And the Philistines out of Caphtor, and Aram out of Kir? 8. Lo, the Lord Jahveh's eyes are against the sinful kingdom, And I destroy it from the face of the earth.

But yet not utterly will I destroy the house of Jacob,
Jahveh saith,

9. For, behold, I will give my command,

And shake in all the nations Israel's house,

Like what is shaken in the sieve,

And there shall not a grain fall to the earth.

10. All sinners of my people by the sword shall die,
Who say, "The evil shall not reach and fall around us.

9. Oracle of Promise.

11. In that day I will raise the fallen booth of David,
Wall up their breaches, and his ruins raise,
And I will build her as the days of old,
12. That they the remnant of Edom may possess,
And all the nations on whom my name is called,
Saith Jahveh, who doeth this.

13. Behold, the days are coming, Jahveh saith,
When he that plows will touch upon the reaper,
And he that treads grapes him that sows the seed;
Then will the mountains cause new wine to drop,
And all the hills dissolve themselves.
14. And I will turn the captivity of my people,
And they shall build the wasted cities, and inhabit;
They shall plant vineyards and shall drink their wine;
They shall make gardens and shall eat their fruit;
15. And I will plant them upon their own land,

And no more shall they be torn from their land,
Which I gave to them, saith Jahveh thy God.

Philistines out of Caphtor-See Gen. x. 14; 1 Chron. i, 12. Kir-Whither Aram was destined to go again into exile, chap. i, 5.

But not

8. Sinful kingdom-The ten tribes, the doomed kingdom of Samaria. utterly-Though this kingdom be utterly annihilated, the house of Jacob was not destined thus to perish, but only the sinners of my people," verse 10.

9. Not a grain-Only the chaff shall perish. Comp. Psa. i, 4; Matt. iii, 12. 11. Booth of David-So sadly broken by the revolt of the ten tribes, as described in 1 Kings xii, 16. The house of David is here conceived as a fallen booth or hut: how fallen from its glory in "the days of old!" Their... his . . . her-The first suffix refers to the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah as composed of fragments of the monarchy under David and Solomon; the second refers to David; and the third, to the united kingdom as it was and is aain to be.

Edom is spe

12. Possess Edom-Allusion to the prophecy of Num. xxiv, 18. cially mentioned because of his persistent enmity toward Israel. Comp. chap. i, 11. All the nations-A prophetic glimpse of the Messianic age and the gathering in of the Gentiles. Compare the New Testament application of this in Acts xv, 14-17. 13. He that plows . . . reaper-Comp. Lev. xxvi, 5. Mountains... drop-Comp. Joel iv, (iii,) 18.

Milton S. Terry

EDITORIAL NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.

OPINION.

GERMANY has some scruples about using the word" orthodox" as expres sive of its Christian faith. The word is applied to so many varying and uncertain conditions of thought that it fails to convey the single or generally accepted idea of the Christian believer touching the supernatural origin of the system of divine revelation. The conservative prefers, therefore, the words "evangelical," "liberal," or phrases that will not entangle him in the snare of contradictory notions. Thus the high-toned word, which in America represents the historic faith of the Church, has fallen to the level of that critical terminology that should be used only in the critical, and never in the popular, sense. What is orthodox in America is evangelical or liberal in Germany. Of evangelical religion in the empire, it is strengthening to be assured that it is on the eve of a veritable achievement in the realm of criticism; and there are grounds, also, for the belief that the results of its triumph will be permanent, undisturbed by the politic schedule of Roman Catholicism, or the ever-menacing attitude of aggressive rationalism. It is not to the credit of the evangelical party that the prophetic triumph has been so long delayed or rendered uncertain until the recent awakening of the orthodox sentiment in the universities. In two respects Orthodoxy has been culpable, and is to-day suffering the penalties of its lassitude and over-confidence. 1. It is held, with more or less evidence, to support the accusation that historic orthodoxy is responsible to some extent for some of the errors and heterodoxies that have afflicted and divided the Church from the days of Pelagius. Nearly every error is rep resented as a reaction from an over-rigid, iron-clad orthodoxism. The theologian has provoked the heterodoxy he would demolish. Even now it is said that negative criticism is the result of an over-positive faith. The theory of verbal inspiration provoked a denial of all inspiration, as the dogma of the Trinity provoked the development of Unitarianism. This is the accusation. 2. It is certainly true that many times Orthodoxy has been lethargic when, by alertness and a methodical assault, error could have been overcome before it intrenched itself in the thought and faith of the people. In a crisis involving its very life it has been singularly slow and deficient, permitting heterodoxy to establish itself, and for the time check the advance of evangelical truth. But it must be added, that, inert from over-confidence, and too often relying upon its alleged fellowship with divine forces, it has always awakened to its peril in time to save itself from extinction or material harm. In Germany the weakness of the evangelical forces has been this spirit of self-confidence and lethargy in the midst of peril. It is now in the act of opening its eyes, unsheathing the sword, and entering the arena for a final rescue of the truth that lay

wounded, if not bleeding, in the center of conflict. The orthodoxy of the universities is at last proclaiming itself, and causing terror among those who, like Nebuchadnezzar, were carrying away the vessels of gold from the temple of the Lord. Professor Weiss, of Berlin, insists that the orthodox party must unite, himself being willing to be leader, and drive the higher critics from the field. Professor Strack, of Berlin, strikes the Wellhausen theory hard blows and is anxious to expel it from Germany. Professor Luthardt, at Leipsic; Professor Köstlin, at Halle; professors at Griefswold, Rostock, Tübingen, Erlangen, and Bonn, are saying to higher criticism, as Jehovah said to the proud waves of the sea, "Hitherto thou shalt come and no farther." As the problems of the "higher criticism" will be determined in the universities of Germany, it is gratifying to know that the evangelical party, though not united as to methods, are agreed to define the limits of negative criticism, and to see that the biblical system of religion is unharmed by the destructionists, who rejoice at every advance they have been able to make. Germany will quench its own rationalism. Destructive criticism will have its Waterloo somewhere in the empire. The fact, however, of the tardiness of the orthodox party, with the dangers and mischiefs that have followed, should teach the orthodox classes in America a very profitable lesson. If Professor Weiss is correct in saying that that party in Germany could have prevented the mischief done by the higher critics, it is certainly true that such a party here, strong, scholarly, resolute, can checkmate every movement of destructionism, and save Christianity from the necessity of slaying the already slain errors of a majority of the critics. Let the Orthodoxist assert and vindicate the faith, and error will have small chance of success.

It is a common saying that the God of nature is the God of the Bible, and that the teachings of the one are in no wise contradictory of the teachings of the other. On this platform of truth the Christian can afford to stand; but the atheist, the infidel, and the agnostic have temporarily made a point against the biblical doctrine of providence in human life by declaring that the system of nature is fatalistic, unchangeable, without respect to persons in its administration, and cold and unmoved at calamity and death. Infidel or agnostic science presumes to find in nature as heartless a predestination as Calvin unearthed in the realm of theology. If within the system of nature there is no room for miracle, providence, mercy, or adaptation to human exigencies as they arise, then we must expel these things from the Bible, or withdraw the claim that the God of the one is the God of the other. To the assumption, however, that nature is fatalistic we oppose a square negative, and insist that, interpreted from its own history as well as in the light of the divine purposes as made known in the Bible, it is in perfect harmony with the divine government, and furnishes the most powerful illustrations of the divine benignity. With its observable tendency to order, nature is the theater of unfixed fact. In the morning of creation the earth was chaotic; but under the plastic touch of the Former it began to assume mathematical precision.

In its progress from chaos to order and from deformity to beauty it was changeable, and was under the force of a purpose that compelled its own laws or tendencies to contribute to an end which, left to itself, it could not actualize or establish. From the Silurian through the mesozoic, carboniferous, cretaceous, and tertiary periods, it was unfixed, unfatalistic; new laws and new ends constantly appearing and being fulfilled. The same unfatalistic tendency is now manifest, for under the manipulation of human agency it is changing in appearance, and man is acquiring dominion over it according to the original commandment given at the close of the creative week. He is seldom the victim of lightning, or the seas, or the wind, or rock, or mountain, but is master of the situation, looking upon nature as both friend and servant. If, then, nature has ever been obedient to a divine purpose, which contemplates its regulation and development according to an ideal of order, beauty, and perfection; and if it also has been and is subservient to the directing power of man, by which he causes it to minister to his happiness, in what sense does it appear cold, fatalistic, and contrary to the doctrine of providence? It is, however, affirmed that the laws of nature were established in the beginning, and that none of these permitted such variations in the development of history as would be compatible with the theory of providential changes and interventions. We do not know when the laws, socalled, were established; and it is quite certain that science has not yet discovered the entire list of natural laws, as it has not yet catalogued all the phenomena of nature. It may happen that, when Nature shall have been fully explored, and the record of its phenomena and their laws shall have been completed, some so-called laws that have contradicted the notion of Providence will have disappeared, and laws entirely subservient to the divine rulership will have been enthroned. We are not yet sure of the so-called laws of nature. Some of them science may have read into Nature; they may reflect the subjective states of men and have no objective existence. Is it not, therefore, a little early to employ the little knowledge that men have against the possibilities and probabilities of those divine interferences that have marked the successive ages of worldbuilding, and also the more remarkable epochs of human history? If we embrace the larger view of Nature's history, and interpret it in its present condition as the product of divine and human forces, ever serving a divine idea and never venturing an idea of its own, we shall relieve it of all alleged coldness, and compel the fatalist to seek other worlds for instances of a doctrine that is as comfortless as an iceberg, as unphilosophical as the grossest stoicism, and as irreligious as satanic ingenuity and malice could suggest or approve.

The trend of critical thought in England is toward a sturdy, vigorous orthodoxy. By this we do not mean an orthodoxy respecting doctrine, but an orthodoxy respecting the historic origin and authorship, or the literary character, of the books of the Bible. Unlike the dilatory orthodox party in Germany, the Christian scholars of England have leaped into

the conflict even before the higher critics were ready for them, and have demolished some of their arguments by anticipation, and overcome others by the calm processes of logic and history. Exhibiting the same boldness, the same measure of egotism, and the same degree of hostility to the orthodox faith as prevails in Germany, the critics of England hoped to win without much of a struggle; but we are greatly mistaken if they make any advance in the future. Oxford University will take care of the evangelical faith in England. It is true the university is the center of rationalistic sentiment, the principal critics of the German type occupying some of its chairs; but it is all the more fortunate that the battle can be fought there and the victory secured. Dr. Cheyne cannot lead England into acceptance of his theory of the origin of Deuteronomy; Dr. Driver has not turned the faith of the English people toward a dismembered Isaiah; Professor Neubauer has only gathered ridicule unto himself by an attempted employment of a critical weapon against the Christian faith; and Dr. Gore, one of the brilliant writers of Lux Mundi, has been obliged to write an explanatory essay of his original paper, intimating that he was misunderstood, and that he did not intend to assert any thing contrary to established faith. We may now apprise our readers of two scholars at Oxford who are doing more to damage higher criticism than has been done even in Germany by the conservative critics. Professor Sayce, with the cuneiform inscriptions recently discovered at Tell el-Amarna, is driving the boastful critics into a dungeon by showing that writing was known in pre-Mosaic times, and that the Pentateuch, so far as allusions are made to it, record exact history and is a Mosaic document. Professor Margoliouth has already overthrown the theory of the late origin of the book of Daniel, and is preparing to vindicate the single authorship of Isaiah by a philological argument that is unanswerable. So complete is his argument in vindication of Daniel that Cheyne and Driver practically surrender the point. With Professor Sayce on our right hand and Professor Margoliouth on our left, we could walk through all the camps of the German critics and compel a retreat without discharging a single gun into their midst. Oxford will answer Germany, and save England from a transitional epoch in criticism. Others also are at work in triumphant vindication of the historic faith: Principal Cave, who renounces negative criticism; Canon Ince, who insists on an orthodox theology; the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon, who, punctures negativism at every opportunity; Mr. Gladstone, who has cast a bomb into the ranks of the Wellhausen school; Professor Freeman, who holds to Christianity on historical grounds, and a host of scholars who are united in defense of the truth, and are determined to preserve the Bible as it is for the English people. The strength of the defensive movement among conservative critics is its purely progressive character. Neither tradition, nor the usual historical arguments, are invoked, but rather a class of arguments based on the latest results in philology, archæology, history, and exegesis. The negative critic is resisted by the same logic;. and by the same methods, as he employs against the position of orthodox believers. Of this he cannot complain, and the result is his extinction.. 56-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VI.