many things concerning the faiths of the world; and the unique character of the Old Testament Revelation can only be understood when it is compared with the religious practices and ideas of other peoples. Moreover, the discoveries in Egypt and Assyria, and the study of Eastern life, furnish many new illustrations of the manners and customs of Israel; and the new knowledge of Semitic languages enables us to correct many defects in the Authorized Version of the Old Testament. Indeed the publication of the Revised Version clearly demanded a revised exposition.

Again, the new exegesis had to consider results in other departments of study, e. g., the Lower and the Higher Criticism. Something had been done in the Lower Criticism, or the discussion in detail of the text of the Sacred Books; but here the changes were comparatively unimportant; and even now our knowledge of this subject is very inadequate from the point of view of scholarship, though the text is determined with an accuracy sufficient for practical purposes. It was very different, however, in what is known as the Higher Criticism, i. e., the discussion of the date, authorship, and composition of the books of the Old Testament. Higher critics of one school, following those of former generations, were inclined, for the most part, to assign the books as they stood to the authors whose names were given as their titles. For instance the whole of the Pentateuch, with the exception of Deuteronomy, xxxiv, 5-8, was ascribed to Moses; the whole of Isaiah to the prophet of the time of Hezekiah; and all the Davidic Psalms to David. But for about a century this subject had been studied from another point of view, by a school of critics who were inclined to neglect tradition, and to take for their motto "Prove all things." The principles of this school are clearly and eloquently set forth in the following quotation from Prof. Sayce;[2] the passage refers to the sacred books of Babylonia, but the principles are of universal application.

"Before we can understand it (a collection of sacred books) properly, we must separate the elements of which it consists, and assign to each its chronological position.

"The very fact, however, that religious texts are usually of immemorial antiquity, and that changes inevitably pass over them as they are handed down in successive editions, makes such a task peculiarly difficult. Nevertheless it is a task which must be undertaken before we have the right to draw a conclusion from the texts with which we deal. We must first know whether ... they are composite or the products of a single author and epoch; whether, lastly, they have been glossed and interpolated, and their primitive meaning transformed. We must have a chronology for our documents ... and beware ... of interpreting the creations of one age as if they were the creations of another."

The application of these principles to the Hebrew Scriptures has had startling results. If two tables were compiled showing the date and authorship of the various books, one according to the traditional school of higher criticism,[3] the other according to the school with which we are now dealing,[4] the two would present a marked contrast to each other. The new school would hold, for instance, that the bulk of the Pentateuch is not in its present form the work of Moses; that the last twenty-seven chapters of our Book of Isaiah were not composed by that prophet; and that very few of the Davidic Psalms were really written by David. At the time when the first volumes of the Expositor's Bible were published this school had become large and influential; and public attention had been called to their teaching by the attacks on Prof. W. Robertson Smith, one of their leading representatives. The new criticism affected not only purely literary questions but also the views to be taken of the history and religion of Israel. The history before Saul, it was maintained, was not so fully and definitely known as had been supposed; and the religion of Israel had developed, under the influence of Revelation, from a primitive faith which had much in common with that of other Semitic peoples. Here again we can illustrate the alleged results of the new criticism by a passage from Prof. Sayce: "It is to Babylonia, therefore, that we must look for the origin of those views of the future world and of the punishment of sin[5] which have left so deep an impression on the pages of the Old Testament.... They were views from which the Israelite was long in emancipating himself. The inner history of the Old Testament is, in fact, in large measure a history of the gradual widening of the religious consciousness of Israel in regard to them and their suppression by a higher and more spiritual form of faith."[6]

In the Expositor's Bible both the old and the new schools of criticism are represented. Thus a great opportunity was offered to critics; and a crucial experiment was tried which was of the utmost importance to all Christian Churches. When the books of the Old Testament were read in the light of the new criticism, would it still be possible to derive from them a consistent and reasonable account of the history and religion of Israel; would they still stimulate and nourish Christians' faith, piety, and devotion, and minister to the needs of the spiritual life? The volumes of this series written by representatives of the new school of criticism have enabled us, it is claimed, to answer this question with an emphatic affirmative. For the general public the first volume of Prof. Geo. Adam Smith's Isaiah was an epoch-making book, revealing undreamed-of possibilities in the way of fresh light breaking forth from the ancient Scriptures. The British Weekly wrote of this work, "Isaiah is for the first time made perfectly intelligible to the people.... Mr. Smith has opened out a new line of work ... which will do more than many arguments to reconcile a timorous and misguided public to scientific scholarship and the newer criticism."

Another modern tendency which influences the interpretation of the Old Testament is the decay of ecclesiastical authority. There are still, and always will be, those who are willing to believe anything on the bare word of their favorite preacher. But in the long run this kind of faith does not count. On the other hand there are many, religious or capable of religion, to whom it would seem absurd to suggest that the decrees of Churches had any great value in matters of faith. As regards the Old Testament, for instance, neither the creeds of ancient councils nor the resolutions of modern synods, neither papal bulls nor episcopal edicts could seriously affect the attitude of such men to, say, Canticles, Ecclesiastes and Esther. The testimony of the Church Universal—of which creeds, confessions, and other standards are the least important part—induces inquirers to read the Bible. But in