isconceptions, overlaying and blending
with each other like close-piled geologic strata. Pious intent of the
original writers, shaping their facts to suit their theories--later
assumptions of inspiration and infallibility in the records--theologic
systems quarried and built out of these materials--the supposed
dependence of the most precious faiths of mankind upon these misreadings
of history,--all these influences, with the lapse of time, have buried so
deeply the original facts, that the exhuming and revivifying of the true
story, or at least a tolerable similitude of its main lines, has imposed
a gigantic task upon modern scholarship. Of the results of this
scholarship, we may give here only a kind of shorthand memorandum.

The Old Testament as a whole, with precious exceptions, can only by a
great stretch of imagination be claimed as an integral part of "_the_
book of religion"--the title which Matthew Arnold asserts for the entire
Bible. The phrase can scarcely be applied to the Old Testament, unless
it be read through a medium surcharged with association and
prepossession. Much of its morality has been outgrown; many of its early
stories are revolting to us: much, of which the inner meaning is at one
with our deepest life, is disguised under phraseology wholly alien to our
modern thought and speech. As a manual of devotion, or as a textbook for
the young, the Old Testament can never again fill such a place as it
filled to our fathers. But we can still trace in it many of the upward
steps of the race, and there are portions which still hold a deep place
in the affections of the truly religious.

The mind at certain stages personifies the Deity with the greatest ease
and naturalness. The primitive man interprets the whole world about him
by the analogy of his own activity. He sees in all the phenomena of
nature the presence of personal beings,--beings who act and suffer and
enjoy and love and hate as he does himself. The sky, the sun, the wind,
the ocean, represent each a separate deity. Next, each clan, or city, or
nation, comes to regard itself as under the patronage of one of these
deities. The national god of the Israelites, at the earliest time we
know them, bore the name of Yahveh,--a name more familiar to us under the
form Jehovah. Originally he was probably the god of the sun and fire.
His acts were seen everywhere, his motives guessed. The heat and light
of the sun--now illumining, now fructify