204 THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. lonish captivity. The Bishop faintly attempts to account for this awkward and unmanageable fact, absolutely fatal to his theory, by saying that it would almost seem as if after their long sojourn as captives in a strange land, when Israel no longer existed as a nation, they had begun to discontinue the use of the national name for the Divine Being' (p. 317.) The rare occurrence of the name in the Book of Daniel, and its entire absence from the Book of Ecclesiastes, both of which he considers as works of a still later date, are referred by him to the prevalence of 'superstitious scruples.' Such are the exigencies of Rationalism. Other signs of a later date than the age of Moses and Joshua for the books ascribed to them, or their time, are adduced by the Bishop and his Nonconformist predecessor. They consist chief ly of proper names which came into existence after that age, and alleged notices of transactions of later occurrence. Upon this class of objections I will only remark, that the Bishop and the learned Doctor freely indulge in the hypothesis of revisers and editors of books of Scripture written long before their own times. Why may we not be allowed the benefit of the same hypothesis, much more sparingly and moderately employed, to account for additions or interpolations of the kind objected to? Such men as Samuel, or Gad, or Nathan, or various others who are known to have been themselves writers of sacred books, and who would certainly superintend the copying of the already existing books of Scripture, may readily be supposed to have inserted explanatory words or sentences in the Mosaic records, without prejudice to the genuineness of the mass of these records, as the composition of Moses. Or very probably such introductions were originally made in the margin of the manuscripts of the Pentateuch, and became gradually incorporated into the text a process with which all who have paid any attention to the textual criticism of ancient writings are familiar. Dr. Colenso endeavors, indeed, to establish the position, that if the Pentateuch existed from the time of Moses with the reputation of an inspired authorship, no one might presume to add to or alter any part of its text. But surely such additions and alterations as Harbinger. June 1, '63. those in question might be made by competent authority, and such authority would undoubtedly be possessed by persons who were themselves inspired by the same Spirit who spake by Moses. Insertions of this kind would no more interfere with the authenticity of his writings as true and divine, than with the genuineness of them as really his work. Even if we grant them to be interpolations by uninspired hands, this admission no more affects the credit and received authorship of the whole, than the numerous various readings of the New Testament manuscripts affect the claims of the books in which they are found to be inspired, or to be the work of those inspired persons to whom they are ascribed. We are not obliged to deny the authenticity and inpiration of the Acts of the Apostles and of the First Epistle of St. John, even if we are persuaded that such important passages as Acts viii. 37, and 1 John v. 7, are interpolations of a much later age. For what is the alternative proposed to us by Bishop Colenso, if we abandon our belief in the historic truth of the Pentateuch and its authorship by Moses? He is bound to supply us with some reasonable and probable account of the origin and composition of the book, and of its undoubting reception, in all generations of the Jewish people, as the work of Moses and the word of God. And this he has undertaken to do in Part II. of his publication. Commencing with the investigation to which I have before alluded, of the use of the names Elohim and Jehovah, he advances step by step-or rather, leap by leap-to the conclusion, that the name Jehovah was not in use before the time of the Prophet Samuel that Samuel invented this name for God, and introduced it among the Israelites,' perhaps in imitation of some Egyptian name of the Deity which may have reached his ears' (p. 339)—that he was therefore the author of Exod. vi. in which an account is given of the origin of the name, and consequently of all the previous portions of the Books of Exodus and Genesis, in which that name does not occur, and generally of the Elohistic portion of the Pentateuch that the rest of the four books, and the Book of Joshua, were composed after the name Jehovah had become fa Harbinger, June 1, '63. But it is utterly incredible and impossible that as an honest man, to say nothing of his inspiration, or a special permission or command of God, he could have thought of investing his revelation with authority by falsely reporting it as made to Moses or to Abraham, publishing a record of the actions of those men of God, and of God himself, and of communications which had passed between them and God, which he knew were anything but real matter of fact, or which were in miliar, by one or more writers in the latter days of David and the early part of Solomon's reign-and that Deuteronomy was written in Josiah's time, its author having revised the whole Pentateuch, and inserted many interpolations. "This theory bears on its very brow the brand of its condemnation. Samuel, allowed to be a true prophet of God, a man acting under the special influence of the Holy Spirit, is represented as inventing-not receiving by immediate communication from Goda name for the Deity, and then com-ventions of his own. Bishop Colenso, posing a story, a mere fable, which by however, maintains that such conduct the exigency of the case supposed can was consistent with the character of have had no existence as a floating le- Samuel as ‘a true man, a true servant gend before, in which he attributes the of the Living God,'fighting the good formal promulgation of the name to a fight on the side of God and his truth, revelation made by God to Moses for against all manner of falsehood and the purpose of announcing it to the evil.' How is it, then, that he repudichildren of Israel. Samuel, that is, in ates the idea which seems to have been order to introduce the name and bring entertained by some, that our Lord, it into use among the people of his kuowing the true state of the case in time, concocted an entirely false ac- regard to the Pentateuchal narratives count of its crigin, and then published and laws, and their authorship, neverthis account to persuade the people theless conformed in his language to the that this new name had been solemnly popular belief on the subject? If the made known to their ancestors, and tacit sanction of fables as facts, and of constanly employed by them, four hun- forgeries in the name of Moses as the dred years before. What but the ab- genuine writings of Moses, may not surdity of such a proceeding could pa- without irreverence be ascribed to the rallel its immorality? It is, however, Great Master, with what consistency its immorality which constitutes the can we attribute to one of his most apgraver charge against the character of proved servants the actual invention of the Prophet. We can imagine that the fables and the commission of the Samuel, possessed of no higher inspira- forgeries? Or, to take the most retion than Dr. Colenso ascribes to him, cent illustration which the history of awakened to the strong conviction of the church supplies, If a Christian the distinct personal presence of the Bishop, not believing the story of the Living God, and feeling assured that flood or of the passage of the Red Sea, this conviction was a revelation direct as related by the Elohistic writer in the from God to his own soul, might an- Books of Genesis and Exodus, to be nounce it to the people of Israel as a true, would omit an allusion to them in communication from God to them, in- a prayer of the church, because it imtended to be made through his instru- plies their truth, and counsels all who mentality. It is just conceivable that have similar doubts or disbelief to do he might in this case, retaining the the same--if he charges his brethren in principles of truth and honesty, state the ministry with dishonesty for withto the people that Jehovah had spoken holding from the people the acknowto him, and commissioned him to make ledgment of their doubts or disbelielf known his nature and will to them; or on this and similar subjects-if he exeven proceed to represent the com- hibits, and sternly requires, such scrumands and laws which he felt it his pulousness in regard to Scripture reduty to God and man to promulgate, as cords claiming unduly an historic chadictated by a voice from heaven. In racter, in what language might we exproportion to the strength of his con- pect him to denounce the unscrupuviction that his own immediate inspi- lousness, the dishonesty, the unveracity ration was a fact and a reality, would of that Elohistic writer who, bearing such a line of conduct be justifiable. the name of a prophet of the God of Truth, was the author of those fictions of the flood and the passage of the Red Sea, and published them as true history? If it be wrong for the ministers of the church now to intimate a profession of belief, or not to make open profession of unbelief, in these and all the other fables of the Pentateuch, how can it have been otherwise than wrong, otherwise than intensely immoral and profane, for the Israelitish Prophet to invent those fables and propose them for the belief of his disciples and his people? "But again, Samuel, who is of course allowed to be a historical personage and a writer of history, can hardly fail to have chronicled the events of his own time, and must be regarded as the author of the history of those events which passes under his name. But in this history Dr. Davidson and the German critics discover contrarieties and improbabilities of just the same kind as those which they and Dr. Colenso adduce as testimonies against the truth of the narrative in the Pentateuch. It contains also accounts of supernatural interventions, and among them of God's speaking to Samuel himself by an articulate voice. Must we then believe that Samuel considered it equally justifiable for him, in virtue of his office as a witness of God's truth, and in his contest against all manner of falsehood and evil,' to compose fabulous stories about himself, and Saul, and David, as he had about Moses and the Patriarchs, and that he found it equally easy to impose upon his contemporaries the romance of his own life, as that of Noah, or of Abraham, or of the Exodus? Or, if the discrepancies of this history prove that it was not written by Samuel, but by several later novelists, are we to suppose that at about the same distance of time after his own era as his own was from that of Moses, various lovers of truth and haters of falsehood ascribed to him as many fictitious actions and communications with God as he had to Moses? This supposition | Harbinger, June 1, '63. reduces his personal existence and the story of his life and time to the same level of credibility with the historical character of Moses and the narratives of the Pentateuch. In fact, there is no end to the absurdities involved in the hypothesis, that Samuel was the writer of the (so-called) Elohistic portion of the Pentateuch, the author of the primary and most important part of the first four books of the Old Testament Scriptures, the substratum of all the rest. But it is the only hypothesis Bishop Colenso has to offer as to the date and authorship of these writings, his only alternative for the generally accepted belief in their genuineness and authenticity as the works of Moses, and historically true. It is the quod erat demonstrandum of the second part of his publication, the logical and necessary result, according to him, of the Elohistic and Jehovistic system of criticism, the discovery on the reality of which the credit of that system depends. It is the very keystone of the arch, and by its displacement, most easy to be effected, the whole fabric must collapse and fall to utter ruin. "If the things which Jehovah is reported to have done and said—if the things which Christ is reported to have done and said-are not actual and substantial verities, our knowledge of God, and faith in God, as he is manifested by them, must be an illusion. Our religion is essentially historical, a religion of facts, from the earliest to the latest period of its development; nor can its effects upon thousands of souls, in all ages and lands, be satisfactorily and philosophically accounted for, except upon the ground that its facts are historically true. Their truth is the secret of its strength for conquest and dominion, and it will prove the secret of its strength for resistance and defence against aggression." In our next we shall look more to the Pentateuch than to the Bishop, and notice some little of its vast mass of internal evidence. D. K. GEORGE HERBERT. IT is often said that "extremes meet" -and certainly they did meet in the family that inhabited Montgomery Castle at the end of the sixteenth cen tury. The eldest of seven sons was that Edward Herbert who became known as Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and famous as the father of the so Harbinger, June 1, '63. GEORGE HERBERT. called Free-thinkers, a disbeliever in the revelation of God; while the fifth of those sons was George Herbert, a poet of sound practical piety and earnest Christian soul. 66 Born in 1593, George Herbert had ten years to live in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and doubtless the doings of the doughty Drake and Hawkins, and the triumphs of Essex against Spain, would be spoken of to his young ears; but the soldier's fame seems not to have had any attraction for him. The region around the home of the Herberts was and is eminently fitted to foster a contemplative disposition. Methinks the boy George would often wander by Severn swift," and meditate there. Oft, perhaps, would he climb the hills about, and gaze in quiet rapture on the glorious vision of mountain, and moor, and mead, and rejoice in the goodly sight. Methinks not unfrequently he would descend the Severn vale, and reach the precipitous front of Breiddyn, and toil round its shoulder till he stood under the lonely pine-tree by the ruined British fort on the summit, and gaze and gaze with almost inspired delight on a scene fit to be compared with what Moses saw from Pisgah's top. Severn coming down his narrow valley from far-away Plinlimmon, and here rolling out like a serpent at play across the Shropshire plain. Llanymynech, with its steep precipice abruptly terminating the long ridge from the North, and the opening of the Vale of Meifod, where ruled in the olden time ancient Princes of Wales. Yonder is the rugged top of Allt-y-gader, (the forest chair) and far beyond the peaks of Berwyn, and underneath the afternoon sun are the pillared crags of Cader Idris. Out in the plain, the Wrekin rises and looks down upon the ruins of Roman domination. The hills of the Cherbury district and the far-away Malvern are to the SouthEast, and every spot around is teeming with historic memories and blushing with beauty. And the boy George saw all this, and made an early vow that he would devote himself to God. That vow, however, was not written at home, but in a letter to his mother from college, where, having previously passed some time at Westminster School, he went in 1608, the year in which Milton was born. The college was that of Trinity, at Cambridge, and 207 seven years after he became Master of Arts, and in 1619 was made Orator for the University, which office he held for eight years. It fell to his lot to offer the thanks of the University to King James for the present of one of the monarch's works, and this he did in such sort that he obtained a sinecure of the value of £120 a year, and after this was for some time constantly at court, and aspired to be a politician. But the death of the King and other friends threw him back into more congenial habits, and in obedience to his mother's desire he devoted himself strictly to the church, taking first only deacon's orders. His mother died in 1627, and shortly after he took priest's orders and entered on parochial duty, having obtained the Rectory of Bemerton in April 1630. There he remained till his death in 1632, and in that time he wrought a wonderful change in his parish. "He found religion little more than a form-he left it a thing of life." He had high notions of priestly dignity, but higher of priestly duty, and he honestly strove to uphold the former by the performance of the latter. George Herbert was singularly happy in his marriage, which, however, only took place when he entered on his duties as parson. His wife was Jane Danvers, who, by the mutual consent of the families had long been his destined bride, but he never saw her till three days before he married her, but he had never occasion to regret the haste. Herbert was a proficient classical scholar, and he delighted in music, which was his chief recreation. He passed the dangerous ordeal of college life without getting into dissipated habits, and when he gave up his court life he was still pure. He has been called “the holy Herbert," and he went to his duties as a pastor determined to live well, as the strongest argument he could use on behalf of religion. He wrote poetry in his boyhood, and became favorably known during his life as a writer in verse and prose; but his most considerable achievement," The Temple," he kept to himself, as the records of his own mental exercises, and it only became known after his death. When Herbert lived the English language had been settled in very much the form we have it. Excellent prose had been written in it, and Shakespeare had stamped it with his present clear style, and our present translation of the Bible was published (1611.) But Herbert, though he could and did write freshly in modern English, seemed to delight in the forms of expression and the olden orthography that Spencer had so lately made classical in the " Fairie Queene," and that farther back still had come so beautifully from the pen of Lord Surrey. Pollok gives us vivid personifications of virtue and vice, with warning or encouragement, but does so as in his own young life, with the genial freshness of Spring. Milton has lessons of instruction, but his language is like the rich luxuriance of Summer. But Herbert's practical piety, linked by his language to the olden time, in his quaint rhymes and pretty conceits, comes with the mellowness of Autumn --with the crispness of September frost. 66 Years ago we met with extracts from "The Church Porch," and just one couplet fastened itself on our memory, and in our mind remained the impression that George Herbert was worth knowing. Some time after that we heard The Sacrifice" read by a lady in a way that few persons can read, and thenceforward we have loved George Herbert. Throughout all his poetry he shews a predilection for con ceits, but he always manages to get a lesson out of them. He sees relationships in words that others miss; he shews a partiality for anagram, and has a decided liking for antithesis. He was very decidedly attached to the Church of England, and some of his poems are in its praise, and nearly all have reference to it; but much of what he says of it is true of the Church of Christ, and the exhortations he gives as to life are applicable to all Christians. Take the following from " The Church Porch :" Beware of lust! it doth pollute and foul Whom God in baptisme washt with His own blood; How dare those eyes upon a Bible look, Harbinger, June 1, '63. drunkenness, gluttony, envy, and other forms of vice. The Sacrifice is a long piece descriptive of the sufferings of Christ, as though himself did say it. We can only give one verse Behold they spit on me in scornfull wise, Was ever grief like mine? There is one short piece in which he gives us the letters J. C. meaning Joy and Charitie, and also, or rather because they stand for JESUS CHRIST. In another piece, out of the word Jesu, he gets these words addressed to a broken heart, I. ease. you. In another he praises our language, and gives as equivalents the words sonne and sunne. Thus- How neatly do we give one by name * What Christ once in humblenesse began We Him in glorie call the Sonne of Mun. Here we have an anagram. Mary— Army, and the couplet, How well her name an Army doth present, In whom the Lord of Hosts did pitch His tent! Some of his prose is characterised by plain common sense, and if parsons were generally as he sets forth "the country parson," there would be more church going. Not long before his death he wrote some notes to a translation of "The Divine Considerations" of Valdesso, a Spaniard, and the following is expressive of his view of the value of the Scriptures: "I much mislike the comparison of images and Holy Scriptures, as if they were but both alphabets, and after a time to be left. The Holy Scriptures fection; neither can they be exhausted (as pictures have not only an elementary use, but a use of permay be by a plenary inspection), but still, even to the most learned and perfect in them, there is some what to be learned more." * "Cornelius had revelation, yet Peter was to be sent for; and those that have inspirations must still use Peter-God's Word. If we make another sense of the text, we shall overthrow all means save catechising and set up enthusiasms." We have also of George Herbert's quite a number of sayings of proverbial Much lesse towards God, whose lust is all their pithiness, some of which he has borrow 'book ?' And again, Lie not; but let thy heart be true to God, ed from the Spaniards. Here are a few: Keep not ill men company, lest you increase the number. When the fox preacheth, beware, geese. We have spent another pleasant evening with George Herbert, and mayhap A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.usefully rehearsed old lessons and learnt And so he writes against idleness, some new ones; and well shall we be |