church, listen to his sermon, and go away to express astonishment at the extreme simplicity of such a discourse in a church where are to be found some of the most cultured and able men of the metropolis. His sermons are so plain that anyone might be supposed capable of preaching them. But let the person who criticises them unfavorably undertake to announce the same sentiments in as impressive a way and he will find how exceedingly difficult it is. Dr. Hall has the rare faculty of taking the great heart-truths of Christianity, the great characters of Scripture, its parables and its miracles, and so investing them with his own experience and with the richness of his own meditations that they become living forces in the life of the people, who go away feeling that they have somehow been blessed and enriched in their spiritual life. People have been heard to say that they go to hear Dr. Hall in the afternoon in order that once during the day at least they may have their souls fed with the bread of life. He understands the Gospel, its philosophy, its history. He has meditated deeply and profoundly on the life and teachings of his Lord, has walked with Jesus in the garden, and has been near him as he arose and appeared to his disciples. He has gone with Paul through the wondrous plan of salvation, as revealed in the epistles to the Galatians and the Romans, until it is written on the very tablets of his being; he has studied the first epistle to the Corinthians until the great principles of Church government and Church life have become a part of his being; he has gone through the second epistle until he has felt the very throbs of the sufferings of the great apostle and the profoundness of his sympathy. He has stood with John on the isle of Patmos, and heard the voices which spoke to him from the other world, and has seen with him the city of God, coming down from heaven. All these great truths, both from the prophetical Scriptures and the New Testament, are very precious and important. Dr. Hall has lived them, has enjoyed them, has preached them. This, it would seem, is the philosophy of the event which we are considering.

We write not thus for the laudation of this revered pastor, but rather for the emulation of our younger ministers; and we desire that they may learn from it the lesson that not by mere brilliancy of scholarship, not by the scintillations of imagination, nor by the declaration of new and strange thoughts is humanity to be blessed, but rather by a deep insight into the things of God and a showing of them to the people with the simplicity and clearness which befit so lofty a theme. To do this, however, requires scholarship. It is with Dr. Hall, not an expression of its want, but of its fullness-scholarship so scholarly that neither preacher nor hearer perceives its presence until he stops to analyze it, and finds to his surprise that the very simplicity is a proof of the training behind it. Dr. Archibald Alexander, one of the founders of the Princeton Theological Seminary, uttered this truth: "It takes all our learning to make things simple."

ARCHEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL RESEARCH.

ARCHEOLOGY AND CRITICISM.

PROFESSOR DRIVER, in the Preface to the last edition of his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, though in a general way acknowledging that the archæological discoveries of recent years have been both valuable and interesting, yet maintains that they have revealed nothing at variance with the generally accepted conclusions of critics. But, lest we may misrepresent him, we shall reproduce his own words, which are as follows: "The attempt to refute the conclusions of criticism by means of archæology has signally failed, . . . and the idea that the monuments furnish a refutation of the general critical position is a pure illusion." The soundness or fallacy of this statement must depend upon the real meaning of the terms "criticism" and the "general critical position." For, as we all know, there are critics and critics. We presume, however, that the learned author had in mind the vague term "higher criticism," in other words, a critical inquiry into the nature, origin, and date of the several books of the Old Testament. Now, what are the generally accepted conclusions of critics? Unless that can be answered Professor Driver's statements may mean one thing to one man and something quite different to another. Indeed, he admits that there is a criticism which cannot be trusted, and that there are extreme critics; for in the same paragraph he adds: "I readily allow that there are some critics who combine with their literary criticism of the Old Testament an historical criticism, which appears to me to be unreasonable and extreme; and I am not prepared to say that isolated instances do not exist in which opinions expressed by one or another of these critics may have to be reconsidered in the light of recent discoveries."

These words of the Oxford professor seem to repudiate the extreme wing of the critical school, no less than the conclusions drawn from the monuments by such men as Sayce and Hommel. It is therefore an effort to find a middle way between the Wellhausen school and the conservatives under the leadership of the Assyriologist and the modern archæologist. That the latter have sometimes gone too far cannot be doubted, and that they have occasionally reached conclusions on insufficient data is also evident; but their shortcomings in this regard are few and far between, compared with the wild speculations of Wellhausen and his less distinguished echoes. Wellhausenism followed to its legitimate results would wipe out everything supernatural about the religion of Israel, and would reduce the Old Testament to the level of the sacred books of other nations. It is, therefore, refreshing to learn from the pen of Professor Driver that archæology and the general critical position are after all not so widely separated. Thus may we not

hope that the chasm which once existed is being gradually bridged over? It is now much less common among the critics than it was ten years ago to sneer at the efforts of the Assyriologists, and to brand almost all the conclusions of the archæologists, especially when referring to biblical criticism, as unscientific. Scholars have in the meantime also weighed the subjective theories of some of the critical leaders, and have found them wanting. Archæology has constantly pushed to the front, and as it has revealed its varied treasures it has shown the weakness of Wellhausenism. In a general way we may say that not a single one of the recent discoveries has in any way contradicted the Old Testament; but, on the other hand, many a passage which at one time was regarded as doubtful or obscure has been explained and confirmed in a most wonderful manner. Thus the monuments bear indubitable testimony to the antiquity of many a custom and practice which the neo-critics once regarded as later inventions of Hebrew writers, invested with an air of antiquity with the view of giving them greater authority. Much in the same way as if some modern politician in the United States should foist his own views, in regard to the money or other question upon the American people in the name of Jefferson or Washington.

Now, one of the cardinal doctrines of the German biblical critic of the destructive type and his meek follower in English-speaking countries is that the Old Testament is of a much later date than was formerly supposed, and that the several books in the Hebrew Scriptures are the results of compilation and more or less careful editing. There are, it is commonly acknowledged, some passages in the Hebrew Bible interpolated after the main body of the work had been written; but if Ezra or his contemporaries did some editing that is no reason why an entire book should be branded as post-exilic. One has well said, "The love of documentary analysis, like the love of allegorical interpretation, tends in some minds to become a morbid passion, under the influence of which one cannot read the simplest paragraph without dark suspicion of duplicity of authorship." Thus, according to the neo-critics, everything from Genesis to Malachi is a mosaic, more or less artistically patched together. Even Obadiah, the shortest book in the Old Testament, is of composite origin. Should anyone desire to gratify his curiosity in this direction let him examine the Polychrome, or "Rainbow," Bible now going through the press. Take, for instance, the thirteenth page of the Book of the Judges, containing vi, 28-vii, 2. This single page has five different colors or documents, but so placed together as to show at least fifteen patches. This is criticism gone to seed and bound to fall into disrepute.

We shall not discuss the document theory in this place, but shall simply ask the question, Why do the critics depress the date of the several books? Why, for instance, do they insist upon the nonmosaic authorship of the Pentateuch? Underlying the entire scheme of the Wellhausen school of critics is the determination of reducing the Old Testament to the level of other books, and thus to deprive it of all

supernatural worth. In order to do this successfully both the miraculous and prophetical elements must be eliminated. Granting that the books were not written till centuries after the events therein discussed had taken place, there is no need of inspiration or supernatural aid to foretell them. This prophecy is not prophecy at all, but rather history, so worded, however, as to deceive the ages till the time of Wellhausen and his wise followers. So, in regard to the miraculous, if anything has been reported as passing the boundaries of the natural it is for the interest of the writer to date it back to the distant past, when the wonderful, mysterious, and legendary played such an important part. Anyone adopting such a theory will find some difficulty in distinguishing between the miracles of the Old Testament and the wonderful works of Hercules and other heroes of Greek mythology. If, for example, the Book of Daniel was not written till 168 B. C. the story of the three young men in the fiery furnace, or of Daniel in the lions' den, can be termed legendary or mythical much more easily than if the book had been written by Daniel or some contemporary in the same year or decade as the events are supposed to have occurred.

Some of the arguments produced by the critics for the late origin of books are of the flimsiest kind. One argument to prove that Daniel could not have been written as early as 550 B. C. is the presence of three Greek words. "These words," says Driver, "it may be confidently affirmed could not have been used in the Book of Daniel unless it had been written after the dissemination of Greek influences in Asia through the conquests of Alexander the Great." Such reason is scientific (?), written by a critic, a defender of modern criticism. The words in question are the names of musical instruments. What reason can there be for thinking that these musical terms or musical instruments, if you please, did not exist before the time of Aristotle or Plato, or for thinking that not only the words but the very instruments could not have been carried to Babylon centuries before the time of Alexander? If not directly from Greece, by the way of Egypt? The fact that Professor Petrie found among the ruins of Tel-el-Amarna many specimens of Mycenæan pottery proves that there were commercial relations between Egypt and Greece at least 1400 B. C. If Greece and Egypt exchanged commodities at so early a date, many centuries earlier, is it an incredible thing that these musical instruments bearing Greek names could have been found in Babylon in the sixth century before our era? Archæology has clearly established the fact that there was a flourishing commerce between the nations of the Orient from gray antiquity. This fact must be emphasized. The critics can no longer ignore it. It confirms in a remarkable way several important things reported in the Bible as historical, but relegated by the critics to the region of myths, such as the account of the military campaign reported in Genesis xiv. The monuments have shown that this chapter may have been actual history, and not a fanciful story invented centuries later by some one who had witnessed the expeditions of

the later Assyrian kings. Nay, more, three or four of the very names have been revealed to us by monuments of undoubted antiquity.

The critics have delighted to regard the ancient Israelites as a people far down in the scale of civilization, and utterly unfit for such legislation as is contained in the Pentateuch. They have evolved a Hebrew, not out of history as given in the Bible, but out of their own idea of the development of the Israelites. They have constructed a theory. Everything must bend to this. If the documents, they say, fail to support this theory, then the documents must be spurious. The teachings of the Pentateuch are too lofty to have come from the semibarbaric hordes of wandering Hebrews of the Mosaic times, a people, we are informed, whose religion could have been hardly anything more than rude fetichism. We are assured that the books bearing the name of Moses are, for the most part, pious frauds, the work of more enlightened Jews written after the captivity. Or, as Justi of Marburg, quoted by Hommel, says, in no guarded language: "A fiction was set on foot to the effect that the priestly code had long ago been delivered to the people by Moses, either as a law to be immediately followed by them or as a rule for their future guidance under new conditions, which Moses in his capacity as prophet must have been able to foresee. A wholesale perversion of history was the result; the whole body of tradition was revised on theocratic lines, with a view to prove that the Levitical priesthood and priestly office had existed prior to the time of the kings, and even during the wanderings in the desert; even the history of primitive times which teems with mythical (polytheistic) associations was distorted in the interests of the new code, and employed to strengthen the arguments in favor of its preexistence." This quotation of Justi, not himself a theologian, yet fairly represents the critical school. True, he might have been more guarded and couched his language in less offensive words. Granting that there was a Moses, the tabernacle with its costly furniture and the priesthood of the wilderness were pure inventions of later ages.

Unfortunately,

Here again the monuments have come to our rescue. Wellhausen had elaborated his theory while archæology was still an infant, unable to talk. Of late years the monuments of the Nile and Euphrates valleys have revealed to us the fact that there was a very high degree of civilization in the nations around Israel ages before Moses. Both Egypt and Babylon possessed much literature in the first half of the second millennium before Christ, some of it of marvelous beauty and lofty moral tone. No one can read the great hymn to Aten, published by Petrie,* without being convinced of this. The remarkable resemblance between the formation of the proper names on the old Babylonian monuments, as well as upon those of southern Arabia, and the proper names of the Book of Numbers is also very marked. The testimony from the monuments is, therefore, all favorable to the conservative view, and the sooner the higher critics will see it the better it will be for biblical criticism.

History of Egypt, vol. ii, pp. 215-218.