By Prof. Richard G. Moulton, Ph. D.; the Rev. John P. Peters, D. D.; Prof. A. B. Bruce, D. D., and others. With an introduction by the Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D. Published by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York.

      This book, of which I gave a brief announcement a few weeks ago, is the joint product of twenty-one writers, all men of prominence in literary and religious circles. They write, every one on a separate portion of the Bible, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation. Thirteen essays are devoted to the Old Testament and seven to the New. As the book contains only 375 pages, the essays are all comparatively short. It is commended to the public by writers of a certain class in such terms as to indicate that they esteem it of great value; and the publishers' slip which accompanies the specimen copies closes with the statement, "The book can be warmly recommended to all Sunday-school and literary classes." It may be regarded, then, as an attempt to popularize the views respecting the Bible entertained by its chief promoters and contributors. While this effort is being made, it becomes the duty of thoughtful men who have at heart the religious welfare of young people to inspect it very carefully, and to pass judgment on its merits.

      There are many persons now, of limited reading in Biblical literature of the past few centuries, or possessed of convenient memories, who speak and write as if the fact that the Bible is literature, was a new discovery now being brought before the public for the first time. There is nothing more deceptive. The literary merits of the Bible and the special literary excellencies of the several [184] writers have been known, and have been held up to public admiration in all the literary ages of the past. What college graduate now fifty years old does not remember reading in his Greek course the essay on "The Sublime," written by Longinus, a Greek writer of the third century A. D., in which he quotes, as one of the finest extant specimens of sublimity in writing, a passage from the first chapter of Genesis? From the time of Longinus to this day, it would be easy to produce an almost continuous line of writers who have pointed out the literary features of the Bible for the admiration of their readers. This has been done to some extent even by the most prosaic of the commentators. What, then, is the meaning of this new emphasis on the subject which displays itself as a fresh discovery? It means simply this, that certain men have learned to look upon the Bible as the mere national literature of the Hebrews, comparable to the national literature of other ancient peoples, excelling these chiefly, if not only, in the fact that it emanated from a people who worshiped only one God, but not excelling them in truthful representations respecting the earliest times. The contributors to this volume--at least those whose essays refer to Old Testament books--are all advocates of the "new criticism," and one has to read no further than the introduction to see that it is intended, under the disguise of setting forth the literary characteristics of the Bible, to instill into the minds of its readers as settled facts the disputed conclusions of recent German unbelievers. I can not occupy here the space necessary to support this statement by quotations, though I may do this hereafter; but I wish to say as emphatically as I can that Sunday-school and literature classes, instead of being warmly advised to study the book, should be very warmly advised to shun [185] it, until a better knowledge of the Bible than they now possess shall enable them to read it without detriment to their faith.

[SEBC 184-186]