it lie outside of, 
 and anterior to, the very earliest human experience. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 35 
 
 How came, then, this recital into the possession of a 
 portion of mankind ? 
 
 It is conceivable that a theory of Creation and of 
 the ordering of the world might be bodied forth in 
 poetry, or might under given circumstances be, as 
 now, based on the researches of natural science. 
 
 But, in the first place, this recital cannot be due 
 to the mere imagination of a poet. It is in a high 
 degree, as we shall see, methodical and elaborate. 
 And there is nothing either equalling or within 
 many degrees approaching it, which can be set down 
 to the account of poetry in other spheres of primi- 
 tive antiquity, whatever their poetical opulence may 
 have been. Further, the early Hebrews do not 
 appear to have cultivated or developed any poetical 
 faculty at all, except that which was exhibited in 
 strictly religious work, such as the devotions of the 
 Psalms, and (principally) the discourses and ad- 
 dresses of the Prophets. 
 
 As they were not, in a general sense, poetical, 
 so neither were they in any sense scientific. By 
 tradition, and by positive records, we know pretty 
 well what kinds of knowledge were pursued in very 
 early ages. They were most strictly practical. 
 Take, for example, astronomy among the Chaldees, 
 or medicine among the Egyptians. The necessities 
 of life then, as now, pressed upon man. We may 
 say with much confidence that in remote antiquity 
 
36 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 there existed no science like geology, aiming to 
 give a history of the earth. So, again, there was 
 no cosmogony, professing to convey a history of the 
 kosmos as then understood ; which would have in- 
 cluded, together with the earth, the sun, moon, 
 planets, and atmosphere. 
 
 When, at a later date, speculation on physical 
 origins began, it was rather on the primary idea than 
 on any systematic arrangement or succession. With 
 the Ionic, which was the earliest school of philosophy, 
 the human intelligence was mainly busied in con- 
 tending for one or other of the known material 
 elements, as entitled to the honours of the pri- 
 mordial cause. Nor had even the Greeks or Romans 
 formulated any scheme in any degree approaching 
 that of Genesis for order and method, so late as the 
 time when they became acquainted with the Hebrew 
 Scriptures through their translation into Greek. The 
 opening statement of Ovid in the " Metamorphoses" 
 is remarkable; but at the time when he wrote, the 
 Book of Genesis had been accessible to educated 
 persons in what was then the chief literary language 
 of the Romans. There is not, then, the smallest 
 ground for treating the Mosaic cosmogony, whether 
 in the way of original or copy, as the offspring of 
 scientific inquiry. 
 
 To speak of it as guesswork would be irrational. 
 There were no materials for guessing. There was 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 37 
 
 no purpose to be served by guessing. For a record 
 of the formation of the world we find no purpose in 
 connection with the ordinary necessities or con- 
 veniences of life. Not to mention that down to 
 this day there exists no cosmogony which can be 
 called scientific, though there are theories both 
 ingenious and beautiful, which apparently are coming 
 to be more and more accepted ; these, however, 
 being of an origin decidedly late even in the history 
 of modern physics. 
 
 But, further, as the Tale of Creation is not 
 poetry nor is it science, so neither, according to its 
 own aspect or profession, is it theory at all. 
 The method here pursued is that of historical 
 recital. The person, who composes or transmits 
 it, seems to believe, and to intend others to believe, 
 that he is dealing with matters of fact. But these 
 matters of fact were, from the nature of the case, 
 altogether inaccessible to inquiry, and impossible to 
 attain by our ordinary mental faculties of percep- 
 tion or reflection, inasmuch as they date before the 
 creation of our race. If it is, as it surely professes 
 to be, a serious conveyance of truth, it can only be 
 a communication from the Most High ; a com- 
 munication to man and for the use of man, there- 
 fore in a form adapted to his mind and to his 
 use. If, thus considered, it is true, then it carries 
 stamped upon it the proof of a Divine revelation ; 
 
38 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 an assertion which cannot commonly be sustained 
 from the nature of the contents as to this or that 
 minute portion of Scripture at large. 
 
 If, when thus considered, it proves not to be true, 
 we then have to consider what account of it we are 
 in a condition to give. I cannot say that to me 
 this appears an easy undertaking. ^' If," says Pro- 
 fessor Dana with much reason, "it be true that 
 the narration in Genesis has no support in natural 
 science, it would have been better for its religious 
 character that all the verses between the first and 
 those on the creation of man had been omitted.^' * 
 
 But the truth, or trueness, of which I speak, is 
 truth or trueness as conveyed to and comprehended 
 by the mind of man ; and, further, by the mind of 
 man in a comparatively untrained and infant state. 
 I cannot, indeed, wholly shut out from view the 
 possibility that casual imperfections may have crept 
 into the record. Setting aside, however, that possi- 
 bility, let us consider the conditions of the case as 
 they are exhibited to us by reasonable likelihood ; 
 for, if the communication were divine, we may be 
 certain that it would on that account be all the more 
 strictly governed by the laws of the reasonable. 
 
 In an addressf of singular ability on " The Dis- 
 cord and Harmony between Science and the Bible," 
 
 "Creation." By Professor Dana. Oberlin, 0., 1885; p. 202. 
 t New York : Hatcham. The Address is dated July 27, 1882. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 39 
 
 Dr. Smith, of tlie University of Virginia, has drawn 
 some very important distinctions. In the depart- 
 ment of natural science, and in the department of 
 Scriptural record, the question lies " between the 
 present interpretation of certain parts of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, and the present interpreta- 
 tion of certain parts of nature.'^ * " We must 
 not too hastily assume that either of these 
 interpretations is absolute and final." '' The 
 science of one epoch is to a large extent a help, 
 which the science of the next uses and abandons." 
 Dr. Smith points out as an example that, down to 
 the early part of the present century, Newton's pro- 
 jectile theory of light seemed to be firmly established, 
 but that it has given place to the theory of undula- 
 tion, " which has now for fifty years reigned in its 
 stead." Hence, he observes, we should not be too 
 much elated by the discovery of harmonies, nor 
 should we receive with impatience the assertion of 
 contradictions. Throughout, it is probable, and not 
 demonstrative, evidence with which we are dealing. 
 There should always be a certain element of reserve 
 in our judgments on particulars ; yet probable evi- 
 dence may come indefinitely near to demonstration ; 
 and, even as, while falling greatly short of it, it 
 may morally bind us to action, so may it, on pre- 
 cisely the same principles, bind us to belief. What 
 
 * Ibid. p. 3. 
 
40 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 we have to do is, to deal with the evidence before us 
 according to a rational appreciation of its force. It 
 may show on this or that particular question the 
 concord, or it may show the discord, between alleged 
 facts of nature and alleged interpretations of Scrip- 
 ture ; or it may leave the question open, for want 
 of sufficient evidence, either way, on which to ground 
 a conclusion. 
 
 It is by these principles, and under these limita- 
 tions, that I desire to see the question tried in the 
 terms in which I think it ought to be stated ; 
 namely, not whether the recitals in Genesis at each 
 and every point have an accurately scientific form, 
 but, Whether the statements of the Creation Story, 
 as a whole, appear to stand in such a relation to 
 the facts of natural science, so far as they have been 
 ascertained, as to warrant or require our concluding 
 that the statements have proceeded, in a manner 
 above the ordinary manner, from the Author of the 
 creation itself.* 
 
 Those, who maintain the affirmative of this propo- 
 sition, have by opponents been termed Reconcilers ; 
 and it is convenient, in a controverted matter, to 
 
 * See the attractive paper of Professor Pritchard, in his 
 " Occasional Thoughts," Murray, 1889. He says on p. 261, " I 
 cannot accept the Proem as being, or even as intended to be, 
 an exact and scientific account of Creation," but adds that it 
 " contains within it elements of that same sort of superhuman 
 aid or superintendence, tvhich is generally understood by the wide- 
 fined term of inspiration.'' 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 41 
 
 have the power of reference by a single word to 
 the proposers of any given opinion. The same rule 
 of convenience may perhaps justify me in desig- 
 nating those who would assert the negative by the 
 name of Oontradictionists. The recorder of the 
 Creation Story in Genesis I may designate by the 
 name of Moses himself, or the Mosaist, or the 
 Mosaic writer. This would not be reasonable, if 
 there were anything extravagant in the supposition 
 that there is a groundwork of fact for the tradition 
 which treats Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. 
 But such a supposition, in whole or in part, is 
 sustained by many and strong presumptions, and I 
 bear in mind that Wellhausen, in giving Bleek's 
 " Introduction" to the world, stated it as his opinion 
 that there is a strong Mosaic element in the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 It does not seem too much to say, that the convey- 
 ance of scientific instruction as such would not, 
 under the circumstances of the case, be a reasonable 
 object for the Mosaic writer to pursue ; for the con- 
 dition of primitive man, as it is portrayed in the 
 Book of Genesis, did not require, perhaps did not 
 admit of, scientific instruction. On the other hand, it 
 could not but be a reasonable object then to convey 
 to the mind of man, such as he actually was, a moral 
 lesson drawn from and founded on that picture, that 
 assemblage of created objects, which was before his 
 
42 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 eyes, and with which he lived in perpetual contact. 
 We have, indeed, to consider both what lesson it 
 would be most rational to convey, and by what method 
 it would be most rational to stamp it, as a living 
 lesson, on the mind by which it was to be received. 
 And the question finally to be decided is not, whether 
 according to the present state of knowledge the 
 recital in the Book of Genesis is at each several 
 point either precise or complete. It may here be 
 general, there particular ; it may here describe a 
 continuous process, and it may there make large 
 omissions, if the things omitted were either abso- 
 lutely or comparatively immaterial to its purpose ; 
 it may be careful of the actual succession in time, or 
 may deviate from it, according as the one or the 
 other best subserved the general and principal aim ; 
 so that the true question, I must repeat, is no more 
 than this : Do the propositions of the Creation Story 
 in Genesis appear to stand in such a relation to the 
 facts of natural science, so far as they are ascertained, 
 as to warrant or require our concluding that these 
 propositions proceeded, in a manner above the ordi- 
 nary manner, from the Author of the visible 
 creation ? 
 
 What, then, may we conceive to have been the 
 moral and spiritual lessons which the Mosaist had to 
 communicate, and not only to communicate but to 
 infuse or to impress ? I do not presume to attempt 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 43 
 
 an exhaustive enumeration. But it is not difficult 
 to specify a variety of purposes which the narrative 
 was calculated to promote, and which were of great 
 and obvious value for the education of mankind. 
 
 First, it was fitted to teach man his proper place 
 in creation in relation to its several orders, and 
 thereby to prepare at least for the formation of the 
 idea of relative duty, as between man and other 
 created beings. 
 
 Secondly, it presented to his mind, and by means 
 of detail made him know and feel what was the 
 beautiful and noble home that he inhabited, and 
 with what a fatherly and tender care Providence 
 had prepared it for him to dwell in. There was a 
 picture before his eyes. That picture was filled 
 with objects of nature, animate and inanimate. I 
 say, one of its great aims may have been to make 
 him know and feel by means of detail ; for whole- 
 sale teaching, teaching in the lump, or abstract 
 teaching, mostly ineffective even now, would have 
 been wholly futile then. It was needful to use the 
 simplest phrases, that the primitive man might 
 receive a conception, thoroughly faithful in broad 
 outline, of what his Maker had been about on his 
 behalf. So the Maker condescends to partition and 
 set out His work, in making it a picture. 
 
 But He proceeds further (and this is the climax) 
 to represent Himself as resting after it. This de- 
 
44 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 claration is in no conflict with any scientific record. 
 It, however, implies a license in the use of language, 
 which for its boldness was never exceeded in any 
 interpretation, reconciling or other, which has been 
 applied to any part of the text of Genesis. But it 
 draws its ample warrant from the strong educative 
 lesson that is to be learned from it ; for it invests 
 both with majesty and authority the doctrine of a 
 day of rest, which was of the highest importance to 
 the higher and inner life of man, and which the 
 daily cares of his existence were but too likely, as 
 experience proved, to efface from his recollection 
 
 I contend then, thirdly, that the Creation Story 
 was intended to have a special bearing on the great 
 institution of the day of rest, or Sabbath, by exhibit- 
 ing it in the manner of an object lesson. Paley, 
 indeed, has said that God blessed the seventh day 
 and sanctified it (Gen. ii. 3), not at that time but 
 for that reason. He is a writer much to be respected, 
 for many reasons; but, in dealing with Holy Scripture, 
 he was somewhat apt to rest upon the surface. And 
 now we have learned from Assyrian researches how 
 many and how sharply traced are the vestiges, long 
 anterior to the delivery of the law, of some early 
 institution or command, which in that region evi- 
 dently had given a special sanctity to the number 
 seven, and, in particular, to the seventh day. 
 
 Man then, childlike and sinless, had to receive a 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 45 
 
 lesson which was capable of gradual developmentj 
 and which spoke to something like the following 
 effect. It has not been by a slight or single effort 
 that the nature, in which you are moulded, has 
 been lifted to its present level ; you have reached 
 it by steps and degrees, and by a plan which, 
 stated in rough outline, may stir your faculties, 
 and help them onwards to the truth through the 
 genial action of wonder, delight, and gratitude. 
 This was a lesson, as it seems to me, perhaps 
 quite large enough for the primitive man on the 
 facts of creation, and one which, when he had 
 heard and had begun to digest it, might well be 
 followed by a rest for generations. 
 
 And it further seems to have been vital to the 
 efficiency of this lesson, from such a point of view, 
 that it should have been sharply broken up into 
 parts, although there might be in nature nothing, at 
 any precise points of breakage or transition, to cor- 
 respond physically with those divisions. They 
 would become intelligible, significant, and useful 
 on a comparison of the several processes in their 
 developed state, and of the vast and measureless 
 diflferences, which in that state they severally present 
 to contemplation. As, when a series of scenes are 
 now made to move along before the eye of a 
 spectator, his attention is not fixed upon the joints 
 which divide them, but on the scenes themselves, 
 
46 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 yet the joints constitute a framework as it were for 
 each, and the idea of each is made more distinct 
 and lively than it would have been if, without any 
 note of division, they had run into one another. 
 
 There is, however, another purpose, not yet named, 
 and more remote yet perhaps even more vital, which 
 appears to be powerfully served by the Creation 
 Story of the Bible. In the prehistoric time, poly- 
 theism was very largely engendered by national 
 distinctions, rivalries, and amalgamations. By a 
 ready and ingenious compromise each people became 
 habituated to recognise a deity all-sufficient for its 
 own wants, but unconcerned with those of others. 
 In the course of time and of successive change, many 
 of these deities might find themselves inducted into 
 one and the same thearchy, or mythological system, 
 such as that of Assyria or of Olympus, and sitting 
 there side by side. When this happened, the 
 polytheistic idea had reached its full development. 
 But the road to it lay principally through the 
 erection of separate thrones each for its particular 
 national organisation, and through the limits thus 
 imposed upon the earlier and more proper conception 
 of a Divine Governor. But where the Creation 
 Story of Genesis was received, the door was 
 effectually closed for all thinking men against these 
 coequal and purely national gods. And how ? 
 Because the God of Israel was the Maker of the 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 47 
 
 world, and of all the nations in it. It was His 
 creation; and its inhabitants, whether terrestrial 
 or celestial, were His creatures. Thus the narra- 
 tive in this great chapter was nothing less 
 than a charter of monotheism ; and though, in 
 Israelitish practice, Baal and Ashtoreth might find 
 their way into popular worship, and spread around 
 them an infinity of corruption, the lines of the 
 dogma never were obscured, and the standard of 
 authoritative reform still lifted up its head to heaven 
 from the first day of idolatry to the last, when, in 
 the Exile, it was finally submerged.* 
 
 How efiectually and vividly this great idea of 
 creation, lost or dilapidated elsewhere, was impressed 
 upon the Hebrew mind we may perceive from an 
 usage in the Psalms, to which I do not remember 
 a parallel in the classical literature. The lower 
 orders of animated creatures are themselves placed 
 in a living relation to the Almighty. " The lions 
 roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from 
 
 God These all wait upon thee; that thou 
 
 mayest give them meat in due season." f Nor is the 
 boldness of Hebrew devotion arrested at this point. 
 It extends to the inanimate wor'ld. "The heavens 
 declare the glory of God ; and the firmament showeth 
 His handiwork Their sound is gone out into 
 
 * For the further elucidation of the subject of this paragraph 
 see the Postscript to " The Creation Story." 
 t Fs. civ. 21, 27. 
 
48 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 all lands, and their words into the ends of the world. 
 .... The sun cometh forth as a bridegroom out 
 of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his 
 course." * This is without doubt noble poetry, but 
 it is also nobler than any poetry. Mute Nature is 
 instinct and vocal with worship, and Creation in its 
 humblest orders, giving a lesson to its loftiest, 
 ministers to the glory of the Most High. 
 
 In order, then, to approach any attempt at com- 
 parison between the record of Scripture and the 
 record of Natural Science, we must consider first, 
 as far as reasonable presumption carries us, what is 
 the proper object of the scientist, and what was the 
 proper object of Moses, or of the Mosaic writer, in 
 the first chapter of Genesis. 
 
 The object of the scientist is simply to state the 
 facts of nature in the cosmogony as and so far as 
 he can find them. The object of the Mosaic writer 
 is broadly distinct ; it is, &urely, to convey moral 
 and spiritual training. This training was to be 
 conveyed to human beings of childlike temperament 
 and of unimproved understanding. It was his 
 business to use those words which would best 
 convey the lessons he had to teach ; which would 
 carry most truth into the minds of those he 
 taught. This observation has not the honours of 
 originality. " He emphasised," says Rabbi Gross- 
 
 * Ps. xix. i-<{. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 49 
 
 mann,* in his interesting tract on Maimonides, " as 
 very proper and wise, the Talmudic maxim, that 
 the Torah employs such diction as is likely to be 
 most communicative." 
 
 In speaking of the Mosaic writer, I would, with- 
 out presumption, seek to include any divine impulse 
 which may have prompted him, or may have 
 dictated any communication from God to man, 
 in whatever form it may have been conveyed. 
 With this aim in view, words of figure, though 
 literally untrue, might carry more truth home 
 than words of fact ; and words less exact will even 
 now often carry more truth than words superior 
 in exactness. The truth to be conveyed was, indeed, 
 in its basis physical ; but it was to serve moral and 
 spiritual ends, and accordingly by these ends the 
 method of its conveyance behoved to be shaped and 
 pictured. 
 
 I submit, then, that the days of creation are 
 neither the solar days of twenty-four hours, nor are 
 they the geological periods which the geologist him- 
 self is compelled popularly, and in a manner utterly 
 remote from precision, to describe as millions upon 
 millions of years. To use such language as this is 
 simply to tell us, that we have no means of forming 
 a determinate idea upon the subject of the geologic 
 periods. I set aside both these interpretations, as 
 
 * P. 12. Putnam, New York and London^ 1890. 
 
 D 
 
50 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 I do not think the Mosaist intended to convey an 
 idea like the first, which was false, or like the 
 second, which for his auditory would have been 
 barren and unmeaning. Unmeaning, and even 
 confusing in the highest degree ; for large state- 
 ments in figures are well known to be utterly 
 beyond comprehension for man at an early intellec- 
 tual stage ; and I have myself, I think, shown * 
 that, even among the Achaian or Homeric Greeks, 
 the limits of numerical comprehension were extremely 
 narrow, and all large numbers were used, so to 
 speak, at a venture. 
 
 It seems to me that the ''days" of the Mosaist are 
 more properly to be described as chapters in the 
 HISTORY OF THE CREATION. That is to Say, the 
 purpose of the writer, in speaking of the days, was 
 the same as the purpose of the historian is, when he 
 divides his work into chapters. His object is to 
 give clear and sound instruction. So that he can 
 do this, and in order that he may do it, the periods 
 of time assigned to each chapter are longer or 
 shorter, according as the one or the other may 
 minister to better comprehension of his subject 
 by his readers. Further, in point of chronology, 
 his chapters often overlap. He finds it needful, 
 always keeping his end in view, to pursue some nar- 
 
 * "Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age," vol. iii., Section 
 on Number. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 51 
 
 rative to its close, and then, stepping backwards^ to 
 take up some other series of facts, although their 
 exordium dated at a period of time which he has 
 already traversed. The resources of the literary art, 
 aided for the last four centuries by printing, enable 
 the modern writer to confront more easily these diffi- 
 culties of arrangement, and so to present the mate- 
 rial to his reader's eye, in text or margin, as to place 
 the texture of his chronology in harmony with the 
 texture of the action he has to relate. The Mosaist, 
 in his endeavour to expound the ordinary develop- 
 ment of the visible world, had no such resources. 
 His expedient was to lay hold on that which, to the 
 mind of his time, was the best example of complete 
 and orderly division. This was the day ; an idea at 
 once simple, definite, and familiar. As one day is 
 divided from another, not by any change visible to 
 the eye at a given moment, yet effectually, by the 
 broad chasm of the intervening night, so were the 
 stages of the creative work several and distinct, even 
 if, like the lapse of time, they were without breach 
 of continuity. Each had its work, each had the 
 beginning and the completion of that work, even as 
 the day is begun by its morning, and completed and 
 concluded by its evening. 
 
 And now to sum up. In order that the narrative 
 might be intelligible, it was useful to subdivide the 
 work. This could most effectively be done by sub- 
 
52 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 div^iding it into periods of time. And further, it 
 was well to choose that particular circumscription or 
 period of time which is the most definite and best 
 understood. Of all these, the day is clearly the 
 best, as compared with the month or the year 
 first, because of its small and familiar compass ; 
 and, secondly, because of the strong and marked 
 division which separates one day from another. 
 
 Hence, we may reasonably argue, it is that not 
 here only, but throughout the Scripture, and even 
 down to the present time in familiar human speech, 
 the day is figuratively used to describe periods of 
 time, perfectly undefined as such, but defined, for 
 practical purposes, by the lives or events to which 
 reference is made. And if it be said there was a 
 danger of its being misunderstood in this particular 
 case, the answer is that such danger of misappre- 
 hension attaches in various degrees to all use of 
 figurative language ; but figurative language is still 
 used. And with reason, because the mischiefs aris- 
 ing from such danger are rare and trivial, in com- 
 parison with the force and clearness which it lends 
 to truth on its passage, through a clouded atmo- 
 sphere of folly, indifference, and prejudice, into the 
 mind of man. In this particular case, the danger 
 and inconvenience are at their minimum, the benefit 
 at its zenith ; for no moral mischief ensues because 
 some have supposed the days of the creation to be 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 53 
 
 pure solar days of twenty-four hours, while the 
 benefit has been that the grand conception of orderly 
 development, and ascent from chaos to man, became 
 among the Hebrew people an universal and familiar 
 truth, of which other races appear to have lost 
 sight. 
 
 I may now part from the important and long- 
 vexed discussion on the Mosiac days. But I shall 
 further examine the general question, what is the 
 true method, what the reasonable spirit, of interpreta- 
 tion to be applied to the words of the Creation 
 Story ? I will state frankly my opinion that, in this 
 important matter, too much has sometimes been 
 conceded in modern days to the Scientist and to the 
 Hebraist, just as in former days too much was 
 allowed to the unproved assumptions of the Theo- 
 logian. Now it is evident that the proper ground 
 of the Scientist and of the Hebraist respectively is 
 unassailable, as against those who are neither 
 Scientists nor Hebraists. On the meaning of the 
 words used in the Creation Story I, as an ignoramus, 
 have only to accept the statements of Hebrew 
 scholars, with gratitude for the aid received ; and in 
 like manner those of men skilled in natural science 
 on the nature and succession of the orders of beicg, 
 and the transitions from one to the other. Not 
 that their statements are inerrable ; but they con- 
 stitute the best working material in our possession. 
 
54 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 Still they are the statements of men whose title to 
 speak with authority is confined to their special 
 province ; and if we allow them without protest to 
 go beyond it, and still to claim that authority when 
 they are what is called at school '^ out of bounds," 
 we are much to blame, and may sufier for our care- 
 lessness. 
 
 I will now endeavour to illustrate and apply what 
 has been said. The Hebraist says, I will conduct 
 you safely (as far as the case allows) to the mean- 
 ing of the Hebrew words. And the Scientist makes 
 the same promise in regard to the facts of the 
 created orders, so far as they are exhibited by geolo- 
 gical investigations into the crust of the earth. At 
 first sight it may seem as if these two authoritative 
 witnesses must cover the whole ground, each setting 
 out from his own point of departure, the two then 
 meeting in the midst, and leaving no unoccupied 
 space between them. But my contention is that 
 there is a ground which neither of them is entitled 
 to occupy in his character as a specialist, and on 
 which he has no warrant for entering, except in so 
 far as he is a just observer and reason er in a much 
 wider field. And what is the residuary subject- 
 matter still to be disposed of ? Not the meaning of 
 the Hebrew words. The Hebraist has ah'eady given 
 us their true equivalents in English. We now learn, 
 for example, that the '^ whales " of Gen. i. 2 1 are 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 55 
 
 not whales at all, but that they are aquatic 
 monsters* or great creatures; while we learn from 
 the biologist that the whale is a late mammal. So 
 geology has acquainted us what are the relative 
 dates of the water and of the land populations, and 
 has supplied much information as to reptiles, birds, 
 and beasts. But there remains a great uncovered 
 ground, and a great unsolved question. It is 
 this. Given the facts as the geologist is led 
 to state them, given the Hebrew tongue as the 
 instrument through which the relator has to work, 
 what are the terms, and what is the order and adjust- 
 ment of terms, through which he can convey most 
 of truth and force, with least of incumbrance and of 
 impediment, to the mind of man, in the condition in 
 which he had to deal with it ? Let me be permitted 
 to say that the only specialism, which can be of the 
 smallest value here, is that of the close observer of 
 human nature ; of the student of human action, 
 and of the methods which Divine Providence em- 
 ploys in the conduct of its dealings with men. Cer- 
 tainly I can lay no claim to be heard here more than 
 
 * R.V., the great sea-monsters. " It seems, on the whole, most 
 probable, that the creatures here said to have been created were 
 serpents, crocodiles, and other huge saurians, though possibly 
 any large monsters of sea or river may be included " (Bp. 
 Browne hi he, "Speaker's Commentary"). Possibly a word 
 meaning, whether wholly or inter alia, crocodiles would convey 
 a pretty clear idea to the mind of the Hebrews, after their 
 sojourn in Egypt. 
 
56 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 any other person. Yet will I say, that any man 
 whose labour and duty for several scores of years has 
 included as their central point the study of the 
 means of making himself intelligible to the mass of 
 men, is fro tanto perhaps in a better position to 
 judge what would be the forms and methods of 
 speech proper for the Mosaic writer to adopt, than 
 the most perfect Hebraist as such, or the most con- 
 summate votary of natural sciences as such. 
 
 T will now endeavour to try some portions of the 
 case which turn upon verbal difficulty. At the 
 outset of the narrative the relator says, that " the 
 earth was without form and void " (Gen. i. 2) and 
 that " the spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
 waters." Nay, how is this, says the Hebraist ? The 
 Hebrew word for earth means earth, and the word 
 used for water never means anything except water. 
 But according to the beautiful theory, which has 
 during the last half-century won so largely the adhe- 
 sion of the scientific world, and which seems to be 
 mainly called the nebular theory, at the commence- 
 ment of the process which Genesis describes, and in 
 its early stages, there was no earth, and there were 
 no waters. Is the relator here really at fault ? It 
 seemn to me that it might be quite as easy to cavil 
 at the phrase nebular theory, though it be one in use 
 amoDg scientific men, as it is to find fault with these 
 words of Genesis. For nothing can be more dif- 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 57 
 
 ferent than a nebula or cloud from a vast expanse c 
 incandescent gaseous matter. In truth, we seem to 
 have for our point of departure a time when all the 
 elements and all the forces of the visible universe 
 were in chaotic mixture, whereas there could hardly 
 be any sort of nebula until they had begun to be 
 disengaged from one another. How then are we to 
 judge of the use of the word " earth " by the Mosaic 
 writer ? Is it not thus ? He is dealing with an 
 Adam, or with a primitive race of men, who have 
 the earth under their eyes. He wants to give them 
 an idea of its coming into existence. And he says 
 what we may fairly paraphrase in this way : that 
 which has now become earth, and was then becoming 
 earth, the solid well-defined form you see, was as yet 
 without form and void ; epithets which I am told 
 might be improved upon, but this is a matter by the 
 way. 
 
 So again with respect to water. The men for 
 whom the relator wrote knew, perhaps, of no fluid 
 except water, at any rate of none vast and practi- 
 cally measureless in volume. What was the idea 
 he had to convey ? It was not the special and 
 distinctive character of the liquid called water ; 
 it was the broad separation between solid as 
 such, familiar, firm, immovable under his feet, 
 and fluid as such, movable and fluctuating at 
 large in space. No doubt the idea conveyed by 
 
58 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 the word waters is an imperfect idea, although 
 waters are still waters at times when they may be 
 holding vast quantities of solid in solution. But 
 it was an idea easy, clear, and familiar up to the 
 point of expressing forcibly the contrast between 
 the ancient state of things, with its weltering waste, 
 and the recent and defined conditions of the habit- 
 able earth. Could we ask of the relator more 
 than that he should employ, among the words at 
 his disposal, that which would come nearest to con- 
 veying a true idea ? And had he any word so 
 good as water for his purpose, though it was but an 
 approximation to the actual fact ? Dr. Driver 
 describes the scene as that of a " surging chaos." 
 An admirable phrase, I make no doubt, for our 
 modern and cultivated minds ; but a phrase which, 
 in my judgment, would have left the pupils of the 
 Mosaic writer exactly in the condition out of which 
 it was his purpose to bring them ; namely, a state 
 of utter ignorance and total darkness, with possibly 
 a little ruffle of bewilderment to boot. Another 
 description claiming high authority is, an " uncom- 
 pounded, homogeneous, gaseous condition " of 
 matter ; to which the same observation will apply. 
 Even now, it is only by rude and bald approxi- 
 mations that the practised intellects of our scientists 
 can bring home to us a conception of the actual 
 process by which chaos passed into kosmos, or, in 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 59 
 
 other words, confusion became order, medley be- 
 came sequence, seeming anarchy became majestic 
 law, and horror softened into beauty. Before cen- 
 suring the Mosaist, who had to deal with grown 
 children, let the adverse critic try his hand upon 
 some little child. I believe he will find that the 
 method and language of this relator are not only 
 good, but superlatively good, for the aim he had in 
 view, if once for all we get rid of standards of in- 
 terpretation other than the genuine and just one, 
 which tests the means employed by their relation to 
 the end contemplated and sought. 
 
 I now approach a larger head of objection, which 
 is usually handled by the Contradictionists in a 
 tone of confidence rising into the paean of triumph. 
 But let me, before presuming to touch on objections 
 to particulars of the Creation Story, guard myself 
 against being supposed to put forward any portion 
 of what follows as unconditional assertion, or final 
 comment on the text. The general situation is 
 this. Objectors do not hesitate to declare dogma- 
 tically that the Great Chapter is in contradiction 
 with the laws and facts of nature, and that attempts 
 to reconcile them are futile and irrational. It is 
 thus sought to close the question. My aim is to 
 show that the question is not closed, and that the 
 condemnation pronounced upon the Mosaist is pre- 
 mature. For this purpose I ofier conjecturally, and 
 
6o THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 in absolute submission to all that biology and 
 geology, or other forms of science, have established, 
 replies which are strictly provisional ; but replies 
 which I consider that the Contradictionist ought, 
 together with other and weightier replies, to con- 
 fute, or legitimately to consider, before he can be 
 warranted in asserting the contradiction. But I 
 proceed. 
 
 How hopeless, is the cry, to reconcile Genesis 
 with fact, when, as a fact, the sun is the source 
 of light, and yet in Genesis, light is the work of 
 the first day, and vegetation of the third, while 
 sun, moon, and stars appear only on the fourth ! 
 Nay, worse still. Whereas the morning and the 
 evening depend wholly on the rotation of the earth 
 upon its own axis as it travels round the sun, the 
 Mosaist is so ignorant that he gives us not days 
 only, but the mornings and the evenings of days 
 before the sun is created. And so his narration ex- 
 plodes, not by blows aimed at it from without, but 
 by its own internal self-contradictions. It is hissed, 
 like a blundering witness, out of court. Not that 
 this is the opinion of astronomers in general. Mr. 
 Lockyer,* for example, cites with apparent approval 
 a passage from his very distinguished predecessor in 
 the science, Halley, who says that the diffused lucid 
 medium he had found disposed of the difficulty 
 
 * Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1889, p. 788. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 6i 
 
 wliich some have moved against the description 
 Moses gives of the Creation, alleging that light 
 could not be created without the sun. 
 
 The first triad of days, says Professor Dana,* 
 sets forth the events connected with the inorganic 
 history of the earth. The second triad, from the 
 fourth day to the sixth, is occupied with the events 
 of the organic history, from the creation of the first 
 animal to man. He finds in the general structure 
 of the narrative a considerable degree of elaboration, 
 an arrangement full of art. The passage from 
 ver. 1 4 to ver. 1 9 is, in one sense, a qualification of 
 the order he thinks to have been laid down, inas- 
 much as the heavenly bodies belong to the inorganic 
 division of the history. From another point of 
 view, however, this arrangement contributes in a 
 marked manner to the symmetry of the narrative. 
 The first triad of days begins with the first and 
 gradual detachment of light from the " surging 
 chaos " ; the second, at the stage in which light 
 has reached its final distribution. The central mass 
 had now assumed with a certain amount of regularity 
 (for according to heliologists the process does not 
 even yet appear to be absolutely completed) its 
 spherical and luminous figure, after shedding off 
 from itself the minor masses, each to find for itself 
 its own orbit of rotation. Or, if we are to assume 
 
 * Dana's " Creation," p. 207. 
 
62 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 that the photosphere or vapour- envelope of the 
 earth itself had obstructed the vision of the sun, we 
 have, further, to assume ^ that this obstacle had 
 now disappeared, and the visibility of the sun was 
 established. So that light, or the light-power, 
 while diffused, ushers in the first division of the 
 mighty process ; the same light-power, concentrated 
 by the operation of the rotatory principle, and for 
 practical purposes become such as we now know it, 
 is placed at the head of the second division, the 
 division that deals with organic life. 
 
 It is remarkable, that the subject of light is the 
 only one which is dealt with in two separate sections 
 of the narrative. The gradual severance, or disen- 
 gagement, of the earth from its present vesture, the 
 atmosphere, and of the solid land from the ocean, 
 are continuously handled in verses 6-10. Each of 
 the processes is summed up into its grand result, as 
 if it had been a violent, convulsive, instantaneous 
 act. The avoidance of all attempt to explain the 
 process seems to me only a proof of the wisdom 
 which guided the formation of the tale. To the 
 primitive man it would have become a barren puzzle; 
 the wood must have been lost in the trees. As it 
 now stands, mental confusion is avoided, and definite 
 ideas are conveyed. 
 
 There seems, however, to be a special reason for 
 
 * Guyot, "Creation," ch. xi. p. 92, 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 63 
 
 the introduction of the heavenly bodies at this par- 
 ticular place. It was evidently needful at some 
 place or other to give a specific account of the day, 
 or compartment of time, which is employed to mark 
 the severance of the different stages of creation from 
 each other. At what point of the narrative could 
 this account be most properly and most accurately 
 introduced ? In order to answer this question, let 
 us consider the situation rather more at large. 
 
 The supposition is, that we set out with a seething 
 mass that contains all the elements which are to 
 become the solids and liquids, the moist and dry, the 
 heat and the non-heat or cold, the light and the 
 non-light or darkness, that so largely determine the 
 external conditions of our present existence. By 
 degrees, as, according to the rarity or density of 
 parts, the centripetal or the centrifugal force prevails, 
 the huge bulk of the sun consolidates itself in the 
 centre, and aggregations of matter (rings, according 
 to Guyot,* which afterwards become, or may become, 
 spheres), are detached from it to form the planets, 
 under the agency of the same mechanical forces ; all 
 or some of them, in their turn, dismissing from their 
 as yet ill-compacted surfaces other subaltern masses 
 to revolve around them as satellites, or otherwise, 
 according to the balance of forces, to take their 
 course in space. Meantime, the great cooling pro- 
 
 * ''Creation,'* pp. 67, 73. 
 
64 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 cess, which is still in progress at this day, has begun. 
 It proceeds at a rate determined for it by its par- 
 ticular conditions, among which mass and motion 
 are of essential consequence ; for, other things being 
 equal, a small body will cool faster and a large body 
 will cool slower ; and a body moving more rapidly 
 through space of a lower temperature than its own 
 will cool more rapidly ; while one which is stationary, 
 or more nearly stationary, or which diffuses heat less 
 rapidly from its surface into the colder space, will 
 retain a high temperature longer. Owing to these 
 perhaps with other causes, the temperature of the 
 earth-surface has been adapted to the conditions of 
 human life, and of the more recent animal life, for 
 a very long time ; to those of the earlier animals, 
 and of vegetation in its different orders, for we know 
 not how much longer ; while the sun, though gradu- 
 ally losing some part of his stock of caloric, still 
 remains at a temperature inordinately high, and 
 with a formation comparatively incomplete. 
 
 Considering, then, what are the relations between 
 the conditions of heat and those of moisture, and 
 how the coatings of vapour, "the swaddling-band 
 of cloud," * might affect the visibility of bodies, 
 may it not be rash to affirm that the sun is, as a 
 definite and compact body, older than the earth? 
 or that it is so old ? or that the Mosaist might not 
 
 * Dana, p. 210. 
 
THE CREATION STORY, 65 
 
 properly treat the visibility of the sun, in its present 
 form, as best marking for man the practical inception 
 of his existence ? or that, with heat, light, soil, and 
 moisture ready to its service, primordial vegetation 
 might not exist on the surface of a planet like the 
 earth, before the sun had fully reached his matured 
 condition of sufficiently compact, material, and well- 
 defined figure, and of visibility to the eye ? May 
 not, once for all, the establishment of the relation of 
 visibility between earth and sun be the most suitable 
 point for the relator in Genesis to bring the two 
 into connection ? And here again I would remind 
 the reader that the Mosaic days may be chapters in 
 a history ; and that, not in despite of the law of 
 series, but with a view to its best practicable applica- 
 tion, the chapters of a history may overlap. 
 
 The priority of Earth to Sun, as given in the 
 narrative, carries us so far as this, that vegetative 
 work (of what kind I shall presently inquire) is 
 stated to be proceeding on the surface of the earth 
 before any relation of earth with sun is declared. 
 It is then declared in the terms, " and God made 
 two great lights" (ver. 16). Now the making 
 of earth is nowhere declared, but only implied. 
 And who shall say that there is some one exact 
 point of time in the continuous process which 
 (according to the nebular theory) reaches from the 
 first beginning of rotation down to the present con- 
 
 E 
 
66 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 dition of the solar system, to which point, and to 
 which alone, the term making must belong ? But, 
 unless there be such a point, it seems very difficult 
 to convict the Mosaic writer of error in the choice 
 he has made of an opportunity for introducing the 
 heavenly bodies into his narrative. 
 
 I suppose that no apology is needed for his men- 
 tioning the moon and the stars as accessories in the 
 train of the sun, and combining them all without 
 note of time, although their several '' makings " may 
 have proceeded at different speeds. But here again 
 we find exhibited that principle of relativity to man 
 and his uses, by which the writer in Genesis appears 
 so wisely to steer his course throughout. We are 
 told of " two great lights" (ver. i6); and one of 
 them is the moon. The formation of the stars is 
 interjected soon after, as if comparatively insignifi- 
 cant. But the planet-stars individually are in 
 themselves far greater and more significant than the 
 moon, which is denominated a great light. In what 
 sense is the moon a great light ? Only in virtue 
 of its relation to us. For its magnitude, as it is 
 represented on the human retina, is far larger than 
 that of the stars, approaching that of the sun ; and 
 its office also makes it the queen of the nocturnal 
 heaven. So, then, the general upshot is, that the 
 mention of the sun is introduced at that point in 
 the cosmogonic process when, from the condition of 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 67 
 
 our form and atmosphere, or of his, or of both, he 
 had become so definite and visible as to be finally 
 efficient for his office of dividing day from day, and 
 year from year ; that the planets, being of an 
 altogether secondary importance to us, simply appear 
 as his attendant company ; and that to the moon, 
 a body in itself comparatively insignificant, is 
 awarded a rather conspicuous place, which, if objec- 
 tively considered, is oat of proportion, but which at 
 once falls into line when we acknowledge relativity 
 as the basis of the narrative, by reason of the great 
 importance of the functions, which this satellite 
 discharges on behalf of the inhabitants of the 
 earth. 
 
 Next, it is alleged that we have days with an 
 evening and a morning before we have a sun to 
 supply a measure of time for them. Doubtless 
 there could be no approach to anything like an 
 evening and a morning, so long as light was uni- 
 formly difiused. But under the nebular theory, 
 the work of the first day implies an initial concen- 
 tration of light ; and, from the time when light 
 began to be thus powerfully concentrated, would 
 there not be an evening and a morning, though 
 imperfect, for any revolving solid of the system, 
 according as it might be turned towards, or from, the 
 centre of the highest luminosity ? 
 
 But we have not yet emerged from the net of the 
 
68 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 Contradictionist, who lays hold on the vegetation 
 verses (i i, 12) to impeach the credit of the Crea- 
 tion Story. The objection here becomes twofold. 
 First, we have vegetation anterior to the sun ; and 
 secondly, this is not merely an aquatic vegetation 
 for the support of aquatic life, nor merely a rude 
 and primordial vegetation, such as that of and 
 before the coal-measures, but a vegetation complete 
 and absolute, including fern-grass, then the herb 
 yielding seed, and lastly the fruit- tree, yielding fruit 
 after its kind, whose seed is in itself. Here is the 
 food of mammals and even of man provided, when 
 neither of them was created, or was even about to 
 exist until after many a long antecedent stage of 
 lower life had found its way into creation and 
 undertaken its office there. 
 
 First, as regards vegetation before the sun's per- 
 formance of his present function in the heavens is 
 announced. There were light and heat, atmosphere 
 with its conditions of moist and dry, soil prepared 
 to do its work in nutrition. Can there be ground 
 for saying that, with such provision made, vegetation 
 could not, would not, take place ? Let us, for argu- 
 ment's sake, suppose that the sun could now recede 
 into an earlier condition, could go back by some few 
 stages of that process through which he became our 
 sun ; his material less compact, his form less defined, 
 his rays more intercepted by the " swaddling-band " 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 69 
 
 of cloud and vapour. Vegetation might be modified 
 in character, but must it therefore cease ? May we 
 not say that a far more violent paradox would have 
 been hazarded, and a sounder objection would have 
 lain, had the Mosaic writer failed to present to us 
 at least an initial vegetation before the era at which 
 the sun had obtained his present degree of definite- 
 ness in spherical form, and the conditions for the 
 transmission of his rays to us had reached substan- 
 tially their present state ? 
 
 But, then, it is fairly observed that the vegetation 
 as described is not preparatory and initial, but full- 
 formed ; also, that any tracing of vegetation anterior 
 to animal life in the strata is ambiguous and 
 obscure. In the age of Protozoa, the earliest living 
 creatures, the indications of plants are not deter- 
 minable, according to the high authority of Sir 
 J. W. Dawson. It is observed by Canon Driver 
 " that the proof from science of the existence of 
 plants before animals is inferential and d^ priori" * 
 Guyot, however, holds a directly contrary opinion, 
 and says the present remains indicate a large pre- 
 sence of infusorial protophytes in the early seas.f 
 But suppose the point to be conceded. Undoubt- 
 edly, all a p7'iori assumptions ought in inquiries of 
 
 * " The Cosmogony of Genesis," in The Expositor, January 
 1886, p. 29. 
 f "Creation," x. p. 90. 
 
70 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 this kind to be watched with the utmost vigilance 
 and jealousy. Still there are limits, beyond which 
 vigilance and jealousy cannot push their claims. Is 
 there anything strange in the supposition that the 
 comparatively delicate composition of the first vege- 
 table structures should have given way, and become 
 indiscernible to us, amidst the shock and pressure of 
 firmer and more durable material ? The flesh of the 
 mammoth has, indeed, been preserved to us, and eaten 
 by dogs in our own time, though coming down from 
 ages which we have no means of measuring ; but 
 then it was not exposed to the same pressure, and it 
 subsisted under conditions of temperature which were 
 adequately antiseptic. But has all palaeozoic life been 
 ascertained by its flesh, or do we not owe our know- 
 ledge of many among the earlier forms of animated 
 life altogether to their osseous structures ? And, in 
 cases where only bone remains, is it an extravagant 
 use of argument db 'priori to hold that there must 
 have been flesh also ? And, if flesh, why should 
 not vegetable matter have subsisted, and have dis- 
 appeared ? Canon Driver, indeed, observes * that 
 from a very early date animals preyed upon animals. 
 Still the first animal could not prey upon him- 
 self; there must have been vegetable pabtdum, 
 out of which an animal body was first developed. 
 " Before the beasts," says Sir George Stokes, " came 
 
 * The Expositor, January, 1886, p. 29. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 71 
 
 the plants, plants which are necessary for their 
 sustenance."* 
 
 Next, with respect to the objection that the 
 vegetation of the eleventh and twelfth verses is a 
 perfected vegetation, and that there existed no 
 such vegetation before animal life began. But why 
 are we to suppose that the Mosaic writer intended to 
 say that such a vegetation did exist before animal 
 life began ? For no other reason than this : having 
 mentioned the first introduction of vegetable life, he 
 carries it on, without breaking his narrative, to its 
 completion. In so proceeding, he does exactly what 
 the historian does when, for the sake of clearer 
 comprehension, he brings one series of events from 
 its inception to its close, although in order of time 
 the beginning only, and not the completion, belongs 
 to the epoch at which he introduces it. What I 
 have called the rule of relativity, the intention, 
 namely, to be intelligible to man, seems to show the 
 reason of his arrangement. If his meaning was, 
 " The beautiful order of trees, plants, and grasses 
 which you see around you had its first beginnings 
 in the era when living creatures were about to com- 
 mence their movements in the waters and on the 
 earth, and all this was part of the fatherly work of 
 God on your behalf " such meaning was surely 
 well expressed, expressed after a sound and work- 
 
 * Letter to Mr. Elflein, Aug. 14, 1883. 
 
72 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 manlike fashion, in the text of the Creation Story as 
 it stands. 
 
 I will next notice the objection that the Mosaic 
 writer takes (according to the received version) no 
 notice of the great age of reptiles, but proceeds at 
 once from the creation of marine animals (ver. 20) 
 to the fowl that may " fly above the earth in the 
 open firmament of heaven." He thus passes over 
 without notice the amphibians, the reptiles proper, 
 the insects, and the marsupial or early mammals, on 
 his way to the birds. It is added that he brackets 
 the birds with the fishes, and thus makes them of 
 the same date. 
 
 It is requisite here to observe, with respect to 
 birds, that Professor Dana ^ writes of the narrative 
 in Genesis as follows : speaking of the relation 
 between the Mosaic narrative and the ascertained 
 facts of science, he uses these words : " The accord- 
 ance is exact with the succession made out for the 
 earliest species of these grand divisions, if we except 
 the division of birds, about which there is doubt." 
 
 Owen, however, in his *' Palgeontology,"! places 
 animal life in six classes, according to the following 
 order, namely 
 
 1. Invertebrates. 4. Birds. 
 
 2. Fishes. 5. Mammals. 
 
 3. Reptiles. 6. Man. 
 
 * " Creation," as before, p. 215. \ Second edition, i86r, p. 5, 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 73 
 
 In the more recent " Manual " of Professor 
 Prestwich (1886) the order of seniority stands as 
 follows : 
 
 1. Cryptogamous Plants. 4. Mammals. 
 
 2. Fishes. 5. Man. 
 
 3. Birds. 
 
 In the " Manual " * of Etheridge we are supplied 
 with the following series, after fishes : i . Fossil 
 reptiles. %. Ornithosauria ; ''flying animals^ which 
 combined the character of reptiles with those of 
 birds." 3. The first birds of the secondary rocks, 
 with " feathers in all respects similar to those of 
 existing birds." 4. Mammals. 
 
 It thus appears that much turns on the definition 
 of a bird, and that, in this point as in others, it is 
 hard, on the evidence thus presented, seriously to 
 impeach the character of the Creation Story. 
 Largely viewed, the place of birds, as an order in 
 creation, is given us by our scientific teachers, 
 or, as I have shown, by many and recognised 
 authorities among them, between fishes and the 
 class of mammals. It is a gratuitous assump- 
 tion that the Mosaist intends to assign to them 
 the same date as fishes; he places them in the 
 same day, but then we have to bear in mind that 
 he more than once gives several actions to the same 
 
 * Phillips's " Manual of Geology," part ii., by E. Etheridge, 
 F.R.S., chap. XXV. pp. 511-520. 
 
74 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 day. He sets them after the fishes ; and the fairer 
 construction surely is, not that they were contem- 
 poraneous, but that they were subsequent. He 
 forbears, it is true, to notice amphibious reptiles, 
 insects, and marsupials. And why ? All these, 
 variously important in themselves, fill no large place, 
 some of them no place at all, in the view and in the 
 concerns of primitive man ; and, having man for his 
 object, he forbears, on his guiding principle of rela- 
 tivity, to incumber his narrative with them. 
 
 If it be true that the demarcation of the order of 
 birds in creation is less sharply drawn than that (for 
 example) of fishes and of mammals, may we not be 
 permitted to trace a singular propriety in the dimi- 
 nution, so to speak, of emphasis with which the 
 Mosaist gives to their introduction a more qualified 
 distinctness of outline, by simply subjoining them 
 (ver. 20) to the aquatic creation. 
 
 I have now made bold to touch on the principal 
 objections popularly known. They run into details 
 which it has not been possible fully to notice, but 
 which seem to be without force, except such as they 
 derive from the illegitimate process of holding down 
 the Mosaic writer in his narration, so short, so 
 simple, so sublime, by restraints which the ordinary 
 historian, though he has plenty of auxiliary ex- 
 pedients, and is under no restraint of space, finds 
 himself obliged to shake ofi" if he wishes to be 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 75 
 
 understood. On the introduction of the great or 
 recent mammals, and of man, as the objector is 
 silent, I remain silent also. 
 
 It would be uncandid, however, not to notice the 
 " creeping thing " of verses 24, 25, and 26. In these 
 verses the " creeping thing " is distinguished from 
 cattle, and undoubtedly appears upon the scene as if 
 it were a formation wholly new. If the Mosaist 
 really intended to convey that this was the first 
 appearance of the creeping thing in creation, there 
 is I suppose no doubt that he is at war with the 
 firmly established witness of natural science. Guyot, 
 indeed, says* that these creeping things are not 
 reptiles, but are the smaller mammals, rats, mice, 
 and the like. If, however, the common rendering 
 be maintained, it may be just worth while to suggest 
 a possible explanation. It is as follows. These 
 creeping things were a very minor fact in the scheme 
 of creation ; so that the purpose of the relator, and 
 the comparative importance of the facts may here, 
 as elsewhere, govern his mode of handling them. It 
 is fit to be observed that he never mentions insects 
 at all, as if they were too insignificant to find a 
 place among the larger items of his account ; as if 
 he advisedly selected his materials, and sifted off the 
 less important among them. And there does seem to 
 be some license or looseness in his method of treating 
 
 * "Creation," p. 120 
 
76 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 these creeping things ; for while he severs them 
 from fish, fowl, and beast, in the verses I have 
 named, and again in verse 30 from fowl and from 
 beast, yet in verse 28, when the great charter of 
 dominion is granted to man, he sums up in three 
 divisions only, and makes man the lord " over the 
 fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and 
 over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 
 Reptiles appear to have passed out of his view, either 
 wholly, or so far as not to deserve separate mention, 
 and it may seem likely that he did not think their 
 importance such as to call for a particular and 
 defined place, and, while according to them inci- 
 dental mention, did not mean to give them such a 
 place, in the chronological order of creation. Let 
 the Contradictionist make the most he can out of this 
 secondary matter : it will not greatly avail. 
 
 If, on the whole, such be a fair statement of 
 arguments and results, we may justly render our 
 thanks to Dana, Guyot,* Dawson, Stokes, and other 
 scientific authorities, who seem to find no cause for 
 supporting the broad theory of contradiction. I am 
 
 * In the preface to Guyot's " Creation " will be found some 
 account of the recent literature of this subject, I must also 
 mention a valuable pamphlet entitled " The Higher Criticism," 
 by Mr. Eust, Kector of Westerfield, Suffolk. It sets forth the 
 scope of the negative criticism at large, and recommends 
 (p. 30) to "have patience for a while, and wait to see the 
 issue." Similar advice has, I understand, been given in the 
 recent Charge of the learned Bishop of Oxford. 
 
THE CREATION STORY, yy 
 
 well aware of my inability to add an atom of weight 
 to their judgments. Yet I have ventured to 
 attempt applying to this great case what I hold 
 to be the just laws of a narrative intended to 
 instruct and to persuade, and thus finding a key to 
 the true construction of the Chapter. For myself, 
 I cannot but at present remain before and above 
 all things impressed with the profound and marvel- 
 lous wisdom, that has guided the human instru- 
 ment, whether it were pen or tongue, which was 
 first commissioned from on high, to hand onwards 
 for our admiration and instruction this wonderful, 
 this unparalleled relation. If I am a " reconciler," I 
 shall not call myself a mere apologist, for I aim at 
 a positive, not merely a defensive result, and claim 
 that my reader should feel how true it is that in 
 this brief relation he possesses an inestimable 
 treasure. And I submit to those, who may 
 have closely followed my remarks, that my 
 words were not wholly idle words, when, without 
 presuming to lay down any universal and inflexible 
 proposition, and without questioning any single 
 contention of persons specially qualified, I said that 
 the true question was whether the words of the 
 Mosaic writer, in his opening chapter, taken as a 
 whole, do not stand, according to our present 
 knowledge, in such a relation to the facts of nature 
 as to warrant and require, thus far, the conclusion that 
 
78 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 the Ordainer of Nature, and tlie Giver or Guide of 
 the Creation Story, are One and the Same. 
 
 Postscript to the Creation Story. 
 
 [Mankind have travelled not by one but by 
 several roads into polytheism. It took a thousand 
 years from the institution of the Mosaic legislation 
 to place the chosen people in a state of security from 
 this insidious mischief. But all along a powerful 
 apparatus of means had been at work, which was 
 strengthened from time to time as Divine Providence 
 saw fit. The foundation, however, had been laid in 
 the Creation Story. It was impossible for those who 
 received it either to travel or to glide into 
 polytheism by either of the widest roads then 
 open, the system of Nature- worship, aud the 
 deification of heroes. No one could make the Sun 
 his God, who really believed that there was a God 
 who created the Sun. Even more perhaps was it 
 needful that the line should be clearly and sharply 
 drawn between Deity and humanity, and that a 
 barrier not capable of being surmounted should 
 exclude kings and heroes from deification. In the 
 Homeric or Olympian system, the worship of in- 
 animate nature was studiously shut out ; but the 
 beginnings of deification are visible in the case of 
 
THE CREATION STORY. yg 
 
 Heracles,* whose very self {avroq) sits at the 
 banquets of the Immortals, and of the twin brothers, 
 Castor and Pollux, who live and die on alternate 
 days, and who, when they live, receive honours like the 
 gods. In the height of their civilisation the Eomans 
 set up their living Emperors as divinities. But neither 
 they nor the Greeks believed in the creation of man 
 by the Almighty. The old cosmogonies of the 
 heathen placed matter and other impersonal entities 
 in a position of priority to their gods, who merely take 
 their turn to come upon the scene. Only (I believe) 
 in the Hebrew story is the Deity anterior, without 
 which condition He cannot be supreme. 
 
 Besides being anterior, He is separate. Did we 
 find in the pages of the Old Testament a story 
 of deification, we should at once know it to be 
 spurious, because in contradiction, alike as to letter 
 and as to spirit, of the entire context. 
 
 It is, I hope, not presumptuous to proceed a step 
 further and to say that this broad and effectual 
 severance was necessary not only for the Old 
 dispensation, but for the New : not only for the 
 exclusion of idolatry in all its forms, but for the 
 establishment of the Incarnation. A marriage 
 would be no marriage, unless the individuality 
 of the parties to it were determinate and inefface- 
 able. The Christian dogma of the two natures in 
 
 * Od. xi. 302-5. 
 
8o THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 one Person would be in no sense distinctive, if it 
 had been habitual in the preparatory dispensation, 
 as in some of the religions outside it, for man 
 properly so-called to pass into proper deity. Ee- 
 union was to be effected between the Almighty and 
 His prime earthly creature by the bridge to be 
 constructed over that flood, the flood of sin, which 
 parted them ; and, to sustain that bridge, it was 
 needful that the natures to be brought into union 
 should stand apart like piers perfectly defined, each 
 on its own separate and solid foundation. A.nd the 
 firm foundations of those piers were laid, to endure 
 throughout all time, by the great Creation Story.] 
 
III. 
 
 Ube ffice anb Wioth of tbe Q{t> Testament 
 in utltne^ 
 
III. 
 
 TL\)c trice ant) MotF? of tbe It) Testament 
 Irt utltne* 
 
 We may often hear it said, that the Old Testament 
 is an introduction to the New. Much more is con- 
 tained in these words, than an irreflective recital may- 
 permit us to grasp. Yet they do not seem to cover 
 the whole ground. It seems necessary to glance first 
 at the conjoint function of the two Testaments, in 
 order to measure fully the exalted mission of the 
 earlier. As the heavens cover the earth from east 
 to west, so the Scripture covers and comprehends 
 the whole field of the destiny of man. The whole 
 field is possessed by its moral and potential energy, as 
 a provision enduring to the end of time. But it is 
 marvellous to consider how large a portion of it lies 
 directly within the domain of the Old Testament. 
 The interval to be bridged over between the prophet 
 Malachi and the Advent is not one of such breadth 
 
84 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 as wholly to abolish a continuity, which was also 
 upheld by visible institutions divinely ordained, and 
 by the production of certain of the Psalms themselves. 
 It is further narrowed in so far as something of a 
 divine afflatus is to be found in the books which 
 form the Apocrypha, which are esteemed by a large 
 division of Christendom to be actually a part of the 
 Sacred Canon, and which in the Church of England 
 have a place of special, though secondary, honour. 
 At the more remote end of the scale, it is difficult 
 to name a date for the beginning of the Sacred 
 Scriptures. The corroborative legends of Assyria,* 
 ascertained by modern research, concerning the 
 Creation and the Flood, to which we know not what 
 further additions may still progressively be made, 
 carry us up,t it may be roughly said, 
 
 " To i\i% first syllable of recorded time." 
 Historic evidence does not at present warrant our 
 carrying backwards the probable existence of the 
 Adamic race for more than some such epoch as from 
 4000 to 6000 years before the Advent of Christ. 
 And if, as appears likely, the Creation Story has 
 come down from the beginning, and the Flood 
 
 * These legends will be separately noticed later in the present 
 series of essays. 
 
 t See No. VI. of this series for the ground of the argument, 
 which, as here presented, can only have in a certain measure the 
 character of an assumption. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 85 
 
 legend is also contemporary, tlie Christian may feel 
 a lively interest in observing that, daring by far the 
 larger portion of human history, the refreshing rain 
 of Divine inspiration has descended, with compara- 
 tively short intervals, from heaven upon earth, and 
 the records of it have been collected and transmitted 
 in the Sacred Volume. Apart from every question 
 of literary form and of detail, we now trace the 
 probable origins of our Sacred Books far back be- 
 yond Moses and his time. And so we have a 
 marvellous picture presented to us, not only all- 
 prevailing for the imagination, the heart, and the 
 conscience, of man, but also, as I suppose, quite un- 
 exampled in its historical appeal to the human 
 intelligence. The whole human record is covered 
 and bound together in that same unwearied and in- 
 violable continuity, which weaves into a tissue the 
 six Mosaic days of gradually developed creation, 
 and fastens them on at the hither end to the 
 gradually advancing stages of Adamic, and in due 
 course, of subsequent history. 
 
 We find then that, apart from the question of 
 moral purity and elevation, the Scriptures of the 
 Old Testament appear to be distinguished from the 
 sacred books possessed by various nations in several 
 vital particulars. They deal with the Adamic race 
 as a whole. They begin with the preparation of the 
 
86 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 earth for the habitation and use of man. They then, 
 from his first origin, draw downwards a thread of 
 properly personal history, with notices, most remark- 
 able in their character, but contracted in space, of 
 divergent families of men. This thread is enlarged 
 into a web, as from being personal the narrative 
 becomes national, from the Exodus onwards; and 
 eventually it includes the whole race of man. Our 
 Scriptures are not given once for all, as by Confucius 
 or Zoroaster in their respective spheres. They do 
 not deliver a mere code of morals or of legislation, but 
 their character is pre-eminently historical, while they 
 purport to disclose a close and continuing superin- 
 tendence from on High over human affairs. And 
 the whole is doubly woven into one formation. First, 
 by a chain of Divine action, and of human instructors 
 acting under Divine authority, which is sustained 
 and represented by national institutions, and is never 
 broken until the time when political servitude, like 
 another Egyptian captivity, has become the appointed 
 destiny of the nation. Secondly, by the Messianic 
 bond, by the light of prophecy shining in a dark 
 place, and directing onwards the minds of devout 
 men to the " fulness of time " and the birth of the 
 wondrous Child, so as effectually to link the older 
 sacred books to the dispensation of the Advent, and 
 to carry forward their office through an action both of 
 and in the Church, until the final day of doom. May 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 87 
 
 it not boldly be asked, what parallel to such an 
 outline as this can be supplied by any of the sacred 
 books preserved among any other of the races of the 
 world ? So far, then, the office and work of the Old 
 Testament, as presented to us by its own contents, 
 is without a compeer among the old religions. It 
 deals with the case of man as a whole. It covers 
 all time. It is alike adapted to every race and 
 region of the earth. And how, according to the 
 purport of the Old Testament, may that case best be 
 summed up ? In these words : it is a history first 
 of sin, and next of redemption. 
 
 Our Lord has emphatically said, " They that be 
 whole need not a physician, but they that are sick ; " * 
 and this saying goes to the root of the whole matter. 
 Is there or is there not a deep disease in the world, 
 which overflows it like a deluge, and submerges in 
 a great degree the fruit-bearing capacities of our 
 nature? Are we as a race whole, or are we sick, 
 and profoundly sick ? 
 
 I think that to an impartial eye, and to a thought- 
 ful mind, it must seem strange that there should be 
 a doubt as to the answer to be given to this ques- 
 tion. It seems more easy to comprehend the mental 
 action of those whom the picture of the actual 
 world, as it is unrolled before them, tempts, by its 
 misery, guilt, and shame, into doubt of the being of 
 * Matthew ix. 12. ' 
 
88 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 God, than of persons who can view that picture, and 
 who cannot but observe the dominant part borne by 
 man in determining its character, and yet can make 
 it a subject of question whether man is morally 
 diseased. Veils may have been cast between our 
 vision and the truth of the case by the relative ex- 
 cellence of some select human spirits ; by the infi- 
 nitely varied degrees and forms of the universal 
 malady ; by the exaggerations and the narrownesses 
 of outlying schools of theology ; and lastly by the 
 remarkable circumstance, that races, above all the ex- 
 traordinarily gifted race of the ancient Greeks, have 
 lived on into large developments of art, of intellect, 
 and of material power, without creating or retaining 
 any strong conception of moral evil, under the only 
 aspect which reveals its deeper features ; that aspect, 
 namely, which presents it to the mind as a depar- 
 ture from the supreme and perfect standard, the will 
 of God. But these disguises are pierced through 
 and through by ever so little of calm reflection. We 
 can conceive how generations, blinded by long abuse 
 to the character of moral evil, could well contrive to 
 blink and pass by the question. But we, who inherit 
 the Christian tradition, ethical as well as dogmatic, 
 cannotj I think, deny the prevalence, perhaps not 
 even the preponderance, of moral evil in the world, 
 without some subtle and preliminary process of de- 
 generacy in our own habit of mind. We shall find 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 89 
 
 that, in renouncing that tradition, we return to a 
 conception which admitted to be evil only that, which 
 was so violently in conflict with the comfort of human 
 society as to require condemnation and repression by 
 its self-preserving laws. The gap between these two 
 conceptions, the one of disordered nature, the other 
 of Divine grace, is immeasurable. 
 
 And I think it will not be denied that, in describ- 
 ing vividly the fact of sin in the world, the Scrip- 
 tures of the Old Testament proceed upon lines, which 
 have also been clearly drawn in the general con- 
 sciousness at least of the Christian ages. This sense 
 of sin, which lies like a black pall over the entire 
 face of humanity, has been all along the point of 
 departure for every preacher, writer, and thinker 
 within the Hebrew or the Christian fold ; and it is 
 the gradual and palpable decline of it, in the litera- 
 ture and society of to-day, that is the darkest among 
 all the signs now overshadowing what is in some re- 
 spects the bright and hopeful promise of the future. 
 
 Nor can any one, who believes in the existence of 
 God, wonder that sin is described as a deviation 
 from the order of nature, as a foreign element, 
 not belonging to the original creation of Divine 
 design, but introduced into it by special causes. 
 At this point we come to what is known as the 
 fall of man, and to the narration of that fall as it 
 is given in the Book of Genesis. 
 
90 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 Against this narration the negative criticism has 
 been actively employed. The action ascribed to the 
 serpent is declared to be incredible ; the punishment 
 of Adam, disproportioned to the offence, which con- 
 sisted only in an action not essentially immoral ; the 
 punishment of all mankind, for the fault of one, 
 intolerably unjust. 
 
 Now let us set entirely aside, for the moment, the 
 form of this narrative, and consider only its sub- 
 stance. Let us deal with it as if it were a parable ; 
 in which the severance between the form and the 
 substance is acknowledged and familiar. In pro- 
 posing this, I do not mean to make on my own part 
 any definitive surrender of the form as it stands, 
 or any admission adverse to it. There is, it may 
 be, high and early Christian authority even for 
 surrendering the form. I only seek to pass within 
 it, and to put the meaning and substance of it upon 
 their trial. 
 
 In this relation, we find a certain aggregate of 
 objects, which we are now to treat as if they were 
 simply significant figures. There are presented to 
 us the man, with the woman, in a garden ; the 
 serpent, with its faculty of speech ; the two trees, 
 of knowledge and of life respectively ; a fruit for- 
 bidden by Divine command, but eaten in defiance 
 of it ; and, after certain reproofs and intimations, 
 ejectment from the garden in consequence. In this 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 91 
 
 ejectment is involved a great deterioration of out- 
 ward state. But it is not a matter of outward state 
 alone. A deterioration of inward nature is also 
 exhibited, in the derangement of its functions. A 
 new sense of shame bears witness to the revolt * of 
 its lower against its higher elements ; and, for the 
 first time, exhibits it to us as a disordered, and 
 therefore a dishonoured thing. Together with all 
 this, there is the outline of a promise that, from 
 among the progeny of the fallen pair a Deliverer, 
 born of woman, shall arise, who, at the cost of 
 personal sufiPering, shall strike at the very seat of 
 life in the living emblem of evil, and so shall 
 destroy its power. In this relation, on the one 
 hand, many modern objectors have discovered an 
 intolerable folly, and, on the other, the Christian 
 tradition of eighteen centuries has acknowledged a 
 profound philosophy, and a painful and faithful deli- 
 neation of an indisputable truth. 
 
 Now what is the substance conveyed under this 
 form ? The Almighty has brought into existence a 
 pair of human beings. He has laid upon them a 
 law of obedience, not to a Decalogue or code, setting 
 
 * See Delitzsch, who, in accordance with patristic authorities, 
 writes as follows : " The first consequence of the fall was shame. 
 The nakedness of mankind is no longer the appearance of their 
 innocence. Their corporeity has fallen from the dominion of 
 the spirit. Their beholding has become a sensuous imagining, 
 and the flesh excites their fleshly passions " (" Old Testament 
 History of Eedemption," p. 23. Edinburgh : Clark. 1881). 
 
92 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 forth things essentially good, and the reverse of 
 them, but simply to a rule of feeding and not feed- 
 ing. The point, at which this representation first 
 brings into view an independent or objective law, 
 lies in the prohibition to feed upon a tree which 
 imparts the knowledge of good and evil. That is 
 to say, the pair, as they then were, were forbidden 
 to aspire to the possession of that knowledge. It 
 was a dispensation of pure obedience. 
 
 The question whether this was reasonable or un- 
 reasonable cannot be answered upon abstract 
 grounds, but resolves itself into another question, 
 whether it was appropriate or inappropriate to the 
 state of the beings thus addressed, and to their 
 relation towards Him who gave the command. 
 Some may assume that Adam was what so great a 
 writer as Milton has represented him to be 
 
 " For contemplation he and valour formed,"* 
 
 and not for contemplation only, but for intricate 
 inquiry and debate on subjects such as tax all the 
 powers of a cultivated intellect. And indeed, if 
 we take the developed man, such as we know him 
 in Christian and civilised society, it seems plain that 
 to lay down for him a law of life which did not 
 include the consideration of essential good and evil, 
 
 * '* Paradise Lost " (iv. 297). 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 93 
 
 would not only stunt and starve his faculties, but 
 would shock his moral sense. 
 
 It may be said that a single act of disobedience, 
 even after full warning, could not so deprave a 
 character as reasonably to entail upon the offender a 
 total change of condition. But I would observe 
 that the school of critics which is apt to take this 
 objection is the very school which, utterly rejecting 
 the literal form of the narrative, is bound to look at 
 it as parable. When so contemplated, its lesson is 
 that rebellion, deliberate and wilful (and this is 
 nothing less), against just and sovereign authority, 
 fundamentally changes for the worse the character 
 of the rebel. It places him in a new category of 
 motive and action, in which the repetition of the 
 temptation ordinarily begete the repetition of the 
 sin J and it is mercy, not cruelty, which meets this 
 deterioration of character, not with a final and 
 judicial abandonment, but with a deterioration and 
 reduction of state, such as to teach the lesson of 
 retribution, and to serve as an emphatic warning 
 against further sin. 
 
 Scripture will lie before us in a true perspective 
 when we come to understand that everywhere the 
 will of God is in accord with the righteousness of 
 God, and that what is promised or inflicted by 
 command is also promised or inflicted by self-acting 
 consequence, according to the constitution of the 
 
94 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 nature we have received. Religion and philosophy 
 thus join hands, and never part them. When, 
 therefore, we are told that Adam after his sin was 
 shut out from Eden, we are not entitled to say, 
 how hard that he could not be allowed to return, 
 and then perhaps to amend. What is inflicted as 
 penalty from without is acted and suffered in 
 character within. Repentance is not innocence ; 
 there must be a remedial process ; and, until that 
 process has been faithfully accomplished, the ante- 
 rior state and habit of mind cannot be resumed. 
 
 I do not argue with those who say this is a bad 
 constitution of things, under which sin engenders 
 sinfulness ; some better one might surely have 
 been devised. This is to say, " had I been in the 
 Creator's place, I would have managed the business 
 of creation better." It is for us not merely as 
 Christians, but as men of sense, to eschew specula- 
 tions which even their authors must' see to be 
 wholly devoid of practical effect, and to assume 
 the great moral laws and constitution of our nature 
 as ultimate facts, as boundaries which it is futile 
 to attempt to overstep. 
 
 To my mind, then, the narrative of the Fall is in 
 accordance with the laws of a grand and compre- 
 hensive philosophy, and the objections taken to it 
 are the product of narrower and shallower modes of 
 thought. Introducing us to Adamic man in his 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE, 95 
 
 first stage of existence a stage not of savagery 
 but of childhood it exhibits to us the gigantic 
 drama of his evolution in its opening. In the 
 Paradise of the Book of Genesis, it reduces to a 
 practical form the noble legend of the Golden Age, 
 cherished especially in prehistoric Greece. It 
 wisely teaches us to look to misused free-will as 
 the source of all the sin, and mainly of the accom- 
 panying misery, which still overflow the world, and 
 environ human life like a moral deluge. It shows 
 us man in his childhood, no less responsible for 
 disobedience to simple command, than man in his 
 manhood for contravention of those laws of essential 
 right and wrong, which remain now and for ever 
 clothed with the majesty of Divine command. It 
 teaches us how sin begets sin ; how the rebellion of 
 the creature against the Creator was at once fol- 
 lowed by the rebellion of the creature's lower 
 appetites against his higher mind and will. It im- 
 presses upon us that sin is not like the bird lightly 
 flying past us in the air, which closes on it as it 
 goes, and carries no trace behind it. It alters for the 
 worse the very being of the man that acts it, and 
 leaves to him a deteriorated essence. This he in 
 turn, by the inexorable laws of his constitution, 
 transmits to his descendants ; and this again in 
 them exhibits, variably, yet on the whole with clear 
 and even glaring demonstration, the evil bias, which 
 
96 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 it has received ; and which it retains until it shall be 
 happily corrected and renewed by those remedial 
 means, which it was the office o the Old Testament 
 to foreshadow, and of the New to establish. Every- 
 where, then^ in this narrative we find that it is 
 instinct with the highest principles of the moral 
 and judicial order. 
 
 For the present I pass by the Flood * and the 
 Dispersion,! which may be most conveniently con- 
 sidered in connection with what is termed profane 
 history ; and I touch next upon the call of Abraham. 
 This call imports the selection of a peculiar and 
 separate family, which was afterwards to grow into 
 a people. They were to be in a special degree the 
 subjects of God's care, the guardians of His Word, 
 and the vehicles of His promises. Of all great and 
 distinctive chapters in the Biblical history of the 
 human race since Paradise, we have here perhaps the 
 greatest and the most distinctive. 
 
 The selection of a family may be regarded from 
 many points of view. 
 
 When sin had come into the world, it developed 
 itself in the forms of infirmity, and of apostasy : 
 if it be allowed to describe rudely by their general 
 terms the form of character which distinguished the 
 race of Cain from the race of Seth. What we see 
 of the former is, as described in Gen. iv. 16-24 
 
 * Genesis vi.-viii. f Genesis x. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 97 
 
 its rapid advance, and apparently its marked pre- 
 cedence, in arts and powers. It disappears entirely 
 with the story of the Flood ; and we are left to infer 
 that it may have had a principal share in calling 
 down that great retribution inflicted upon revolt from 
 God. 
 
 After the Deluge, in the time of Peleg, fifth from 
 Noah, selection again appears, and is carried down 
 in Gen. xi. to Abraham, from whom an unbroken 
 thread runs onward into the period when the chosen 
 family had become a chosen nation. 
 
 This choice of a particular family or race may be 
 advantageously contrasted with the heathen method 
 of selection or preference, by the deification of indi- 
 viduals. Of the first, it is obvious that it reached 
 over all time ; that in this way it tended to assert 
 the unity of the human race ; and that it was 
 never exclusive, as it always (not to mention 
 other proofs) invited to partake of its benefits 
 the " stranger " with whom it had come into 
 contact. The rival method of deification broke 
 communion rather than established it, and was based 
 on no rational principle of choice. It was corrupt 
 as well as arbitrary, for the deified were not the best. 
 But what I would here chiefly press is, that the 
 continuous selection of a family was a bar to deifi- 
 cation, because deification was essentially founded on 
 individualities ; instead of that headship in series. 
 
98 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 which presented to humanity as its chiefs a lineage. 
 Of this every member had his destiny as it were 
 locked into that of the rest by an essential parity. 
 This kind of selection did not favour idolatry, like 
 the other, but built up a wall against it. And so 
 it came about, as we have seen, that, even when 
 idolatry invaded and possessed the people, it never 
 tainted the religion. 
 
 This selection of Abraham and his progeny, if we 
 speak after the manner of men, we might perhaps 
 describe as follows. The original attempt to plant 
 a species upon our planet, which should be endowed 
 with the faculty of free-will, but should always 
 direct that will to good, had been frustrated through 
 sin ; and the tainted progeny had, after a trial of 
 many generations, been destroyed by the Deluge. 
 In the descendants of Noah, man was renewed upon 
 a far larger scale. Different branches of the race * 
 were sent, or were allowed to go forth, and to people 
 different portions of the earth, each carrying with 
 them different gifts, and different vocations accord- 
 ing to those gifts ; the notes of which, in various 
 prominent cases, we cannot fail to discern written 
 large upon the page of history. After a brief period, 
 choice was made not of a nation, but of a person, 
 namely, Abraham, who with his descendants became 
 the subject of a special training. They lived, accord- 
 
 * Genesis x. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 99 
 
 ing to the record in the Bible, not like other men 
 generally, dependent upon the exercise of their natural 
 faculties alone, but with the advantage from time to 
 time, and with the continuing responsibility, of super- 
 natural command and visitation. But this remark- 
 able promotion to a higher form of life did not 
 invest them with any arbitrary or selfish prerogative. 
 On the contrary, as the legislation of Moses was dis- 
 tinguished from other ancient codes by its liberal 
 and likewise elaborate care for the stranger ; so also, 
 from the very outset, and before the family could 
 blossom into the nation, nay, even in the very person 
 of Abraham, the gift imparted to him was declared 
 to be given for the behoof of mankind at large. " In 
 thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the 
 earth be blessed."* The prerogative of the Jew 
 was, from its very inception, bound up with the 
 future elevation of the Gentile. 
 
 This divine election doubtless carried with it the 
 duty and the means of reaching a higher level of 
 moral life than prevailed among the surrounding 
 Asiatic nations. These nations, sharing with the 
 chosen race the infirmity and deterioration of nature, 
 differed in this, that they at once carried the reflection 
 of their own sinfulness into their creed respecting the 
 unseen, and made religion itself a direct instrument 
 of corruption. Yet those, whom we call the patri- 
 
 * Genesis xxviii. 14. 
 
loo OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 archs, were not exempted from the general degene- 
 racy of morals ; and even Abraham, the general 
 strain of whose life appears to have been so simple 
 and devout, on going down into Egypt to escape from 
 famine, exposed his wife to the risk of an adulter- 
 ous connection with the king of the country, lest, 
 if she were known to be his wife, his personal 
 safety should be compromised. On the moral 
 standing of the nation sprung from Abraham, as 
 compared with that of contemporary races, there 
 will be more to say hereafter. Meantime, it may 
 be observed that the sins and follies of the favoured 
 race, as well as of their priests and rulers, are told 
 in the narrative frankly, and without attempting to 
 excuse them. This frankness of narration extends 
 also to the calamities which befell the Israelites ; 
 and, as an evidence of the integrity of the Hebrew 
 penmen, it suggests a presumption that such plain 
 speaking, in the face of national and ancestral self- 
 love, is, to say the least, highly in accordance with 
 the belief that the record generally was framed under 
 special guidance from above. 
 
 The selection of Abraham and his posterity was 
 at the least a boon to some, a privation to none. 
 In its immediate effect, it withdrew nothing from 
 the nations outside the Hebrew pale. It bestowed, 
 indeed, upon the parallel line of Ishmael a prefer- 
 ential but inferior blessing, which, however, it is no 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. loi 
 
 part of the present purpose to examine, further than 
 to say that the Mohammedan religion may be re- 
 garded, in its conflict with the idolatry which it 
 first confronted, and in the present day among the 
 tribes of Western Africa, as having been, if not per- 
 manently yet for a time, the communication of a 
 relative good. And the Old Testament abounds 
 with passages which demonstrate the care, and even 
 the special care, of the Almighty for nations other 
 than the Jews.* 
 
 But the object, which now demands our attention, 
 is the promise of a blessing in and by the seed of 
 Abraham to all the nations of the earth. The first- 
 fruits of this blessing may be said to have been 
 perceived in the translation of the books of the Old 
 Testament into Greek during the third century 
 before the Advent. At the time when the language 
 of the Greeks was maturing its supremacy, in the 
 East through the conquests of Alexander the Great, 
 and in the West through appreciation by the Roman 
 and Italian genius, in some respects allied to their 
 own, the Greek race itself was on its decline, both as 
 to its intellect and as to its practical energy. This 
 decline may, perhaps, have rendered the world more 
 receptive of the influences, which the substance of 
 the Hebrew books was calculated to exercise. 
 
 * See, for example, the two first chapters of Amos, and the 
 whole book of Jonah. 
 
I02 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 There can hardly be a doubt that, among all the 
 
 forms of Hellenic thought exhibited in the different 
 
 schools of philosophy, that of the Stoics was the 
 
 highest in respect of its conception of the Deity, of 
 
 its emancipation from idolatry, and of its capacity of 
 
 moral elevation. In the hands of Seneca, of Epic- 
 
 tetus, and of Marcus Aurelius, Stoic ideas attained 
 
 so high a level as to have been used by some in 
 
 disparagement of the exclusive claim of the Gospel 
 
 to the promulgation of truths powerful enough to 
 
 regenerate the world. Without asserting that the 
 
 early Stoics derived their inspiration through the 
 
 Greek version, called the Septuagint, from the 
 
 Hebrew Scriptures, it may be observed that, as a 
 
 matter of fact, philosophy rose to its highest level 
 
 through the Stoics at a time when the Greek mind 
 
 was declining ; and further, that Stoicism made its 
 
 first appearance, and began its advance, at the 
 
 epoch when those Scriptures had become accessible. 
 
 Also it arose and flourished not in Greece itself, 
 
 but at points such as Citium, in countries such as 
 
 Pont us, in schools of learning such as Alexandria, 
 
 which were seats of Jewish resort and influence.* 
 
 * See " Encycl. Britann." Qtlied. Art. Stoics. It states that 
 " the school is mainly to be considered as the first-fruits of that 
 interaction between West and East, which followed the con- 
 quests of Alexander. Zeno was of Phoenician descent ; Cyprus, 
 Silicia, Syria, the main countries of its origin. Citium, 
 Alexandria, Heraclea, Pontus, were prominent among the places 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 103 
 
 It was an advance of a different order towards 
 the fulfilment of the Abrahamic promises, when 
 the Apostles, charged with the commission of our 
 Lord, went forth into all the world, and preached 
 the gospel to every creature.* Then, indeed, an 
 enginery was set at work, capable of coping with 
 the whole range of the mischiefs brought into the 
 world by sin, and of completely redeeming the 
 human being from its effects, and consecrating our 
 nature to duty and to God. It is impossible here 
 to do so much as even to skirt this vast subject. 
 But at once these three things may be said as to 
 the development, through the Gospel, of the 
 Abrahamic promise. First, that in the vast aggre- 
 gate of genuine believers, the recovery of the 
 Divine image has been efiectual, and the main- 
 spring of their being has been set right before 
 their quitting the world, by the dedication of the 
 will to God. Secondly, that the social results of 
 the change have been beneficial and immense, in 
 the restriction of wars, in the abolition of horrible 
 practices publicly sanctioned ; in the recognition of 
 essential rights ; in the elevation of woman (whose 
 case most and best of all represents the case of right 
 as against force) ; in the mitigation of selfish and cruel 
 laws ; in the refinement of manners ; in the utter 
 
 furnishing and rearing its teachers. Most of the Stoics were from 
 lands of Hellenistic (as distinct from Hellenic) civilisation. It 
 was the growth of the Hellenised East.'' * Mark xvi. 15. 
 
104 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 proscription of all extreme forms of sin ; and in the 
 public acknowledgment of standards of action 
 nearer to the true. Thirdly, that Christendom is 
 at this moment undeniably the prime and central 
 power of the world, and still bears, written upon its 
 front, the mission to subdue it. In point of force 
 and onward impulsion, it stands without a rival, 
 while every other widely spread religion is in 
 decline. Critical, indeed, are the movements 
 which affect it from within. Vast are the deduc- 
 tions which on every side are to be made from the 
 fulness of the Divine promises, when we try to 
 measure their results in the world of facts. In- 
 definitely slow, and hard to trace in detail, as may 
 be, like a glacier in descent, the march of the 
 times, the Christianity of to-day has, in relation to 
 the world non- Christian, an amount of ascendency 
 such as it has never before possessed; and, if only it 
 can sufiiciently retain its inward consistency, the sole 
 remaining question seems to be as to the time, the 
 circumstances, and the rate of its further, perhaps 
 of its final, conquests. 
 
 I know that it is far beyond the scope of a few 
 pages such as these to make good in detail the 
 claims of the Abrahamic promise. Still, I think 
 that even what has been said may in some measure 
 suffice for the purpose which I have immediately in 
 view. That purpose is to establish in outline the 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 105 
 
 strictly exceptional character of the books of the 
 Old Testament ; and with this aim to show that 
 they bear upon them the stamp of a comprehensive- 
 ness which concerns, which penetrates, nay, which 
 envelops the history of the world as a whole. The 
 promise, given to Abraham nearly two thousand 
 years before the Advent, finds its correlative marks 
 in the general train of subsequent history. These 
 marks demonstrate that it was given by a Divine 
 foreknowledge. And if so, then the venerable 
 record in which it is enshrined surely seems here, 
 at least, to carry the seal and signature of a Divine 
 authorship. 
 
 Now let us consider from another point of view 
 the selection of the Hebrew race, and the peculiar 
 standing of the Mosaic legislation, so intimately allied 
 with the whole of its singularly chequered fortunes. 
 And in order to effect something towards ascertain- 
 ing what was probably the cause determining the 
 Divine selection and procedure, we may do well first 
 to refer to some aims which might at first sight have 
 been thought probable ; such as, to provide a com- 
 plete theology ; or such as, to reward with honour, 
 wealth, and power a peculiarly virtuous people, whose 
 moral conduct was to be of a nature likely to make 
 them an edifying and attractive example to the 
 nations of the earth. Human speculation might have 
 been forward to anticipate that one or both of these 
 
io6 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 aims might have been contemplated by a plan so 
 exceptional, as the selection and isolation of one 
 particular line and people. But the facts appear to 
 show that any such anticipation would have been 
 entirely mistaken. 
 
 By a complete theology, I mean simply such a 
 theology as would confront and make provision for 
 all the leading facts of the moral situation. Among 
 these a prominent place had from the date of the 
 first traditions been given to the entrance of sin into 
 the world, and to the promise of redemption from its 
 power. Now it is evident that there was no attempt, 
 in the legislation of the Pentateuch, at this theo- 
 logical completeness. Its theology is summed up in 
 clear declarations of the being of God and of duty 
 and love to Him, with which are directly associated, 
 in the Decalogue, the main items of man's duty to 
 his neighbour, and, both there and elsewhere, the 
 doctrines of rewards and punishments. The race 
 also inherited the narrative of what is termed in 
 Christian theology the Fall of Man. This, however, 
 was part of the anterior tradition; and, though 
 implied in the Mosaic system, was neither directly 
 set forth in its terms, nor made a common subject 
 of allusion in the historic books, however it may 
 have been involved in the sacrificial system. 
 
 But these rewards and punishments are of a 
 temporal nature ; and the Mosaic legislation is 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 107 
 
 thought to give no indication of a future state or of 
 an Underworld. This is the more remarkable, be- 
 cause the early chapters of Genesis, although they 
 usually contain but the merest outline of history, 
 are not without such indication.* Enoch, at the 
 end of his 365 years, " was not, for God took him." 
 These remarkable words are substituted for the 
 formula given in the cases of the other patriarchs, 
 whose record closes with the phrase, "and he 
 died." t Here there seems to be a clear manifesta- 
 tion of the state into which Enoch is declared to 
 have entered, without passing through the gate of 
 death. 
 
 Again, we now know, from the Egyptian Book 
 of the Dead and otherwise, that the religious system 
 of that country not only included, but was greatly 
 based upon, the conception of a future life. It 
 seems absolutely impossible that the Israelites, even 
 had they not been aware of it already, could have 
 dwelt for many generations in the land of Egypt 
 without coming to know of it. Our Lord Himself 
 affirms that they knew it in His time. J And we have 
 it exhibited to us in the PsalQis, which exhibit the 
 interior and spiritual life of chosen souls. 
 
 It has, perhaps, been too much the practice to 
 assume that the Mosaic law is to be regarded as an 
 
 * Genesis v. 24, \ Ihid. v. 5, and passim. 
 
 X Matthew xxii. 32 ; Mark xii. 27. 
 
 For example, Psalms xvi. 10; xlix. 15. 
 
io8 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 enlargement of the patriarchal religion. Without 
 doubt it is at least a very large and important 
 supplement to that religion. But a supplement 
 differs from an enlarged and reconstructed edition : 
 it is less, as well as more. It need not contain 
 everything contained in that to which it is a sup- 
 plement. Here is a great and vital particular, in 
 which the Mosaic law cannot be said even to have 
 republished the patriarchal religion ; and which both 
 preceded and survived the law, but did not find a 
 place in it. Accordingly, among the Jews of 
 the Advent, the school which most rigidly adhered 
 to the letter of the law, namely, that of the Sad- 
 ducees,* denied the future state, and held '* that there 
 is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit." 
 
 We are not, therefore, to suppose that Israel was 
 without the hope of a future life, which St. Peter 
 on the Day of Pentecost himself demonstrated out 
 of the Sixteenth Psalm ; f but only to perceive that 
 the Mosaic legislation was limited to its proper 
 purpose ; that, namely, of setting apart a nation 
 from the rest of mankind, and providing it with 
 peculiar means and guarantees for the fulfilment of 
 its mission as a nation. It erected a walled precinct, 
 within which the ancient belief of the fathers was 
 to find shelter and to thrive, while it was wofully 
 dwindling and perishing among all the kindred 
 
 * Acts xxiii. 8. f Acts ii. 25. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 109 
 
 nations of the world. It supplied an impregnable 
 home for personal religion. But personal religion, 
 taken by itself, is conspicuously weak in the means 
 of transmission from age to age. The sons of Eli 
 were wicked persons, and the evil Manasseh succeeds 
 the pious Hezekiah. It is not without the aid of 
 fixed and solid institutions, which take hold upon 
 masses of men collectively, that the sacred fire is 
 kept alive among us. Hence our Lord did not merely 
 teach His holy precepts, and fulfil His Divine 
 career in His own person, but founded His Church 
 on earth, to carry His work onwards even to the 
 day of doom. And hence, under the guidance 
 of the Most High, Moses was commissioned to 
 establish a system which, without being in itself 
 complete, provided for the double purpose, first, 
 of building up a fortress (so to call it) within 
 whose wall true spiritual religion might in singular 
 fulness flourish and abound ; and, secondly, of 
 establishing a firmly knit national system of doc- 
 trine and worship, intended to secure the per- 
 manent purity of belief in the one self-existent 
 God, and the continuing practice of a ritual which 
 set forth in act the existence of sin, and made 
 intelligible and familiar to the people at large some 
 need of deliverance from it by reconciliation. And 
 so, through the long ages from the Exodus to the 
 Advent, there lived on the two systems together, 
 
no OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 distinct but accordant. The one was the religion 
 of interior devotion, powerfully upheld and stimu- 
 lated, as occasion offered, by the Prophets, and con- 
 tinually exercised and developed in the public ritual 
 by the Psalms. The other was the religion of exte- 
 rior worship. This was full of significance. It had 
 a command over the entire people. It was incor- 
 porated in public laws and institutions, and was 
 associated at every point with the national life. 
 These outer means so operated as to exempt the 
 higher and interior treasure from the risks of depen- 
 dence on short-lived individual fervour, and pro- 
 vided secure means for its transmission from age to 
 
 We have in the institution of the prophetic school 
 the setting forth of a profound lesson, which reminds 
 us that the Mosaic system was alike in itself neces- 
 sary, and of itself insufficient. 
 
 From another, and possibly even more command- 
 ing, point of view, we perceive the insufficiency of 
 Mosaism to fill up fully the outlines of the Divine 
 dispensations. Sin, in the form of disobedience to 
 Divine command, had entered into the world, and 
 had utterly marred the fair order which, at the 
 outset, the Almighty had noted in His Creation. 
 The mischief was not left to stand alone ; and the 
 promise of a Redeemer from it was immediately 
 delivered. Thus far, the Mosaic system helps us ; 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. in 
 
 yet, in helping ns, tells us to look beyond itself. 
 By its system of sacrifice it threw into distinct relief 
 the idea that offence had been committed, and that 
 our standing was not upright before God. Now 
 with this were associated in Genesis the further ideas 
 that from this offence there would be a way of recon- 
 ciliation and recovery, and that this way would be 
 found in a member of the human race, a portion of 
 the seed of the woman. On these further ideas 
 Mosaism so far threw light, that it pointed through 
 sacrifice to pardon ; but it added nothing of force or 
 clearness to the original promise that this recovery 
 should be wrought out in and through a Redeemer 
 having the form and the nature of man. This 
 prophecy of the Incarnation, though a vital portion 
 of the ancient tradition of the patriarchs, did not 
 derive any supplement or new enforcement from the 
 construction of the Hebrew laws and institutions. 
 It remained, and it propagated itself, mainly in the 
 Psalms and in the Prophets, while its root was pre- 
 Mosaic. Some rays of the light of that promise 
 may perhaps be traced, outside the Hebrew precinct, 
 in particular traditions of the heathen world. There 
 may be vestiges of it in that close vital association 
 between Deity and humanity, which marked the 
 Greek or Olympian religion ; but which, as the 
 fundamental conception of sin more and more faded 
 away, lost all its moral force. Mosaism did essential 
 
112 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 and infinite service in deeply sculpturing (so to 
 speak) the idea of sin in the human consciousness ; 
 but it was not favourable to that theanthropy, or 
 union of the Divine and human, of which the human 
 side had been so strongly foreshadowed in the 
 original charter. Perhaps by the rigid prohibition 
 of images, which was so necessary for its direct 
 purpose, it rather tended to widen the distance, at 
 which man stood as a being worshipping his Maker. 
 Already idolatry, such as prevailed in the East, was 
 associated with the human form, and the necessity 
 of shutting out that idolatry may have carried with 
 it, in this respect, a certain religious incompleteness 
 as a consequence. 
 
 I now come to the second supposition ; and I ask 
 whether the selection of the Hebrew race was 
 grounded on their moral superiority. Within 
 narrow limits, the answer would be affirmative. They 
 were appointed to purge and to possess the land of 
 Canaan on account of the terrible and loathsome 
 iniquities of its inhabitants. The nations whom they 
 w^ere to subdue had reached that latest stage of sen- 
 sual iniquity, which respects neither God nor nature. 
 The sensual power within man, which rebelled against 
 him when he had rebelled against God, had in 
 Canaan enthroned its lawlessness as law, and its 
 bestial indulgences had become recognised, normal, 
 nay more, even religious and obligatory. And there 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. IJ3 
 
 are those in the present day who, admitting the facts, 
 find in them a subject of pleasurable contemplation, 
 as if they simply exhibited an innocent and free 
 exercise of natural propensities. The propensities 
 were due indeed to nature ; but only to nature in a 
 condition of disorder and disease. 
 
 The vicious practices of these nations, indicated 
 rather than described in the Old Testament, and 
 veiled, apparently for decency's sake, in the transla- 
 tions, are too sadly attested by the character of the 
 remains, which, in later times, archaeology has 
 recovered from their hiding-places. They are also 
 attested by the poems of Homer. In these poems, 
 the Phoenicians represent Syrian religion, and we 
 find the goddess Aphrodite, whose debased worship 
 it seems plain that they were gradually importing 
 into Greece, to have stood for little more than a 
 symbol of lawless lust. This is " Ashtoreth, the 
 goddess of the Zidonians." * 
 
 I find it much more diflScult to answer the 
 question, whether the Hebrew race were planted in 
 the land of promise, which flowed with milk and 
 honey, by reason of, or in connection with, their 
 moral superiority to the nations of \hQ world 
 taken universally. It is, down to the present day, 
 extremely difficult to make any trustworthy estimate 
 of the comparative moral standing even of any 
 * I Kings xi. 5-33. 
 
114 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 two contemporary peoples. It may be admitted 
 that the form of human nature has with the modern 
 conditions grown far more manifold and complex. 
 But, on the hand, in answering the question I have 
 just put, we have the difficulty not only of remoteness 
 in time, but of extreme scantiness of information. 
 
 I shall assume that the mass of the children of 
 Israel at large were trained mainly by Mosaism, 
 and little in comparison by the more highly spiritual 
 tradition conserved and enshrined within it. Speak- 
 ing of these, we may consider that the Old Testa- 
 ment gives us more than a sketch, if less than a 
 picture, of their social and moral state. I am aware 
 of only one other race, with respect to which we 
 have any account possessing a tolerable fulness. 
 That is the race of the Achaian Greeks, painted 
 with marvellous force as well as completeness by 
 Homer. The poet describes the manners of one 
 generation; the books of the Old Testament, say 
 from Abraham to the Captivity, range over many. 
 Still, numerous as these are, they present a consider- 
 able unity of colour. I carefully reserve the case 
 of that inner and elect circle among the Hebrews, 
 to whom we owe the possession down to this day 
 of inestimable spiritual treasures. But comparing, 
 as well as I am able, ordinary or average life among 
 the ordinary Hebrews on the one side, and the 
 ordinary Greeks of Homer (whom I take to have 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 115 
 
 lived long after Moses, but considerably before the 
 age of David) on the other, I cannot discern that 
 these last were in a moral sense inferior. 
 
 I am sensible, however, that in such a proposition 
 as has just been uttered there must be, to the 
 general reader, some appearance of paradox ; and 
 likewise that such an appearance will not be 
 effectually removed by reference to the Scriptural 
 complaints of the stiff neck, or the hard heart, of 
 the Israelites. I must therefore make further en- 
 deavours to get at the truth of the case before us. 
 
 I do not feel that even the patriarchal history is 
 designed to convey to us the idea that the privileged 
 race stood uniformly at a great moral elevation, 
 as compared with other and ordinary portions of 
 mankind. 
 
 The subject is a painful one, and I shall not dilate 
 upon its details. But it seems undeniable that, \\\ 
 the history of the selected line, we find from time 
 to time the development of wickedness in its ex- 
 treme forms. Such are the sin of Onan,"^ the incest 
 of the daughters of Lot,t and the brutal insensibility 
 of Ham, the son of Noah, to the claims of natural 
 decency 4 Nor are the women exempt, as we learn 
 from the incest devised and effected by Tamar. 
 And the wife of Lot cast a yearning look on the 
 
 * Genesis xxxviii. 8, 9. \ Genesis xix. 32. 
 
 X Genesis ix. 22. Genesis xxxviii. 6-30. 
 
tf6 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 hell of Sodom.* The first three cases, and the last, 
 are not in the line of the ultimate succession ; but 
 Pharez, the son of Tamar, is the recorded ancestor 
 of King David and his descendants.! Now, among 
 the Achaian Greeks of Homer we find a sensitive 
 delicacy, altogether peculiar, as to all exposure of 
 the person. There is nowhere any extreme form of 
 sensual indulgence. Among the Boeotian immigrants 
 from the East, that is from the Syrian coast, there 
 occurred at an early stage of their history in the 
 Peninsula, a case of incest ; % but it was always 
 regarded by the indigenous tradition as involuntary, 
 and what is more, a curse clave on this account 
 to the race of Kadmos, and brought about its early 
 extinction. 
 
 While incest is thus regarded as a monstrous 
 perversion of nature among the Greeks, there are in 
 the Homeric poems, as I think, sufficiently clear 
 indications that it was practised without shame 
 among the Phoenicians, the coast-neighbours of 
 Syria, and partners with it in manners, if not also 
 probably in race. 
 
 Let us now turn to two others among the great 
 moral constituents of human character, and consider 
 the case of humanity as against cruelty, and of 
 truth as against fraud. 
 
 * Genesis xix. 26. f Matthew i. 3-5. 
 
 X Od. xi. 271-4. Od. X. 7, and less flagrantly, vii. 64-8. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 117 
 
 Let us take the two cases first of the deceit 
 practised by Jacob upon his brother Esau and his 
 father Isaac ; secondly, of the base and unnatural 
 conduct of the sons of Jacob towards their brother 
 Joseph. As there is nothing recorded in favour of 
 the Homeric or Achaian Greeks which approaches 
 in moral beauty to the forgiveness freely accorded 
 by Joseph, so there is nothing recorded against them 
 which so wickedly tramples down the laws of nature, 
 as the flagrant iniquities to which attention has just 
 been called. The conduct of the suitors of Penelope 
 in the Odyssey, and the actions of Paris (a foreigner), 
 supply the worst exhibitions of human nature which 
 come before us in the Poems. Both there and in 
 the Old Testament retribution follows guilt, but 
 what I now speak of is the depth of guilt, not its 
 treatment. There is nowhere in Homer a case? 
 between relatives, of deceit like that of Jacob, or of 
 cruelty like that of his sons. 
 
 When we come to the Palestinian period, it would 
 appear that the Israelites were subjected to a force 
 and diversity of temptations, such as perhaps no 
 people ever had to encounter. Successful war had 
 stimulated their vindictive passions. Triumph every- 
 where had waited on their arms. They were entitled 
 to esteem themselves the directly chosen ministers 
 of God. They were likely to regard the heathen, 
 among whom they came, with hatred and contempt. 
 
ii8 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 They passed from a life, wandering, uncertain and 
 ill supplied, to settlement and to abundance. The 
 temples or emblems of seductive lust everywhere 
 met their eyes ; and the vile example, by which they 
 were solicited in the mass and in detail, pretended 
 plausibly to hallow itself by close association with 
 religion. There is scarcely an evil passion that finds 
 entrance into the human breast which was not power- 
 fully stirred by the circumstances of the Israelitish 
 conquest. We find in the sacred text indications of 
 the severity of some of their temptations. Take, 
 for instance, Deut. vi. 10-16; and again in xxxi. 
 20 it is written, 
 
 " For when I shall have brought them into the land 
 which I sware unto their fathers, that floweth with milk 
 and honey; and they shall have eaten and filled them- 
 selves, and waxen fat ; then will they turn unto other 
 gods and serve them, and provoke me, and break my 
 covenant." 
 
 The general indication seems to be first the per- 
 petuation of a chosen seed, at the very heart of the 
 nation, high in the knowledge of interior religion ; 
 secondly, a decided ethical superiority of the 
 Hebrew line over the Asiatic nations in their 
 neighbourhood, as indeed it was from Asia that 
 the extremes of corruption flowed into the Greek 
 Peninsula in the earliest historic times. Yet the 
 loveliest picture of womanhood in all the early 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 119 
 
 sacred books is that of Ruth ; and Ruth was of the 
 children of Moab, who was the incestuous offspring 
 of one of the daughters of Lot.* 
 
 Humanity, or mercy, is certainly not the strong 
 point of the Achaian Greeks. With them not only 
 no sacrednesSj but little value, attached to human 
 life ; and the loss of it stirs no sympathy unless it 
 be associated with beauty, valour, patriotism, or 
 other esteemed characteristics. Yet here, again, the 
 forms of evil are less extreme. We do not find, 
 even in the stern, relentless vengeance of Odysseus 
 on his enemies, or in the passionate wish of Achilles 
 that nature would permit what it forbade, namely, 
 to devour his hated foe, a form of cruelty and 
 brutality so savage as is recorded in the case of the 
 Levite with his wife and concubine at Gibeah, and 
 of the war which followed it.t 
 
 The temptations of lust were even more formid- 
 able, than those of cruelty and revenge. According 
 to the sacred text, this danger was foreseen from 
 the first ; and the very earliest Mosaic legislation, J 
 after that of the Commandments, begins to denounce 
 a portion of the indescribable practices which were 
 rife among the older occupiers of the promised land . 
 It was subsequently carried into further particulars, 
 and we know that, down the whole course of the 
 
 * Genesis xix. 36-7. f Judges xix.-xxi. 
 
 X Exodus xxii. 16. 
 
I20 OFFICE AND WORK OF THE 
 
 historic period before the Captivity, the filthy- 
 idolatry not only encircled the chosen people, but at 
 times so invaded it, as to reduce to a remnant the 
 untainted portion of the community, the true wor- 
 shippers of God. Even pious monarch s were some- 
 times afraid to destroy its constituted, and in a 
 perverse sense, consecrated emblems. 
 
 On the other hand, we must not view the case of 
 the earliest Greeks in the spirit of optimism. War 
 and its devastations were with them habitual and 
 almost normal ; property was little respected ; cun- 
 ning, as well as skill, was sometimes held in honour. 
 Yet it remains a broad and indisputable truth that 
 honour and truth, as well as valour, were prevailingly 
 respected, that family ties were very sacred, that 
 the law of nature was simply and profoundly revered, 
 and that the extreme forms of vice and sin, the 
 widest and most hopeless departures from the law 
 of God, are nowhere to be found in any of their 
 forms. 
 
 Enough has perhaps been said to show that we 
 cannot claim as a thing demonstrable a great moral 
 superiority for the Hebrew line generally over the 
 whole of the historically known contemporary races. 
 This, however, leaves ample room for the belief that 
 there was an interior circle, known to us by its 
 fruits in the Psalter and the prophetic books, of a 
 morality and sanctity altogether superior to what was 
 
OLD TESTAMENT IN OUTLINE. 121 
 
 to be found elsewhere, and due rather to the pre- 
 Mosaic, than to the Mosaic, religion of the race. 
 But it remains to answer with reverence the 
 question, Why, if not for a distinctly superior mo- 
 rality, nor as a full religious provision for the whole 
 wants of man, why was the race chosen, as a race, 
 to receive the promises, to guard the oracles, and 
 eventually, to fulfil the hopes, of the great Re- 
 demption ? 
 
 The answer may, I believe, be conveyed in 
 moderate compass. The design of the Almighty, 
 as we everywhere find, was to prepare the human 
 race, by a varied and a prolonged education, for the 
 arrival of the greatest epoch of history. The imme- 
 diate purposes of the Abrahamic selection may have 
 been to appoint, for the task of preserving in 
 the world the fundamental bases of religion, a 
 race, which possessed qualifications for that end 
 decisively surpassing those of all other races. 
 We may easily indicate two of these fundamental 
 bases. The first was the belief in one God. The 
 second was the knowledge that mankind at large 
 had departed from His law^s; without which know- 
 ledge how should they welcome a Deliverer, whose 
 object it was to bring them back ? It may be 
 stated with confidence that among the dominant 
 races of the world the belief in one God was speedily 
 destroyed by polytheism, and the idea of sin faded 
 
122 OFFICE AND WORK, ETC. 
 
 gradually but utterly away. Is it audacious to say 
 that what was wanted was a race so endowed with 
 the qualities of masculine tenacity and persistency, 
 as to hold over in safe custody these all-important 
 truths until that fulness of time, when, by and with 
 them, the complete design of the Almighty would 
 be revealed to the world ? A long experience of 
 trials beyond all example has proved since the Advent 
 how the Jews, in this one essential quality, have all 
 along surpassed every other people upon earth. A 
 marvellous and glorious experience has shown how 
 among their ancestors before the Advent were kept 
 alive and in full vigour the doctrine of belief in one 
 God, and the true idea of sin. These our Lord, when 
 He came, found ready to His hand, essential pre- 
 conditions of His teaching. And, in the exhibition 
 of this great and unparalleled result of a most 
 elaborate and peculiar discipline, we may perhaps 
 recognise, sufficiently for the present purpose, some- 
 thing of the Office and Work of the Old Testament. 
 
IV. 
 
 Uhc psalms. 
 
IV 
 XTbe psalms. 
 
 I. THEIR HISTORIC PLACE IN THE DEVOTION 
 
 OF ALL AGES. 
 
 John Bright has told me that he would be content 
 to stake upon the Book of Psalms, as it stands, the 
 great question whether there is or is not a Divine 
 Kevelation. It was not to him conceivable how a 
 work so widely severed from all the known produc- 
 tions of antiquity, and standing upon a level so much 
 higher, could be accounted for except by a special 
 and extraordinary aid calculated to produce special 
 and extraordinary results ; for it is reasonable, nay 
 needful, to presume a due correspondence between 
 the cause and the effect. Nor does this opinion 
 appear to be unreasonable. If Bright did not pos- 
 sess the special qualifications of the scholar or the 
 critic, he was, I conceive, a very capable judge of 
 the moral and religious elements in any case that had 
 
126 THE PSALMS. 
 
 been brought before him by his personal ex- 
 perience. 
 
 It was in truth a noble distinction of the Hebrew 
 race to have produced persons imbued with such 
 qualities and gifts, as were capable of composing 
 the Book of Psalms. 
 
 Twice in his Epistles (Eph. v. 19 ; Col. iii. 16) 
 does St. Paul admonish Christians upon musical 
 services as a fitting vent for the devout mind and 
 heart. In both cases he employs the same phrase- 
 ology, and enjoins the use of " psalms and hymns 
 and spiritual songs," each time giving the first place 
 in the enumeration to Psalms. I find it difficult to 
 dismiss the idea that in this word the use of the 
 Psalter was either intended or included ; especially 
 as there are early testimonies to the effect that anti- 
 phonal singing was in use from the origin of the 
 
 Church.* 
 
 Upon the most superficial survey of the Psalms 
 in their general aspect, it seems difficult or impos- 
 sible to regard them as simply owing their parentage 
 to the Mosaic system. Some, indeed, of their 
 features may well be referred to it ; especially the 
 strong sense of national unity which they display, 
 and the concentration of that sense upon a single 
 centre, the city of Jerusalem and the temple. 
 
 * As to the last-named point, see Wordsworth and Alford, 
 in loco. 
 
THE PSALMS. 127 
 
 It may also be noted that the Mosaic law incul- 
 cated in its utmost breadth the principle of love to 
 God. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
 thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
 might."* Yet may it not be said, from the place 
 in which it occurs, that this is rather exhortation 
 than statute ? Further, it is not unfolded in the 
 detail of the legislative Torah ; and, even in the 
 Decalogue, service is enjoined without the mention 
 of love. The early books do not exhibit, like the 
 Psalter, the close, inner contact of the individual 
 soul with the Deity ; and, as water does not rise 
 above the source, it is hard to ascribe to them alone 
 the wonderful development of that principle which 
 pervades the body of this unparalleled collection. 
 We seem compelled to assume for them some loftier 
 fountain-head of instruction. This, I would submit, 
 is in part supplied, and in part suggested, by the 
 Book of Genesis. I say suggested, inasmuch as the 
 outlines of a primeval religion drawn in that book 
 are not less slight than they are significant. So 
 slight, indeed, that I have been unable to resist the 
 impression that there were supplementary com- 
 munications of Divine truth, over and above those 
 contained in Holy Writ, and perhaps traceable, 
 here and there, in later portions of the Old Testa- 
 ment and of the Apocryphal Books. And I also 
 
 * Deut. vi. 4, 5. 
 
128 THE PSALMS. 
 
 say supplied, inasmuch as the story of the Fall 
 involves in full the idea of our restoration in 
 character as well as condition, which is nowhere 
 enunciated in the Law ; and further, inasmuch as it 
 sets forth, at least down to the time of Abraham, 
 a personal intercourse, habitual and direct, with the 
 Deity, and one pointing onwards to the great 
 Redemption. 
 
 In a preceding essay I have represented that the 
 Mosaic law was not the promulgation of a new and 
 complete religion, but a code of provisions intended 
 for the particular purpose (i) of building up a wall 
 of effectual separation between the Jewish commu- 
 nity, and the corruption of the nations whose land 
 they were to conquer and to possess ; and (2) of 
 preserving in vitality and freshness, within that 
 precinct, the fundamental conceptions of the Divine 
 unity and righteousness, and of the duty and the 
 sinfulness of man. These all-important propositions 
 were the necessary pre-conditions of any plan for 
 the restoration of peace in a disordered world. But 
 they were, nevertheless, in process of extirpation 
 from the general and public religion of all those 
 Gentile races, whose history is given us in Scripture, 
 or in the classical books of profane antiquity. 
 
 Thus the Mosaic system, while it was defensive 
 against the surrounding iniquity, was also some- 
 thing more, and something higher. That system, 
 
THE PSALMS. 129 
 
 both institutional and doctrinal, fenced in, as it 
 were, a clear space, a free and secure domain, for 
 the fuller development of a religion, inward and 
 personal, devotional and spiritual, the materials for 
 which it could hardly have supplied by presenting, 
 as it did, God as ruler and judge, and man as a 
 servant who continually either sinned, or was on 
 the brink of falling into sin. 
 
 In the inner sanctuary, thus provided for the 
 most capable human souls, was reared the strong 
 spiritual life, which appears to have developed 
 itself pre-eminently in the depth, richness, tender- 
 ness, and comprehensiveness of the Psalms. To 
 the work they have here accomplished, there is no 
 parallel upon earth. For the present I put aside 
 all details, and am content to stand upon this fact 
 that a compilation, which began (at the latest) 
 with a shepherd of Palestine, three thousand years 
 ago, has been the prime and paramount manual of 
 devotion from that day to this ; first for the Hebrew 
 race, both in its isolation, and after it was brought, 
 by the translation of its sacred books, into relations 
 with the Gentile world ; and then for all the Chris- 
 tian races, in all their diversities of character and 
 circumstance. Further, that there is now, if pos- 
 sible, less chance than ever of the displacement of 
 these marvellous compositions from their supremacy 
 in the worship of the Christian church. And 
 
 I 
 
I30 THE PSALMS. 
 
 beyond doubt it may be also said that their function 
 has not been one of ritual pomp and outward power 
 alone. They have dwelt in the Christian heart, and 
 at the very centre of that heart ; and wherever the 
 pursuits of the inner life have been most largely 
 conceived and cultivated, there, and in the same 
 proportion, the Psalms have towered over every 
 other vehicle of general devotion. We have a con- 
 spicuous illustration of their office in the fact that 
 of two hundred and forty-three actual citations 
 from the Old Testament found in the pages 
 of the New, no less than one hundred and six- 
 teen are from the single Book of Psalms ; and 
 that a similar proportion holds with most of the 
 early Fathers.* Bishop Alexander has published 
 the result of a careful examination made by him- 
 self. It is, that reference is made to the Psalms, 
 either by quotation or otherwise, in no fewer than 
 two hundred and eighty-six passages of the New 
 Testament.f 
 
 * Canon Cook, in the Speaker's Bible, vol. iv. p. 146. There is 
 u minor, but still not unmeaning, indication to the same effect, 
 which it would be unseemly to couple with that given in the text, 
 but which I venture to name for its recency, and because it is 
 eminently associated with the general course of modern life. In 
 a manual, not of hymns, but of devotions prepared for public use 
 in the mixed congregations on board a great line of packet ships 
 from Great Britain to North America, I find that, out of 254 
 pages, 137 are occupied by selections from the Psalms ; the chief 
 part of the remainder being a collection of hymns. 
 
 t " The Witness of the Psalms." Note A, p. 291. 
 
THE PSALMS. 131 
 
 We have thus before us the fact that the Psalms, 
 composed for the public worship of the Hebrews 
 from two to three thousand years ago, constitute 
 down to the present day for Christians the best and 
 highest book of devotion. A noteworthy fact even 
 on the surface of it ; more noteworthy still, when 
 we go below the surface into the meaning. The 
 Hebrews were Semitic, Christendom is (chiefly) 
 Aryan ; the Hebrews were local, Christendom is 
 world-wide ; the Hebrews were often tributary, and 
 finally lost their liberties and place among the 
 nations; Christianity has mounted over every ob- 
 stacle, and has long been the dominating power of 
 the world. The Hebrews had no literature outside 
 their religion, nor any Fine Art ; Christendom has 
 appropriated, and even rivalled, both the literature 
 and the art of the greatest among the ancients. 
 This strange book of Hebrew devotions had no 
 attraction outside Hebrewism, excejDt for Christians ; 
 and Christians have found nothing to gather, in the 
 same kind, from any of the other religions in the 
 world. The stamp of continuity and identity has 
 been set upon one, and one only, historic series ; one 
 and one only, thread runs down through the whole 
 succession of the ages ; and, among many witnesses 
 to this continuity, the Psalms are probably among 
 the most conspicuous. This stamp purports to be, 
 and to have been all along, Divine ; and the un- 
 
132 THE PSALMS. 
 
 paralleled evidence of results all goes to show that it 
 is not a forgery. 
 
 The wonderful phenomenon thus presented to us 
 can hardly be said to admit of enhancement ; and 
 yet it is, perhaps, enhanced, when we bear in mind 
 that the long period of this perpetual youth, 
 exhibited by the Psalms, has been one broken by the 
 promulgation of a new religion, together with all 
 the changes of fact, and developments of principle, 
 which transformed the heathen world. 
 
 Moreover, we should remember that the shapings 
 of all language merely human are essentially short- 
 lived, and forms of speech succeed one another as 
 wave follows upon wave. But herein seems probably 
 to lie one of the ways in which the Divine revelation 
 asserts itself. It appears to have the faculty of 
 giving to things mutable the privilege and the 
 power of the immutable, and to endow fashions of 
 speech, when they belong to the heart's core of 
 human nature, with a charter that is to endure 
 throughout all time. 
 
 I submit, then, that the fact of so wonderful a 
 power as was thus exercised by the Psalms, in such 
 diversities of time, race, and circumstances, is not 
 only without parallel, but is removed by such a 
 breadth of space from all other facts of human 
 experience in the same province, as to constitute in 
 itself a strong presumption that the cause also is one 
 
THE PSALMS. 133 
 
 lying beyond the range of ordinary human action, 
 and may most reasonably be set down as consisting 
 in that speciality of Divine suggestion and guidance, 
 which we term revelation. 
 
 II. THEIR ANTIQUITY. 
 
 The antiquity of the Book of Psalms, like that of 
 the other books of Scripture, does not directly or 
 necessarily involve the essence of the case concern- 
 ing them, which I apprehend is more dependent 
 upon their character and their results. Yet it 
 counts, for importance, in the next order of con- 
 siderations, since the form and substance are here 
 more intimately allied than in the terms used for 
 the recital of events in an historical book. 
 
 It is also to be assumed that the incessant use of 
 the Psalms in the service of the temple, and the 
 comparatively wide knowledge of them thus con- 
 veyed to the people, were in the nature of special 
 securities for their faithful and exact transmission. 
 
 When we speak of the Psalms of David, we use 
 a popular and general form of expression, which 
 names the whole from the largest or most weighty, 
 and, originally, most conspicuous, of the parts. The 
 phrase is sufficiently shown not to be absolute and 
 precise by the beautiful 137th Psalm, which de- 
 scribes the condition of the Hebrews in Babylon, five 
 
T34 THE PSALMS. 
 
 centuries after the death of the minstrel King. 
 Seventy-three Psalms* in all are ascribed to him. 
 This is not the assumption or opinion of conservative 
 writers only. Bleek, whose work is revised and 
 sanctioned by Wellhausen, admits it to be a matter 
 of the highest probability that no inconsiderable 
 number of the Psalms are due to his authorship.f 
 He also, with others, largely accepts the inscriptions 
 which are prefixed to them. According to Canon 
 Cook, a judicious and able writer, it was never held 
 that the entire Psalter was the work of the King ) 
 and he says that, in the time of the Maccabees, the 
 completion of the Book was ascribed to Nehemiah. 
 He thinks that a large proportion of the two closing 
 books (out of the five Books composing the Psalter) 
 belong to the period of or following the Exile. J But 
 of the three Psalms most pointedly referable to the 
 Messiah, two (xxii., ex.) are Davidic. He shows 
 how the conclusive objections to the theory which 
 refers the Psalms to the Maccabean age are sustained 
 by various advanced German writers, and Bleek 
 holds that no Psalm can be shown to be later than 
 Nehemiah. But the master idea of the whole argu- 
 ment is not so much that such and such Psalms 
 
 * Cook's Introduction, p. 150. 
 
 t " Einleitung in das alte Testament .... besorgt von J. 
 Wellhausen." Sect. 221. Berlin, 1886. 
 
 X Cook's Introduction, p. 156. The Books are Psalms i.-xli., 
 xlii.-lxxii., Ixxiii.-lxxxix., xc.-cvi., cvii.-cl. 
 
THE PSALMS, 135 
 
 were produced at such and such an era, as that 
 the Book at large is the product of that influence 
 which stamps it, like the other books of Holy 
 Scripture, as embodying a Divine revelation. 
 
 On this point of antiquity, it is more than enough 
 if a large portion of the Psalms are ascribable to King 
 David. I venture, however, to ofier two sugges- 
 tions. First, the Psalms come to us through a 
 channel supplied by the kingdom of Judah, not the 
 kingdom of Israel. If they had been largely com- 
 posed after the severance of the ten tribes from the 
 two, would they not have presented some more definite 
 indication of that severance .? Now, the name of Israel 
 is the name, under which in the Psalms the chosen 
 people are described. We have this name repeated 
 twenty-six times. The name of Judah was likely, 
 it may be supposed, after the schism, to become the 
 prevailing and distinctive name. It would so continue 
 after the captivity and dispersion of the ten tribes, 
 and as long as their remnants continued to maintain 
 any serious and systematic rivalry with the southern 
 kingdom. Yet, throughout the Psalter, we never 
 find the name of Judah mentioned in this para- 
 mount sense. Jerusalem is mentioned seventeen 
 times, and Sion thirty-eight, together fifty-five 
 times. But the name of Judah only occurs ten 
 times, and never with this paramount significance. 
 It is mentioned either together with Israel 
 
136 THE PSALMS, 
 
 (Ps. Ixxvi. I ; cxiv. 2), or in conjunction with other 
 tribes, as with Ephraim and Manasseh in Ps. Ix. 7, 
 and cviii. 8, or with Sion ; but always locally or 
 tribally. Could this have been so, if the Psalms had 
 mainly been composed when Judah was the only 
 acknowledged name for the elect people, and Israel 
 was a stranger, often an enemy, always the symbol 
 of a rival and apparently, from the character of its 
 priesthood,* a degraded worship ? 
 
 Secondly : the one great deliverance commemo- 
 rated in the Psalms (as also, I understand, in the 
 later Jewish Liturgies), is the deliverance from 
 Egypt. See, for example. Psalms Ixviii., Ixxii., Ixxx., 
 Ixxxi., cv., cvi., cxiv., cxxxv., cxxxvi. Could this 
 have been the case, if the Book was unknown 
 until the time when, between the people and their 
 earlier past, there arose up a frightful spectre ? 
 I refer to the terrible experience of the Captivity 
 in Babylon. 
 
 And yet, surely, there were incidents attendant 
 upon that Captivity, which might have carved upon 
 the Jewish mind recollections yet deeper in some 
 respects than those of Egypt. In that country, if 
 their treatment had been cruel and degrading, yet 
 they must upon the whole have flourished, inasmuch 
 as they grew there from a family into a people. 
 But the Babylonish captivity entailed, firstly, the 
 
 * I Kings xii. 31 ; xiii. 33. 
 
THE PSALMS. 137 
 
 loss of what was not only an ancestral home, 
 but the local seat of the Divine promise 
 to their race ; secondly, the loss of the worship 
 divinely ordained, and attached to the temple of 
 Jerusalem ; thirdly, the loss of the kingly line, 
 and of that prized nationality, in and by which they 
 were preferred before all the nations of the earth. 
 Is it then conceivable, if the Psalms in general owed 
 their origin to the time of the Captivity, that the 
 composers of them should, in numerous and con- 
 spicuous cases, have dwelt so long and so often on 
 the details of the Egyptian bondage, and should 
 never but once and briefly have made reference, 
 specific indeed but narrow, to the one recent 
 catastrophe, choosing rather to go back to the 
 centuries dimmed, in comparison, by the interval of 
 a thousand years ? 
 
 It seems more than possible that this argument 
 may be decisively supported by that portion of the 
 Book of Jeremiah, which distinctly prophesies, not 
 long before the Captivity, that a time is coming 
 when the servitude in Egypt shall cease to be the 
 one commanding recollection of the Hebrews, and its 
 place shall be taken by the Exile in Babylon. 
 
 *' Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, 
 that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that 
 brought np the children of Israel out of the land of 
 Egypt ; 
 
138 THE PSALMS. 
 
 " But, the Lord liveth, that brought up the children 
 of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the 
 lands whither he had driven them : and I will bring them 
 again into their land that I gave unto their fathers." * 
 
 The arguments, drawn from general features and 
 from historical probability, respecting the antiquity * 
 of the Books of the Old Testament, are in some 
 degree common to the Torah, or Books of Moses, 
 and the Psalms. The Psalms have, however, the 
 benefit of the admission I have cited from the leader 
 of the negative school in our own day, that a consider- 
 able number are probably from the pen of David. 
 And there are also points in which reasoning, 
 available to show the antiquity of the Torah, has an 
 enhanced force for the Psalms. 
 
 We see, for example, that the history of the 
 Israelites, from the conquest of Canaan to the 
 Captivity, is upon the whole a history of decaying 
 faith. This is exhibited in the original demand for 
 the change to a monarchy from that earlier form of 
 government by Judges, which powerfully suggested 
 the presence and providence of the Almighty, by 
 leaving unoccupied the place upon earth most sym- 
 bolical of Him. It was shown by the increased 
 wickedness of the kings, and by the enlarged and 
 developed office of the Prophets. For these were 
 like an army of reserve in support of the Divine 
 * Jer. xvi. 14, 15. 
 
THE PSALMS. 139 
 
 dispensation, which takes its position on the field 
 of battle in the hour of need. 
 
 Tt is also observed by Sack,* that in the period 
 succeeding the exile the original creative force of 
 the Hebrew spirit died out, and that, as formalism 
 advanced, the sectarian lines of party were sharpened 
 and deepened. In both these tracts of history, the 
 spirit and voice of the Book of Psalms throw us 
 back upon antiquity, and even upon a distant anti- 
 quity. They seem to be manifestly the product as 
 of a school, so probably of an age, of living, ener- 
 getic faith. And they are not less eminently 
 notable for the harmony which pervades the religious 
 community. " Jerusalem is built as a city, that is 
 at unity in itself." f 
 
 III. THEIR CONTENTS. 
 
 Let us now look for a moment at the contents 
 of this Book, which are such as to fasten our wonder 
 upon them, and to leave little room for any surprise 
 that they should have established for themselves, in 
 collective worship and in personal devotion, the 
 place to which no parallel is elsewhere to be found 
 in the experience of the human race. And, on the 
 other hand, I shall not fail to notice in their proper 
 
 * " Die alijiidische Religion im ilbergange vom Bibelthnme 
 zum Talmudismus, von Israel Sack." Berlin, 1889. Einleitung, 
 pp. 13, 5622" t Psalm cxxii. 3. 
 
I40 THE PSALMS. 
 
 place the objections whicli some have urged against 
 the Book of Psalms. 
 
 The multiplication of divinities under the system 
 which we term polytheism, had tended to establish 
 everywhere a system of what are termed national 
 gods. These act within the sphere of a particular 
 race or country : they are open to the competition 
 of other deities, when through migration or conquest 
 these spheres happen to overlap. They do not claim 
 the allegiance of other races, or show care or, so to 
 speak, responsibility, for their welfare. 
 
 I do not indeed deny, but should be forward to 
 assert, that while, in the early stages of historic 
 antiquity, this nationalising process seems to harden 
 more and more with the gradual accretions of legen- 
 dary tradition, we can trace among the mythologies, 
 in various degrees of faintness or clearness, the older 
 idea of a supreme God ; of a belief in one Ruler of 
 the universe, anterior and superior to these multi- 
 form powers. We find in many cases disguised 
 resemblances of that original belief ; but it is most 
 commonly with such dislocation of its elemients, such 
 exaggerations, sd^ intrusion of ideas foreign to it, 
 as to defy all attempts, at least in the present state 
 of knowledge, to ascend the channel upwards to the 
 source. The schemes become so complex, as to defy 
 any rational account of the original deviation : even 
 when their basis is found to lie in the several powers 
 
THE PSALMS. 141 
 
 of external nature, which were not known to be con- 
 nected by any common tie, but which received the 
 names of gods, and were combined into religious 
 systems. These popular gods became realities in 
 two senses ; first, subjectively, because as they were 
 accepted in the minds of men, the associations con- 
 nected with them became a source and spring of 
 human action ; secondly, because the images, under 
 which they came to be represented, gave them a real 
 existence at least in the material sphere. It is, 
 therefore, natural that the Psalms, in phrases con- 
 cerning deity, should not be confined to the One 
 God, but should say, for example, that among 
 the gods there is none like Him, or should exhort 
 the worshippers to give thanks unto the God of 
 gods.* 
 
 Yet no reader of the Psalms can fail to see that 
 they are strictly, unconditionally, and exclusively 
 monotheistic. God is undoubtedly the God of 
 Israel, and the worshippers properly describe Him 
 in the terms, which most closely correspond with 
 His relation to themselves. There seems to be a 
 great mixture of the terms of Elohim and Jehovah, 
 and in none of the five Books is the use of the 
 properly Hebrew name exclusive. t But, without 
 drawing any argument from this intermixture, the 
 
 * Ps. Ixxxvi. 8; cxxxvi. 2. See Exodus xv. 11. 
 t Cook's Introd., p 149. 
 
142 THE PSALMS. 
 
 Psalms make it plain that the God whom they 
 adore is from everlasting, and is the God, not of 
 Palestine, but of the whole world : " vSing nnto* 
 God, O ye kingdoms of the earth ; sing praises 
 unto the Lord ; who sitteth in the heavens over all 
 from the beginning."* And His eye and care are 
 over all men. *' praise the Lord all ye heathen : 
 praise Him all ye nations. For His merciful kind- 
 ness is ever more and more towards us ; and the 
 truth of the Lord endureth for ever." f 
 
 No doubt the ^' Lord " is represented as having 
 special relations with and special care for Israel. 
 But these are relations of affection, not of exclusion. 
 A Psalm declares indeed 
 
 *' He shall choose out an heritage for us ; even the 
 worship of Jacob, whom he loved." 
 
 But the very same Psalm had already sounded the 
 trumpet note 
 
 "O clap your hands together, all ye people; O sing 
 unto God with the voice of melody: for the Lord is 
 high, and to be feared ; He is the great king upon all 
 the earth." % 
 
 Among the notes, then, of the supreme position 
 of the Psalms, and of the religion to which they 
 belonged, we find this idea of the one God, who is 
 also the universal God, and the universal Governor 
 
 * Ps. Ixviii. 32-3. t Ps. cxvii. % Ps. xlvii. 4, and 1-2. 
 
THE PSALMS. I43 
 
 of men, and who thereby stands broadly distin- 
 guished from what we find to be the character of 
 'the polytheistic systems and of their heads ; namely, 
 divinity restrained by limits of the races or countries 
 of antiquity. 
 
 But the form of the Almighty, thus divested of 
 the limitations of mere nationality, and exhibited in 
 the majesty of perfect Oneness and Omnipotence, 
 revealed itself through the Psalms in other and more 
 tender aspects. His care for the poor and for the 
 stranger might be learned from the books of the 
 law, and may be traced in other religions among the 
 remnants of true Theism. Still, that is a function 
 of government only, though of benevolent govern- 
 ment, and it is compatible with the idea of im- 
 measurable remoteness. But in the Psalms is 
 developed with singular force and beauty the idea 
 of Omnipotence in the attitude of nearness to man : 
 and, more conspicuously still, of nearness to the 
 individual man. In Heaven, and in the Under- 
 world, and at the extremities of earth, " even there 
 also shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand 
 shall hold me."* 
 
 The presence thus brought near is not, as inExodus,t 
 a consuming, but a soothing and sustaining presence.^ 
 When thus brought near, the Almighty is invested 
 in relation to us with all those capacities of action 
 
 * Ps. cxxxix. 6-9, t Chap. xix. 12, 13, 21. \ Ps. xxiii. 
 
144 THE PSALMS. 
 
 and of sympathy, wliicli fill in human nature the 
 department of the affections. In the mouth of the 
 objector, this is termed anthropomorphism. I do 
 not presume to say that there is not in it some 
 prefiguration of the Messiah, made in all such things 
 like as we are. But that there is no deflection from 
 the loftiness of the monotheistic idea we know from 
 this, that the same people, who gave utterance to 
 the Psalms, have been the most rigid and lofty in 
 their definitions of the Godhead. As when it is 
 said by Maimonides that with God " there is neither 
 folly nor wisdom, like the wisdom of a wise man ; 
 neither sleep nor waking; neither anger nor 
 laughter ; neither joy nor sorrow ; neither silence 
 nor speech, like the speech of the sons of 
 men."* Yet it is He that is not only the guardian 
 of His people, but as it were their sentinel ; and not 
 of His people only, but of every one among them, as 
 truly and as much as of the whole. In truth, the 
 two threads of national and of personal Providence 
 are so intertwined in the Psalms that they scarcely 
 can be severed. '' He will not suffer thy foot to be 
 moved, and He that helpeth thee will not sleep ; " 
 and then in the very next verse, by a transition not 
 
 * Maimonides, " Yad Hachazakah." Transl. Bernard, Cam- 
 bridge, 1832, p. 39. Declarations not less remarkable are to bo 
 found in the More Nehuchim, or " Guide of the Perplexed." See 
 also the work of Dr. Ginsburg on the Kabbala, pp. 87-9 (London, 
 Longmans, 1864). 
 
THE PSALMS. 145 
 
 less gentle than complete, " Behold, He, that keepeth 
 Israel, shall neither slumber nor sleep." There is 
 no detail too minute for describing the closeness of 
 this protection : "He is thy defence upon thy right 
 hand ; " " The Lord shall preserve thy going out 
 and thy coming in : from this time forth for ever- 
 more." * But no mere selection can rightly convey 
 a picture of the close and intimate care, which this 
 and so many others of the Psalms describe in setting 
 forth the attitude of the Almighty towards His 
 worshippers. 
 
 I will not quit this portion of the subject with- 
 out quoting a remarkable testimony to the elevation 
 of the Psalter from a recent critic generally 
 negative, but one who makes his affirmative 
 declarations with an exemplary sincerity and fer- 
 vour. He speaks of the Psalter as follows: "It 
 is, as a whole, the expression and fruit of the prin- 
 ciples of the Jewish religion, as they existed in the 
 minds of pious Israelites. Its one great theme is 
 the clinging of the human spirit to God. In joy 
 and sorrow, in victory and defeat, in moods ot 
 saintliness or sin, the spirit of the poor earthly 
 wayfarer here pours out its plaint and prayer to 
 
 the God of its life What exultation is 
 
 here, for high days of victory and joy ! What 
 
 touching moans of penitence ! What childlike 
 
 * Psi. cxxi. 3, 4, 5, 8. 
 
146 THE PSALMS. 
 
 cries for help ! Wliat entreaties from the soul that 
 can only say, ' out of the depths I have cried unto 
 Thee ! ' What delightful confidences between the 
 trustful spirit, and the Shepherd who leadeth by 
 the green pastures and the still waters ! " * 
 
 I must not altogether pass by the Messianic 
 Psalms. These are the songs which show, by the 
 adaptation of their language to Him and to His 
 office, either that their composers had a prevision of 
 His coming, or that such prevision was conveyed 
 into their strain by the higher influence which 
 prompted it. It is not necessary here to debate 
 their number. Suffice it to specify Psalms ii., xxi., 
 xxii., xlv., Ixxii., ex. And it is sufficiently plain 
 that the principle of prophecy, which is involved in 
 them, whether conscious or unconscious to the com- 
 poser, is the same which belongs to the other 
 predictions and prefigurations in the books of the 
 Old Testament. But they differ from, and go 
 beyond, the rest in this important particular. The 
 primitive religion descends through them, as it were 
 by an inner conduit. The great and cardinal facts 
 of the lapse of man from righteousness, and of the 
 need and promise of a Kedeemer, were embodied 
 by the Psalms in the perpetual public worship of 
 the Temple ; they thus became part of the open, 
 common inheritance of all ; and were systematically 
 * Seven Lectures by the Rev. J. P. Hopps ; vii. p. 33. 
 
THE PSALMS. 147 
 
 forced, so to speak, upon the attention of the people, 
 that they might come into personal and conscious 
 appropriation of this most precious and absolutely 
 central part of their covenanted privileges. 
 
 When the foot of the Greek first, and after- 
 wards of the Roman, trod the streets of Jerusalem; 
 when the treasures of the Hebrew books were 
 unlocked to the Gentile world through the 
 Septuagint; then there happened, we may justly 
 assume, one of two things. There was, as we 
 know upon strong heathen testimony, before 
 the advent of our Lord, an universal and traditional 
 expectation in the East that a great power was to 
 arise in Judaea and to subdue the world. How 
 came it that so remarkable a conception, foreign to 
 the cultivated communities of the Greek and the 
 Italian peninsulas, and apparently menacing the 
 continuance of the Eoman dominion, should at this 
 time have been prevalent in the East ? The East 
 had, indeed, through a long series of centuries, sup- 
 posed itself entitled to the mastery of the world : 
 hence the wild expedition of Darius into Scythia, 
 and the repeated conflicts of Persia with the Greeks. 
 It is not strange that this heritage should in some 
 shape or other be reclaimed, for ideas of this kind 
 are tenacious of life, and easy of revival. But what 
 is at first sight most strange is, the choice of the 
 spot from which deliverance was to proceed. It 
 
148 THE PSALMS. 
 
 was not from any of the seats of ancient power, the 
 fame of which was still on record ; but from among 
 the small, isolated, and undistinguished people who 
 inhabited Palestine, and whose brief appearance on 
 the stage of human affairs as conquerors, in the 
 time of King David, was so slight in limit and in 
 duration, as to have inscribed no mark upon the 
 page of general history. It had passed away, 
 like the old empire of the Hittites. The Jews 
 were also a people, whose manners and institutions 
 repelled rather than attracted the sympathy of the 
 world One supposition, explanatory of this remark- 
 able expectation, might be that it had lived on from 
 prehistoric times in feebleness and obscurity, but 
 had come to the front when the East felt the hard 
 hand of power pressing on it from Rome, and welding 
 it for the first time by a permanent system into 
 uniformity of servitude or inferiority, from which it 
 panted for deliverance. But it seems more probable 
 that the Jewish Scriptures, which had for two 
 centuries become known by translation into Greek, 
 were themselves the fountain-head of this most 
 remarkable anticipation ; and in that case its popular 
 promulgation would seem most probably to have 
 been due, in an eminent degree, to the Messianic 
 Psalms, which were, of all the available evidence, the 
 part most in the eye and mind of the people. 
 
 Such being, in outline, the presentation of God 
 
THE PSALMS. 149 
 
 to man in the Book of Psalms, let us consider in its 
 turn the manner in which they present man to God. 
 Now this may be set forth in a multitude of parti- 
 culars, but they aro all capable of being summed into 
 one. For we have seen that the Psalms are a book 
 of spiritual communion, not only between God and 
 man, not only between God and His Church, or 
 especially chosen people, but also, and even pre- 
 eminently, between God and the individual man. 
 
 As it is the fashion of the day to assert for the 
 sacred books of other religions a kind of parity with 
 the Old Testament, I ask the reader to spend a few 
 moments on this subject. 
 
 No doubt there are points at which resemblance 
 may be traced between the Hebrew devotions and 
 those of the outer world : not those of the outer 
 world generally, for from the Greek mind, as repre- 
 sented by the Greek literature, devotion, properly 
 so called, has disappeared ; the rise of intellect, sad 
 and strange as this may sound, was the fall of 
 piety. But let it be granted that in the Vedas, for 
 example, and in the Babylonian Hymns, there are 
 points of contact with the Psalms. Do those points 
 of contact run along the whole line ? are they con- 
 tinuous, or are they isolated ? Is it coincidence, or 
 is it a sort of tangential contact only, or one which 
 reminds us of the definition of a point as that which 
 has position but not magnitude in space ? 
 
ISO THE PSALMS. 
 
 May not those hymns be described as belonging 
 only to the idea of dependence upon the Deity to the 
 power and grandeur which exists on one side, the 
 misery and weakness on the other ? This is perhaps 
 what is called the religious sentiment, the religion 
 of which we have a subjective need, and which we 
 are now constantly (and doubtless in good faith) 
 assured is not to disappear on the submergence 
 of positive religion and its institutions. But 
 does this give us anything near a true concep- 
 tion of the Psalms ? They are based upon the 
 idea, not of dependence only, but of sympathy 
 and communion. Yes, for the work of spiritual 
 discipline, the human soul is there almost lifted 
 upwards, as St. Paul was, into the third heaven, 
 and meets the Creator as son meets father, face to 
 face. It is not possible, perhaps, to carry this idea 
 farther, than it is carried in the Psalms. It is cer- 
 tainly not woven into a closer tissue in Thomas a 
 Kempis, after fourteen centuries of Christian ideas 
 and practices. We approach to it in the Prophets, 
 when, through Isaiah, the Almighty invites us to a 
 pleading (Is. i. i 8), " Come now, and let us reason 
 together." * But can we, even in idea, press it 
 further or lift it higher than in that marvellous 
 expostulation of the forty-fourth Psalm. It defies 
 the test of extract or quotation. From the fifth 
 * See also Ezek. xviii. 25, 29. 
 
THE PSALMS. 151 
 
 verse to the end it is a sustained note of moving, 
 sorrowing appeal, lifted as far above the level of any 
 merely human effort known to us as the flight of 
 the lark, " hard by the sun," is lifted above the 
 swallow, when it foresees the storm and skims the 
 surface of the ground. Such, as set forth in the 
 Psalms are the inward exercises of the individual soul. 
 Not that the stamp set upon the Psalms is 
 uniform : it is highly diversified. Take the noble 
 first Psalm, which opens the Book. It sets forth 
 in one part (verses 3 and 4) with a tender beauty, 
 in another with strong and stern denunciation, the 
 positions of the righteous and of the wicked before 
 God. But it sets them forth, as it were, from the 
 outside. So, again, many of the Psalms, dealing 
 with the Israelites as a whole, have for their theme 
 national deliverance and glory. But let us turn to 
 the penitential Psalms, and most of all to the fifty- 
 first, in which King David * sounds the loweijt 
 depths of sorrow and shame for sin, and has pro- 
 vided for the penitent of every age and every 
 character the medicine that his case required. On 
 these Psalms as a whole, on this Psalm in particular, 
 and, again on the thirty-eighth Psalm, most of all 
 in its first moiety, let us fasten our attention for a 
 moment. Have modern learning and research suc- 
 
 * Some critics argue, not without some reason on their side, 
 that the two last verses are an exilic addition. 
 
152 THE PSALMS. 
 
 ceeded in extracting from all the sacred books of 
 all the ancient religions of the world anything like, 
 I do not say a parallel, but an ever so remote approach 
 to them ? The great discourse of onr Lord to 
 Nicodemus, in the third chapter of St. John, might 
 find in these compositions a basis broad enough to 
 sustain the whole of His startling doctrine, "except 
 a man be born again, he cannot seethe kingdom of 
 God."* 
 
 Penitence thus lying at the door of the process 
 by which man is appointed to ascend to holiness, 
 this golden book supplies, beyond all others, the 
 types and aids for attaining it in all its stages. All 
 that special class of virtues, which were unknown 
 to the civilised world at the time when the Apostles 
 preached them, had been here set forth in act a 
 thousand years before, and stored up for use, first 
 within the narrow circle of the Jewish worship, 
 and then in the Church, which claims, and which 
 may yet possess, the wide world for its inheritance. 
 Another standard of virtue indeed, and in itself a 
 glorious one, the Greek and the Roman world 
 possessed. They had their code of Justice, Forti- 
 tude, Temperance, and Wisdom. But this list of 
 virtues contained no recognition of the terrible and 
 world-wide fact of sin, and opened no road to the 
 acquisition of powers capable of contending against 
 
 * John iii. 3. 
 
THE PSALMS. 153 
 
 it, and of casting down its strongholds to the ground. 
 That road was to be opened by the Beatitudes of 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and by the Faith, Hope, 
 and Charity of St. Paul. Now, is there one of those 
 Beatitudes which has not been, in its blossom or its 
 germ, anticipated by the Psalms ? Take the sancti- 
 fication of sorrow in verse 4 : so the Psalm instructs 
 us, ** Thy loving correction shall make me great " 
 (Ps. xviii. 35). Take the blessing of the meek 
 (verse 5). So says the Psalmist : '' Lord, I am not 
 high-minded. I have no proud looks. I refrain 
 my soul and keep it low. My soul is even as 
 a weaned child." (Ps. cxxxi. i, 3.) These are 
 principles, not only which the ancient philosophies 
 did not contain, but which they would have repu- 
 diated and contemned. Take again that blessing 
 of satiety which is promised to " hunger and thirst'" 
 after righteousness ; words which indicate such an 
 adult age, such a fulness of growth and stature in 
 the new man of the Christian system, that what 
 was at first lesson from without has come to be 
 appetite from within, and part of the untaught 
 spontaneous working of a renewed humanity. But 
 this idea is fully developed in the Psalms (xlii. 1,2), 
 " Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so 
 longeth my soul after Thee, God. My soul is 
 athirst for God, yea, even for the living God: when 
 shall I come to appear before the presence of God.^' 
 
154 THE PSALMS. 
 
 E^en the doctrine of forgiveness, of doing good to 
 enemies, to the growth of which the conditions of 
 Hebrew life were less favourable, finds expression in 
 the Psalms. Take xxxv. 12, 13 : "They rewarded 
 me evil for good. Nevertheless, when they were 
 sick I put on sackcloth, and humbled my soul with 
 fasting." And again, " If I have rewarded evil 
 unto him that dealt friendly with me : yea, I have 
 delivered him that without any cause is mine 
 enemy " (Ps. vii. 4). It is, I submit, the general 
 strain of the Psalms to which we should look. And 
 who will deny that they habitually abound in 
 humility, in penitential abasement, in the strong 
 faith which is the evidence of things not seen, in 
 fervour, self-mistrust, filial confidence towards God? 
 These and all kindred qualities they develop in 
 what, for want of a better word, I will term their 
 innerness. Their tones come from the inmost heart, 
 and, not with a rude familiarity, yet with a wonder- 
 ful nearness, they seem to seek the response, if the 
 phrase may be used without irreverence, from the 
 inner heart of God Himself. 
 
 All this is severed, as a whole, by an immeasur- 
 able distance from the language, ideas, and mental 
 habits of pagan antiquity. What we find there of 
 religion associated with intellectual culture turns 
 upon the external relations between God and man, as 
 between sovereign and subject, or master and de- 
 
THE PSALMS. 155 
 
 pendant. The prehistoric verse of Homer abounds 
 in prayers. They are not such commonly as we 
 should use, yet they indicate fully these external 
 relations. But in the life of later, of classical, 
 Greece, prayer seems wholly to have lost its force and 
 place as a factor in human life. 
 
 Again, in the " Odyssey " of Homer we have 
 remaining traces of the personal relation between 
 man and God. In the intercourse of Athene with 
 Odysseus, and reversely in her action on the minds 
 of the guilty suitors, there are distinct traces of the 
 working of a Divine force within the soul of man. I 
 do not remember to have found anything like this in 
 the later classical literature. But the development 
 of the principle and idea of a communion with God, 
 operative on human feeling, thought, and action, is 
 the standing and central thought of the Psalms. 
 And it is probable that, the more fixedly we regard 
 them, the more of their distinctive marks we shall 
 perceive, even as the stars in heaven multiply to the 
 gazing eye. The pervading idea of a living com- 
 munion with the Most High, the communion which 
 both gives and takes, exhibits and fulfils itself in 
 many ways. One of them is the use of intercessory 
 prayer ; a trait conspicuously absent from the 
 numerous and interesting prayers of Homer. Another 
 is that, while full of warm personal interests they 
 persistently hold up the banner of a righteousness 
 
156 THE PSALMS. 
 
 apart from and above all personal interests whatever. 
 Another is that the affections, alienated by sin, have 
 returned to their allegiance, and are arrayed on the 
 side of the Most High. The testimonies of God 
 are the " very joy " of the Psalmist's heart. It is 
 all his desire that the Divine will should have free 
 course and be glorified upon earth. The glory of 
 God has become to him a profound personal interest. 
 " Set up thyself, God, above the heavens ; and 
 thy glory above all the earth." Sentiments of this 
 type are, I apprehend, hardly to be found outside 
 the precinct of the Hebrew race. 
 
 I will only note, in passing, before quitting this 
 subject two remaining characteristics ; the height of 
 that sacredness which the Psalms attach to the 
 claims of the poor; and their sense of the utter 
 worthlessness of all ceremonial observances, though 
 commanded, except in connection with the service of 
 the will, and purification of the heart. 
 
 IV. THE OBJECTIONS TAKEN TO THEM 
 
 Referring to what has been said elsewhere on the 
 presence of a human element in Holy Scripture, I 
 will now say a few words on the special objection 
 which is lodged against the Psalms. 
 
 Let me first endeavour to reduce the question to 
 its true dimensions. The criticism is not here, as 
 
THE PSALMS. 157 
 
 it might be in some cases of books claiming to be 
 sacred, that they are feeble, or fanciful, or remote 
 from human interests, or that large veins of clay run 
 through such true metal as they contain. The Psalms, 
 in their sublimity and in their sympathy, so im- 
 measurably divine and so intensely human, are proof 
 against all such criticism, which would be only 
 cavil. The only dart which really rings upon their 
 coat of mail, is the dart which carries the reproach 
 of their severe and unmeasured denunciation of 
 enemies. 
 
 And first, in order to disembarrass the question 
 of matter which appears to be extreme and excep- 
 tional, I will refer to the verse which represents the 
 ne phis ultra of the difficulty, as it stands in the 
 Prayer-book Version of the Psalms; in respect to which 
 we pay a certain price for its incomparable majesty 
 and beauty, in the shape of occasional though rare 
 shortcomings as to accuracy. The Prayer-book 
 gives verses 21, 22, of Psalm cxxxix., as 
 follows : 
 
 " Do not I hate them, Lord, that hate thee : and 
 am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee ? 
 
 "Yea, I hate them right sore : even as though they 
 were mine enemies." 
 
 Which seems to say, " I have a reserved stock of 
 special and superlative hatred for those who have 
 not only sinned in general, but have sinned against 
 
IS8 THE PSALMS. 
 
 me in particular." But this notion is completely 
 put aside in the translation direct from the Hebrew 
 as it stands in the Authorised, and also in the 
 Revised Version, where the second of the two 
 verses runs : 
 
 " I hate them with a perfect hatred ; I count them 
 mine enemies." 
 
 This seems not to set up the selfish feeling, about 
 offence personally received, above the sentiment of 
 indignation and resentment against wickedness ; but 
 to say only, " All that I might feel against a personal 
 enemy, all that natural exasperation would sug- 
 gest, I discharge upon the enemies of God." But 
 the sentiment concerning them has already been 
 expressed in terms not admitting of enlargement. 
 "" I hate them with a perfect hatred." And this 
 brings the objection to a point. It is that this 
 unmeasured detestation and invocation of wrath by 
 man even upon God's enemies cannot be justified, 
 and is not to be referred to divine inspiration. 
 
 Now let us notice, in the first place, that the 
 general tone of the Psalms concerning enemies is 
 not aggressive, but defensive. A sense of trouble 
 and danger from the might of experienced or 
 impending assault, and an appeal to God for protec 
 tion, furnish the staple sentiment of the Book. I 
 quote a single instance, which is a fair sample of 
 
THE PSALMS. 159 
 
 the whole of this class of passages, from Psalm Ivi. 
 I, 2: 
 
 " Be merciful unto me, God, for man goeth about 
 to devour me : he is daily fighting and troubling me. 
 
 " Mine enemies are daily in hand to swallow me up: 
 for they be many that fight against me, thou Most 
 Highest." 
 
 Let those who question the assertion I have 
 made, that this passage has a character typical of 
 the whole, refer (among other places) to Psalms 
 V. 8 ; vi. 7 ; vii. 5 ; xviii. 27, passim ; Ivi. 9 ; lix. i ; 
 Ixix. 4; cxviii. 11, 12; cxxxviii. 7; cxliii. 9. 
 
 But undoubtedly a certain number of passages 
 are not defensive, they are denunciatory ; such as 
 liv. 5, 7 ; lix. 10; xcii. ii ; cxliii. 12. I will 
 recite this last verse in full, for it brings into view 
 the sentiment which forms the base of all these 
 passages : " And of thy goodness slay mine enemies, 
 and destroy all them that vex my soul, for I am 
 thy servant." If we put these words into paraphrase, 
 the Psalmist pleads that he is engaged in the service 
 of God ; that in this service he is assailed and 
 hindered ; that, powerless in himself, he appeals 
 to the source of power ; and that he invokes upon 
 the assailants and hinderers of the Divine work the 
 Divine vengeance, even to their extinction. 
 
 We have, then, to consider these denunciatory 
 passages, first, as they were employed by their authors ; 
 
i6o THE PSALMS. 
 
 secondly, as they are now presented to us for our 
 own use in the services of the Church, or in private 
 devotion. 
 
 Under the first head, let me observe as follows. 
 There is not one of these passages which tampers 
 with truth or justice ; the}^ are aimed only at sin, 
 to blast and wither it. ' Lead me, Lord, in Thy 
 righteousness, because of mine enemies" (Ps. v. 8). 
 This is the universal strain. All these passages are 
 strokes delivered with the sword of righteousness, in 
 its unending warfare with iniquity. Nor is there 
 one among them, of which it can be shown that it 
 refers to any personal feud, passion, or desire. Every- 
 where the Psalmist speaks in the name of God, on 
 behalf of His word and will. 
 
 But it may still be urged, that such denunciations 
 are excessive in degree, that they are too severe and 
 savage, and that they are not suitable for the 
 mouth of man. 
 
 With respect to their severity I suggest, and if 
 need be contend, that we, in our ignorance and 
 weakness, are no fit judges of the extent to which 
 the wisdom of the Almighty may justly carry the 
 denunciation, even by the mouth of man, and the 
 punishment of guilt. 
 
 Man, and even civilised man, contemplates with 
 much equanimity the taking of human life for the 
 occasions which he deems sufficient. He knows 
 
THE PSALMS. i6i 
 
 that in all wars one party must be guilty, and that 
 in most or many wars neither have had a justification 
 for the wholesale bloodshed, which floods the path of 
 destruction that they necessarily follow. Life, which 
 man did not give and cannot restore, he takes away, 
 for the repression of crime, with general, though not 
 unanimous, approval. It is also taken, even now, 
 in most Christian countries, through duels for 
 private injury or insult ; and it is but recently 
 that public opinion in our own country has become 
 repugnant to the practice. But the scruples, which 
 for ourselves we so easily thrust aside, become 
 active, feverish, and even violent, when, in a world 
 to the abundant wickedness of which our own prac- 
 tice witnesses, the Ruler of that world, who gave 
 life for use, and who sees and judges its abuse, is 
 to be arraigned before our mock tribunal ; and we, 
 who cannot and do not rightly guide, each of us, our 
 own action, are to undertake to determine His. 
 And this, when we have not fully learned, and can- 
 not measure, either the deep and frightful depravity 
 of the Canaanitish nations, or the purposes with 
 which Penalty descends from on high. We know 
 not whether it comes in mercy to correct the 
 growth of evil before it shall become incurable, and 
 whether, or how far, when opportunity has been 
 exhausted here, resources may still have been held 
 in reserve on behalf of persons placed as they were, 
 
 L 
 
1 62 THE PSALMS. 
 
 to be expended for good in the great Elsewhere. 
 To pronounce verdicts upon these terrible denun- 
 ciations may be impious; and is surely, at the 
 least, unreasonable. 
 
 " And who art thou, that on the bench would sit, 
 To judge what is a thousand miles removed, 
 With the brief vision of a single span ? " * 
 
 There is certainly more claim to substance in the 
 objection, which urges that these denunciations are 
 unsuitable for man. But here I should interpose 
 the question, To what man ? The wonderful nature, 
 in which we have been created, is in nothing more 
 wonderful than in the diversity of the conditions 
 under which it has to subsist and work, on its road 
 from embryo to perfection. As those stages accu- 
 mulate, the moral code becomes multiform and 
 involved. In simpler forms of life, and in earlier 
 stages of society, the roads between right and 
 wrong were short, broad, and clear ; like as were 
 then the dividing spaces of the battle-field, whereas 
 contending hosts are now severed by miles, and 
 almost leagues, from one another. 
 
 But, further, the Psalmists, and the nation to 
 which they belonged, lived under a different dis- 
 pensation from ours. If we accept the Scriptures, 
 that nation held a divine commission to establish 
 the right and to put down the wrong, in a sense in 
 which no such commission is now given. For 
 Dante, " Parad." xix. 8i. Pollock's translation. 
 
THE PSALMS. 163 
 
 us it is enough to hope that at any given juncture 
 we may be doing the will of God ; but what we 
 hope, they knew ; and sight for them was mixed 
 with faith in a degree and mode remote from 
 the spirit of our later, and in this respect, 
 perhaps, higher training. They were accustomed to 
 what may be termed short accounts with the Divine 
 Justice ; and to reward or suffering as the imme- 
 diate consequences, and, therefore, as the direct 
 attestations, of the judgment of God upon the moral 
 conduct of man. The responsibility, which is for us 
 diffused and indefinite, was for them concentrated 
 and palpable. But, besides this, they had the great 
 standing institution of prophecy ; and the king in 
 whose ears Nathan's words had thundered, "Thou art 
 the man/' might well feel that his own contact was a 
 close one with the mind of the Almighty, and that 
 he might upon occasion speak his very strongest 
 words under guidance from on High. 
 
 I do not pursue farther these remarks, which are 
 no more than tentative and approximate. But I 
 do not find myself justified in the assumption that 
 we are in all cases to have a complete cognisance of 
 the conditions under which the Psalms give judg- 
 ment upon the unrighteous, or are intended to 
 arrive at final judgments on the question what the 
 Jews might, and what they might not, suitably be 
 commissioned by the Almighty to denounce. 
 
1 64 THE PSALMS. 
 
 More immediately are we concerned in the 
 question as to tlie place held in Christian devotion, 
 and especially in public ritual, by the denunciatory 
 passages of the Psalms. It is one question what 
 these denunciations were for the Jew ; it is another, 
 and entirely distinct, what they are for us. But 
 the answer to this objection, I apprehend, lies near 
 to hand. All scruple, at least all rational or 
 plausible scruple in this matter, seems to rest upon 
 the supposition that the passages are aimed at 
 creatures, who have characters mixed between good 
 and evil, and who therefore are not presumptively 
 fit subjects for our unmixed, undiscriminating de- 
 nunciation. But can any one reasonably suppose 
 that these declarations are, in the mind and sense 
 of the Christian Church, directed against any human 
 enemy ? Our human enemies, if we are so unhappy 
 as to have any, are not the most watchful, the most 
 subtle, the most destructive of our foes. " For we 
 wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against 
 .... the rulers of the darkness of this world." ''^ 
 But the Holy Scripture and the Christian religion 
 teach, and our human experience largely testifies, 
 that there are spirits whose meat and drink, so 
 to speak, it is to extend the domain of evil, to 
 deepen corruption, to destroy happiness by destroy- 
 ing innocence, which is its base ; to add both in range 
 
 * Eph. vi. 12. 
 
THE PSALMS, 165 
 
 and in intensity to the misery and the sin which 
 have made the world so sad. If this be so, then I 
 contend that to pray for the abolition or paralysis 
 of their work and of its agents, and this especially 
 when we meet as Christians to set forth solemnly 
 the collective needs and aspirations of mankind, is 
 a practice which speaks for itself, and requires 
 neither justification nor apology. 
 
 Apart altogether from the question, what may be 
 the value or completeness of the foregoing defensive 
 suggestions, I would remind my readers that they 
 relate not to the main body of the question respect- 
 ing the Psalms, but to a portion of it which is 
 limited and exceptional. The Psalms, like other pro- 
 ductions, are to be judged by their general character. 
 I do not perceive how, if we approach this question on 
 the grounds and in the spirit of reason, it is possible 
 for a person so approaching it to set aside the mass 
 of evidence, which establishes the unparalleled and 
 unapproached position of the Book in its antiquity 
 and use, in its pure and noble theology, and in a 
 moral and spiritual character witnessed afresh by 
 the judgment and practice of each succeeding age. 
 And, if the several parts of this evidence link them- 
 selves into a compact and harmonious whole, it is 
 not reason, but unreason in the mask of reason, 
 which declines or omits to acknowledge the pre- 
 sumption thence arising, that the Book is at a level 
 
1 66 THE PSALMS. 
 
 indefinitely higher than has been reached by the 
 unassisted faculties of man, and that the power 
 which raised it to that level can only be Divine. 
 Such a conclusion will survive even the approving 
 reference in Ps. cxxxvii. 9, to a practice of savage 
 warfare. Were it true that the image of gold 
 had feet of clay, we might indeed be perplexed by 
 the combination ; but would not this be just, as we 
 often are perplexed by other combinations, presented 
 to us in the providential government of the world ? 
 And not only in the providential government of the 
 world, but in the fulfilment of our personal relations 
 with other men. Yet we do not put an end on 
 that account to such relations : nor do we cease to 
 believe in God because we, such as we are God 
 save the mark cannot comprehend the reason, or 
 even discern the rightfulness, of all He does. In 
 like manner, so neither can we refuse to admit 
 sufficient evidence of an origin more than human 
 for the Psalms on the ground that we see only 
 through a glass darkly, and that they present 
 incidental features analogous in principle to those 
 which in other departments our experience brings 
 before us. 
 
V. 
 
 XTbe /nbosaic Xeglslattom 
 
V. 
 
 XTbe /IDosaic Xeatslatton* 
 
 The legislative Books of the Pentateucli, from 
 Exodus to Deuteronomy, may be contemplated in 
 the light, either (i) of their credentials, or (2) of 
 their character and contents. 
 
 The Christian Church, which had heretofore re- 
 garded them as an integral and instructive part of 
 the Divine Revelation, is now challenged by the 
 voices of numerous critics to defend them. Cham- 
 pions in this cause are not wanting ; and it is not 
 to be supposed that the learned in linguistic studies 
 have arrived at unanimous and final conclusions in 
 these grave matters. If we compare their studies, 
 as to unanimity, continuity, and ascertained pro- 
 gress, with that of the natural sciences, the com- 
 parison will be not at all to their advantage. Their 
 services are not, however, to be unduly disparaged. 
 What is understood to be at issue is, the date 
 
T70 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION, 
 
 and authorship of the Books in the form in which 
 we now have them. These are contested by 
 the negative school on grounds of language and 
 style, upon which none can properly attempt to 
 follow or to judge them, unless when equipped with 
 the same special knowledge. They also allege, as 
 parts of the destructive argument, that the Books 
 contain anachronisms, contradictions, statements 
 disproved by history. 
 
 They have recently been challenged by Dr. Cave* 
 to set forth a plain and distinct statement of these 
 difficulties, such as might bring the allegations in 
 some degree within the circles of knowledge and 
 of judgment, for us who are not experts but are 
 supposed to be endued with ordinary intelligence. 
 They are also invited to state what meaning they 
 assign to the standing phrase, "And the Lord spake 
 unto Moses," which with its variants occurs, it may 
 be observed, no less than thirty times in the twenty- 
 seven chapters of Leviticus. And, finally, they are 
 invited by Dr. Cave to show in plain terms the 
 reasons why it is unreasonable to suppose that the 
 Books (either in their present state or otherwise) 
 were contemporaneous with the events described and 
 grew up one by one along with those events. 
 
 It seems but common equity that we, who stand 
 outside the learned world, and who find operations 
 
 * Contemporary Beview, April 1890, pp. 537-55^- 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 171 
 
 are in progress, which are often declared to have 
 destroyed the authority of these ancient Books, 
 should be supplied, as far as may be, with available 
 means of rationally judging the nature and grounds 
 of the impeachment. And it is unfortunate that 
 this has been little thought of ; and that, while we 
 are, it may almost be said, drenched with the de- 
 ductions and conclusions of the negative critics, it is 
 still so difficult, in multitudes of instances, to come 
 at any clear view of the grounds on which they build. 
 The matters of style and language we must con- 
 tentedly take upon trust ; but anachronism, con- 
 tradiction of history, contradiction in the Books 
 themselves, ought to be more or less within our 
 cognisance. And there are many arguments of 
 historical verisimilitude and likelihood, which are 
 in no sense the exclusive property of specialism. 
 
 Even within the compass of the Torah, a distinc- 
 tion has been drawn by some eminent critics (by 
 Eichhorn, for example), in their writings on the 
 canon of the Old Testament ; * who have assigned 
 the legislative portions to Moses himself, and the 
 historical parts to scribes acting under his direction, 
 or at a later time. It does not appear easy to show 
 why this singular intermixture of the two should 
 
 * A most convenient summary of the history of critical opinion 
 on the Pentateuch is supplied by Bleek cum Wellhausen in the 
 Einhitung (Ed. 1886), sects. 13-17. Wellhausen adds another 
 review at the close of the volume in this edition. 
 
172 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 have been made, unless by or under the direction 
 of the lawgiver himself. The tangled occupations 
 of his evidently hard-pressed life would account 
 for a form of authorship, which is not in itself at all 
 convenient. But the ordinary reader will not fail 
 to observe that it is the legislation, for which in 
 the sacred text itself the claim is constantly made 
 of being due to direct communication from above,* 
 while no corresponding assertion in general accom- 
 panies the historical recitals. Speaking at large, 
 every imaginable difference has prevailed among 
 the critics themselves as to the source, date, and 
 authorship of the Books. But on the whole, the 
 negative movement has become bolder in its asser- 
 tions as it proceeded, and has brought them gradu- 
 ally towards later epochs : to Samuel, to the age of 
 David, to the severance of the kingdoms, to Josiah, 
 to the Captivity, and even to those who followed it. 
 The affirmative side has been also stoutly main- 
 tained,! not without the admission of particular 
 additions and interpolations in the received text. 
 The distinction between substantial authorship, and 
 final editorship, has been largely recognised by 
 writers of celebrity and weight. Bleek himself, 
 sustained by Wellhausen as late as 1886, held that 
 Moses had a hand {eimn antlieil) in the Legislative 
 
 * So Wellhausen in the Einleitung, sect. 18, p, 40. 
 f Ibid. sect. 15. 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 173 
 
 Books. Many of the laws, they say at that date, 
 
 are without sense or purpose, except in regard to 
 
 circumstances which disappeared with the Mosaic 
 
 period.* Several sections of this important work t 
 
 are given to the indication of portions of the Books 
 
 which must have been Mosaic. Further, we have 
 
 this remarkable declaration. Though the entire 
 
 Pentateuch in its present form should not have 
 
 been the work of Moses, and though many laws are 
 
 the product of a later age, still the legislation, in 
 
 its spirit and character as a whole, is genuinely 
 
 Mosaic ; % and that, in dealing with the Pentateuch, 
 
 we stand, at least as to the three middle Books, 
 
 upon historical ground, evidently meaning upon 
 
 historical ground as opposed to that which is unau- 
 
 thenticated or legendary. Further, what is thus 
 
 generally asserted of the spirit and character of the 
 
 Pentateuchal laws, is asserted for an important share 
 
 of them II as to both the contents and even the form. 
 
 These statements it would not be fair to call 
 
 them admissions go to the root of the whole 
 
 matter, and seem to leave us in possession of that 
 
 for which alone I contend ; namely, that the heart 
 
 and substance of the legislative and institutional 
 
 system delivered to us in the Pentateuch is historically 
 
 * Ihid. sect. 11. + 13-24. 
 
 X " So muss dock die darin enthaltene gesetzgehung threm ganzen 
 geiste und character nach echt mosaischseyn." Ibid., sect. 22, p. 45. 
 ^^^- II Sect. 23, p. 46. 
 
174 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 trustworthy. If this be so, it still remaios highly 
 important to distinguish by critical examination 
 what, if any, particular portions of the work in 
 their actual form may be open to question, either as 
 secondary errors, or as developments appended to the 
 original formation ; but the citadel, so long vic- 
 toriously held by faith and reason, both through 
 Hebrew and through Christian ages, remains unas- 
 sailed, and the documents of Holy V/rit emerge 
 substantially unhurt from the inquisitive and search- 
 ing analysis of the modem time. 
 
 There is a later work of Wellhausen's (" Die 
 composition des Hexateuch's und der Historischen 
 Biicher:" Berlin, 1889) which minutely subdivides 
 the Books into smaller portions, and refers these to 
 their different authors, with a self-reliance which 
 appears to be remarkable, but of which I am not a 
 fit judge. I may observe, however, that this work 
 has neither introduction nor conclusion, neither index 
 nor table of contents, and that it resembles rather 
 the promiscuous gatherings of a note-book, or rather, 
 of two note-books crossing one another, discharged 
 bodily into a printing-office, than a work of regular 
 or scientific criticism. I must add that in certain 
 cases, where the unity of the text is disputed upon 
 grounds alike cognisable by us all, I find the con- 
 clusions of the author as disputable as they are 
 confident. In other instances, numerous enough, 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 175 
 
 assertions are made, as if they were oracles, without 
 the slightest explanation, or any indication of their 
 grounds. Examples of these methods may be found 
 in the criticisms^ on Genesis, and in the contradic- 
 tion alleged to exist in the several accounts of Caleb 
 and Joshua (Num. xxxii. 5, and Deut. i. 32-8). 
 
 A still more negative utterance, if I understand 
 it rightly, is found in the " Prolegomena to the 
 History of Israel," translated under the author's 
 supervision, and accompanied with his article on 
 Israel from the Encyclopcedia Britannica.-f This 
 book, published since the edition of Bleek cu7n 
 Wellhausen from which I have quoted, appears in 
 a singular manner to contradict it, and announces 
 that " the Mosaic history is not the starting-point 
 for the history of ancient Israel, but for the history 
 of Jndaism."t The distinction may not be familiar 
 to English readers, but the meaning seems to be 
 that the Pentateuch had not, either in form or sub- 
 stance, any operative existence until after the Exile, 
 when the ancient Israel is held to end, and Judaism 
 to begin. A " Mosaic germ " only is admitted ; and 
 a germ is that which, like 'an unborn child, has no 
 operative existence,but only the promise^of producing 
 one. According, then, to the showing of those who 
 tender themselves as our guides, Israel lived on for 
 
 * Page 7. t Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885. 
 
 t Preface by Professor Eobertson Smith, p. v. 
 
176 THE MOSAC LEGISLATION. 
 
 nine hundred years, from the Exodus, and trans- 
 mitted a peculiar faith, law, ritual, and nationality, 
 without any legislative and constitutional system to 
 uphold any one of them. This very startling pro- 
 position appears to me to do violence to reason not 
 less glaringly, than any of the assertions ventured by 
 the theologians in the days of their pride and power. 
 Those writers are doubtless perfectly sincere, who 
 represent this as a method of progressive revelation. 
 But there are also persons who think that such a pro- 
 gressive revelation as this would for over two thou- 
 sand years have palmed upon the whole Jewish and 
 Christian world not only a heartless, but an impos- 
 sible imposture. It is more immediately necessary 
 to observe that the hypothesis is one reaching far 
 beyond the province of specialism, and requiring to 
 be tested at a number of points by considerations 
 more broadly historical. Nor can I quit the subject 
 without observing that it is extremely difficult to 
 learn whether there exists any real standing ground, 
 which the present negative writers mean not only to 
 occupy but to hold. Almost any representation of 
 their views may be either supported or contradicted 
 by citing particular expressions from their works. 
 All we can do is to dive as best we may into their 
 conception of what Wellhausen rather singularly 
 calls " the secrets " of his art.* Upon the whole, 
 
 * Einleitunq , Ed. 1886, Vorwort 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLA TION. 177 
 
 and taking the article on Israel in the Encyclopmdia 
 Britannica as the fairest exposition of his views, 1 
 infer that the present fashion is to believe in Moses, 
 but to question even his connection with the Deca- 
 logue ; * to allow him to have given or suggested a 
 something, totally indefinite in its character, to the 
 Israelites ; and to hold that the materials of ihe 
 legislative books gradually grew up out of material 
 supplied upon occasion by the priests (like the 
 "Answers of Experts," f which supplied a contribu- 
 tion to the Code of Justinian) into a state which 
 enabled editors, generally post-exilic, to reduce them 
 to their present form. This scheme seems to be 
 admirably represented by the words which Mr. 
 Robertson Smith quotes, on his own very high 
 authority, as its gist. And this is the scheme to 
 which I desire, on historical grounds, to demur. 
 
 At the same time it is undeniable that, even if 
 the outside negative conclusions were still such as 
 they were stated to be so lately as in 1886, yet the 
 impression they had created was not of a similarly 
 limited character. Whether owing to the predis- 
 positions of the time, or to a spirit latent in some 
 of the critics, or to the reaction which is usually 
 perceptible when certain ideas long cherished on one 
 side have been found to require modification, there 
 
 * Wellhausen, Hist. Israel (Black), pp. 436, 509. 
 f Gibbon (Milman's ed.)> iv. 193. 
 
 M 
 
178 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 have been, as it were, exhalations from the recent 
 inquiries, extending outwards in their effect much 
 beyond the positive conclusions. An atmosphere 
 has been diffused around us, and we habitually 
 inhale it, which inspires a general uncertainty, leading 
 to negation, with respect to the Mosaic Books. This 
 causes us, not, perhaps, to believe (for this would 
 imply and demand a rational process), but to feel 
 towards these great foundation-books as if we 
 believed, that, instead of being as to the heart and 
 pith of them trustworthy, they were in the main 
 untrustworthy ; that they were compounded or com- 
 posed at uncertain times, by uncertain authors, from 
 uncertain materials ; that even bad faith is to be 
 traced in them ; and that the question is not so much 
 what particulars can be convicted of unauthenticity, 
 as whether any particulars can be rescued from the 
 general discredit of a mythical or legendary incep- 
 tion. It is against this vague, irrational, un- 
 scientific method of proceeding, that I would enter 
 not a protest only, but a pleading. Whatever is to 
 happen, let not Christians lose unawares either their 
 faith, or that pillar of their faith which the great 
 Books of the Old Testament always have supplied. 
 
 I have already made it clear that I yield, as 
 matter of course, to the conclusions of linguists in 
 their own domain, not only respectful attention, but 
 provisional assent. That domain includes not only 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 1^9 
 
 criticism stricfcly textual, but all that relates to 
 style, and, in a word, whatever properties of any 
 given writings are developed through the medium 
 of the particular tongue in which they are com- 
 posed. On the mere form of the Books they speak 
 with a force which, as against us, the unlearned, is 
 overwhelming. But, in the examinations directed to 
 the matter as opposed to the form, their authority 
 is of a less stringent character, and may even decline 
 to zero. The historical aspects and relations which 
 open out this field are not theirs exclusively, and 
 we may canvass and question their conclusions, just 
 as it is open to us to proceed with the conclusions of 
 Macaulay or of Grote. 
 
 When it is attempted to bring down the date of 
 the Pentateuch from the time of Moses, by whom 
 the Books in various forms purport* to have been 
 composed, to the period of the Babylonian captivity, 
 and this not only as to their literary form, but as to 
 their substance, the evident meaning and effect of 
 the attempt is to divest them of an historical, and to 
 invest them with a legendary character. 
 
 * For instance, as by the proem to Deuteronomy (i. i) : the 
 recited orders of the Almighty to Moses that he should speak, 
 followed by the speeches, e.g.. Lev. i. i, Num. i. i : the constant 
 verbal report of words spoken to Moses when no other person (or 
 in some cases Aaron only) was present : and the remarkable 
 and high-toned injunctions in the later chapters of Deuteronomy 
 which all through seem to have reference to a code of legisla- 
 tion preceding them. 
 
i^o THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 At the same time, it should be borne in mind that 
 those who have not seen reason to adopt the negative 
 theory above described, leave entirely open numerous 
 questions belonging to the institutions of the 
 Israelites. It is not extravagant to assume that 
 laws given to them as a nomad people, and then sub- 
 jected to the varying contingencies of history during 
 many centuries, may or even must have required and 
 received adaptation by supplement, development, or 
 change in detail, which the appointed guides of the 
 people were authorised and qualified to supply, not 
 in derogation, but rather in completion and in 
 furtherance of the work of Moses, which might 
 still remain his in essence from first to last. 
 
 It is admitted, however, that the whole question 
 must be tried on historical and literary grounds. 
 On such grounds I seek to approach it, and to 
 throw light upon it from some considerations of 
 reason and probability, which appear to me to be 
 of not inconsiderable cogency. By testing the 
 subject in this way, we may come, in part at least, 
 to learn by testing what in the main is fact, what 
 in the main is speculation, and to a great extent 
 fluctuating and changeful speculation. 
 
 First, it is never to be forgotten, that our point of 
 departure is from the ground of established historic 
 fact. The existence of Moses is even better and 
 far better established than that (for example) of 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION, i8i 
 
 Lycurgus. We know Lycurgus in the main from 
 the one great fact of his very peculiar institu- 
 tions. They, such as we find them in historic times, 
 compel us to presume his existence in a prehistoric 
 time. Not only their high and elaborate organisa- 
 tion, but their practical eflficacy in separating and 
 fencing of! from the rest of Greece the Spartan 
 community, reduces to something near absurdity 
 any such supposition as that they were essentially 
 no more than a late growth reached by impercep- 
 tible degrees. We know Moses as well from his 
 institutions, which are by no means less peculiar, 
 and which, as experience has shown, have been 
 very far more durable. In the case of Moses, it 
 happens that we have much evidence independent 
 of, and anterior to, the institutions themselves in 
 their historic form. Yet no one doubts either the 
 existence of the Spartan lawgiver, or the general 
 character of his personal work. If the form 
 of the Books in which the Mosaic legislation 
 reaches us be open to the suspicion of manipulation 
 by scribes or editors, or if it suggest some suspicion 
 of developments, how does this compare with the 
 case of Lycurgus ? About or from him we have no 
 no books at all ; and yet it would be deemed irra- 
 tional to doubt either the existence of the man, or 
 the substance of the work performed by him. 
 
 The exodus from Egypt, the settlement in Pales- 
 
182 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION, 
 
 tine, the foundation there of institutions, civil and 
 religious, which were endowed with a tenacity of 
 life and a peculiarity of character beyond all ex- 
 ample : these things are established by Scripture, 
 but they are also established independent of Scrip- 
 ture. They constitute a tnnoda necessitas, a three- 
 fold combination of fact, which, in order to make 
 them intelligible and coherent, in order to supply 
 a rational connection between cause and effect, 
 require not only a Moses, but such a Moses as the 
 Scripture supplies. They build up a niche, which 
 the Scripture fills. At all times of history, and 
 specially in those primitive times, when* the men 
 made the governments, not the governments the men, 
 these great independent historic facts absolutely 
 carry with them the assumption of a leader, a 
 governor, a legislator. All this simply means a 
 Moses, and a Moses such as we know him from the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 And this leads us, I do not say to, but towards, 
 the conclusion that whatever be the disparaging alle- 
 gations of the critics, they may after all according to 
 likelihood be found reasonable as to matters of form 
 or of detail, but that the substance of the history 
 is in thorough accordance with the historic bases 
 that are laid for us in profane as well as in sacred 
 
 * So Montesquieu, "Grandeur et decadence des Komains," 
 chap. i. 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 183 
 
 testimony. If this be so, then we have also to bear 
 in mind that the phenomenon, which we have 
 before us, is one so peculiar that it could only 
 have been exhibited to the world as the off- 
 spring of a peculiar generating cause. A people 
 of limited numbers, of no marked political genius, 
 negative and stationary as to literature and art, 
 maintain their absolutely separate existence for 
 near a thousand years, down to the Captivity. 
 They are placed in the immediate neighbourhood, 
 and subject to the frequent attacks, of the great 
 Eastern monarchies, as well as of some very war- 
 like neighbours. These attacks compromise their 
 political independence, but do not prevent it from 
 being recovered. They receive the impress of a 
 character so marked that not even the Captivity 
 can efface it ; but, on the contrary, that searching 
 trial helps to give a harder and sharper projection 
 to its features. It retains its solidity and substance 
 while everything else, including great political 
 aggregations, such as the Hittite monarchy, be- 
 comes gradually fused in the surrounding masses ; 
 and this even when it has been subjected to con- 
 ditions such as at Babylon, apparently suflBcient to 
 beat down and destroy the most obstinate national- 
 ism. Can it be denied that this great historic 
 fact, nowhere to be matched, is in thorough accord- 
 ance with, and almost of itself compels us to 
 
1 84 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION, 
 
 presuppose, the existence from the outset of an 
 elaborately detailed and firmly compacted system 
 of laws and institutions, under which this peculiar 
 discipline might subsist and work, so as gradually 
 to shape, determine, and mature the character of 
 the people ? 
 
 If, apart from all questions of form and expres- 
 sion, the substance of the Mosaic law was given to 
 the Israelites on their settlement in Palestine, such 
 a provision, it may fearlessly be said, was in full 
 accordance with the moral exigency of the case, 
 and with the laws of historical probability. If on 
 the other hand there was no Moses, or only a Moses 
 who left nothing behind him, and who does not 
 rank among the lawgivers of the world, if the 
 Legislative Books represent a gradual and mythical 
 accretion due mainly either to class interests or to 
 the magnifying effect of distance, turned to account 
 by invention either interested or credulous, then 
 the hypothesis presented to us is, it may surely be 
 contended, in violent discord with what, on princi- 
 ples of Providential government or of human good 
 sense, the case would usually be held to have re- 
 quired. 
 
 In estimating the claim of the Old Testament to 
 a divine origin, it is important to compare the 
 legislation given by Moses with that of other 
 ancient lawgivers, such, for example, as Solon, who 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 185 
 
 enjoyed the light of a far more advanced civilisa- 
 tion. Still, this comparison, if alone, would not fully 
 bring out the reason of the case ; we must also 
 match the Hebrew intellect, as measured by 
 knowledge, art and manners, with the correspond- 
 ing conditions among the other nations whose laws 
 may be brought into the comparison. For if, with 
 inferior tools and materials, a superior work was 
 produced, it must surely be admitted that such a 
 result suggests, even perhaps of itself requires, the 
 supposition of some hidden aid which rectified the 
 disproportion, and placed the means in a due 
 relation to the end. Now, among the Hebrews of 
 the period there is no sign as yet of intellectual 
 predominance or advancement ; and that such a 
 man as Moses should have been raised up amongst 
 them is a fact which of itself suggests and sustains 
 the idea of some altogether special and peculiar guid- 
 ance exercised by the Almighty over the selected 
 people. 
 
 I cannot but think that, wherever we turn, we 
 seem to find the broad and lucid principles of historic 
 likelihood asserting themselves in favour of the sub- 
 stance of the Legislative Books, apart from questions 
 of detail and literary form. 
 
 In its great stages, we are entitled to treat the 
 matter of the narrative books as history entitled to 
 credit. An elaborate organisation, with a visible 
 
i86 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 head and an hereditary succession, is, after a long 
 lapse of time, substituted for a regimen over Israel, 
 of which the mainsprings had been personal emi- 
 nence and moral force. It is represented in the 
 Scripture, and it seems obvious, that the transition 
 from this patriarchal republicanism to monarchy was 
 in the nature of a religious retrogression. It showed 
 an increasing incapacity to walk by faith, and a 
 craving for an object of sight, as a substitute for the 
 Divine Majesty apprehended by spiritual insight, 
 and habitually conceived of by the people as the 
 head of the civil community. This view of the 
 relative condition of republican and of regal Israel 
 is confirmed by the fact, on which I have already 
 observed, that with the monarchy came in another 
 regular organisation, that of the schools of the 
 prophets. Prophecy, which for the present pur- 
 pose we may consider as preaching, instead of 
 appearing from time to time as occasion required, 
 became a system, with provision for perpetual 
 succession. That is to say, the people could not 
 be kept up to the primitive, or even the neces- 
 sary, level in belief and life, without the provision 
 of more elaborate and direct means of instruction, 
 exhortation, and reproof, than had at first been 
 requisite. 
 
 Notwithstanding the existence of those means, 
 and the singular and noble energy of the prophets, 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 187 
 
 the proofs of the decline are not less abundant than 
 painful, in the wickedness of most of the sovereigns, 
 and in the almost wholesale and too constant lapse 
 of the Israelites into the filthy idolatry which was 
 rooted in the country. And again, it is not a little 
 remarkable that the enumeration by name of the 
 great historic heroes of faith, in the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, ends in the person of King David,* with 
 the first youth of the monarchy. The only later 
 instances referred to are the prophets, named as a 
 class, who stood apart and alone, and were not as a 
 rule leaders of the people, but rather witnesses in 
 sackcloth against their iniquities. Taking the his- 
 tory from the Exodus to the Exile as a whole, the 
 latter end was worse than the beginning, the cup of 
 iniquity was full ; it had been filled by a gradual 
 process : and one of the marks of that process was 
 a lowering of the method, in which the chosen 
 people were governed ; it became more human and 
 less divine. 
 
 Under these circumstances, does it not appear 
 like a paradox, and even a rather wanton paradox, to 
 refer the production of those sacred Mosaic Books, 
 which constituted the charter, and formed the cha- 
 racter, of the Hebrews as a separate and peculiar 
 people, to the epochs of a lowered and decaying 
 spiritual life ? They surely formed the base on which 
 
 * Heb. xi. 32. 
 
i88 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 the entire structure rested. It is hardly possible to 
 separate the fabric from its foundation. Had they 
 not been recorded and transmitted, it would have 
 been reasonable, perhaps necessary, for us to pre- 
 sume their existence. They could only spring from 
 a plant full of vigorous life, not from one compara- 
 tively sickly and exhausted. 
 
 Again, we are taught by the negative school that 
 the portion of the Pentateuch, which specially 
 describes the work of the Priest, and which they 
 term the Priest-Code, is of late composition, probably 
 the latest of all, and has been devised in the interest 
 of the priestly order. 
 
 Now I think that there are ready means of 
 applying the touchstone to this allegation. It seems 
 the great aim of the assailants to bring down the 
 date of the main contents of the Legislative Books 
 to the Exile and the period which follows it. Now 
 we have to remember that the schools of the 
 prophets established a caste which was in profes- 
 sional rivalry with the priesthood, and which pre- 
 sented every likelihood of being its effective censor. 
 We have the written and, I believe, unquestioned 
 productions of this school of prophets, reaching 
 back into the ninth century (in the Book of Amos), 
 above two hundred years before the Exile. The 
 relation of the prophet to the priest, somewhat 
 accentuated so to speak by competing interests. 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 189 
 
 was in certain respects one of superiority ; for, 
 while the priest only administered in a human way 
 a system originally of Divine appointment, the 
 prophet believed himself to speak under direct 
 inspiration and command from the Most High. 
 The supposition pressed upon us is that, during the 
 period when the Books of the Prophets were being 
 produced, the priests foisted upon the nation adul- 
 terated, nay, rather forged, works, which they 
 audaciously ascribed to Moses, and which they 
 shaped in the interests of the sacerdotal order. Is 
 it not quite plain that, if this had been true, nay, 
 if it had been so much as an approach to the truth, 
 the prophets would, in the interests of righteousness 
 even more than in their own, have made use of the 
 advantages of their position, and would have held 
 up such a flagrant iniquity of the rival class to 
 infamy or rebuke ? Yet they do nothing of the 
 sort. And it is not even open to us to refer this 
 to some hidden cause, as it would have been if we 
 could have alleged that, for some undeclared reason, 
 it is their habit to pass by the conduct of the priests 
 in silence. For, on the contrary, they do exercise 
 the office of reprimand most freely. They do re- 
 prove and denounce neglect of duty and abuse of 
 power by the priests ; but they do this exactly in 
 the same way for the priestly order and for their 
 own ; and, though they could not have been biassed 
 
290 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 agaiust their own schools, there is no sign that 
 priests were more faulty than prophets. By way 
 of specimen of their usual manner, I may quote the 
 prophet Zephaniah, who in the following passage 
 appears to administer justice impartially all round: 
 
 " Her princes within her aie roaring lions ; her judges 
 are evening wolves ; they gnaw not the bones till the 
 morrow. 
 
 *' Her prophets are Hght and treacherous persons : her 
 pi'iests have polluted the sanctuary, they have done 
 violence to the law." * 
 
 All were human, all were alike. There is no- 
 where a tittle of evidence to show the gross and 
 very special offences with which the priesthood are 
 now charged. In such a case the negative evidence 
 carries positive force. It is evident, first, that the 
 prophets knew nothing of such delinquencies: and 
 secondly, that, if they were unknown to the prophets 
 through this long lapse of time, it was because they 
 were not committed. 
 
 Wo have, then, in the historic Moses a great and 
 powerful genius, an organising and constructing 
 mind. Degenerate ages cannot equip and furnish 
 forth illustrious founders, only at the most the names 
 and shadows of them. Moses belongs to the class 
 of nation- makers ; to a class of men, who have a place 
 by themselves in the history of politics, and who are 
 
 *t Zeph. iii. 3, 4. 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION, 191 
 
 among the rarest of the great phenomena of our race. 
 And he stands in historic harmony with his work. 
 But we are now sometimes asked to sever the work 
 from the worker, and to refer it to some doubtful 
 and nameless person ; whereas it is surely obvious 
 or probable that the author of a work so wonderful 
 and so far beyond example, so elaborate in its essen- 
 tial structure, and so designed for public use, could 
 hardly fail to associate his name with it as if written 
 upon a rock, and with a pen of iron. For, be it 
 recollected, that name was the seal and stamp of the 
 work itself. According to its own testimony he was 
 the apostolos* the messenger, who brought it from 
 God, and gave it to the people. If the use of his 
 name was a fiction, it was one of those fictions which 
 are falsehoods; for it altered essentially the cha- 
 racter of the writings to which it was attached. 
 
 Supposing it to be granted that this or that 
 portion of the Legislative Books may have been an 
 addition in the way of development, of an appendage 
 and supplement to a scheme already existing, how 
 and why came it to be placed under the shelter of 
 the great name of Moses, but because that name 
 had already acquired and consolidated its authority, 
 from its being inseparably attached to the original 
 gift of the law ? 
 
 Even so it was that, when the great and wonder- 
 
 * Exod. xix. 16-25, ^^^ passim. 
 
192 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 ful poems known as the Iliad and Odyssey had given 
 to the name of Homer a surpassing celebrity, and 
 other works of less exalted rank sought for fame by 
 claiming him as their author, the simple fact that 
 they so claimed him of itself supplied the proof that 
 Homer was traditionally, and from immemorial time, 
 taken to be the author of those greater works at the 
 time when the lesser ones were imputed to him. 
 If the title of Mosaic authorship was ever in any 
 case attached to what Moses did not produce, the 
 ascription was made in order to gain credit for the 
 new supplemental matter, and of itself proved that, 
 at the date when it was made, there was an older 
 and immemorial belief in his being the author of 
 the work whereto the supplement was appended. 
 
 As we stand on historical ground in assuming 
 that Moses was a great man, and a powerful agent 
 in the Hebrew history, so we stand on a like basis 
 in pointing to the fact that, from the Captivity 
 onwards (I say nothing of the prior period, as it 
 would beg the question), the Jewish nation paid to 
 the Five Books of the Pentateuch a special and 
 extraordinary regard, even beyond the rest of their 
 sacred books. These were known as the Torah ; 
 and the fact of this special reverence is one so 
 generally acknowledged, that it may without dis- 
 cussion be safely assumed as a point of departure. 
 
 Before, then, any sort of acceptance or acqui- 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 193 
 
 escence is accorded to notions which virtually consign 
 to insignificance the most ancient of our Sacred 
 Books, let us well weigh the fact that the devout 
 regard of the Hebrews for the Torah took the form, 
 at or very soon after the Exile, of an extreme 
 vigilance on behalf of these particular Books as 
 distinct from all others. This vigilance, which at 
 a later epoch reached its climax under the Masso- 
 retes, very naturally began, or greatly advanced, at 
 the time when the nation, or its leading classes^ 
 having for the time lost their temple and their 
 visible home, clung more closely than ever to the 
 written word in their Sacred Books ; to its body either 
 more, or not less, than to its spirit. 
 
 So early as in the days of Hezekiah, there is said 
 to have been a restorative process of some kind per- 
 formed upon the text of the law, as well as upon 
 the temple and its doors.* That clinging affection 
 to the Word, which the Captivity could not fail to 
 stimulate in pious minds, took effect, after the 
 Keturn, in the establishment of positive institutions 
 for its care ; which, indeed, had become a necessity, 
 in consequence of the change in the spoken language, 
 unless it were to be wholly lost to the people. Hence 
 we have the Jewish tradition of a Great Synagogue, 
 founded with this view. A guild of scribes was 
 
 * Paterson Smyth, 
 
 "The Old Documents,' 
 
 ' p. 42. 
 
 2 Chron. 
 
 xxix. 3. 
 
 
 
 N 
 
t94 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 appointed to copy, preserve, and expound the Divine 
 Word,* and the Canon of the Old Testament 
 appears during the same period to have assumed 
 something of a regular form. Soon grew up the 
 Massorah, or body of traditions concerning the texts 
 of the Torah, which is supposed to have become 
 noticeable from about 300 B.c.,t and which in after 
 ages gave a name to the Massoretes, official students 
 and guardians of the text. This body is one with- 
 out a parallel in the history of the world. Its 
 existence not only afforded strong securities of a 
 special nature for the faithful custody of the text 
 from the date when its operations commenced, but 
 it also bears witness to a profound and exacting 
 veneration for the Ancient Books as such, which 
 seems to presuppose an unquestioning traditional 
 belief in their antiquity and authenticity. 
 
 The Jews, perhaps exclusively among the early 
 peoples, distinguished broadly between the matter 
 and the corporeal form of a book, between its soul 
 and its body. They alone conceived the idea of 
 using the material form of the words and letters as 
 an instrument for ensuring the conservation of the 
 contents. If (such was their conception) we secure 
 the absolute identity of the manuscripts, and reckon 
 up the actual numbers of the words they contain, 
 and of the letters which compose the words, then 
 * Patersoii Smyth, p. 66. t ^*"'- P- 90- 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 195 
 
 we shall render change in them impossible, and 
 conservation certain. Thus, for example, the words 
 in the Book of Psalms were counted, and the middle 
 word of the book was known. The letters in each 
 word were also counted, and the middle letter was 
 known. Rules for writing, placing, and arranging 
 were laid down; readings were noted as khetihh 
 and keri ; as what was in the text, and as what 
 ought to be in the text but, from a reverent unwill- 
 ingness to alter, only took its place upon the margin. 
 The Hebrews were the only people who built up by 
 degrees a regular scientific method of handling the 
 material forms in which the substance of their 
 Sacred Books was clothed, and this system had 
 begun to grow from the time when a special rever- 
 ence is known to have been concentrated upon the 
 Torali. I will not dwell upon the topic that this 
 peculiarity of handling supplies of itself a certain 
 amount of presumption for peculiarity of origin. 
 It may have commenced before the Captivity. 
 It may have preceded, and may in that case 
 probably have been enhanced by, the division of the 
 kingdoms. It must have been in great force when, 
 soon after the Captivity, schools of scribes were en- 
 trusted with the custody of the text of the law as a 
 study apart from that of its meaning. Now, in 
 our time, we are asked or tempted by the negative 
 criticism to believe that all this reverence for the 
 
196 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 Books of the Pentateuch, having primarily the sense 
 for its object, but so abounding and overflowing as 
 to embrace even the corporeal vehicle, was felt to- 
 wards a set of books not substantially genuine, but 
 compounded and made up by operators, and these 
 recent operators, who may be mildly called editors, 
 but who were rather clandestine authors. Is this 
 a probable or reasonable hypothesis ? Is it even 
 possible that these books of recent concoction, 
 standing by the side of some among the prophetical 
 books possessing a much greater antiquity, should 
 nevertheless have attracted to themselves, and have 
 permanently retained, an exceptional and super- 
 lative veneration, much exceeding that paid to the 
 oldest among the Books of the Prophets, and such as 
 surely presumes a belief in the remoteness of their 
 date, the genuineness of their character, and their 
 title to stand as the base, both doctrinal and historic, 
 of the entire Hebrew system ? 
 
 The result of this negative criticism ought to be 
 viewed in its extreme form, and this for several 
 reasons : such as, that, with the lapse of time, it 
 continually adopts new negations ; that the more 
 conservative of the latest schools exhibit to us no 
 principle, which separates them in the mass from 
 the bolder disintegration ; and that what is now 
 the ultima tliide of the system may, a short time 
 hence, appear only to have been a stage on the way 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 197 
 
 to positions as yet undreamt of. So viewing the 
 snbject, do we not find that it comes to this: not 
 merely that the Mosaic laws received secondary 
 supplements or amendments from time to time, but 
 that the entire fabric had grown up anonymously as 
 well as recently, and that it rests upon no guarantee 
 whatever, either of time, or of place, or of personal 
 authority ? 
 
 I have already endeavoured to show the historic 
 improbability that an upstart production could have 
 leaped into an estimation such as belongs to a firm 
 tradition and a general credit of antiquity. And 
 now let us look for a moment at the rather crude 
 and irregular form of the Mosaic Books from Exodus 
 to Deuteronomy. Taken as a whole, they have 
 not that kind of consistency which belongs to 
 consecutiveness of the parts, and which almost 
 uniformly marks both historical and legal docu- 
 ments.* They mix narrative and legislation : 
 
 * " As to this want of order (which seems to me to favour the 
 idea of contemporaneity), a later codifier would have been more 
 artificial in his arrangement" (Milman's " History of the Jews," 
 3rd Edition, 1863). Writing of the delivery of the law, the learned 
 and very liberal-minded Dean Milman had before him the works 
 of the critical school down to Bleek ; and in the admirable note 
 (i. 131) from which I have just quoted a few words, he expresses 
 a firm and reasoned dissent from the negative conclusions as to 
 the Pentateuch in its substance, while he strongly urges the 
 likelihood of minor changes in the text with anachronism and 
 inaccuracy here and there as the consequence. This note is in 
 effect a succinct but highly pregnant treatise, and will well repay 
 those who carefully peruse it. 
 
198 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 they pass from one to the other without any 
 obvious reason. They repeat themselves in a 
 manner which seems to exclude the idea that they 
 had undergone the careful and reflected reviews, the 
 comparison of part with part, which is generally 
 bestowed upon works of great importance, com- 
 pleted with comparative leisure, and intended for 
 the guidance not only of an individual but of a 
 people. They are even accused of contradiction. 
 They appear to omit adjustments, necessary in the 
 light of the subsequent history : such, for instance, 
 as we might desire between the sweeping proscrip- 
 tion not only of image worship, but of images or 
 shapen corporeal forms, in the Second Command- 
 ment, and the use actually made of them in the 
 temple, and in the singular case of the serpent 
 destroyed by Hezekiah.* It seems not difficult to 
 account for this roughness and crudeness of author- 
 ship in the case of Moses, under the circumstances 
 of changeful nomad life, and the constant pressure 
 of anxious executive or judicial functions, combined 
 with the effort of constructing a weighty legislative 
 code, which required a totally different attitude of 
 mind. The life of Moses, as it stands in the sacred 
 text, must have been habitually a life of extra- 
 ordinary, unintermitted strain, and one without 
 remission of that strain even during its closing 
 
 * Kings xviii. 4. 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 199 
 
 period. As some anomalies in the composition of 
 the Koran may be referable to the circumstances of 
 the life of Mahomet,* so we may apply a like idea to 
 the configuration of the Legislative Books. It is not 
 difficult to refer the anomalies of such authorship to 
 the incidents of such a life, and to conceive that any 
 changes, which have found their way into the text, 
 may yet have been such as to leave unimpaired what 
 may be called the originality, as well as the integrity, 
 of its character. But how do these considerations 
 hold, if we are to assume as our point of departure 
 the hypothesis of the negative extremists ? Under 
 that supposition, the Legislative Books were prin- 
 cipally not adjusted but composed, and this not only 
 in a manner which totally falsifies their own solemn 
 and often repeated declarations, but which supposes 
 something like hallucination on the part of a people 
 that could have accepted such novelties, and almost 
 worshipped them, as ancient. In addition to all this, 
 they assumed their existing shape, so wanting as to 
 series and method, in a settled state of things, in an 
 
 * See Eodwell's Preface to the Koran respecting the Suras. 
 A critic in the Magazine and Book Revieio has cited against me the 
 fourteenth chapter of Esdras ii., and the strange story it con- 
 tains of the burning of the law and the rewriting of it by Ezra- 
 This story dates at the earliest from the time of Caesar, according 
 to others from Domitian. Thus a tale which first appears five 
 centuries after tho alleged fact at once becomes authoritative, if 
 it serves a purpose of negation. But even this story supports 
 the argument in the text, for the law is continuously and 
 miraculously reproduced by dictation to a body of five scribes. 
 
200 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 old historic land, with an unbounded freedom of 
 manipulation, at any rate with no restraint im- 
 posed by respect for original form, and with every 
 condition in favour of the final editors, which could 
 favour the production of a thoroughly systematic 
 and orderly work. Does it not seem that if the 
 preparation and presentation of the Hebrew code 
 took place at the time and in the way imposed on us 
 by the doctrine of the thorough disintegrationist, 
 then we stand entirely at a loss to account for the 
 somewhat loose and irregular form of the work 
 before us ? And conversely do not the peculiarities 
 of that form constitute an objection to the negative 
 hypothesis, which it is an absolute necessity for its 
 promoters to get rid of as best they can ? 
 
 Let me again illustrate the case by referring to 
 the Iliad. Those who have referred that work to a 
 variety of authors, have been driven to very subtle 
 and questionable arguments in order to exhibit some 
 semblance of anomaly in the text, and have always 
 been allowed to assume that the final editors under 
 Pericles, or at whatever epoch, wrought with energy 
 and purpose to weld the fragmentary material into a 
 seemly whole. Is it conceivable that an operation 
 such as we are now required to believe in could 
 have been carried on without the sense of a similar 
 necessity, or could so absolutely have failed in lite- 
 rary aim and effort ? 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 201 
 
 I subjoin one further topic of the same class, as 
 fit to be taken into view. The absence from the 
 Legislative Books of all assertion of a future state, 
 and of all motive derived from it with a view to 
 conduct, has been already noticed. The probable 
 reason of that absence from a code of laws framed 
 by Moses under divine command or guidance, is a 
 subject alike of interest and difficulty. It has 
 sometimes occurred to me as possible that the close 
 connection of the doctrine with public religion in 
 the Egyptian system might have supplied a reason 
 for its disconnection from the Mosaic laws* even as 
 I suppose we might, from other features of those 
 laws, draw proof or strong presumption that, among 
 the purposes of the legislator, there was included a 
 determination to draw a broad and deep line, or 
 even trench of demarcation, between the foreign 
 religions in the neighbourhood and the religious 
 system of the Hebrews. The connection estab- 
 lished by Moses between conduct and earthly 
 retribution or reward, must of itself have tended to 
 depress, if not the idea of a future state, yet the 
 expression of that idea in public documents. Espe- 
 cially we should remember that the work of Moses 
 was national rather than theological.! His theology 
 
 * This topic is touched by Bishop Alexander in his Bampton 
 Lectures. 
 
 t See Zincke, "Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedive," 
 p. 202. 
 
202 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 is a means of conserving the nationality, which was 
 itself a forerunner and a means of preparation for 
 the Advent. It is enough for my present purpose, 
 that the absence of the doctrine of a future state 
 from the work cannot be held to discredit the 
 Mosaic authorship. But does not that absence help 
 discredit the idea of a post-exilic authorship ? Is it 
 conceivable that Hebrews, proceeding to frame their 
 Legislative Books, after the Captivity, and long after 
 the Dispersion of the Ten Tribes, and after the light 
 which these events had thrown upon the familiar ideas 
 of a future life and an Underworld, as held both in 
 the East and in Egypt, could have excluded all 
 notice of it from their system of laws ? We see 
 something of this influence, in the noble passage on 
 the dead. Wisdom iii. i 8, to which there is no 
 parallel in any of the pre-exilic books. If it was 
 an influence impossible to exclude at the later date, 
 then the fact of the exclusion becomes another 
 difiiculty in the way of our accepting any such date 
 concerning the substance of the Legislative Books. 
 It seems, then, that it is difiicult to reconcile the 
 results of the negative criticism on the Pentateuch 
 with the known reverence of the Jews for their 
 Torah, which appears absolutely to presuppose a 
 tradition of immemorial age on its behalf, as a pre- 
 condition of such universal and undoubting vene- 
 ration. But if this be necessary in the case of the 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 203 
 
 Jew, how much more peremptorily is it required by 
 the Samaritan contribution to the present argument, 
 and what light does that case throw upon the 
 general question ? 
 
 It seems certain that in mediaeval times, and until 
 the seventeenth century, Christendom knew nothing 
 of a Samaritan testimony to the authenticity of the 
 Mosaic Books, excepting from certain slight refer- 
 ences in the works of the Fathers to " the ancient 
 Hebrew according to the Samaritans." But, early 
 in the seventeenth century, a traveller found, 
 among the Samaritans of Damascus, a copy of the 
 Pentateuch in the ancient Hebrew letters, and we 
 are told that there are now about sixteen of these 
 manuscripts in the various European libraries. The 
 chief one in existence is guarded with sacred care at 
 Nablous, the ancient Shechem, by a congregation 
 still surviving of a few hundred Samaritans.* For 
 questions of textual accuracy, this work is esteemed 
 inferior to the Hebrew, though it is not wholly 
 without a claim to more archaic forms. 
 
 The Samaritan Pentateuch is one of the most 
 remarkable monuments of antiquity. Its testimony, 
 of course, cannot be adduced to show that the Books 
 following the Pentateuch have been clothed from a 
 very ancient date with the reverence due to the 
 Divine Word ; indeed, it is even capable of being 
 
 * See Paterson Smyth, p. ii8. 
 
204 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION, 
 
 employed, in a limited measure, the other way. 
 But as respects the Samaritan Pentateuch itself, how 
 is it possible to conceive that it should have held as 
 a Divine work the supreme place in the regard of 
 the Samaritans, if, about or near the year 500 B.C.,* 
 or, still more, if at the time of Manasseh the 
 secederf it had as matter of fact, been a recent 
 compilation of their enemies the Jews ? or if it had 
 been regarded as anything less than a record of a 
 great revelation from God, historically known, or at 
 the least universally believed, to have come down to 
 them in the shape it then held from antiquity ? Be 
 it remembered that this work itself, and an approxi- 
 mate date for its known existence, are not matters 
 of mere speculation, but are accepted results of his- 
 torical research. And it is in this as in other cases 
 a matter for serious consideration, whether we can 
 accept the ingenious conclusions of critics before we 
 know whether they are to be shattered and shivered 
 when flung against the face of the strong rock of 
 history. 
 
 The Samaritan Pentateuch, then, forms in itself a 
 remarkable indication, nay, even a proof, that, at the 
 date from which we know it to have been received, 
 the Pentateuch was no novelty among the Jews. 
 But may we not state the argument in broader terms? 
 
 * Paterson Smyth, p 49. 
 
 f Placed by Wellhausen at about 375 B.C. "Hist. Israel," 
 (Black), p. 498. 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 205 
 
 Surely the reverence of the Samaritans for the 
 Torah could not have begun at this period ; hardly 
 could have had its first beginning at any period 
 posterior to the schism. If these Books grew by 
 gradual accretion, still that must have been an accre- 
 tion gathering round the work within a single 
 channel. A double process could not have been 
 carried on in harmony. Nor can we easily suppose 
 that, when the Ten tribes separated from the Two, 
 they did not carry with them the law, on which 
 their competing worship was to be founded. In 
 efiect, is there any rational supposition except that 
 the kingdom of Israel had possessed at the time 
 of Eehoboam some code corresponding in sub- 
 stance, in all except pure detail, with that which 
 was subsequently written out in the famous manu- 
 scripts we now possess ? 
 
 I have not attempted in these essays to discuss 
 the general credit of the Historic Books ; yet, in 
 connection with the Samaritans, I must here touch 
 briefly on a single point. The negative critics are 
 fairly challenged to explain to us how it is that 
 priestly fabricators, writing at a late date in the 
 interest of their order, have so notably abstained 
 from endeavours to glorify its virtues and honours, 
 or to conceal its lapses from right. In a yet wider 
 view we may ask how it has come about, that they 
 have entirely avoided attempts to magnify the reli- 
 
2o6 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 gious responsibilities of the schism which divided 
 Israel. It seems indeed strange that if these 
 Books were in substance framed after the Exile, and 
 in times when a spirit of rigorous uniformity pre- 
 vailed, a more emphatic and distinct censure should 
 not have passed upon Jeroboam, on the simple 
 ground of his having established a separate and 
 rival worship. 
 
 The man of God, who came from Judah, did 
 indeed testify against the altar in Bethel ; but that 
 altar was associated with the golden calf established 
 and worshipped there (as well as in Dan) by 
 Jeroboam ; and the testimony of the prophet, or man 
 of God, against this altar, embraced " all the houses 
 of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria," 
 and was therefore a testimony against idolatry, not 
 against mere schism.* The special sin of Jeroboam, 
 which caused his house to be cut off, was not that 
 he divided Israel, but that he degraded its religion 
 by making priests of the lowest of the people. f 
 Nay, the Books present to us the two illustrious 
 prophets, Elijah and Elisha, as having Israel for 
 their field, and as working there not on behalf of the 
 Levitical priesthood, but on behalf of righteousness 
 as against sin, and of God as against Baal ; in com- 
 plete conformity with the spirit of the prophetic 
 
 * I Kings xii. 28, 29, 32 ; xiii. 32. 
 t I Kings xiii. t^^. 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 207 
 
 Books, which so largely concern the ten tribes. 
 How is it conceivable that men wicked enough to 
 forge should so carefully have eschewed gathering 
 any fruits from their forgery ? 
 
 Let us close this portion of the subject with a 
 plea of a different order, one which, admitting jDro- 
 bable imperfection in the text, deprecates, as opposed 
 to the principles of sound criticism, any conclusion 
 therefrom adverse to its general fidelity. It has 
 caused me some surprise to notice (i) that some 
 negative writers lay considerable stress upon what 
 they deem to be numerical errors in the Books of 
 the Old Testament ; and (2) that, so far as I have 
 seen, they do not advert to the increased risks of 
 mistake in the transmission of numbers as compared 
 with other literary matter, whether it be by copying, 
 or by word of mouth. 
 
 The increased risk, which accompanies all record- 
 ing of numbers, extends likewise to enumerations, 
 such as genealogical or other recitals of names in 
 lists ; subject, however, to the remark that, where 
 metre is used, inasmuch as it supplies a framework 
 for particular words which would not apply to other 
 words, the danger is proportionably less ; and also 
 that, where the record is by writing and not by 
 simple hearing, the eye has the opportunity of 
 traversing again and again the names, as the me- 
 chanical process is carried on ; and these names will 
 
2o8 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 in many cases stand in connection with, and so be 
 seen to check, one another. 
 
 ]3ishop Colenso, for example, lays very great 
 stress on the numbers assigned by the Old Testament 
 to the children of Israel on their passage through 
 the desert, and observing on the practical difficulties 
 which such a multitude must encounter on a march 
 treats the case as one w^hich materially impugns the 
 general credit of the history.* 
 
 I suppose that those who are practically con- 
 versant with the movement of men in large bodies 
 may be much inclined to follow Colenso in question- 
 ing the statements of numbers, both at that point 
 of their history, and in many other places of the 
 narrative. It is quite another question whether, 
 because errors may have crept into the numbers, 
 the recitals of facts generally are therefore untrust- 
 worthy. 
 
 There is a broad and clear difference, of which note 
 ought to be taken. Both in copying and in original 
 composition, as a general rule, the structure of the 
 sentence, or what is called the context, is mentally 
 carried onwards, and the general drift confines 
 within narrow limits the possibility of error in the 
 particular words. Mistake in the form would very 
 commonly betray itself by inconsistency in the sense, 
 
 * See Colenso on the Pentateuch and Joshua, part i, oh. xii,, 
 et alihi. 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 209 
 
 and this inconsistency would not fail to be detected, 
 because the relation between the parts of the 
 sentence is ordinarily perceived as the process is 
 carried on. But the relation between numerical 
 amounts is not at once determined for the copyist 
 by the context, and usually requires a distinct and 
 careful examination to detect it. 
 
 I will give two practical illustrations of this state- 
 ment, the one very old and the other very modern ; 
 the one touching oral, and the other written trans- 
 mission. 
 
 The most elaborate invocation of the Muse, or 
 appeal for divine assistance, in the whole of the 
 Poems of Homer, is the Preface* to the Catalogue of 
 the Greek troops and ships ; and this, although in 
 no part of the poems could less of eifort properly 
 poetic be required. But the Catalogue consists 
 partly of numerical statements of the strength of 
 the contingents which made up the fleet, partly of 
 geographical detail of the names of towns and dis- 
 tricts ; and here we find the rationale of the poet's 
 call for special aid from heaven, and for his care with 
 a view to accuracy, and this although he had metre 
 to assist him. 
 
 I now turn to very modern practice. In the year 
 1853, it was my duty for the first time to submit 
 to Parliament one of the large and complex state- 
 
 * II. ii. 484-93. 
 
 O 
 
2IO THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 ments of the public accounts for the year, which are 
 associated in our country with the familiar name of 
 the Budget. The speeches, in which these state- 
 ments were contained, were made known to the 
 country by reporting in the usual manner. But the 
 art of the reporters could not be trusted to convey 
 the figures with accuracy by the ear. A practice 
 had consequently grown up of supplying them from 
 the proper official source in carefully written state- 
 ments for their guidance, which were sent to them 
 during the delivery of the speech. It has now been 
 found more convenient not to trust at all to the ear, 
 and the Minister is understood to speak from printed 
 figures : but this in no way weakens the illustration 
 I have used. 
 
 My position amounts to but does not go beyond 
 this, that the same care, which ensures general fidelity 
 of statement in ordinary recitals of fact, does not 
 suffice to secure numerical precision ; and conversely 
 that the want of such precision, which may some- 
 times be suspected in the Old Testament, does not 
 raise presumptions adverse to general correctness. 
 
 The necessary limits of this essay do not permit 
 of my entering on the contents of the Mosaic legis- 
 lation. It is, I apprehend, both far more complex 
 and far deeper than the other systems of ancient 
 law known to us, as well as far higher in its moral 
 aims. I humbly recommend that those who read it 
 
THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 211 
 
 should fix their minds upon the skill with which it 
 is addressed to the attainment of ends of such a 
 nature as to render them, in their ordinary aspects, 
 hardly reconcilable with one another. Severely 
 prescriptive of the stranger, namely, the nations 
 whom it found in possession of Canaan, it is as 
 singularly liberal and generous towards him when 
 he has made his peace with Hebrewism. Again, 
 the Pentateuchal code differs from (I believe) all 
 others in the extraordinary amount of its sanitary 
 legislation, and in investing it with a quasi-moral 
 character. But a sense of some strangeness in this 
 respect alters into a profound admiration of the 
 sagacity which includes in its far-reaching view 
 provisions for giving an exceptionally high character 
 even to the physical constitution of a people that 
 was meant to remain socially separate from the 
 nations of the world. Again : while aiming much 
 at equality, simplicity, and industry, as fountains of 
 order and of strength, it embodies most peculiar 
 regulations for the purpose of restraining within 
 the narrowest limits both that growth of wealth, 
 which is their natural result ; and also the spirit 
 of enterprise, which would have burst prematurely 
 the narrow bounds of Palestine, and destroyed the 
 seclusion of the chosen people by untimely contact 
 with the nations of the world. The design seem- 
 ingly was to repress the latent powers of human 
 
212 THE MOSAIC LEGISLATION. 
 
 nature, and to secure a conservative, even a station- 
 ary community, changeless as the truths of which 
 it was the guardian. The completeness of the 
 severance was not impaired by the Captivity and 
 Dispersion of Israel, or by the Exile of the Jews in 
 Babylon, or by the creation of Jewish factories abroad, 
 or by the final destruction of the political independ- 
 ence of the country, or by the invasion and supremacy 
 of the Greek language. The Jew, when our Lord 
 came, was still, and was even more than ever, the 
 Jew ; and so, though it may have been despite of 
 himself, the purpose of his great stewardship was 
 accomplished. 
 
VI. 
 
 n tbe IRecent CortoborationB of Scripture 
 
 from tbe IRegtons ot fblstor^ anb 
 
 IFlatural Science* 
 
VI. 
 
 n tbe IRecent Cottoborattons ot Scripture 
 
 from tbe IRegtons ot Ibistori^ anb 
 
 IRatural Science. 
 
 I. PRELIMmARY ; II. AS TO THE CREATION STORY ; 
 III. AS TO THE FLOOD STORY ; IV. AS TO THE 
 IxREAT DISPERSION ; V. AS TO THE SINAITIC 
 JOURNEY. 
 
 It is to be observed, that many of the favourite 
 subjects of scientific or systematic thought in the 
 present day are of a nature powerfully tending to 
 reinforce or illustrate the arguments available for 
 the proof of religion, and for the authority of Scrip- 
 ture. If it had been actually proved, as it is largely 
 argued and seriously held, that the vast and diver- 
 sified scheme of organic life throughout the world 
 has been evolved from a few simple types or pos- 
 sibly from one, such a demonstration would both 
 enlarge and confirm the great argument of design. 
 
2i6 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 For this argument, instead of being drawn from 
 particular and separate constructions, would then 
 be drawn from the entire scheme of creation, and 
 from the relation of all its parts to one another, 
 inasmuch as every earlier portion of it would be an 
 indication, and therefore a prediction, of all those 
 which were to succeed ; the seed of a long series of 
 harvests to come. " Day unto day uttereth speech, 
 and night unto night showeth knowledge." * 
 
 Again, the formal treatment in recent years of 
 the subject of heredity not only tends to link the 
 generations of mankind in one, but, in proving that 
 our nature undergoes incessant modification through 
 the influence of progenitors, enlarges our conception 
 of the width of its range, and the varieties of those 
 forms which it is capable of assuming. It shows 
 us, for example, how the nature, as well as the 
 environment, of descendants is deteriorated by the 
 fault of ancestors, and how there may have been an 
 education of the race from childhood to maturity, 
 or some converse process of decay. Thus the doctrine 
 of birth-sin, as it is sometimes called, is simply the 
 recognition of the hereditary disorder and degene- 
 racy of our natures ; and, of all men, the evolutionist 
 would find it most difficult to establish a title to 
 object to it in principle. 
 
 On these grounds, and on others more specific 
 
 * Ps. xix. 2. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 217 
 
 which it will be the aim of this essay to set forth 
 in given instances, we should dispel wholly from 
 our minds those spectral notions of antagonism be- 
 tween religion and science, which have been raised 
 up by the action of prejudice on the one side, and 
 perhaps by the occasional practice of bragging on 
 the other. Of religion and of science, as of man 
 and wife, let us boldly say, " What God hath joined, 
 let not man put asunder." But I proceed to 
 particular illustrations. 
 
 II. AS TO THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 A double confirmation has, I conceive, in our time 
 been supplied to the Creation Story of Genesis ; 
 the first by natural, and the second by historic 
 science. 
 
 Perhaps we have been too readily satisfied with 
 assuming, in regard to this narrative, a defensive 
 position ; whereas it may be found to contain within 
 its own brief compass, when rightly considered, the 
 guarantee of a Divine communication to man strictly 
 corresponding with what in familiar speech is termed 
 Revelation. 
 
 We have here in outline a primordial history of 
 the planet which we inhabit, and of the celestial 
 system to which it belongs. Of the planet, and of 
 the first appearance and early developments of life 
 
2i8 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 upon it, anterior to the creation of man, in many of 
 the principal stages which have been ascertained by 
 geology. Of the celestial organisation to which our 
 earth belongs, whether in all its vastness or only 
 within the limits of the solar system we may be 
 unable to say ; but, at the least, a sketch of the 
 formation of that system from a prior and unadjusted 
 or chaotic state. Upon such a document a sharp 
 issue is at once raised, at least as to the latter or 
 strictly terrestrial part of it, the earth-history, for 
 all those who hold it to be in its substance a true 
 account. We accept from Science, as demonstrated, 
 a series of geological conclusions. We have found 
 the geology of Genesis to stand in such a relation 
 to these conclusions, as could not have been exhibited 
 in a record framed by faculties merely human, at 
 any date to which the origin of the Creation Story 
 can now reasonably be referred. Starting from this 
 premiss, we have no means of avoiding or holding 
 back from the conclusion that the materials of the 
 story could not have been had without preterhuman 
 aid ; and such preterhuman aid is what we term 
 Divine Revelation. And if the time shall ever come 
 when astronomers shall be in a condition to apply to 
 the earlier portion of the chapter the demonstrative 
 methods, which geology has found for the latter 
 part, it may happen that we shall owe a debt of the 
 same kind, and of as great amount, to astronomy, 
 
 I 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 219 
 
 as we now owe to geologic science. My present 
 purpose is to call particular attention to the exact 
 nature and extraordinary amount of that debt. 
 
 There was nothing necessarily unreasonable in 
 accepting as worthy of belief this portion of the 
 Book of Genesis, along with the rest of the Book, 
 and with other books of Holy Scripture, on general 
 proofs of their inspiration, if sufficient, apart from 
 any independent buttress furnished either by science 
 or by history for the Creation Story. In a court of 
 justice, the evidence of a witness is to be accepted 
 on matters within his cognisance, when it is con- 
 sistent with itself, and when neither his character 
 nor his intelligence are questioned ; or again, when 
 the main part of a continuous narrative is sufficiently 
 verified, it may be right to accept the rest without 
 separate verification. If, however, a new witness 
 comes into court, and pretends to give us fresh and 
 scientific proof of the Creation Story, this may be 
 true or may be false. If false, the story is not 
 disproved; it stands where it stood before. Bad 
 arguments are often made for a good cause. But 
 if true, the event is one of vast importance. 
 
 Now the present position is as follows. Apart 
 altogether from faith, and from the general evidences 
 of Revelation, a new witness has come into the 
 court, in the shape of Natural Science. She builds 
 up her system on the observation of facts, and upon 
 
220 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 inferences from them, wliicli at length attain to a 
 completeness and security such as, if not presenting 
 us with a demonstration in the strictest sense, yet 
 constrain us, as intelligent beings, to belief. 
 
 The Creation Story divides itself into the cos- 
 m.ological portion, occupying the first nineteen verses 
 of the Chapter, and the geological portion, which is 
 given in the last twelve. The former part has less, 
 and the latter part has more, to do with the direct 
 evidence of fact, and the stringency of the authority 
 which the two may severally claim varies accord- 
 ingly ; but in both the narrative seems to demand, 
 upon the evidence as it stands, rational assent. In 
 regard to both, it is held on the affirmative side that 
 the statements of Genesis have a certain relation 
 both to the ascertained facts and to the best accepted 
 reasonings; and that this relation is of such a 
 nature as to require us, in the character of rational 
 investigators, to acknowledge in the written record 
 the presence of elements which must be referred to 
 a superhuman origin. If this be so, then be it 
 observed that natural science is now rendering a new 
 and enormous service to the great cause of belief 
 in the unseen ; and is underpinning, so to speak, 
 the structure of that divine revelation, which was 
 contained in the Book of Genesis, by a new and 
 solid pillar, built up, on a foundation of its own, 
 from beneath. 
 
 A 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 221 
 
 It is, then, to be borne in mind that, as against 
 those who by arbitrary or irrational interpretation, 
 place Genesis and science at essential variance, our 
 position is not one merely defensive. We are not 
 mere reconcilers, as some call us, searching out 
 expedients to escape a difficulty, to repel an assault. 
 We seek to show, and we may claim to have shown, 
 that the account recorded in the Creation Story for 
 the instruction of all ages has been framed on the 
 principles which, for such an account, reason recom- 
 mends ; and that, interpreted in this view, its entry 
 into the argument is at this juncture like the arrival 
 of a new auxiliary army in the field while the battle 
 is in progress ; like the arrival, to choose an his- 
 torical instance, of the Prussians at Waterloo. 
 
 Such is the confirmatory argument founded upon 
 the contents. But now, yet another ally has come 
 to join our ranks, under the title of Archaeologic and 
 Historic Science. It has deciphered the cuneiform 
 inscriptions, and has read among them a Creation 
 Story inscribed on the tablets found at Nineveh. 
 Here we have a new witness to the very early 
 existence, among civilised or partly civilised men, 
 of records of creation corresponding in very essential 
 particulars with the Hebrew narrative. Such a 
 witness plainly to some extent offers to it confirma- 
 tion ; but also stands in competition with it. The 
 competition is in those particulars w^here the accounts 
 
222 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 are not in harmony. As to these, standing on the 
 character of its contents, the Hebrew tradition lays 
 claim to superior antiquity and authority. But in 
 proving the vast antiquity of certain fundamental 
 ideas, the two are concurrent, and not competitive. 
 
 The Babylonian Creation Story is given by Mr. 
 Smith in his " Assyrian Discoveries,^' * so far as its 
 mutilated state permits. It runs as follows, and we 
 cannot, I think, but cherish the hope that it may 
 hereafter receive extension or elucidation. " When 
 the gods in their assembly made the universe, there 
 was confusion, and the gods sent out the spirit of 
 life. They then create the beast of the field, the 
 animal of the field, and the reptile or the creeping 
 thing of the field, and fix in them the spirit of life. 
 Next comes the creation of domestic animals, and 
 the creeping things of the city." Here we have, 
 I, creation by the gods ; 2, chaos ; 3, life, and only 
 by inference, order ; 4, wide extension of this life 
 in beasts and reptiles ; 5 , after this the domesticated 
 animals. Thus there is before us a real, though 
 rude and imperfect, structural resemblance to the 
 Hebrew narrative, together with the lowering inter- 
 polation of polytheism. 
 
 From the works of Schraderf on the cuneiform 
 
 * P. 397- 
 
 f Schrader, "The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testa- 
 ment." Translated by Whitehouse. "Vol. i. pp. 4, seqq. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 223 
 
 inscriptions, some further particulars may be 
 gathered. He observes that in Berosus, as in 
 .Genesis, we begin with water and darkness. On 
 which I would only observe that Berosus, who wrote 
 in Greek, may not improbably have known the 
 Mosaic writings,* and, as I have already stated, 
 that water, in the text of Genesis, may be 
 equivalent to fluid. The marked points of 
 correspondence appear to be these : that the 
 heavenly bodies are created after the heavens, 
 which last expression, I presume, may be meant to 
 include the light. That the land population follows 
 that of the water, and appears when vegetation has 
 already begun. That the monuments name a 
 Babylonian week, with the seventh day as a day of 
 consecration, called also an evil day,t perhaps 
 because evil for any work done on it. The inscrip- 
 tion says : 
 
 "To redeem them, created mankind 
 The merciful one, in whom is the power 
 that summons to life." 
 
 which is faintly comparable with the words of Gen. 
 ii. 7, and the Jehovistic account, " and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life." What seems 
 to disappear from the Babylonian account is that 
 evident intention of series and orderly develop- 
 
 Smith, Biogr. Diet. f Schrader, p. 19. 
 
224 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 ment, or evolution, which is so wonderful a feature 
 in the Mosaic narrative. 
 
 Dawson, in a recent work, observes that the 
 polytheistic element is the distinctive feature of the 
 Chaldean record, and that the originals of the 
 tablets from Nineveh may have been very ancient, 
 but that they are so mixed up with the history 
 of the Chaldean hero, named Izdubar, as to 
 suggest that there may have existed before it 
 still older creation legends. He compares this 
 record with the corresponding account in Genesis, 
 which is as broadly marked with the idea of 
 the Divine unity as the Chaldean legend is per- 
 vaded by the conception of polytheism. And he 
 adds, " Is it not likely that the simpler belief is 
 older than the more complex ; that which required 
 no priests, ritual, or temple, older than that with 
 which all these things were necessarily associated?" 
 He naturally assigns a marked superiority to the 
 " Hebrew Genesis." * In truth, that superiority 
 seems to be not great only, but immeasurable. In 
 one point only do the tablets go beyond the narra- 
 tive of Genesis ; they record the great struggle of 
 Deity with rebellion, the war in heaven between 
 Merodach and Tiamat. But, upon the whole, our 
 Bible narrative is a regular structure ; it is orderly, 
 progressive, and rational ; that of the tablets is dark 
 
 * " Modern Science in Bible Lands," p. 32. 
 
OF SCRIPTUl^E. 225 
 
 and confused. This may, however, be referable in 
 part to the imperfection of the tablets, the third of 
 which, Mr. Sayce thinks, may probably have re- 
 counted the formation of the earth.* The one is 
 charged in a marvellous way with instruction and 
 moral purpose ; from the other they have almost 
 disappeared. The first has, as we believe, been 
 receiving marked confirmation in the most vital 
 particulars from cosmic and geologic science ; on 
 the second they can hardly be said to cast more 
 than the faintest light. And yet this inferior 
 document is itself of very great confirmatory value ; 
 for the Izdubar legends, says Mr. Smith, t appear 
 to have been composed more than 2000 years B.C. 
 '^i^here is no late date to which the Mosaic narrative 
 can with a shadow of probability be referred. It 
 could not have been formed without a miracle from 
 the tablets as they stand. The two are evidently 
 accounts proceeding from a common source, but 
 derived through channels, partly or wholly inde- 
 pendent. The one comes through a powerful and 
 civilised empire, the other through an obscure 
 nomad family. In the relative superiority of the 
 Mosaic narrative, all the rules of merely human 
 likelihoods are reversed ; and the presumption of a 
 Divine illumination is proportionably augmented. 
 
 * " Hibbert Lectures," p. 394. 
 t *' Assyrian Discoveries," p. 166. 
 
336 kECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 But the unsuspected antiquity of the inferior legend 
 attests by an independent witness, if not the truth, 
 yet at least the presumable origin, of its transcen- 
 dent rival. 
 
 So far as scientific opinion is concerned, another 
 remarkable confirmation seems to have been given 
 to the cosmical portion of the Creation Story in 
 Genesis by the course which it has taken of late 
 years. Writing in 1839, Dr. Whewell devoted a 
 chapter of his " Bridgewater Treatises on Astronomy 
 and Physics"* to the Nebular or, as it is often 
 called, Kotatory hypothesis. He described it in 
 outline, as it had been conceived by Laplace. The 
 idea of it was that the mass, which eventually 
 centred in the sun, had revolved in a state of exces- 
 sive heat ; that, as it gradually cooled, the rapidity 
 of its motion was increased ; that, as the centrifugal 
 force thus grew, the mass detached from itself ex- 
 terior zones or rings of gas or vapour, which most 
 commonly broke up into several minor masses, and 
 so gradually formed the planetary system. Dr. 
 Whewell's object in this early notice of a subject, 
 which has since attracted, I believe, very general 
 attention in the world of astronomical science, was 
 to sustain and illustrate his general argument, by 
 showing how this theory did nothing whatever to 
 explain the origin of the system, or to weaken the 
 
 * Ch. vii. p. 181. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE, 227 
 
 statement of Newton, that its admirable arrange- 
 ment must be " the work of an intelligent and most 
 powerful being." The origin of this rotation, said 
 Dr. Whewell, remains unexplained, and still as 
 powerfully as ever cries aloud for, and proclaims an 
 Author. My purpose in here naming the subject is 
 to point out that Dr. Whewell then found himself 
 dealing with a theory which had not yet obtained 
 any wide currency or authority, and he then " left 
 to other persons and to future ages to decide upon 
 the merits of the nebular hypothesis.'"* But, 
 during the half century which has elapsed since 
 he produced his Treatise, the hypothesis is under- 
 stood to have gained very general, if not indeed 
 unanimous, acceptance from astronomers. I refer 
 to this result of the most modern studies as 
 a new and remarkable establishment of accord 
 between natural science on the one hand (so far 
 as its reasonings have proceeded), and the Book 
 of Genesis on the other. Often has it been en- 
 deavoured to place the Mosaic geology in con- 
 flict with ascertained results, but less, though even 
 here something, of the same kind has been attempted, 
 so far as I know, by persons of scientific authority, 
 with regard to the cosmogony which occupies the 
 earlier portion of the Chapter. On the other hand, 
 it has been shown, with what seems to me conclusive 
 
 * P. 190* 
 
228 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 clearness, that, without the use of scientific lan- 
 guage, that very process has been described in slight 
 outline, but in singular correspondence with the 
 hypothesis now so largely accepted. That hypo- 
 thesis may not indeed have reached the point of de- 
 monstration, and this the subject-matter itself may 
 be found not to permit ; yet it has attained to so 
 much of authority from consent that Dr. Whewell 
 were he writing now, would not have had simply 
 to hand it over to the future for consideration, but 
 would more probably have declared that it holds 
 the field, and seems little likely to be displaced 
 from it. 
 
 With the creation of the world or the solar 
 system, the question of its termination is naturally 
 associated. On this subject, however, I will not 
 dwell at length, because the support here afforded 
 by scientific opinion is given to the Scriptures of 
 the New Testament, rather than the Old. To refer 
 again to Dr. Whewell. In a passage of extraor- 
 dinary grandeur, he delivered (I think it was in a 
 sermonj his opinion that the world would end with 
 a catastrophe, instead of dying what is termed a 
 natural death. Such, as we know, is the emphatic 
 declaration of the inspired Word. " The day of 
 the Lord will come as a thief in the night : in the 
 which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, 
 and the elements shall melt with fervent heat j 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 229 
 
 the earth also, and the works that are therein 
 
 shall be burned up." "^ And again, '' Looking 
 
 for and hasting unto the coming of the day of 
 
 God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be 
 
 dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent 
 
 heat." Such was the judgment of Dr. Whewell 
 
 nearly half a century ago. His words were delivered 
 
 rather as by one uttering his own firm opinion, than 
 
 as expressing the conviction of astronomers at large. 
 
 Nevertheless, as I have been informed on high 
 
 authority, it is now the established conclusion of 
 
 astronomers, based upon reasoning from ascertained 
 
 facts, that the Galilean fishermen knew what all the 
 
 genius and learning of the world for thousands of 
 
 years failed to discover, and that 
 
 " The great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve." f 
 
 III. AS TO THE FLOOD STORY. 
 
 I pass now to the Flood-Legend, one form of 
 
 which has come down through Berosus and Josephus, 
 
 but which acquires much more certain antiquity, 
 
 and greater grandeur, from the Inscriptions. Their 
 
 account, says Schrader, whose bias cannot, I think, 
 
 be considered as friendly towards the Hebrew record, 
 
 " brings the Biblical narrative into much closer 
 
 * 2 Peter iii. 10, 12."] 
 
 f Shakespeare, Tempest, iv. i. 
 
230 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 relation with the Chaldean flood-legend than could 
 be assumed on the basis of the tradition in Berosus."* 
 It forms part of the Izdubar legends discovered by 
 Mr. George Smith, who published his account of 
 them in 1872, and who assigns to them a date 
 anterior to 2000 years B.C. under the early Baby- 
 lonian empire, f The hero of the legends is believed 
 by Mr. Smith to be the same as the Nimrod of 
 Genesis. Like the Creation Story of Genesis, J that 
 of the Flood derives corroboration from the Baby- 
 lonian record, inasmuch as it is thus carried back by 
 an independent testimony to a very great antiquity. 
 That record, composed, as Mr. Smith thinks, not 
 long after the time of Izdubar or Nimrod, gives us 
 the tradition of a Hood which was a Divine punish- 
 ment for the wickedness of the world, and of a holy 
 man, who built an ark, and escaped the general 
 destruction. The particulars are set out in Mr. 
 Smith's volume. They differ, in many respects, 
 from those of Genesis, but the essential features are 
 in the highest degree marked, and, together with 
 certain of the details, are singularly accordant. || 
 As in the case of the Creation Story, so here there 
 is stamped upon them the note of a common source, 
 and of channels of descent which separate at some 
 
 * Schrader, as above, p. 47. 
 
 t "Assyrian Discoveries," p. 166. % Ihid. and 204. 
 
 Pp. 205-6, seqq. II Pp. 184, seqq. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 231 
 
 later date. In " this case, however, the Babylonian 
 narrative holds a higher position, relatively to the 
 scriptural record, than in the case of the Creation. 
 
 The hero of the deluge is Hasisadra, a name 
 which has been Hellenised into Xisuthrus ; who, on 
 the eleventh tablet, relates to Izdubar (the sup- 
 posed Nimrod) the story of the' deluge. I 
 shall only attempt an outline presenting the main 
 points.* 
 
 In the ancient city of Surippah, where Anu and 
 other great gods were worshipped, Hasisadra was 
 divinely warned by Hea, the great water-god, to 
 construct a ship, of which the size is named, and 
 commit to it " the seed of life, all of it," as " the 
 sinner and life " were about to be destroyed by a 
 flood. Food, furniture, wealth, servants, and animals 
 were all to be embarked. The building and loading 
 of the ship are then described, and the part taken 
 by the several gods in bringing about the cata- 
 strophe. But "the gods " themselves feared the 
 tempest, and '* ascended to the heaven of Anu." 
 This deluge lasted for six days : on the seventh all 
 was quiet. There is sight of land from within the 
 vessel. It is arrested by the mountain of Nizir. A 
 dove is sent forth, and returns. A swallow is sent, 
 and does the like. A raven goes, feeds on the 
 corpses that are afloat, and returns not. Then comes 
 
 * Smith, pp. 184-194. 
 
232 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 landing, sacrifice, the sending forth of animals, 
 Ninip and Hea then remonstrate with Bel, and sug- 
 gest other more usual means of chastising men, in 
 which there seems to be some affinity to the promise 
 of Gen. viii. 21-2, and ix. 1 1-1 7, that there should 
 never again be a flood upon the earth. And " then 
 dwelt Hasisadra in a remote place at the mouth of 
 the rivers." 
 
 The resemblances between this narrative of the 
 flood and that in Genesis are such as clearly to be- 
 token a relationship at or near the source. The most 
 peculiar, and at the same time purely incidental, 
 among all the details of the narrative, appears to be 
 the threefold experiment with birds upon the decline 
 of the waters ; but this appears alike in the three 
 narratives of Chaldsea, the Bible, and Berosus. No 
 other nations have accounts so full and precise as 
 these.* 
 
 Mr. Smith has some judicious and impartial obser- 
 vations on the two accounts.! The Chaldean account 
 indicates the nature of the country in which the 
 flood took place. Surippah is near the mouth of the 
 Euphrates, and there Hea was worshipped as the god 
 of the deluge. The Hebrew account has no local 
 confirmations of the story. When Surippah was 
 conquered, in the sixteenth century B.C. or earlier, it 
 is called in the record, " the city of the ark." Hasis- 
 Smith, p. 212. + Md. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE, 233 
 
 adra is, like Noah, a devout man ; and the Chaldean 
 deluge is, like the Hebrew, a punishment for gross 
 and widespread sin. Schrader argues with a view to 
 attenuate this statement, but, as it appears to me, in 
 the spirit of a partisan rather than a judge.* The 
 dimensions of the ark varj'- in the three accounts ; and 
 on the variations of numerals I observe elsewhere. 
 It may, however, be observed that the Babylonian 
 account, which presumably was written down from a 
 very early date, and in a durable form, has in this 
 respect a great advantage over oral transmission, 
 which is most of all dangerous for numerical state- 
 ments. The inscription describes a regular vessel with 
 boatmen, another incident of local colour. The 
 accounts curiously coincide in the minute point 
 that, both inside and out, the ark is coated with 
 bitumen. The tablet tells us that not eight only, 
 but a comparatively large number of persons went on 
 board. The Bible gives forty days as the duration 
 of the flood, meaning apparently at the height. 
 After I 5 o days the waters all abated. The whole 
 duration before disappearance is a year and ten 
 days.f The tablet allows only seven days for the 
 fulness of the flood. On the seventh day all storm 
 has ceased. Hasisadra then sends out the bird. 
 The ship is stranded for seven days more on the 
 mountains of Nizir, so that the total term mentioned 
 * Vol. i. p. 49. f Gen. vii. 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 24. 
 
334 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 is one of only fourteen days. Nizir lies away to the 
 east, far from the site of Ararat mentioned in 
 Genesis ; on the other hand,* the present tradition of 
 the country lands the ark at a site farther to the 
 north, and nearer Ararat. Again as to the birds, 
 In Genesis Noah sends out a raven, which does not 
 return ; then a dove three times, at intervals of 
 seven days ; on the third occasion the dove does not 
 return. The inscription sends, first, a dove, which 
 returns, then a swallow, which returns, and then a 
 raven, which does not return. Lastly, in the Bible, 
 Noah lives after the flood for 350 years ; the tablet 
 and Berosus both assign to him, associated (rather 
 strangely) with his daughter and the helmsman,! 
 that translation to heaven for his piety, which 
 Genesis gives to Enoch. Before translation, he was 
 visited by Izdubar, and the region was deemed a 
 sacred region. 
 
 On a general comparison of these two profoundly 
 interesting records, the result appears to be that in 
 what is circumstantial only there is much difference 
 along with some curious resemblance ; but in the 
 outline of the fundamental facts, and in the moral 
 considerations applicable, they are radically at one. 
 The wickedness of the antediluvian world, the Divine 
 anger, the command to build, the use of this vehicle 
 of escape, and the erection of an altar of thanks- 
 * Smith, p. 217. t Schrader, i. 60. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 235 
 
 giving, are recorded alike in both. We have no 
 absolute right to assume that either of the accounts* 
 as it stands, is contemporary with the period of the 
 flood. The points in which the Bible account may 
 seem inferior, are the absence of local colouring, and 
 the probable relation of the numerical statements to 
 actual fact. Yet this, so far from impairing its 
 claim to our acceptance, appears on the contrary to 
 accredit it, because it is a feature which, given the 
 circumstances of the case, there was reason to expect. 
 If, indeed, we ride the hobby of the negative 
 criticism, the Bible account bristles everywhere with 
 difficulty. It is inconceivable that the framers 
 should have in that case departed so widely from 
 the inscription in points so palpable to all the world, 
 or should have let slip the local colour, with which a 
 fabricator or late relator would have been forward to 
 dress up his narrative. But, if we take Abraham, 
 with his ancestors and his posterity, as a nomad 
 people, religious and of simple life such as the Bible 
 represents them ; at an earlier period hanging on 
 the outskirts of the Babylonian power, at a later one 
 migratory towards the West ; it was natural for them 
 to drop the local colouring of a region with which 
 all their relations had come to an end, and to drop 
 somewhat behind in the exactitude of some among 
 the particulars ; and this is perhaps observable, as 
 to the point of local colour, not in the case of the 
 
236 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 flood only, but throughout the Abrahamic narrative 
 down to the entry into the promised land. 
 
 The most significant difference of all between the 
 two records is that the inscription is based upon 
 polytheism, while in the Bible, here as elsewhere, 
 all is based upon the doctrine of one God. That is to 
 say, the simpler form is the groundwork of the Bible 
 narrative, and the simpler form, according to the 
 generally recognised principle, is that nearest the 
 source, most closely akin to the occurrence or the 
 original record. The religion of Noah agrees with 
 that of the common father, Adam ; the religion of 
 Hasisadra has departed from the primitive belief, 
 and exhibits to us those multiplied and deteriorated 
 images of the Deity, which human infirmity and sin 
 had introduced or allowed. 
 
 While Schrader glances at the period when the 
 Babylonian flood-legend reached the Hebrews as 
 that of "the prophetic narrator of early Biblical 
 history," he candidly adds, " I am led to the obvious 
 conclusion that the Hebrews were acquainted with 
 this legend at a much earlier period, and that it is 
 far from impossible that they acquired a knowledge 
 of these and the other primitive myths now under 
 investigation as far back as in the time of their 
 earlier settlements in Babylonia, and that they 
 carried these stories with them from Ur of the 
 Ohaldees." For him they are all myths ; the 
 
OP SCRIPTURE. 237 
 
 original invention is in Babylonia, and the Hebrews 
 are early copyists. For others, however, they are 
 in the nature of primitive traditions, founded on 
 histories ; and the twin versions bear testimony by 
 their concurrence, and even in some respects by 
 their discrepancies, to their historical character. If 
 there was remoulding, it may be the more detailed 
 and circumstantial narration which is presumptively 
 entitled to the credit of it ; and the Bible story, 
 more sparing in its details, but far broader and more 
 direct in the terrible lesson it conveys, may reason- 
 ably be judged to have come down from the source 
 with the smallest amount of variation in essentials 
 from the original. It is here as elsewhere. " The 
 wisdom of this world," the race favoured with stable 
 institutions, and with intellectual development, yet 
 fails in the firmness of its hold, and the clearness of 
 its view, where the appreciation of the tremendous 
 moral lesson is concerned ; while the race of wander- 
 ing shepherds, who are but the "babes and suck- 
 lings " of intelligence, yet transmit that lesson in a 
 type so fresh and clear that our Lord has only to 
 quote and enlarge without correcting it, and so to 
 launch it anew into the world as a solemn chapter 
 of His gospel teaching. 
 
 It may be noticed that the translation to heaven 
 of Hasisadra, the Noah of the tablets, is in curious 
 accordance with that far larger development both of 
 
238 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 the Underworld and of the future state, which marks 
 alike the Babylonian and the Egyptian systems in 
 comparison with that of the Old Testament, and 
 forms an interesting but separate subject of dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 The Hebrew story of the Deluge has long been 
 supported by a diversity of traditions among nations 
 and races of the world, but never before with such 
 particularity, or such corroboration in the sense and 
 to the extent before described. But though we 
 have now a new and important witness in court on 
 our behalf, yet undoubtedly, if the narrative be 
 provably untrue the testimony of both, or of any 
 number of traditional witnesses, must fall to the 
 ground. 
 
 The voice of natural science has not been, and 
 probably is not at present, uniform on this subject. 
 The negative has just been presented to the world, 
 of course with great ability, and also in a suffi- 
 ciently magisterial form, by Professor Huxley. He 
 conceives that Christian theology must stand or fall 
 with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish 
 Scriptures ; * and, as these are not trustworthy, the 
 consequence is that it must not stand but fall. With 
 this general proposition I have here nothing to do. 
 
 Mr. Huxley selects the flood-story for the capital 
 article of his indictment. But he treats it as little 
 * Nineteenth Century, July 1890, p. 8. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 239 
 
 worthy of serious notice. ''It is difficult to per- 
 suade serious scientific inquirers to occupy them- 
 selves in any way with the Noachian deluge." * He 
 finds, indeed, a sort of historic nucleus for a partial 
 deluge in the occasional desolating floods of the 
 Euphrates and Tigris.! But, be it a partial or be 
 it a general flood, he applies the same contemptuous 
 negative doctrine to the deluge : perhaps most of all 
 to what he terms a particularly absurd attempt 
 at reconciliation, which places it " at the end 
 of the glacial epoch." J: I am far from intend- 
 ing to enter upon a controversy, which I have 
 no capacity to handle. Yet I may be bold 
 enough to mention, that, while Mr. Huxley is 
 speaking in the name of science at large, some 
 votaries of science hold an entirely different lan- 
 guage. Moreover, that the idea of a flood was not 
 thus summarily dismissed by the luminaries of the 
 scientific world anterior to the present day; and 
 that the grounds of this dismissal are not of recent 
 discovery, but were fully open to the geologists of 
 the last generation. Quite recently, the doctrine of 
 a deluge has been maintained by Sir J. Dawson, by 
 Mr. Howorth, and by the Duke of Argyll (if I 
 interpret him aright), || all of whom are, I suppose, 
 to be considered as " serious scientific inquirers." 
 
 * P. 12. t P. 14. X P. 13. 
 
 " Modern Science in Bible Lands," p. 252. 
 
 II In Tlie Scottish GeograpJiical Magazine, April 1890. 
 
240 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 Mr. Howorth, in his learned and laborious work 
 on " The Mammoth and the Flood," is certainly not 
 bound by any superstitious reverence for the mere 
 text of the Book of Genesis ; for, in his preface,* 
 he seems to cast aside as null its traditions respecting 
 all that preceded the creation of man. His treatise 
 collects largely not only the diluvial traditions of so 
 many races and countries, but an immense mass of 
 palseontological evidence ; and, having laid this wide 
 ground for his induction, he declares that, in his 
 judgment, the whole points unmistakably 
 
 " To a widespread calamity, involving a flood on a 
 great scale. I do not see how the historian, the archae- 
 ologist, and the palaeontologist can avoid making this 
 conclusion in future a prime factor in their discussions, 
 and I venture to think that before long it will be 
 accepted as unanswerable.^f 
 
 Moreover, I am free to consider history no less a 
 science, though a less determinate science, than 
 geology or biology ; and I quote in conclusion the 
 following passage from Lenormant, which follows a 
 copious collection of testimonies to the tradition of 
 a deluge in almost all lands : 
 
 " La longue revue, a laquelle nous venons de nous 
 livrer, nous peimit d'affirmer que le recit du deluge est 
 une tradition universelle dans tous les rameaux de I'huma- 
 nite, a I'exception toutefois de la race noire. Mais un 
 souvenir partout, aussi precis et aussi concordant, ne 
 
 * Pp. ix. , X. t P- 463. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 241 
 
 saurait etre celui d'un mythe invente a plaisir ; aucun 
 mythe religieux ou cosmogonique ne presente ce caractere 
 d'universalite. C'est necessairement le souvenir d'un 
 evenement r^el et terrible, qui frappa assez puissamment 
 I'imagination des ancetres de notre espece pour n'etre 
 jamaiK oubli^ de leurs descendants. Ce cataclysme se 
 produit pres du berceaux primitif de I'liumanite." * 
 
 IV. AS TO THE GREAT DISPERSION. 
 
 The contents of the Tenth chapter of Genesis 
 constitute a document of a character altogether 
 extraordinary : for example, in the two following 
 particulars. First, it is without parallel in the 
 world. Nowhere else is there known to us a dis- 
 tinct and detailed endeavour to draw downwards 
 from a single source the multiplication of men in 
 the earth by families, and the distribution of them 
 over the face of the earth. Secondly, this account, 
 containing seventy-two names of men (to which 
 
 * " Les Origines de I'Histoire," pp. 489, 490. Second Edition 
 1880. "The long review, to which we have just applied our- 
 selves, warrants our affirming that the tale of the Deluge is an 
 universal tradition among all the branches of the human family ; 
 excepting, however, the blacks. But a remembrasce prevailing 
 everywhere, so precise and so concordant, cannot belong to a 
 myth arbitrarily invented. No religious or cosmogonic myth 
 presents such a character of universality. It must of necessity 
 be a recollection of a great and terrible occurrence, which im 
 pressed the imagination of the ancestors of our race so powerfully 
 as never to have been forgotten by their descendants. That 
 cataclysm took place at a spot near the primeval cradle of 
 humanity." 
 
242 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 more are added in connection with the descent of 
 Abram when we reach chap, xii.), is so particular, 
 that the notion of its correct transmission by 
 ordinary means may appear to present much diffi- 
 culty. Abram, when he migrated westward, came 
 from a country which we now know to have pos- 
 sessed in his time means of durable record ; but, 
 as the head of a nomad family, he could hardly 
 have carried with him written traditions : and a 
 specific narrative of this kind, like the Greek Cata- 
 logue in the " Iliad," presented great difficulties in 
 the way of oral transmission through several, perhaps 
 many, generations, down to the time when we may 
 reasonably suppose the children of Israel to have 
 acquired the art of writing during their sojourn in 
 Egypt. The assisting Providence of God may sug- 
 gest itself to the believing mind as having supplied 
 the needful measure of that aid, which Homer * 
 besought, in a kindred case, from the Muses. But 
 the document, if thus considered, lays a certain 
 weight upon our faculty of belief, and even offers a 
 tempting invitation to assault from those who are 
 adversely minded. This weight, however, is con- 
 verted at once into a prop, into a buttress which 
 well and stoutly supports the wall, when we find 
 that this singular and, so to speak, exposed tradi- 
 tion has received in the most fundamental and vital 
 
 * II. ii. 484. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 243 
 
 points^ from the researches of philological and 01 
 historical science, striking and, we may suppose, 
 conclusive confirmation. 
 
 The foundation of the arrangement is the three- 
 fold division of the human race from a certain 
 period of its history. If such a division actually 
 took place, we might expect to find the traces of it 
 in a threefold division of language, which has an 
 unquestionable relation to race ; and, conversely, 
 such a divarication in language proves an early dis- 
 tribution of races or families, from which it took its 
 origin. Without entering into details, it may be 
 observed that the Book of Genesis associates the 
 first distinctions of language with the local dispersion 
 of man ; and it is now known that, in days ante- 
 cedent to the permanent bond of literature, such an 
 association is agreeable not only to probability, but 
 to the ascertained laws of experience. And now we 
 find that comparative philology, dealing at large with 
 the languages of the world, has resolved them into 
 that very threefold division, which the distribution of 
 man according to Gen. x. into three great branches 
 anticipates and requires. Here is again an important 
 service, rendered by modern science to belief. 
 
 It is true that the Bible (Gen. xi. i) speaks of 
 language as originally one, and that this proposition 
 has not yet been generally afiirmed by philology. 
 Yet the way to it has been opened, and it need 
 
244 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 excite no surprise should the goal be soon attained. 
 Professor Max Miiller, I believe, says there is no 
 proof that the Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian families 
 of language had independent beginnings ; that 
 radicals existing in all the three can be traced to 
 the common source, and that even the grammars 
 may have been originally one. But this subject still 
 awaits its scientific elucidation or decision. 
 
 The Table of Peoples presents on its surface some 
 apparent anomalies ; of which, however, a rational 
 account can be given, and one which for the most 
 part converts them into evidences in its favour. 
 For instance, the Hamitic portion presents to us 
 out of a total of thirty names no less than eighteen 
 which are plural words, and which are therefore 
 national or tribal, while only two of the same class 
 are found in the rest of the account. But this 
 seems upon consideration to illustrate what we know 
 from history ; namely, that the Hamitic races 
 exhibited the most precocious development, and set 
 up the earliest known civilisations of the world, those 
 of Babylonia and of Egypt. 
 
 Again : the Cushite stock, after its regular order 
 is arrested in ver. 7 of the chapter, jumps as it 
 were down to Nimrod in 8-10. But we must bear 
 in mind the greatness assigned to his individual 
 position. He is the only person in the Table who 
 is described as founding a kingdom, and the account 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 245 
 
 of him has a great resemblance to that of Izdubar 
 in the Assyrian Tablets, with whom he is identified 
 by Mr. George Smith. 
 
 Again, as Shem, Ham, and Japheth are four 
 times mentioned together, and invariably in this 
 order, it seems to follow naturally that this is 
 the order of their ages. In ch. x., however, their 
 descendants are set out in the inverse order, and 
 Japheth takes precedence. But this also, upon 
 reflection, we may find to be quite natural. Migra- 
 tion was largely connected with considerations of 
 space and food. It may be that the younger had 
 to give place to the elder, and that the children of 
 Japheth had on this account to be the first in moving 
 from the common centre. 
 
 Further : in the Japhetic line the genealogy 
 wholly stops with the next generation but one, 
 whereas, it is continued farther, not only in he 
 Semitic line, which had to be connected with 
 Abram, but also in the Haraitic, by the mention 
 of Nimrod and of the Philistines. This, however, 
 seems perfectly natural if the line of Japheth, as is 
 probable, moved the first, and, as is manifest, went 
 the farthest, so as to be out of sight of the nar- 
 rator, while descendants of Shem and Ham remained 
 locally in contact with each other. Knobel* has 
 observed, that in each of the three branches the 
 
 * " Volkertafel der Genesis," Giessen, 1850, p. 14. 
 
246 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 enumeration begins with those who travelled to 
 the greatest distance from the common centre 
 (which is taken by him to be near Mount Ararat), 
 and accordingly the Japhetites are reckoned from 
 the north-west, the Semites from the south-east, and 
 Hamites from the south-west. Just as in the case 
 of the Homeric Catalogue,* this methodical arrange- 
 ment probably gave great assistance to the memory 
 of the first recorder. 
 
 - Knobel has discussed with great minuteness and 
 care the particular names of the recital, and he 
 traces them to their historic seats. Bishop Browne, 
 in the " Speaker's Commentary," has entered on 
 the same field. Some examples may be given. 
 The Japhetites are those (Japhah) of fair com- 
 plexion. They take to the isles or coast-lands, f 
 the seaward countries of the north and west. 
 Here we meet the name of Gomer reproduced in 
 the Cimmerians, Cimbri, and Cwmry. Ashkenaz, 
 the son of Gomer, is found in Scandinavia,! 
 the Scangia of Jornandus, the chief seat of 
 the German stock. Another route is marked in 
 the same direction by Ascania, in Asia Minor, 
 a name found at various points of that region. 
 Knobel thinks there is a trace of the Teutonic 
 race in Teuthras, a name found on both sides in 
 
 * " Juventus Mundi," p. 467. 
 
 f See Revised Version, Gen. x. 5. 
 
 X Knobel, Ihid. pp. 35-7. P. 39. 
 
OF SCRIPTURE, - 247 
 
 tlie war of the Iliad.* He proceeds with the list 
 of Japhetites as follows. Riphath, he thinks, is 
 traced in the Carpathian country, f Togarma in Ar- 
 menia, Magog in the Slavs, Madai in the Medes, 
 Javan in the laones or lonians, Elisa in ^olians, 
 Tarshish in the Tursenoi, Kittim in the Chitians of 
 Cyprus, Dodanim in the Dardanians, Tubal in the 
 Iberians, Meshech in the Meschi or Moschi, Tiras 
 in the Thracians (Thrax or Thras).j: Some among 
 these particular interpretations for instance, that 
 given to Elisa may be untenable. Bishop Browne 
 sets out the various opinions that have been held, 
 mostly without declaring a preference. It is not, 
 however, the accuracy of each particular identi- 
 fication, nor even of every particular item of the 
 text, but the principles of the general arrangement, 
 and the large number of cases reasonably clear, 
 which give the subject its importance. 
 
 The Semitic and Hamitic branches offer less diffi- 
 culty to the investigator. No part of the tracking 
 is more satisfactory than that which relates to the 
 nations of Palestine, and to the names of Canaan, 
 Sidon, and Heth, where every particular, known to 
 us from independent history or tradition, supports, 
 so far as I can judge, in a most remarkable manner 
 
 * V. 705, and vi, 13. f Knobel, Ibid. p. 44. 
 
 X Pp. 53, 60, 71, 77, 81, 95, 117, 123. 
 " Speaker's Comm.," Genesis hi loc. 
 
248 RECENT CORROBORATIONS 
 
 the trustworthiness of the record. Speaking gene- 
 rally, perhaps no one can go farther than Knobel in 
 the work of identification. His treatise has become 
 a considerable authority, and is of the greater value 
 because he does not belong to the conservative school 
 of criticism on the Old Testament. 
 
 V. AS TO THE SINAITIC JOURNEY. 
 
 In his " Modern Science in Bible Lands," Sir. J. 
 Dawson has examined, with elaborate care, first the 
 dwelling-place of the Israelites in Egypt, and their 
 probable route from it until they cross the Yam 
 Suph ; and then, still more particularly, the account 
 of their journeyings beyond the Eed Sea. His 
 conclusion is that they crossed at a point,* now 
 forming part of the Bitter Lakes of the Isthmus, 
 but then a part of the Eed Sea itself, which was fed 
 in ancient times by a branch of the Nile flowing 
 eastwards. t Yam Suph, or sea of weeds, is the 
 name given to it in the Bible. t 
 
 Beyond the Red Sea, and onwards to the Sinaitic 
 region, the country has been surveyed by officers of 
 the British Ordnance. All the instruments of 
 modern science have been employed; the results 
 have been published on a large scale ; and the 
 effect, as reported by Sir J. Dawson, has been 
 '' entire agreement of the members of the party on 
 * P. 389 t P. 392. X P. 404- 
 
OF SCRIPTURE. 249 
 
 essential points " ; "^ and the ascertainment of such 
 complete coincidence of the actual features of the 
 country with the requirements of the Mosaic narra- 
 tive, as to prove it to be a contemporary record of 
 the events to which it relates. f 
 
 The route pursued by the Israelites down the 
 coast of the Red Sea, and then to the eastward, was 
 peculiar, as it seems to have been dictated by a 
 combination of strategical considerations with those 
 which concerned the subsistence of the people, and 
 especially the supply of water. The local indica- 
 tions are on this account all the more remarkable. 
 It is not possible, without exceeding the limits 
 proper for the present observations, to convey the 
 full force of the evidence which shows how the 
 stamp of Egypt was impressed both upon the 
 Israelites themselves, and upon the narrative in 
 Exodus of their escape ; inasmuch as it depends on 
 the details of measurement, atmosphere, water-supply, 
 and other physical circumstances, and upon their 
 relation to the Mosaic narrative. The conclusions 
 reached have no direct bearing upon the proofs of a 
 Divine revelation through the Scriptures, but they 
 are of great historical importance in establishing the 
 credit of the Book, and its contemporaneous character 
 as to the substance of its contents. 
 
 * Pp. 371, 406. I P. 407. 
 
VII. 
 
 ConclUBiom 
 
VIT. 
 
 Conclustom 
 
 In closing this series of papers, it is right to record 
 the admission that they can lay no claim to any- 
 thing more than touching, and that but slightly, 
 certain parts of a great subject. They omit many 
 things important, perhaps some things essential. The 
 essay on the Creation Story, indeed, aims at bring" 
 ing out, in lieu of simple apology, what seems to 
 me a distinct a^d specific argument in proof of a 
 Divine Revelation. Except in that instance, their 
 main design is to draw out, so far as they go, the 
 force of that cumulative evidence witnessing to such 
 a Revelation, which has been so wisely summed up 
 by Bishop Butler ; * and also to disembarrass belief 
 in it from those difficulties which properly belong 
 not to itself, but to exaggerations and excrescences 
 against which it can carry no absolute guarantee. 
 They form the testimony of an old man, in the 
 * " Analogy," part ii. chap. vii. 
 
254 CONCLUSION. 
 
 closing period of his life. It is rendered with no 
 special qualification but possibly this one. Few 
 persons of our British race have lived through a 
 longer period of incessant argumentative contention, 
 or have had a more diversified experience in trying 
 to ascertain, for purposes immediately practical, the 
 difference between tenable and untenable positions. 
 Such experience is directly conversant with the 
 nature of man and his varied relations ; and I own 
 my inclination to suppose that it is more germane 
 to the treatment of subjects that lie directly between 
 collective man and the Author of his being, more 
 calculated to neutralise deficiencies, though not to 
 impart capacity, than a familiarity with those 
 material sciences which have supplied an arena for, 
 perhaps, the most splendid triumphs of the century 
 now far advanced in its decline. On this subject 
 has been recorded the nobly candid admission of 
 Mr. Darwin, * respecting the possible atrophy, 
 through disuse, of the mental organs on which our 
 higher tastes depend. Among those organs I can- 
 not but include the organ of belief. On this 
 subject, however, I am a biassed witness. It is for 
 others to judge. I only offer a plea, not in proof 
 of ability, but only in extenuation of defect. 
 
 There is in certain circles a very confident dis- 
 position to assert that, as regards belief in super- 
 * ** Life and Letters," vol. i. pp. loi, 102. 
 
CONCLUSION. 255 
 
 naturalism, the intellectual battle has been fought 
 and won, and that victory is on the side of negation. 
 It ought to be observed, before proceeding further, 
 that supernaturalism is a term which includes the 
 idea of God. A sense may be, indeed, loosely given 
 to it, which confines it to the mode of His manifes- 
 tations. But, essentially, if God be there, the super- 
 natural is there ; and the developments which pro- 
 ceed from that idea, even if they had been crushed 
 and stamped out, might germinate again. It is 
 not, then, a question of excrescences or of details ; 
 the life and essence of religion are at stake. It is 
 the question of belief in what is not perhaps scien- 
 tifically, but yet intelligibly, termed a personal God. 
 
 I shall presently enter on the moral causes which 
 may have contributed, and even mainly contributed, 
 to stimulate the negative tendencies of the day. I 
 am now only endeavouring partially to test the 
 justice of a Psean, which is not warranted even by 
 the established fact of a victory. The Paean of the 
 victor is the epitaph of the vanquished : and the vic- 
 tory, which is to warrant it, must be a victory belong- 
 ing to that class of victories, which end the war. 
 
 That such a song of triumph is raised there can 
 be little doubt. It seems to have inspired the 
 recent Articles of that very distinguished and not 
 less upright writer. Professor Huxley, in the 
 Nineteenth Century. But I have never seen a 
 
256 CONCLUSION, 
 
 better example of the plenary satisfaction which 
 possesses the mind of many among the negative 
 athletes than in the following passage, taken from a 
 writer of ability : 
 
 "I set out from the standpoint that the mission of 
 Freethought is no longer to batter down old faiths. That 
 has been long ago eifectively accomplished ; and I, for 
 one, am ready to put a railing round the ruins, that they 
 may be preserved from desecration, and serve as a land- 
 mark ! Indeed, I confess to having yawned over a recent 
 vigorous indictment of Christianity." * 
 
 This purports to be a description of a certain 
 state of facts.f Now, it is not the first time that 
 we have heard description of the kind. Such a 
 description was supplied in an earlier time by no 
 less a person than Bishop Butler, who, I apprehend, 
 was not among those given to exaggeration. His 
 words are these : % 
 
 " It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted 
 by many persons that Christianity is not so much as a 
 subject of inquiry ; but that it is now at length discovered 
 to be fictitious. And, accordingly, they treat it as if, in 
 the present age, this were an agreed point among all 
 
 * Karl Pearson, " Ethics of Freethought," Preface, p. 5. The 
 dramatic character of this declaration is brought to its climax 
 by the fact that the work is dedicated to the members of King's 
 College, Cambridge. 
 
 t It is far from being isolated. The same ideas are expressed 
 with greater vehemence by Dr. Hardwicke, of Sheffield, in a 
 preface to " Evolution," London, 1890. 
 
 \ From the Advertisement to the " Analogy." 
 
CONCLUSION. 257 
 
 people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set 
 it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule ; as it 
 were by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted 
 the pleasures of the world." 
 
 It seems pretty plain that at the time when the 
 Bishop published the "Analogy" * a wave of unbelief 
 was passing over the land. The spiritual declension of 
 the Hanoverian period had set in ; and the standard 
 of life, and of the ideas current concerning life, was 
 sinking almost from day to day. The negative 
 movement of the period may have been quite as 
 vigorous, as widespread, and as self-confident, as 
 that of which we now feel the pressure. Yet it 
 dwindled, and almost disappeared ; and we may even 
 say that, at the time of Johnson's social predomi- 
 nance, it left hardly a trace behind. f Nor was this 
 either the first or the last of the reverses which 
 negation has suffered. At the time of the great 
 Renascence of ancient learning in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries, the cultivated mind of Europe 
 sank far back into Paganism ; but that ebb was 
 
 * In 1736. 
 
 t In 1797, when Wilberforce published his "Practical View," 
 he spoke of " absolute unbelievers " as a class which he feared 
 was an increasing one (chap. vii. sect. 3). Perhaps the great 
 war of the years 1793-1815 tended to debilitate the religious 
 mind of the country by drawing off mental force in another 
 direction. I have, however, heard from persons of high 
 authority, who were old when I was young, that the French 
 Revolution generated a distinctly religious reaction on this side 
 of the Channel. 
 
 R 
 
258 CONCLUSION. 
 
 succeeded by a flowing tide. Again, in my own 
 earlier days, say in the second quarter of tlie present 
 century, there was a great revival, both of the 
 dogmatic sense and of the religious life in England ; 
 and the temper of the time, in the thinking world, 
 was strongly adverse alike to worldliness, to indif- 
 ference, and to unbelief. No man, perhaps, was 
 better qualified to pass a judgment on this subject 
 that the late Dr. Whewell ; and he, writing in 
 November 1853, ^^^ referring to an opinion ex- 
 pressed by a contemporary of smaller calibre than 
 himself, says, " As to his assertion that scepticism 
 is increasing, it is contrary to all my knowledge of 
 the cultivated classes." * But as the third quarter 
 proceeded, the sceptical movement set in with a wide 
 and subtle power. History, then, seems to prove 
 that these negative movements are subject not only 
 to a hazard, but even to a law, of mutation ; and that 
 every one of them, when it has done its work, may 
 cease to be. Of one thing we may be assured : 
 such a movement derives no real strength, no true 
 promise of permanence, from an overweening self- 
 assertion. The question is not what negation thinks 
 of itself and of the opposing forces, but what is the 
 intrinsic strength of the reasoning on which it rests. 
 I have said that, when it has done its work, it 
 may cease to be. For doubtless it has a work to 
 * ' Life of Whewell," p. 431. 
 
CONCLUSION. 259 
 
 do. The wave that breaks and foams upon the 
 rock exhibits to us not merely, as it might seem, 
 a picture of violence and a source of danger, but a 
 fraction of the vast oceanic movement, which is the 
 indispensable condition of health and purity both 
 to the water and the air, and to the populations by 
 which they are respectively inhabited. If we 
 believe in Providential government, we might 
 rationally believe, even where we did not see, that 
 those boastful, and even powerful, agencies are not 
 without their purposes prefigured, and bounded too, 
 in the counsels of God. It seems, however, not 
 difficult to discern a portion of those purposes ; 
 which may have been, first, to dispel the lethargy 
 and stimulate the zeal of believers ; and, secondly, 
 to admonish their faith to keep terms with reason, 
 by testing it at all its points ; lest fancy, or pride, 
 or indolence, or the intolerant spirit of sect or party, 
 should have imported into their beliefs merely human 
 elements that it may be very needful to eject. 
 
 While leaving to the champions of negation their 
 title, whatever it may be, to insist on the utter 
 blindness of belief, this at least I urge upon them : 
 they ought to understand that it remains just as 
 possible now as it was in the early or middle ages, 
 to uphold belief in perfect good faith and with 
 immovable conviction. In the advance of scientific 
 knowledge, and of the critical art, I for one see 
 
26o CONCLUSION. 
 
 much that corrects and chastens what was tem- 
 porary or accidental in our persuasions concerning 
 the subjects of belief, but nothing that disintegrates 
 or undermines the basis of belief itself ; much, on 
 the contrary, that confirms it. 
 
 It is sometimes taken for granted or alleged, 
 that religion or its champions are reduced to the 
 necessity of defending their cause only with arms 
 which have been superseded, either by the introduc- 
 tion of forces previously unknown, or by new forms of 
 construction better adapted to their ends. In a 
 spirit which seems to fluctuate between pity and a 
 good-natured contempt. Professor Huxley describes 
 *'the old-fashioned artillery of the Churches," on 
 the one side, and " the weapons of precision," used 
 by the advancing forces of science on the other.* 
 Now let it be remembered that we have not here 
 to do with the masses of mankind, to whom 
 historical and scientific arguments, whether nega- 
 tive or affirmative, are, and probably must remain, 
 inaccessible. We are speaking of that standing 
 army, so to call it, of more or less instructed per- 
 sons, who, on the one side and the other, execute all 
 the fighting on behalf of the community at large. 
 Writing, then, of those within the palisades of 
 the lists, and not appealing to mere numbers, I 
 demur entirely to the statement of Professor 
 
 * Nineteenth Century, July 1890, p. 22. 
 
 I 
 
CONCLUSION. 261 
 
 Huxley. I deny that the weapons of belief are 
 antiquated : I pause even before admitting that 
 those of scientific men are always, except in their own 
 particular sciences, weapons of precision. When we 
 decline the appeal to the established facts of science, 
 or to the conclusions upheld or reasonably sustained 
 by human experience through history, or when we 
 fall into the trap laid for us by Hume, and treat 
 the a,cceptance of our '' holy religion " as a matter 
 in no way amenable to the view of reason ; then we 
 may be justly charged with the use of weapons 
 never worthy, and no longer serviceable. But until 
 then, we may quietly endeavour to proceed as 
 rational beings upon rational considerations. If 
 these principles have not uniformly guided me in 
 the composition of the essays I am now bringing 
 to a close (on which it is not for me to judge), 
 at least I can say that there has not been in any 
 instance, even by a hair's-breadth, an intentional 
 deviation from them. 
 
 The fact, however, of a strong and widespread 
 negative movement among important and active sec- 
 tions of our countrymen during the latter portion of 
 this century is admitted ; and now I propose to offer 
 some remarks upon its alleged or probable causes. 
 
 I shall speak, first, of the detriment which religion 
 is supposed to have suffered through the great anrl 
 wonderful advance both of science and of rational 
 
262 CONCLUSION. 
 
 speculation, mostly physical, but also critical, archaeo- 
 logical, and historical. 
 
 Secondly, of the detriment it has suffered through 
 the exposure to the world of erroneous notions 
 about religion, which are due to believers them- 
 selves : a detriment attending, in different manners 
 and degrees, either the retention, or even the 
 abandonment of these opinions. Such detriment 
 seems to me certain to ensue, when we uplift into 
 the region of dogmatic truth (for example) such 
 propositions as the following, i . That the material 
 volume of the Holy Scriptures, translated into our 
 tongue, with every fact and sentiment it contains, 
 must be received under the same (so to call it) 
 materialised conception, as that under which Maho- 
 metans are supposed to receive the Koran, and held 
 absolutely true ; or 2, that there is no progression 
 or distinction in the inspiration to which it is to be 
 referred ; or 3, that the Adam portrayed in 
 Scripture was the exclusive source of the race ; or 
 4, that he was furnished with large intellectual 
 development and endowment. 
 
 Thirdly, I shall speak of the strength which the 
 negative movement has in my opinion derived from 
 causes greatly and subtly effective, yet wholly ex- 
 trinsic to itself; causes, which I take to constitute 
 its principal strength. 
 
 Of the first head I might dispose very briefly. I 
 
CONCLUSION. 263 
 
 have enumerated some of the great services which 
 science has rendered, and is rendering, to religion. 
 Of the damage it has inflicted I have heard much; 
 but the allegations commonly appear to me upon 
 examination to be found untrue : in some cases, like 
 that of the first Chapter of Genesis, to be not only 
 untrue but contradictory of the truth, inasmuch as 
 science, when just principles of interpretation are 
 called in, is found to have established what it has 
 been charged with destroying. 
 
 The nearest semblance, that has attracted my 
 notice, to palpable contradiction between modern 
 science and Holy Writ is upon the statement that sin 
 brought death into the world, whereas we now know 
 that death was antecedent to the introduction of 
 man, and therefore of sin. But in Scripture, beyond 
 all dispute, the word death has many senses. For 
 example, it means habitually, severance of spirit 
 from body. It means separation from God, and 
 domination of body over spirit.* It means reunion 
 with God, and domination of spirit over body.t As 
 it means the soul's disease, severance from God, so 
 also it means the final consummation of that disease 
 in the second death. These are various senses of 
 the term, dispersed about the Bible. How do we 
 know that St. Paul used the words in the first of 
 
 * Luke i. 79 ; John viii. 51 ; Epb. ii. i. 
 + Col. ii. 20 ; iii. 3 ; 2 Tim. ii. 11. 
 
^64 CONCLUSION. 
 
 these and not in the second ? And if he had used 
 it in the first sense, and had intended to declare that 
 there was no physical death before the sin of Adam, 
 how much would this prove ? Only that the apostle 
 was ignorant of any pre- Adamite history of the 
 planet, and that we should have to ask whether 
 such ignorance, when proved, would destroy or im- 
 pair the overflowing proofs that he was commissioned 
 of God to speak, and was taught of God how to 
 speak, for the salvation of the world ? 
 
 It remains, however, a vital portion of our duty, 
 on the one hand, to estimate and to measure aright 
 the differences between the Divine Eevelation in 
 itself, and the subjective conceptions entertained and 
 propagated concerning it ; and on the other to 
 inquire pretty strictly whether the professors of 
 science are sometimes apt to push their legitimate 
 authority beyond their own bounds into provinces 
 where it becomes an usurpation, and whether the 
 weapons which they hurl, are then always "weapons 
 of precision " ? 
 
 On the first of these two points, I will give an 
 illustration of my meaning from the latest writings 
 of the Achilles of the opposing army. In a very 
 recent article, which deals chiefly with the Deluge,* 
 Mr. Huxley, in a succinct but decided way, 
 administers capital punishment also to the Creation 
 * Nineteenth Century, July 1890, p. 21. 
 
CONCLUSION. 265 
 
 Story of Genesis. He does not enter much into 
 particulars, but he says the Israelites were like all 
 other men, curious to know their origin. Now, so 
 far as the records of the past go, the cosmological 
 curiosity of the ancients appears to have been com- 
 paratively small. The cosmologies of Babylon and 
 Egypt hold an utterly insignificant place in their 
 systems of knowledge. The Greeks, perhaps the 
 most inquisitive of men, cared little or nothing for 
 these things, through many centuries after they had 
 felt the passion of high poetry and of the legends 
 associated with it ; and when their schools of phi- 
 losophy arose, they dealt, and this only in outline, with 
 the origin of material things, rather than of men. 
 There was no nation, I believe, except the Israelites, 
 whose cosmology held a classical place in their memory 
 and in their devotions. But I am perhaps wrong in 
 arguing the question. What I ought rather to point 
 out is that while Professor Huxley is fond, as he 
 well may be, of claiming to represent science, his 
 dictum is entirely outside the sciences he represents. 
 Again, in the same short space he proceeds to lay 
 it down that an opinion given by Dr. Eiehm on the 
 subject of the seven Mosaic days (^.e., that they are 
 natural days) should be final. We claim, however, 
 to be, if not Freethinkers, yet free thinkers. Why 
 are we to renounce the- faculty of discourse, to 
 square our minds to those of Dr. Riehm, to let him 
 
266 CONCLUSION. 
 
 do the thinking for us, and to accept his words as 
 " final " ? Simply because Mr. Huxley has said so. 
 What right has Professor Huxley to close this ques- 
 tion ? For the question whether the Creation Story 
 of Genesis describes solar days or not, is no more 
 a scientific question, than whether Parliament should 
 or should not meet in November, or whether Shake- 
 speare wrote or did not write the whole of " Henry 
 the Eighth." 
 
 But I have now to ask whether the weapons 
 used by this most distinguished scientist are 
 always " weapons of precision " ? On scientific 
 grounds he condemns, as we have seen, the 
 narrative of the Deluge, and pronounces it to 
 be fabulous. One of his reasons is this. The 
 Mosaic account assigns a period of one hundred 
 and fifty days (the Tablets give only seven) for the 
 subsidence of the waters. Against this statement 
 Mr. Huxley advances a dictum.^ of which the subject- 
 matter is unquestionably scientific. He gives the 
 length of the Mesopotamian plain* at three to four 
 hundred miles, and the elevation of the higher end 
 at five to six hundred feet. Had this plain been so 
 covered with water, says Mr. Huxley, a "furious 
 torrent" would have rushed downwards, and instead 
 of an hundred and fifty days the plain generally 
 (this word no doubt is meant to except particular 
 * Ihld.^. 15. 
 
CONCLUSION. 26 
 
 hollows of the ground) would have been left bare in 
 a very few hours. 
 
 Let us try this question a little more nearly. If 
 the length of the plain be 350 miles, and the fall 
 525 feet, we have a descent of one foot and a half 
 per mile ; and this descent, says the Professor, would 
 cause a furious torrent, such as would clear the 
 plain in a very few hours Let us assume twenty 
 miles an hour as the rate of the " furious torrent " ; 
 on which assumption, the plain would be bare in 
 seventeen and a half hours. I take these rates and 
 figures so as to translate approximately into definite 
 quantities Mr. Huxley's more general expressions. 
 
 One foot and a half per mile represents a gradient 
 of 3-4W- I ^3,ve sought information on this subject 
 from an engineer, who is in charge of a portion of one 
 of our rivers. I understand from him that a fall of 
 one in three thousand four hundred and twenty 
 would probably produce a current of about two 
 miles an hour. It may require all Professor Huxley's 
 resources to show that a current of two miles an 
 hour is a " furious torrent " ; or that to represent as 
 a furious torrent what is in truth an extremely slow 
 stream is to use a " weapon of precision." 
 
 My informant, indeed, adds that each case has 
 modifying circumstances of its own, and must be 
 judged by itself; but he likewise tells me that if, 
 instead of taking an ordinary English river we 
 
268 CONCLUSION. 
 
 remove the banks, and suppose the stream indefinitely- 
 widened, the fall remaining the same, the rate of 
 the current would be not increased but slackened. 
 Thus we seem to get farther and farther from the 
 " weapons of precision." And it seems just possible 
 that, after all, these weapons may, like our monster 
 guns, sometimes damage those who handle them, or 
 may fail to batter down so soon as is expected the 
 undoubtedly ancient walls of the fortress of belief."^ 
 
 The case to which I have last referred is one of 
 elementary hydraulics. The obligation to be precise 
 may be thought to rise with the elevation of the 
 subject. If we may not ask from the scientific man 
 that when he touches questions of the innermost 
 feelings of believers, and of the highest destinies of 
 man, he should be reverent, yet surely we are 
 entitled to require of him that he should be circum- 
 spect ; that he should take reasonable care to 
 include in his survey of a case all elements which 
 are obviously essential to a right judgment upon it. 
 
 In another recent article,! Mr. Huxley has 
 touched very lofty ground indeed. He selects as a 
 crucial instance for the trial of the Gospels, and with 
 them of the character of our Lord, the miracle which 
 
 * It is not without interest to remark that, on the data before 
 us, the time required for clearing the plain would be about 162 
 hours, or nearly seven days, the actual time mentioned in the 
 Babylonian account. 
 
 f Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1889, pp. IT i, IT 2. 
 
CONCLUSION. 269 
 
 happened in the country of the Gergesenes, or 
 Gadarenes. It is narrated, with certain variations, 
 by three Evangelists ; the essential point being, 
 that evil spirits, cast out from the body of a 
 demoniac, are permitted to enter into a herd of 
 swine, and that the animals rush furiously into the 
 sea. Mr. Huxley, as a physiologist, disbelieves in 
 demoniacal possession, and that is the point that has 
 commonly attracted the chief share of attention in 
 connection with this miracle. Such a physiological 
 judgment it is not for me to discuss. But he also 
 very properly touches the question of the injury 
 inflicted by the destruction of the swine, which was 
 due to our Lord's permission. Mr. Huxley observes 
 that the Evangelist has no " inkling of the legal 
 and moral difficulties of the case," and adds, the 
 devils entered into the swine " to the great loss and 
 damage of the innocent Gerasene or Gadarene pig- 
 owners." Further, " Everything that I know of law 
 and justice convinces me that the wanton destruc- 
 tion of other people's property is a misdemeanour of 
 evil example." 
 
 So then, after eighteen centuries of worship 
 offered to our Lord by the most cultivated, the most 
 developed, and the most progressive portion of the 
 human race, it has been reserved to a scientific 
 inquirer to discover that He was no better than a 
 law-breaker and an evil-doer. It is sometimes said 
 
Vo CONCLUSION. 
 
 that the greatest discoveries are the most simple. 
 And this, if really a discovery, is the simplest of 
 them all. So simple that he who runs may read, 
 for it lies on the very surface of the page. The 
 ordinary reader can only put the wondering ques- 
 tion, how, in such a matter, came the honours of 
 originality to be reserved to our time and to Pro- 
 fessor Huxley ? 
 
 Simple as it has been from his point of view, the 
 case * is to a reflective mind a very peculiar one. It 
 offers the only occasion on which our Lord exercised, 
 or co-operated in the exercise, of preternatural 
 power for the destruction of life. 
 
 It is observable that in certain instances, such as 
 that of the fig-tree, and of the ass with her colt. 
 He seems to assert Himself as the universal owner. 
 He is the Lord to kill, as well as to make alive, 
 according to His wisdom. But this consideration, 
 to whatever conclusion it might lead, is of what may 
 be termed an esoteric nature, and is hardly suited to 
 an argument against the negative school, who are 
 plainly entitled to raise the question of the swine as 
 it affects the rights of property. Why, then, does 
 our Lord in this instance see cause to vary from the 
 philanthropic and beneficent tendencies, which usually 
 mark His miraculous agency ? It has been observed 
 that the entrance into the swine may have been per- 
 * Matt. viii. 30 ; Mark v. 2 ; Luke viii. 31. 
 
CONCLUSION. 271 
 
 mitted, in order to certify the man or men relieved 
 of the reality of the great and hardly credible deliver- 
 ance vouchsafed to him. And again, that the willing 
 departure of the demons may have spared the victim 
 or victims from the tortures, which it is natural to 
 suppose would have attended their violent ejection. 
 Yet something more seems to be desirable in order 
 to meet the question that has just been raised. I 
 find the answer to it in the reasonable, and (as it 
 seems to me) almost necessary supposition, that the 
 possession of the swine was unlawful, and, therefore, 
 was justly punishable by the ensuing loss. 
 
 The scene is described by different Evangelists in 
 different terms. It is the country of the Gergesenes, 
 or the country of the Gadarenes. The distinction 
 is immaterial to the present purpose. It was appa- 
 rently part of the land of the Girgashites,* one of 
 the seven Canaanitish nations, and was subject, 
 therefore, as a matter of religious obligation, to the 
 Mosaic law. Now that law contained a prohibition 
 to use various meats, among which pork was included. 
 But in the case of swine the law went farther than 
 in other cases, and it was forbidden even to touch 
 the carcass.t Such a prohibition of course pre- 
 cluded all use whatever of the animals when dead ; 
 and it was only for use when dead that there 
 could be any object in keeping them at all. Nor 
 
 '* Deut. vii. i, f Lev. xi, 7, 8. 
 
272 CONCLUSION. 
 
 was this prohibition merely ceremonial. It was 
 immediately related to the health of the people, as 
 the use of pork (I am informed) produces the disease 
 called trichinosis, and I understand that the veto is 
 down to this day regarded by well-informed Jews as 
 of a serious importance ; and is directly connected 
 wich a high sanitary condition. 
 
 It may be that the deeper counsels of Providence 
 are more implicated in this prohibition, than even a 
 less superficial reader of the Gospels than Professor 
 Huxley might at first sight suppose. That calling 
 of the Hebrew people, which is set before us in the 
 Old Testament, demanded in them above and beyond 
 all other qualities the quality of persistence. It 
 may be that this purpose required the constitution of 
 the race in body as well as in many points of cha- 
 racter to be raised to a point unusually high. We 
 know that man is a compound being, and we know 
 that the Mosaic code took cognisance of bodily 
 health to an extent quite unknown in other schemes 
 of legislation. In the Book of Exodus,* reference 
 was made to the superior formation of the Hebrew 
 women for the great office of a mother, and I am 
 informed that the modern researches of anatomists, 
 supporting the text, refer the fact to a physical 
 cause. I have learned enough from some high medi- 
 cal authorities to be warranted in saying that the 
 * Ch. i. 19. 
 
CONCLUSION. 273 
 
 sanitary qualities of the Jewish race, even in our own 
 time, and their superior longevity, appear in no small 
 manner to be due to the strict observance of the 
 Mosaic law. These remarks may be justifiable in 
 connection with what I have said of the description 
 of authority, which they attach to a particular pro- 
 hibition. Yet for the immediate purpose of the 
 argument it may suffice to have pointed out the 
 illegality of keeping swine. 
 
 Mr. Huxley, exercising his rapid judgment on 
 the text, does not appear to have encumbered him- 
 self with the labour of inquiring what anybody else 
 had known or said about it. He has thus missed a 
 point which might have been set up in support of 
 his accusation against our Lord. Some commen- 
 tators have alleged the authority of Joseph us for 
 stating that Gadara was a city of Greeks rather than 
 of Jews, from whence it might be inferred that to 
 keep swine was innocent and lawful. This is not 
 quite the place for a critical examination of the 
 matter ; but I have examined it, and have satisfied 
 myself that Josephus gives no reason whatever to 
 suppose that the population of Gadara, still less (if 
 less may be) the population of the neighbourhood, 
 and least of all the swine-herding or lower* portion 
 
 * It is clear that such people could not be the owners of 2000 
 swine. But (i) this is stated in St. Mark only; (2) it is stated 
 in a parenthesis, whereas it would naturally appear in the direct 
 
 S 
 
274 CONCLUSION. 
 
 of that population, were other than Hebrews, bound 
 by the Mosaic law. Now, this being the case, the 
 punishment inflicted upon the owners of the swine 
 by the permission of our Lord, did not constitute a 
 breach, but rather a vindication of the law ; as a 
 law would be vindicated if casks of smuggled spirits 
 were caught and broken open after landing, and their 
 contents wasted on the ground.* 
 
 Surely if these were only possibilities, instead of 
 rather cogent likelihoods, they should have been 
 examined and weighed before pronouncing sentence 
 on One who, apart from all other claims, must be 
 supposed to have had some considerable reason for 
 deviating from His usually beneficent and gentle 
 methods. And, again, such hand-over-head reason- 
 ing is hard to reconcile either with the judicial 
 temper, or with the claim, nay the exclusive claim, 
 to the honour of using " weapons of precision." 
 
 There is yet another point of great importance, in 
 regard to which I desire to challenge the methods 
 pursued by some critics of the Holy Scriptures ; and 
 I cannot do better than again proceed on the recent 
 article of Professor Huxley. He finds, on the one 
 hand, a vast mass of diversified tradition, which 
 agrees in reporting a Flood. He finds that, as we 
 
 narrative ; (3) so large a number suggests the error of a copyist 
 or very possibly a marginal gloss. 
 
 * For the further elucidation of this important case, I Lave 
 added a note at the end. 
 
CONCLUSION. 275 
 
 draw near to that central seat of civilisation in 
 Chaldsea, from which Abraham probably carried the 
 Hebrew narrative, it unfolds largely into detail, and 
 that the tradition, which thus emigrated, is supported 
 in many very remarkable particulars by the history 
 which has been recorded in the Tablets. Finding, 
 however, in the Mosaic story various statements 
 which he deems to be irreconcilable with natural 
 laws, he protests, not against those particular state- 
 ments, but against the entire relation ; and he casts 
 aside without more ado, not only the whole tale as 
 it is given in Genesis, but the large mass of collateral 
 testimony, from every quarter of the globe, which 
 supports it. Is this a scientific, is it a philosophical, 
 is it altogether a rational method of proceeding ? 
 
 Errors, and even great errors, may creep into a 
 true narration. This is a case where the tale had, 
 according to all appearances, been carried orally for 
 ages, perhaps for very many ages, before the race 
 that have transmitted it to us had the means of 
 giving it a written form. Was it not likely that 
 some, perhaps even that much, variation of parti- 
 culars would creep in ? Could they be shut out 
 except by miracle, and has the Christian Church ever 
 taught us to believe in such a miracle ? Is it not 
 the fact that, as between the Chaldee and the 
 Hebrew reports, the essence of the story remains in 
 absolute integrity ? A divine warning, a woful 
 
276 CONCLUSION. 
 
 prevalence of sin, a terrible inundation or deluge as 
 a punishment, the rescue of a small and righteous 
 remnant ; not only do these things remain, but tra- 
 ditions supporting them in several or in all points 
 have descended to us independently through a 
 hundred channels ; and we are now asked to believe 
 that, in each of these, imagination, and imagination 
 only, has been at work, and that in each of them 
 it has worked with an essentially (though not cir- 
 cumstantially) identical result ? May not this be 
 to substitute for a great physical a greater moral 
 miracle, and are we not even in some danger of 
 exchanging the unaccountable for the absurd ? 
 
 My conclusion, then, upon this part of the subject, 
 be it worth much or little, is threefold. I am 
 grateful to science, both physical and historical, for 
 the noble services it has rendered to belief by the 
 establishment of truths, or by the rational accept- 
 ance of propositions, in its own domain. I feel that 
 science is not responsible for any errors of scientists, 
 either in the misconstruction of the Bible, or in 
 offences which their share of human frailty may 
 have led them occasionally to commit against the 
 known laws of rational discussion. And, lastly, I 
 am grateful both to science and to scientists for 
 having assisted, or for having compelled, those who 
 believe to correct errors which, in the wantonness 
 of power, they may too long have cherished, and to 
 
CONCLUSION. 277 
 
 submit all their claims to free and critical investi- 
 gation. 
 
 The retreat from an untenable to a tenable posi- 
 tion is in itself an unmixed good. We feel that we 
 have redressed a wrong which had been done to 
 Truth ; and we breathe the more freely for the act. 
 Still there is a retribution in store for error ; and, 
 given all the conditions of human feeling, thought, 
 and action, this recession is an operation of in- 
 variable danger, and, for the time at least, of 
 mixed result. Happy they who accurately know, 
 and who exactly realise to themselves, in the 
 practical part of their being, what it is that they 
 ought to abandon and what to retain, nor only to 
 retain, but to uphold with a determination enhanced 
 in proportion to the difficulties of the day. But in 
 the minds of many, perhaps of the greater part, the 
 dominant sense, at least for a time, will be that 
 they have passed from a ground old and familiar to 
 one new and strange ; that they have parted with 
 something, they do not quite know how much ; 
 that if they have been wrong once, they may, 
 perhaps, be wrong again. And then it is so much 
 easier to believe in a volume, which the hand could 
 grasp, than to hold fast the mental conception of a 
 Revelation conveyed in that volume. True, such a con- 
 ception of God in the Bible, which may be, but ought 
 not to have been, a new one, is strictly and solidly 
 
278 CONCLUSION. 
 
 analogous to the familiar, and equally indispensable, 
 conceptions of God in Nature, God in Providence, 
 God in the Christian Church. But these we had 
 from our cradles ; they were thoroughly congenial 
 through use. To apply the same rule to the Bible 
 is really to integrate, rather than to disintegrate, 
 the idea of our knowledge of God. But there is 
 something like the discomfort of a new habiliment 
 to be got over ; and there are the ready, sometimes 
 perhaps the too ready, taunts of the adversary to be 
 endured. 
 
 I will not dwell at large upon other difficulties 
 springing from the errors or the incaution of believers; 
 but they are grave in their nature. Whenever, 
 under the idea of magnifying the grace or favour 
 of God, we derogate from His immutable righteous- 
 ness and justice ; and whenever, in exalting the 
 unspeakable mercy of His pardon, we unhinge its 
 inseparable alliance with a profound and penetrating 
 moral work in the creature pardoned : then we 
 draw down dangers upon the Christian system 
 greater far than can ever be entailed upon it by its 
 enemies. But there may be worse still than this. 
 Worse there will be, if the believer in Christ: holds 
 the doctrine without giving effect to it in his life ; 
 and worst of all, if while he holds it he not only is 
 betrayed into the ordinary weaknesses or excesses 
 of human nature, but forgets also, and derides or 
 
CONCLUSION. 279 
 
 disregards those primal sanctions of natural 
 morality, whicli vice itself is not always hardened 
 enough to discard. The constitution of the family, the 
 ties between its members, the nature of the woman 
 and of the man, and the relation of each one of them 
 to himself, to that self, which is entrusted by God 
 to every one of us to study and to revere, as well as 
 to cleanse, to cherish, and to sanctify ; all these 
 are regulated by laws the oldest, holiest, and most 
 profound of all. Progress may be traced and tested 
 by its regard for these sacrosanct, though unwritten, 
 ordinances. According as such regard is paid or 
 not paid, we shall know whether such progress be a 
 reality or an imposture; and Christianity itself would 
 lose all its titles were it capable of an attempt to 
 disturb them. 
 
 In the class of difficulties thus roughly suggested 
 has been, as I believe, not, indeed, a legitimate, but 
 a powerfully operative, cause for the increase of 
 scepticism. 
 
 But the gravest portion of the case remains. 
 Negation is in part, and it professes and believes 
 itself to be altogether, an affair of the intellect. It 
 proclaims, for example, that the reason why un- 
 belief has (at the moment) so much advanced, is 
 that dogmas like those of the Trinity, the Incar- 
 nation, the Sacraments, and the future judgment 
 have become insufferable to the cultivated human 
 
28o CONCLUSION. 
 
 understanding. The conviction which possesses 
 my mind, and which I may find it difficult to ex- 
 press in an unexceptionable manner, is that the main 
 operative cause, which has stimulated the growth of 
 modern negation, is not intellectual but moral ; and 
 is to be found in the increased and increasing domi- 
 nion of the things seen over the things unseen.* 
 
 Such a proposition may at first sight appear to 
 carry an odious meaning, pharisaical in the worst 
 sense of the word ; a meaning which would provoke 
 and might justify, an angry reply. It might be 
 interpreted as implying that the elevation of moral 
 character in individuals varied with and according 
 to the amount of their dogmatic belief; a proposi- 
 tion which in my view is untrue, offensive, and even 
 absurd. Had I ever been inclined to such a con- 
 ception, the experience of my life would long ago 
 have undeceived me. My meaning is a very different 
 one. I speak of that which touches not this or 
 that man only, but us all. We have altered 
 the standard of wants ; we have multiplied the 
 demands of appetite ; we have established a new 
 state of social tradition, of that tradition which 
 
 * In a work of great ability just issued, and termed " Scien- 
 tific Theology," Mr. Barber, a civil engineer, treats (chap, iii. 
 p. 41) the question, " Why does not religion reach the masses ? '' 
 His conclusion is stated thus : " The weak point is clearly the loss 
 of spiritual motive, and increased strength of natural motives as 
 springs of action and thought." 
 
CONCLUSION. 281 
 
 forms and guides us, apart from and antecedently 
 to thought or choice of our own. We have created 
 a new atmosphere, which we breathe into ourselves 
 and by breathing which our composition is modified 
 unawares, according to the ingredients which that 
 atmosphere contains. I do not say that we are the 
 creatures of what surrounds us, for we have power 
 to reflect upon and to control it. Yet, reflection 
 and control are exercised but little, in comparison 
 with the need for them ; and, in the absence of such 
 exercise, it is the surrounding atmosphere, it is the 
 ordinary standard, accepted, and to a great extent 
 necessarily accepted, without examination, that both 
 supplies the stock wherewith we individually begin 
 the great adventure of the world, and that guides 
 our life, except in the rare cases where depravity on 
 one side, or Christian heroism on the other, causes 
 us to adopt a separate standard for ourselves. 
 "Where both range only within the zone marked 
 out by fashionable opinion, it is sadly easy to point 
 out men of high virtue with little creed, and men 
 of low virtue with much creed, in the discipline 
 and conduct of their personal lives respectively. 
 And, in the region of opinion, it often seems as if 
 liberty and justice among men fared quite as well 
 with the heterodox, as with the orthodox. 
 
 A large part of these grave and even terrible 
 anomalies is no doubt due to the fact, that to each of 
 
282 CONCLUSION. 
 
 us personally our creed has come, not with the 
 throes of struggle, sacrifice, and strong conviction, 
 but rather, like most of what we hold an easy 
 tenure ! by descent, through others, not from our- 
 selves ; as matter of course, not of choice and effort ; 
 so that it sits upon us like an outward badge, rather 
 than pervades us as a principle and a power. 
 
 But, on the other hand, how true it will be found 
 that the sovereign tradition which has filled the air 
 is the Christian tradition. This it is, which has 
 made possible what without it would have been 
 wholly beyond reach. This it is, which carries 
 noiselessly into many minds and characters those 
 opinions on behalf of virtue, of self-denial, and of 
 philanthropy, together with the power of acting 
 upon them, which are often found so honourably to 
 distinguish creedless men. Just as many, who do 
 not reject Christianity, know not why or how they 
 came to hold it, so many, who have abjured Chris- 
 tianity, know not that, in the best of their thought, 
 their nature, and their practice, they are appropriat- 
 ing its fruits. What is the modern word altruism ? 
 As to its meaning, it is simply the second great 
 commandment of the Christian law, which was 
 " like unto the first." As to its form, it is merely a 
 disguise which has been put upon a borrowed idea, 
 so that it often fails to be traced to its true original. 
 And this not by a conscious, but, if the phrase may 
 
CONCLUSION. 283 
 
 be pardoned, by an unconscious fraud. We find 
 ourselves in possession of the code of Christian 
 ethicSj which has gradually pervaded life, institutions, 
 manners, and has become so blended with our ordi- 
 nary life that the memory of its divine origin has 
 faded away, as though it were like the title-deed of 
 some inheritance which we hold by unquestioned 
 use. If we wish to know what the Christian 
 tradition has done for us, we must examine the 
 moral standard of nations who have differed from us 
 mainly in not having it. For example, we must 
 look to the Greeks of the fifth century before Christ, 
 or the Romans at and after the period of the Advent, 
 whose moral degradation was not less conspicuous 
 than the intellectual splendour of the one, or the 
 constructive political genius of the other. 
 
 My twofold proposition is that we have before us 
 an increased power of things seen, and that this 
 increased power implies a diminishing hold upon us 
 of things unseen. The question is no new one. 
 Throughout the history of mankind, the invisible, 
 and the future which is part of the invisible, have 
 been in standing competition with what may be 
 
 termed the things of this world. 
 
 " Two magnets, heaven and earth, allure to bliss ; 
 The larger loadstone that, the nearer this ; 
 The weak attraction of the greater fails, 
 We nod awhile, but neighbourhood prevails." * 
 
 * Dryden, " Hind and Panther," part iii. 
 
284 CONCLUSION. 
 
 There has never been a time in human history to 
 compare with the last half century in two vital 
 respects ; the multiplication of wealth, and the multi- 
 plication of the enjoyments which wealth procures ; 
 two things separate, yet concurrent, and morally allied. 
 To take a familiar example: men (and the commodities 
 they depend on) now travel at (say) one-fourth of 
 the former cost, just when they have also an enlarge- 
 ment of their means to bear the cost of travelling. 
 True, this pervading change has gone, to an immense 
 extent, towards the cure of actual want, and towards 
 extending the sphere of that sufficiency, that modest 
 and humble comfort, which do not at all come within 
 the scope of the present argument. But it has also 
 extended largely to the spheres of leisure and of 
 comparative affluence ; and in those spheres it is 
 generally true that the apparatus of enjoyment has 
 been immensely developed in small things and 
 great, that wants and appetites have grown along 
 with it, and that if " the world was too much with 
 us " when Wordsworth wrote his noble sonnet, it is 
 more with us now than it was then. Obviously, 
 almost mathematically, the increased powers of 
 worldly attraction disturb the balance of our con- 
 dition, unless and until they are compensated by 
 increased powers of unworldly attraction and eleva- 
 tion. Whence are such compensating powers to be 
 had ? I am afraid we can hardly say that, in the 
 
CONCLUSION. 285 
 
 spheres now under view, there has been such a 
 growth in unworldly motives and ideas, as to 
 countervail the augmented strength of worldly- 
 attachment. And I apprehend that, if the unseen 
 world and the ideas belonging to it operate upon 
 us with a proportionately diminished force, it 
 follows, almost as a matter of course, that creeds, 
 which belong to that circle of unseen associations, 
 will be more dimly and therefore more feebly 
 appreciated. Materialism as a formulated system 
 is probably not upon the increase. Those who think, 
 as I am compelled to think, about the intellectual 
 calibre and capabilities of such a system, will hardly 
 include such a growth among the objects of their 
 apprehension. But the power of a silent, unavowed, 
 unconscious materialism is a very different matter. 
 I think Professor Max Miiller has said that without 
 language there cannot be thought. And this I sup- 
 pose is true of all organised and conscious thought. 
 But there are in human nature a multitude of unde- 
 veloped (so to speak) embryonic forces, of impressions 
 received from without, and finding a congenial soil 
 within, which never ripen to maturity, or make 
 their way into articulate speech, or obtain a defined 
 place in our consciousness. 
 
 My belief is that at this moment these unspoken 
 and untested movements, not so much of mind, as 
 of appetite, or, to use a milder word, propensity, 
 
286 CONCLUSION. 
 
 pressing upon mind, these not thoughts, but rudi- 
 ments of thought, are at work among us, and within 
 us ; and that, were they translated or expanded into 
 words, their sense would be no more nor less than 
 the old vulgar sense of those, who in every age have 
 held that after all this world is the only world we 
 securely know ; and that the only labour that is 
 worth labouring, the only care worth caring, the 
 only joy worth enjoying, are the labour, the care, 
 the joy that begin and end with it. What can be 
 more natural (in the lower sense of nature) than 
 that among those on whom this world really smiles, 
 together with the increasing gravitation towards a 
 terrestrial centre, too often a creeping palsy should 
 silently come over the inward life ? And how easy 
 it is to understand that, when such a palsy has set 
 in, a new and less ungenial colour is imparted to 
 whatever undermines the written Word, or the great 
 Christian tradition, or in whatever other way 
 repels, or blinds and deadens, the sense of the pre- 
 sence of God, and silences the reproaches of the 
 voice within. So that it is not either real or pre- 
 tended science, nor is it even the errors and excesses 
 of believers, illegitimately charged upon belief, that 
 form the root of the mischief. It is the increased 
 force within us of all which is sensuous and worldly 
 that furnishes every sceptical argument, good, bad, 
 or indifferent, with an unseen ally, and that 
 
CONCLUSION. 287 
 
 recruits many and many a disciple of the negative 
 teaching. He indeed dreams that by the free 
 admission of doubt he is paying homage to truth, 
 when in reality he is only pampering the inferior 
 life ; for he allows fresh coadjutors, with unex- 
 amined credentials, to enter and to reinforce its 
 already overweening power. Ideas in themselves 
 weak are backed by propension, which is ever 
 strong. A latent conspiracy is established, and 
 two knights ride forth together to the war, one of 
 them fairly exhibiting his countenance, but the other 
 with his vizor down. 
 
 And the chain of cause and consequence is some- 
 thing like this. The Christian Creed generates a 
 Christian tradition of idea and conduct. Of this 
 tradition men do not disown the precepts ; they only 
 deny the parentage. And then there appears some 
 great thinker, some really venerable man, who has 
 learned to cherish piety, while he discards dogma. 
 The next order of operators in the field carry the 
 work a stage further, and cherish morality, while 
 they discard piety. And the anti-moral, anti- 
 spiritual force, that is strong even if it be hidden 
 in us all, using what is substantive in the work as 
 a cover for what is destructive, looks on with com- 
 placency, and swells the chorus of applause. The 
 sceptical argument is in reality little more than a 
 graft, set into, and deriving its life and energy 
 
288 CONCLUSION. 
 
 mainly from, a tree stronger and more enduring than 
 itself. 
 
 In thus stating my conviction, that it is the great 
 world-power within us and around us, which at the 
 present time gives to scepticism the chief part of 
 its breadth and its impetus, it will be seen that 
 my remarks have little application to the officers or 
 the soldiers of the army ; to those who really, and it 
 may be laboriously, think out subjects admitted to 
 be arduous for themselves. They apply more to the 
 camp-followers, who largely outnumber both, and 
 whose voices are not less good than others to swell 
 an acclamation, as Falstaff's recruits were not less 
 good than others to fill a pit. The opinions of a 
 man are due partly to himself, partly to his environ- 
 ment ; in the thinking man mainly to himself, though 
 even he may be affected by latent influences never 
 consciously present to his thoughts ; mainly, some- 
 times wholly, to environment in those who do not 
 think ; and environment, I need hardly say, includes 
 the idols and the fancies, the shadows and the 
 phantoms, of the passing day. 
 
 I must, however, in drawing these observations 
 to a close, for a moment change my tone. In their 
 nature apologetic, they themselves require an apology ; 
 and an apology, too, which is also in the nature of 
 protest. They are intended to meet, so far as they 
 go, a state of things peculiar and perhaps without 
 
CONCLUSION, 289 
 
 example, in whicli multitudes of men call into ques- 
 tion the foundations of our religion and the preroga- 
 tives of our sacred books, without any reference to 
 either their capacity or their opportunities for so 
 grave an undertaking. In other matters, qualifica- 
 tion must be known or shown ; in religion, it is 
 taken for granted. 
 
 We have to bring equally into view, on the one 
 side and on the other, two great propositions. On 
 the one hand, the Christian religion stands on the 
 foundation of free and intelligent assent. On the 
 other hand every man, whatever be his position, 
 founds, and reasonably, nay, necessarily founds, the 
 actions and experiences of his life principally upon 
 trust. Upon trust, no doubt, which is both intelli- 
 gent and free ; but still upon trust. Upon trust, 
 sometimes in particular individuals, sometimes upon 
 traditions which are, in a narrower or wider sphere, 
 the traditions of his race. Every one acting a 
 responsible part in the world, be it great or small, 
 and be it acted with or without consciousness of its 
 character, is continually working for others as well 
 as for himself; is establishing and verifying on 
 behalf of others, and in lieu of others, intellectual 
 conclusions or material facts, which are needful for 
 human life, but which the conditions of human life 
 do not permit men in each case to establish and 
 verify for themselves. Still, to establish and verify 
 
 T 
 
29Q CONCLUSION. 
 
 for ourselves is best. Independent knowledge is to 
 be preferred where, and as, it can be had. The 
 limiting law is found in capacity and in opportanity. 
 Where wo cannot, and this is often, let us refuse 
 to seek refuge in the falsehood of a pretended or 
 supposed examination. 
 
 But it seems to be beyond doubt that, more 
 perhaps in these days than of old, numbers both of 
 women and of men question the religion delivered to 
 them from of old without, or in excess of, both 
 capacity and opportunity. The turn and training 
 of the mind, the nature of callings and pursuits, 
 make it for some of us reasonable and necessary to 
 put the great historic revelation on its trial as to 
 its evidences of fact and doctrine, and its relation to 
 the character and condition of man. This search- 
 ing process is in itself thoroughly normal ; and its 
 application to the subject-matter, and the commonly 
 aflfirmative results of such application, through so 
 many ages and in minds so many and so great, 
 have continually added force to the authority with 
 which the Gospel lays claim to our assent and our 
 obedience. 
 
 As to the mass of mankind, however, reason 
 teaches that the presumption is for each man in 
 favour of that which he has received, until he has 
 found solid cause to question it. This is the rule 
 taught by common sense, and established in 
 
CONCLUSION. 291 
 
 common life. It is doubt, and not belief, of the 
 things received, which ought in all cases to be put 
 upon its defence, and to show its credentials : cre- 
 dentials, not necessarily in terms of demonstration, 
 but of rational likelihood. But untested doubt, 
 which often makes a lodgment in our minds, is a 
 tenant without a title, a dangerous and in the main 
 an unlawful guest. It assumes unawares, and in 
 default of examination, the attitude of demonstrated 
 negation. It paralyses action ; it casts into the 
 shade the sense of duty, and of the Divine presence 
 encompassing us in all our ways ; and it reduces the 
 pulse of our moral health. Doubt may emancipate 
 us. Or it may enslave us. But it must be either a 
 friend or an enemy : it cannot be a neutral. And 
 those doubts, which cannot be tested, ought not to 
 be entertained as having a title to affect conduct or 
 belief. And such inquiries as, from being in- 
 adequate, are illusory, are but fresh forms of temp- 
 tation from the path of duty. Inquiry should be 
 undertaken as a solemn duty, when it can be made 
 the subject of effective prosecution. But if we have 
 not the means of effective prosecution, the so-called 
 inquiry is a pretence and an imposture ; and, under 
 its name, we become the mere victims of assumptions 
 due to prejudice, to fashion, to propensity, to appe- 
 tite, to the insidious pressure of the world-power, 
 to temptation in every one of its Protean shapes. 
 
292 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The universal vocation of man is for eacli to regulate 
 his own proper conduct in his own proper sphere. 
 A noble task for all, but even this an arduous task ; 
 a task so arduous, that none can perform it in per- 
 fection. Duty does not require us to arrive at 
 conclusions on 
 
 " Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," 
 much less on the yet deeper and darker specula- 
 tions which lie beyond, and which, so far as they 
 are formidable, all run up into one single, one per- 
 haps impenetrable problem, the presence and action 
 of evil in the world. The Christian faith and the 
 Holy Scriptures arm us with the means of neutralis- 
 ing and repelling the assaults of evil in and from 
 ourselves. That is a practical answer. Mist may 
 rest upon the surrounding landscape, but our own 
 path is visible from hour to hour, from day to day. 
 
 " I do not ask to see 
 The distant scene ; one step enough for me." 
 
 Speculation, which is purposeless, becomes irre- 
 verent; and irreverent speculation on the doings 
 and designs of God, by those who believe in Him, 
 is itself a sin. To leave the duty of governing con- 
 duct, to which every one of us is called, for other 
 functions to which we are not called, unless the 
 power of following them reasonably guarantees our 
 vocation for the work, is morally to pass from food 
 to famine. It is as if one who ]30ssesses a piece or 
 two of crockery full of cracks, should announce that 
 
CONCLUSION. 293 
 
 he desires to give a sumptuous banquet to the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 But besides acknowledging that the proper pre- 
 conditions of legitimate inquiry are adequate capacity 
 and adequate opportunity, and deploring the course 
 of those who treat naked and unreasoned doubt as 
 casting a burden of proof upon belief, we must bear 
 in mind that religious inquiry, though it may raise 
 conflicting issues, is not like a suit between parties 
 who meet upon equal terms, or the conflict of 
 Emperors warring for a territory in dispute. Our 
 Saviour astonished the people because, instead of 
 being lost in the mazes of arbitrary and vicious ex- 
 crescences that darkened the face of religion, He 
 taught them " with authority, and not as the 
 scribes." Taught them with authority, that is to 
 say, with the title to command, and with the force 
 of command. If God has given us a revelation of 
 His will, whether in the laws of our nature, or in a 
 kingdom of grace, that revelation not only illu- 
 minates, but binds. Like the credentials of an 
 earthly ambassador, it is just and necessary that the 
 credentials of that revelation should be tested. But 
 if it be found genuine, if we have proofs of its being- 
 genuine equal to those of which, in the ordinary 
 concerns of life, reason acknowledges the obligatory 
 character, then we find ourselves to be not inde- 
 pendent beings engaged in an optional inquiry, but 
 the servants of a Master, the pupils of a Teacher, 
 
294 CONCLUSION, 
 
 the children of a Father, and each of us already 
 bound with the bonds which those relations imply. 
 Then head and knee must bow before the Eternal, and 
 the Divine will must be embraced and followed by 
 man with all his heart, with all his mind, with all 
 his soul, and with all his strength. 
 
 I have yet one more closing word. I have desired 
 to make this humble offering at the shrine of Chris- 
 tian belief in general, and have sought wholly to 
 avoid the questions which concern this or that par- 
 ticular form of it. For there is a common cause, 
 which warrants and requires common efforts. Far 
 be from me the intention hereby to undervalue par- 
 ticular beliefs. I have not intentionally said a word 
 to disparage any of them. It will in my view be 
 an evil day, and a day of calamity, when men are 
 tempted, even by the vision of a holy object, to abate, 
 in any region or in the smallest fraction, the authority 
 of conscience, or to forget that the supreme title and 
 the supreme efficacy of truth lie in its integrity. 
 
 Note on the Gadarene Miracle. 
 
 [The miracle of the possessed Gadarene, or Ger- 
 gesene, raises in so pointed a form the question of 
 demoniacal possession generally, that it has supplied 
 the central point in the discussion of the case, and 
 that other points, less salient on the surface, have 
 
CONCLUSION. 295 
 
 received a smaller share of attention than they 
 deserve. 
 
 The question may of course fairly be put, whether 
 the movement of the devils by permission into the 
 swine involved an injustice to an innocent owner, 
 which would not be at all in harmony with the 
 usually beneficent character of our Lord's ministry, 
 and especially of His miracles. 
 
 Both Bishop Wordsworth* in his Commentary 
 and Archbishop Trench refer to Josephus. The 
 Bishop says, " Gadara is mentioned by Josephus as a 
 Greek city, and hence the swine." I am, however, 
 under the impression that both these excellent authors 
 may have insufficiently examined the effect of the pas- 
 sages in Josephus, which relate to the subject. These, 
 so far as I know, are three in number, and are found 
 in the " Antiq. Jud.," xvii. 13,4, and the " De Bello 
 Jud.,'' iii. 7, I, and iv. 7, 3. In the first-named of 
 these Josephus undoubtedly says that Gadara was, like 
 Gaza and Hippos, a Greek city, Hellenis polis ; but 
 he explains his meaning by adding, that these cities 
 had been taken by the Roman authority out of the 
 Diocese of Jerusalem, and added to that of Syria. 
 The sense seems to be not that these cities were 
 inhabited by a Greek population, but that they had 
 politically been taken out of Judaea and added to 
 Syria, which I presume was classified as simply 
 * l7i loc, and Trench on the Miracles, p. 185. 
 
296 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Hellenic, a portion of the great Greek Empire erected 
 by Alexander. As to the population of Gadara, the 
 passage '^De Bello Jud.," iii. 7, i , appears absolutely to 
 prove that it was a Jewish and not a Greek popula- 
 tion ; while Josephus also specifies, in ''De Bello Jud.," 
 iv. 7, 3, that many of the inhabitants were wealthy. 
 For he mentions, in iii. 7, i, that when Vespasian 
 took the city he caused all the adult males to be put 
 to death, and that he did this partly on account of a 
 particular misdeed, but partly (misei tou ethnous) out 
 of hatred towards the nation or race, evidently the 
 Jewish nation, not possibly the Greek. The testi- 
 mony of Josephus, therefore, does nothing to cast a 
 doubt upon the natural, and in the absence of 
 counter-evidence necessary, supposition that our Lord 
 in this case had to deal with Hebrews^ the ordinary 
 subjects of His ministry, bound to the law of Moses, 
 and on this occasion, as it would seem, justly 
 punished for infringing it. 
 
 Hudson, in his commentary on Josephus, " Antiq. 
 Jud.," xvii. 13, 4, gives a strong opinion, with his 
 reasons, that Gadara is a wrong reading, and that 
 we ought to read Gerasa. If he is right, the pre- 
 sumption founded on the phrase Hellenis jpolis at once 
 disappears.] 
 
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