the timidity and compromise which always characterize the attitude of the clergy in the transition from opposition to acceptance, we may confidently regard the victory of the higher criticism as decisive. All the contentions of the critics are not admitted, except by those theologians who succeed in pursuing grammatico-historical exegesis quite apart from theology; but sufficient is admitted to justify the assertion that the Christian conception of the Bible has been revolutionized. We shall throughout distinguish between the unaccepted and the received views of the purely Rationalistic critics; but an independent and unbiassed mind will naturally prefer to follow the guidance of non-theological scholars.
The inquiry has been chiefly directed to the Pentateuch and the prophets in the Old Testament, and it is here especially that the revolutionary character of the analysis is discerned. In both cases the compromising tendency of theological critics is to be guarded against by the candid inquirer, on account of the possible dogmatic consequences of any change in that direction. However, the whole ground of the Canon has been laboriously covered by the German critics. In the case of nearly every book the result has been fatal to the traditional belief, and in most cases the new doctrine is in startling contrast to the old. Many of the hypotheses are still only provisional, and a résumé of the results of the higher criticism is not yet a collection of stereotyped conclusions. At the same time, so many of the most important conclusions have been ratified by general acceptance that they may be duly registered as final acquisitions to science. It will be impossible, as a rule, even to glance at the process of reasoning by which the conclusions have been reached; but a fuller exposition of the Hexateuch controversy, the first and most ardent struggle, will throw some light upon the vast labour which has been expended, and the constant control of hostile forces, in arriving at definite results. To the Pentateuch, or five books which form the Torah, the first section of the Jewish canon, it has been found necessary to add the Book of Joshua, which continues the early narrative, and shares the peculiar composite structure of the Pentateuch; hence the writers now invariably speak of the Hexateuch, or group of six books. The first object of the critics
