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as easily learned as literary parody, and it is often as tiresome. Yet the battle of Bannockburn took place; and the best proof of the fact is, that the whole nation believes it, and has been and is at this moment sensibly affected in its very vitals by the recollection. So the great events of Israel's history, the turning-points, the points determinative of the whole life and history, are attested by the nation at the earliest time at which we are enabled to look for materials on which an opinion can be based. No reason can be given for the invention of them just at this time, or for the significance which the prophets assign to them. It may be that a fond memory invested with a halo of glory the great fathers of the race; it may also be that a simple piety saw wonders where a modern age would see none. Yet the individuality of the characters is not destroyed, nor are the sequence of events and the delineations of character shown to be the work of a fitful and unbridled imagination.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE KEY OF THE CRITICAL POSITION.

The preceding inquiry has given us so far a general confirmation of the Biblical view, and the conclusion has been reached by taking undisputed documents in their natural sense-But since the modern view claims to rest on a critical examination of the documents, we have to consider what the critical sifting amounts to-Stade's statement of the process that has taken place in the canonisation of books—The historical books ; how modified in accordance with later views-Critical appeal to contemporary prophetic writings as a check on the historical—Prophetical books, however, have also to be critically sifted: Stade's account of the case-Examples of the critical adjustment of Amos and HoseaStriking out, allowing for unhistorical ideas-Want of fixed objective standard of appeal—The first principle of criticism, how stated and how misapplied-The whole controversy, however, turns round the question as to whether the prophets were reformers or originators—Two points eliminated as not in dispute-Still there are three points to be proved before the critical position can be adopted.

"I GREET you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start." With these words Emerson extended to Walt Whitman a welcome into the literary world; and in a similar way we must greet the so-called first literary age of Israel. By three distinct lines of inquiry we have examined this age, and from a literary, a religious, and a historical point of view, we conclude that it must

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have had "a long foreground somewhere for such a We have confined ourselves to such books or portions of books as are placed in this period, and we have found that by a safe inference they lead us back to an anterior time and an antecedent condition of things which, substantially, are those represented in the books which profess to give us a record of those times. The testimony of the writing prophets, Hosea and Amos, to the history, is particularly weighty. When they refer to the past history of the nation, they do so as to a matter well known; and when they give a particular representation of the history, they leave no room for doubt that the consciousness of their contemporaries was with them. Now what does this imply? It implies that the facts and ideas were so wrought into the national mind that there was no need to prove or substantiate them, no thought of gainsaying them. And applying the argument we have employed in regard to the literary and religious features of the books, we conclude that a scheme of history like this was not a sudden product, foisted upon their generation by two individuals. Before it could become, as it clearly had become, the settled belief of the whole nation in any one century, there must have been not merely a set of facts on which it was based, but a process of reflection upon them, a holding of them up by some person or persons before the nation's eyes, or a provision of some kind for keeping them alive in the nation's remembrance. Again, therefore, we are driven back to an antecedent time, during which these traditions took concrete shape, and became, not only recollections of events, but interpretations of them in a religious historical sense. From every point of view, therefore, it appears that the century we

are considering is not merely, or not mainly, the startingpoint of a new development, but that, preceding it, there is implied a very considerable stage of culture and a long process of religious reflection and education. All this, of course, is not sufficient to establish the existence or composition of the disputed books at the early period to which they relate. It is enough, however, to show that writings of a historical and religious kind, such as they are, might quite well have been composed before what has been provisionally called the first literary age. Moreover, the testimony afforded by Hosea and Amos, and by writings of their century, amounting, as we contend, to the testimony of the nation itself, will be regarded, by some minds at least, as stronger testimony than that of written compositions, and a sufficient guarantee that the disputed books, which profess to relate the earlier national history, at whatever time they may have been written, rest upon and are in accordance with the same tradition, which we find to be a national possession at the period of the undisputed compositions.

So far as we have gone, then, we seem to get a general confirmation of the Biblical theory. And the conclusion at which we have arrived, whatever may be its value, has not been based upon any of the writings that are said to be late and unhistorical, nor has any attempt been made to strain words beyond their natural sense, or to assume anything that ordinary experience and common-sense do not warrant. According to the modern critical historians, however, the matter is not by any means so simple as this; for the conclusion to which they come, based, as it is claimed, on the same documents critically examined, is very different, as has already been indicated. We must now, therefore, consider somewhat more closely what this

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critical sifting of the documents amounts to, and on what principles it is carried out, so as to discover, if possible, what residuum of testimony remains to us as authoritative and trustworthy.

A great part of Wellhausen's History of Israel is devoted to what he terms "History of Tradition," in which he goes over the historical books in detail, pointing out how later views have been superimposed on earlier accounts, or made to explain or even originate earlier alleged events. Stade, near the beginning of his history, lays down in a preliminary way, and more explicitly, the grounds for this critical sifting. Canonical writings, he says, are usually affected in only too sensible a manner by the process of canonisation. With every act of canonisation there is inseparably connected a thorough revisal and working over-a final redaction, in fact, of the work canonised. The reason for this is, that a definite final development of thought is only reached after varied mental movement; and those standing at the end of a chain of development and looking back at the process by which it has been reached, assuming that the final form. is alone right, will find blanks and contradictions in the writings that have been composed in the course of this development. The final redaction will seek to fill up the blanks and to smooth down the contradictions; and this gives rise to insertions, omissions, and patching up of the original. Even after canonisation has taken place, writings are exposed to defacement in the interest of some party or tendency which has gained the upper hand and possesses the guardianship of the books.

This working over of the materials of tradition, Stade

1 Geschichte, p. 14 f. I give the substance of the passage instead of a literal translation.