PAGE XI. Kalisch's first objection XIV. Kalisch's fourth objection XV. Kalisch's fifth objection XVI. Kalisch's sixth and seventh objections THE PENTATEUCH. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. WHO wrote the PENTATEUCH? Is the story true? Is the spirit it breathes worthy of the Deity? These are questions which men are often putting to themselves now-adays, and answering as best their learning or their bias guides them. Anciently faith in the real inspiration of Scripture did away with the necessity for such enquiries. For where it was believed that God himself had dictated the work, the hand that wrote it was almost lost sight of; and it was superfluous to ask if truth and befitting dignity were there. If ever the subject was mooted at all, it was confined to the precincts of the theological class-room; and even there it was brought in more with a view to mould into organic unity the entire body of systematic teaching, than to clear away doubts which had no actual existence. Faith then always held the lamp, whether reason explored the mine or genius worked the vein. Time, however, brought about a change. For the Reformation, by divorcing Theology from the Church, inverted the relative positions of Faith and Reason. In the Church it was a living authority that taught in virtue of a divine commission; and reason most reasonably B yielded. But in the new religion authority was superseded, and individual reason was made the judge of faith. True, Scripture was set up as the rule of both. But as the only witness that could give testimony had been put out of court, it lay with reason alone, first, to find out whether God had really spoken at all in Scripture; then, to settle the books and the amount of inspiration; and, lastly, to decide without appeal on the precise meaning of it all. Thus reason necessarily became the supreme arbiter of a faith which at any moment could shift its ground as rationally as it took it up at the beginning. The Reformers did not heed-perhaps they did not see -all that was logically included in the principle of their secession. By a lucky inconsistency, which ensured for a time a genuine respect for God's Word, they took for granted in their rule that very divine authority which they had to prove, and did not perceive the glaring petitio principii involved in citing Scripture to vouch for its own veracity, infallibility, and inspiration. But their disciples in Germany have long since taken up the work at the point where they stopped short, and pushing their principles to their legitimate issue, have at last reduced the Bible to the level of an ordinary book, which may be as freely found fault with as Josephus, or Philo, or Sanchuniathon. In this country-less given to learned speculation, and more tenacious of old traditions-that last phase of the Reformation has naturally been slower to develope itself. But it seems to have come at last; and now we have to lament that the same ideas are everywhere filtering rapidly through the different layers of society, and widely diffusing themselves through the channels of our every-day literature. Germany meanwhile looks on applaudingly, and half in sport and half in earnest, watches to hear us |