which bears upon the critical problem, and from which many of the anti-critics are expecting a rehabilitation of their fallen theories. The deciphering of ancient monuments has given rise to the new sciences of Assyriology, Egyptology, etc., and some of their most prominent representatives, as Sayce and Schrader, have taken up an attitude of opposition to the critics. In the first place, it must be noted that the evidence of the monuments militates against the old orthodox view of Scripture much more than against the views of Cheyne and Wellhausen; the S. P. C. K. is driven to the questionable expedient of using Sayce against the critics, while rejecting the more important of his conclusions, which are very advanced. But, in point of fact, the result of Professor Sayce's achievements—does not seriously affect the critical position does not at all affect its main points. Mr. Sayce contends that his evidence throws back the date of many of the sources of the Hexateuch, and sometimes corroborates the Old Testament where the critics had refused its testimony; it would, therefore, tend to restore its historical credit. But, from a purely critical point of view, the new evidence makes little or no difference to the problem. Archaeological research has confirmed the Scripture narrative in some passages, but it has equally negatived it in others; the narrative is, therefore, as useless as ever in itself, without the confirmation of the monuments in detail. That the higher critics have erred in several points is of little significance; if they had been convicted of such enormous errors as the Church has been guilty of in teaching the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and the inspired character of the historical books of the Old Testament, we should have grave reason to distrust their methods. And then Mr. Sayce's proposed new analysis of the early books into Babylonian, Egyptian, Aramaic, Edomite, and Canaanitish elements neither conflicts with the literary analysis, nor restores confidence in the narrative; the fact that the narrative of the creation is a purified copy of a Babylonian epic, that the day of seven weeks and the Sabbath comes from Babylon, that Eden was the great plain of Babylon, that the Hebrews most probably borrowed from the Babylonians the notions of the tree of life, of the cherubim, of the creation of woman out of man, of the fall by eating the forbidden fruit, of the deluge in all its details,
