haracter. This explains the discrepancies
in their histories, and also in the discourses and doctrines of Jesus.
The miracle that took place at the baptism of Christ was a pure myth;
and the resurrection and reappearance of Christ have their existence
more in the mind than in history. With this view of the New Testament,
it is not surprising that the Old should receive even more rigorous
usage. The larger part of the Pentateuch was supposed to be taken from
two old documents, the Elohistic and Jehovistic, and was compiled
somewhere near the close of the legal period. The five books, purporting
to have been written by Moses, are the Hebrew epic, and contain no more
truth than the great epic of the Greeks. As the Iliad and Odyssey are
the production of the rhapsodists, so is the Pentateuch, with the
exception of the Decalogue, the continuous and anonymous work of the
priesthood. Abraham and Isaac are equally fabulous with Ulysses and
Agamemnon. A Canaanitish Homer could have invented nothing better than
the journeys of Jacob and the marriage of Rebecca. The departure from
Egypt, the forty years in the wilderness, the seventy elders at the head
of the tribes, and the complaints of Aaron are each an independent myth.
The character of myths is varied in different books; poetic in Genesis,
juridical in Exodus, priestly in Leviticus, political in Numbers,
etymological, diplomatical, and genealogical, but seldom historical, in
Deuteronomy.

De Wette's theological novel, _Theodore, or the Doubter's Consecration_,
1822, was designed to banish the doubts of the skeptic by seeking refuge
in the theology of feeling. Tholuck replied to it in his _Guido and
Julius_, in which he proves that a deep appreciation and acceptance of
Christ by the soul is the only remedy for infidelity. "We perceive in De
Wette a continual conflict between the longings of his heart and the
theological creed to which he attached himself. The lines written by
him just before his death touchingly declare the great failure of his
life:

"I lived in times of doubt and strife,
When child-like faith was forced to yield:
I struggled to the end of life,
Alas! I did not gain the field."

With the name of the lamented Neander we hail the morning light of
reviving faith. He was one of the purest characters in the history of
the modern church. His influence was so great as to lead very many of
the young men of Germany to embrace the vital doct