that is, about 1000 B. C., to the time of the captivity, that is, about 600 B. C., the history is contained in two narratives, parallel in time but very different in spirit—the First and Second Books of Kings and the First and Second Books of Chronicles.

Thinkers may be roughly divided into two great types, one of which lays emphasis on truth, the other on organization. The first, fixing its attention on truth, forgets that to be efficient in society truth must be embodied; the second, fixing its attention on the mediating organization, forgets the truth which alone can vitalize it. Men of the first type, having no objective standard, often make a standard of their own personal opinions; indifferent to the coöperation of their fellow-men and strenuous in their own opinions, they refuse to compromise the latter to gain the former; and thus become irreconcilables and impracticables. Men of the second type, overestimating the force of numbers and of authority, and underestimating the force inherent in moral principles, too readily yield principles to gain recruits. They may, indeed, be quite ready to sacrifice self to truth, but they are too ready to sacrifice truth to organization. Lacking a standard in themselves, they seek it in the body to which they have attached themselves. In philosophy the first type of man is always a moral reformer, generally an independent, often a doctrinaire. His loyalty to his own convictions is strong; his loyalty to party is slight. The second

seeks to carry moral reform only so far as he can carry it through a political organization; he is generally an opportunist; he sometimes degenerates into what is called a "machine politician." In religion the first has faith, but no creed: he worships, but without a ritual; he is religious, but unchurchly. When organization meant the Church of Rome, he was a Protestant; when it meant the Established Church, a Puritan; when it meant Presbyterianism, an Independent; and when it meant Congregationalism, a "Come-outer." The second is always a Churchman, though he may be a Roman Churchman, an Anglican Churchman, a Presbyterian Churchman, or a Congregational Churchman. He is a defender of creeds, of the established order, of the ancient traditions- or, if he is inclined to reform, he will not carry reform so far as to break with the traditions of the past or the recognized authorities of his own ecclesiastical organization. In the history of the world the first is interested in the progress of ideas, the second in the development of institutions. Is he a historian? the first writes the story of popular life, the second that of institutional life. John Richard Green, writing the history of the English people, represents the first; Lord Macaulay, measuring all events by their relation to Whig principles and policies, or Lord Clarendon, measuring them by their relation to the Royalist principles and policies, represents the second.

This distinction is apparent upon even a most

cursory comparison of the Books of Kings and of Chronicles. The Book of Chronicles really one book in two parts-is written by an ecclesiastic who identifies the religion of the Hebrew people with its churchly forms. His history is essentially Levitical in contents and in spirit - the history of Jerusalem, of the Temple, and of the Temple ordinances. National events are measured by their relation to the institutions of religion. When the separation of the before-united kingdom takes place, and the ten tribes form a nation by themselves in northern Palestine, leaving Jerusalem in the hands of the southern tribes, the author of Chronicles does not include them in his subsequent history, for they have no Temple, no Levitical priesthood, no orthodox ritual; to him, therefore, they are to all intents and purposes as pagans. Even the intensely religious and dramatically romantic lives of Elijah and Elisha do not concern him; they are in the northern kingdom, and they are unrelated to the ecclesiastical institutions of Hebraism. On the other hand, he gives in great detail the organization of the hierarchy, the furnishing of the Temple, the genealogies of the tribes, lists of the cities of the Levites, and makes much of the glory of Solomon, the builder of the Temple, and nothing of his decadence and fall. The Book of Kings for this also is one book in two partsis as distinctly prophetic as the parallel history is priestly in its character. "The writer records the fulfillment of the promises which God had made to

David and his line. A son was to succeed David whose kingdom should be established of the Lord, who should build a house for the Name of Jehovah, and to whom God would be a Father and from whom the name of the Lord should not depart.1 To show that this prophecy was fulfilled is the object of the Book of Kings, and what does not conduce thereto is passed over by the compiler with little notice."2 It is he alone who tells the story of Elijah and Elisha, he alone who records the influence of Isaiah in the reforms of Hezekiah, he alone who, in telling the story of Josiah's reform, indicates the extent to which the pollutions of the Temple and the priesthood had been carried in the previous reign of Manasseh. Each deals with the nation as the people of God; but to the one the divine life is centred in the ecclesiastical organization, to the other that life is manifested in the activity of the prophets, who belong to no order and are representatives of no organization. So marked is the difference between the two narratives that some scholars have attributed the Book of Chronicles to Ezra, the Book of Kings to Jeremiah; it is certain that the one is continued without a break, except a purely formal one, in the history of Ezra ; it is equally certain that the other is pervaded by the spirit, not of the Levitical code,

1 2 Sam. chap. vii.

2 Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, Book of Kings, Introduction, p.

χχίν.

but of the prophetic law contained in the Book of Deuteronomy.1

The modern scholar, seeing these two types of history, the priestly and the prophetic, in the later historical books of the Bible, has looked for and found them in the earlier books, though woven together into a single strand. The priestly narrative and the prophetic narrative, apparent to the casual English reader, in the form of our English Bible, from the reign of David to the Captivity, appear scarcely less evident to the modern literary student of the Bible in the historical narrative from the creation of the world to the time of David. In his analysis of the composite narrative the modern student may be sometimes mistaken; but that there were originally two such narratives, and that the two have been united in the one narrative which we now possess, is regarded by all scholars who apply literary and scientific methods to the study of the Bible as beyond all question.

In the first century after Christ, Tatian constructed a harmony of the Gospels which is known

1 "Jewish tradition assigns the authorship of Kings to Jeremiah. Modern criticism neither unreservedly accepts nor wholly rejects this ascription." Canon F. C. Cook, Bible Commentary. "The recurrence of the final passage of our present copies of Chronicles at the commencement of Ezra, taken in conjunction with the undoubted fact that there is a very close resemblance of style and tone between the two books, suggests naturally the explanation, which has been accepted by some of the best critics, that the two works, Chronicles and Ezra, were originally one and were afterward separated." Ibid.