RELATIONS OF OLD TESTAMENT SCIENCE 555 



facts, the more evident it will become that the Old Testament contains 

 within itself an unusually large number of important stages which 

 have been passed through successively or simultaneously. It is only 

 with this result attained that the earnest and self-denying critical 

 work done during the past century upon our Old Testament is 

 brought to a close, and at the same time celebrates its triumph. For 

 in agreement with these results all those various manifestations of 

 religious action, feeling, and thought are successively or simultan- 

 eously disclosed; so that wherever literary criticism has distinguished 

 different sources from each other, there are also disclosed various 

 stages of religious perception, and each of these stages finds within the 

 broad realm of religion corresponding phases of religious thought, 

 more or less related. Whoever stands in the midst of the matter, and 

 has learned to think and to feel with the Old Testament, will not let 

 himself be led astray. Again and again the attempt has been made to 

 derive the whole of the phenomena found in the Old Testament from 

 one and the same source, from this or that great civilized nation of 

 antiquity. It is true that ancient Israel had about her, on the right 

 and on the left, the religious second-hand shops of over-civilized 

 peoples, from which syncretistic temerity could easily derive whatever 

 it liked. But one who does not merely stand outside and look over 

 the hedge into the Old Testament knows that the religion of Israel, 

 however manifold and however wise its cross-breedings, is, neverthe- 

 less, grown from the kernel. We Old Testament students are there- 

 fore not at all in the fortunate, or at least comfortable, position of 

 being able to limit our study of comparative religion either to the 

 lands on the Euphrates and the Tigris, or to a small group of civilized 

 countries in Hither Asia; for we have repeatedly learned that the 

 most primitive forms of religion afford striking and exceedingly 

 useful points of comparison for the Old Testament. 



Now, these facts have an important bearing upon the position of the 

 Old Testament in the academic programme. Of late the cry sounds 

 ever louder that the department of the history of religion is indis- 

 pensable to the theological faculty, and that the subject absolutely 

 must be added to those already presented; indeed, this is in many 

 cases already an accomplished fact. I do not know whether this is 

 to be considered an unqualified advantage. The familiar definition 

 of theojogy as the science of religion I consider wide of the mark. 

 Theology is, as I have already said, not a pure but an applied science, 

 busy with life within sharply defined limits. To penetrate to the 

 depths of the general history of religion, within the time which is 

 allotted to the study of theology, in addition to the enormous range 

 of studies already included, is an absolute impossibility. A short 

 course of lectures on the subject might do harm rather than good, 

 by leading the student to think that he possessed genuine knowledge, 



