THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



SEPTEMBER, 1895. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



XX. FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 



Bt ANDKEW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D. (Yale), Ph. D. (Jena), 



FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



IV. THE CLOSING STRUGGLE. 



THE storm aroused by Essays and Reviews had not yet sub- 

 sided when a far more serious tempest burst upon the Eng- 

 lish theological world. 



In 1862 appeared a work entitled The Pentateuch and the 

 Book of Joshua Critically Examined, its author being Colenso, 

 Anglican Bishop of Natal in South Africa. He had formerly 

 been highly esteemed as fellow and tutor at Cambridge, master 

 at Harrow, and author of various valuable text-books in mathe- 

 matics. Had he exercised his powers within the limits of popular 

 orthodoxy, he was evidently in the way to the highest positions in 

 the Church ; but he chose another path. His treatment of his 

 subject was reverent, but he had gradually come to those conclu- 

 sions, then so daring, now so widespread among Christian schol- 

 ars, that the Pentateuch, with much valuable historical matter, 

 contains much that is unhistorical ; that a large portion of it was 

 the work of a comparatively late period in Jewish history ; that 

 many passages in Deuteronomy could only have been written 

 after the Jews settled in Canaan ; that the Mosaic law was not 

 in force before the captivity; that the book of Chronicles was 

 clearly written as an afterthought to enforce the views of the 

 priestly caste; and that in all the books there is much that is 

 mythical and legendary. 



These statements, which now seem so moderate, then aroused 



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