•■ ■■■■-.■•- SJB '■■■ • 
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 Professor SMITH on THE BIBLE, 
 
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 Or MARCUS D0DS on INSPIRATION. 
 
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 ■ . . 
 REV. JAMES SMITH, M.A 
 
 FREE CHVBCH, TAULANJ). 
 
^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^ 
 
 
Sept. IW 
 
 Professor SMITH on THE BIBLE, 
 
 AND 
 
 Dr MARCUS D0DS on INSPIRATION. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JAMES SMITH, M.A., 
 
 FREE CHURCH, TARLANI). 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 EDINBUEGH: JOHN GREIG & SON. 
 
 EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW: JOHN MENZIES & CO. 
 ABERDEEN : A. & K. MILNE. 
 
 187 7. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The following pages are substantially a reprint of a series of Articles 
 which appeared lately in the Aberdeen Journal. They appear in their 
 present form at the request of many friends who then read them. The 
 author lays no claim to any special fitness for dealing with the subject ; 
 having been led to study it to some extent for his own satisfaction, he 
 found that the main elements of it were within the reach and grasp of 
 men of ordinary intelligence, whatever their calling or training may be. 
 He professes to deal here, so far as Professor Smith is concerned, only 
 with the Article " Bible ;" and he trusts that what he has written may, 
 as well as the whole controversy, tend in some measure to promote a 
 better knowledge of the Word of God, and a more loyal and devout 
 acceptance of its statements. 
 
o^^m. 
 
 '. 
 
 
 PROFESSOR SMITH AND "THE BIBLE. 
 
 I. — COMPENDIUM OF PROFESSOR SMITHS VIEWS. 
 
 The literature of the Old Testament embraces two periods — first, a 
 period of religious productivity, and then, a period of stagnation and 
 conservatism. 
 
 The first period extends from the time of Moses to that of Ezra, 
 ihuing which there was a continual conflict between spiritual religion 
 and various forms of polytheism. The spiritual religion was compelled 
 during this conflict to prove itself capable of growth and development, 
 so as to vindicate its superiority to the false systems. In Ezra's time 
 the spiritual religion triumphed. 
 
 From Joshua to Samuel we find a state of political disintegration and 
 tribal jealousy, during which the worship of Jehovah was kept from 
 being lost by the priesthood serving at the sanctuary of the ark. From 
 the priestly ranks Samuel arose as a reformer to reunite the nation and 
 revive the true worship. He did this, however, not as a priest, but as a 
 prophet. (634 a.) 
 
 A priesthood is always conservative, not creative ; but the spiritual 
 religion could oidy live as a growing and creative power. It is the 
 function of the priest to conserve the traditions of the past ; it is the 
 prophet who has the faculty of seeing religious truth in new lights. 
 From Samuel's time the priest falls into the background, the prophetic 
 ideas being distasteful to his aristocratic conservatism. 
 
 The prophet's work has hitherto been misunderstood in consequence of 
 a twofold traditional prejudice — (1) Undue prominence has been given to 
 the predictive element, and attention has thereby been withdrawn from 
 the influence exerted on contemporary religious life; and (2) it has been 
 assumed, in accordance with Jewish notions, that all the ordinances, and 
 nearly all the doctrines, which are found in the post-canonical period 
 were delivered by Moses at the very outset. 
 
 Thus the prophets were regarded partly as inspired preachers of old 
 truths, and partly as predicting future events. But, in reality, they 
 were leaders of a great development whereby both the doctrines and the 
 ordinances were advanced from a crude and imperfect state to a mature 
 and adequate form. It is only on this view that we can have a just 
 insight into the prophet's work. 
 
 The laws of grammatico historical exegesis applied to the Old Testament 
 have proved the development theory to be the only true one, both as 
 regards doctrine and ritual. Development in ritual has been less readily 
 
I 
 
 Conceded than development in doctrine, because it involved a change of 
 view regarding the authorship of the Pentateuch. But the facts are 
 decisive. For instance, there is a manifest development of ritual shewn 
 by comparing the following texts — Exod. xx. 24 ; Deut. xxxiii. 19 ; 
 1 Kings xix. 1 4 ; 2 Kings xxii. and xxiii. ; and the last chapters of 
 Ezekiel. (634 b.) The doctrine and practice in reference to "high 
 places " are equally conclusive. Samuel and Elijah approved of the 
 practice. It was exposed however to heathenish corruptions, and was 
 frequently attacked by the prophets of the eighth century, under whose 
 influence the high places were abolished by Hezekiah. But their 
 abolition was not permanent. In Josiah's time a law-book was found 
 in the temple and acknowledged by the high priest, in which the 
 principle of a single sanctuary is laid down in accordance with Deuter- 
 onomy and in opposition to Exodus. 
 
 The indisputable conclusion is that the true spiritual religion was not 
 complete in authoritative documents from the time of Moses, but was a 
 growing system both in ritual and doctrine, and was propagated mainly 
 by personal effort. 
 
 The priestly ordinances were mainly published by the oral decisions of 
 the priests, and these were regarded as law ( = Torah), and are so called 
 up to the time of the Exile. It is probable there were written collec- 
 tions as old as Moses ; but these, as well as the traditional ritual, were 
 modified from time to time by the prophets and the priests to meet 
 the varying exigencies of their own times. This is proved by the 
 example of Ezekiel and the new law book of Josiah's time, which 
 obviously contained provisions which had been no part of the law 
 hitherto. 
 
 By the eighth century the prophets began to commit their teachings to 
 writing, and these earlier writings were frequently cited by those who 
 come after. 
 
 Besides the direct efforts of priests and prophets, spiritual religion was 
 diffused in the literary products of the poets and musicians who had 
 flourished as early as Samuel's time, and in the written history of the 
 nation in which the theocratic spirit generally prevailed. In this history 
 we find a third element — in addition to the priestly and prophetic — in 
 the religious life of Israel, viz., the cultured lay element. Though 
 generally the mass of the people were crass and unspiritual, there was a 
 deep strong current of spiritual faith among them, as is proved by the 
 fact that a man like Amos could be a prophet. Indeed, prophecy itself 
 is, in one sense, the highest development of this lay element, which 
 appears also in the Psalms, the Proverbs, and kindred works. (635 a.) 
 
 The captivity led to the triumph of spiritual religion. It was no 
 longer possible to worship Jehovah as a tutelary god of the commonwealth. 
 Those who returned from the exile had nothing left them but to obey 
 Jehovah's law, and wait for the promised deliverer. This was recognised 
 in the new institutions of Ezra and Nehemiah. The spiritual religion 
 being now victorious became stationary and stagnant. The prophetic 
 spirit had long been decadent, and it soon died, the national religion 
 being now purely conservative. The sacred literature of the past formed 
 the stay and guide of the leaders of the new theocracy. Ezra came to 
 Jerusalem with no fresh message from the Lord, but with the book of 
 the Law of Moses, i.e., the Pentateuch, whose recognition as the rule of 
 
5 
 
 the theocracy was an admission that the religious ordinances admitted of 
 no further development. The living prophetic voice now yields to the 
 written canon. The tradition is probably correct which attributes the 
 second part of the Hebrew canon, " The Prophets," to Nehemiah, who 
 may also have commenced the third part. (635 b.) It was not com- 
 pleted, however, till long after, and seems to have been open to receive 
 additions recommended by their own intrinsic value, or by bearing an 
 ancient and venerable name. This is corroborated by the fact that the 
 third part, the Hagiographa, held a subordinate position to the "Law" 
 and the " Prophets." 
 
 The historical books form two parallel series — 
 
 (1.) The Book of Chronicles contracts the earlier history into mere 
 genealogies, and dwells mainly on the kingdom of Judah. It is continued 
 in (lie narrative of Ezra and Neliemiah, and the whole is the work of one 
 author not earlier than the close of the Persian Empire. (630 a.) 
 
 (2.) The Pentateuch and the earlier prophets form another continuous 
 narrative. These, however, are made up of a variety of different records 
 belonging to different ages, and exhibiting many varieties of style, so 
 combined as to form now a single narrative. The tradition that Moses 
 was the author of the Pentateuch was mere conjecture. A Jewish scribe 
 who regarded the sacred books as a complete history of Israel would 
 naturally ascribe it to him, and identify other great leaders with other 
 parts of that history. But a more careful examination shews this to be 
 a mistake. 
 
 The Pentateuch was written after the occupation of Canaan, and 
 Joshua is a continuation of it. (Exod. xvi. 35; Josh. v. 12; Gen. 
 1. 24, 25 ; Exod, xiii. 19; Josh. xxiv. 32.) Names are found in it 
 which were only given after the occupation — e.g. Dan, Hebron. The 
 conquest is supposed as already accomplished, and even kings were ruling 
 in Israel. (Deut. ii. 12; Numb. x\. 32 ; Gen. xii. 6 ; Gen. xxxvi. 31.) 
 
 It is futile to base any theory of authorship on the present division of 
 the books. The history has not been carried on consecutively by 
 successive additions, but is composed of several narratives combined into 
 unity by an editor. Thus we find frequently duplicate narratives of the 
 same events, and diverse laws on the same subject so divergent — not to 
 say discordant — as to preclude the idea of one author (compare Exod. 
 xx.-xxiii. with Exod. xxxiv., and the six laws about the Passover, Exod. 
 xii. 1-28; Exod. xiii. 3-10; Exod. xxiii. 15; Exod. xxxiv. 18; Lev. 
 xxiii. 5-H ; Deut. xvi). (636 b.) 
 
 Astruc's famous discovery that two narratives, a Jehovistic and 
 Elohistic, can be traced in Genesis, led to the discovery of similar 
 parallel narratives elsewhere. The unmistakeable marks of the Elohistic 
 author run through the whole of the Pentateuch and Joshua, though the 
 exclusive use of Elohim ceases from the call of Moses. This document 
 can be extracted complete, and its discovery is the great event of Old 
 Testament criticism. The results of criticism shew that the Elohistic 
 author is priestly, the Jehovistic prophetic, and that there is a third, a 
 cultured layman, who has edited portions which are neither Jehovistic 
 nor Elohistic. The story of Joseph, e.g., is very different from the 
 Elohistic document, though it uses Elohim. This third author is a 
 northern Israelite ; but it is impossible to extract his contributions with 
 accuracy. We thus find in Old Testament authorship the same three 
 
elements — the priestly, the prophetic, and the lay — which run through 
 the whole Old Testament development. From the time of the Judges 
 the priestly element becomes more obscure, and only the other two are 
 clearly traceable. (637 a.) 
 
 The lay writer appears to be nearest to the events narrated, and on his 
 record the prophetical narrative is based. Whether each narrative is by 
 the same hand throughout, from Genesis to Kings, or whether each is 
 the work of various authors shewing the same tendency, is uncertain. 
 The date is also uncertain ; all that we know certainly is that these 
 three narratives existed in Hosea's time, because they are clearly referred 
 to by him. 
 
 A great controversy has raged regarding the third narrative, or series of 
 narratives, ie., the Elohistic or Levitical. This controversy has turned 
 mainly on some of the legal parts of the Pentateuch, such as Exod. 
 xx.-xxiii., which is a fundamental sketch of the theocratic constitution, 
 and the greater part of Deuteronomy, which is a development, and in 
 some parts an alteration, of it. It is most probable that the writer of 
 Deuteronomy was the editor of the whole history from Genesis to Kings. 
 The style is certainly peculiar, and recurs in various passages all through 
 these books ; still it is a style which might easily be imitated, and it may 
 have been so by later writers. In any case, it cannot possibly be as old 
 as Moses. Some episodes in the subsequent history are unintelligible, on 
 the supposition that Deuteronomy was known to the actors. (Comp. e.g. 
 Deut. xvii. with Judg. viii. 23, and especially with 1 Sam. viii. 7. 
 Comp. also the laws about high places.) Deuteronomy is known to 
 Jeremiah, but to no earlier prophet, and the whole theological standpoint 
 of it is in accordance with that period. It gives the most spiritual view 
 of the law, and if it be placed at the beginning of the theocratic develop- 
 ment, the whole subsequent history is rendered unintelligible. (637 b.) 
 The author puts his work into the mouth of Moses, because he is not 
 giving a new law, but expounding aud developing Mosaic principles. 
 This involves nothing like pious fraud ; it was quite natural that he 
 should adopt such a course. 
 
 If then the lay element was known in Hosea's time, and the prophetical 
 element — comprising the whole of Deuteronomy and portions of the other 
 books — belongs to the time of Jeremiah, the great question remains : To 
 what period do the Elohistic or Levitical portions belong 1 These com- 
 prise the whole of Leviticus and the larger portions of Exodus and 
 Numbers. There is no certain reference to this document before the 
 exile, and critics are so divided in opinion as to make our whole con- 
 struction of the origin of the historical books uncertain. The Levitical 
 law gives a graduated hierarchy of priests and Levites. In Deuteronomy 
 all are equal. Ezekiel xliv. shews that the hierarchical law was not in 
 foi*ce in the period immediately preceding the captivity, and apparently 
 never had been in force. There are accordingly two views of this legisla- 
 tion. The one is that the hierarchy — we might say the very idea of a 
 hierarchical priesthood — is the latest development of the Old Testament 
 law, and therefore the Levitical element is the last of the historical series. 
 The other view is that the hierarchy existed long before the exile as a 
 legislative programme, though it was never fully carried out till after 
 Ezra's time. All the more elaborate symbolic observances are connected 
 with the hierarchical idea, and hence the solution of the question as to the 
 
priority of Leviticus or Deuteronomy is essential to a right understanding 
 both of the theology and history of the Old Testament, and this priority 
 is as yet undetermined.* 
 
 How have all these elements been fused into one? In this way. The 
 Semitic genius does not lie in the direction of organic structure. Part is 
 added to part, and docs not grow out of it. Thus the Biblical history is 
 a stratification, not an organism. Anonymous writing and the utter 
 ignorance of anything like; copyright facilitate the process. A copyist 
 adds and modifies as lie pleases; he need not distinguish in any way 
 between the original work and his own comments and alterations. He 
 could compile a treatise by selections from various authors, and harmonise 
 them in his own way. (638 a.) 
 
 Our present Psalter was compiled by making selections from earlier 
 collections. The titles arc of little or no value. The Psalms ascribed to 
 Daviil arc probably taken from collections which really contained some 
 poems of his. The authorship of two or three psalms may with confidence 
 lie attributed to David, but the greater part of them must remain 
 anonymous. (638 b.) The 51st Psalm was obviously composed during 
 the desolation of the temple. The date of the latest psalms is very 
 doubtful. Perhaps the Psalter was completed before the latest books of 
 the canon were written, or perhaps some of the psalms are as late as 
 the Maccabees. We have no means of determining accurately. 
 
 The Song of Solomon describes the pure love of the Shulamite for her 
 betrothed, and how it triumphed over Solomon's seductive wiles. Its 
 object is political as well as ethical, and belongs probably to the early 
 days of the northern kingdom. f (639 a.) 
 
 The Book of Proverbs contains, no doubt, many of Solomon's aphorisms ; 
 but we cannot be sure of the authorship. Some of them were collected 
 by Hezekiah, who of course was no ciitic, and cannot have had any sure 
 means of proving their authenticity. In fact from the variety of colouring 
 it is manifest that the authorship extends over centuries. 
 
 Ecclesiastes was written long after the exile. 
 
 The noblest parts of the Old Testament are those of earliest date, such 
 as the Book of Job, which was probably as early as the seventh century 
 B.C. The author seems to have laid hold on an old traditional name, and 
 to have attached to it the poetical incidents of his own invention for 
 didactic purposes. The speeches of Elihu have been interpolated by a 
 later hand. There is no reason why the same art may not be found in 
 other books also. Jonah is generally regarded as an example ; and some 
 add Esther. 
 
 The poetical books, like the historical, are anonymous, and copyists 
 have taken great libeities with them. 
 
 The earliest prophetical books belong to the eighth century b.c. Joel 
 may have lived in the ninth. The older prophets did not commit their 
 oracles to writing, and the writings we have are very much abridged, i. e. 
 the oral utterances of the writers were much more voluminous. Some of 
 the prophetic books shew a unity of subject and composition ; e.g., Amos : 
 others, as Isaiah, are composed of several books. Ezekiel appears to have 
 
 * So far as we can gather, Professor Smith has himself come to no conclusion on 
 this point, but leaves it in this undecided state. 
 
 t Elsewhere Professor Smith says the deletion of this book from the Canon was 
 providentially averted by the allegorical theory. 
 
8 
 
 written what had never been spoken. (639 b.) Prophetic books were in 
 circulation before the exile, and these were quoted by subsequent prophets ; 
 but by the time an. attempt was made to collect and edit the sacred books 
 many of them were lost ; some of them existed hi a fragmentary state 
 only, and the authorship was not always known. Some prophecies have 
 their authors' names, others are quite anonymous. They were all ulti- 
 mately arranged in four books. It is not safe to assume that the author- 
 ship is always correctly assigned. 
 
 The predictive element in prophecy is simply the encouraging of the 
 godly and the warning of the wicked among the prophet's contemporaries, 
 by declarations of the righteous purpose of God concerning them. 
 
 The prophet always starts from present sins, present needs, &c, and 
 there is no reason to believe that he ever received a revelation which was 
 not intended directly and pointedly for his own time. 
 
 On this principle the latter chapters of Zechariah cannot have been 
 written by him, but must have been soon after Hosea's time. Similarly, 
 Isaiah xl.-lxvi. belong to the time of the exile, the author being some 
 " Great Unnamed." (641 a.) 
 
 In Christ's time there was a learned and a popular literature. The 
 literary party — the Scribes — had adopted a fantastic exegesis of legal 
 traditions which were opposed by Christ. They made void the teaching 
 and legislation of the Old Testament, but Christ came to fulfil them, to 
 carry them forward to spiritual completeness Thus he attached himself 
 to the Deuteronomic conception of the law. He saw also in the Prophets 
 and the Psalms the image of his own experience and work as a teacher, 
 and specially as the Messiah. The Old Testament bore witness to him in 
 the spirit of its teaching and the mission of its prophets, and he recognised 
 and accepted this testimony to himself. 
 
 The popular literature in vogue was full of apocalyptic mysteries and 
 symbolic utterances, put into the mouths of ancient patriarchs, containing 
 golden visions of deliverance and vengeance. These Messianic notions 
 had become very crass and earthly. The new hopes of the Christians 
 found expression in the revival of prophetic gifts, but the symbolical and 
 the apocalyptic also remained, and these continued after the new prophetic 
 spirit had died away. It culminated in the Revelation of St John, which 
 is admitted to be of the Apostolic age, although its authorship is questioned 
 and is really matter of no moment. 
 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by Paul, but by one closely 
 akin to him ; it may have been Barnabas, or it may have been Apollos, a 
 man of Alexandrian training. Alexandrian influences are visible in it. 
 
 The Gospel of John is an unhistoric product of abstract reflection. 
 
 The Synoptical Gospels are a non- Apostolic digest of Apostolic tradition, 
 both spoken and written, gradually compiled and arranged. 
 
 II. — CRITICISM AND CRITICS. 
 
 It is an axiom in Jurisprudence that Law has no passions, that it is no 
 respector of persons, and that it moves in a region above the agitations to 
 which mortals are exposed. In like manner Critics claim for their special 
 depai'tment an entire exemption from prejudices and foregone conclusions. 
 
Others are liable to be misled because they are ignorant of Criticism and 
 are at the mercy of prejudices and "Idols" of various kinds. It is 
 unfortunate however both for Law and Criticism, that while the abstract 
 idea is beautiful, it cannot in this present world lie anything else than an 
 abstract idea, inasmuch as the law-makers and the critics are men of like 
 passions with ourselves, equally liable to make mistakes, equally liable to 
 
 have preconceived opinions and to have, consciously or unconsciously, 
 adopted foregone conclusions. The history of Biblical < 'riticism since the 
 beginning of the present century furnishes ample proof of the fact that 
 the subjective element, the individual stand-point of the critic, his theo- 
 logical views, and other such-like considerations have a powerful influence 
 in directing his critical methods, and shaping his conclusions. 
 
 The extent to which the subjective element has dominated critical 
 Opinions could scarcely lie better illustrated than by considering the chaos 
 of conflicting conclusions to which men — all professing to be above the 
 miserable condition of having any forgeone conclusion or dogmatic views 
 to serve — have been led by their inquiries regarding the date' and author- 
 ship of the Pentateuch. The time of Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, David, 
 Solomon, Josiah, the Exile, has each been assigned. It has been cut lip 
 into two, three, four, or even more, different portions, of which one critic 
 will have it that the ritual is earliest, another the historical, another the 
 prophetic ; while editors, and revisers, and narrators have been called 
 into requisition to remove all difficulties when the critics began to find 
 themselves cornered. 
 
 It would be a deplorable mistake to suppose that at last the critics are 
 agreed. They are as busy at the present moment devouring each other 
 as ever ; and a new crop is constantly springing up to devour and to be 
 devoured. And yet each has perfect confidence in his own method and 
 conclusions ; others may be unscientific in their methods or illogical in 
 their conclusions, but far be it from him to be so ! The history of 
 criticism should certainly have taught its students caution and humility ; 
 but it is doubtful if they have yet learned these lessons to much 
 advantage. Professor Smith's article on the "Bible" is certainly 
 disfigured, and its value greatly diminished by an unseemly dogmatism 
 and unqualified assertion on disputed points on which critics as capable 
 as himself, and with more critical experience, take a different new. 
 Conclusions are said to follow indisputably, which do not follow at all ; 
 facts are regarded as obvious which are very questionable ; theories and 
 hypotheses are put forward as if they were well established conclusions 
 universally accepted ; we are told all about how the ancient Hebrew 
 authors did their work in an off-hand easy way, as if the writer had been 
 brought up among them j facts are spoken of as decisive which are not 
 even facts, or at least very doubtful. Such expressions as these — " could 
 not fail to be," "clearly made out," "appears most plainly," "the law was 
 not dreamed of," "beyond doubt," "it is impossible to comprehend," " he 
 naturally presents his views in the mouth of Moses," "of course a scribe 
 would naturally leap to the conclusion" — all employed regarding matters 
 by no means settled beyond dispute are not fitted to secure confidence in 
 the methods, conclusions, or unimpassioned judicial calmness of the critic. 
 To one who is not a critic it does sound rather odd to hear it coolly 
 asserted in an off-hand way that Jewish Scribes would naturally leap to 
 the conclusion that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, but now after three 
 
10 
 
 millenniums from Moses' time it has been discovered by some strangers 
 and foreigners that their natural conclusion was based upon a mere 
 conjecture ! With all deference to the criticism and the critics, we must 
 express our fear that it is too late in the day even for them to tell us all 
 about the historical and literary conditions under which the Hebi-ew 
 authors wrote, and to explain all the circumstances of the collection and 
 transmission of then- writings. Yet this is the task which Professor 
 Smith set himself to accomplish. (634 a.) Considering how very scanty 
 the literature of the period is, how meagre is the area from which facts 
 and inductions can be drawn ; and considering farther that the Pentateuch 
 has to be brought nearly a thousand years nearer our time than is 
 generally understood, in order to bring it within the range of critical 
 artillery at all, we fear the critics will after all be obliged to leave it very 
 much where they found it — in the hands of the Jewish Scribe with the 
 name of Moses still upon the title-page. When even Sir Walter Scott 
 could be deceived by a piece of contemporary authorship in his own 
 tongue appearing under the guise of an ancient ballad, we suspect modem 
 criticism can scarcely expect to succeed well with this task, when the data 
 are a dead language, a few brief treatises, and intervening millenniums. 
 If it be futile, as Professor Smith says it is, to attempt to base any theory 
 of authorship on the present division into books (636 b.), how much more 
 futile must it be for him to attempt a reconstruction of these books on a 
 basis of a more reliable kind ! 
 
 We are not at all disposed to concede the claims which Professor Smith 
 makes on behalf of criticism and what it has done. In his statement or 
 "Apologia" sent to the Free Church College Committee he does not 
 hesitate to affirm that critical views of Israel's history make it far more 
 intelligible than the old traditional view which frequently obscured the 
 theocratic development which, it seems, criticism has brought to light. 
 " Criticism tries to explain difficulties which the older exegesis sought only 
 to explain away." If it tries, it can scarcely be said to succeed; otherwise 
 how comes it that, almost without exception, the foremost men in the 
 Free Church — Dr Duff, Dr Begg, Dr Rainy, Dr Smeaton, Dr Moody 
 Stuart, Dr Brown, and many others, agree in regarding Professor Smith's 
 views as calculated to raise difficulties, not to remove them 1 There are 
 difficulties on any view, and there will continue to be ; but it would be 
 hard to point to any serious difficulty which has been removed by the 
 upsetting of traditional views without raising more formidable difficulties 
 in their place. 
 
 We are told, also, that traditional views have long hindered a just 
 insight into the work of the prophets, which criticism is now enabling us 
 to understand. But where are all these great discoveries '? Where is the 
 new light that criticism has created 1 Professor Smith's article gives none 
 of it ; neither does any of it appear in his statement to the College Com- 
 mittee. True, he mentions some difficulty which he seems to have had 
 about the " high places," and which criticism has dissipated ; but the 
 ordinary intellect may be disposed to wonder where the difficulty is. But 
 then the average intellect is probably not critical. He tells us, moreover, 
 that similar examples might be multiplied ; and yet, strange as it may 
 seem, this solitary illustration is brought to the front again and again, 
 and even when such a tempting opportunity was afforded him by the 
 College; Committee of multiplying examples and convincing them that he 
 
11 
 
 was right, he falls back again upon this solitary specimen ! And after all. 
 it is not tradition but Professor Smith that is wrong. 
 
 We believe traditional views are unwarrantably depreciated, and 
 critical views unwarrantably lauded. No doubt it has happened thai 
 
 tradition lias sometimes made void the "Word of God ; but thai reminder 
 
 would e< • ill from the mouth of criticism ; and it is almost ludicrousto 
 
 be told by Professor Smith that much unbelief has been produced by the 
 old way of trying to reconcile contradict ions, and that criticism has suc- 
 ceeded in arresting such unbelief by uniting the contradictions in a higher 
 unity. Again we ask — What are these grand achievements ( Where are 
 they to be found? It is strange that no one appears to know anything of 
 the greal triumphs that the critics have achieved except the critics 
 
 themselves. 
 
 We demur in toto to the assumed antagonism between what are called 
 traditional and critical views. Professor Smith writes as if traditional 
 views had no basis whatever — were a mere chaos which the critics had been 
 providentially raised up to reduce to order and intelligibility. "Jewish 
 notions" are sneered at as if, of course, they could know nothing about 
 the transmission of their own Brciptures. Who knows anything about 
 these matters, who ever did or could know anything about them, but 
 modern critics 1 It would surely be strange if Ezra and Nehemiah had 
 not as good means of determining the age and authorship of the Penta- 
 teuch, or rlezekiah the age and authorship of the Proverbs as Professor 
 Smith has. But the "notions" of such men are set aside by the 
 flippant assumption that of course they were not critics, and had no 
 infallible means of knowing. The critics only have that ! 
 
 It would have been more seemly if Professor Smith had not so 
 contemptuously ignored all criticism except that of the school to which 
 he unfortunately belongs, It would have been little more than honest to 
 have given some hint that there were still some critics whose views went 
 to uphold the traditional doctrine on scientific, critical, literary grounds. 
 It is known to the churches, although Professor Smith seems in blissful 
 ignorance, that many of the ablest critics, men quite abreast of the most 
 advanced rank of scholars, have then faith in the received views con 
 tinned, and not overthrown, by their critical labours ; and that if 
 cricitism has tended to unsettle received opinions, criticism has also 
 tended to settle them again. To talk of criticism and tradition as if 
 they mutually excluded each other, as if any one who prefers the old 
 paths could only do so because he had never studied the question, is 
 calculated only to provoke a smile. 
 
 "It is a vulgar mistake," says Professor Smith,* "to assume an almost 
 necessary connection between critical opinions and unbelief,'' in which 
 sentence he quietly and, as it would seem, unconsciously substitutes the 
 phrase. •• critical opinions," for "opinions of critics of the negative school.'' 
 The College Committee had emphasized his agreement with the negative 
 school; they expressed their regret, they called his attention to the fact 
 that his critical opinions often diverged from those of "believing theo- 
 logians ;" and he replies that they are coimtenancing the vulgar mistake 
 just mentioned ! In other words, he contemptuously ignores the dis- 
 tinction which the committee carefully made between the opinions of 
 "negative critics" and those of " believing theologians, " as if the latter 
 * College Committee's Report, App. IT. pp. 21, '22. 
 
12 
 
 were wholly unworthy of notice ; and, a few sentences farther on, this 
 metamorphosis becomes still more complete by a farther substitution of 
 the phrase, "sOund criticism." Sound criticism is not associated with 
 unbelief ; as if the committee had said it was ! Hitherto the subjective 
 element, the character of the theology, doctrinal views, have really deter- 
 mined the critical conclusions. Believing theologians have not, as a rule, 
 found it necessary to contrast criticism and tradition ; negative theologians 
 alone have done so. It remains to be seen whether Professor Smith is to 
 reconcile the contradictions which have hitherto prevailed in a higher 
 critical unity. 
 
 Notwithstanding Professor Smith's ignoring of the orthodox critical 
 school, it is well for us to know that it has possessed and still possesses a 
 continuity and vitality, a homogeneousness and unity, which we look for 
 in vain in the other schools — or chaos of schools. Many of the con- 
 clusions at which the self-styled higher criticism has arrived would never 
 have been heard of apart from the foregone conclusions of the theologians 
 who arrived at them. It has been claimed for Professor Smith that he 
 has forced into the service of the Faith many processes and results which 
 have hitherto served only the interests of unbelief. We have failed to 
 see what service the Faith has received at his hands ; we have only heard 
 as yet the shouting of the Philistines. 
 
 There is no fear that anything will be clone by the Courts of the Free 
 Church to " trammel the hands " of any of its professors in the prosecution 
 of honest, earnest, critical study, or to prevent them from adopting such 
 methods as may be most conducive to that end. But, at the same time, 
 a clear distinction mvist be drawn between abstract theories about criticism 
 and the concrete results of it. One may concede to the utmost the right 
 of free speech, and, at the same time, have strong objections to particular 
 utterances. It would be perhaps unreasonable to expect the critics to see 
 it in this light, but it is really quite true that it might sometimes be useful 
 — in the interests of criticism itself — that it were set free from the one- 
 sided and unscientific opinions of its own omnipotence and sacredness into 
 which its worshippers are so apt to fall. It is easy to raise a cry about 
 trammelling people's hands, and obstructing the advance of thought, &c, &c. 
 But in fact, if the engine runs off the rails, the sooner it is stopped the 
 better. "The rails! These are just traditional views and ignorant 
 prejudices of uncritical people ; is criticism to be trammelled by them 1 " 
 So we hear some of the critics exclaim. And we reply that, when the critics 
 publish their opinions to the world, they must really submit to the humili- 
 ating necessity of having them judged by the " sanctified common sense " 
 of the Church, and if they are likely to collide with other views which the 
 Church holds more precious, there can be no harm in plainly telling them so. 
 
 It would be a pity if the opinion should be generally entertained that 
 the questions involved, the results at which criticism arrives, are beyond 
 the reach of ordinary theologians, and competent only for " specially 
 equipped scholars." N"o doubt ordinary men are not qualified to carry out 
 all the investigations needed to arrive at these results ; but they may be 
 quite able to understand them when presented to them. Men must 
 necessarily devote themselves to special studies before they can make all 
 the experiments and tabulate the results in any department of knowledge ; 
 but others may be interested in these experiments and quite competent to 
 judge of the results when set before them. Mxist I be able to conduct an 
 
]?, 
 
 Ar.-tic expedition before I can understand the results which navigators 
 have arrived al I Is it impossible forme to understands scientific lecture 
 because all the processes have not been personally superintended by myself I 
 Axe the gentlemen of the jury totally unable to give a verdict, because 
 they could nol have pleaded the case like the counsel learned in the law I 
 
 Am | wholly unlit to consider or have any Opinion about the bearing of 
 critical results, because 1 have not myself made all the critical investi- 
 gations ( It is just possible that there may lie hundreds of ministers and 
 thousands of intelligent lay elders in the Free Church who are more truly 
 qualified to give a calm judicial opinion upon the bearing of the author 
 ship and contents of the Pentateuch upon the doctrine of Inspiration than 
 Professor Smith himself. 
 
 The Church has no reason to fear criticism; far from it. Critical 
 examination — sound criticism — will assuredly confirm the faith of the 
 Church ; it has done so in the past, anil is doing so now. Like all 
 science, it is the handmaid of religion and of theology. But if our 
 Bible is so contused, our notions of its contents so crude and unscientific, 
 our interpretations based on such ignorance and traditional prejudice, 
 surely the critics are not serving their generation well when they have so 
 long deferred the essential task of giving us a Bible freed from its chaotic 
 confusion, orderly and intelligibly set forth, so that we also may be put 
 in possession of this magic key which opens up all difficulties. Let the 
 critics resolve themselves into a Biblical Revision Committee for this 
 purpose. Meanwhile, when asked to receive with all deference the 
 results of critical scholarship ; when told that we must not sit in 
 judgment upon the bearing or tendency of any critical opinions, but that 
 we must accept the teachings of these fully equipped scholars, we can 
 only, with all humility, ask in reply — Which of them 1 
 
 III. — HEBREW AUTHORSHIP. 
 
 We agree with Principal Tulloch,* that there are larger consequences 
 in Professor Smith's criticism than he himself at present imagines, that 
 his historic and spiritual sense have need of further development, and 
 that he will probably learn by-and-by to state his conclusions with less 
 confidence. We cannot, however, agree with the learned Principal, when 
 he says that his article is admirably fitted to convey to the general mind 
 a clear outline of the latest conclusions of criticism regarding the sacred 
 volume. To our mind many of Professor Smith's statements are any- 
 thing but clear. We have tried to form a conception of what the Bible 
 is, according to the article, but can form only a vague, hazy, unsatisfac- 
 tory notion of it. For this, to be sure, we may be ourselves to blame; 
 the article may be too deep for us. We are disposed, however, to think 
 that we could see to the bottom of it were it less muddy than it is. We 
 find in it a considerable amount of confusion and contradiction, expres- 
 sions which are difficult to understand, not from the depth or greatness 
 of the idea, which labours for expression, but simply from the unsati- 
 factory form in which it is expressed. What is meant, e.g., by "one 
 
 Contemporary Review, March 1877. 
 
u 
 
 side of the assertion that this Gospel [John] is an unhistoi'ical product of 
 abstract reflection 1 ?" or what is the " foundation of the theocracy in the 
 work of Moses 1" What was the "new theocracy" founded after the 
 exile "1 or what can be meant by the " ideal elements of the theocratic 
 conception "1 It would surely have been possible for the learned Professor 
 to have put his thoughts into more intelligible language. It is not 
 improbable that he may have to complain of his sentiments being occa- 
 sionally misunderstood ; and we, for our part, reply to any such complaint 
 by anticipation by saying that his language is often far from easy to 
 understand. We must humbly and honestly confess that, on the questions, 
 "What is the Bible? and how did it come to be as we And itl" we have 
 found little new light ; but seem rather to have lost any little that we had. 
 But we fear that the vagueness of the impression left upon our mind 
 at times as to what the author means or intends, arises in no small 
 degree from his own confusion of ideas, as well as the unsatisfactory 
 expression of them. In endeavouring to follow closely his train of 
 thought, we have repeatedly felt ourselves at one point come into sharp 
 and severe collision with a conclusion or an argument which we had 
 found elsewhere. Regarding the Psalms, " we have to begin by ques- 
 tioning the tradition contained in the titles. . . . There is no reason to 
 believe that any title is as old as the Psalm to which it is prefixed." 
 (638 b.) "The titles are far more trustworthy in the prophecies than in 
 the Psalms." (640 a.) Now, if the titles in both cases rest upon exactly 
 the same traditional authority, this arbitrary mode of rejecting and 
 retaining them does not commend itself as self-evidently scientific. The 
 arguments of the negative critics against the genuineness or credibility of 
 the New Testament books do not rely on external evidence, their 
 strength lies in internal evidence ; but " the external evidence is as 
 strong as can fairly be looked for, " and therefore Professor Smith 
 argues that the negative critics have no right to reckon this or that 
 book unhistorical or of late date on the ground of internal criticism. 
 (644 a.) And yet this is the very thing that he himself does in the 
 most arbitrary fashion with Old Testament titles, dates, and author- 
 ships. At one time there is " no reason to think," at another " no reason 
 to doubt," or perhaps " there is no reason for denying ; " again, it is not 
 " safe to assume," and once more it is "a mere conjecture " — when in 
 sober truth, the matter of thought, doubt, denial, assumption, and conjec- 
 ture is in each case to be received or rejected on precisely similar evidence.* 
 
 * This arbitrary method of dealing with evidence is characteristic of the Negative 
 Criticism. The latest example we have of it is in Dr Samuel Davidson's "Canon of 
 the Bible." In treating e.g. of the New Testament quotations in the Apostolic Fathers, 
 if he finds an awkward but undoubted quotation, he tells us that ' ' all probability is 
 against " its being from the New Testament (page 92) ; or the reference is "invalid " 
 (page 94). If Papias speaks of Matthew and Mark, it is " most probable " that it is 
 tiot our Matthew and Mark (page 96), or "the matter is somewhat uncertain " (page 
 103). If the Fathers do not testify as the critics would like, they are " credulous 
 and blundering," or "passionate and one-sided" (page 121). As a crowning example, 
 take the following : " Whatever be said about Justin's [a. d. 150] acquaintance with 
 this [the fourth] gospel, its existence befoi'e a.d. 140 is incapable either of decisive 
 or probable shewing. The Johannine authorship has receded before the tide of 
 modern criticism ; and though this tide is arbitrary at times, it is here irresistible. 
 Apologists should abstain from strong assertions," &c. (page 99). Strong assertions 
 are only for critics, and the more arbitrary the stronger. " No case : abuse plaintiff's 
 attorney. " 
 
15 
 
 "There can be no reasonable doubt that the priests possessed written 
 Legal collections from the time of Moses," but the "word Law (Torah) in 
 writings earlier than t lie Captivity" means " oral decisions of the priests." 
 Now, if you assert that the only writings whieh profess to be Mosaic (lid 
 not exist till more than 800 years after, it seems very unreasonable to 
 assume that there were other writings of whieh you find no trace what- 
 ever. And if you assume that there were such " written legal collections," 
 how do you know that the word Law (Torah) means " oral decisions of the 
 priests " ? And again, if you find writings which mention the Law (Torah) 
 before the Captivity, is it safe to assume that the Law to which these 
 writings refer was not written also] There can surely be no reasonable 
 doubt that it was. 
 
 As formerly observed, the law regarding high places has been the 
 occasion of much critical anxiety to Professor Smith. He sees between 
 the law of Exodus and that of Deiiteronomy such a divergence or con- 
 tradiction as to convince him that there; must Ik; a dillerent authorship. 
 And yet elsewhere lie gives, in another connection, a satisfactory solution 
 of his own difficulty, when he says — " For our present argument the main 
 point is not diversity of enactment, which may often be only apparent." 
 For our present argument ! Even critics can base their reasoning at 
 times upon premises which they have no difficulty in seeing to be fallacious 
 when Looked at from another stand-point ! 
 
 Professor Smith's assertions regarding Hebrew Authorship and Litera- 
 ture are given with a confidence and authority which no scholar can 
 possibly be justified in claiming. The data for coming to an authoritative 
 conclusion on such questions are far too meagre to warrant the dogmatism 
 which is exhibited. But in addition to this, his ideas on the subject are 
 extremely confused and contradictory. 
 
 The prophets, we are told, began to commit their oracles to writing in 
 the eighth century B.C. (639 b.), and these writings were widely circulated 
 among the people who " had attained a high degree of litei-ary culture." 
 Now, in Professor Smith's view, the prophets were far before the priests 
 in their literary and spiritual activity, and we wonder how the people had 
 attained this high degree of literary culture when the most literary and 
 cultured among them, viz., the prophets, were only beginning to write. 
 We suspect there is some mistake here, and that, if the literary culture of 
 the Hebrews was what Professor Smith represents (though unfortunately 
 he withholds all information as to the sources from which his very full 
 and accurate knowledge is derived), their literature itself must have had 
 its beginning much earlier than he and his authorities seem, to suppose. 
 
 But while the nation was thus highly cultured, the writers, whose pro- 
 ductions were the sources and constant feeders of that culture, seem to 
 have possessed very little of it themselves. They had little idea of 
 organic unity in their compositions ; their genius did not lie in that 
 direction. One man wrote a few sentences, and another wrote a few 
 more, and another, and another, till an editor appeared, who transferred 
 all these compositions to a single sheet, intercalating a sentence of his 
 own here and there, and issuing the whole to the highly cultured nation, 
 either as his own work, or anonymously ! " If a man copied a book, it was 
 his to add and modify as lie pleased, and he was not in the least bound to 
 distinguish the old from the new. If he had two books before him, to 
 which he attached equal worth, he took large extracts from both, and 
 
16 
 
 harmonised them by sxich additions or modifications as he felt to be 
 necessary." (638 a.) Again, we are told that the people and their 
 literary instructors laid no weight upon questions of authorship ; but the 
 writer of Deuteronomy " naturally " put his work into the mouth of 
 Moses : on what principle it is difficult to understand. If the people had 
 no writing from the hand of Moses, and laid no weight on questions of 
 authorship, why should the writer " naturally " do so unwarrantable and 
 unnecessary a thing 1 No doubt, as far back as our means of investigation 
 lead us or allow vis to go into the questions of Jewish authorship, we 
 find an unvarying tradition that the Pentateuch was the work of Moses, 
 but how easy it is for modern criticism to dispose of a trifling circumstance 
 like that : — " It is not probable that this tradition rests on any surer 
 ground than conjecture." What possible answer can any uncritical person 
 make to so satisfactory a disposal of the whole matter 1 If he should still 
 wonder how the tradition arose, how the real origin of these books has 
 been so wholly lost sight of till the modern criticism brought it to light 
 again, the critical reply is obvious : "Of course a scribe would naturally 
 leap to the conclusion that the Father of the Law was the author of the 
 Pentateuch ! " A very natural mistake for a mere Hebrew scribe ! But 
 modern criticism, having taken " a more careful view of the books them- 
 selves " than any Hebrew scribe could be supposed capable of taking, has 
 discovered the mistake, and thereby shed a flood of light upon the state of 
 Hebrew literature, the law of copyright, the want of organic unity, and the 
 high state of culture generally ! Ephraim especially possessed an unusual 
 literary genius even among a people who had generally attained a high 
 degree of literary culture, and yet for all that they laid no weight more 
 than others upon questions of authorship, and were as incapable as their 
 neighbours of distinguishing " historical data from historical deductions," 
 which means, apparently, that with all their genius they could not detect 
 historic facts amid historic fictions, or tell which were contemporary 
 writings or which were a few centuries old. 
 
 If this confused and contradictory representation of Hebrew literature 
 and authorship were correct, it would seem to supersede the necessity or 
 use of any further criticism ; for it must clearly be a hopeless task to 
 reduce the Biblical books to anything like order if this be a correct 
 account of their character and composition. But, fortunately, it is not so. 
 The very way in which, in the Bible itself, books and their authors are 
 quoted and referred to, shews that whether their culture was highly 
 advanced, or of a very primitive kind, they had some common sense even 
 in matters of literature and authorship. If the Bible and its writers 
 require to be dealt with in such a fashion before the " higher historical 
 unity" can be reached — so much the worse, we say, for the higher unity, 
 and the less we hear of it the better. It is said to be one of the funda- 
 mental principles of modern criticism that there is an organic unity in all 
 history; but if the records of that history be mere "stratifications," and 
 if the writers had no genius for "organic structure" (638 a.), how are we 
 to come at the organic unity of the history itself? Just in the way 
 Professor Smith, and the critics of his school do ; we must somehow get 
 into our minds a conception, an idea, or a notion of what that history 
 should be, and then cut up the record into fragments and patch it together 
 again so as to fit our notions. There is no other way in which the thing 
 can be done satisfactorily ! 
 
17 
 
 This subjective method of dealing with history and the record of it 
 necessarily interferes seriously with the essential judicial qualification of 
 balancing evidence, which is quite a sme qua non in scholarly and reliable 
 
 criticism. Professor Smith must either have been very one-sided in his 
 leading on matters of Biblical criticism, or else he must have strangely 
 overlooked many obvious considerations which would have materially 
 modified many of his conclusions, overturned not a few of them, and led 
 him to oiler a statement of them all in a much less dogmatic form. In 
 fact, we believe Professor Smith's whole view of Hebrew History, 
 Prophecy, Ritual, and Authorship is contorted and erroneous. The weight 
 of evidence on almost every single point is in favour of "traditional" 
 views. We are not at present going to discuss the authorship of the 
 Pentateuch, but let any one read the references to it in the New Testa- 
 ment, specially those by our Lord himself; let him then turn to Ezra 
 ix. 11, which agrees with a law found in Deuteronomy; let him then 
 decide for himself whether the former in behalf of the Mosaic authorship, 
 or the latter against it, is the more conclusive. Yet Professor Smith 
 tells us that " only a very strained exegesis can draw any inference of 
 authorship from the recorded words of our Saviour," and he tells us* also, 
 that the testimony of Ezra is so conclusive, that it can only be got over 
 by being "explained away" ! 
 
 To judge from Professor Smith's manner of stating the case, one would 
 imagine that the documents of which supposed marks are found through 
 all the books from Genesis to Kings, had been separated from each other 
 beyond dispute, and that there is no longer any controversy about them : 
 whereas the controversy started by Astruc in his " Conjectures," upwards 
 of a century ago, is still raging as keenly as ever, and whatever way it may 
 be settled, it has but a remote bearing upon the authorship of the Penta- 
 teuch. But how many separate documents are there 1 Ave they com- 
 plete in themselves, or are they merely fragments 1 What relation do 
 they bear to each other? All these questions, and many others, are 
 exercising the critics still ; and, of course, as the decision depends upon 
 so many subjective considerations, they are by no means agreed. The 
 controversy about the separation of the documents has departed consider- 
 ably from the old ground. Originally it depended entirely upon two 
 names of the Deity, Elohim and Jehovah — hence the somewhat clumsy 
 terms, Elohistic and Jehovistic — but now there are secondary marks 
 (which, of course, are quite unmistakeable in the critic's estimation), so 
 that the Elohistic document can be traced long after the exclusive use of 
 Elohim has ceased. Then, again, the name Elohim appears in many 
 passages which are not Elohistic, and as they cannot very well be called 
 Jehovistic, what are we to do ? The critics are at no loss what to do» 
 " A third author is generally postulated for these sections," and thus the 
 higher " criticism tries to explain difficulties which the older exegesis 
 sought only to explain away," and this " new task is undoubtedly more 
 delicate " ! 
 
 Thus there seems to be little difficulty in doing for these Hebrew 
 treatises, written at least five-and-twenty centuries ago, by the confession 
 of ciiticism itself, what it would be impossible to do for a few pages of 
 
 * In a letter which he sent to the newspapers in reference to a statement made 
 l>y Dr Moody Stuart at the March Commission. 
 
 B 
 
is 
 
 well-edited contemporaiy English. Or otherwise, a little sharp criticism 
 applied to Professor Smith's article "Bible" might, on the very same 
 principles, cut it Up into fragments and prove beyond dispute that it was 
 written by three or four different persons, and that its traditional author- 
 ship is a mere conjecture. 
 
 The only other point to which we shall at present advert is the follow- 
 ing statement about the Ketubim or miscellaneous writings not compre- 
 hended under the Law and the Prophets. This third part of the Canon, 
 we are told, " was open to receive additions recommended either by 
 their religious and historical value, or by bearing an ancient and venerable 
 name. And this was the more natural, because the Hagiographa had 
 not the same place in the Synagogue service as was accorded to the Law 
 and the Prophets." We say nothing here of the very obvious bearing 
 which such an opinion must have upon the nature and value of 
 Inspiration, we merely call attention to the statement, in order to 
 challenge its accuracy. Have all the latest writings been from the first 
 classified as belonging to the third part of the Canon 1 Of course all 
 Scripture is not equally suited for public reading ; but parts at least of 
 the Ketubim were read : Esther was read once a-year, the Psalms were 
 sung, and other portions also were used. What is Professor Smith's 
 authority for the statement that the third division of the Canon held a 
 lower place than the other two 1 ? Is it in any writer earlier than 
 Josephus 1 He knew nothing of any such distinction ; in his time all the 
 Scriptures were reckoned of equal value ; they were separated by a great 
 gulf from all other writings ; they were believed to be divine, and 
 " no one had the boldness to make any addition or change upon them." 
 Is it possible that Professor Smith can trace back the tradition on which 
 he builds no farther than the writings of Maimonides, in the twelfth 
 century of the Christian era ? He, we know, held erroneous views on 
 Inspiration, and taught that the authority of Scripture was graduated 
 accordingly, the Law being first, then the Prophets, and the third portion 
 lowest. And Professor Smith, while setting aside as unworthy of notice, 
 as mere " Jewish notions," all the most ancient traditions of Hebrew 
 authorship which extend back into antiquity farther than we can follow 
 them, has no difficulty in accepting as trustworthy, when it suits his 
 " present argument," such a worthless invention as that I* 
 
 IV. — THE PROPHET, THE PRIEST, AND THE LAYMAN. 
 
 Professor Smith's Article on the " Bible " opens with the declaration 
 that " the pre-Christian age of Biblical religion falls into a period of 
 religious productivity and subsequent period of stagnation " — a division 
 which will by no means commend itself to those who, underneath the 
 letter, can discern the true spirit of Israel's history. The earliest of 
 the Old Testament writings, according to Professor Smith, is not earlier 
 
 * Here, as elsewhere, we observe a marvellously close resemblance between 
 Professor Smith and Dr Samuel Davidson, both in their views and expressions, 
 which seem to suggest a common source somewhere. But the latter is obliged 
 virtually to give up the inferiority of the Ketubim after a feeble attempt to assert 
 it. He cannot get rid of Josephus except by saying that " his authority is small," 
 and his language probably " exaggerated." (Canon, p. 57.) 
 
19 
 
 than the end of the ninth or beginning of the eighth con tmy B.C., and 
 the latest is about the end of the fifth or beginning of the fourth ; 
 bo that the whole Old Testament literature in this view is confined 
 within four hundred years. This period, we suppose, is what Professor 
 Smith calls the "period of productivity," and the intervening four 
 hundred years, from Malachi to Christ, constitute the "period of stag- 
 nation." But do these two periods exhaust the age of the Biblical religion 
 of the Old Testament 1 Could we not find, previous to the supposed com- 
 mencement of the Biblical literature, periods quite as long in which the 
 productivity or stagnation was equally manifest, though perhaps in a 
 different form 1 Is the writing of books the only mark of the vitality of 
 religion '( Was there no productivity in the time of Moses, or Joshua, or 
 Samuel, or David 1 But, perhaps Professor Smith means the whole period 
 of Old Testament history- not < >ld Testament literary activity merely — to 
 be included in the so-called period of productivity. If so, we would ask, 
 were there no intervening periods of stagnation 1 Was the period of the 
 Judges — say 400 years — a period of productivity or of stagnation 1 Was 
 the time of the Kings, from Rehoboam to the commencement of the 
 literary period in the eighth century, one of productivity or stagnation'? 
 How are the two periods defined and bounded 1 Can we discover the 
 characteristics and boundaries from the Bible itself, or must we call in 
 some other witnesses to eke out the evidence 1 
 
 Running alongside this erroneous and confused conception of Bible 
 history is an equally erroneous and confused notion of " Spiritual 
 Religion," what it is and what it does. This is Professor Smith's account 
 of it : — During the period of productivity, there was a continual conflict 
 between spiritual religion and heathenism, in the form either of polytheism 
 or a mere national political religion. During this struggle, the spiritual 
 religion was forced to shew itself capable of growth and development, so 
 as to prove its superiority to false religions : this conflict began in Moses' 
 time, and continued till the time of Ezra, when spiritual religion triumphed. 
 
 Now this delineation suggests a number of queries to which, so far as 
 we can see, Professor Smith supplies no answer. If, as would from this 
 description appear to be the case, the period of productivity extends from 
 Moses to Malachi, where are the products, what were the " ever clearer 
 forms," what were the stages of the new development ? How are they 
 manifested — say, in the time of the Judges and the earlier kings of Judah 1 
 Were there no periods of retrogression, backsliding, departures from the 
 truth previously attained unto? Was there no spiritual religion before 
 the time of Moses 1 ? When or how did spiritual religion cease to be 
 '•militant'' against some form of heathenism or idolatry? Does not 
 spiritual religion still need the Apostolic declaration and warning : " He 
 [i.e. Jesus Christ] is the true God and eternal life : little children, keep 
 yourselves from idols " 1 And if it needed in Old Testament times to be 
 " working out into ever clearer forms the latent contrasts between true 
 and false religion," does it not equally need to be doing so still 1 And, in 
 that case, what bearing has this description upon a special criticism and 
 critical understanding of Old Testament books ? 
 
 What we are told about the so-called " conclusive victory " of spiritual 
 religion in Ezra's time is even more unintelligible and inconsistent, both 
 with the truth of history and wi th itself. While spiritual religion was 
 in conflict with Paganism, it had to bestir itself and prove its vitality by 
 
20 
 
 new forms to meet the ever-varying needs of the people. Hence the 
 prophets arose as leaders of this new development ; but after the Exile 
 and Restoration " no political future lay before the returning exiles, and 
 continued confidence in the destiny of the race was not separable from 
 the religious ideas and Messianic hopes of the prophets. . . . With this 
 victory the spiritual religion passed into a stationary state." (635 b.) 
 Again, we are told that in the prophets of the Restoration " no important 
 new ideas are set forth," and " the spirit of prophecy foresaw its own 
 dissolution." Now this theory of the triumph of spiritual religion raises 
 questions even more difficult to answer than the theory of its history and 
 conflict. Did spiritual religion gain a conclusive victory because no poli- 
 tical future lay before the returning exiles 1 Did spiritual religion pre- 
 vail from and after the Restoration 1 ? If spiritual religion, forcing its 
 way to victory, developed prophecy with its spiritual insight, poetic fire, 
 and noble enthusiasm, how comes it that spiritual religion triumpliant 
 developed a set of third-rate prophets whose " tone of moral exhortation 
 sometimes reminds us more of the Rabbinical maxims of the fathers in 
 the Mishna than of the prophetic teaching of the eighth century?" How 
 could spiritual religion give birth to a period of productivity, when its 
 triumph and conclusive victory produce only stagnation ? 
 
 Taking a conjunct view of what Professor Smith tells us about Israel's 
 history and the spiritual religion among them, we are forced to the con- 
 clusion that this kind of spiritual religion is a very miserable production, 
 and the less it triumphs the better ; also that history and its development 
 must be read in another way before any intelligent idea can be formed of 
 them. The truth is that in Israel, as elsewhere, true religion had its 
 periods of productivity and stagnation, backsliding and revival, not in 
 two long stretches of a few centuries each, but in ever-recurring cycles of 
 briefer duration, and that the history — as a spiritual history and a 
 national development — is in this view quite intelligible to ordinary 
 readers. The Law, i.e. the Pentateuch, is to the subsequent Old Testa- 
 ment writings what the Gospels are to the subsequent writings of the 
 New Testament ; and the view held by Professor Smith and his School 
 that the Law consisted of mere oral traditions for more than six centuries 
 will not bear calm examination, any more than his strange notion about 
 the victory of spiritual religion. Few orthodox theologians or ordinary 
 Christians would be disposed to deny his statement in the British 
 Quarterly Review some years ago (to which attention is being called anew) 
 that "the Prophets knew that Jahveh (i.e. Jehovah) was guiding his 
 people to a higher standpoint in which even prophecy itself must fall 
 away," but most of them would be surprised to learn that this higher 
 standpoint was reached soon after the return from Babylon, when the 
 spiritual religion was crowned with victory, and prophecy consequently 
 first sank to the level of the Mishna, and then died ! 
 
 The new teaching about the prophets, the priests, and the development 
 of doctrine and ritual, is no more likely to commend itself to the general 
 mind of the churches than the theory of history. Traditional views, says 
 Professor Smith, long hindered a just insight into the work of the 
 prophets, they were traditionally regarded as partly teaching old truths 
 and partly foretelling future events. This view, we are inclined to think, 
 is after all not so very far from the truth; and we fail to see any 
 antagonism between it and what Professor Smith claims, most unjustly, 
 
21 
 
 to be a special discovery of the new critical school, viz., that the prophets 
 spoke to the heads and hearts of their contemporaries, and that prophecy 
 was not mere mechanical prediction. We fail to see in what way the 
 " best thanks of the Church" are due to criticism, i.e. to Professor Smith, 
 for bringing prominently forward a truth which nobody, worth hearing, 
 ever denied ; and we fail likewise to see how the new emphasis is " vital 
 to the interests of living Christianity." We fear the learned Professor 
 is somewhat inclined to over-estimate the value of his own labours and 
 the results thereof. We are reminded here of an article of his in the 
 British and Foreign Evangelical Review, an article full of learned quota- 
 tions and references, in which he some time ago propounded a new theory 
 of the meaning of the name Jehovah, or Jahveh, which was to have 
 " important consequences for Biblical theology," and which turned out to 
 be nothing more than a proposed substitution of " I will be" for " I am," 
 as if that were a new discovery about the Hebrew tense ! We have not 
 yet heard of the revolution in Biblical theology that was to follow. 
 
 But we suspect Professor Smith understands his own view of the 
 prophet speaking directly to his own time in a different sense from that 
 in which it is generally received ; otherwise we cannot see how he could 
 consider it in any way opposed to the so-called traditional view. It is 
 perhaps true that too much has been . sometimes made of the predictive 
 element in prophecy ; but certainly it holds a distinct and prominent 
 place in the work of the prophet, and did not necessarily grow out of the 
 peculiar and special circumstances and needs of the nation at any 
 particular time. The Gospel, as we have it, is intended and adapted 
 for sinners in all circumstances ; and the facts of the Gospel history, 
 though long past, are still recorded directly for our time, and thus the 
 record may be " a living word to him who reads it." Similarly the 
 Messiah, Jesus Christ, was the Saviour of men in pre-Christian times, 
 and the will of God necessary for salvation could not fail to contain 
 some reference to His advent. 
 
 The Fall was the occasion of the first prophecy, which came direct from 
 God himself, without the hand of any prophet ; and all subsequent 
 prophecy is rather to be viewed as the growth and development of that 
 first promise than the growth of any element in Israel's history — that 
 history itself being part of the larger development. This no doubt 
 necessitates a more constant and absorbing regard to the Divine element 
 in prophecy than has been shewn by Professor Smith ; but if it be true, 
 as he says, — and we of course cordially agree with him — " that that is not 
 a true criticism which refuses to find in the Old Testament the special 
 hand of a revealing God," it is no less true that that cannot be a time or 
 adequate theory of prophecy which does not recognise the revelation of 
 the Messiah as the primary and pervading element in it, and indeed the 
 main object of it. We can therefore see no reason why Professor Smith 
 should so persistently attempt to identify the new criticism with a true 
 view of prophecy, or attempt to make the traditional view identical with 
 making God's revelation " a mechanical, dead, unintelligible thing to the 
 Church that received it." It seems to us that the more the Divine and 
 Messianic element is understood to pervade all prophecy, the more life is 
 infused into it, and the more intelligible it must be, in connection with 
 true spiritual religion, to the Church in every age. Was the first promise 
 a dead, mechanical, unintelligible thing to our first parents ? Could the 
 
22 
 
 development and expansion of that promise be a dead thing to the Church 
 in any age ? Was not the Church bom of that Word — the incorruptible 
 and evergrowing seed — and was it not ever nurtured by the same 1 Is 
 not the Word of God — the Old and the New Testament alike — a living 
 Word to the Church of to-day 1 and yet surely it is not spoken directly 
 and immediately to our time, in the sense in which Professor Smith seems 
 to insist upon. The traditional view never made prophecy less of a 
 living Word to those of the prophets' own time than to ourselves 1 
 Does Professor Smith mean that the prophecies of Hosea, say, were 
 somehow more living and less mechanical to the prophet's contemporaries 
 than the Gospels are to us now % No such distinction can be made ; 
 there was then as now the broad everlasting distinction between the 
 letter and the spirit, between the natural and the spiritual man. And if 
 the New Yiew be so essential to a right understanding of prophecy, how 
 are we to explain the book of Revelation 1 or how are we to account for 
 the fact — for which Professor Smith is our authority — that part of 
 Ezekiel's prophecy was never spoken, but written without oral delivery 1 
 
 To be sure, " the prophet starts from present sin, present needs, present 
 historical situations;" but surely an Evangelical theology has no difficulty 
 in finding room for the most direct and explicit Messianic predictions 
 in such a connection; nay, rather it would say there are no possible 
 historical situations in which such gospel predictions would not be 
 adapted to present needs, just as gospel preaching is adapted to them now. 
 If the apostles preached Christ and him crucified as the wisdom and the 
 power of God, did not the prophets do the same? Messianic prophecy 
 — including types and ritual — was to the ancient church what gospel 
 preaching and ordinances are now. To conceive of the prophets therefore 
 as "partly inspired teachers of old truths, partly as predicting future 
 events," is by no means to give an unworthy or mechanical view of the 
 prophets' work. " Old truths" are what the Church has to live by in 
 modern times, and it is yet capable of a great development in many 
 directions through the living power of these old truths ; and the ancient 
 prophets, inspired by the Spirit, taught the same truths — old to a certain 
 extent even in their day, yet ever growing and therefore ever new. 
 
 It is not a bettei*, or a higher, or a more worthy view of the prophet's 
 office to speak of him as "the leader of a great development," as con- 
 trasted with the view we have presented. It is a shallow notion, both of 
 history and prophecy, which would make the connection between them, 
 and the outgrowth of the one from the other, always manifest upon the 
 surface. Thus Kurtz and others have argued against an exegesis which 
 would find Messianic prophecies in the Pentateuch, on the ground that 
 the organic progress of prophecy and its relation to contemporary history 
 must be everywhere maintained, and that the Messianic idea is only to 
 be looked for after the reign of David, in whom it originated. We do 
 not know if Professor Smith would accept this particular application of 
 his own principle, but it is a good example of how the principle may be 
 used in the hands of critics who have a bias or a crotchet. 
 
 The same misapprehension of the true scope of prophecy pervades 
 Professor Smith's explanation of the testimony borne to Christ by the 
 Old Testament generally. He saw in the Prophets and the Psalms, He 
 tells us, the image of His own experience and work ; He recognised the 
 testimony to Himself which was found in the spirit of the Old Testament 
 
23 
 
 teaching. But was that all 1 He himself and his apostles teach us 
 otherwise. On the way to Emmaus he found much more concerning 
 Himself in the Old Testament than Professor Smith seems ever to have 
 found ; and Philip appears to have expounded the 53rd of Isaiah to the 
 Ethiopian eunuch after ;i maimer which we fear Professor Smith must 
 regard as uncritical. No matter, he was sent by the Spirit, and his 
 mission proved entirely successful — a stronger argument for the soundness 
 of his views than all that the critics will ever muster against it. 
 
 If it be true that the prophecy grew out of the historical situation, it is 
 none the less true that the history grew out of the prophecy. Supposing 
 for a moment that the traditional view is correct as regards the relation 
 between the Law and the Prophets, it seems to us that any prophet or 
 preacher, ancient or modern, might well be content to be used as an 
 instrument in the hand of God for leading a great development in the 
 practical exposition and application of the principles of the law. Certainly 
 those principles — both in the moral and civil code — are far beyond any- 
 thing which the world has ever seen practically exemplified as yet. 
 
 On any other view, we are left wholly in the dark as to what the 
 " Great Development " was. What did it commence with 1 What did 
 it end with 1 What were the steps by which its consummation was 
 reached 1 How did the one stage grow out of the preceding 1 All this 
 the new criticism must tell us before we can accord it our best thanks for 
 the discoveries it says it has made. 
 
 The new theory of Israel's history and of the prophets' work being 
 untenable, the theory of the priesthood must likewise fall. The priest 
 never at any time became second in importance ; there is no antagonism 
 between him and the prophet ; his " aristocratic conservatism " was an 
 honourable and virtuous quality, seeing it was the law and ordinances of 
 God that he had to conserve ; and it was only when he became carnal, 
 unspiritual, and indolent, that the prophet and he stood on opposite sides. 
 We fear the spectacle may, even in these highly favoured and enlightened 
 times, be witnessed occasionally of a man's personal character not being 
 all that might be expected from his official position, and when that be- 
 comes general among the priesthood a prophet is required ; new life must 
 come from without, when all is dead within. But from first to last — 
 from Moses to Malachi — we find the priestly office in the front, and 
 Israel's history must be sadly misread before we can ignore this fact. 
 Why was Jeroboam so careful about having an altar and a priesthood — 
 not a prophets' guild ? Why do we find the priests so prominent in 
 Ahab's time 1 Because, while denying the power of godliness, they were 
 anxious to retain the form ; and the most prominent forms come therefore 
 to the front. On Professor Smith's theory, how can we account for the 
 fact, which he himself admits, that the law, i.e. the Priestly, Levitical, 
 portion of the Canon, was compiled and closed before any of the others, 
 and that " a complete body of the remains of the prophets" came oidy 
 second ] If ever since Samuel's time the priesthood had become secondary, 
 and " the priestly interest found little scope in the subsequent history," 
 how could the Law take precedence of the Prophets in the Canon, both as 
 regards time and place? 
 
 Having thus disposed of the prophet and the priest created by the new 
 criticism, we may at once dismiss the " cultured layman " without further 
 remark. 
 
24 
 
 It does not appeal* to have struck Professor Smith that he has himself 
 put a fool's cap upon the head of his own theory of prophecy. The 
 prophet was the leader of a great development both in doctrine and ritual. 
 The two ends of this development we find in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. 
 The one is the terminus a quo and the other the terminus ad quern — always 
 bearing in mind that the cultured layman has prepared the soil for the seed. 
 But which is which 1 which is the root and which the fruit 1 which is 
 the beginning and which the end 1 Nobody knows ; the critics have not 
 yet decided. " Here arises the great dispute which divides critics and 
 makes our whole construction of the historical books uncertain. As all 
 the more elaborate symbolic observances of the ritual law are bound up 
 with the hierarchical ordinances, the solution of this problem has issues of 
 the greatest importance for the theology as well as for the literary history of 
 the Old Testament." (638 a.) And this is the result of all the labour of 
 the critics ! Well may they exclaim, " Vanity of vanities ! all is vanity ; 
 what profit hath a man of all his labour that he taketh under the sun?" 
 But have they not rescued the prophets' work from the reproach of being 
 dead and mechanical 1 Have they not discovered a new way of recon- 
 ciling contradictions by uniting them in a " higher historical unity" 1 What 
 matters it that the whole "construction of the historical books is uncertain," 
 and that they have put them into such confusion that they themselves 
 can make neither head nor tail of them 1 What matters all this, seeing 
 they have made the grand discovery that there was a " Geeat Develop- 
 ment " 1 (See Appendix.) 
 
 V. — THE BOOK OF THE LAW OF MOSES. 
 
 The new criticism teaches that this book is a stratification, not an 
 organic unity, and that its date is long after the time of Moses, that " the 
 Law," prior to the captivity, means oral decisions of the priests. This 
 criticism rests on very unsubstantial and shallow grounds. The negative 
 critics generally — being anxious to establish certain foregone conclusions, 
 and to eliminate the supernatural from Hebrew literature — are under the 
 necessity of introducing hypotheses, for which it requires a total perver- 
 sion of Scripture to shew any plausible basis. But Professor Smith was 
 under no such necessity. He stated in his letter to the Free Church 
 College Committee, that the authorship of the Pentateuch cannot be 
 decided merely from " the few meagre hints as to the course of the criti- 
 cal argument" contained in his article. He does not, however, profess 
 to adduce any original evidence or to have conducted the inquiry in a 
 different manner from the negative critics generally ; indeed, he seems to 
 accept the " evidence which critics put forth " as being that on which he 
 has himself decided the case. And this evidence must, on a calm and 
 judicial review of it, appear meagre and unsatisfactory. 
 
 There are some things here which must be carefully distinguished. 
 The historical veracity of the Pentateuch is not at all identical with the 
 Mosaic authorship of it. The former may be admitted and established, 
 though the latter be doubted or denied. 
 
 Again, the substantial authorship may be Mosaic, though a later editor 
 be understood to have revised the wox*k so as to allow of its being bound 
 
25 
 
 up and read along with subsequent writings. These questions are wholly 
 different from the one before us. What Professor Smith alleges is that 
 the Pentateuch is not in any proper sense the work of Moses, that it is 
 the product of several hands manifesting diverse tendencies, that it must 
 be arranged quite differently from the way in which we have it, and that 
 it belongs to various ages all long subsequent to Moses. Each of these 
 propositions is contrary to the evidence, and has originated with the sub- 
 jective naturalism of the negative critics. We can merely give a brief 
 outline of the state of the evidence. 
 
 1. We have abundant evidence that other portions of Israel's history 
 were written by contemporaries, and it is a ]yriori probable that Moses 
 would have left some record of his own time. Samuel, Nathan, and Gad 
 wrote a history, or histories, of David and his times (1 Chron. xxix. 29) ; 
 Nathan, Ahijah, and Iddo left memorials of the reign of Solomon 
 (2 Chron. ix. 29); Iddo and Shemaiah were the historians of Rehoboam's 
 reign (2 Chron. xii. 15); Jehu, the son of Hanani, wrote the history of 
 Jehoshaphat and his reign (2 Chron. xx. 34) ; and a history of the reigns 
 of Uzziah and Hezekiah was written by Isaiah (2 Chron. xxvi. 22, and 
 xxxii. 22), besides many other contemporary chronicles and official records. 
 Part, at least, of the Book of Joshua was manifestly written either by 
 him or by a contemporary who took part in the work which he narrates 
 (Joshua v. 1, and vi. 25), and other parts of it — with Judges, which is a 
 continuation — must have been written before the time of David and 
 Solomon. (Compare Josh. xv. 63 and Judg. i. 21, with 2 Sam. v. 7-9, 
 and Josh. xvi. 10, with 1 Kings ix. 16.) There is certainly then no 
 a priori improbability in Moses also having left written memorials of his 
 own time. He may have collected and edited such patriarchal chronicles 
 as are contained in Genesis, and both these and his own work may have 
 been again edited by a subsequent hand. There is a wide difference 
 between an author and an editor ; and, until we have some better proof 
 than we have yet received, we must refuse to believe that such an obvious 
 distinction was wholly unknown to the Hebrews. 
 
 2. The art of writing was well known in Egypt at the time of 
 Moses. It was known even to the family of Jacob (Gen. xxxviii. 
 18-25). Moses himself knew it (Ex. xvii. 14, and xxxiv. 27). It was 
 known to the Canaanites before the Conquest, who seem even to have 
 possessed some sort of public library (Joshua xv. 1 5 ; Judges i. 11). There 
 were various modes of writing and engraving known to the Egyptians at 
 this period (Ex. xxviii. 9-11). This fact was formerly denied by the 
 Deists and Rationalists, but overwhelming evidence was adduced to prove 
 it. Writing, about a century and a half after the death of Moses, is 
 spoken of as a distinct branch of business (Judges v. 14), and there was 
 no reason to doubt that it was so from the beginning of Israel's national 
 history. Letter-writing was a common practice in David's time (2 Sam. 
 xi. 14, 15), and was known and practised also among the surrounding 
 nations (2 Chron. ii. 11). 
 
 3. Throughout the Pentateuch there are frequent references to manners 
 and customs which prove that the writer was intimately acquainted with 
 the land of Egypt. Many objections formerly urged against the historical 
 veracity and the Mosaic authorship of the Book on the ground of error in 
 this respect have been completely set aside by further investigation of 
 ancient histories and monumental inscriptions, and have — like most other 
 
26 
 
 objections — tended rather to the establishment of the traditional view. 
 Both the writer and those for whom he writes are better acquainted with 
 Egypt than with Canaan ; the age of Hebron is indicated by comparison 
 with a town in Egypt (Num. xiii. 22); the fertility of the plain of Sodom 
 is expressed by a similar comparison (Gen. xiii. 10); the manna is com- 
 pared to Bdellium, which was well known in Egypt, but not in Canaan 
 (Num. xi. 7); and the parties for whom the book is intended are 
 constantly supposed to be familiar with Egypt. Trifling incidents are in 
 this way introduced which on any other understanding are without force 
 or meaning. This is specially visible in the history of Joseph. It is 
 noted that he shaved himself before appearing in the presence of 
 Pharaoh (Gen. xli. 14); that he formed an alliance with the priests by 
 marriage (Gen. xli. 45); that he received a new name which has never 
 yet been interpreted to the general satisfaction of philologists, but which 
 the writer did not consider it necessary to explain ; that he possessed a 
 sacred cup (Gen. xli v. 2). Later we find similar Egyptian touches coming 
 in quite naturally, and clearly shewing the writer's acquaintance with 
 Egypt, while all references of a similar kind to any other country are 
 wholly wanting. 
 
 4. That it is an ancient writing in comparison with most of the other 
 books of Scripture might be inferred from the fact that not a few words 
 found in it disappear from subsequent writings. The " gopher " wood of 
 which Noah's ark was made is nowhere else mentioned, and it is im- 
 possible to identify it. So also the " garlick," * with which the Hebrews 
 were supplied so plentifully (Num. xii. 5), is mentioned nowhere again. 
 It is said by Herodotus to have been supplied in large quantities to the 
 builders of the pyramids. A reference to a Hebrew concordance proves 
 that the number of words found only in the Pentateuch is very con- 
 siderable. We put little confidence in the results of mere verbal criticism 
 applied to such a limited field as the Hebrew books afford ; but it is well 
 to know that, even on this ground, the marks of antiquity found in the 
 Books of Moses are quite as numerous and satisfactory as the supposed 
 marks of Jeremiah's time. 
 
 5. Moses, we are distinctly informed, wrote many things in a book at 
 sundry times, and the Pentateuch is quite in keeping with such a mode 
 of writing ; and the fact that it was written at various times, in various 
 moods and circumstances extending over a period of forty years, is quite 
 sufficient to account for many of the seeming objections to the unity of 
 the authorship. (Exod. xvii. 14 ; andxxiv. 4-7 ; andxxxiv. 27, 28 ; Num. 
 xxxiii. 2; Deut. xxviii. 58-61 ; and xxxi. 9-24.) Many laws, e.g., are 
 given in a brief outline at an earlier period, and repeated afterwards in a 
 more extended form ; some are given at first with special reference to the 
 Desert life, and afterwards altered so as to suit the circumstances of their 
 permanent settlement in Canaan. Or at one time a special law is given 
 to enforce a pai*ticular principle of ethics, and at another time it is 
 repeated for another purpose. (Compare Exod. xxi. 2-6, with Deut. xv. 
 12-18 ; Exod. xxii. 26, with Deut. xxiv. 6 ; Lev. xvii. 3, 4, with Deut. xii. 
 5-7.) This, as we shall afterwards see, has an important bearing on the 
 relation of Deuteronomy to the previous books. 
 
 6. The other books of the Old Testament frequently quote the Pen- 
 
 * Of course we mean here the article of diet, whatever it may have been, expressed 
 by the Hebrew word. 
 
11 
 
 tateuch, and make constant reference to it as the basis of Israel's history 
 and the ground of the prophet's appeals. Remove the Pentateuch, and 
 the other books become unintelligible, and this not merely because the 
 authors of the subsequent books had the Pentateuch before them, but 
 because the actors in the subsequent history had it before them. The 
 events recorded in the first chapters of Joshua, and onward through the 
 whole history, are founded on the commandment of the Lord to Moses as 
 written in the Book of the Law (Joshua i. 8). Now, of course, the actors 
 in these events having the Look in their time is a very different thing 
 from the authors of the narrative merely having it; on the latter sup 
 position both might possibly be centuries after the events recorded, but if 
 the reoord contains true history, the Book of the Law must have been 
 known to the actors themselves. The undoubted fact that the Pentateuch 
 is quoted by the prophets of the Northern Kingdom, proves that it had 
 been recognised by the whole nation prior to the disruption. 
 
 7. The universal tradition of the unity of the Pentateuch and the 
 Mosaic authorship ought not to be set aside without the clearest and the 
 most convincing evidence. Of external evidence in support of Professor 
 Smith's conclusions there is not the slightest trace ; and, as we have 
 previously shewn, the internal evidence is made to speak by the critics 
 generally in accordance with their own subjective notions, and can be 
 made to say anything, provided only the critic who for the time mani- 
 pulates it be allowed a sufficiently wide range of postulates to start with. 
 
 8. The testimony of Christ and his apostles is entirely in support of the 
 received Opinion. We are by no means disposed to press, as some do, the 
 mere mention of the name of Moses by Christ in connection with the 
 Pentateuch as an end of all controversy. This might be explained, if it 
 stood alone, without any irreverence or without derogating from the 
 Saviour's divine character, on just the same principle as I might speak of 
 Ossian's poems without in the least committing myself thereby to an 
 opinion on the genuineness of the poems so called. The book to which I 
 refer is best known by that name which conveys to the mind of the 
 hearer a correct impression of the book meant without necessarily con- 
 veying any impression regarding my view of the authorship. The Penta- 
 teuch was known among the Jews in the time of Christ as the Law of 
 Moses, and there was no other name by which it could be so easily and 
 generally identified. Thus, when we read of Moses and the prophets 
 (Luke xvi. 29, and xxiv. 27), we need not necessarily understand more 
 than the books generally so called. Or again, when the phrase is " the 
 book of Moses," it might possibly mean the book so called or the book 
 about Moses (Mark xii. 26). 
 
 But there are references and quotations of another kind which com- 
 pletely exclude such a method of interpreting the name. We must bear 
 in mind that there was undoubtedly a person called Moses well known to 
 the Jews, and closely identified with their national existence; that thexfe 
 was a book or series of books also called by that name ; that both the 
 man and the book were held in extraordinary reputation among them, 
 and that the jyosition held l*;/ each was inseparably connected with the 
 position held by the other. Moses was known and honoured mainly as the 
 author of the law, and the law was held in honour as the law of Moses. 
 Moses and the law are identified just as we identify Mohammed and the 
 Koran. Then it is said, " The law was given by Moses," with the clear 
 
28 
 
 intention of emphasising the person — Moses being there opposed to Jesus 
 Christ (John i. 17). Again, we read of Moses speaking in the law (John 
 i. 45), and Chris't himself adopts this mode of speech, "Did not Moses 
 give you the law 1 ?" (John vii. 19); Stephen also builds a weighty- 
 argument upon the Mosaic authorship of the law (Acts vii. 22-53, 
 compare ver. 38 with Deut. iv. 8, and Rom. iii. 2). Christ distinctly and 
 repeatedly homologated this view (Matt. viii. 4, and xix. 7, and xxiii. 2 ; 
 John v. 45-46, and vii. 19) — i.e., he uses the term Moses to designate 
 both the book and the author, and in such a way that he must mean 
 Moses whom the Jews regarded as the author ; and he does this in such a 
 way as to make it manifest that in his own view there is no difference 
 between the laws found in that book and the laws given by that man the 
 author of the book. Or, to put it otherwise, Christ identified Moses and 
 the Law just as we identify Mohammed and the Koran. 
 
 We know how sharply and unsparingly our Lord dealt with the 
 traditions of the Pharisees whereby they made void the word of God ; we 
 know, also, how unanswerably he met the rationalism of the Sadducees 
 concerning the resurrection. The Sadducees acknowledged the divine 
 authority of the Pentateuch, and that alone. Resembling in this respect 
 the modem critics, they questioned all traditional matter, and would receive 
 nothing which was not sanctioned by Moses. It will not be disputed 
 that their respect for the book was inseparably connected with their 
 veneration for the author. And when they appealed to Jesus about the 
 seven brothers and the one wife (Mark xii. 19 ; Luke xx. 27), our Lord, 
 instead of controverting their traditional view of the Mosaic authorship 
 of the Pentateuch, clearly confirmed that view ; and that, let us repeat — 
 not merely as designating a particular book — but as identifying the book 
 and the author in circumstances when truth woiild have required him to 
 dispel the delusion of his questioners, if it was a delusion. It is also 
 significant, as regards the authorship of the Pentateuch, that while the 
 Sadducees quoted a law from Deuteronomy, chap. xxv. 5, our Lord replied 
 by quoting a passage from Exodus, chap. iii. 15, and speaks of their 
 reference and his own as alike to be found in the booh of Moses (Mark xii. 
 26), thereby adopting the traditional view of the unity of the Petateuch 
 and its authorship. 
 
 Moreover David is quoted in connection with some of the Psalms in 
 exactly the same way that Moses is referred to as the author of the Law, 
 and this in circumstances where the argument demands that the personal 
 king David be understood (Mark xii. 36, 37 ; Acts ii. 25-36). And add 
 to all this that the man Moses whose name is thus used in connection 
 with the Law is mentioned in the same writings in which such references 
 occur as having appeared personally and had an interview with Jesus 
 (Matt. xvii. 3 ; Mark ix. 4; Luke ix. 30, 31). 
 
 A better example of the frivolous and unsatisfactory character of the 
 evidence on which the critics base their conclusions could scarcely, perhaps, 
 be found than Professor Smith's flippant treatment of the New Testament 
 evidence on this matter. " Only a very strained exegesis," he thinks, 
 could draw any conclusion as to authorship from the recorded words of 
 Christ ; and tlms the whole New Testament evidence is at once set aside. 
 He can produce much more satisfactory evidence — and that from the 
 Bible itself — against the Mosaic authorship; for does not Erza (ix. 11) 
 ascribe a Deuteronomic law, not to Moses but to the prophets ? It seems 
 
29 
 
 that in his estimation one such incidental reference, when favourable 
 to his argument, must be pressed t<> the uttermost, but that the mass 
 of distinct and undoubted declarations of an opposite character is of 
 no value I But what then does Professor Smith understand by "the 
 prophets " in Ezra ix. 11 1 The part of the ('anon bo called was, himself 
 being witness, not yet compiled. Does the phrase then mean books or 
 persons? and if the latter, where is the straining if we suppose Moses to 
 mean a person too 1 ? If the term Prophets was not at this time used as 
 distinct from Moses, is it not much more natural to suppose that the 
 Prophets may include Moses than thai Moses afterwards included the 
 Prophets, and that too at a time when the meaning of each term was 
 distinct — "Moses and the Prophets.' 1 Was not Moses a prophet 1 And 
 is not the term "prophets" elsewhere used to designate nil through whom 
 divine revelations were given (Neh. ix. 26, Luke i. 70, Heb. i. \)% Had 
 not the same law been reiterated from age to age by the prophets as well 
 as given originally by Moses? And how does Professor .Smith explain 
 away the words of Nehemiah, the contemporary of Ezra (chap. ix. 13, 
 14) i How would he explain the words of Zacharias (Luke ii. 70) about 
 \he holy prophets " which have been since the world began," who (it may 
 be mentioned by the way) are stated to have uttered directly Messianic 
 prophecies ] This method of dealing in the most arbitrary fashion with 
 texts, according as they do or do not suit the " present argument," is quite 
 characteristic of the self-styled higher criticism. 
 
 9. An unanswerable argument in favour of the unity of the law as 
 given by the hand of Moses is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where 
 the Aaronic priesthood, the doctrine of sacrifice, the tabernacle, and the 
 whole ritual are made the basis of a profound discussion and made arti- 
 culate with evangelical teaching in a manner which to the new criticism 
 must be very perplexing. The unity of the law and its Mosaic origin are 
 pre-supposed throughout, and a careful study of the whole epistle will 
 make it manifest that either the writer of it or the new critics have made 
 a grievous mistake. 
 
 We shall consider some of the arguments on the other side after we 
 lmve looked more carefully at the book of Deuteronomy. Meanwhile we 
 may remark that the Book of the Law of Moses can be traced from the 
 time of Christ and his Apostles back to the time of Moses, and nobody ever 
 heard of any other book so called. It is manifestly the same book which 
 is called indiscriminately "the book of the law." " the book of Moses," 
 and "the book of the law of Moses." This book, Professor Smith admits, 
 is the Pentateuch in Ezra's time. The same book is expressly mentioned 
 afterwards by Nehemiah (chap, viii 1, 2, 18, and ix. 26, and x. 29-39) 
 when the statutes, judgments, commandments, as well as levitical ordi- 
 nances are those of Moses, and by .Malaehi (chap. iv. 1), who expressly 
 declares that this law with the statutes and judgments was delivered by 
 Jehovah at Horeb. This book of the law was well known to Zerubbabel 
 and Iris associates (Ezra iii. 2) ; it was well known in the time of Hezekiah 
 (2 Chron. xiii. 16), of Jehoahaphal (2 Chron. vii 7-9), of Solomon (1 Kings 
 viii. 53-56), of David (1 Bangs ii. 3), of Joshua (Joshua xxiv. 26, and 
 xxiii. 6, and viii. 31-34, and iv. 10, and i. 7, 8). Moses had com- 
 menced the practice of reading it to the people (Exod. xxiv. 7), and he had 
 ah'eady commenced to write in it before reaching Horeb (Exod. xvii. 1 I) . 
 and the contents of the book are continually referred to in the Psalms 
 
30 
 
 and by the Prophets, when it is not expressly mentioned. But all this, 
 which to ordinary minds is sufficiently convincing, is set aside by the 
 critics as a " very strained exegesis, " mere " conjecture, " quite a 
 " natural " mistake ; they have discovered a new way of doing " more 
 justice to the principle that the Bible is to be interpreted by itself ! " 
 
 VI. DEUTERONOMY. 
 
 What has been already said about the Pentateuch in general applies to 
 that part of it called Deuteronomy ; but several things may be added in proof 
 of its authenticity as a part of the Pentateuch, and a Mosaic document. 
 
 Prima facie the book appears to be Mosaic ; there is much in it which 
 corresponds exactly to that period and to no other, while a few things 
 which may seem to suggest a different period are capable of easy 
 explanation. 
 
 1. The references to Egypt suggest the time of Moses. Any relation 
 subsisting between Isi^ael and Egypt at a later period — say the time of 
 Josiah — was of a wholly different character. Egypt is throughout the 
 book spoken of as the land best known, and Canaan as a strange land 
 (e.g. Deut. viii. 7, ff, and xi. 10). 
 
 2. If the writer addresses his work directly to his contemporaries, then 
 no generation could understand this book in that sense except the genera- 
 tion who sojourned in the Desert. It would require a great stretch of 
 imagination to conceive a writer six or seven centuries later so completely 
 identifying himself with the Desert period, and so completely forgetting 
 all subsequent history, for 
 
 3. There is not the slightest reference to any person or period in Israel's 
 history after the age of Moses (we are not forgetting the reference to 
 Kings, chap. xvii. 14). There were many important persons and eras 
 which a late writer, writing for his own age, would necessarily have 
 noticed. There was a new departure in the time of David and Solomon, 
 which is never lost sight of by subsequent writers, but which is wholly 
 unknown to the writer of this book. 
 
 4. Events are minutely detailed which would have had no direct 
 interest to a late writer or his contemporaries. Why should any writer 
 make mention of the Emim, Zamzummim, and Horim, &c. (Deut. ii. 10, 
 12, 20, 23), many centuries after they had ceased to be, and make no 
 mention of contemporary nations 1 Is it after the manner of fiction to 
 condescend upon such particulars as Deut. i. 1, 3, 6; iv. 41-43; xxiii. 
 3, 4 ; xxiv. 8, 9 ; xxix. 1,8; and xxxi. 9 1 How can we account for the 
 directions in chap, xxvii. about Ebal and Gerizim and the exact fulfilment 
 by Joshua (chap. ix. 30-35) if these were not Mosaic 1 
 
 5. What explanation can be given of the benedictions or prophecies 
 regarding the tribes in chap, xxxiii. if they belong to Josiah 's time 1 It 
 is noticeable that the tribe of Simeon is omitted. At the time of Moses' 
 death it had all the appearance of dying out, its numbers being reduced 
 during the forty years' wandering in the desert to little more than a 
 third of what they were at the time of the Exodus. (Comp. Num. i. 23, 
 and Num. xxvi. 14.) 
 
 6. If Deutei-onomy be contemporary with Jeremiah, why does the 
 
31 
 
 writer of the former invariably speak of all the transactions connected 
 with Egypt and the Desert as intimately known to those whom he ad 
 B, while tin; writer of the latter as uniformly speaks of those and 
 much later events as belonging to tin- times of the Fathers. Deuteronomy 
 says you, not your fathers, (chap. i. 8 ; iii. IS ; iv. 20, 37 ; v. 3, <fcc, &c), 
 Jeremiah says, yow fathers, not you (chap. ii. 5 ; vii. 22, 2"> ; ix. 14, &c., 
 Ac.), when referring to the time of Moses and subsequent periods. 
 
 7. The prophecy (chap, xviii. 15J is clearly Mosaic and Messianic 
 We have only to examine the numerous references to it in the New 
 Testament to be convinced of this. It is referred to by Philip (John i. 
 Ml), by the five thousand (John vi 14); our Lord himself probably had 
 the same passage in view (John v. 46, 47) when he said, " J lad ye believed 
 Moses ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me : but if ye believe 
 not his writings how shall ye believe my words?" It is noticeable thai 
 in this passage there is a significant and designed emphasis laid by Christ 
 upon the writings of Moses in contradistinction to his own words ; but if 
 these writings were not the work of Moses, and if they had only traditional 
 words of his, the argument here is meaningless.* Can anything be more 
 conclusive than the language of the Apostle Peter (Acts iii. 22)? And 
 if the " me" to whom the Prophet is to be like is not really Moses, can 
 this quotation be defended on any ground which will yet conserve the 
 infallible accuracy and divine authority of this passage of Scripture ? The 
 same remarks apply to Acts vii. 37. 
 
 8. The admission of this book by the Samaritans and by all the Jewish 
 sects as Mosaic is inexplicable on the theory of its being so late as the 
 time of Josiah. f 
 
 9. The loss of all trace of its true authorship and the accompanying 
 circumstances is equally inexplicable. 
 
 10. Deuteronomy is quoted and referred to in other Old Testament 
 writings. When David arranged the priests and Levites in courses 
 (1 Chron. xxiii. 4, and xxvi. 29), he appointed "officers and judges," the 
 terms being identical with those in Deut. xvi. 18, and the appointment 
 being in harmony with the Mosaic legislation in Deut. xvii. 9-12. Deut. 
 iv. 7, 8 is quoted, 2 Sam. vii. 23. The law of redemption (Ruth iv. 
 5-11), in virtue of which Boaz married Ruth, is found only in Deut. 
 xxv. 5-7 ; and in Ruth's case the custom was carried out exactly as it is 
 there appointed. Deut. xxxiii. 2 is quoted by Deborah, Judg. v. 4, 5 ; 
 and Deut. xxxii. 17 is likewise quoted by her, Judg. v. 8, the term 
 B^HQ Chadaahim in the sense of new or unknown gods occuring in 
 both. Jephtha's answer to the Ammonites (Judg. xi. 15) corresponds 
 exactly with Deut. ii. 9-19, and there is no other writing to account for 
 his accurate information. 1 Sam. ii. 12, 13, by a slight change in the 
 punctuation, might read — " The sons of Eli were sons of Belial ; they 
 knew not the Lord nor tlie legal right (or statutory due) of the priests with 
 the people ; \ when any man offered sacrifice," &c. Being ungodly and 
 
 * "S\aisri is opposed to Ifioi ; iKtivof to iftev ; and ro7i ijetivau y oa p. ft an* to ttii IftoT; 
 frtfta si. 
 
 t The Sadducees, apparently the most ancient of the sects, did not receive a.s 
 authoritative any books but the Pentateuch. As this fact does not suit Dr S. 
 Davidson, of course "little reliance can be put" upon it. (Canon, p. 63. 
 
 % The words in italics are exactly the same as those in Deut. xviii. o, viz., 
 Dyn (or riNO) riX D^n'sn BSE 5 » ; Mishpat hakkohcitiim 'eth [me'eth] ha'am. 
 
32 
 
 ignorant they transgressed the law in such a manner as to disgust the 
 worshippers. 
 
 11. In Dent. vi. 7 provision is made for family instruction and the 
 transmission of the law from generation to generation. This is clearly 
 referred to in Psa. lxxviii. 5-8. The word " Testimony " (H-ny.) there 
 used is also employed in 2 Kings xi. 12, where we are told that Jehoiada 
 gave to the young king Joash the " Testimony," with a manifest reference 
 to the instruction of Deut. xvii. 18, 19. This was nearly two hundred 
 and fifty years before the finding of the book in the temple by Hilkiah. 
 There is no reason for restricting the meaning of the term to the 
 Decalogue ; it is equally applicable to the whole of the laws contained in 
 Deuteronomy which all the people, and especially the rulers, were 
 expected to be familiar with, as the above texts clearly shew. It was 
 also to be read publicly at stated times (chap. xxxi. 10). 
 
 "We may now examine some of the objections raised to the Mosaic 
 authorship of the Pentateuch in general, and Deuteronomy in particular. 
 So far as adopted by Professor Smith, they are (1) the mention of names 
 belonging to a later age, e.g., Dan and Hebron ; (2) the repetition — some- 
 times with divergence — of various laws ; (3) the contradictory legislation 
 about high places ; (4) the mention of kings in Israel ; and (5) the 
 identity of the priests and Levites in Deuteronomy, contrasted with the 
 difference between them elsewhere. 
 
 1. Later names. This objection is a pure mistake on the part of the 
 critics themselves. Professor Smith mentions Dan and Hebron as 
 examples. But at other times he is not slow to suggest interpolations as 
 obviating all difficulties, and the possibility of such a thing has been by 
 others suggested here. It is, however, quite unnecessary. Dan is 
 mentioned twice in the Pentateuch (Gen. xiv. 14, and Deut. xxxiv. 1), 
 and in neither case is it probable that Laish-Dan (Joshua xix. 47, Judges 
 xviii. 29) is meant. It would have been out of Abraham's way con- 
 siderably when pursuing his enemies in the direction of Damascus (Gen. 
 xiv. 15), and it is geographically inaccurate to speak of "all the land of 
 Gilead unto Dan" (Deut. xxxiv. 1), if Laish-Dan were meant; besides, 
 the whole country west of the Jordan is included in the next verse. It 
 is clear, therefore, that there was another Dan besides Laish. Even if 
 Dan be placed at or near the sources of the Jordan, this will not at all 
 suit the locality of Laish (see Judg. xviii. 29, and 2 Sam. x. 6), and 
 this district, moreover, was already allocated to Naphtali (Josh. xix. 
 32-39). It is no uncommon thing to find two places, or even more, 
 having the same name, e.g., Bethlehem, Kadesh, Hebron, Carmel, Ramah. 
 It is equally easy to dispose of Hebron. It has three names in the 
 Pentateuch, Mamie, Kirjath-Arba, and Hebron (Gen. xxxv. 27). The 
 name Hebron appears in reality to be the most ancient (Num. xiii. 22); 
 in Abraham's time it was called Mamre after a man so named, a friend 
 and confederate of Abraham's (Gen. xiii. 13); in Moses' time it was called 
 Kirjath-Arba by the sons of Arba, the Anakim, who then had possession 
 of it (Num. xiii. 22; Josh. xiv. 15; and Judg. i. 10). When Caleb 
 got possession of it, he very naturally wished to abolish this heathenish 
 name, and restored the original name, Hebron. The references given 
 
 DDIJ'P had not yet so entirely lost its original significance as to mean an illegal 
 or unauthorised innovation, instead of a statutory enactment. There is thus a 
 verbal and accurate quotation. 
 
33 
 
 above dearly shew that Etirjath-Arba cannot have been a very ancient 
 name. The sole proof that Hebron waa a late, or post-Mosaic name, is 
 Josh. xiv. 15 ! One might as well say the place did not exist till 
 Rehoboam's time (2 Chron. xi. 10.) The mention of the thra names in 
 the Pentateuch is an incidental, and therefore all the more striking, 
 evidence of the Mosaic; authorship, for at no other period could all these 
 be so naturally and appropriately used. 
 
 2. The Repetitions of various Laws. The Passover, e.g., is no less 
 than six times enjoined with variations. But these are all capable of 
 satisfactory explanation. Exod. xii. details the specific arrangements for 
 the first passover, which was of course unique and exceptional ; Exod. xiii. 
 regards it as a permanent ordinance, and connects with it also the dedica- 
 tion of the first-born, which, as well as the Passover, is based upon the 
 redemption of the people from Egypt. Again, in chap, xxiii., the three 
 feasts are mentioned along with other important statutes. In chap, xxxiv. 
 the Passover and the dedication of the first-born are again brought into 
 close connection, and more specific instructions given (ver. 20). In 
 Leviticus xxiii. the three feasts are again enumerated, and more specific 
 instructions given about the presentation of the first-fruits (vers. 10-14), 
 which had been already enjoined in a general way (Exod. xxiii 19). 
 The repetition of the law in Dent. xvi. needs no explanation. It supplies 
 us, however, with another incidental and valuable testimony in favour of 
 the Mosaic authorship of that book, for it is here only that the specific 
 reason for using unleavened bread is given : " Seven days shalt thou eat 
 unleavened bread therewith — the bread of affliction, for thou earnest forth 
 out of the land of Egypt in haste" (ver. 16). Now, what possible use 
 could a writer in Josiah's time, 800 years after the event, have for such a 
 statement 1 It is the language of a contemporary speaking to those who 
 had taken part in the event. The repetitions are simply an example of 
 the "line \ipon line" method of instruction, there is no contradiction, 
 there is no development ; there are merely a few additional details or 
 needed explanations. 
 
 This may be regarded as a fair example of the repetition of laws of 
 which so much is made by the negative critics ; and there is really 
 nothing in the objection but what a little careful thought would easily 
 obviate. Even the double or triple repetitions of an historical event may 
 be necessary in order that the historian may shew its organic connection 
 with antecedent or subsequent history in different aspects and at different 
 points. The history and legislation of the Pentateuch are so interwoven 
 as to render their separation impossible They form the warp and the 
 woof of the whole work ; remove the one and the other falls to pieces. It 
 requires no great penetration to see that during the forty yeai-s' sojourn 
 in the Desert particular cases might occur which called for a more explicit 
 statement of the law. and in particular that the regulations given in 
 I Vuteronomy when the people were on the point of entering Canaan. 
 where everything would become permanently fixed and settled, would 
 naturally differ to some extent from those formerly given when they had 
 to modify all permanent statutes to suit the Desert life. Thus r.g., in 
 Exod. xxii. 26, mention is made of raiment received in pledge, and it is 
 ordered to be restored before night, while in Deut. xxiv. 6, the millstones 
 arc expressly mentioned, and the receiving of them in pledge prohibited. 
 
 
 
34 
 
 The principle of the law is the same, though the details naturally vary. 
 We find the same method adopted by our Lord himself, in whose recorded 
 teachings there are numerous instances of parables and precepts identical 
 in principle yet varied in detail, delivered at different times. There is, 
 moreover, a close connection, not only between the history and the legis- 
 lation of the Pentateuch, but also between its ritual and ethical principles. 
 The ethics of the theocracy form the preamble, the " Whereas " of the 
 ritual, and in order to enforce these theocratic truths the ritual, which 
 is the type of them, is repeated, so as to enforce the idea of the organic 
 unity of doctrine and ritual, and to guard against the superstitious notion 
 that the ritual itself, as a mere isolated arbitrary observance, possesses 
 virtue ex opere operato. How needful such instruction was and is, 
 the history both of the Jewish and the Christian Church abundantly 
 testifies. 
 
 3. The law regarding high places. Briefly, Professor Smith holds that 
 there was no law against sacrificing on high places till Josiah's time, but 
 there is such a law in Deuteronomy, therefore the legislation of Deuter- 
 onomy belongs to Josiah's time. The law in Exodus xx. 24—26 does not, 
 as Professor Smith asserts, "contemplate the worship of God on other 
 altars than that of the central sanctuary ; " and there is no contradiction 
 whatever between this passage and Deuteronomy xii. 5, 14, and xvi. l(j. 
 Even if Professor Smith's view of " all places where I record my name " 
 were grammatically correct, which is very doubtful, it simply implies the 
 assertion of a sovereign right to choose, and one exclusive place was not 
 definitively chosen till David's time. And, in point of fact, the passage 
 in Exodus applies to the present Desert life, when the "place" was con- 
 stantly changing, whereas Deuteronomy is contemplating the settlement 
 in Canaan, where high places were closely associated with polytheistic 
 worship, to which the temptation would become much greater than it was 
 in the Desert. It is quite true that both Samuel and Elijah did not con- 
 fine their sacrifices to the central sanctuary, but this is not difiicult of 
 explanation. The spirit of the law was always above the letter of it, and 
 in Elijah's case the whole circumstances were so entirely exceptional that 
 it is pitiful to adduce it in this connection. The law against high places 
 was to prevent idolatry ; Elijah's object was to bring back Israel from 
 idolatry, and he was acting directly under the guidance of the same God 
 who gave the law; there was no legitimate sanctuary in Israel, and 
 obedience to the strict letter of the law was impossible. The moral and 
 spiritual dignity of Elijah and his work, under the inspiration of God, 
 was such as to render all mere ritual details of no moment whatever : the 
 spirit is in this case all the more thoroughly conserved by ignoring the 
 letter. 
 
 The case of Samuel is not more formidable. We might simply assert 
 the obvious fact that with such priests as Eli's sons ministering at the 
 Tabernacle the letter of the law might very well be dispensed Avith ; and 
 Samuel was acting under special divine guidance as well as Elijah, though 
 his work was somewhat different. There may be more said, however, 
 than this. By this time it seems to have been not an uncommon thing 
 to remove the Ark from the Tabernacle and cany it to various places and 
 for various purposes ( Judg. xx. 26, xxi. 1-4 ; 1 Sam. iv. 3), the Tabernacle 
 also, originally set up at Shiloh (Josh, xviii. 1), was afterwards removed 
 to Gibeon ; and thus the places where the Tabernacle and the Ark had 
 
35 
 
 been were reckoned holy, and retained their character after these had 
 been removed (1 Sam. xxi. l-(> ; 1 Chron, xvi. .'5'.), and rari. 29 ; 2 Sam. 
 vi. 17; audi Chron. xv, I, and 2 Chron. viii. 11). Thus the high p] 
 where sacrifice was offered were those to which the Ark or the Tabernacle 
 was removed. (Compare the above reference, and especially 1 Chron. 
 
 \\i. 39, and xxi. 29, with 1 Kings iii. 1, 1">.) The separation of the Ark 
 
 and the Tabernacle introduced a double priesthood for a time, and their 
 removal from one place to another originated various high places which 
 afterwards became liable to much abuse, and from the period of Solomon, 
 when the temple was built, their use became an index of the spiritual 
 
 state of the people. But all this implies thai the law on the subject was 
 well known. Samuel had, under special divine guidance, departed from 
 the letter of the law in special circumstances in order to recall the people 
 to a true perception of Its spirit; at a later period the letter was heed- 
 lessly and irreverently broken because the people had do regard for the 
 spirit of it. Finding the authorised ritual profaned to the great scandal 
 and injury of religion, Samuel fell hack upon the more simple customs 
 of patriarchal times, in order to conserve and re-animate true religion 
 Public worship is a divinely-appointed ordinance, and yet there may be 
 circumstances in which, the form and the substance being divorced, i 
 may become schismatic in outward appearance, and thereby manifest m 
 truly the unity and vitality of the Faith. It is remarkably strange that 
 an evangelical theologian should see insuperable difficulties in believing 
 that Samuel, under divine guidance, could act thus, and yet have no diffi- 
 culty in maintaining the new theory about Deuteronomy ! That the 
 prescribed ritual was known to David and Solomon is manifest from 
 1 Chron. xxi. 28-30, and 1 Kings iii. 2 ; and that the spirit is everything 
 and the letter wholly subordinate was also well known (1 Sam. xv. 22, 
 23 ; 2 Chron. xxx. 16-20). Many attempts at reformation were made, 
 as by Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah ; but the high places were not 
 abolished, even the altars erected by Solomon for his pagan -wives remained 
 for nearly four centuries, when they were removed by Josiah (2 Kings 
 xxiii. 13, 14). No one has shewn how the new law — supposing it was 
 new — grew out of any special needs of the people at any time subsequent 
 to the entry into Canaan ; the principle of the law was as clear then as at 
 any other period, and throwing it forward into Josialrs time does not in 
 the least help us to a better understanding of any thing. 
 
 4. The mention of kings in Israel. But the idea of a monarchy is 
 manifestly prospective, and is by no means regarded with complacency or 
 approbation. The general scope of the legislation contemplates a more 
 primitive form of government. Compare e.g., Deut. xvii. 9, with Num. 
 wvii. 18-21, where the mutual relation of the civil authorities and the 
 priesthood are described in almost identical terms. The regular civil 
 authority contemplated is simply a UDI^ Shophet, a judge, and the appoint- 
 ment of a ■=!?>? MeLech, a king (Deut. xvii. 14), is purely hypothetical ; and 
 we can see no difficulty whatever in supposing that both Gideon (Judg. 
 viii. 23) and Samuel (1 Sam. viii. G) had strong objections to the kingship 
 when proposed as a practical step. They saw in it, in the form and 
 circumstances in which it came before them, the rejection of Jehovah 
 (Judg. viii. 23, and 1 Sam. viii. 7), and even if it had been authorised and 
 contemplated in the law of Moses as a desirable change, they would have 
 
36 
 
 seen at once that it never could have been so on that principle.* It is 
 possible also that. too much is made of the mere word "king," a title 
 which is applied even to Moses himself (Deut. xxxiii. 5). 
 
 5. It is said that in Deuteronomy the priests and Levites are identical, 
 which proves a progressive development and change of view regarding 
 the priesthood. The objection is frivolous and ill-founded. Certainly 
 the priests, whoever they were, are as prominent in Deuteronomy as else- 
 where, which ill agrees with Professor Smith's other notion that long 
 before Josiah's time they had fallen into the shade. 
 
 But (1.) Deuteronomy xviii. 1-8 clearly proves that the distinction 
 between priests and other Levites was not obliterated but rather confirmed. 
 
 (2.) After the book was found by Hilkiah in the temple, the priests 
 and Levites were as distinct as before ; the Levites who were not priests 
 were to be the teachers of the people (2 Chron. xxx. 22, and xxxv. 3 ; 
 Deut. xxxiii. 10). Hezekiah, who had formerly made a reformation 
 very similar to Josiah's, carried out this regulation, and so also did 
 Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xvii. 9). Deut. xxxiii. 10 therefore introduced no 
 new legislation. 
 
 (3.) The way in which the priests and Levites are spoken of at the 
 coronation of Joash (comp. 2 Kings xi. and 2 Chron. xxiii), and also at 
 the dedication of the temple, shews that there is no special emphasis to be 
 put upon the expression, "the priests the Levites." According to the 
 new criticism, the distinction made in 1 Kings viii. 4 (comp. 2 Chron. v. 5) 
 is a mistake. 
 
 (4.) The emphasizing of Levitical priests is in perfect accordance with 
 the transition period to which Deuteronomy belongs. Like many other 
 of the Mosaic laws, those regarding the priesthood had not been strictly 
 adhered to in the Desert, but henceforth no priests can be allowed to 
 minister but those of the tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron. 
 
 (5.) The expression, " priests and Levites, " is used by Ezra and 
 Neheniiah (jmssim), and the distinction clearly marked. The expression, 
 " the priests the Levites," is once used by Nehemiah (chap. xi. 20) ; it 
 occurs also in Josh. iii. 3, and therefore proves nothing. 
 
 (6.) The division of the priests and Levites into courses by David 
 (1 Chron. xxi. 24—29, and xxiii. 6) was continued by Solomon (2 Chron. 
 viii. 14) and Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxxi. 17-21). The same arrangement 
 subsisted in the time of Josiah, Ezra, &c, down to the time of Christ 
 (Luke i. 5-8). The Deuteronomic legislation, which according to the 
 critics revolutionised the priesthood, left all these things unchanged ! 
 The fact is that the Aaronic priesthood, instituted in the Desert, was the 
 only divinely instituted or authorised priesthood ever existing in Israel, 
 and there is no proof of any other. 
 
 (7.) In the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. vii. 11) the expression, 
 " Levitical priesthood," is used as synonymous with " the order of Aaron ' 
 (comp. chap. v. 4), and is contrasted with that of Melchisedec. It is also 
 argued that the priesthood, which has always been an essential element 
 in true worship, must be expressly appointed by God (chap. v. 4), and 
 that any change in it indicates an entire revolution in the whole economy 
 (chap vii. 11-18). Now the critics are bound to shew when, where, and 
 for what important purpose the change which they insist upon was made. 
 
 * " The land of his possession " (Deut. ii. 12), may be applied to the country east 
 of Jordan merely as in chap. iii. 20, Josh. i. 15, and xii. 6. 
 
37 
 
 VII. THE PERSONATION THEORY. 
 
 Professor Smith's idea about Deuteronomy is this. It is a development 
 of the Mosaic legislation belonging to the time of Josiah, containing the 
 oracles of some unknown prophet of that period who put his own work 
 into the mouth of Moses. We have already demonstrated that there is 
 no necessity for such a theory, and that it docs not in the least help us 
 to understand anything better than we did before. We shall now shew 
 that it is utterly untenable. 
 
 1. Professor Smith says it was natural for the author to use Moses 
 name, on what ground unfortunately he does not say. He says also that 
 in doing so he adopted a " literary method " which was quite usual ; it was, 
 in fact, " a liberty common to every historian of antiquity,"* and consisted 
 merely in throwing " certain didactic matter into the form of a speech." 
 Now, in opposition to this bold declaration, we affirm that such a pro- 
 ceeding as this would have been most unnatural, and that no parallel case 
 can be adduced from either ancient or modern literature. For what is 
 the true state of the case 1 Is it merely certain didactic matter in the 
 form of a speech 1 According to his own shewing, it is much more than 
 this. A book is accidentally discovered, written nobody knows when, 
 where, or by whom. It is, without the least inquiry, accepted as a divine 
 authoritative law-book. The king and all the people are greatly troubled 
 because neither they nor their fathers had kept the word of the Lord as 
 contained in that book (2 Chron. xxxiv. 21), although of course neither 
 they nor their fathers had ever heard of it before or had any opportunity 
 of knowing its contents. And besides all this, much evil and many curses 
 were to come upon them for not keeping a law which it was impossible 
 they could have ever heard of. Well may we ask, in Professor Smith's 
 own words, " Can it be denied that to many minds such a circumstance 
 must appear to suggest a far more fundamental difficulty" than any that 
 it professes to remove ? 
 
 But farther, the author of this new law-book is never heard of. Pro- 
 fessor Smith says everybody knew quite well what it was, but really we 
 must ask where he got his information. When we read the thirty-fourth 
 and thirty-fifth chapters of Second Chronicles, we must confess that we 
 naturally suppose that this was a book which had been well known to 
 exist, that everybody at once understood what book it was, and that if 
 Professor Smith be right, Josiah and all concerned were labouring under 
 some egregious mistake. The whole thing is utterly unnatural. 
 
 But it is a sort of thing, we are told, which was done by all ancient 
 historians. In order to produce a parallel case, Professor Smith must 
 bring forward one in which an unknown author uses the name of a 
 legislator who lived eight centuries before, a man of great renown, on the 
 title page of his own production, wherein he introduces new legislation to 
 supersede the old ; he must shew further that a nation has at once, with- 
 out the least inquiry, accepted the new legislation and been thrown into a 
 state of great alarm because their fathers had not obeyed it ; and, finally, 
 he must be able to prove that there has from the earliest times been a 
 universal tradition that the work was really the work of him whose name 
 it bore. Until this can be done, it is simply ridiculous to talk about a 
 * "Remarks," in App. II. Coll Com. Report, p. 23. 
 
38 
 
 " liberty common to every historian of antiquity." It is impossible to 
 argue the case, if this book, bearing to be historical, professing to relate 
 the intercourse between Moses and Israel, and in every respect accordant 
 with that profession, whose character is not didactic merely, but historical 
 and legislative also, is to be dealt with as a mere dramatic fiction. If 
 that is all that criticism can do for the Bible and us, instead of according 
 it our best thanks for its valuable services, as Professor Smith thinks we 
 should, we would gladly give it hearty thanks to let the Bible alone and 
 try its skill on some corpus vile on which it might experiment undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 2. But unless we suppose Deuteronomy to belong to Josiah's time, our 
 " uncritical tradition " obscures " the order and regular progress " of 
 God's dealings with Israel, i.e. the great development which the critics 
 have discovered. Now, we must repeat what we have substantially said 
 before, that this idea, as they understand it, is a pure imagination ; there 
 is in the Old Testament ritual no such development as they profess to 
 have discovered. The mere ritual is nothing in itself, apart from the 
 ethical and spiritual truths of which it is the expression ; separated from 
 these, it is purely arbitrary and changeable, not fixed and determinate. 
 There was, undoubtedly, a great deal of meaning in the Jewish ritual, 
 which was probably never rightly understood ; we believe there was much 
 in it which even now is not understood ; and the real development con- 
 sisted in the deeper study, the better understanding, and the more intel- 
 ligent and spiritual practice both of the moral and Levitical laws. Both 
 the ethical and the ritual contained an ideal toward which Israel was to 
 be educated and disciplined, as well as the germs and living roots from 
 which that education and discipline was to spring. 
 
 Now, in order to prove their theory of a great development of ritual, 
 the critics would require to show what is the mutual relation between the 
 ritual and the ethic at every step, how they grow out of each other, and 
 how the one as it grows is adapted at each new phase to express the 
 simultaneous growth of the other. It may fairly be a question whether 
 a development of ritual, having a true spiritual significance, would not be 
 a simplification and a curtailing of forms and precepts rather than other- 
 wise ; for as the truly spiritual is apprehended and becomes operative in 
 forming the thoughts and habits, the less need is there for the ritual, 
 which is to a certain extent a scaffolding for the spiritual building, an 
 artificial support for the spiritual plant. 
 
 If, in this light, we regard the legislation about high places, we can see 
 no reason why the permission should have been first and the prohibition 
 last, as Professor Smith maintains ; and it is for him to show us in what 
 respect Israel had reached a stage of development in the time of Josiah in 
 connection with which this particular prohibition becomes so expressive, 
 and that at any previous period it would have been mal apropos. We 
 would, if compelled to take a side, rather argue the opposite, for spiritual 
 development throws off the ritualistic yoke, positive injunctions are more 
 safely dispensed with, and the permission to sacrifice on high places might 
 plausibly be regarded as an intermediate stage between the restriction of 
 all sacrifice to one place and the throwing down of all partitions, when 
 the whole earth might become a place for worship of the highest, the most 
 spiritual, and least ritualistic kind. 
 
 As we have previously shewn, the great difference between Leviticus 
 
3D 
 
 and Deuteronomy in the matter of legislation is, that the former has 
 respect to the present Wilderness life, and the latter contemplates the 
 people as dwelling in Canaan. Add to this the explanations and details 
 which forty years' experience as supreme judge in explaining all the 
 difficulties and settling all controversies had suggested ; add further the 
 spiritual progress and the literal ■ \ experience of the author during the 
 same period, and yon have an entirely satisfactory explanation of 
 supposed diflercnces in style and divergencies of legislation found in them. 
 Deuteronomy has no specific reference or adaptation to any definite period 
 of Israel's history; it simply contemplates them, in the most general 
 manner, as settled in the land of Canaan. 
 
 3. Mew does Prof essor Smith's theory agree with the contents of the hook 
 Itself? The work is put into the mouth of Moses; but that is not all. 
 We might suppose Moses to rise from the dead and deliver a divine 
 message to the men of this generation; we might suppose a cultured 
 clever author to deliver in the name of Moses such a message as we might 
 anticipate — a message applying the precepts of the Decalogue to the con- 
 science and life of this age. And Professor Smith seems to think that 
 that is something like what the author of Deuteronomy did. But it is 
 entirely the reverse. The author does not bring Moses up to speak to the 
 Israel of the seventh century B.C., but he himself goes back and speaks 
 exactly as .Moses might have been supposed to speak to the Israel of the 
 fifteenth ! Some one has sought an illustration of the state of the case 
 from the supposition that Carlyle, being an ardent Republican, had issued, 
 imder the title of letters and speeches by Oliver Cromwell, a work of his 
 own, inculcating republican sentiments ; and this lias been regarded as a 
 parallel case But if Carlyle had really wanted as to hear what Oliver 
 Cromwell would have to say to us, is it conceivable that he would have 
 clothed his utterances in the antiquated language and phraseology of the 
 sixteenth century, that he would at once have introduced all the manners 
 and customs of that age instead of ours, that he would have intertwined 
 his republican doctrine inextricably with the history of the Civil War. 
 that he would have utterly ignored all that has happened since, that he 
 would have written it so completely with the effect of making us acquainted 
 with Cromwell's times, when his real object was to make Cromwell sp 
 directly to us and our times? For he is a contemporary author, and 
 there is no reason to think that he would speak otherwise than directly 
 and pointedly to his own time — i.e., to us, for our development. But its 
 use as an illustration is this : — As Carlyle could not possibly have © 
 cocted these letters and speeches as Oliver Cromwell's with the view of 
 inculcating republican views on this nineteenth century, but would of 
 necessity, as a reasonable being, have adopted a totally different method, 
 so the author of Deuteronomy could not possibly have put his work into 
 the mouth of Moses in the form in which it is, while he intended it all 
 the time to be a direct and pointed appeal to Israel in the seventh century. 
 Moreover, the history given us in " Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. 
 known from other sources to be true history, whereas the author of 
 I Huteronomy falsifies history, — or, let us say, makes a historical romance, 
 as a framework for his didactic and legislative matter. The more the 
 subject is calmly considered, the more irresistible will the conclusion lie 
 that Deuteronomy is no more a romance of the sixth century is.c., than 
 Cromwell's Letters are a fiction of this nineteenth century A.D. 
 
40 
 
 If we could imagine some prophetical genius of the present time 
 publishing an historical romance pertaining to the time of the Norman 
 Conquest, under the name of William the Conqueror, containing new- 
 principles of legislation, which at once creates immense excitement in the 
 political and religious world, and leads to the immediate enforcing of the 
 suggested laws, while everybody knows that it is a romance by a living 
 author ; if we could suppose farther, that in a few generations from the 
 present time this book will come in some unaccountable way to be accepted 
 as really historical, and to be bona fide the law book introduced into 
 England by the Conqueror, we would have some approach to the absurdity 
 under consideration : with this important exception that, in the estimation 
 of some of the critics, the Jewish author was inspired by the Holy Ghost ! 
 
 4. We must have some more definite information about this author and 
 his work before we be called to throw aside our uncritical traditions. 
 Surely the critics would not have us to act toward them and their 
 discoveries as Josiah did with Hilkiah and his discovery. He was very 
 uncritical, very credulous, in fact very stupid, if the critics be right. 
 How did this book commend itself ? What evidence was produced of its 
 authenticity and genuineness ? Where, when, by whom, was it written ? 
 How did it come into the temple? When was the truth about its 
 authorship lost? How did it ever come to be regarded as the work of 
 Moses ? Can the critics give us no better answer than merely to tell us, 
 It was all natural, quite natural, it requires no explantion ; the author 
 naturally presents his views in dramatic form in the mouth of Moses : 
 all Hebrew history is anonymous, and of course a scribe would naturally 
 leap to the conclusion that it was really the work of Moses ! All that 
 any one can reasonably be expected to do, when brought face to face with 
 such profound methods of " explaining difficulties which the older exegesis 
 sought only to explain away," when he meets with such a thorough 
 exposure of the " old-fashioned plan of making arbitrary assumptions " — 
 all that any one can reasonably be expected to do in such a case is, in all 
 humility and with all respect, to follow the example of good old Dominie 
 Sampson, who swung his arms like a windmill, and shouted, " Prodigious !" 
 
 VIII. — CRITICISM AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 Questions of criticism may be undecided, and opinions may vary ; but 
 the doctrine of the Inspiration of the Scriptures is held as settled, and 
 wo critical views can be tolerated which are not consistent with it. On this 
 point, we should suppose, all parties are agreed j and the main question 
 in this connection is whether Professor Smith's opinions are compatible 
 with the Church's doctrine of Inspiration, or to use the language of the 
 College Sub- Committee,* " the question arises whether in themselves, or 
 in their plain tendency, they do not imperil the faith in the inspiration and 
 trustworthiness of the Scriptures, and do not suggest views inconsistent 
 with these attributes." 
 
 It is fair that allowance should be made, quantum valeat, for the element 
 of novelty. Not, of course, that the views promulgated are either novel 
 
 * College Com. Keport, App. I. p. 14. 
 
41 
 
 or original, for they arc neither ; Imt the combination of these views with 
 a bona fide adherenoe to the received doctrine of Revelation and Inspira 
 tion is certainly a novelty. Meanwhile, of course, Professor Smith must 
 reoeive credit for holding the doctrine of the Church on the Inspiration 
 of the Scriptures along with the critical results which he has promulgated 
 But that docs not affect the question as to the relative bearing of these 
 doctrines and these results, and their consistency with each other. Doc- 
 trines may be promulgated whose Logical results reach farther than their 
 promulgators arc aware of ; ami smh we believe to lie the case here. The 
 teaching is dangerous and unsettling in its tendency; the teacher is 
 apparently too short-sighted, ami by some detect in his mental constitution 
 too one-sided, to see that it is so. 
 
 1. It has struck many ordinary uncritical but fairly intelligent and 
 sensible people, as a vit\ lvmarkal ile thing that a professor in the Free 
 Church should have sat down to write an article for an encyclopedia on 
 the word "Bible," with the distinct understanding and firm resolution 
 that he was quietly ami deliberately to ignore the divine side of its 
 authorship : and Professor Smith in his explanation to the College Com- 
 mittee does nothing to remove the impression of incongruity and art 
 liness. If "everything of the nature of constructive theology " had to be 
 excluded in the sense of allowing him to say anything he chose about the 
 Bible as a Intuitu) book, but nothing whatever about it as a divine book, 
 then the ordinary Christian conscience will have little difficulty in decid- 
 ing, and that very emphatically, that loyalty to the truth demanded, that 
 under such insulting and unchristian limitations, from whatever quarter 
 they came, the work ought to have been declined as one which, in the 
 \cry nature of the case, would give a very unfair and inadequate repre 
 sentation of what the Bible really is. 
 
 It is amazing that Professor Smith should regard this matter so com- 
 placently : to many minds it suggests an unfitness for dealing with the 
 question of the Bible and all its details, which no amount of learning or 
 critical acumen could obviate. It is a question which many find a great 
 difficulty in answering satisfactorily how one who professes to receive the 
 Bible as a living word from God to the race and to himself personally, 
 could have deliberately acted on the plan which he had laid down, and 
 how he could have so complacently carried out his own plan in the whole 
 tone and spirit of his work. To our mind this invalidates greatly any 
 conclusions to which Professor Smith may have come, and gives us more 
 confidence in dealing even with his criticism itself; for if he could bring 
 himself m limine to adopt such a method, we are free to question with 
 less restraint his whole conclusions. 
 
 2. Criticism cannot be a sure guide unless it be pervaded with a sense 
 of the Divine authorship of the Scriptures. It is said that critics have to 
 do only with the human aspects of the question, and inspiration must be 
 left out of view in order that they may deal impartially with their own 
 proper department. The very reverse is the fact. The Bible is the Word 
 of God, and any criticism which ignores or sets aside that fact is incom- 
 petent ; any critic who deliberately allows it to be forgotten is adopting a 
 method which can only vitiate his whole work. 
 
 Atheists and infidels tell us that we must argue the questions of God's 
 being and Christ's mission impartially, by allowing ourselves to be in a 
 state of neutrality or indifference as to which side of the argument shall 
 
42 
 
 carry the day. As if that were a proper frame of mind, a higher or more 
 desirable attitude towards such questions ! Similarly the critics, when 
 they insist upon dealing with the books of the Bible as with mere human 
 writings, manifest an attitude towards the "Word of God which we can by 
 no means regard as well fitted to secure accuracy in their results. We 
 cannot all be critics, but we know that the Bible is the Word of God, 
 and that all candid and competent criticism will tend to confirm this fact, 
 and to produce greater reverence and more unreserved submission to it 
 as such. All the more on this account will we be cautious in accepting 
 the verdict of the critics. We will inquire well who they are, what atti- 
 tude they assume, what plan they propose, what postulates they start 
 from, and whether their purpose is to increase our knowledge of the Word 
 and Ways of God, or merely to exercise their skill in useless speculation ; 
 we must be satisfied that those who volunteer to be our guides are really 
 competent for the task. 
 
 Scholarship in human literature may be one important qualification ; a 
 humble childlike acceptance of the inspired Word of God as authoritative 
 over themselves and their work, and a hearty submission to it, is certainly 
 a no less essential requisite. Personal salvation and fellowship with God 
 are the highest ends of Bible study, to which all other labour is secondary 
 and subordinate ; and when the merely intellectual and literary is elevated 
 into the highest place, there is such a gross and glaring perversion that 
 nothing can be secure.* And much of the more recent criticism has 
 been of this character ; the critics have been largely unspiritual men, 
 who have confounded intellectual activity- with spiritual growth, and who 
 have stigmatised as mere uncritical tradition those views which have 
 looked mainly to the divine authorship of Scripture, although such uncri- 
 tical students have really understood the Bible better, what it is, and 
 what it is intended for, than the most scholarly of the new school of 
 critics. The higher criticism has not unfrequently adopted conclusions 
 hostile to orthodox beliefs, because heterodox beliefs have misled the 
 critics. Professor Smith has too implicitly followed this school; while he 
 disavows all sympathy with their negative or destructive designs, he has 
 not brought into the foreground the only efficient counteracting element, 
 viz., the divine authorship of the Bible, which all really valuable criticism 
 confirms. His work is, to say the least, extremely defective in holding 
 back those aspects of the Biblical authorship which are really its distinc- 
 tive feature. It has been said in his defence that that is a poor faith 
 which needs to be for ever calling out, " I am here," as if that had any 
 relevancy to the case. It might, with great force, be replied that that is 
 a much poorer faith which no one can see, and that in the very circum- 
 stances in which, if ever, we would expect it to be distinctly visible. 
 
 3. Professor Smith sees and very imperfectly answers the objection, 
 that his criticism, though assuming the reality of a divine Revelation and 
 acknowledging the authority of the Record, " tends to bring down the 
 notion of Revelation to a lower platform, and to make the distinction 
 between the Word of God and the word of man less palpable." The 
 objection is well-founded, and expresses one of the dangerous tendencies 
 
 * Dr S. Davidson tells us that the question of the Canon is not yet settled ; 
 what is wanted in order to settle it satisfactorily is a ra ional historic criticism 
 which does not believe in the supernatural inspiration of the books, nor their di i*ect 
 reference to the work of salvation. (Canon, 182, 185.) 
 
43 
 
 of his critical opinions. But he has a reply to it. The contrast, he says, 
 
 between belief in Kevelation and unbelief is absolute. " Belief Bays thai 
 God first finds and chooses man; unbelief says that man first finds and 
 
 chooses God ; t be critic lias no middle ground bei ween these t \v<> positions.' 1 
 Now this may be quite true, but it is certainly quite irrelevant; it does 
 not give us any information about the character <>f the Record; it doet 
 not, apparently, hinder the critic who believes in Revelation from adopting 
 
 precisely the same views of the Record as the critic who disbelief 
 and therefore it avails nothing to tell us that there is no middle ground. 
 There may be a great gttlf between them, but it' the critic on the one side 
 can leap to conclusions which lie on the other, what does it matter { You 
 may have a clear perception of the distinction between meum and t mi ni. 
 you may assure me that the distinction is absolute, and that there is no 
 middle ground, and yet you may at the same time propound doctrines 
 which make the distinction less palpable in regard to any particular Q 
 "so that unbelievers [= dishonest persons] have now an easier task when 
 they try to obliterate the distinction altogether." Your tine definiti 
 therefore go for nothing. Surely one may well doubt (and Profa 
 Smith ought not to be surprised at the doubt) whether such views as hi' 
 has promulgated about Deuteronomy, prophecy, Canticles, and even the 
 Gospels, tend to elevate or lower our views of the Bible as a divine book, 
 to confirm or call in question its divine inspiration. If Deuteronomi 
 a mere fiction, can it also be inspired? If Canticles be a mere sensuous 
 love-song, can it be inspired ] And, if so, what is the great spiritual 
 revelation of which it contains the record? The remarkable phrase to 
 which Dr Begg called attention at the Commission, that the deletion of 
 this book from the ('anon was " providentially averted by the allegorical 
 theory" seems to imply that Professor Smith doubts its canonicity : 
 least, he virtually declares that had it not been for the mistake of regarding 
 it as an allegory, it would never have been admitted. We believe tin 
 sanctified common sense of the Church would rather agree to reject i: 
 from the canon than to receive it on Professor Smith's terms. Here. 
 least, there can be no middle position ; if it is inspired, it must contain 
 some divine truth, and be worthy of its place. If you take from it even 
 thing which makes it really worthy of a place in the canon, and yet leave 
 it there as an inspired work, you may say what you will about the absolute 
 distinction between Belief in Revelation and Unbelief, but your own view 
 of what Inspiration and Revelation are must be very low and inadequate. 
 Probably, it was the mistake of the Hebrew Scribe in attributing Deuter- 
 onomy to Moses that providentially averted its deletion too! And we 
 suspect that Ezra, Nehemiah, and their coadjutors had not heard that 
 prophecy was a mere evolution of the spirit of the age, otherwise they 
 too might have acted differently ! Blissful ignorance ! If these ancient 
 worthies had known what these books really were, we would have 1 
 left without a Bible! How thankful we ought to be that we are 
 critics; we can really believe in the old-fashioned doctrine of inspiration, 
 without troubling ourselves overmuch about the human authors ; and we 
 do not feel in the least grateful to the critics for making a muddle of the 
 latter in order, as it seems, that they may make a muddle of the former 
 too. 
 
 The main difference, as it appears to us, between Professor Smith and 
 the negative school generally is simply this. Having arrived at the same 
 
44 
 
 conclusions, they say these conclusions prove that there is no special 
 inspiration, no divine hand in these books ; while he says, these con- 
 clusions are undoubtedly correct, yet we may conceive of God having 
 inspired these books after this manner. Believing Theology agrees with 
 the negative critics that either their critical conclusions or else the divine 
 inspiration of the Scriptures must be given up. There is no middle 
 ground for Professor Smith, and he attempts to stand with one foot on 
 the Evangelical Theology and the other on the negative criticism. The 
 experiment will probably not succeed, but we cannot forecast what the 
 precise result may be. 
 
 Others also we find assuming awkward positions, which appear to us 
 inconsistent, and which it must be impossible permanently to occupy. 
 Professor Macgregor, e.g., considers the question about the Mosaic author- 
 ship of the Pentateuch as one "not of abstruse scholar-ship, but of 
 morality," * and that any one personating Moses would probably have 
 been stoned as a profane person ; he is strongly of opinion that Christ 
 was completely committed to the Mosaic authorship, and he regards it as 
 " inconceivable that God should have inspired or authorised any man to 
 put on the false face of the supposed impersonation." But then again, he 
 tells us that, if we insist upon all this, we run the risk of driving some 
 men into infidelity ! that we must not only permit but encourage the new 
 teaching — no doubt, under the plausible guise of " scholarly inquiry " — 
 otherwise we will do " enormous damage to the Christian cause in the 
 rising generation " ! If we ask, in alarm and amazement : How so 1 we 
 are told that " the question is exercising the minds of our young people, 
 and must exercise it more and more until the question is definitively 
 settled in the way of real ascertainment " — all which is a mere hallucina- 
 tion ; our young people are not greatly exercised about anything of the 
 kind. There is much exercise of another sort among others than our 
 young people in the Church at present. 
 
 4. We have formerly observed that the mere human authorship of a 
 book is of little moment, provided its contents are not thereby affected. 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews may furnish an illustration of this : the 
 authorship is not yet determined, probably never will be, but the contents 
 are not thereby touched. It is very different with Deuteronomy. If 
 Professor Smith's view of the authorship be correct, then the contents of 
 the book are in reality quite different from what they seem to be. We 
 can easily suppose that inspired books may have been lost, having had a 
 temporary use, which being served, their preservation was no longer- 
 necessary. Many of the words of the prophets, and of our Lord's own 
 words, which were practically equivalent to inspired writings, were not 
 r-ecorded, and so were lost. We can easily suppose that inspired writers 
 could gather their materials from other works of an uninspired character. 
 But it is a totally different thing to hold that men may have been guided 
 by the Divine Spirit to make use of methods which spiritual men, i.e., 
 men taught by the Spirit, consider questionable in point of honesty, and 
 which have undoubtedly been misleading in point of fact. If inspired 
 men were not critics, they were certainly much superior to most critics in 
 their sense of what the truth of God required at their hands. 
 
 We repeat that no criticism is worthy of notice, because in the nature 
 of the case it must be false or misleading, which does not tend to exalt 
 * "British and Foreign Evangelical Review," April 1S77. 
 
\:> 
 
 our views of the Bible as the Word of God The human elemei 
 variable and uncertain, the divine element is fixed and unchangeable ; the 
 former must, be kept La subordination to, and in harmony with, the latter. 
 Any views of the human authorship which are inconsistent with the i 
 complete acceptance of the veracity, honesty, accuracy, and entire truth- 
 fulness of the contents tend i<> cast discredit on the divine authorship, 
 under whatever plausible forms and phrases these views may be pro 
 mulgated. It is most probable thai in many cases the buman authorship 
 has been providentially kept out of our sight in order to keep before us 
 the higher and essential fact of their divine authorship. When an author 
 
 has remained unknown till now, it is about as useless to search for hini as 
 it would he to institute a search for the grave of .Moses. 
 
 5. The faith of the Church in the Word of God does not stand in the 
 literary and intellectual methods and results of criticism, but in the 
 witness of the Holy Spirit. it is not as the- words of men, l.ut as the 
 Word of God that we have faith in it. Professor Smith appears to us to 
 have Btrangely misunderstood this basis of faith. In his statement to the 
 Brae Church College Committee he says : — "I am convinced that there is 
 nothing in what I have written to touch a faith which moves in the lines 
 of sound Protestant doctrine and rests on the basis indicated in the first 
 chapter of our Confession ; and I cannot he answerable for the effect of 
 my teaching on men whose belief in the Bible moves in other lines and 
 rests on other foundations." Now it is strange that Professor Smith does 
 not seem for a moment to have doubted or hesitated as to the correctness 
 of his position, even when the most matured experience probably to he 
 found in the Church plainly told him that he was moving in a dangerous 
 direction : the members of the College Committee evidently were 
 "touched" in some way by his teaching; but he quite confidently assures 
 them that if so, their faith must be moving in wrong lines, and not accord- 
 big to the basis indicated in the Confession .' Probably the Professor did 
 not see the manifest application of his words, and probably the Committee 
 received them with a smile. But what can Professor Smith mean by this 
 strange explanation. The Confession declares that the authority of the 
 holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth 
 not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God the 
 author thereof : and therefore it is to he received because it is the Word 
 of God. This is the line in which faith must move, ami the basis on 
 which it must stand. Put Professor Smith deals with the human 
 authorship in such a way as to obscure the divine element, and in s< 
 cases to suggest to many minds the question whether such writing 
 composed can possibly have been inspired by the God of truth, to whom 
 every shade and semblance of falsehood is an abhorrence. Ami yet hi 
 convinced that if any feel aggrieved their faith must In- on a wrong hasi^ '. 
 Why, it is just because they see far mote clearly than himself that, if he 
 be right, the true basis of faith is in danger of being shaken, that they 
 feel aggrieved. Not that they have any real fear for their faith or its 
 basis : they know that the Pible is the inspired Word of God, and there- 
 fore the low and dishonouring views of it which the critics advocate 
 cannot possibly be true. 
 
 6. The inspiration of the Scriptures being established on its own pro- 
 per evidence, and being an article of faith in the Churches, it must be 
 assumed in all our dealings with those Scriptures. We are guilty of 
 
46 
 
 irreverence and profanity if, for any purpose whatever, we deal with them 
 as mere human writings. The recognition of the Divine elements in the 
 Record is as essential to a scientific criticism as the recognition of a 
 Divine revelation in the matter recorded. Professor Smith says truly 
 that his criticism is not rationalistic ; he admits a supernatural element 
 in the Bible. Refuse to own a Divine revelation in the Bible, and criti- 
 cism is reduced to a chaos. But while the new criticism acknowledges to 
 a certain extent a Divine revelation, we insist upon its acknowledging 
 also, and to the very fullest extent, the divine authorship of the record in 
 which that revelation is contained, and we deny the competency of any 
 criticism which does not do so. Like the Incarnate Word, the written 
 "Word is both divine and human, and there can be nothing hi the humanity 
 of it which is morally incompatible with its divinity. On one point, which 
 is really the point round which the whole controversy turns, we cordially 
 agree •with Professor Smeaton : "An attack on the genuineness and au- 
 thority of Scripture, whether dignified by the title of the higher criticism, 
 or prompted by the lower scepticism, ought never to be permitted within the 
 Church on the part of any ofiice-bearer." Professor Smith, of course, does 
 not see that his own views have any such tendency as here suggested, but 
 the College Committee have told him that they are "dangerous and 
 unsettling" in this very direction, and in this opinion we think all 
 competent, candid, and impartial judges must concur. 
 
 We trust that Professor Smith himself is yet open to new light upon 
 the subject, and that he will be led to see the dangerous nature of the 
 path in which he has been walking. If he would consider dispassionately 
 who they are who most clamorously applaud, and who on the other hand 
 most seriously disapprove, he would surely, at least, begin to doubt and 
 review his own position. Possibly he might see no cause to alter or 
 retract anything that he has written ; and he will, no doubt, in that case 
 manifest the courage of his convictions. Por every man's guidance con- 
 science is supreme ; but it guides rightly or wrongly, according to its 
 light. The conscience of the Church also is supreme, and we have no 
 doubt that the Church, when called upon in the exercise of its duty to 
 give a deliberate judgment upon the questions involved, will give no 
 uncertain sound, but will declare — perhaps more emphatically and with 
 less reserve than the College Committee — that the new teaching has given 
 reasonable ground for anxiety and suspicion, and that in its nature and 
 tendency it is dangerous and misleading. 
 
n 
 
 DB MABCUS DODS ON INSPIRATION.* 
 
 W"e arc at a loss to understand what can have been the author's motive 
 either in preaching or publishing this Bermon, or what good purpose he 
 expected to Berve by it. It contains some things which are undoubtedly 
 sound and good, but it says them with no very marked insight or adap- 
 tation to present questions. The same things have often been said befo 
 they arc generally understood and accepted ; there is no special call to 
 say them at present ; and it' there was, they should have been said better 
 than they are. The Bible, we arc told, gives us the best and highesl 
 views of God to he anywhere found. " It is not pretended that there is 
 any higher, worthier idea of God present to the mind of the most dis- 
 ciplined or spiritual thinker than just that idea which the Bihle conveys." 
 " Revelation is different from speculation, from a natural development of 
 national thought, institutions, and literature. It is not man, by searching, 
 striving to find out God; it is God presenting himself before man." Very 
 true, but very commonplace ; and, so far as we can see, this is ahout the 
 whole truth that the sermon contains. 
 
 It contains, even in relation to this question of revelation, some things 
 with which we can by no means agree. We are told, for example, that 
 the Bihle differs from the sacred writings of other religious systems mainly 
 in this, that it " professes to he an account of the whole series of revela- 
 tions which God has made of His nature and relation to our race ;" that 
 in other respects there is not much difference ; these other writings 
 contain admirable hymns and prayers, and a moral teaching "little, if at 
 all, inferior to that contained in" the Bible. 
 
 Now, this we hold to be a gross misrepresentation of the true state of 
 the case. The moral teaching of false systems is no more like that of the 
 Bible than their representation of God is like the God of the Bible. 
 There may be occasional gems of moral truth buried in the rubbish, hut 
 the mass is rubbish. An occasional detail of morality is of little value 
 without a living root of moral principle ; and without a true conception 
 of God this is impossible. Take, for instance, the supreme divinity of 
 Hinduism as represented in the Vedas and the Yedanta, and you find 
 the boasted sublimity of Hindu theism disappear before a nearer inspec- 
 tion. We are told by Dr Duff f that, " with one or two exceptions, all 
 the attributes ascribed to him might, with almost equal propriety, be 
 predicated of infinite space or of infinite time. . . . There is not the 
 remotest allusion to a singe moral attribute. . . But, if no moral attri- 
 butes can be predicated of the Divine I icing, how can men, constituted 
 as they are, regard Him with moral sentiment 1 ?" How can the morality 
 of such a system be spoken of as little inferior to that of the Bible 1 
 Even, if here and there a few scattered precepts may lie found of a purer 
 and higher moral parentage, yet the bloody and brutal rites of the popular 
 idolatry, and the total extinction of all humanity which it entails, shew 
 us the morality with which such theology is really allied. 
 
 And who knows how much of what is really good in these books may 
 
 * ' ' Revelation and Inspiration : The Historical Books of Scripture. " A Sermon. 
 By Marcus Dods, 1>. 1>. 
 
 t " India and India Missions," pp. 57, 58. 
 
48 
 
 be derived from the Bible or learned from those who were acquainted 
 with it 1 Everybody knows that Mohammed was indebted for much both 
 of his theology and ■ morality to our Scriptures. If the Biblical repre- 
 sentation of human nature be coirect, it would be very strange if these 
 systems were — as they admittedly are — so radically wrong in their views 
 of God, and yet so nearly right as to the duty which God requireth of 
 man. Dr Dods himself recognises the wide difference between the writings 
 of David, Isaiah, and Paul, and those of the best thinkers of the heathen 
 world ; and this distinction is as wide in reference to their respective 
 ethics as it is in their theology. 
 
 To Dr Dods' representation of Revelation, as considered in itself, wc 
 make objection on two grounds : — 
 
 1. He makes an unwarrantable distinction between the historical books 
 and the other writings — the Psalms, prophecies, and doctrinal treatises. 
 In the latter, he says, the revelation is more obscure. He selects the 
 simpler first, in order, he says, to shew how Revelation and Inspiration 
 work conjointly ; and he intends, it would appear, subsequently to apply 
 the same experiment to the more difficult books. We can see no ground 
 for this distinction as regards the obscurity and simplicity of Revelation. 
 Some revelations, it appears to us, could not possibly be given to men as 
 men without being given inwardly, and Dr Dods appears to foiget his own 
 distinction between the matter of the Revelation and the record of it. 
 He appears also to confound the intellectual apprehension of an idea with 
 the spiritual apprehension of it. The natural man, we must bear in mind 
 in discussing this whole question, receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
 God, in whatever way they may be revealed. 
 
 2. He applies an erroneous test to the accuracy of the writers. It is 
 briefly this. A father receiving photographs of his child who is in a distant 
 land would know them to be false representations unless they indicated 
 an advance in age from time to time ; a boy of twelve must be misrepre- 
 sented if he looks younger than when he was ten. In like manner, it is 
 said, we can verify the representations of God given us in the Bible 
 because they "are in a regular progression." This is a very unsafe and 
 unsatisfactory method. For (1) it presupposes an accurate a priori 
 knowledge on our part of the nature of this progression and the order of 
 it, which we not only do not possess, but of which we are entirely ignorant. 
 The father knows something about the growth of children besides his own; 
 but we have no progressive revelation prior to the Bible. We would thus 
 be constituted judges in a case which is wholly beyond our competency. 
 And (2) even with this revelation in our hands, it is impossible for us to 
 tabulate the progressive revelations in such a manner as to show an 
 organic development. For who can tell whether such a process ought 
 to start with, and grow out of, a manifestation of divine power or wisdom, 
 goodness or holiness, justice or mercy 1 Which is first, and why 1 Let 
 any number of students attempt to draw up a systematic scheme of such 
 progression, andj we will probably have as many schemes as there are 
 persons who attempt it. But (3) the illustration is utterly fallacious, 
 inasmuch as the child photographed is constantly changing, and the father 
 knows that he must be so ; whereas in the other case it is not the 
 photograph which must shew a progression, but the eye by which and the 
 light in which it is examined. Perhaps the nearest approximation which 
 we can make to the real state of the case is by considering how a modern 
 
49 
 
 missionary goingwith the Bible and its completed revelation to a heathen 
 land, and having the Word of Christ dwelling richly in his own soul, 
 would unfold its truths and bring them to hear upon the natives. But 
 could anyone forecast the process 1 ? Might it not be done in many ways? 
 
 If Dr hods' lv\ position of Revelation is unsatisfactory, his treatment of 
 [nspiration is much more so. We are indeed put upon our guard, before 
 ho deals directly with this doctrine, by the conclusion ho draws from the 
 fact (hat the Bible contains, and is intended to contain, simply a revela- 
 tion of God's character and His relation to our race. We nmst not, he 
 vpect it to teach anything else ; and this is so explained as to imply 
 that it may contain false and erroneous teaching on all other matters, such 
 as history, geography, chronology, or any of the sciences. "It has been 
 found imperfectly informed." "Errors and imperfections have been 
 pointed out." "Paul was occasionally wrong in a date." Now if the 
 author meant nothing more than that Biblical writers did not always use 
 the accurate phraseology and technical terms of modern science, that they 
 used the modes of speech current in their own circle for the expression of 
 ideas, as they spoke of the sun rising and setting : — If this was all that 
 he meant, it is extremely ill advised to put it in the way he has done, 
 which certainly suggests much more serious error as being quite com- 
 patible with his view of inspiration. And we think there can be little 
 doubl but he does mean more. He dwells with needless emphasis on the 
 human aspect of the authorship, the necessity of personal knowledge, the 
 honesty and credibility of the writers as eye-witnesses of what they 
 record. There was no special need, so far as we know, for insisting upon 
 this at present, and Dr Dods has really nothing new or fresh to say upon 
 the subject. 
 
 No doubt the strong prominence which he gives to the necessity of 
 personal knowledge on the part of the Apostles, and other Scriptural 
 writers, might be regarded with satisfaction as a set-off to Professor 
 Smith's unfounded notion that the synoptical Gospels are non- Apostolic 
 digests of mere Apostolical tradition, but he is careful to assure us that 
 he lias no such meaning. " We find," he tells us, " the historical writers of 
 Scripture asserting that the prime requisite is knowledge of these facts at 
 first hand." But these "historical writers" are not necessarily "those 
 who brought the books into their final shape, but those, whoever they 
 were, who first recorded the revelations made." How, then, do we know 
 that those writers ever made any such assertion 1 ? Where are these asser- 
 tions of the original writers to be found, if they are not the same as those 
 who wrote the books as we have them 1 ? Whatever assertions we have on 
 the subject are those of the final writers, and if Professor Smith's notion 
 of non-Apostolic digests be correct, Dr Dods' idea of the essential import- 
 ance of personal information is manifestly wrong. But it is merely playing 
 with an important subject to tell us with so much circumstantiality 
 and emphasis what is necessary to constitute an inspired writer, and then, 
 in a footnote, to explain away all that is said by the intimation that it is 
 not always applicable to those whom we regard as the writers, but to 
 certain ideal personages nobody knows anything about. The original 
 historical writers must have their knowledge al firsi hand, and the know- 
 ledge of Revelation at first hand is Inspiration. But, it seems, those who 
 put the books into their Jinal shape need not have such knowledge ; how 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 then can we call them inspired 1 The true inspired original Scriptures 
 would seem, on this theory, to have been lost, or greatly adulterated by 
 the improvements "of uninspired writers ! 
 
 Dr Dods, moreover, contradicts himself ; for while he insists upon the 
 necessity of information at first hand as the prime requisite, he yet speaks 
 of the writers using records in which errors existed, and documents in 
 which facts were misstated; and of the writers of the Gospel narrative, 
 he tells us that " they saw it and tell us of it. They were, above all else, 
 eye-witnesses. And therefore no subsequent writers can take their place 
 and supersede their testimony." What, then, is the use of that footnote 
 drawing the distinction between those who first recorded the revelations 
 and those subsequent writers who are supposed to have perfected their 
 unfinished work 1 Are the Gospels the work of eye-witnesses or are they 
 not 1 Are they or are they not the writings of those who received the 
 revelations which they contained at first hand 1 If they are not, according 
 to Dr Dods, they are not Scripture. But then there is Professor Smith, 
 and the footnote ! 
 
 "What, then, is the bearing of all this upon Inspiration ? Our authoi 
 is at pains to tell us that inspiration is not mechanical, that it does not 
 supersede the exercise of memory and the use of the eyes. " They never 
 ask us to take their word for a thing which they had not good means of 
 knowing in the ordinary way . . . they ask us to believe their word as 
 honest men." All very true again, but still very commonplace, containing 
 nothing so new, fresh, or pressing as to require the information that the 
 author has been deeply indebted to Mr Erskine, Mr Home, and Dr 
 Rainy, for suggestions on the subject. These two positions (1), that the 
 writers of Scripture were well-informed, honest, trustworthy; and (2), 
 that inspiration did not convert them into mere writing machines, desti- 
 tute of intellect, memory, and eyes — these two positions have surely been 
 among the common-places of orthodox theology for a long time. 
 
 According to our author, inspiration apparently may be defined by 
 three negatives and three positives. Negatively (1), it was not a process 
 whereby men were supernaturally made acquainted with facts beyond 
 their ordinary means of knowing (that, we believe, would be more 
 properly called revelation) ; (2), it was not an influence which served them 
 instead of eyes and memory ; and (3), it furnished no means of detecting 
 errors in the records and documents used. Positively (1), it was an 
 influence which set them in a right attitude toward Him they were to 
 reflect ; (2), it was such an impression as moved them to preserve and 
 perpetuate the revelation to others ; and (3), it was a special influence 
 and impression upon eye-witnesses, men who stood in a position in which 
 no subsequent writers could stand. 
 
 After all that he says on these points, we fear Dr Dods, in attempting 
 to explain the modus of inspiration, has only succeeded in shewing iiow 
 incapable he, like all other men, is of doing it. We doubt if he has 
 satisfied himself, and we should be surprised to learn that he had made 
 the matter plain to anybody else. The nature of this influence, as we 
 are told in Hodge's " Outlines," just as the nature of the divine operations 
 upon the human soul in providence, in regeneration, or in sanctification, 
 is, of course, entirely inscrutable Dr Dods appears to be somewhat 
 conscious that he has not added materially to the elucidation of the subject, 
 for he admits towards the close that the question, " What was that 
 
51 
 
 process l>y which Paul was enabled authoritatively to deduce a doctrinal 
 system from the revelation made to him <" remains unanswered. He 
 
 lias, it seems to us, rendered this question more difficult of solution than 
 if he had let it alone. For some of his statements on the subject are 
 most inadequate and unsatisfactory. 
 
 1. He seems to regard the spiritual illumination of the Apostles as all 
 the inspiration they had. They were in the right attitude toward Christ; 
 they had His spirit; they were one with him in character and will ; and 
 thus they became the best possible channels of the Spirit ; what they saw 
 they uttered authoritatively; being merged in God, they wire merely 
 his ambassadors and spake with his authority. In support of this view 
 our author quotes two passages from the words of Christ which have no 
 direct reference to the question of inspiration at all, hut to that spiritual 
 illumination and fellowship which Christians as such enjoy. We are not 
 concerned to deny that this is true of the Apostles; but it is not inspira- 
 tion, otherwise every Christian may be competent to write for the Canon.* 
 Were the Apostles perfectly enlightened and in full unbroken harmony 
 with Christ 1 Surely all the Saints have the Spirit of Christ in some 
 measure? Wherein, then, is the difference? 
 
 2. The mere impression made by the revelation received, ho\ 
 deep, does not constitute inspiration. Dr Do<ls tells us that we ourselves 
 may have such revelations, and that Ave may be more deeply impressed 
 by them than by anything we have ever read in the Bible. But, for what 
 reason we are at a loss to understand, he does not consider this equivalent 
 to inspiration in our case ; although to us the impression may be such as 
 to have all the force and freshness of a new revelation. It is quite true 
 that our minds are already to a certain extent charged with Scripture 
 truth, but so was Paul's before he wrote any of his Epistles ; and if 
 this were enough to close the Record, it can clearly be pleaded at any 
 point. 
 
 3. It seems the only difference between the Apostles and us is that 
 they stood nearest the events, and were eye-witnesses of them; but all the 
 other influences which they had to guide them we have likewise. They 
 were the sources, the original authorities, nothing more. Farrar's " Life 
 of Christ " was written under the same influences as Matthew's or Mark's, 
 except that they ["or those, whoever they were, who first recorded" the 
 life of Christ] were nearer the events, were eye-witnesses, were more 
 deeply impressed, and perhaps (but not certainly) had more of Christ's 
 Spirit and character. 
 
 In shewing how this mode of inspiration — which is really no inspiration at 
 all — might be applied to writings not historical, Dr Dods selects the Epistles 
 of Paul, and, to our thinking, he is most unfortunate in his treatment both 
 of the matter of these Epistles and the Apostle's special fitness for writing 
 them. "In these Epistles," we are told, "he communicated to the world 
 the knowledge that the true religion, the religion of the Spirit, had come. 
 They teach, in a word, that Spirit supersedes law. . . . True religion is to 
 
 * < 'orapare Dr S. Davidson's view of Inspiration : — " The Oanon was a work of 
 divine inspiration, because the agency of the Holy Spirit has always been with the 
 people of God, as a principle influencing their conduct. It was not a .</" 
 peculiar act of divine inspiration." (Canon, p. 197.) The first chapter of the Con- 
 fession of Faith, £ VII., makes a clear distinction between the ordinary gracious 
 illumination of the Spirit and special inspiration, 
 
52 
 
 have one spirit with God. . . . Paul was, in point of fact, the man who 
 saw what God meant in the revelation made in Christ." But was this a 
 new revelation 1 ? Did God ever give a revelation in which the Spirit was not 
 more than the letter, or the principle of obedience not more than the law? 
 Paul saw for the first time that true religion is to have one spirit with 
 God ! This is the one grand distinctive feature of the Revelation of God 
 in Christ ! And this is the ultimate, the highest possible religious 
 teaching ! Why, the first and great commandment since the world began 
 had been, and could never cease to be, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart." That teaches what true religion is. If you call 
 that law, we reply that all divine truth is law to those who hear it ; and 
 whatever you call it, it expresses the spirit of true religion. But as a 
 representation of what Paul's Epistles teach, and what God's revelation in 
 Christ is, it is miserably inadequate and defective. 
 
 It seems that, having discovered what Paul teaches, the question, 
 Whether or how far he was inspired, is quite secondary. And Dr Dods 
 proves this in a most extraordinary manner. " Put the word ' inspira- 
 tion' out of Court for a while, and what remains 1 The fact remains that 
 here you have the literature of the world's religious crisis . . . the 
 ultimate and universal religion." That is to say : we would have all 
 Paul's Epistles just as they are, whether he was inspired or not, therefore 
 his inspiration is quite a secondary matter ! We common Christians 
 believe these Epistles to be what they are, because the writer was divinely 
 inspired. Nothing of the sort, says Dr Dods, for sujopose you have the 
 Epistles without the inspiration, and the needlessness of -inspiration is 
 clearly established ! Surely Dr Dods knows that evangelical theologians 
 regard the character of the Epistles and the inspiration of the writer in 
 the light of effect and cause. If Dr Dods had proved, what he has not 
 attempted, that the effect had a totally different cause, then, but not 
 till then, he might ask us to put inspiration out of court a while and 
 examine what remains. 
 
 We might agree with Dr Dods in the declaration that " the only 
 inspiration worth contending for is the ability to see and represent truly 
 a revelation of God," but what he calls inspiration gives no such ability, 
 otherwise every good man who writes good books is an inspired author of 
 Canonical Scriptures. No man can be able to represent truly a revelation 
 from God who is not supernaturally and expressly guided in the doing of 
 it in such a way as to secure the infallible accuracy both of idea and 
 expression, whether the matter was previously known by ordinary means 
 or specially revealed. No amount of such spiritual illumination as is 
 common more or less to all Christians could effect this. In the words of 
 Dr Bannerman :* " the union of the divine and human elements, in all 
 the integrity and perfection of each, in every portion of Scripture, 
 guarantees the exclusion from the authorship of the sacred writings of 
 every error and imperfection that could belong to it as man's, and the 
 possession of all the truth and infallibility that must appertain to it as 
 God's." The mode of inspiration it is needless for us to inquire into. It 
 bears some such relation to the human authorship and its necessary 
 requisites as the special work of the spirit in conversion and sanctification 
 bears to the preaching of the gospel. The preacher uses the best method 
 available ; he studies ; he prays ; he addresses the reason, the conscience, 
 * ' ' Inspiration, " p. 567. 
 
53 
 
 the heart ; he uses arguments and plies motives adapted to the end in 
 view. The result is in harmony with all this. But it is none the le - 
 a special, supernatural, divine operation which makes the Word effect u.il. 
 In the conversion of a sinner you have the human and the divine co-oper- 
 ating in a manner analogous to the authorship of the Scriptures. All 
 attempts to define the mode of inspiration, and bring it under the analy- 
 tical power of criticism must fail, as they havealways hitherto done. We 
 ein have no certain record of a divine revelation unless we have a 
 
 divinely inspired record ; however g I and trustworthy the writers may 
 
 otherwise be, our faith can only .stand in the wisdom of men. 
 
 If our faith is to be in the testimony of God, we must have not merely 
 a divine revelation, but since that revelation comes to us in a book, it 
 must be a divine book. As it contains a divine revelation, the Bible 
 contains the Word of God; as it is an inspired Record of that Revelation, 
 the Bible is the Word of God. And all criticisms and expositions must 
 be t'alse and dangerous which tend to obscure its divine authorship or its 
 divine contents. Its human authors have an exemption from error and a 
 fulness of light which no other authors have ; in other books we must 
 make allowance for ignorance and error, but in this we dare not. Mis- 
 conception of facts and erroneous influences are quite compatible with the 
 veracity of an historian, but not with the divine inspiration of that 
 historian. Dr Dods says he does not care whether a man regards Paul as 
 inspired or not, so long as he accepts his teaching. He might as well say 
 lie does not care whether a man's faith be in the testimony of God or the 
 testimony of men. provided only he have faith ! 
 
 Toward the close of his sermon, Dr Dods makes a not very intelligible 
 attempt to distinguish faith in the Bible and faith in God. He uses 
 several illustrations whose application is far from obvious or striking. He 
 seems to resolve his distinction latterly into the well-known commonplace 
 of the evangelical pulpit, the difference between historical and Baving, 
 intellectual and experimental, dead and living, faith. But this distinction 
 is not well put when our author tells us that we must rise from "belief 
 in Christ on the authority of Scripture to belief in Him from personal 
 acquaintance;" or, "the Bible has not done its work until it takes us 
 past itself, and makes us indejn ndent of if.'' We arc not proper Christians 
 until we are beyond and above the Bible! If "many have so acquainted 
 
 themselves with Christ that his image can never more be obliterated from 
 
 their minds, nor their faith in Him destroyed by sickness, or blindness, or 
 any disaster which might preclude them from the use of the Bible," it can 
 only be because they have it dwelling richly in their memories and in 
 their hearts. They may to a certain extent be independent of the printed 
 page! But is that being independent of the Bible? Ask these people 
 themselves whether they have got past it, and have become independent 
 of it. Listen to them in the Land of Beulah, on the Delectable Moun- 
 tains, or in the Valley of the Shadow, and see if they have got past the 
 Bible ! 
 
 It may sound plausible to say that " it is not faith in itself which 
 the Bible seeks to create as its ultimate object, but faith in God"; in 
 reality, however, such a statement means just this and nothing more : I 
 do not want you to believe my toord, I want you to believe myself/ 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Since a greater part of the foregoing pages was in type, we have seen in the 
 Aberdeen Free Press a Eeview of Kuenen's work on "Prophecy,"* which is 
 understood to be from the pen of Professor Smith, and bears internal evidence 
 of its authorship. It gives three theories of prophecy. 
 
 1. Kuenen's, which he himself calls the "modern," the "historical," the 
 < l organic " view. According to him, prophecy is merely a phenomenon in the 
 religious development of humanity, " proceeding from God in the same sense 
 in which everything in human life and history proceeds from him, but in no 
 higher or more special sense." The prophets thought, or said, they were 
 inspired, but that was a mistake or a falsehood. They had a very inadequate 
 idea of God ; in fact Kuenen has a much higher one himself, he says ; and that 
 is the reason why he does not think there is anything supernatural in their 
 views. I, Dr A. Kuenen of Leyden, have a higher idea of God than Isaiah, 
 Jeremiah, or Daniel ; but I, Dr Kuenen, am not inspired, and have no superna- 
 tural revelations, ergo and a fortiori Isaiah, &c, had no supernatural revelations 
 and were not inspired! Could any logic be more conclusive? Isaiah, &c, 
 believed in a personal God, while Dr Kuenen has apparently risen to the 
 higher sphere of pantheism, which, so far as the Bible is concerned, is 
 equivalent to Atheism! 
 
 He of course does not believe that there is any such thing as predictive 
 prophecy, or literal fulfilment of it. With this foregone conclusion he analyses 
 a number of supposed predictions, and finds of course that they were not 
 literally fulfilled, and hence concludes again that there is nothing supernatural 
 in the prophets. Eveu his Reviewer, however, is obliged to admit " that he has 
 overstrained his own case in not a few instances, and has used some violence 
 to explain away predictions of the most striking kind." He parts from him 
 however, " not without profitable stimulus," and with a manifest admiration of 
 the " agreeable qualities " of his works, and specially their " unaffected 
 candour." For our part we would consider it a' sheer waste of time to inquire 
 what such a man thought of the Word of God, however agreeable and candid 
 his works may be. He is manifestly and ludicrously unqualified to deal with 
 the subject. It is tolerably manifest, as his Reviewer says, that his conclusions 
 
 * The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel: An historical and critical inquiry, by Dr A. 
 Kuenen. Translated by the Kev. A. Milroy. With an introduction by J. Muir, Esq., 
 D.C.L. London: Longmans. 1877. 
 
55 
 
 rest "on certain doctrines of religious philosophy rather than on direct his- 
 torical investigations," and this religious philosophy is such as to render the 
 philosopher wholly incompetent to speak upon the question of prophecy or any 
 oilier .special depart incut of divine revelation. His treatment of the Books of 
 .Muses and Israel's history is such a caricature as might be expected from a 
 purely deistical stand point ; and this is the man at whose feet Professor Smith 
 delights to sit ! 
 
 2. The orthodox theory, which Knenen and his Reviewer distort and 
 caricature in order to cast ridicule upon it. It makes " the essence of prophecy 
 consist iu the exact prediction of future events, and finds the value of prophecy 
 for the Christian in the evidence of a supernatural revelation which the fulfil- 
 ment of such prediction affords." This crass superuaturalism regards prophecy 
 as merely "the history of future events" — " empirical events" they are called — 
 whatever that may mean. " The measure of the supernatural is to be got by 
 simple subtraction, by deducting everything that can be explained " — the super- 
 natural remains. Such prophecy would not " have the slightest religious 
 value," and is therefore " no real pi'ophecy." And the Reviewer amuses him- 
 self with throwing stones at this effigy of prophecy, being apparently much 
 more at home in casting ridicule upon it than in controverting the absurdities 
 of Kueuen — " so acute and candid a critic " — whom he so much admires. 
 The orthodox theory thus caricatured is " empirical." 
 
 3. The Reviewer's theory combines, he tells us, the supernaturalism of the 
 orthodox school — purified, of course, from all its erassness — with the historical 
 principles of Kueneu. By this he appears to mean that he admits the special 
 operation of the Spirit somehow in the work of the prophets, but the result is 
 after all very much what Kuenen says. The Reviewer gives his own opinion 
 thus : — 
 
 " It is admitted by all competent persons, and of course by Dr Kuenen him- 
 self, that the prophets had quite a different conception of their woi'k from that 
 of the persons who define prophecy as the history of future events. According 
 to the prophets' own account of the matter, God's word has for its function to 
 keep Israel in sympathy — not with empirical events but — with God's trans- 
 cendental plan and purpose. If the word really discharged this function, if it 
 enabled men to walk with God in a personal fellowship of faith and love, and 
 gave them so much insight into His purposes as was needful at each moment 
 to cast light upon their path — if, as Isaiah puts it, the prophets and those who 
 hearkened to their voice really heard a word behind them saying, ' This is the 
 way, walk ye iu it — then surely the prophets were justified in saying that 
 their word was not theirs but God's." 
 
 This is regarded by the Reviewer as a higher and more worthy conception 
 of the prophet and his work than the orthodox view — a fact which merely 
 proves that he really does not know what that view is. It certainly involves, 
 all that he makes prophecy to be, and a good deal more. 
 
 It may be quite true, as he says, that we might have " the most remarkable 
 prediction of events verified in the most literal way by subsequent events" 
 without any proper " revelation of the heart and purpose of God." We might 
 have ! But what has such a hypothesis to do with the matter ? If predictive 
 
56 
 
 prophecies do as matter of fact fill an important place in the revelations of God, 
 what use is there in telling us that it might be otherwise ? If Dr Slade, says 
 the Reviewer, had foretold the price of Russian stocks, that would have been no 
 proof that Spiritualism is the true religion ! Of course not ; but is it seriously 
 meant that that illustrates accurately the common view of predictive prophecy ? 
 
 The analogy of prayer is introduced, but in such a way as to confound things 
 that differ. " The very idea of prayer excludes such experiments " as some 
 men of science have proposed. But what if God himself had authorised and 
 ordered such experiments, as in the case of Samuel (1 Sam. xii. 16-18) and of 
 Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 21-39). Who ever said that predictive prophecy was a 
 mere human exjseriment ? Agaiu, the Reviewer tells us that " it is not because 
 we receive literal answers to individual petitions that we believe in the efficacy 
 of prayer. ... The most certain answers to prayer are just those in which 
 God answers the spirit of our petition by denying the letter of it." Are these 
 two statements mutually exclusive of each other ? Is either of them, taken 
 separately, the whole truth on the subject? Does God never grant literal 
 answers ? Is the letter of our prayers always opposed to the spirit ? Does the 
 habitual spirit of prayer forbid specific petitions 1 In all these suggested 
 queries we find that the illustration tells against the Reviewer. Specific predic- 
 tions, we have no objection to allow, bear some such relation to the spirit of 
 prophecy as specific petitions bear to the spirit of prayer. But the new theory 
 teaches that the more we are in the spirit of prayer the less we will pray ! 
 
 Any view of prophecy, to be at all adequate, must find room for many 
 aspects of the subject which this writer appeal's wholly to ignore. It must 
 bear in miad that the prophets and their prophecies were for signs to the 
 people as well as teachers. It must bear in mind that even to us the pre- 
 dictive element is no less full of present truth than the historical or didactic. 
 All " the powers of the world to come " — the Second Advent, the Resurrection, 
 the Judgment, Heaven, Hell, — belong strictly to the future. It must further 
 find large room for Messianic prophecies ; for the preaching of Christ and Him 
 crucified has been the substance of all divine teaching since the world began. 
 
 We agree with the Reviewer that " we ought to remember that till we have 
 mastered the idea of prophecy we do not know what kind of fulfilment to 
 expect;" but when he tells us that "the detailed predictions are mainly 
 inferences drawn from higher religious convictions,'' we are quite sure that he 
 has not mastered the idea of j^rophecy. 
 
 EDINBURGH : PRINTED BV JOHN GREIG AND SON. 57 FREDERICK STREET. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON PROFESSOR SMITH'S 
 
 ANSWERS. 
 
 "When Professor Smith had before him the questions submitted 
 to him by the Presbytery of Aberdeen, he had an opportunity of 
 adopting what would have been at onco a manly and a re-assuring 
 course, viz., of expressing his deep regret and unfeigned sorrow 
 for having been the occasion of so much disquietude to the Church, 
 and of reconsidering, retracting, or explaining those statements 
 and opinions which have occasioned the prevailing dissatisfaction. 
 Had he done so to any extent, the whole matter might have been 
 regarded very much as an ill-advised attempt on the part of 
 Professor Smith to perform a literary task beyond his or air- 
 man's ability, in which attempt he had been misled into a number 
 of unguarded statements expressing erroneous views, which would 
 probably never more be heard of from the same quarter, or 
 trouble the Church again. 
 
 The best friends of Professor Smith will most seriously lament 
 his entire failure to take advantage of the opportunity thus pre- 
 sented to him, and his refusal to make any movement whatever 
 toward allaying the reasonable and righteous dissatisfaction which 
 prevails. 
 
 After an unreasonable complaint of being allowed so short a 
 time to prepare his answers — although, the whole field being a 
 subject of fresh and frequent study, days instead of weeks might 
 have been quite sufficient — he comes forward with a series of 
 answers which partake more of the character of haughty reproof 
 of his questioners, and often of mere evasions of their questions 
 than of an earnest manly desire to bo taught more perfectly and 
 to satisfy the Church. 
 
 One series of questions he refuses altogether to answer, because. 
 although transmitted by the Presbytery, he regards them as in 
 various respects objectionable. 
 
 He was asked if he regarded the incidents related in the books 
 of Jonah and Esther as authentic history. This question he 
 declines to answer, because his reference to these books in his 
 article "Bible" contains "no statement of personal judgment," 
 but only reports the views of others. This we cannot but regard 
 
58 
 
 as an unworthy-evasion, for anyone reading his reference to Jonah 
 would at once, and most naturally, conclude that he agrees with 
 what he calls the general view, that the book of Jonah is a mere 
 poetic fiction. He does not expressly say in the article that that 
 is his own view, and he declines to say now whether it is or is not. 
 Surely he would have lost nothing in the esteem of any person or 
 party if he had been somewhat more ingenuous in the substance 
 of his answer, and more deferential in the form he made it take. 
 Being asked if he regards the book of Daniel as authentic history, 
 he cannot see that the question is relevant ; and so, instead of a 
 plain candid answer, he evades it likewise. In an equally 
 undignified manner he evades the question about the Law, by 
 giving an irrelevant explanation about prophetic revelations and 
 iv ordinances, which the Presb} T tery did not want, instead of 
 explaining the relation between the written and the oral law, 
 which was what they did want. " In this question," he says, 
 " the statement of my article seems to be incorrectly apprehended ; " 
 while he himself, either by accident or by design, clearly misappre- 
 hends the question, and succeeds under a cloud of words in saying 
 nothing ! 
 
 The only questions that Professor Smith really attempts to 
 answer are the two regarding Deuteronomy and the Mosaic 
 legislation. His answer to these two questions consists mainly of 
 a restatement and expansion of his views as elsewhere expressed. 
 His attempt to shew how these views can be harmonised with the 
 doctrine of inspiration amounts virtually to a confession that they 
 cannot be so harmonised. "I am entitled to believe that two 
 truths cannot clash, even if I am not able to exhibit in a 
 complete and conclusive manner the way in which they are 
 to be harmonised." That is : I believe Deuteronomy is a 
 prophetic fiction, not an historical narrative — I believe this on 
 grounds of historical science ; I believe also it is divinely inspired 
 under the form of historical narrative, I believe this on theological 
 grounds : therefore both articles of belief must be true ! And this 
 miserable absurdity is spoken of by Professor Smith as analogous 
 to the relation between Divine Sovereignty and Free Will ! Try 
 it with some other books of Scripture. I believe on grounds of 
 historical science that the Gospels are poetic fictions, and not 
 historical narratives ; I believe on theological grounds that they 
 are divinely inspired : therefore I must be allowed to hold and to 
 teach both ! And so on through every Scripture book and Scrip- 
 ture character. Adam, Noah, Abram, Jacob, Moses, David, 
 Christ, may each and all be regarded as mere poetic myths, 
 provided only we profess that our belief rests on grounds of 
 
59 
 
 historical science! If this principle of antagonism between the 
 plain meaning of inspiration and the results of criticism bo once 
 admitted, how or where can it be arrested? 
 
 Professor Smith furnishes us with several remarkable tllti 
 
 tions of the method in which this new principle will he applied in 
 the Church of the future. For example, "the history of (lie 
 people in the wilderni 'ss was also the statute-boob of Tsrael, and 
 thus (here was no way of placing new laws on the statute-book 
 except by placing them in 1he historical context of the old legisla- 
 tion." That is to say, the former laws were embodied in true 
 history, and there was no way in which the Holy dhost coidd 
 reveal the new laws except by having- them embodied in fiction 
 made to look like history! "It would be very dangerous, not to 
 say rationalistic, to reject this theory as incredible, if it can Im- 
 proved historically, as critics undertake to prove, that there are 
 post -Mosaic ordinances in the Pentateuch." It would certainly 
 be very dangerous to reject anything which is proved to be true, 
 but until Professor Smith adduce some better proof for his 
 wretched imitations of Kuenen's infidel positions than he and his 
 associates have ever yet done, ho will simply make himself 
 ridiculous by persisting in this conceited and haughty mode of 
 speech. Surely he does not consider the whole world fools except 
 himself — and Kuenen. 
 
 We regard these answers of Professor Smith, both in the 
 matter and the manner of them, as fully confirming the worst 
 impressions that had been made by the article under review. 
 Whatever of an unsettling and dangerous tendency he has 
 written he means to stand by ; the discussions that have taken 
 place have confirmed him in the confidence of his own immense 
 superiority, and he has been raised up as a prophet to vindicate 
 the right of all conclusions, however absurd, which profess to be 
 based on tho grounds of critical science, to the same veneration 
 and binding power as the divine inspiration of the Word.