hand," he says, "from thy poor brother." But beyond this point, where mere human law must stop short, he goes on to say: "And thy heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him" (Deut. xv. 10). He enjoins upon masters that they load their departing slaves with gifts and rewards: “Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock and out of thy floor and out of thy wine-press." But it is no injunction, it is a moving entreaty, when he adds: "It shall not seem hard unto thee when thou sendest him away free from thee" (Deut. xv. 10, 18). If this be invention, the inventor meant it should be received as fact, as indeed it was, and ever gratefully has been. It is that alone which has given the book all the authority and all the power for good it has ever had. But if it be invention, the effrontery and real falsensess of the invention is only equalled by its spiritual beauty and ideal truth. If it be invention, the discovery to the world of the mysterious inventor, who combined within himself qualities so exceptionally excellent with those so exceptionally otherwise, might be some compensation for the loss from sacred. history of such a character and career as that of the Moses of the Exodus.

The Book of Deuteronomy is distinctly based on the presumption that the man whom it makes its hero has an important history behind him. It everywhere implies, in fact, something answering to what we learn of Moses in the middle books of the Pentateuch. Without this previous history the representation of him is not simply a torso, it is the barest fragment of a full-sized figure. The period that the narrative covers is only the few hurried days preceding the passage of the Jordan. Moses appears upon the scene as already an old man whose work is virtually over. He wears, indeed, accustomed honors; exercises still, with undiminished zeal, a shepherd's care for his people; but we are never suffered to forget that we are listening to parting words, and looking upon one of the most solemn of farewells.

The book opens with a significant reference to the fortieth year, expecting the reader, without explanation, to under

stand what is meant by it. The entire matter, unlike that of any other book of the five, is of a purely subjective cast. The ecclesiastical and theocratical nomenclature of Leviticus and Numbers has disappeared along with the topics on which it was employed. It is the people who are addressed, and on civil and social themes; but a people called of God, and all whose institutions are to be fashioned with chief reference. to his claim. Ethical precepts are those chiefly emphasized. The Lord their God is God of gods and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible, who regardeth not persons nor taketh reward. He executeth judgment for the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, giving him food and raiment (x. 17, 18).

The ten commandments furnish the key-note and startingpoint of all the Deuteronomic laws. Their affinity is naturally with the Sinaitic code, rather than with the priestly regulations of the middle books. Of both Moses professes to have been the mediator (iv. 5, 10). He is apparently not insensible to the difficulties that such a claim involves, and is equally ready to confess his limitations, infirmities, and sins. He does not hesitate to set in the boldest relief the miraculous nature of Jehovah's dealings with his covenant people. "Did ever a people," he asks, "hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?" But he hesitates just as little, with all his brooding tenderness of feeling, to charge that favored people 'to their faces with rebellion, with weak defection, and despicable cowardice, with stiff-neckedness and hard-heartedness since he had known them (i. 26, 31, 43; vi. 16; ix. 6, 22, 24). Not for their sakes, but for the fathers' sakes were they chosen (x. 15), and in all that "great and terrible wilderness" had there been folded about them the everlasting

arms.

Would such sentiments have been calculated to recommend a book calling for the sweeping reforms of this to the men. of the later day? The sudden lapse from efforts at betterment when the outward pressure ceased shows in the midst.

of what a fearful current of opposition the revivals of Hezekiah and Josiah had been begun.

Lessons from the past alternate throughout with solemn admonitions for the future. The Bible furnishes few examples of warnings which in melting pathos or awful power equal those of this book (cf. xxviii.). It does not surprise us that the rabbins of a later day named it the "Book of Admonitions." The possibility and fear, rising in some places to prophetic conviction, that the Israel of Red Sea deliverances and of Sinai would yet one day lapse from its high privilege, and lose sight for a time of its predestined goal, dominate like a trumpet-tone beginning, middle, and end of this series of discourses. It is for this reason, among others, that the fourteen chapters of legislation, whose faithful observance was meant to prevent the day of calamity, are flanked by Ebal and Gerizim. That imposing ceremonial should be forever afterward a solemn and restraining memory (xi. 29; xxvii.).

For this reason, too, the heroic leader desires to be with his people as long as possible. How much of the Book of Deuteronomy might have been unknown to us, or have appeared in quite another form, had he been able to complete in person the conquests of which the forty years of seemingly aimless wanderings and his sin had robbed him! His wish in the matter he makes no effort to conceal. Again and again he speaks of it in words that tremble with suppressed emotion. It had been made the subject of earnest petition (vii. 23-29). "I must die," he says, "in this land. I may not go over Jordan. But ye will go over to possess that good land" (iv. 22). Moreover, there is but one sole reason given for the deprivation. The Lord was angry with him because he had failed to be as patient with them, his people, as he might have been (iv. 21). At the close of the book the subject is introduced in connection with Moses' age and infirmities: "He said unto them, I am a hundred and twenty years old this day. I can no more go out and come in. Also the Lord hath said unto me, Thou shalt not go over this

Jordan." How rare an opportunity for the writer of the book, if he had so desired, to clear his hero of the almost only stain that rested on his great career, to suggest that it was physical infirmities that unfitted him to brave the hardships of a campaign in Canaan! A few slight changes, and what a different and, as it might be thought, far more natural and worthy conclusion might we have had for this great man's life! To die as Jacob did, for example, comforted by the ministry of loving hands. His faults were venial, compared with Jacob's. From a literary point of view it was as unskilful as from the point of view of ordinary demerit unkind, to make that one peccadillo of years gone by stand out so conspicuously here at the close and climax of his life. But it is like the Bible always to show its preference for candor over simple literary effect and finish.

This is no romance. We recognize the force of resistless truth. It is charged with a spirit before which we unhesitatingly bow. Every mountain altitude has its peculiar flora and fauna. It would be in vain to seek to convince a botanist that certain plants were found flourishing on the summit of Mount Washington. Occular proof would not be needful to convince him of the contrary. The impossibility would be in the nature of things. And there are spiritual elevations to which finesse and falsity are of necessity strangers. The plane on which the whole Book of Deuteronomy moves is one of these moral uplands. It begins with the sublimities of Sinai, and ends with the inimitable solemnities of Nebo and Pisgah. It is no effort at historiography interjected with pious expressions, as some critics 1 represent the later biblical narratives to be. It is in web and woof sacred history, narrated, as it was enacted, under the eye of God.

'Wellhausen, Geschichte, i. pp 340, 309.

ARTICLE II.

SKETCHES OF PENTATEUCH CRITICISM.

BY REV. SAMUEL IVES CURTISS, D.D., PROFESSOR IN CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL

SEMINARY.

II. - CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICS.

THE first appearance of constructive criticism was in the age of Louis XIV. It cannot, however, be regarded as an outgrowth of an intellectual activity which was fostered by the grand monarch. While he sought to surround his reign with a halo of glory, there was only one theme — himself— which could secure his patronage for men of letters. Such patronage was repressive of all independent research, and the censorship of the press imposed a check on the publication of all opinions which were not approved by the literary magnates of the court.1

This criticism, however, was favored by the dominant philosophy of the period, that of Des Cartes (b. 1596; d. 1650). A fundamental principle of this philosophy —a sine qua non was doubt, the tearing down of all that was accepted and traditional that there might be a building up.2 Des Cartes had attended the best Jesuit school of that age, and had pursued his studies for eight and a half years with 1 Cf. The Knickerbocker, New York, 1862, pp. 148–157; Kitchin, A History of France, Oxford, 1877, Vol. iii. pp. 160 f.

2 Cf. Wallace in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, New York, 1878, Vol. vii. p. 122; Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neuen Philosophie, Mannheim, 1865, Vol. i. p. 207; Erdmann, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, Berlin, 1870, Vol. ii. p. 11: "Dass in der Forderung de omnibus dubitandum, von der Descartes ausdrücklich sagt, sie sey nicht im skeptischen Interesse als das Ziel, sondern als das Mittel anzusehen, um zum Zeil zu kommen, jener Protest gegen alles bisher Gültige enthalten ist .... der sich bei dem epochemachenden System finden werde, ist klar. Durch die Erfüllung jenes Postulats wird der Boden geebnet, auf dem das neue Gebäude errichtet werden soll."

3 La Flèche in Anjou, which was founded by Henry IV. as a training school for the French nobility.