this position, or who even denies it, just as he can breathe without knowing of the existence of oxygen, or even while he doubts its existence. The assimilation of human nature to the Divine is possible—it may be realized because it is God's will that it should be. Has it been already realized in the course of history, as Christians believe, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth twenty centuries ago?

Let us see what objections have been raised to this fundamental position of historical Christianity. According to Strauss, the ideal of humanity could not be realized in a historical person; to manifest the fulness of the type all examples of the race are needed; only mankind as a whole can constitute the God-Man-the incarnation of the Divine Spirit. This argument labours under a grave defect. If the infinite cannot be realized in the finite, if God cannot be fully manifested in any individual, we are bound to admit that the human race itself is too limited a sphere for the manifestation of the absolute-the whole universe of nature is needed. To this, indeed, Strauss came at last. In his Old and New Faith he declares without disguise that there is no other divinity than that of this mighty All; he has the courage to invite us to direct our adoration and love to this sovereign monster, without conscience and without heart, which only advances to retrace its steps, and which incessantly devours the children it has brought forth.

If you recoil from this Moloch, if you cannot make up your mind to confess that all that exists is Divine, because it exists, or to renounce the distinction between good and evil, if, in a word, the God you worship is not immensity and infinity, but the Holy One, you will easily triumph over the objection of Strauss. The God-Man is not the infinite confined within the finite, or the whole Divine nature enclosed, if one might use the expression, within a human person, but a human person full of God. It is not an individual life which exhausts the totality of the absolute life, but a human life which is absolutely Divine.

We come to the last difficulty of the question. Granted that the God-Man can and should appear in an individual form, how is it that there is only one example of that appearance, and that, too, in the past? If it were a question of confessing that the God-Man would appear at the close of history as the final result of gradual evolution, there would doubtless be minds willing to conceive and admit it, so strong at the present day is the superstition concerning progress. But to the great scandal of the doctrine of evolution, it is found that the God-man came before us, who are so far from being filled with all the fulness of God. It is to be doubted, however, whether in spite of progress in civilization, the heart of man is any the less "deceitful and desperately wicked." If, then, there has arisen in the bosom of humanity at any period of history-earlier or later—a human being who could truthfully say, “I and the Father are one," and could add, "I ever do what is well-pleasing to Him," and "the prince of this world has nothing in me," that person must be an exception. He cannot be the simple and natural product of history, but a new beginning inserted in the course of history by the sovereign Master. It is thus that the Gospel presentsthe person of the Christ. Is it to violate history? It cannot be counted so, if the true end of history is the production of the God-Man. However unique He may be among His imperfect and sinful brethren, the Christ is not an intruder; on the contrary, He is for all of them their raison d'être. Nothing has ever existed but in view of Hisappearance, for all history, all nature has no other end than the realization of the Divine life, as the plant lives only to bear its seed. It is "through Him and for Him' that God has created all things; it is for Him and "in Him" that all things subsist. He is able to realize fully, without failure or defect, the Divine life in a human life, so that God should be manifested in the flesh.

The God-Man has come in Jesus, and if humanity does not recognize Him, it will cut itself off from the source of life, and lose all faith and hope. But we cannot believe that this is more than a theoretical danger. We know that humanity will never perish, just because we know that the God-Man has come, because He has accomplished the work of salvation, and will not allow the fruit of His toil to fall to the ground. From the height of His cross His blood has watered the earth, and therefore that earth can never again become a desert. Every year, in the spring, the Church celebrates the resurrection of the God-Man, and that, over which it rejoices in commemorating that great historical event, is the pledge of the resurrection of humanity. Jesus Christ lives; by Him we may live, by Him we shall live. He lives, and because He lives, His race will not perish.

CURRENT SWISS THOUGHT.

À PROPOS OF A RECENT BOOK ON THE QUESTION OF THE PENTATEUCH. By L. GAUTIER (Le Chrétien Evangélique).—For more than a hundred years past the question of the Pentateuch has engaged the attention of scholars, and the number of books devoted to it has been considerable. But because of the special and technical nature of the subject, these discussions remained for a long time the almost exclusive province of professional theologians. But now matters are different; the Church, in the person of its spiritual leaders, and of its future ministers, and also of many of the most intelligent of its lay adherents, has recognized the necessity of making use of the results of learned research. Hitherto both English and German Protestants have had a considerable advantage over us. We French Protestants who form but a feeble minority in the midst of great Roman Catholic populations have hitherto had a somewhat limited theological literature. Our gratitude, therefore, is specially due to those who open new and interesting fields of study to such as are not able to make use of the works published on the other side of the Channel and beyond the Rhine. One of those to whom we are thus indebted is M. Westphal. In his Sources of the Pentateuch, which has just appeared, he has written a book which is both scholarly and attractive in its character, and pervaded by a spirit of deep, manly piety.

At the close of the preface to his first volume M. Westphal speaks of those "patient seekers who have discovered the sources of the Pentateuch," and he adds that by doing so they have brought to light "the harmony of the Gospels of the Old Testament." The phrase is a suggestive one, and by means of it we can show effectively that the facts, which every one knows, concerning the New Testament illustrate and elucidate the similar problems which are raised by the first part of the Old Testament. Our readers are doubtless acquainted with some one or other of the attempts which have been made at various times to cast into one connected narrative the contents of our four Gospels. The work which many Christians have done for the Gospels is precisely similar to that which we have before us in the Pentateuch: an ancient writer has succeeded in arranging into a single work a number of earlier compositions, some of which are as parallel to each other as our four Gospels are. The only difference is that whilst we possess the four Gospels along with the "Harmonies" constructed out of them, in the case of the Pentateuch the primitive and independent works have been lost, and only the Harmony has come down to us. We can imagine what would have happened if we had not the separate Gospels, but NO. IV.-VOL. II. THE THINKER,

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only a fusion of them into a single work. There would be those who would blame all attempts to analyse the history-all endeavours to discover and reconstruct the primitive narratives, just as at the present day there are many who consider it chimerical and even blameworthy to analyse the Pentateuch and to separate it into its component parts. But for all that the attempt would be made. By the aid, say of the first Epistle of St. John, one would be able to discover clearly the Johannine portions of the Gospel, and to recognize their special characteristics. Perhaps there would be a clue found in the use of the phrases, "kingdom of God” and “kingdom of heaven," which, together with other peculiarities of expression, would enable us to distinguish between the work of St. Luke and St. Matthew. And when in the composition of the Harmony there were observed two parallel but slightly differing narratives, it would be possible to assign each of them to some one or other of the primitive documents. Then, too, one would have little difficulty in admitting that in order to combine materials drawn from different sources the constructor of the Harmony had suppressed or added conjunctions, substituted proper names for relative pronouns, and vice versá—in short, had, in the interests of his work, used his own discretion in dealing with the texts before him. Without pushing the comparison too far, we hasten to apply to the Pentateuch the results to which it leads us. The critical labours of the last century and a half have resulted in the recognition in the first five books of the Bible of the fusion or Harmony of works independent of each other, of various ages, animated by the same spirit, yet still presenting, as the four Gospels do, special characteristics, and pursuing analogous but not identical ends.

Is it the case, then, that all Christian scholars, theologians, and Hebraists who have paid special attention to these matters have come to the same conclusions? To answer this question in the affirmative would be to be guilty of a little exaggeration; for there are still, and especially in America, men of really competent scholarship who maintain the unity and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. In our part of the world the advocates of this traditional solution of the question are growing fewer and fewer, and even they hold it with certain reservations-they admit that the original work of Moses has been retouched and modified in the course of succeeding ages. In other words, they feel the need of "rectifying" the traditional opinion. This is of itself a considerable concession; for it is to enter on the way in which the majority of modern specialists precede them, and which has led to exact and positive results. It may surprise some to hear of exact and positive results. Is it not a notorious fact, it may be asked, that in the analysis of the sources of the Pentateuch, and in fixing the respective dates of component parts, there are as many opinions as there are authors? No, we reply, it is very far from being so. No doubt in details there are divergences, as is only to be expected; in no field of historical, literary, or philosophical science is uniformity to be expected. But what is still more striking than the disagreement of critics, is their agreement on a very large number of points. Let us take, for example, the division of the constituent elements of the Pentateuch into the various documents out of which it is constructed. That which is manifest, and which will strike any one who has eyes to see, is the general consensus of critics, whatever their language, or race, or dogmatic position may be. The leading English, German, Dutch, and French critics admit the existence of the same four principal sources of the Pentateuch, and assign to them almost exactly the same portions of the five books in question. For about fifteen years past we have seen among our colleagues, friends, and fellow-students, and even as in the case of the venerated Delitzsch, among our masters, the same kind of struggle, ending more or less speedily in the same results;

some ranging themselves promptly, and almost without striking a blow, under the banner of the new theory, others only accepting the data after carefully weighing it, and after perhaps for a time taking shelter in untenable hypotheses, ending by a complete surrender. No one can believe that this has been done lightly, thoughtlessly, or even in some cases without pain. It has frequently been only after mature examination and conscientious resistance that the change has been made. But, on the other hand, from the new light come fresh satisfaction and comfort. The better the Pentateuch, and with it the whole Old Testament, is understood in its history and composition, the dearer and more precious does it become; it excites a new interest, and an everincreasing admiration.

If we admit that the Pentateuch is the result of a combination of different documents, are we obliged to reject as ill-founded the testimony rendered in all ages to its "majestic unity"? To this question we answer both yes and no. Yes, if by unity we are to understand its having been composed at a single stroke, and by one author. But no, if we can ascribe the characteristic of unity to a work in which many have co-operated at various periods, in which there are even different tendencies. There is the unity which comes from all who co-operate in a work being animated by a common interest, and guided by a common inspiration. Is it not legitimate to speak of the unity of the Psalms, or of the minor prophets-a unity which does not exclude, but which, on the contrary, implies a variety of authorship? And among the writings of the New Testament, does not the fourfold narrative of the Evangelists present a real and striking unity of character? And to generalize still further, does not the New Testament as a whole bear a stamp sui generis? Are not its various parts indissolubly united and coherent with each other? Let no one, therefore, say that the question of the unity of the Pentateuch is affected by the theory of documents. The writers, whose work we have learned to differentiate, are unknown to us by name. We are, therefore, compelled to designate them somewhat pedantically as the Jehovist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist, and the Priestly author. And the various sections belonging to each are usually indicated by the respective initials of J, E, D, P.

But it is not enough to affirm and prove the presence of different documents in the Pentateuch, and to assign them to their various authors. There remains the still more difficult and delicate task of assigning to these authors their respective places in the history of Israel. Three events, duly established by historical testimony, serve as landmarks to guide us in this research.

The first is the discovery of the book of the law in the time of King Josiah (c. B.C. 623), and the religious reformation which resulted from it. This book of the law is incontestably the Book of Deuteronomy, or at least the essential part of that document. The character of the reformation of Josiah, the very language used in the Book of Kings to describe it, and the echoes of the Book of Deuteronomy, which we find in the writings of the great contemporary prophet, Jeremiah, all lead to the same conclusion. This, then, is our first fixed point-the Book of Deuteronomy was the basis of Josiah's reformation.

The second historical fact which we have to take into account is connected with the Exile in Babylon. Ezekiel, carried into captivity with Jehoiachin (B.c. 599), has described at great length (xl.-xlviii.) the new economy and the new temple; and this tôrah (revelation or law), which has fortunately come down to us intact, can with the greatest certainty be assigned to the year B.C. 574. This is a second base of operations.

In the third place, we find in the Book of Nehemiah (viii. et seq.) the circum

stantial narrative of measures taken by the Jewish community, after the Exile, under the influence of Ezra, to control all things henceforth in a manner conformable to the law of God (B.C. 444).

These three epochs, and these three names, Josiah, Ezekiel, and Ezra, are the data we have to go upon. They are not, indeed, sufficient for the solution of all the problems involved in the question of the Pentateuch, but are of very great value. Though, as we have said, there are divergences in detail in the conclusions to which critics have come, the following points are generally agreed upon :

The most ancient legislation (the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant, Exod. xx.-xxiv., xxxiv.), and various poems and narratives, formed integral parts of two works composed shortly after the schism of the ten tribes: the one in the northern kingdom (E, Elohist), and the other probably in Judah (J, Jehovist). From the fusion of these two principal documents there resulted in the eighth (or seventh) century B.C. a work which M. Westphal very appositely calls the prophetical narrative of the Pentateuch (JE).

According to M. Westphal, Deuteronomy (or at least its central nucleus, xii.-xxvi., with its prologue, v.-xi., and its epilogue, xxviii.) was composed in the time of Ahaz (eighth century). For our own part, we are inclined to assign it to a later date, to the time of Manasseh (the first half of the seventh century). But this difference of some years is of no consequence in the general sketch which we are here endeavouring to draw. It was on the basis of this document that the reformation of Josiah took place, and we, therefore, come to the first of the three dates above mentioned. Unfortunately the results of that reformation were ephemeral, and the ruin of Jerusalem was not averted.

It belonged to the prophet of the Exile, Ezekiel, to reorganize the nation and to guide its future. And so the second half of the period of the Exile is marked, on the one hand, by the completion of the Deuteronomic document (the addition of its opening and closing sections), and its combination with the prophetical narrative, and on the other hand, by the elaboration of a collection of laws (laws of holiness, preserved in Lev. xvii.-xxvi.), which form the most ancient nucleus of the great Priestly or Levitical legislation, the only constituent part of the Pentateuch which has not as yet figured in the course of our enumeration. It was at the close of the Exile, M. Westphal thinks, or even a little later as we are inclined to hold, that this great work was achieved.

And when in the fifth century B.C. Ezra the scribe conceived and executed the noble thought of giving his nation a Bible, that is to say, a collection of sacred books intended to be solemnly read in public, it was this priestly document which furnished the framework or skeleton on which were arranged the materials borrowed from the three anterior documents J, E, and D, which had already been combined among themselves. And so the community after the Exile entered into possession of the books which we know and use as the Pentateuch, and to which have been added at later times the other books that go to make up the Old Testament.

Rome was not built in a day. And so the Pentateuch was not the result of the labours of a single man, or the production of one epoch. It was formed slowly, gradually, and in successive strata, as indeed was the case with all the other great works of the Jewish people. The historical books of the Old Testament, the collections which we call the Psalms and the Book of Proverbs, are not each the composition of a single individual, but the accumulated productions of several consecutive generations. All are anonymous and impersonal, the product of the race and of successive generations, and not the work of a single author.