His tender sympathies were often tried by the personal unkindness or spiritual faithlessness of his friends. Divisions were introduced into the Methodist societies; some of his followers became Calvinists or Moravians, and were taught to turn from their spiritual father as a false prophet; others embraced fatal errors, and abandoned the profession and practice of the common faith. On such occasions, the poet's wounded spirit soared to the healing fountain. In the volumes of 1739 are a number of hymns on the "Loss of his Friends: Take these broken reeds away! On the Rock of Ages, I Now on Christ alone rely; Every other prop resign, Sure the sinner's friend is mine. Fly, my friends, with treacherous speed; Leave me to my God alone, While I thus my soul recline On my dear Redeemer's breast, With such sublime consolations did the Christian soothe his own afflicted spirit and the spirits with him to that altitude of faith. fort, the perfect rest of his life, he state: of as many as could rise But for the enduring comlooked beyond the present Come, Finisher of sin and woe, And spend, contemplating thy face, The last poem ever written by his own hand, "a little before his death," possesses a peculiar interest. The fire of his youth is gone, but the grace and sweetness are still present; it is now the subdued language of one full of years and earthly experience, who only desires to fulfil his Maker's will and depart in peace: How long, how often shall I pray, Davidson's Introduction to the Old Testament. 397 Again, I take the words to me So shall I render thee thine own, Oh that the joyful hour were come, Where angels chant the song of love; The glories of the heavenly Lamb! The He died March 29th 1788, in his eightieth year. epitaph placed over his remains had been written by himself for another: With poverty of spirit blest, Rest, happy saint, in Jesus rest; A sinner saved, through grace forgiven, By thee forgot, are crowned above;- ART. IX.-Davidson's Introduction to the Old Testament.* An Introduction to the Old Testament, critical, historical, and theological, containing a discussion of the most important questions belonging to the several books. By SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D.D., LL.D. 3 Vols. 8vo., pp. 536, 492, and 192. 1862-3. UPON the appearance of the tenth edition of Horne's Introduction, six years ago, we felt called upon to notice particularly the volume relating to the Old Testament, which was prepared by Dr Davidson. At the conclusion of that notice we remarked: "The principles avowed or covertly insinuated in this volume will legitimately lead much further than the extent to which they are actually pursued. There is no logical consistency in going so far as Dr Davidson does, and stopping * Slightly abridged from the Princeton Review, January 1864. VOL. XIII.-NO. XLVIII. C C there." The volumes before us amply justify this language. Almost every page might be cited in evidence that the author has found his old position of compromise between orthodoxy and unbelief to be untenable, and has exchanged it for another more consistent with his radical principles. It is not so much our present purpose to subject the merits or demerits of this treatise to examination, as to deduce from it a few illustrations of the processes and results of the "higher criticism," as practised by our author and the school to which he has addicted himself. In order to accomplish this in the most coherent and intelligible manner, we shall restrict ourselves to his discussion of a single book of Scripture. And with this view we have selected the prophecy of Isaiah, both from its intrinsic interest and from its affording a fair specimen of the whole. In 1856, we were told that the entire book which bears the name of Isaiah was the genuine production of the prophet, not excepting the four historical chapters, xxxvi.-xxxix., which, though not incorporated with his prophecies by himself, were extracted from another work written by him. Now we are informed, that, out of the sixty-six chapters, but twenty-three, together with a few scattered verses, have proceeded from Isaiah. At the former date, Dr Davidson tells us in his preface, "he had not reached his present maturer views. He did what he could under the circumstances and with the knowledge he had at the time." "The circumstances in which he was placed," i. e, as Professor of Biblical Literature in an Independent College, "were averse to the free expression of thought. A man under the trammels of a sect, in which religious liberty is but a name, is not favourably situated for the task of thoroughly investigating critical or theological subjects." "Harsh-minded theologians," he adds, "who have inherited a little system of infallible divinity, out of which they may excommunicate their neighbours, will not understand such development." We are glad to be thus expressly excluded at the outset from a class, which our author so violently and repeatedly reprobates, for we fancy that we do understand his development exactly, and, assuming his point of departure, we think it the most natural thing in the world. We lay no stress upon his having previously attributed the first chapter "to the reign of Hezekiah," whereas he is now "inclined to refer it to the reign of Ahaz." And it is of slight consequence that adopting, as before, the hypothesis that the passage common to Isaiah (ii. 2-4), and to Micah (iv. 1–3), was borrowed by both from an older prophet, he now retracts his former confident assertion, "that older prophet was not Joel," and thinks it a "probable" "conjecture that he was Joel." Dr Davidson's "Development" in Six Years. 399 His change of mind in regard to the sixth chapter is more deserving of note, on account of the reason upon which it is professedly based, and which reveals the secret of more considerable and serious alterations yet to come. He had formerly said, "The sixth chapter is ascribed in the first verse to the year of Uzziah's death, and there is no reason with various critics for supposing it to have been written later. The most natural interpretation is that which refers to the very commencement of the prophet's entrance upon office, as describing his original inauguration." Now he says, "It refers to the inauguration of the prophet, but was not composed at the time; for he could not then know that his addresses would only tend to aggravate the guilt of the people, because they would be treated with neglect. The experience of the prophet in his intercourse with his fellow-countrymen had made him acquainted with their stubborn unbelief; and the reflection of such experience appears in the composition. Hence we must assume an interval of time between his induction into office and the writing of the prophecy." There is more involved in this language than might at first sight appear. It is not purely a question whether a given chapter was committed to writing a few years earlier or later; it concerns the integrity of the prophet and the possibility of prophetic prediction. If the reason given is valid against the writing of the vision in the year that king Uzziah died, it is equally so against its being received at that time. Isaiah's word is discredited, he is charged with declaring that a vision was granted him upon his inauguration to the prophetic office, which he could not possibly have had; and this when his original auditors were still able to testify whether or no they had heard it from his lips at that early period. And the decisive argument is, "he could not then know" what had not yet taken place. We do not here care to argue with the Doctor, that even upon his own principles the honesty of the prophet might have been spared. Thus he admits, ii. p. 464, that "certain events in the immediate future are sometimes foretold with great confidence, so that the prophets must have been sure that they would take place without doubt, in precise harmony with the announcement. Authentic oracles of this nature, though rare (?), are an evidence that an influence superior to human sagacity pervaded the spirits of the prophets." Again we read, iii. p. 69: "The Old Testament seer never projected his vision into the far distant future, so as to be able to predict events there, or describe persons beforehand with infallible certainty. . . . The near, not the remote, was the limit of prophetic foretelling. This is now acknowledged by all who understand the genius of prophecy." The reception of the prophet's message by his countrymen, certainly belongs to the near and not to the remote future; and if he allows, as he says that he does, the possibility of a revelation which may disclose the former before it becomes apparent to the unaided human understanding, why may not this have been included within "the limit of prophetic foretelling?" Whence then his certainty that this could not bave been known in advance of experience? In fact, even upon a lower theory of prophecy than this, the correctness of his conclusion might be disputed. Even if the prophets' "allusions to the future were the product of human wisdom," and their "experience" "enabled them to glance correctly into the future, because they drew from the past and present the proper materials for their survey," a view which he pronounces "untenable" and "defective in leaving out the divine element," ii. p. 464, why might not the past and present obduracy of the people have been such, that the prophet could confidently anticipate its continuance in the future? Waiving all discussion of the point at issue, however, we simply wish two things to be distinctly observed as exhibited in the case before us, as well as in all that are to follow. First, it is upon his own avowal fundamental to the higher criticism, as Dr Davidson understands and practises it, that no prophecy can have been uttered prior, or none at least long prior to the event to which it relates. The dogma of the impossibility of prediction, in its strict and proper sense, is decisive of the date of every alleged prophecy, irrespective of all other considerations. Secondly, his confident and often-repeated assertions, that there are in fact no real prophecies in the Old Testament, are wholly based upon a logical circle. Thus, ii. p. 460: "Wherever definite predictions having special details occur, particularly in relation to times, it can be shewn that they are supposititious, or that the whole prophecy is spurious." And p. 462: "In no place or prophecy can it be shewn that the literal predicting of distant historical events is contained." Fix the date of each prophecy in detail, on the assumption that prediction is impossible, and the general conclusion will inevitably follow. He might in the same way have demonstrated any other principle that he set out to prove, no matter what it was. The next six chapters also exhibit traces of "development," which are here referred to, not so much from their inherent consequence, as from their betraying a general tendency. Chap. vii. retains the date formerly assigned to it in the inva sion of Judah, during the reign of Ahaz, by the confederate kings of Ephraim and Syria. "The date of the piece is about 742, hardly later." Chaps. viii.-xii., from being "only about |