tellectual process. The specialist, doctrinnaire, or special pleader cannot be admitted here. The mind must be open as the day for the light to stream in from the east, from the zenith, or from the west.

CHAPTER XII

THE LIMITATIONS OF CRITICISM

It is important to bear in mind that while criticism is a legitimate exercise of the intelligence to which the natural forces of the mind impel us, it is surrounded with certain limitations that bound the field of its action and affect the value of its deductions. It is not an exact science, and its achievements must be sifted and carefully weighed to ascertain their true value.

Much of the literary criticism of the Old Testament is vague, indeterminate, and unsatisfying. The canons of literary criticism are sufficiently accurate and reliable in themselves, for they are the product of careful, scholarly thinking. But their application to an individual case, as to the Bible, is subject to the infelicities of a possible faulty diagnosis. The remedy is good where the conditions for which it is appropriate exist; where such conditions do not exist it may prove deadly poison. When one comes to sit in judgment he may be influenced by

prepossessions, prejudice, partial knowledge, eagerness for some worthy intellectual achievement, or want of a broad outlook, and so produce work that will be of little value.

The critical theory about the names of Deity in use in the Pentateuch by which the books, chapters, and even verses are split up and divided among a number of supposed authors has been rather roughly handled in the court of reason and has not stood the test of the best modern thinking. The finest classical writers in Greek and Roman literature use a great variety of names and qualifying terms in speaking of their deities, of Zeus, Jupiter, Venus, and others, yet no one ever thought of splitting up their literature into shreds and parceling it out among a great number of authors according to their mythological terminology. In the New Testament and early Christian writings, for variety of expression, literary enrichment, to express particular shades of thought, the writers used a great variety of names, qualifying terms, and combinations of words to express their thought of Deity, as "Jehovah," "God,"

"Lord," "God and Father," "Lord God Almighty," and many other terms. In speaking of Christ the same freedom and variety in the use of terms appears. He is called "Jesus," "Jesus Christ," "The Lord Jesus Christ," "Son of God," "Son of man, "Son of the Father," "Lamb of God," "Alpha and Omega," "The Bright and Morning Star"; and a great number of other titles indicate the variety of thought with which the sacred writers expressed themselves concerning the Divine Being. It would be just as scientific and reasonable to divide up the writings of Saint Paul or Saint John among a number of supposed unknown authors as to take such liberties with the Pentateuch as some critics have.

It is pedantic and wholly without sufficient reason to attach so much importance to the use of particular names of the Divine Being in early Hebrew literature, especially as we know so little about the meaning, derivation, and use of the names employed. The name El is the most primitive and the most widely distributed of all the names of Deity and it appears

in many combinations, as well as singly, in all the Hebrew writings. It was used in Babylonian, Aramæan, Phoenician, Hebrew, and Arabic; it belongs to primitive Semitic speech before it became modified into dialects, but of its origin, derivation, and meaning nothing is known. Following this apparently in the order of time and of development was the name "Elohim." It is also a general name among the nations for Deity, applied in Hebrew literature to the true God, but without any definite meaning that is known to us. Then came the name "Jehovah," which also seems to have been a very ancient name for Deity, to which special meaning and preference were given in the interview with Moses at the burning bush. We do not know its derivation or meaning, nor do we know its true pronunciation, for the vowel pointings that determine the pronunciation were not employed till the sixteenth century of our era. Knowing so little about these names, as we do, all of which seem to have been used promiscuously among the nations, it seems an absurd and unscholarly thing to attempt to break up the Penta