JS THE SO-CALLED ^' PRIESTLY CODE " OF POST-EXILIC DATE? 75 



IV. — A few general remarks may conclude this paper. We 

 commenced with the assertion that criticism, as at present 

 conducted, is not one of the exact sciences, and that if on some 

 points it may claim to be exact, those claims are confined within 

 very narrow limits indeed. The instances given in this paper 

 will be held by many of my hearers to confirm this assertion. 

 And the way in which Wellhausen and his followers use what 

 they call "historical" criticism, by adding which to literary 

 they claim to have arrived at indisputable conclusions, will be 

 regarded by most historical critics as altogether unique. The 

 real fact is that, as the late Prof. Orr has reminded us, the 

 authors of the latest form of analytical criticism, Graf, Well- 

 hausen and Kuenen, were convinced that wdiat is called " the 

 supernatural " has no existence. It is on that basis that their 

 enquiry is conducted ; but, as I trust we have seen,* an inquiry 

 on that basis requires canons of historical criticism which are 

 altogether inadmissible. Consequently, so far from being 

 " scientific," the methods employed are the very opposite. The 

 destructive critic, moreover, in assuming the impossibility of the 

 supernatural, makes assumptions which have always been 

 strongly contested, have frequently been disputed by scientific 

 investigators, and at the last Afeeting of the British Association 

 were largely declared to be unnecessary and unreasonable. 

 The presuppositions that every religion was evolved from 

 fetichism, and that it advanced through animism and polytheism 

 to monotheism, are not only shown to be incorrect by a scientific 

 thinker so well known as the late Mr. Andrew Lang, but they 

 can only be maintained by striking all assertions to the contrary 

 out of the Old Testament Scriptures, and by turning their 

 contents inside out and upside down. Their strongest and most 

 solemn affirmations on religious matters are contradicted, and 

 declared to be forgeries of a far later date,f The majestic 

 Mosaic Law, with its extraordinarily minute foreshadowings of 

 the Life and Teaching of the Eedeemer of mankind, is, we are 

 told, not Mosaic at all, but is " evolved " out of the most 



^ See above, pp. 64, 65. 



t See Pentateuch, /)r^s6'?j?2, as to the fact that the whole civil, legal and 

 ecclesiastical polity of Israel originated with Moses, As to the fact that 

 the Old Testament asserts that from the first the religion of Israel 

 differed fundamentally from that of the surrounding nations, see 

 Deuteronomy v, 14, 15 ; viii, 19, 20 ; xi, 28 ; xiii, throughout ; xvi, 2, 7 ; 

 xviii, 9, 12, 20. Also Leviticus xviii, 2, 24-28 ; xx, 22-24, 26 ; Exodus, 

 xxiii, 23, 24 is admitted to be Mosaic by many critics who deny the 

 authenticity of the rest of the Pentateuch. 



