Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/101

 in which the spiritual insight of the Church has judged more wisely than the learning of the schools. We know that deeper influences than the legalism and institutionalism of P's manifesto—necessary as these were in their place—were at work in the post-Exilic community: the individualism of Jeremiah, the universalism of the second Isaiah, the devotion and lyric fervour of the psalmists, and the daring reflexion of the writer of Job. And to these we may surely add the vein of childlike piety which turned aside from the abstractions and formulas of the Priestly document, to find its nutriment in the immortal stories through which God spoke to the heart then, as He speaks to ours to-day.