Some of the teaching of the Higher Criticism as to the authorship and credibility of the Old Testament¹ is, on the face of it, contrary to the plain language of Jesus Christ himself in the Gospels. Moses, for instance, is no longer considered as the author of the Pentateuch. Canon Driver, who is perhaps the chief scholar of this movement in the Church of England, as Dean Farrar is perhaps its chief rhetorician, locates the composition of the book of Deuteronomy in the period between Isaiah and Jeremiah. Throughout the book, he observes, the writer introduces Moses in the third person, and puts speeches in his mouth which of course he never uttered. But in "framing discourses² appropriate to Moses' situation!" he was not guilty of "forgery," for he was "doing nothing inconsistent with the literary usages of his age and people." That is to say, everybody did it, and this writer was no worse than his contemporaries—which is probably true. But passing by the question of casuistry here involved, we repeat that the Mosaic³ authorship of the Pentateuch is entirely⁴ abandoned. Dr. Farrar is quite as emphatic⁵ as Dr. Driver on this point. He denies that there is "any proof of the existence of a collected Pentateuch earlier than the days of Ezra (b.c. 444 )"—a thousand years after the time of Moses. He points out that the salient features of the so-called Mosaic Law, such as the Passover, the Sabbatical year, and the Day of Atonement, are not to be traced in the old historical books or in the earlier prophets. Nor does he scruple⁶ to assert that the Pentateuch is "a work of composite structure," which has been "edited and re-edited several times," and "contains successive strata⁷ of legislation." In the New Testament, however, Moses is repeatedly spoken of as the author of the Pentateuch.* Not to multiply texts, for in such a case one is as good as a thousand, we will take a decisive passage in the fourth Gospel:—

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