182 REV. JOHN TUCKWELL, M.R.A.S., ON MODERN THEORIES 



than both." No cloubt theories of the greatest vahie may flash 

 upon a thoughtful mind with great suddenness. But the next 

 thing the scientifically trained will do is to ascertain whether 

 the facts are as the theory supposes. This, however, Eeuss does 

 not appear to have done, but instead thereof to have immediately 

 turned the Old Testament records topsy-turvy. He assumed 

 that the elaboration of a nation's laws must, of necessity, be the 

 result of long experience ; and that the higher the moral level of 

 those laws the longer the period required for the nation to rise 

 to it. But he did not take the pains to inquire whether, even 

 if the rule be admitted, exceptional conditions may not have 

 existed in Israel's case undetected by his intuition. Had he 

 done so he would no doubt have been led to very different 

 conclusions. Now since this is the " working hypothesis " of 

 the principle of historic progress, it may be well to submit it to 

 a brief examination. 



First of all. Is it true that an advanced code of laws 

 necessarily presupposes a long period of previous national 

 history working up to it ? Had Eeuss investigated this 

 question he would have found reason to doubt the universality 

 of the hypothesis. He would have found that it is never true of 

 Colonial nations. Turning his eyes westward he would have 

 seen two great nations, the Canadian and the American, with an 

 advanced code of laws of a high moral level with yet a very 

 brief national history. Or among the nations of antiquity he 

 would have found Assyria, one of Israel's contemporaries, upon a 

 level with Babylonia the mother country of both. It is quite 

 true that comparatively little was known of the history of 

 Babylonia and Assyria when Eeuss formed his hypothesis, but 

 enough was known to have kept even him from the errors into 

 which he fell, and more than enough is now known to check 

 his followers from the adoption of his fallacious intuition and 

 from persisting in his erroneous conclusions. 



Moreover, the Scripture history of Israel is perfectly con- 

 sistent with itself, and does not need reconstructing. Abraham 

 is not represented as a rude and savage sheik nurtured in the 

 wild life of the desert, the progenitor of a tribe of wild nomads 

 wandering into Egypt, captured, enslaved, breaking forth a 

 horde of semi-savages, and adopting a constitution of a highly 

 moral and religious tone. On the contrary it represents him as 

 a devout citizen of a great and ancient city, of whom the 

 Almighty said, " For I know him that he will command his 

 children and his household after liim," a man therefore who 

 could not but have carried forth with him and transmitted to 



