mere identification of God with the principle of righteousness. The one great, outstanding peculiarity of the Bible and its religion is to be found in the presentation of God as the Leading Actor of a long story, or drama, in which mankind is redeemed from evil. Many of the gods of antiquity were believed by their worshipers to be patrons of righteousness. Yet none of the religions of the ancient world, except that of the Bible, have survived in modern civilization.

It is here that the essential feature of the Bible religion is found. This religion has made its triumphant way in the world, not upon the basis of the creatorhood of God, or the doctrine of monotheism, or any other abstract notion whatsoever. It has gone from victory to victory on the basis of the moral saviorhood of God, and nothing else. All other ideas about God that we find in the Bible are present in other ancient religions and Bibles. But no other ancient religion brings before us the picture of a god as the leading figure in a long, consistent drama, or story, in which the central theme is the redemption of the human race from evil. Herein the Bible stands alone in solitary and unapproachable majesty amid the literature of the ancient world. Herein the religion of the Hebrew nation has no parallel among the cults of antiquity. Everything but this feature (and it is indeed a "feature") is present in the so-called "heathen" religions. Thus the inaugural prayer of Nebuchadrezzar, addressed to the god Marduk, is full of sentiments that are found in the Hebrew Bible:

O Eternal Ruler! Lord of the Universe! Grant that the name of the king whom thou lovest, whose name thou hast mentioned, may flourish as seems good to thee. Guide him on the right path. I am the ruler who obeys thee, the creation of thy hand. It is thou who hast created me, and thou hast entrusted to me sovereignty over mankind. According to thy mercy, O lord, which thou bestowest upon all, cause me to love thy supreme rule. Implant the fear of thy divinity in my

heart. Grant to me whatsoever may seem good before thee, since it is thou that dost control my life.'

As Jastrow observes, "one cannot fail to be struck by the high sense of the importance of his station with which the king is inspired. Sovereignty is not a right that he can claimit is a trust granted to him by Marduk. He holds his great office not for purposes of self-glorification, but for the benefit of his subjects. In profound humility he confesses that what he has he owes entirely to Marduk. He asks to be guided so that he may follow the path of righteousness. Neither riches nor power constitute his ambition, but to have the fear of his lord in his heart." This example is one of many that occur all through ancient civilization. We find another instance in a remarkable Egyptian hymn to the god Aton:

How manifold are all thy works! They are hidden from before us, O thou sole god, whose powers no other possesseth. Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire. While thou wast alone: Men, all cattle large and small, all that are upon the earth, that go about upon their feet; all that are on high, that fly with their wings. The countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt; thou settest every man in his place, thou suppliest their necessities. Every one has his possessions, and his days are reckoned. Their tongues are divers in speech, their forms likewise and their skins, for thou divider, hast divided the peoples.❜

These illustrations prove that in the bare ideas of creative power, of righteousness, and of sovereignty, we find nothing peculiar to the God of the Bible. It has often been said that while the other nations of antiquity worshiped "false" gods, the Hebrew nation served the "true" God, and that therefore the Hebrew religion has lived while the others have died. But this theory of the case does not fit the situation that unrolls before us in the history of the Hebrews. For the Bible religion puts the moral saviorhood of God in the

1

1 Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, 1898), pp. 296–99. Cf. Goodspeed, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians (New York, 1906), p. 348. 2 Breasted, History of Egypt (New York, 1905), pp. 373, 374.

foreground, and focuses our attention upon that; while the other attributes of the divine nature are, so to speak, incidental and secondary. It is no derogation of the Bible that we find the ethical impulse widely present in the non-Hebrew religions. It is rather to the credit of humanity that the Hebrews had no monopoly of the moral principle; while the glory of the Bible resides in just this fact, that it brings God into peculiar, dramatic connection with the moral strivings that are common to all mankind. It is not for what God is in the abstract that men worship him in connection with the Bible religion, but for what he does in the promotion of justice and righteousness. If men worshiped him simply for his "attributes," that would be to put religion upon a purely intellectual basis; and no religion can long survive on such a foundation. The Bible religion makes its way into the lives of men by its appeal to the feelings, and not by arguments addressed to the intellect.1

The religion of the Redeeming God is common to the Old and New Testaments.—In its Old Testament form, the religion of redemption was kept alive by Jewish patriotism and racepride. It was interpreted to the Jewish people through the medium of their national interests. But the same consideration that made this religion vital and concrete to a person of Jewish blood, made it unreal and far away to the gentile world. In the eyes of outsiders, the identification of God with morality was a philosophical abstraction, without life or meaning. The gentile could not throw aside his race, and become a Jew, any more than one species of animal can transform itself into another. Thus the Old Testament form of

I Witness the downfall of the "New England theology," which obscured the Bible religion with as much rationalism as was ever found in the anti-religious thinkers. See Foster, Genetic History of the New England Theology (Chicago, 1907). As Professor W. N. Clarke well says, "Theology must discuss God in metaphysical light, but it is important to know that not in such discussing did the Christian doctrine of God originate."-The Christian Doctrine of God (New York, 1909), p. 23.

Bible religion was confined within the limits of nationality and race. A great social barrier stood between Judaism and the outside world.

In a later part of our study we shall consider the sociological aspects of the relation between Judaism and Christianity. Here we need to do little more than emphasize that the religion of the Redeeming God is common to the Old and New Testaments. To deny this, would be to cut the ground from under the feet of Christianity. The New Testament signifies not so much a wholly new religion as a reinterpretation of religion in such a way as to give its terms a deeper and richer meaning. The prophets of the Old Testament gave their message in "divers portions and divers ways." But the social barrier between Judaism and the gentile world ("the middle wall of partition") was at last broken down by the work of Jesus and the preaching of Paul. The religion of redemption did not begin to spread abroad in the world until the Old Testament evolution was brought to a focus, or condensed, in the life of Jesus, who incarnated the redemptive idea in his own person. These facts may be spoken of here by way of preliminary; but a fuller study along the indicated line of approach may not be made until we have considered the sociological presuppositions of the general problem.

Modern scientific study of the Bible comes to a focus on the moral character of Bible religion. Since the Bible puts the principle of righteousness into the foreground, all Biblestudy necessarily gravitates around this fact and becomes adjusted to it. However much the new, scientific school of Bible interpretation may seem to be dealing with matters of another kind, its fundamental preoccupation is with the great moral problem of history. The chief reason why the new scholarship has been spoken against in some quarters is because it has not been understood.

Those who condemn the new view are generally beside the

main issues. A case in point is that of Professor James Orr, whose recent widely heralded book, The Problem of the Old Testament, treats the modern discussion about the Bible as a war between "supernaturalism" and "naturalism." But this is to put the whole subject on a purely metaphysical plane. For nobody has ever yet drawn the line between these terms; and there appears to be no prospect that anybody ever will. Professor Orr would be closer to the issues if he perceived that the new method of Bible interpretation can be neither "naturalistic" nor "supernaturalistic," but simply scientific.'

How did the Bible religion come into the world? This is the real issue at the heart of modern scientific Bible-study. Until we learn to look squarely at this question, we shall not make much progress in further understanding of the Bible. The older school, of course, finds no problem here. The ready answer of Professor Orr and the traditionalists is, that the religion of the Bible came into this world, and entered the stream of human history, by "the will of God." We admit that this answer is good and sufficient from the standpoints of theology and religious faith; but it explains nothing from the standpoint of science. On the other hand, the modern school tells us that the religion of the Bible came into the world through "a process of evolution." Thus, Kuenen writes, "It is the supposition of a natural development alone which accounts for all the phenomena." But this, again, is really no scientific explanation, because the terms "development"

1 See Orr, Problem of the Old Testament (New York, 1906), chap. i and passim. Also, his Bible under Trial (New York, 1907), passim. An older, but in some respects more satisfactory, treatment of the question is that of Robertson, The Early Religion of Israel (New York, 1892). See also Green, Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch (New York, 1895), pp. 157, 164, 165, 177. Professor Orr's work on the Old Testament is considered by the present writer in the American Journal of Theology (April, 1908), pp. 241-49.

2 Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel (London, 1877), p. 585; Religion of Israel (London, 1874), I, 11.