OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sru,—In your review of Schultz's " Old Testament Theology," in the Spectator of September 16th, speaking of the " panic " which some recent views of Old Testament books are apt to cause, you say :—" Mr. Gore and Canon Driver seek to allay the panic by giving an undertaking that the New Criticism will confine itself to the Old Testament; but the history of Biblical science in Germany and Holland does not encourage the hope that such limitation is at all probable." I should think not, indeed ! Any man would indeed be convicted of folly who endeavoured to set such " limitations " to the "New Criticism." The "New Criticism" is a name for a certain method of esti- mating literary products, and must, if it is a legitimate instru- ment at all, be allowed its application to all literature without exception. It is a very different thing to suggest that the most searching literary criticism will not alter the tradi- tional estimate of the New Testament, as it has that of some of the Old Testament books. The method must be applied everywhere ; but it will produce different results in different places, according to the quality of the literature to which it is applied. In the Old Testament, if it alters our estimate of Daniel, it does not affect Hosea or Amos. In the New Testament, the most thorough criticism is reaching results which, if highly instructive, are generally and sub- stantially conservative. Is it not the case, Sir, that the time has come for us all to recognise that literary products, how- ever sacred, must be subjected to free literary criticism ; but that among modern critics there are good and bad, cautious and reckless, trustworthy and fallacious, so that generalisations about "New Criticism" need to be made with great discrimi- nation P—I am, Sir, &e.,
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