later Prophet, including the whole of the latter section of the book (xl.-lxvi.), has been bound up with the writings of the earlier Prophet of the times of Hezekiah. This opinion, though not dating back so far as that which advocates the variety of authorship in the Psalms and in Zechariah, has received a still more decided support from the chief Hebrew scholars of the Continent.

These attempts to discover the real authors of the books, which popular tradition has wrongly assigned to great names, are sometimes invidiously treated as attacks on the authority and genuineness of their writings.

It ought to be needless to say, that the authority, or canonicity, of a sacred book hardly ever depends on its particular date or name. If for these purposes it was necessary that the writers should be known, nearly half the books of the Old Testament would at once be excluded from the canon. And as the second portion of Zechariah cannot lose its authority from its being of an earlier date than has been commonly supposed, so neither can the fifth portion of the Psalter, or the second portion of Isaiah, lose their authority from being later than the reigns of David or Hezekiah. The discovery of diversity of authorship in the Prophecies of Isaiah has been termed "the undeifying of Isaiah." But, even granting the "deification" of Isaiah to be in itself a desirable object, it cannot surely be attained by so accidental a circumstance as the mere outward arrangement of the writings which now bear his name; nor can any of these inspired Prophets be "undeified" or degraded from any glory which is their due by a mistake in their titles, still less by giving to each his proper place, and by adding, if so be, a new personage to that goodly fellowship, which assuredly gains rather than loses by the increase of its members, and by the better understanding of the time and occasion of its utterances.

So also the question of genuineness, properly speaking, can only arise in regard to a work which avowedly claims for itself a false author. The later portions of the Psalter and of Isaiah are, for the most part, as anonymous as the Books of Ruth or of Chronicles, or as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is no forgery which is detected, but the oversight of some ancient Hebrew collector or Christian expositor, who has united in one roll the

writings of two different authors. In the Homeric controversy, no one would think of charging those who believe that the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were the works of two poets, with a denial of the genuineness of either poem. It is much to be regretted, that in the critical controversies of theology there has been a temptation, on both sides, needlessly to impute reprehensible motives: as when, on the one hand, the innocent endeavors to detect the real authorship of disputed works have been branded as sinister attacks on their character; and, on the other hand, the Sacred writers themselves have been blamed for a confusion that has only taken place long after their deaths. The Psalms of the Captivity are not less genuine and authentic because they have been classed with the Psalms of David, nor the Prophecies of the older Zechariah because they have been classed with those of the younger, nor the Prophecies of the younger Isaiah because they have been classed with those of the older.

There is indeed another province of disputed authorship into which the question of genuineness and spuriousness more properly enters. It has been said that "to write any book under "the name of another, and to give it out to be his, is, in any case, a forgery, dishonest in itself, and destructive of all trust"worthiness." But even this remark needs much qualification. Though aimed against those who question the commonly received date of the Book of Daniel, it falls really with far greater force on the vast multitude of divines who question the Solomonian authorship of " the Wisdom of Solomon." That book repeatedly claims to be written by Solomon, was maintained to be so by many of the Fathers, and was by them honored as such with a veneration equal to that which they paid to Scripture. And yet, although this belief is now universally abandoned in all Protestant countries, "the Book of Wisdom" is still treated, at least by the Anglican and Lutheran Churches, with reverence and admiration, and its lofty strain of religious morality is not thought to be impugned by the recognition of the fictitious character of its author. But, in fact, neither in the case of the Book of Wisdom, or (if recent criticisms should prove correct) of the Book of Daniel or of Ecclesiastes, would such a censure

be just, because there is no proof that this assumption of a great name was anything more than part of the plan of the work; and it would be, or, at least, if we had all the circumstances before us, it might be, as absurd to charge the writers of these Sacred Books with forgery, because they wrote in the names of Solomon or Daniel, as to apply the term to Cowper's verses on Alexander Selkirk, or Burns's address to the army at Bannockburn, because those poems were not written by Selkirk or Robert Bruce, in whose mouths they are placed.

In all these questions, the first and chief duty of the critic is to judge without respect of persons; to deal the same measure to the Book of Isaiah that we deal to the Psalter, — to the Book of Daniel that we deal to the Book of Wisdom. The books of Scripture only suffer from being subjected to requirements which we have ceased to apply to the books of common literature. Biblical critics must be called to decide whether the 137th Psalm is of the age of David or of the Captivity; whether the Book of Daniel should be ascribed to the age of the Captivity or of the Maccabees; whether the Book of Wisdom was written at Jerusalem or at Alexandria. But, in the interests alike of truth and of charity, it is much to be desired, that Religion should not be staked on the issue; and that those who submit their understandings to what seem to them the facts of the case should be allowed to do so without being exposed to the charge of wilful blindness or of impious presumption. "The Faith can receive "no real injury except from its defenders." "No book can be "written in defence of the Bible like the Bible itself;" and, therefore, whilst we know that the eternal and essential elements of Religion cannot be affected by any critical investigations, we shall eagerly welcome any light which can be thrown on the structure or the meaning of the Sacred Books, which have already gained so much from a closer study of their contents.

prophecies of Gog and Magog, Jabesh-Gilead, 12, 34, 38.