MODERN BIBLICAL SCHOLAKSHIP. 



235 



of an historical record is to follow a will-o'-the-wisp. To act 

 scientifically, it should first acquaint itself with a sufticient 

 number of facts independent of the record from which it mi.yht 

 deduce the presence of such a theoretical process in Israelitish 

 national life. But to take almost the only existing; record of 

 that life, whicli certainly is not compiled in conformity with any 

 such process, and cut and hack, twist and transpose, deny and 

 disfigure it to tit such a theory is, figuratively speaking, both as 

 cruel and unscientific, as it would be to insist that a man should 

 wear a garment of an artificial pattern, and to bend and break, 

 distort and disfigure his limbs to make them fit it. 



The Biblical record, as it stands, is the record of a national life 

 supernaturally directed and controlled, with an ultimate purpose 

 in view, by a Power interposing at every stage to check the 

 evolutionary results of moral evil, and to preserve that national 

 life from self-destruction, until the purpose of the controlling 

 Power should be accomplished, in the advent of One into the 

 world from without the kosmos — an incarnation of a Divine 

 Person, and not the final result of an evolutionary process. 

 With the history as it stands, the testimony of Archaeology is in 

 complete agreement, and gives not the least sanction to the 

 results which have been made to follow from the application to 

 it of an evolutionary theory. The question at issue is — did the 

 events take place, and did the agents concerned in them feel, 

 think, say, and act at the time, and in the manner asserted by 

 the record ? The answer of Archaeology, so far as its testimony 

 goes, is most emphatically " Yes." The only answer which the 

 evolutionary hypothesis can give is " Xo, it is impossible." 

 Hence it is believed to be — 



(«) Impossible that the national life and polity should 

 have been founded upon any legislative basis approxi- 

 mating to that of the record, so that " The Law was 

 not given by Moses " (John i, 17), no matter who says 

 it. There may have been a " Mosaic nucleus " in it or 

 " Mosaicity," but that is all. 



(h) Impossible "^that the alleged lapses of the people from 

 the so-called Mosaic law recorded in the history and 

 denounced by the prophets should ever have occurred. 

 The record must therefore be regarded as anachronistic ; 

 interpolated, or later ideals were projected back into 

 earlier times, while a higher religious faith was being 

 evolved. 



(c) Impossible that such conceptions of the Deity and 



