PRINCIL'LES OP THE CRITICISM OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 247 



There are critics and critics. We shall agree with the author wheu, 

 referring to the neglect to examine into the correctness of the 

 Hebrew text, shown by one class of critics, he says : — " I cannot but 

 say it seems to me an omission which goes very far to discredit the 

 method and spirit of the w^hole critical process. It looks like an 

 eminent example of the formation of a hasty hypothesis on an 

 incomplete observation of the facts, and a tardy and reluctant 

 attention to the new facts when it could no longer be avoided. 

 It would seem that the critics have been as sure of their theories 

 as the Ptolemaic astronomers were of their ' cycles and epicycles,' 

 and did not think it wortli while to look more closely into any 

 circumstances alleged to be inconsistent with them." 



In a house built upon such foundations we refuse to make our 

 intellectual home. 



The Eev. H. J. R. Maeston wrote : — 



I am sorry indeed that I cannot be at the Victoria Institute 

 meeting to-morrow to hear the Dean. 



I have just read the uncorrected proof of his paper. 



I beg you to read my thanks as a tribute to the erudition and 

 lucidity of his treatment of a very interesting and rather difficult 

 matter. 



My own reading of the Septuagint has more than once suggested 

 to me that arguments based on the names of God in the Greek text 

 must lead to different conclusions from the use in the Authorized 

 Version, which I take to follow the Hebrew. 



The most potent fact of all alleged by the Dean is no doubt that 

 at the end of his paper, namely, that we cannot believe that the 

 Israelite nation has been altogether duped by literary forgers, who 

 long before the theory of religious evolution was known, recon- 

 structed the Old Testament in a sense favourable to that theory. 



Mr. John Schwartz, Jun., wrote : — 



Our author's rebuke of the naive confidence with which matters 

 not capable of definite proof, and therefore only pious opinions, 

 are held, is well merited by the scholars to whom he refers. It 

 is a weakness of human nature which they share with the 

 strictly orthodox who are still more dogmatic on more doubtful 

 matters. 



