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torian to subject the historical books of the Bible to the severest 

 principles of criticism, for they belong to history, and as 1 

 have said, it is the function of this science to discriminate 

 fact from fiction. I have no immediate concern with that 

 portion of this work which denies the Mosaic authorship of 

 the Pentateuch, but with some of its reconstructive principles. 

 We will assume, therefore, for the purposes of argument, that the 

 Pentateuch was not written by Moses, and that it is a com- 

 posite work, which a late writer has reduced into its pre- 

 sent form, out of several original authorities. Ewald, by the 

 aid of conjectural criticism, not only asserts his ability to 

 determine the exact number of these authorities, but to assign 

 each passage to its respective author. But his boldness does 

 not stop here. After a lapse of over three thousand years, 

 he attempts to reconstruct the history, which he considers 

 these authorities to have misunderstood. The audacity with 

 which he uses the principle of historical conjecture is almost 

 sublime, and it seems never to have occurred to him that its 

 validity is questionable. As far as I have read this work, I 

 have failed to discover any rational principles by which the 

 greater portion of the enormous mass of ingenious conjecture 

 which it contains can be verified, or any proof given that they are 

 veritable facts, except the author^s own opinion that he possesses 

 a deep power of vision by which he is capable of seeing into the 

 obscurities of the past. I cannot conceive that a person can be 

 convinced by its perusal that the positions taken by its author 

 are proved, unless he has come to it with a predisposition to 

 accept them. Similar attempts are made from time to time to 

 reconstruct the life of our Lord, and are widely applied to 

 subjects most closely connected with revelation. Do they rest 

 on a rational foundation? Let the plain truth be boldly spoken. 

 These and similar reconstructions are novels, and not histories. 



Let me guard myself from the danger of being misunderstood. 

 The foregoing observations are meant only to apply to the prin- 

 ciple of historical conjecture. I by no means wish to imply 

 that there is not a legitimate use of reason on this subject, or 

 that we cannot by its aid infer the presence of a fact for which 

 we are not in possession of direct evidence. We constantly do 

 so in the daily aftairs of life ; and what is legitimate in these is 

 legitimate in history. 



I will conclude this portion of my subject in the words of 

 Sir G. C. Lewis, — "The main cause of the great multiplicity 

 and wide divergency of opinion is, the defective methods which 

 have been adopted. Instead of applying those tests of credi- 

 bility, which are constantly applied to modern history, they 

 attempt to guide their judgment by the indications of internal 



