Old Testament Criticism and the Christian Church, by J. E.
MacFadyen (Hodder and Stoughton, 6s.), treats, in more detail and in an argumentative rather than a persuasive style, of the same subject. The author holds the balance between opposing schools with fairness. We value especially his sympathy with the feelings of those who cling to the old views, feelings too often ignored by the critics. When he comes, for instance, to speak of Deuteronomy he appreciates the shock felt by a reader who learns that the book is a compilation dating a thousand years after Moses. Its natural place is where it is put, the final address of Moses to his people. And yet, as he points out, it can- not have been so delivered as it stands. It has been worked over and added to. Ile compares, appropriately enough, the speeches in Thucydides. "I have made," writes the historian, "the per- sons say what it seemed to me most opportune for them to say in view of each situation." And yet the speeches "betray a distinct consciousness of later events and contain allusions which would have been impossible or highly improbable on the oCcasions on which they are represented as being delivered."
AT BOOKS.
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