I have before me a small but neatly printed volume, entitled "The Prophets of Israel," by Professor Cornill, of the University of Konigsberg. He is frequently quoted as an authority by our American advanced critics. It is said in the preface to his little book that "Prof. Carl Heinrich Cornill is an orthodox Christian. He holds the chair of Old Testament history in the venerable University of Konigsberg." He is a representative German critic of the new school; so I want to introduce him to our readers by a few choice extracts from his book on the prophets.

      The Israelitish narrative, as it lies before us in the books of the Old Testament, gives a thoroughly one-sided, and in many respects incorrect, picture of profane history, and on the other hand an absolutely false representation of the religious history of the people, and has thus made the discovery of the truth almost impossible (p. 2).

      If this statement is true, I should like to know the sense of having in the "venerable University of Konigsberg" a professor of this "absolutely false history." Why not also have a professor of "Gulliver's Travels"? I should say that "an orthodox Christian" is on a fool's errand when he devotes his time to lectures on such a book as that.

      These German critics do not often make a confession of ignorance, and, when they do, it is ignorance about something which they ought to know. Cornill makes such a confession in the following passage:

      And now I must make an admission to you which it is hard for me to make, but which is my fullest scientific conviction, based upon the most cogent grounds, that in the sense in which the historian speaks of knowing, we know absolutely nothing about Moses. All original records are missing; we have not received a line, not even a word, from Moses himself, or from any of his contemporaries (17).

      The question now arises, Why did the authorities of the venerable University of Konigsberg put into the chair of Old Testament history a man who is such an ignoramus as to know absolutely nothing about Moses? As well have an agnostic to lecture on the being and attributes of God.

      But scarcely do you turn a leaf in Cornill's book until [371] you read of things that Moses did. These statements culminate in this:

      By giving Israel a national Deity, Moses made of it a nation, and cemented together by this ideal band the different heterogeneous elements of the nation into a unity. Moses formed Israel into a people. With Moses and his work begins the history of the people of Israel (26, 27).

      And this is the Moses of whom this knowing professor knows absolutely nothing!

      It is different with reference to Ahab. This notorious apostate is better known to Cornill than he is to the Bible historian:

      Ahab, owing to his conflict with Elijah, is ranked among the Biblical miscreants--but as unjustly so as Saul. Ahab was one of the best kings and mightiest rulers that Israel ever had, esteemed and admired by both friend and foe as a man of worth and character (29).

      As the Israelitish history gives an "absolutely false representation of the religious history of the people," I suppose that Cornill learned all this about Ahab by taking the writer's account of him as the opposite of the truth. There are some men so given to lying that the opposite of what they say is apt to be the truth. The Bible writers, with Cornill, belong to this class. On this principle he not only praises Ahab, but he smirches the reputation of Elijah by saying:

      Elijah was no opposer of Baal on grounds of principle (31).

      On Elisha he has no mercy at all. He says:

      Elisha had learned from his predecessor's example that nothing could be achieved with spiritual weapons; he became a demagogue and conspirator, a revolutionist and agitator (34).

      And still we wonder how a man who knew absolutely nothing about Moses, could know so much about Ahab [372] and Elijah and Elisha. We wonder, especially, how he knew so much that isn't so. And we wonder, more and more, why "the venerable University of Konigsberg" wants a man in its faculty to lecture about a book so full of lies as the Old Testament.

      Perhaps these are enough addled eggs for me to gather out of Cornill's nest at one time. Their odor is not very refreshing. If he passes in Germany for "an orthodox Christian," I am not going over there to study orthodoxy.

[SEBC 370-373]