(together, it is true, with much other and incongruous matter) with a picture of an organized and disciplined nation, rejoicing in a complete civil and ecclesiastical legislation, minutely regulated in its worship under the direction of a jealously exclusive and highly organized hereditary priesthood, and in full possession of the lofty monotheism which speaks in the sublime utterances of the first chapter of Genesis, such as ' And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.' Then comes the period of the Judges; that is to say, a period in which we no longer find a highly organized nation, but a mere loose federation of clans, no longer an elaborate ritual presided over by an official priesthood, but a crude and uncouth cultus under the charge of an irregular and personal clergy, or a patriarchal society in which every father of a family is his own priest. The trained and disciplined strength of an army coextensive with the nation has gone, and the oppressed Israelites are dependent upon flashes of individual and undisciplined valour for

D

even temporary relief from their sufferings.

On the wild and barbaric virtues and vices of the period of the Judges the epoch of Samuel and David follows well enough if we take our ideas of it from the histories that have preserved its memory; but where can we find room in it for the marvellous depth and spiritual maturity of the Psalms? Did the hero who stood with one foot in the period of Gideon and Jephthah, who hung up the seven sons and grandsons of Saul to appease the offended Deity, and so put an end to the drought, who thought that to be banished. from the territory of Israel was the same thing as to be compelled to serve other gods,' and in whose house the 'teraph or household god, was close at hand when a dummy was needed to represent him lying in bed-did this man, I ask, write such words as 'Whither shall I go from thy presence, and whither shall I flee from thy spirit?' or 'Thou desirest not sacrifice else would I give it, thou delightest not in burnt-offering'? Did he compose those portions of the Old Testament which

stand nearer than any others to the feelings and aspirations of Christianity?

Again we leap over some two centuries or more, during which not even the faintest after-vibrations of David's harp are to be heard, and then we are startled by the sudden apparition of the Prophets, true sons of the earth in the freshness and verve of their appeal, speaking like men whom a sudden sense of what should be has horrified with its contrast to what is, and who turn in all the passion of new-born conviction to force the truth on a heedless or astonished world. They speak indeed as men who have a great religious tradition behind them, and they appeal to the lessons and the experiences of the past; but there is no hint that that religious tradition is embodied in writings they regard as authoritative; there is no falling back for support upon the Law or the Psalms, no attempt to enforce the regulations of the one or to appeal to the spirit of the other. The only references they make to the ceremonies, so strongly insisted on in books of the Law, are to declare that

they are matters of absolute indifference; and the only reference to David, as a musician, is made by Amos in connexion with the drinking-bouts of the profligate nobles. The Prophets speak as men directly conscious of the divine guidance and inspiration, with the history of their people behind them, but with no great religious literature on the study of which they have formed themselves, as Jesus, for example, afterwards formed himself upon the study of their writings and the other books of the Old Testament.

For some centuries the stream of prophetic utterance flows, and then all is plunged into sudden darkness. For almost five centuries, Israel, to the ordinary reader of the Bible, has practically no religious history at all. Then in the time of Jesus, when the stream emerges into the light again, we find ourselves-not where we left off, at the Prophets, but where we began, at the Law and the Psalms! For it will hardly be denied that it is by reading the books of the Law that we get the best idea of the religious atmosphere of Pales

tine when Jesus lived, and it is by reading the Psalms that we gain most insight into those aspects of Jewish piety which transplanted themselves with the greatest ease and the least modification into the bosom of the Christian Church.1

Now I would ask in all seriousness whether we should be willing to accept this as a rational account of the progress of Hebrew literature if we had been accustomed to expect or to require the same kind of evidence in matters that concern the Bible as we are in the habit of insisting on in the case of any other history or literature. Should we not at once say that the account given us of the progress of the literature was inconsistent alike with itself and with the history? And should we not set about inquiring how such a topsy-turvy conception had ever come to be accepted, and what means

1 If any exception is to be made to this assertion it must be in favour of the Book of Daniel, the influence of which on New Testament feeling and literature is very marked.