Do we, then, mean to assert, it may be asked, that the earlier books of the Jews are a mere tissue of fable and falsehood? Certainly not. No race has given to the world such insight into primitive history, or inspired it with so lofty a religious spirit. Compare it with the Vedas; the early traditions of a race akin to ourselves are worthless by the side of the records. of this Semitic people, whose history is the only history, and their poetry the only poetry, that millions of Christians have ever read or heard. Four thousand years ago, one family, the sons of Abraham, who traced their origin to the plains of the Euphrates, separated themselves from the Canaanites, perhaps their kinsmen, and carved out a history for themselves. All we know of their religious institutions at that carly period is, that they, with some few others, of whom but a trace is left, served the most high God. The necessities and chances of an Arab life made them dwellers for a time in Egypt, the land of civilisation and culture. Of their hegira from that house of bondage, the genius of their leader, the rapid organisation which he planted among their still half-savage tribes, the wild life which they led for years in the country south and cast of Jordan, the long struggle by which they won their land,-tradition only, which yet left the name of Moses to lie dormant among them for centuries, and a few fragmentary documents, preserved the marvellous record. But it was handed down among them with a fidelity which lasted through centuries of trouble and anarchy, that the God whom they served had led his people like sheep, and done wonders in the field of Zoan. It is this belief, this determinate monotheism, the sacred heirloom of the tribe, which gives to the political history of Israel its wonderful charm and interest. For a change came quickly over the temper of the nation. In what way the kingly spirit and the centralising tendencies of the priesthood struggled against the old simplicity of worship and government, we have but here and there a trace. In the conflicts of Samuel and Saul, maintained in spirit through generations of kings and prophets, we have these two elements at work-the element of political order and religious ordinance, and the element of patriarchal loyalty to the theocracy. David, the most wonderful character of Jewish history, after long warfare, and not without the aid of foreign body-guards, usurped and held the kingdom, and to some extent reconciled the two. But succeeding ages show the same struggle again. Ceremony and system-the Scylla of a nation which is in peril of losing the early vividness of its faith-battled with fanaticism, its Charybdis. Priests against prophets,—we know which side our European sympathies will take. Not that the priestly spirit

had not its good side; it was for political progress, for order, for literature. The devotional spirit, which it combined with its own ritualism and engrafted on the fervour of its opponents, shows itself in the loftiness of Jeremiah, and the impassioned oratory of Deuteronomy. But the prophets were the salt of the Hebrew nation. When liberal alliances would have endangered the faith of the nation, these aristocrats of religious purity denounced them in words of fire. When a corrupt priestcraft held up its sacrifices and cleansings for a people to fall down and worship, it was they who tore the veil from its hypocrisies, and claimed the sacrifice of the heart. And in the end, when the miserable and defeated nation saw no hope or refuge left for their ambition, and were ready to bow down to the idols which it had been their ancestral mission to denounce, it was they who held up Messianism before their weary eyes, that never-failing solace of the oppressed, and even dared to proclaim, in lieu of their earthly sovereignty, a spiritual supremacy of the world, and a kingdom that should never pass away. So runs the history of the race who seem, more than all others in the world, to have lived indeed in earnest. They are our religious forefathers; their old records have a meaning for us, and the very poetry which colours them is almost sacred to our eyes. To condemn them to oblivion would be to sacrifice much more than the mere tale of the journeys and battles of a tribe. They are the treasures of a nation of whose mission in the world we ourselves have reaped the fruit. If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning!

And yet Christianity, civilisation, labour, have educated us to see the defects of what we so highly prize. We miss, as it is natural we should, severity of historic truth in a nation in whom the critical faculty absolutely had no existence; and we detect unworthy ideas of the Deity and his government in the writings of men whom it needed a higher faith to purify and exalt. The result is, that of the exact nature of the events recorded, the historic reality of many details, the extent to which fact has become mixed with legend, we must patiently remain in ignorance. A "mythic" theory has tried to sift this, as other narratives, and failed; pure rationalism has tried, and with no better success. No one who has studied Exodus with care will deny that much of it is true. A conscientious inquiry makes it evident that part of it is not. Where the line is to be drawn, how far we may implicitly trust the record, no labour can with certainty determine. Here, as elsewhere, the truest philosophy will be the first to confess its own impotence.

There is one school of writers from whose enervating in

fluence English theology may specially pray to be delivered.
Open intolerance, stubborn prejudice, are obstacles which may
be attacked with simple arguments, and from a sure footing.
The most useful auxiliary to the cause of reactionary interpreta-
tion is that tone of mingled patronage and contempt which im-
plies an involuntary respect for the theories to which outward
circumstances alone necessitate an apparent opposition. There
are some writers whose views are just liberal enough to add
additional zest to their hatred of intellectual thoroughness. So
far as they know the truth, the truth has made them slaves.
It is a poor compromise between conscience on the one hand
and literary obligations on the other, to imply an obscure assent
to an opinion, and make up for it by abusing its advocate.
Writers in such a position are forced into a dogmatism which
betrays itself by its very acrimony. To urge that Dr. Colenso's
book is worthless because some texts are quoted inaccurately,
shows feebleness of judgment. To infer that because he states
questions in detail, his arguments must therefore be superficial,
indicates want of logical power. To blame the bishop for pub-
licly supporting a view, and at the same time to hint its truth-
fulness, is an inconsistency which argues either dulness or hypo-
crisy, or both. Such writers may be simply told, that the con-
tempt which they profess recoils on them with augmented force
from the candid students of theology. Even their half-hearted
and disguised support brings little credit to the cause of honesty
and courage. Not with such weapons as these, nor with such
champions to lead the fight, is the battle of progress and of reli-
gious liberty to be fought.

The mass of Englishmen would be surprised if they knew
how tumultuously the spirit of rebellion against religious dogma-
tism, and specially the dogma of biblical infallibility, is seething
in the breasts of men who yet shrink from notoriety and the
odium which it brings. As a body, the educated world has dis-
carded these notions already. Among the younger generation
of students the Bible is freely regarded as open to unfettered
criticism. It is only in public and in print that they fear to be
candid; among one another they take the question for granted.
Religious liberty is the watchword of the tacit understanding
which prevails in literary society on the subject. For severe
criticism all men have not the leisure or the inclination; but
upon the right to criticise, and the general result of this parti-
cular discussion, the writers and thinkers of the nation are in an
accordance of which the dogmatists little dream. It is not a
healthy state of things. It is a bad thing that the students
should be so far ahead of the actors in the world; and it presses

7

with a terrible weight upon those who are newly setting out on the path of study. The sense of encountering at every onward step the mandate of opinion and authority, the consciousness that the road to biblical investigation is paved with anathemas, bears more heavily on the candid inquirer than we care to picture. For that terror, that agony, which rolls with overwhelming pain upon so many minds when they first are forced to examine the truth of what they have been taught, the fatal prejudices of past generations are responsible. Perhaps there is no suffering in the world more keen than that of religious doubt. May Heaven forgive those who, by overloading belief and stifling inquiry, make its pangs more severe! "A shell shot into the fortress of the soul! Cast it out!" cries episcopal placidity. "Doubt manfully on, till labour brings conviction!" we reply. He who despiseth not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of such as be sorrowful, will care as much for the distresses of honest scepticism as for the panics of startled orthodoxy.

"These difficulties are left as a trial of our faith." From our childhood up we have ever regarded that as a cruel and wicked fallacy. Doubts are to be solved either by intellectual or by moral means. If by intellectual reasoning, the issue cannot depend upon religious faith; if by moral determination, we reject with all the emphasis of which we are capable the doctrine, that there is any other virtue which can enter into the examination of a controversial problem than honesty, energy, and perseverance. Yes; perhaps they are given to us as a trial of faith, to see if we have strength to work them out. That courage and trust can be but faint which shrinks from inquiry from dread of its uncertain issue. Let us repay God's gift of intellect by honest and trustful use of it. Fear indeed hath torment; but perfect love casteth out fear.

There are some who look into these questions, some who read this treatise of the bishop, who will feel, as they concede a reluctant assent to its arguments, that the prop of life has suddenly been taken from them. They will think, sadly enough, that if the Book on which they have learnt to depend for strength and solace is now withdrawn from their adoration, there is nothing left to fill its place. For years perhaps they have hung on its pages with rapture; they have yielded implicit obedience to its laws; they have fled to its promises for comfort; they have trusted to its sentences for wisdom. Now it seems as if a heartless criticism were stepping in between them and their God, and robbing them of all that is precious in the world. As the awful divinity of its pages seems to fade away, they fancy that

the air they breathe seems colder, and the scenes they gaze upon less bright. The newer interpretations may be true, the old theories may turn out mistaken; but it is all that they have had to bear them through the manifold trials of life. Like Sir Bedivere, they seem to step onward into a world that knows

them not.

"And I, the last, go forth companionless,

And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

So be it. God fulfils himself in many ways. To such as these
a superhuman record may have been the fit instrument to lead
them through the perilous journey of the world; none the less
must those who live with the labours of the past and their own
consciences to guide them tread boldly wherever their judgment
leads. The camps are not hostile; the paths are not divergent.
Or, if human passions and the ignorance that is in us bring
trouble and enmity for a time between those who profess each
to fight for truth, there is yet a unity that lies deeper than
their differences; there is a harmony which in the sight of Hea-
ven their discords cannot avail to drown; there is a sympathy
which, beyond the feuds of criticism and the jarring subtleties
of debate, binds in one those who labour for the same high call-
ing, and name the same holy name.

ART. II.-ORLEY FARM.

Orley Furm. By Anthony Trollope. Chapman and Hall. 1862.
M. FORGUES has recently taken occasion, in the pages of the
Revue des Deux Mondes, to express, under the unflattering title
of "Dégénérescence du Roman," his views as to the present state
of English fiction, and the future prospects of English moral-
ity. As he grounds his opinion in the one case on a survey
of about a dozen of the most worthless stories of the day, and
in the other on the revelations of Sir Cresswell Cresswell's
court, it is natural enough that the account which he gives of
us should be of a somewhat gloomy and humiliating character.
With perfect good humour, and with a polite vindictiveness, the
fruit evidently of prolonged provocation, he turns the laugh of
his audience against the affected severity of our social code, the
delicacy of our taste, and the boasted prudery of our literature.
British mothers, he says, look upon a French novel as "the