struggling into utterance and being, all around us. . . . It is close upon us—it is prepared by all the forces of history and mind—its rise sooner or later is inevitable." This is prophesy, but it is not argument; and a little attention to Mrs. Ward's own statements will exhibit a very different picture. The Christian representative in her dialogue exclaims:
A better statement could hardly be wanted of what is meant by an attack having failed, and now let the reader observe how Merriman in the dialogue meets it. Does he deny any of those allegations? Not one. "Very well," he says, "let us leave the matter there for the present. Suppose we go to the Old Testament"; and then he proceeds to dwell on the concessions made to the newest critical school of Germany by a few distinguished English divines at the last Church Congress. I must, indeed, dispute her representation of that rather one-sided debate as amounting to "a collapse of English orthodoxy," or as justifying her statement that "the Church of England practically gives its verdict" in favor, for instance, of the school which regards the Pentateuch or the Hexateuch as "the peculiar product of that Jewish religious movement which, beginning with Josiah, . . . yields its final fruits long after the exile." Not only has the Church of England given no such verdict, but German criticism has as yet given no such verdict. For example, in the introduction to the Old Testament by one of the first Hebrew scholars of Germany, Prof. Hermann Strack, contained in the valuable "Hand-book of the Theological Sciences," edited, with the assistance of several distinguished scholars, by Prof. Zöchler, I find, at page 215 of the third edition, published this year, the following brief summary of what, in Dr. Strack's opinion, is the result of the controversy so far: