THE LIBRARY PREFACE It is less than half a century since the publication of "Essays and Reviews" startled the orthodox party in England and brought upon its authors a storm of criticism. Of those Essays perhaps none was more severely criticised than that of Dr. Frederick Temple, now Archbishop of Canterbury, on "The Education of the World," in which he affirmed that Rome, Greece, Asia, and Judea each contributed something to the growth of the future church; Rome, law; Greece, science and art; Asia, the spiritual imagination; Judea, the discipline of the human conscience; in which also he traced in the Bible a development of religious teaching, from an earlier and cruder to a later and better spiritual conception of truth and life. Some of his statements he would probably himself now modify; but the two fundamental principles of his essay, that God's processes of education have not been confined to the Hebrew race, and that in the Hebrew race they were gradual, the affirmation of which aroused such fierce antagonism in 1860, are accepted as axiomatic by a large and increasing body of Biblical scholars in 1900. This school of Biblical interpretation may be termed modern, because it has come into existence in England and America during the present century; it may be termed scientific, because in the study of the Bible it assumes nothing respecting the origin, character, and authority of the Bible, but expects to determine by such study what are its origin, character, and authority; it may be termed literary, because it applies to the study of Hebrew literature the same canons of literary criticism which are applied by students of other world-literature; it may be termed evolutionary, because it assumes that the laws, institutions, and literature of the ancient Hebrews were a gradual development in the life of the nation, not an instantaneous creation nor a series of instantaneous creations. The other school may be termed the ancient school, because it prevailed in the church from a very ancient period until the latter half of the nineteenth century; the theological school, because it assumes as settled that the Bible is a revelation from God and consequently possesses certain characteristics which it thinks such a revelation must be assumed to possess; the traditional school, because it accepts as presumptively, if not conclusively true, certain opinions respecting the date, authorship, and character of different books in the Bible which have been traditionally held in the church from a very early period. |