330 THE VEN. ARCHDEACON POTTER,, M.A., ON THE INFLUENCE 



have given fuller weight to the purging process^ in adapting what we 

 may call the "human" materials found ready to hand. It is here 

 that some of us see the " Inspiration of Selection " at work. On this 

 point the writer might do well to make the acquaintance of what 

 Dr. Wace, the Dean of Canterbury, has said in his lecture at 

 University College in 1903 ; and it is no straining of language, 

 surely, to see this in that pouring into the name of Jehovah that 

 " tlood of attributes " referred to on p. 304. 



On p. 311 Professor Driver is made to contradict Professor Sayce's 

 assumption " that the belief of the Higher Critics that the Mosaic 

 law was posterior to the prophets was based on the denial that writing 

 was used for literary purposes in the age of Moses." Dr. Wace has 

 dealt incisively with this point in the lecture already referred to. 

 We scarcely need Dr. Driver's assurance that critics have not the 

 hardihood (aftei' the discovery of the Tel-el- Amarna tablets and the 

 Hammurabi code) to "deny that Moses might have left materials 

 behind him." So that it comes to this — that Moses may after all 

 have been suhstantially the author of the Pentateuch, although the 

 literary form, in which it has come to us, may bear the " cast " of a 

 later age. This is all, I think, that serious research needs to 

 demand. But this reminds one of the stern strictures of Professor 

 Sir William Ramsay, of Aberdeen, on the methods of the Higher 

 Criticism, in his most able paper in Vol. xxxix of the Transactions of 

 the Victoria Institute. 



As regards the general question we may do well to refer to what 

 the Rev. J. Urquhart says in the concluding paragraph of his very 

 able essay, for which the " Gunning Prize " was awarded {Trans- 

 actions of the Victoria Institute, Vol. xxxviii) : — 



"It is not too much to say that within the sphere of genuine science 

 which has concerned itself with scripture statements there is to-day 

 a higher appreciation of the antiquity, veracity, and historic value 

 of the Bible than was to be found in any previous period since the 

 march of modern science began." 



The weakness of the author's position seems to display itself in 

 the two concluding paragraphs of the paper, where he (1) falls back 

 upon the unscientific process of pvphesying what we shall know 

 before we know it, apparently forgetting that " views " are only 

 working hypotheses liable to be corrected by fuller knowledge ; and 

 (2) shifts the ground of debate as to the validity of revealed religion 



