committee, and the Rev. Herbert Welch, of 455 Washington Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., was made secretary. All the members of the committee, and the chairman and secretary in particular, will be glad to receive hints and suggestions upon this matter from their brethren in any Conference, especially those Conferences which are using any advanced and progressive methods of examination. I desire to note certain defects in the system at present in use in our own and many other Conferences.

1. Incompetent examiners. Oftentimes men wish to be put upon examining committees for no other reason than the honor implied in such an appointment. In consequence of this, it is common to find examiners who are incompetent. It is obvious that the examiners ought in every way to command the respect of the candidates, both in regard to general scholarly attainments and to their familiarity with, and taste for, the special topics under their charge.

2. Utter absence of proper instructions. Under the present system a student buys or borrows his books, reads and studies them alone as best he can, and comes up to Conference without the remotest idea of the method his examiners will pursue. Only too often he finds that the examiner has an entirely different idea of a book from his own, and he makes a poor showing or an utter failure on a topic he has tried faithfully to master. Frequently the candidates would even be glad to know whether they are to have an oral or written examination.

3. Haste in conducting examinations. A committee has been known to examine a class on a whole year's studies in a session of about three hours. Sometimes only one question is asked each student out of a large and important book. This makes the examination something like a lottery, as an admirable student might easily fail on one question, and a very poor student might get the one thing he happened to know in all the book. But an examiner who likes to make thorough work of his subject is often urged to hurry by his fellow-examiners, who are impatiently waiting for their turn. This trouble is made worse by the nervous condition in which most candidates come to Conference. Another difficulty comes from the growing tendency to double up examinations. This occurs in the securing of earlier ordination as local preachers, and in the cases of those who avail themselves of the recent permission to theological graduates to double up their examinations.

The favorite remedy for the second and third of these defects is found in the device of the Itinerants' Club. The only objection to this is the difficulty of working it. If the examiners and candidates can be brought together in midyear and go through a part of their work, if the candidates can receive instruction in regard to the remainder, much will be gained. But the difficulties in doing this are very great. It is hard for busy men to find the time. In these days, when even Conferences are beginning to pay the board of their members, it is hard to find a place for the gathering. Perhaps it is the hardest of all for the young men, most of whom are on small salaries, to find money for the expenses of the trip. In a general way this article represents our committee; but for any 53-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XI.

specific thing in it, especially anything which may cause adverse criticism, only the present writer is responsible. I also wish, as not even indirectly representing any person except myself, to offer for the consideration of my brethren the following plan, hoping that its defects may be remedied and its merits brought out more clearly by their criticisms.

PLAN FOR CONDUCTING CONFERENCE EXAMINATIONS.

I. 1. There shall be a general examining board, consisting of twentyfour members of the Conference and elected by it. After the first election these examiners shall be divided into four classes, to serve respectively for one, two, three, and four years. As the term of each class expires the Conference shall elect six members to serve for four years, and shall fill vacancies reported at any session of the Conference. The board itself shall have power to fill any vacancy in the membership when necessary to arrange for examinations held before the Conference meets. This board shall have

charge of the examinations of all candidates for membership or orders, both traveling and local, except that examinations not in the English language shall be assigned to special committees. If a candidate has passed satisfactorily in any study he shall be excused from examination in that study if it occurs again in another course which he also pursues.

2. The board shall choose a president and secretary from its members, and shall divide all its examinations into departments, assigning enough members to each department to properly care for its work. In making such assignments they shall consider taste and abilities for special work.

3. When an examiner knows the candidates for examination in his department it shall be his duty, during the year, to give them some information in regard to his views of any books in the department and the way in which they should be studied in preparing for the examination.

4. The president of the board shall generally superintend the work of dividing the board into departments and the method of conducting the examinations. The secretary shall keep an accurate record of the examinations and the standing of candidates. The president and secretary are, however, to be examiners in at least one study.

II. 1. The regular examinations shall be held at the session of the Conference, and every candidate shall at that time be examined in at least one half the studies of his year.

2. When any candidate wishes to be examined in a study during the year he may arrange for a meeting with the examiner in such study, and the examiner shall report such examination to the secretary of the board for record and presentation to the Conference.

3. In case the examiner and candidate cannot arrange for a meeting the examiner may send an examination paper to some member of the Conference residing near the candidate, and the candidate may read such paper and write his answers to it in the presence of the member of the Conference, who shall then send the papers to the examiner; and he shall report the result to the secretary as before. FRANK S. TOWNSEND.

Waterbury, Conn.

ARCHEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL RESEARCH.

DAVID AS A PSALMIST.

Or late years unusual attention has been given to a minute study of the Psalter. Destructive criticism, having spent its force on the historical and prophetical books, has taken in hand to depress the date of this venerable collection by several centuries, so as to make every psalm, not simply post-Davidic, but post-exilic as well. Professor Robertson Smith, though, perhaps, holding that some of the psalms were written by the poet-king, yet informs us, notwithstanding the fact that tradition declares David to be closely connected with the early psalmody of Israel, that "there is little direct evidence to support this conviction." The reason for depressing the date of the Psalms is not far to seek. It is the natural outgrowth of the Pentateuchal or Hexateuchal discussion. If it can be proved that the first six books of the Old Testament were written several centuries after the Exodus, and that the advanced legislation, the complete code of morals, and the lofty tone of religious feeling pervading these books were impossible in the age of Moses or till after the time of David, it will aid materially in demonstrating that the ascription of the grandest and sublimest lyrics of the ages to David and his contemporaries is an unmistakable anachronism. “Church hymns,” says Cheyne, "like our Psalms cannot be imagined even in the age of Deuteronomy "—that is, in the seventeenth century before Christ. This learned author assures us, with oracular certainty, that there are only two indubitably Davidic compositions in the entire Old Testament, namely, 2 Sam. i, 19–27; iii, 33–34. Thus, with one stroke of his mighty pen the sweet singer of Israel is unceremoniously pushed aside from Hebrew psalmody. "Putting aside," says he, "Psalm xviii and possibly lines imbedded here and there in the later psalms, the Psalter, as a whole, is post-exilic."

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Cheyne, in common with many rationalistic writers, reduces the poetking to a man of war occupying a low spiritual level. He was not "a Church leader, like Zoroaster;" though gifted in music, he was not a psalm writer, for David's fame, we are assured, "rested chiefly upon his secular poetry." He further assures us that neither David nor even Isaiah could have dreamed of Church hymns such as those contained in the Psalter. Then follows the modest admission that he "cannot divide sharply between the age of David and, say, of Isaiah." But, nothing daunted, he adds, "The latter is no Christian, nor is the former a heathen." Kuenen, as might be expected, also maintains that the Psalms, with their sublime teachings so full of the ethical and religious, must be post-Davidic; "for the religion of David was far below the level of the Psalter." Even Driver, perhaps the most conservative of this school, finds it difficult not to feel that many of the psalms ascribed to David "ex

press an intensity of religious devotion, a depth of spiritual insight, and a maturity of theological reflection beyond what we expect from David or David's age." The burden of the above words is to show that whoever wrote the Psalms must have lived centuries later than David. Why? Because the Psalter presupposes the law. The Pentateuch having been already depressed until at least the time of Ezra, it is necessary to assign an equally late, if not much later, date to the Psalms. Else much of the argument relied upon to prove the late origin of the Pentateuch would be sadly weakened, if not wholly invalidated. This must not be, for it would require a reconsideration of the Pentateuchal question. The Psalter, this oldest of all hymnals, is "the response of the worshiping congregation to the demands made upon men in the law." It is the same old story. The development of literature, no less than of religion, demands a late origin for the Psalms. This radical criticism starts from false premises. Therefore, its conclusions are naturally untrustworthy. It assumes that *Israel was not capable of deep communion with God till about the Babylonian captivity, or, indeed, according to the more radical, ages later. Hence the effort of Cheyne and others to assign late dates to every book in the Old Testament.

(ers.

These same critics likewise unite in insisting that only a very small number of the psalms are the expression of the thoughts and prayers, the hopes and faith, the sorrows and anxieties of the individual soul. They must be regarded, rather, as the experiences of "many men and of many ages of the national life." They are the experiences, not of a separate soul here and there, but of the united Jewish Church. The individual, even though he may speak in the first person, as the "I" or "me," does so as representing or personifying the entire community of pious worshipNow, what is gained by this view? Our critics insist that, if it can be shown that the individual element is crowded out, then the Psalms become "national, rather than individual, and must, therefore, belong to an age in which the nation had been welded closely together, an age in which there was unity of thought and unity of aspiration. That this age did not precede the captivity is clear." Granting that the psalmist generally spoke as a representative of the community, we are utterly unable to see why this should prove the post-exilic origin of the Psalms, or how ît could overthrow the Davidic origin of every psalm in the collection. It is folly to argue that David's experience was not such as to call forth the outbursts of anguish and despair, of praise and prayer, of joy and exaltation in all and every psalm bearing his name. It is equally groundless to contend that his age could not have produced such gems as the Eighth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-third Psalms. The age of David, with its struggles and trials, with its revival influences under Samuel and his colaborers, and with its glorious triumph, was as well calculated as any period in Jewish history to call forth the highest type of religious truth, all aglow with pious fervor and religious enthusiasm. We need, therefore, not depress the date of the Psalms to the less spiritual times of Persian rule or Maccabean revolution.

Again, is it not a fact that all great writers reflect, more or less, the spirit of their times? Thus, while breathing out their loftiest sentiments, they are merely the spokesmen of the entire people. The individual is swallowed up in the nation. This is true of all literature. The beautiful hymns of Luther and Gerhardt, of Wesley and Watts, though at first the expression of the innermost thoughts and desires of these holy men, have nevertheless something in them that is exceedingly appropriate for believing souls everywhere. So of the matchless songs of David. Though written nearly three thousand years ago on the hills of Judea, they still find a ready response in the heart and innermost soul of the pious, whether on the banks of the Thames or the Congo, whether on the slopes of the Himalayas or on the steppes of Russia. This is because the wants of the human soul thirsting for communion with its Maker are the same everywhere and in all ages. Trials and privations, difficulties and persecutions, aspiration for higher life and communion with God were certainly as common in the age of David as in any age before the advent of our Saviour.

The fatal mistake of this radical school of Old Testament critics is to premise that the sentiments contained in what are generally called the Davidic psalms are of too lofty a nature for the age of David. They are unwilling to open their eyes to the recent discoveries in archæology, which prove most conclusively the advanced stage of civilization at a time long anterior to the reign of David. The monuments of Egypt prove clearly that the world in the times of Moses, yea, long before his time, enjoyed a very high degree of culture, much higher than our radical friends are willing to admit. Late discoveries have agreed in a wonderful manner with the history as given in the Old Testament. Away, then, with the idea that the Hebrew Scriptures are made up of fanciful legends, to be believed or rejected as it suits our purposes. The Old Testament takes it for granted that the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hittite empires were very powerful in the distant past. The settlement of Egypt is lost in hoary antiquity; but, go back far as we may, we find traces and evidence of much culture among this ancient people. Says Professor Wiedemann, of the University of Bonn, in his recent treatise, The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul: "As far back as Egyptian history has been traced the people appear to have been in possession, not only of written characters, national art and institutions, but also of a complete system of religion. As in all other departments of Egyptian life and thought, so with Egyptian religion-we cannot trace its beginnings. What greatly intensifies the deep interest of Egyptian eschatology is that it testifies to the fact that a whole nation believed in the immortality of the soul four thousand years before the birth of Christ." And if the Egyptians were thus early advanced in their religious ideas, why not the Israelites ?

These dwellers of the Nile valley were not a hermit nation, shut up by themselves, for it has been clearly established that there was intercourse between the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates centuries before Abraham-