larger portion of which is the legislation in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, placed by some critics in the ninth, but now by most in the fifth century B.C.

(2) The Historical Books. Judges: compiled from several distinct sources, united and edited in or after the exile. The same is the case with Samuel and Kings. All these books were compiled and edited by prophetic men for a religious purpose. Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, really one work, written not before the beginning of the third century B.C., and with the design of magnifying the Temple, its founders, services, and priests.

(3) The Prophets. Several are composite collections of prophetic discourses. Isaiah includes besides the writings of Isaiah, those of several other prophets : chs. xl.-lxvi. were written during and after the exile; chs. xxiv.-xxvii. may belong to the time of the Return, or to the Greek period. Micah and Zechariah are each by various authors.

(4) The Poetical Books. Job, not historica 1, but a didactic poem, approaching the dramatic form, dealing with the great Hebrew problem of the sufferings of the righteous. The Song of Songs, a collection of lyrics, perhaps dramatically arranged, in praise of the love of man and woman, admitted into the Jewish Canon only after spiritualization. The Book of Psalms, the Temple hymn-book of Israel, mainly of postexile date, with but few or no Psalms of David.' Daniel, the first of the Apocalypses, with stories and prophecies written about 168-167 B.C., to sustain the hope and heroism of the strict Jewish party under the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes. Esther and Jonah: both novelistic

in character; the first appallingly Jewish, the second as beautifully universalistic in spirit.

II. THE NEW TESTAMENT. (1) The Gospels, the cream, or the refined gold, of a mass of Evangelical tradition and composition, incorporating materials of widely different dates, localities, and tendencies. Which of the Synoptics is the earliest is disputed, though the present drift of opinion is in favour of Mark. Carpenter favours the following dates as the earliest possible : Mark A.D. 70; Luke A.D. 100; Matthew later than Luke. The newly found fragment of the Gospel of Peter is a fresh proof of the variety of the Evangelical literature current in the churches at the beginning of the second century A.D. The Fourth Gospel of an entirely different type from the Synoptics, composed with a dogmatic purpose, almost certainly not by the Apostle John. Keim finally dated it A.D. 130.

(2) The Acts, not a strictly historical work, but employing historical material with an apologetic purpose, for example, ch. xv. is not in full accord with Gal. ii. The date, A.D. 110-120.

(3) The Epistles. Of those ascribed to Paul, Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles, are very generally pronounced to be of another and later authorship. II Peter, the three Epistles of John, and Jude, are not by the Apostles.

(4) The Revelation was in all probability originally a Jewish Apocalypse, perhaps itself of a composite structure, and was Christianized by various additions and interpolations, and is of uncertain date.

On the New Testament books generally, Pfleiderer's 'Urchristenthum' (1887), Martineau's

Seat of Authority in Religion' (1890). On the Epistles, the Protestant Commentary (Theological Translation Fund), Pfleiderer's Hibbert Lectures,' and the 'Introductions' of Reuss, Davidson, and others. On the Gospels, 'The First Three Gospels,' by J. E. Carpenter, 2nd ed. (1890); Gospel Criticism and Historical Christianity,' by Orello Cone, D.D. (1892). 'The Fourth Gospel,' by J. J. Tayler; art. Gospels,' by Abbott in 'Ency. Brit.' On the Old Testament books generally, Canon Driver's 'Introduction to the Old Testament'; Ewald's' History of Israel.' On the Hexateuch, 'The Documents of the Hexateuch,' by W. E. Addis, M.A. (1892); 'The Composition of Genesis,' by E. I. Fripp (1892). On the Prophets : Ewald's 'Prophets of the Old Testament,' English translation; Robertson Smith's 'Prophets of Israel' (1882). On the Psalms, Cheyne's, Ewald's, and Kirkpatrick's Commentaries. On Job: Ewald's and Davidson's Commentaries.

OLD AND NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE STRUCTURE AND CHRONOLOGY

OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

THE Chart1 on which my remarks will be based, and which I hope will enable you to follow them without difficulty, is constructed on a principle now well known to students of history, and doubtless familiar to many of you. It aims at bringing the eye to the assistance of the imagination and the reason, in holding the events or the books of which we may be speaking in their proper relations of order and distance one to the other. An equal lapse of time is represented by an equal space on the Chart, so that a glance of the eye will at once show us the relative

1 The Chronological Chart and Notes ar printed at the end of the Lecture.

lengths of the different periods of the history of Israel, and will bring home to us the meaning of many an assertion or opinion that would be apt to float in the air if we had not some such means of fixing in our minds the chronological relations which it implies or upon which it builds.

I will ask you in the first place to confine your attention to the left-hand side of the Chart, on which the principal events in the history of Israel are set forth. No doubt there is much in the chronology which it assumes that is matter of legitimate controversy, but the questions in dispute have no direct bearing upon the subject of our study, and therefore for our present purpose the left-hand side of the Chart may be regarded as non-contentious.

Let us then glance down it and endeavour to bring the succession of Biblical writings, as usually taught, into connexion with the historical development of the people. At the beginning of the national history, then, we find the Pentateuch, or 'Five Books of Moses,' which present us