dependent mind. They would never have been possible at all if men had judged of Scripture by its own claims and by its actual phenomena, instead of seeing it magnified and refracted through the dense fogs of ignorant tradition. To accept in these days the views of the Rabbis, the Fathers, the medieval commentators, the Schoolmen, or the postReformation bibliolaters, without the largest modification, involves a treason against light and knowledge. Criticism and comparative religion are already sciences, and no competent interpreter can disregard their conclusions. What should we think of an historian of Rome who should attempt to relate the story of the kings with no reference to the researches of Niebuhr, Mommsen, and their successors?

In this chapter I propose to consider some of the narratives-both supernatural and moral-which constitute serious difficulties to many inquirers, and are made the topic for ridicule by sceptical critics. It will be my object to illustrate how little ground there is for such assaults, and how completely such difficulties vanish when the narratives are regarded in the light thrown upon them by unbiassed investigation.

It would not be possible, nor does it fall within my present scope, to deal with all the objections which have been urged against the propriety or truth of some of the Bible narratives. If I touch on one or two it may suffice to show how much less difficult they become when they are regarded from the right point of view.

I

The Bible is assailed on the ground that it contains coarse and unedifying stories.

Let us, then, take one or two instances and examine them.

THE STORY OF LOT

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1. The story of Lot, related in Gen. xix. 30-38, has always been a subject of difficulty. It greatly exercised the ingenuity of some of the Fathers to show any reason why such a tale should find a place on the page of sacred literature. Taken as a whole, the books of Scripture are incomparably more pure and free from stain than any of the other bibles of humanity. To what good end, then, was such a story admitted?1

It is often overlooked that ethnographical and other details, which have lost their interest for us, may yet have had an intense interest for the age and nation to which they were addressed. The fortunes of Israel were closely and fatally linked with those of the cognate tribes of Moab and Ammon. Any story of their origin would have had for the Hebrews no ordinary significance.

Now, what was the exact origin and intention of this story, it is impossible for us to affirm. We have no data to go upon. Nor does it much concern us in any way to decide whether it was at all meant for a narrative of fact, or whether it represents in a concrete form some ethnographic affinity, perhaps disguised and distorted by the bitterness of national hatred. But when the story is denounced as a blot on the sacred page, we have to remember two things:

i. The rigid external modesty and propriety of modern and English literature is disgusted and offended by statements which gave no such shock to ancient and Eastern readers. What may be said, and what may not be said, with plainness, depends greatly upon national custom; and what we call 'coarseness' is a thing so far relative that its offensive character is determined to a great extent by

1 Celsus attacked it, and Origen defends it by giving it an allegorical sense.

the standard of the times. There are other passages of Scripture, happily disguised by the euphemism of translations, which, if their exact meaning were understood, could not be read without a blush. In old days, they would have raised no blush upon the purest cheek, because no habit of reticence upon such subjects had been fixed by the demands of national propriety. The keenness of modern English sensibility on such subjects has done much to preserve our literature from blemish; but it is of recent growth. Ladies in the days of the Tudors commonly used language which would seem grossly immodest now. The plain-spokenness of Orientals involved no necessary offence against abstract morality.

ii. Modern investigation makes it probable that this story about Lot is merely a symbolic way of illustrating certain tribal relations. It must be borne in mind that in early days, before the habits of literary expression were formed, and when the power of penning the simplest story was regarded as an astonishing accomplishment, language was of necessity pictorial. National affinities were described under physical symbols. It is at least possible that the three cases of gross immorality narrated in the Book of Genesis-namely, those of Reuben, Judah, and Lot-are thus figurative. "The Hebrews,' say learned scholars, were undoubtedly accustomed to state facts as to relationships, and fusions of clans and communities under the figures of paternity and marriage; and this plan inevitably led in certain cases to the figurative supposition of very strange connections. The form of the figure was probably not repulsive when first adopted. Marriage with a stepmother is a Semitic practice of great antiquity, and at one time was known to the Israelites.' The story of Reuben therefore may allude to some obscure and now

forgotten combination against the unity of Israel and the hegemony of Joseph. The story of Lot wears a very different complexion if we regard it as an exhibition of unknown traditions about the connection between the Israelites and the tribes of Moab and Ammon.1

2. Take, again, the pathetic story of Hosea as narrated in Hos. i. 1-3, iii. 1-3. It is not unnatural that such a story should have been subjected to hostile criticism, or that abundant casuistry should have been expended in its defence by those who understood it to mean that God commanded His Prophet to take in marriage a degraded and immoral woman. It is, to say the least, doubtful whether such is the true interpretation. Scholars who have profoundly studied Semitic methods of expression think that the opprobrious name given to Hosea's wife, Gomer-bath-Diblaim, is proleptic-i.e. that it applies to her subsequent shamelessness, not to her character when the Prophet took her to wife. It was the anguish caused by her infidelity that first woke Hosea to the sense of Israel's infidelity to Jehovah, whose relation to the Chosen People was repeatedly represented under the type of marriage. God speaks in the events of history and the experiences of human life. He spoke to Amos in the thundering march of the Assyrians, and He spoke to Hosea in the shame of his blighted home. The struggle of Hosea's affection with the burning sense of shame and grief when he found his wife unfaithful, is altogether in

1 See Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, p. 407; Encycl. Britan., art. 'Judah;' Journ. of Philol. ix. 86, 94; Old Testament in Jewish Church, p. 438. In 1 Chron. ii. 24 the true translation, according to the Septuagint, is, 'And after Hezron was dead, Caleb went into Ephratah, wife of Hezron his father, and she bare him Ashur, the father (i.e. the chief) of Tekoah.'

conceivable unless his first love had been pure, and full of trust in the purity of its object. In the midst of his great unhappiness he learned to comprehend the secret of Jehovah's heart in His dealings with faithless Israel, and recognised the misery of his married life as no meaningless calamity, but the ordinance of Jehovah, who called him to the work of a prophet. This he expresses by saying that it was in directing him to marry Gomer that Jehovah first spoke to him.' In the agony of personal experience he learnt the true spiritual meaning of the marriage tie as a doctrine of holy love. He was taught to understand that it should be separated from henceforth from the carnal alloy which disgraced the crude natureworship of idolaters, and that it was an emblem of the union between Jehovah and His people, as it signifies to us the mystical union which is betwixt Christ and His Church.

Read in this light of modern criticism, what is there in the story of Hosea but what is in the highest degree pure and noble?

II

Let us now turn to another quarter in which the Bible is assailed.

It is constantly represented to the multitude as a book which abounds in stupendous supernatural interferences for inadequate ends; as a book which makes impossible demands upon our credulity, and asks us to believe in the most fabulous portents.

I am not here about to enter upon the whole question. of miracles. I am not one of those who feel any doubt that God has, on due occasions and for adequate purposes, in the days of the Old as well as in the days of the New