200 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



Baal was overthrown, there was no return of national 

 prosperity ; Jahveh had delivered his people into the 

 hand of Hazael, not because He was weak, but because 

 He was angry angry that even for a time His people 

 had thought of other gods. Now, the moral attributes of 

 Jahveh already furnished a basis for a deep distinction 

 between Him and other gods. And so earnest worshippers 

 began more and more to lay weight on this side of his 

 character, and dropped the natural basis of the old 

 religion, in order to realize more fully the deep separation 

 between the God of Israel and all heathen gods. 



It was not in the prophetic schools that these new ideas 

 rose. The movement went on in the heart of the nation, 

 especially among the simple nomadic families from whom, 

 for example, Amos sprung. And thus it was that the 

 great thoughts were ripened which burst forth in the new 

 prophecy of the eighth century. 



For this theory, Kuenen does not claim to have 

 historical proof. He gives it as the only plausible method 

 of explaining the advance in religious conceptions between 

 the tenth and eighth centuries. We cannot regard it as a 

 happy theory. Everywhere it reverses the order of cause 

 and effect. It is true that only spiritual views of God 

 could agree with a faith shaken neither by persecution 

 nor by national misfortune. But surely, these views 

 must have been already present to the men who suffered 

 so much, not for leave to worship Jahveh, but to escape 

 tolerating Baal beside Him. And when Baal fell, and 

 misfortune, not prosperity, followed, could aught but 

 spiritual faith have resisted the argument that the wrath 

 of Baal was stronger than the favour of Jahveh ? 



We do not care to develop these objections. The 

 whole theory, ingenious as it is, bears with it not only its 

 own condemnation, but the condemnation of the principle 

 on which it rests. That is not a true historical criticism 

 which does not acknowledge in history a higher element 

 than the merely natural. 



