She has done more; she has done here a great deal of real philanthropic and Christian work. The public policy of few Christian nations can compare, in beneficence, with hers here in the ends of the world. She has found here a magnificent field of action, full of sublime incentives; such a field as no other nation ever possessed. The local press which she has inaugu rated; the presence of numerous Christian missionaries; the vigilant criticism of the home government; and, above all, the public Christian opinion of the home country, have doubtless influenced greatly her Indian administration. All impartial men may heartily acknowledge her beneficence in these circumstances. Enlightened natives do not hesitate to acknowledge it. We have already cited the opinions of some of these. One of them, Ranade, has publicly declared that

The administration of this country by a handful of men, one for every hundred thousand of population, is a wonderful feat; but even this may find its parallel in the world's history. There is, however, no parallel in history where the representatives of the ruling classes have thought it their duty to strive for the moral and social regeneration of the many millions intrusted to their care.

The present dewan (prime minister) of Travancore has published his opinion of the British rule:

We live under the mildest, the most enlightened, and the most powerful of modern governments; we enjoy in a high degree the rights of personal security and personal liberty, and the right of private property; the dwelling of the humblest and meanest subject may be said to be now as much his castle as that of the proud Englishman is his, in his native land; no man is any longer, by reason of his wealth or of his rank, so high as to be above the reach of the law, and none, on the other hand, is so poor and insignificant as to be beyond its protection. In less than a short century anarchy and confusion have been replaced by order and good government, as if by the wand of a magician, and the country has started on a career of intellectual, moral, and material advancement of which nobody can foresee the end. Whatever may be the shortcomings of government (and perfection is not vouchsafed to human institutions and human efforts), in the unselfish and sincere desire which animates them to promote the welfare of the millions committed to their care, in the high view they take of their obligations and responsibilities as rulers, in the desire they show at all times to study the feelings and sentiments of the people and carry them along with them in all important measures, and in the spirit of benevolence which underlies all their actions, the British Indian government stand without an equal.

Another influential native (Sindia) says:

Your prestige fills men's minds to an extent which to men who› know how things were carried on scarce fifty years ago seems. beyond belief. Within that period, when Mahrattas went from time to time from Gwalior to the Deccan, small bodies were not safe. The departure was an epoch in the year. Their friends. parted from them knowing that they had to set out on a journeyof danger-perils through Thugs, robbers, spoliation, and black-mail levied on them by the States through which they must pass; these things men not old still speak of. Now all pass to and fro, without danger or hinderance-the poorest traveler feels as safe as the richest--for you make as much effort to protect the poor as the rich. I never put myself on the mail-cart, unattended and perhaps unknown, without appreciating the strength of your rule. It is a substance-I leave Gwalior without apprehension, and my absence occasions no distrust.

Such testimonies, uttered to their countrymen by educated! and distinguished natives, are worth citing. They could not. be uttered before a generally abused and suffering people. They would recoil and be ridiculous, were they not. demonstrably attested by manifest facts. We have given, thus far, only a few of these facts, but they suffice to show that with all the faults of the Indian government Christian England is doing a good, a great, a sublime work in this land; a work which pledges a new destiny not only to India but to the whole Oriental world. The "Light of Asia" is the light of India; she has sent forth Buddhism over the East and made it the most extensive religion numerically on the earth; but her modern, her true light is this light of Christian civilization. It has dawned at last upon all her plains and hills; it still gleams dimly amidst the general darkness, but we have good reason to believe that it has risen like the sun, inextinguishable, and to shine brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. We often speak of the future as belonging to America; it belongs also to Asia, as Japan and India manifestly show. John Bright prophetically but soberly asks, "If the English language is being spoken so widely over India, if the English literature is being read and studied, if the science of this country and of western nations becomes the science of the people of India, what must be the result?... Caste and idolatry cannot stand against the literature which is now being freely read and studied by multitudes of the most intelligent people of India.” 32-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. III.

ART. II.-HIGHER CRITICISM.

THE CANONICAL PROPHETS AND THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL.

THE term "higher criticism" has become very familiar to all students of the Bible. Its prominence before the public in a great variety of ways-in books and periodical literature, in lectures and even sermons-has been quite remarkable. It has not lacked defenders, advocates, and expositors among the most brilliant scholars of the day. To mention of the most radical only the names of Kuenen, Wellhausen, and Stade, and of the more conservative Delitzsch, Driver, and Briggs, is to affirm that it has no mean supporters. To be sure, the terin is not the most pleasant to the ears of those who cling to the Bible as it is, and cherish it as the word of God and as an authentic representation of events as they occurred in the early ages of the Hebrew people. If, however, it represents a criticism which is far too radical for even a liberal conservatism, and has taken positions whose boldness and apparent peril alike startle the average man, it is only what might be expected of it in the excessive enthusiasm and energy of its youthful life. True or false in its opinions, it is yet fruitful of good in the remarkable interest which it has awakened in the critical study of the Old Testament, and in the hope which it holds out that the necessary result of the most minute and fearless examination of the Scriptures will surely lead to a more correct understanding of them.

Higher criticism differs from lower criticism, which is textual criticism, or an examination and correction of the text of the Scriptures. The former has to do with the matter of the Bible, and seeks to settle on a scientific basis all questions as to the genuineness, authenticity, credibility, literary merits, and order of the several books and parts of books. It touches lower criticism in the one direction, and does not hesitate to question its decisions; and in the other direction it looks forward to biblical theology, and dares to say what it ought to be. It avails itself of all the recent discoveries in archæology, philology, history, geography, and ethnology, which have become very abundant, and are constantly growing more so through the increased energy with which scholars are prosecuting their

investigations. With the most painstaking and minute analysis it compares Scripture with Scripture in most searching internal study of the Bible. Discarding mere tradition, however hoary its antiquity, it penetrates the obscurity of the earliest ages of Old Testament history, if possible to bring order out of confusion, and to put the sacred record on a rational and scientific basis. These are the professed aims of higher criticism in its relation to the Old Testament. Whatever may be the results, the aims are worthy of all praise. If any danger is to be apprehended from such a free and thorough examination of the venerable pages of the Bible, it must lie in the false principles involved. The Christian Church has nothing to fear from correct methods and just principles, however severely they may be applied. The results must, in the end, be altogether in the interest of truth.

The positions, however, which the most radical of the advocates of higher criticism have taken are somewhat startling, and quite remove from the Bible the old familiar story of the history of Israel as it has been generally apprehended. We have no longer to do with familiar scenes. At least, if the scenes are familiar, their relations and significance are so changed that they seem strange and unreal. In the matter of the composition of the different books of the Pentateuch, for instance, there has manifestly been a most radical revolution. All that can be relied upon as belonging to the times of Moses is the Book of the Covenant, which is admitted to have contained Exod. xx-xxiii. Deuteronomy is claimed to have come to light no earlier than the times of Manasseh, and probably not until the reign of Josiah, about the middle of the seventh century. The priestly code, or Leviticus, also is assigned to the times of the exile or later. The narrative parts of the Pentateuch, which existed as traditions during the earliest ages of the history of Israel, received shape, we are thus told, about 800 B. C. Even among scholars who accept in the main the results of higher criticism these dates are in some dispute, but they represent the foremost of the above stated views. The Pentateuch, substantially as we now have it, had taken shape and was read to the people by Ezra, 444 B. C.* It is easy to see that such a reconstruction of the order of the development of the legis * Wellhausen, History of Israel, p. 497.

lation of Israel must make great changes in the facts connected with the history and with their relations and significance.

The accredited results of higher criticism, however, are not more radical and important to the reconstruction of the Pentateuch, and in the view which is given of the rise, progress, and order of the development of the legislation of Israel, than in the changes which it necessitates in the apprehension of the nature of the religion itself. It has been commonly believed, that while the religious truths of the Old Testament gained enlargement and clearness in the unfolding of the national life, its fundamental truths were revealed at or previous to the Mosaic period. Moses was chief in revealing and setting in order those truths of God which should be the guide of the nation through all its history. Israel subsequently neglected, and to a degree lost, those truths. All this higher criticism denies. According to this, the work of Moses was not very great. According to this conception,

Moses was not regarded as the promulgator, once for all, of a national constitution, but rather as the first to call into activity the national sense for law and justice, and to begin the series of oral decisions which were continued after him by the priests.*

The Law, or Torah, was not a completed code, but "consisted entirely of the oral decisions and instructions of the priests," given from time to time. The principal truth connected with Jehovah was this: that "Jehovah is the God of Israel." Only that moral character which the name received from the Book of the Covenant and the decisions of the priests relieved the utter barrenness of such a fundamental truth, except, perhaps, the distinctive thought connected with all tribal deities-that of power. Such a meager and altogether void conception of Jehovah, as we might well believe, gave free license to the adoption of all the peculiarities of the religious worship of the neighboring nations. Images, altars on high places, human sacrifices, the abominable rites and customs of Baal, Asherah, Astarte, and even the name of Baal as a synonym for Jehovah, were received into the popular relig ion of the people in both kingdoms, and became the only religion of Israel. This was the syncretism into which the simple

* Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition, p. 399.