off in the distance there will be heard the faint note of some wakeful bird, first harbinger of coming brightness; soon the low-lying clouds will scud across the sky, patches of blue will appear and vanish in a moment, the sun will gleam through intermittently; something within will make him think of early daffodils, nodding violets, and fragrant apple blossoms, and, lo, before he is half through these inspirational volumes the clouds are gone and the broad sun has filled the earth with the cheer and hope and strength of his shining face.

this smooth and rhythmical Broad, ample, and charitable

The poets' corner in the study is an ample one. Many are the friendly faces that shine from out that sunny spot. Even among friends there are differences-some for special days, hours, and moods, others for all days and every mood. Two of these friends never fail us-Whittier and Browning. We take the one for his breadth, the other for his depth. Open Whittier anywhere. He is as a limpid stream running smoothly over its sandy bed. One sees so readily and reads so easily that he sometimes forgets that writer touches profound deeps. as he is, one must not think him shallow. He rather reminds one of that Floridian spring where one's eye may follow a coin as it slowly sinks to the floor and find it difficult to realize that that plainly discernible floor is eighty feet beneath the little boat over whose side he leans. "Our Master," "The Eternal Goodness," "The Grave by the Lake," "Snow Bound," and many more are household treasures. Who does not feel his heart enlarged, his sympathies broadened, his horizon widened, and his life enriched as he reads these melodious numbers? And how much more vitally these lines speak to us because of the life out of which they come. We know that life-simple and homely as the New England customs among which it was nurtured, pure and gentle as the mountain rivulets it loved so well, rugged and strong as the granite of the hills it moved among all this simplicity, purity, and strength are in the heart, and out of the fullness of the heart the song breaks forth. Perhaps that last stanza of "A Dream of Summer" is as characteristic of the thought and temper of this dearly loved companion and friend as any that could for the sake of illustration be quoted:

The night is mother of the day,
The Winter of the Spring,
And ever upon old decay

The greenest mosses cling.
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,

Through showers the sunbeams fall;
For God, who loveth all his works,

Has left his hope with all!

And of Browning-the sturdy-souled, stout-hearted, fullvoiced singer of our day-what shall be said of him? Only this, that once we know him we are grappled to him with hooks of steel. He is at once our inspiration, our strength, our comfort. When thought lags we read him, when strength fails we read him, when clouds hang thick and low we read him. He is the embodiment of the best, strongest, and truest thought of the Victorian era. His use and interpretation of nature make one say, and with a new and deeper meaning than ever before, "I believe in the living God." When he sings:

The acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,

one is strengthened in his belief of the very, the prime, and the ultimate supremacy of Christ, notwithstanding the crass materialism with which one may be surrounded. His faith in man fills us with both physical and moral courage. We believe in ourselves more than ever before. We no longer call ourselves miserable worms of the dust:

No, when the fight begins within himself,

A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,

Satan looks up between his feet-both tug,

He's left, himself, i' the middle; the soul awakes

And grows. Prolong that battle through this life!

Never leave growing till the life to come.

His conception of God makes us know that the ripest and richest thinking of our era is harmonious with the thinking of John and Paul, and that no discovery of the centuries has antiquated the revealings of Jesus.

God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that! And there, we think, all may build and rest, confident that no gates of hell can ever prevail against so bedrock a foundation. His challenge to death ranks with Paul's swan song. Who

that reads it is not thereby heartened for the conflict? Who does not feel that what man has done man can do? If only back of him be the serene, strong, and loving life that was back of Robert Browning, he, too, can say:

1

Fear death?-to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe;

I was ever a fighter, so-one fight more,

The best and the last.

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,

And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears

Of pain, darkness, and cold.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,

Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,

And with God be at rest!

These are some of the writer's friends. They are always at home when he calls. They are neither wearied nor wearisome. They never fail. Though stereotyped, they have a perennial freshness about them that reminds one of the fabled fountain of eternal youth. A morning or evening in their company makes the world fresh and virile, and the people and things of it full of a new and rich suggestiveness, and one comes away saying:

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't!

Побытер

ART. III. THE HYPOTHETICAL OLD TESTAMENT.

THIS is an age of hypotheses-hypotheses in science, in history, in literature, in every department of thought and investigation. It is customary to form a theory of science or of history and then seek to realize that theory through marshaling the facts under it and bending them into conformity to it. While we boast of the Baconian method-the inductive process of attaining knowledge--yet it is true that theories and a priori assumptions have a dominant influence over all of our investigations, and give color and character to their results. This is especially true with reference to investigations made by certain critics in the history of ancient peoples and their religions. The standpoint is the development hypothesis, applied to the history of these nations and of the human race in general. According to this hypothesis man has gradually worked himself up from a state of primitive barbarism— a state of social, moral, and religious infancy-to the state in which the most civilized nations are at present to be found. The Bible story of primitive innocency and subsequent degradation through sin, from which the race is to be lifted through a divine interposition that has been working out its results through the ages and has found its culmination in the Son of God manifest in the flesh, is to be explained away, if not more summarily dealt with, in the interest of this development hypothesis.

This, we feel sure, is the explanation of the documentary hypothesis, put forth to explain the origin of the Old Testament Scriptures. It is based upon preconceptions and a priori assumptions. Its J, E, JE, P, D, and Redactor, along with sundry supposed interpolations, is a sheer invention of this age. These are wholly imaginary persons. They and their production have no counterpart in literature in all human history of which anyone knows. To say that this scheme is wholly hypothetical is to make an assertion that cannot be gainsaid. It is simply sufficient to call attention to the fact that the parties who advocate this fanciful division of the Old Testament into the productions of documentary authorship do not agree as to

the number of them, their relative position in the work of compilation, and as to just what belongs to each. Some put E before J, and some put J before E, and the other hypothetical characters are also diversely distributed according to the fancy of the particular theorizer. And also to these various dates are assigned, from the days of Josiah down to within a few centuries of our Lord. Nothing can be more profoundly confusing than the assured discoveries of these eminent critics. But it may be said that there are some fundamental facts upon which they agree. They agree upon the hypothesis of the documentary character of the Pentateuch. They agree in calling certain books of the Old Testament the "Hexateuch," thus by a term to constructively set aside the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. They agree in making the Levitical economy the end of Israel's development and not its beginning. Now, let it not be forgotten that this documentary hypothesis is a very different thing from the admission that Moses may have used more ancient productions in the compilation of the history contained in Genesis.

The assurance with which these speculations are put forth reminds one of the same traits exemplified by the advocates of its congener, scientific evolution. A recent writer, for example, says, "The documentary hypothesis seems established; at any rate, it has been adopted by the great majority of the biblical scholars of the day as the most satisfactory solution of the question concerning the structure of the Pentateuch yet suggested." Who are "the biblical scholars of the day?" We infer, from the statement, the men who adopt the hypothesis. Its adoption in certain quarters is the test of biblical scholarship. Shall we mention in opposition to it Professor Green, Edersheim, Stanley Leathes, Keil, Principal Cave, Dean Chadwick, Dr. John Forbes, Canon Rawlinson, Professor Sayce, Dr. Harman, and a host of others? These are certainly men of scholarship, and of Semitic scholarship likewise. May it not be possible that some men are classified as advocates of the documentary hypothesis who simply admit that Moses made use of documents to write the history contained in Genesis? This is a quite different thing from the "documentary hypothesis" of the divisive critics. Familiarity with Semitic tongues