o
pause_ before going with the strong, deep stream.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL QUOTED.

Let me quote a few sentences from the Duke of Argyll's paper:--

THE WORK OF THE SPADE.

"The assumption ... that precision in research is undermining the credit
of the Hebrew Scriptures, is a presumption almost comically at variance
with fact. There is, in particular, one 'weapon of precision' which has
of late been working wonders in precisely the opposite direction. That
weapon is the spade. And what has it been unearthing? Everywhere over
that narrow strip of our planet on which its human interests have been
most impressive and profound--everywhere from Tyre and Sidon, from
Carmel and Lebanon, on the west, to Babylon and Nineveh and the boundary
mountains of Assyria on the east--the spade has been disentombing
continuous and triumphant proof of the genuine antiquity and historical
character of the Jewish books.... Only the other day Mr Flinders Petrie
has told us how the spade has uncovered those impregnable walls of the
Amorite cities which were reported to invading Israel by the spies of
Moses....

"I may be permitted to express a very strong opinion that in recent
years Christian writers have been far too shy and timid in defending one
of the oldest and strongest outworks of Christian theology. I mean the
element of true prediction in Hebrew prophecy. It may be true that in a
former generation too exclusive attention had been paid to it.... But
the reaction has been excessive and irrational. A great mass of
connected facts, and of continuous evidence, remains--which cannot be
gainsaid. Even if the greater prophets can be brought down to the very
latest date which the very latest fancies can assign to them, they
depict and predict overthrows and vast revolutions in the East which did
not take place for centuries" (pp. 28, 30).[6]

[6] "Professor Huxley speaks of the hopeless position of Christian
divines 'raked by the fatal weapons of precision with which the _enfants
perdus_ of the advancing forces of science are armed.'... Perhaps he
means the small arms of the modern critical school. If he does, then
precision is the very last characteristic which belongs to it. Its
methods are largely subjective. Here and there it may have a clearly
ascertained fact to rest upon. Here and there it may have arrived at
some tolerably secure results. But in the main its methods are
metaphysical, resting on nothing but individual preconceptions