Christian conception the peril comes from man to himself, the salvation comes from God for man, through God's act of self-sacrifice. The history of sacrifice in the Old Testament is the history of the process by which the pagan conception was transformed into the Christian conception; the Levitical Code is the bridge by which Israel passed over from the pagan belief that sacrifice is a condition of forgiveness which God exacts, to the Christian doctrine that self-sacrifice is the method by which God confers forgiveness.

CHAPTER VII

HEBREW FICTION

THE suggestion that there are works of fiction in the Bible certainly at one time would have aroused protest, if not resentment, and it is possible that there may still linger in the minds of some a remnant of this feeling. It is largely due to two reasons. The first is an impression that the suggestion of fiction in the Bible has been invented by those who desire to eliminate from it the supernatural. Doubtless it is true that there are some critics who desire to eliminate the supernatural from the Bible, and who therefore seek to show that everything which seems to be supernatural is imaginative. This is not the scientific, it is not the literary, spirit.1 The true scientific spirit does not assume that there can be nothing supernatural in life; it studies life to ascertain

1 Dean Farrar's statement of his own position on this subject may be accepted as an admirable definition of the general position of all evangelical scholars of the modern or evolutionary school. He says: "I withhold my credence from no occurrence- however much it may be called 'miraculous' — which is adequately attested; which was wrought for adequate ends; and which is in accordance with the revealed laws of God's immediate dealing with man." The Bible, by F. W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S., p. 241.

what is in it. The truly literary spirit does not assume that there is nothing supernatural in literature; it studies literature to ascertain what is its character and what are the motive and purpose of each author. No literary critic would think of classifying the story of the resurrection of Jesus Christ among works of fiction or imagination. He might think the narrative incorrect, but he would not doubt that it belongs among historical works

that is, that the authors believed that they were narrating facts. The mere circumstance that an incident narrated in the Old Testament is extraordinary does not afford the slightest indication that it is fiction. The question whether any narrative is history or fiction is not identical with the question whether it is true or false. The literary classification of a narrative depends upon the motive of the author, not upon the accuracy of the narrative. The author of fiction gives free play to his imagination, and his work is not the less fictitious because he interweaves some historical truth with his imaginative narrative; the historian assumes to narrate facts, and his work is history despite the fact that he may be misled into the most serious errors in his narrative. Herodotus is a writer of history; although Macaulay assures us that "he is from the first to the last chapter an inventor." Dumas is a writer of fiction; although his editor affirms that "contemporary authority can be cited for every anecdote or incident not directly connected with the distinctively romantic

portions of the narrative." The question whether any particular narrative in the Old Testament— the Book of Jonah, for example — is history or fiction is not to be determined by considering whether the book contains extraordinary events, but by considering the question whether its general spirit and structure are such as to justify the belief that the author thought himself narrating facts as they actually occurred, or whether he consciously gave a free rein to his imagination as he

wrote.

A second reason for the objection to the suggestion that there is fiction in the Bible is a remnant of a Puritan prejudice which everywhere except in its relation to the Bible has long since disappeared. The Puritans opposed all manifestations of the imagination. They destroyed the pictured windows in the churches; took down the pictures from the walls of the houses; broke in pieces the statues in the niches; closed the doors of the theatres and forbade the drama; and banished the works of fiction from their tables. No doubt some readers of this article can remember, in their own childhood days, how novels of every description were looked upon askance, if not with absolute reprobation, in their own circles. We have emerged into an epoch in which this banishing of the imagination is no longer permitted because it is no longer necessary. We admit the pictured windows to the churches; we hang pictures on the walls of our houses; we have replaced the statues even of

pagan deities in their niches, reopened the doors of the theatres, and novels lie on all our tables. In brief, we recognize the fact that imagination is a divinely given faculty, not to be suppressed, but to be freely used. Why, then, should we think it strange that God should have used the same faculty in the education of the Hebrew race? If to-day it is one of his instruments for the development of humanity, why should we think it impossible that in the olden time he should have inspired men to use their imagination for the moral and spiritual culture of the race?

In truth, the works of imagination have a very high and a very varied service to perform. Fiction is, in the first place, entertaining and gives rest. The little child, left alone at night by the mother, whispers softly to itself a story and so talks itself to sleep; when we have lost the imagination of our childhood, we ask some genius who still retains. it to tell us his story, that he may sweep out of our minds for a little while the cares and perplexities of our busy day, that in his narrative we may find rest and refreshment. Fiction is sometimes a valuable vehicle for the conveyance of instruction. It is true that there are critics who say that a work of imagination never should be didactic; but who would banish from literature Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," or " Oliver Twist," or "Put Yourself in His Place" because they are didactic? Some of the greatest of our novelists have written for the purpose of illustrating truth, moral, religious, or