INTRODUCTION.

HOW IS OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM RELATED TO CHRISTIANITY?

The point of view represented in this volume is still so little recognised and represented in England and America that the author ventures to prefix a short paper delivered as an address at the Church Congress held at Reading in October 1883. It is proverbially more difficult to write a thin book than a thick one, and the labour involved in preparing this twenty minutes' paper, with its large outlook and sedulously under-*stated claims, was such as he would not willingly undertake again for a like purpose. The subject was not an ephemeral one and the attitude of the Churches towards it has not materially altered within the last three years. The present volume is pervaded by the spirit which breathes, as the author trusts, in every line of this paper. It relates, indeed, only to a small section of the Old Testament, but no part of that 'library' (as mediæval writers so well named it) can be studied in complete severance from the rest. And if a high aim is held forward in one of the opening sentences to the Church of which the writer is a son, those who are connected with the other historic communions will easily understand the bitter-*sweet feeling of hope against hope with which those lines were penned.

'My own conviction,' said the late Dr. Pusey, 'has long been that the hope of the Church of England is in mutual