HOMILETIC REVIEW. VOL. XII. FROM JULY TO DECEMBER. 1886. EDITORS: ISAAC K. FUNK, D.D. | J. M. SHERWOOD, D.D. PUBLISHERS: FUNK & WAGNALLS, NEW YORK: 10 AND 12 DEY STREET. TORONTO, CANADA: LONDON: 44 FLEET STREET. WILLIAM BRIGGS, 78 AND 80 KING STREET, EAST. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by FUNK & WAGNALLS, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. THE HOMILETIC REVIEW. VOL. XII.-—JULY, 1886.—No. 1. REVIEW SECTION. I-"HAS MODERN CRITICISM AFFECTED UNFAVOR. BY GEO. D. ARMSTRONG, D.D., NORFOLK, Va.. NO. IV. THE "Higher Criticism," as expounded by its "more advanced" advocates, assumes, as a fundamental principle, that Christianity, in the form in which it exists to-day, is the product of a purely natural development. As Darwin, in his hypothesis of the evolution of organic nature, admits that there may have been "some one or more primordial beings," of the origin of which he does not undertake to give any account; so the advocates of the Higher Criticism seem to take for granted the existence of some germs of truth, which came, possibly, from God; but these furnished a mere starting-point for the purely natural evolution of all we now know as Christianity. Professor Crawford H. Toy, of Harvard University, in his History of the Religion of Israel, writes: "The facts that have come to our knowledge make it probable that all the ancient or national religions originated in the same way, and grew according to the same laws. The differences between them are the differences between the peoples to whom they belonged. Up to a certain point in their development they are all alike, and then they begin to show their local peculiarities. Of the earliest stage in the growth of Israel's religion, the fetishistic, we know nothing; when we find them in Canaan, they are polytheists, like their neighbors-that is, they had separated the Deity from the objects of nature, and regarded these last as symbols of the Godhead. Thus, much of their religious career belongs to the general history of ancient religions. We are more interested in the succeeding development, which may be dated from the time of Samuel. In this we may note the two following stages: 1. There was a period of conflict between polytheism and monotheism, extending from Samuel to the Exile. . . 2. There was the period of religious law-that is, the effort to order man's life in accordance with the will of God."--(History of the Religion of Israel, pp. 148, 149.) Referring to the Scriptures, particularly the Pentateuch, he writes: "The Jews regarded it as the Book, the Tora (instruction on law), the founda |