It will be seen that we have not aimed to argue down the old theory of physics, nor to argue up the new. This was no part of our immediate purpose. All we have sought to do is, first, to call attention to the change which has undeniably taken place in the scientific doctrine of matter; secondly, to show how this change is slowly but surely unsettling the old metaphysical underworks of important theological doctrines, and finally to discuss the possibilities of our advantageous reconstruction of these unsettled underworks. In sitting down to this task we had not the remotest intention of critically discussing the validity of any theory, physical or theological, old or new. Whatever we may have said, therefore, which might seem to have a polemic bearing is only incidental to the main discussion, introduced not for the sake of recommending personal hobbies, but because it seemed due to the reader to know the exact standpoint of the essay. We wish the article to be regarded then, not as an attack upon cherished views, or as a plea for theories whose discussion and settlement lies beyond the proper pale of theology, but simply as an honest effort toward orientation in our department, as a conscientious endeavor to answer the plain matter of fact, yet right weighty questions, Where are we? Whither drifting? Is there danger ahead? The question for the reader to pass judgment upon is, therefore, not, Is this new theory of physics true? but, (1.) Is it a fact that the old doctrine of matter as inherently and essentially inert, has been generally abandoned by scientific men? (2.) Will the natural effects of its abandonment be such as are here described? (3.) In such a case will the changes above portrayed as necessary and beneficial actually take place?

We call attention thus expressly to this point, not because of any lack of confidence in the dynamic view of physics, but from an apprehension that the reader's natural opposition to every view conflicting with his own chosen one might possibly divert him from the real purpose and point of the discussion. As to the scientific revolution, we scarcely need say that we regard it as a grand and auspicious advance. It inaugurates a fresh, truthful, realistic view of nature. The world it gives us is no mammoth mechanism, no self-acting, self-sustaining orrery, nor on the other hand is it a vast aggregate of sand

grains, magnetized by constant divine energy into coherent masses, and manipulated by incessant exertions of main force. It gives us just such a world as we find out of doors-a world of real matter, solid, extended, safe to tread about on, but, at the same time, mobile, plastic, growthful. We view it as a part of that grand intellectual movement which promises to speedily supersede our lingering remnants of Lockian and Coleridgian aberration, by bringing in a broader and truer school of thought than has ever yet found place in AngloSaxon, or indeed in human history. We regard it as one of the pledges of a philosophy which, instead of making the categories of Spinoza, or Des Cartes, or Hamilton the measure of all being and of all beings, will humbly go forth in the genuine Baconian spirit and taking a learner's place at the feet of nature and of God, docilely inquire after the categories determined by the Creator's mind, and realized by his creative will. But all this is aside from the great practical question of the hour. The tendency of the new doctrine of physics is undeniably revolutionary in the department of theology, and something must be done. Should any redoubtable champion of deistic mechanism, or of immediate divine agency, descry relief only in the reassertion of the old doctrine of matter, then let him enter the appropriate forum-that of natural science and scientifically refute the dynamic theory. The believer in second causes, however, either material or spirit ual, has a different task. His theological metaphysics have become untenable and must be reconstructed. His scientific treatises are already full of contradictions and sophisms. If he can find any safer or more advantageous basis on which to reconstruct them than that which we have suggested, he owes it to the cause of truth, to the cause of God's saving truth, to set it forth." "Quisquis haec legit, ubi pariter certus est, pergat mecum; ubi pariter haesitat, quaerat mecum: ubi errorem suum cognoscit, redeat ad me; ubi meum, revocet

me."*

* Augustine, De Trinitate i, 3.

ART. IV. THE AUTHOR OF GENESIS.

THE enemies of divine revelation have generally commenced their assaults upon it with the Old Testament, and more especially with the first five books. Perceiving the intimate connection of these books with those that follow, they have felt that if they could destroy the credit of these, the conquest of the remainder would not be difficult.

The first to assail the Old Testament, and particularly the writings of Moses, were the Gnostics of the second century and the Manicheans of the fourth. Regarding matter as essentially evil and the source of all evil, they could not believe, with Moses, that the Supreme Being created this material world or the corruptible bodies of men. The material creation must have been the work of some inferior and malicious divinity. Hence they discarded the writings of Moses, and profanely corrupted the Old Testament generally.

After the disappearance of these heresies, and the overthrow of Paganism in the Roman empire, we hear of little or no direct opposition to the Scriptures for the next thousand years. Numerous other errors and controversies arose, but the great controversy respecting the fundamental documents of our faith was permitted to slumber.

By the English infidels of the seventeenth century the question was revived as to the authenticity and genuineness of the books of Moses. Thomas Hobbes, in his "Leviathan," says, "It is sufficiently evident that the five books of Moses were written after his time." Spinoza, who was a Jew, advanced the same opinion; the Pentateuch, he thought, could not have been written before the time of Ezra. Others followed in a similar strain, as Blount, Toland, Morgan, and Bolingbroke.

But the most numerous and violent assaults upon the Mosaie writings, in modern times, have come from Germany. Near the close of the last century commenced, in that country, the era of what has been called "historical criticism." This demolishing criticism was first employed upon the Greek and Latin classics. In the year 1795, Wolf, the philologist, published his "Prolegomena to the Homeric Poems," in which he endeavored

to show that the Iliad and Odyssey are not the works of Homer, or of any one else, but are made up of fragments, loosely put together, and are to be ascribed to different authors. He next took in hand the Orations of Cicero, and declared, with regard to four of these, that "Cicero could never have written them, sleeping or waking." Niebuhr followed in the same strain, and "after demolishing Livy's beautiful fabric in regard to the early history of Rome, attempted to reconstruct it on a more philosophical basis."

From this period, discredit or contempt was continually heaped upon some of the most valuable remains of antiquity. Herodotus was a garrulous story-teller, pleasing to children, but not to men. The genuineness of some of the most undoubted of Plato's Dialogues was called in question. Even Thucydides did not entirely escape this destructive criticism.

Under these circumstances, it was not to be expected that the sacred books of the Old Testament would pass unmolested. All sorts of theories were invented to account for some of them, more especially the books of Moses. While it was insisted by all that Moses could not have written them, no two could agree as to the real author or authors, or as to the period to which they should be assigned. All periods were proposed, from Joshua to the Maccabees; and all authors mentioned, whether known or unknown in Jewish history. The famous Document and Fragment theories were for a time immensely popular, representing the Pentateuch, as Wolf had done the Homeric poems, as a sort of patchwork, originated at different periods and by different hands, and put together by some one, nobody could tell who. The fragments of which it was composed were many, and were designated by various names, the more prominent of which were the "Elohistic" and the "Jehovistic," since in the former, the name given to the Supreme Being is constantly Elohim, and in the latter, Jehovah. Much labor was employed in parceling out the sacred text on this principle, assigning one portion to the one class of fragments, and another to another.

After all, it appears that there is no sufficient ground for the supposed division, since, parcel out the fragments as we may, the two names of the Supreme Being occur promiscuously in both. Thus in Genesis ii, 4, which is said to be Jehovistic, the

two names of God occur together. "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, in the day when Jehovah Elohim made the earth and the heavens." So in the fifth chapter of Genesis, which is Elohistic, the word Jehovah appears, verse 29. Also the passage in Genesis vii, 9-24, is pronounced Elohistic; but in verse 16 we find Jehovah. We give but one example more: the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis is throughout an Elohistic document, but in verse 18 we have these words of the Patriarch Jacob, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Jehovah." Difficulties such as these have divided all Germany, arraying critic against critic in strange confusion; no one seeming to suspect that the theory which had been assumed was a baseless one, contradicted perpetually and flatly by the sacred text.

One of the last specimens of the "document theory" comes to us, not from Germany, but from the Princeton Review. Without thinking to detract aught from the divine authority or inspiration of what is commonly called the book of Genesis, the writer at Princeton represents this book as made up of eleven books, each distinct and complete in itself, and all of them anonymous, with which Moses seems to have had nothing to do.*

This scheme, however, did not originate at Princeton. It was first broached by Astrück, a French physician, in 1753, and was adopted in part by Eichorn, Ilgen, and various other German critics. It is strange that the readers of the Bible for the last three thousand years should not have discovered the lines of demarkation between these eleven books of which Genesis is thought to be composed, if they are really there. The truth is, they are not there. There are different subjects treated of in this book, and different views presented; and corresponding to them are sectional divisions, as there are in other books; but the book of Genesis is manifestly one. It has a beginning, a progress, a plan, and an end; and is as well entitled to be considered one book-the work, under God, of one individual mind-as any of our sacred books.

Instead of inquiring as to the author of the Pentateuch in general, I shall confine attention almost entirely to the first book. I do this because the difficulty of the subject mainly centers here, and because the authorship of the four remaining * Number for January, 1861, p. 51.