the translators of the Authorised Version worked in the infancy of biblical criticism, when the foregone conclusions of unreasoning Piety silenced the voice of Scepticism, and apostolic acceptance of Moses and the Prophets was quite sufficient to satisfy English divines of the infallibility of the Pentateuch. All this is now changed; and when we come into possession of the exhaustive labours of the eminent Hebrew scholars now at work on the contents of the Old Testament, even British piety will doubtless learn to question the prescriptive rights of Mosaic theosophy.

As Orthodoxy identifies the God of Israel with the God of Job, does Jehovah appear to greater advantage in dramatic revelation? The curtain rises on a scene of patriarchal happiness in the land of Uz,1 where Job, the greatest of Eastern chieftains, pre-eminent in piety and virtue, enjoys in lavish profusion the temporal blessings assigned to righteousness in the age of the patriarchs. Anon we witness a scene in heaven. Satan attends, with other sons of God, a grand reception given by Jehovah, who asks him if he has considered the many virtues of the exemplary Job. But the sneering demon insinuates that this vaunted friend of God is simply righteous because he finds it pay, and in calamity would utter curses instead of praise. In refutation of this vile calumny, the Deity consents to test the piety of Job through the ordeal of affliction; and all that he possesses, except his very life, is placed at the disposal of Satanic cruelty.

It is unnecessary to dwell on the oft-told tale of the patience of Job under the trying platitudes of his too

1 Job i.

candid friends. Our interest lies in the popular impression that the curtain falls on a vindicated Providence. But the afflicted patriarch had seven sons and three daughters, all of whom, with numerous herds and shepherds, perished by fire and sword and tempest. How, therefore, could divine justice be conclusively vindicated, unless through the miraculous restoration to life of the victims of unmerited but supernatural calamity? As Job witnessed the growth of a second family amid scenes of renewed prosperity, he may have been consoled for the loss of the dead, but it can have been no compensation to the slain daughters of Job that their sisters and successors were the most lovely women and the richest heiresses in the land of Uz,1 whilst they rested in tombs on which might have been inscribed-The Victims of the Gods.

1

If all this seems impious to conscientious believers in an infallible Bible, let them consider whether the impiety does not rather lie with those who enrol the Deity with Satan among the dramatis persona of the Semitic Eschylus, and accept the fiction vocal of a whirlwind as a voice from heaven, instead of the vain attempt of some presumptuous mortal to dramatise Divinity.

In what colours is the national Deity depicted in the pages of Exodus? Jehovah, having forgotten the children of Israel during the period in which they drifted into Egyptian bondage, suddenly remembered the unhappy heirs of Abraham, with whom He had ratified a solemn covenant lavish in prospective benefits?? Moses and Aaron were, therefore, accredited to the 1 Job xlii. 13-15. ? Exod. iii.

Egyptian court, not to proclaim Jehovah as the supreme Ruler of the universe claiming the worship of all mankind, but as the national God of Israel, admitting the existence, and competing for superiority over rival deities holding local jurisdiction in Egypt.

If the ambassadors of Jehovah could change a lifeless rod into a living serpent, the representatives of Egyptian gods could accomplish similar results, varying only in the inferior species of reptile produced.1 And if Moses and Aaron changed the water in all the rivers, streams, ponds, pools, buckets, and pitchers into blood, the Egyptians accomplished the still greater miracle of changing blood to water, and water to blood."

2

Jehovah possessed the power of influencing the heart of Pharaoh, and could therefore have thus ac complished the immediate deliverance of the Israelites, but he postponed the Exodus that he might be personally glorified through the appalling suffering inflicted on the innocent inhabitants of Egypt, because their king did not do that which Jehovah Himself prevented.

Let us try to form some faint conception of this revolting tragedy, enacted among men and women formed of the same flesh and blood as modern Humanity, and living the life of social refinement depicted on the monuments. Water changed to blood, houses filled with frogs, air swarming with flies, cattle destroyed by murrain, vegetation devoured by locusts, land swept by mingled fire and hail, day and night confounded in impenetrable darkness; men, women, and children covered by vermin, or festering with loathsome ulcers, and death finally destroying all the first-born in the 1 Exod. vii. 10, 11.

2 Exod. vii. 19–22.

land! For what purpose these hideous plagues? Why these appalling sufferings of tender women, of innocent children, of defenceless age? To prove that the Deity, who can inflict the greatest calamities on mankind, exceeds in glory the gods who, although successful producers of frogs, fail in the creation of vermin!

Truly, if the author of Exodus had been possessed of the genius of Swift, and designed a malignant satire on the God of the Hebrews, he could have produced nothing more terribly true to his malicious purpose than the grotesque parody of divine intervention in human affairs, depicted in the revolting details of the Ten Plagues ruthlessly inflicted on the Egyptian nation.

Are not our sympathies, however, wasted on imaginary sufferings? Are not the miraculous plagues of Egypt as mythical as the Fall of man or the reign of the giants? And if not the fantastic creations of a barbarous piety, would not the annals of antiquity record the total depopulation of Egypt by famine and pestilence, inevitably following the appalling sufferings of the doomed inhabitants?

Can we trace a higher ideal of providential action in the career of famous prophets?

Ahaziah, King of Israel, having met with a serious accident, sent messengers to inquire from Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, whether he should recover.1 The Angel of the Lord instructed Elijah to meet the messengers, and announce a fatal termination to the illness of the king, who therefore sent one of his captains with fifty men to arrest the unfriendly prophet. The captain and his troop were simply fulfilling the duty of obedi

1 2 Kings i.

ence to the command of their king, but were nevertheless consumed by fire evoked from heaven by the frightened Nâbi, who repeated the tragedy with a second troop, and would have even massacred a third captain with all his men, but that the Angel of the Lord assured him of personal safety. Thus, avenging thunderbolts were placed at the disposal of a rash and erring mortal, and supernatural injustice but tardily arrested by a voice from heaven. And yet this was the crowning act of Elijah's career, who was forthwith transported by a whirlwind to heaven.

Elisha, however, proved more cruel than his master;1 for he had but just received the mantle of Elijah when he summoned, by imprecation, two providential bears, to vindicate prophetic claims on the vengeance of God, through the slaughter of Innocents guilty of making merry at his eccentric appearance-a tragedy which he witnessed with such callous indifference that he forthwith departed for Mount Carmel, leaving the mangled bodies of his victims in the highway. Well may we ask, is this a page from revelation, or the interpolated fiction of some malignant old scribe who hated children, and desired to establish among them a reign of terror as durable as the annals of Judaism ?

Thus far we have shown that the thoughts, words, and actions of the Hebrew Jehovah are not consistent with the attributes of Infinite Divinity;' but this conclusion will receive further confirmation in the ensuing chapters.

1 2 Kings ii.