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Rh the J.-E. document naturally belongs; (2) to the reforming reign of Josiah and centralization of cultus we may securely refer Deuteronomy; (3) after the exile, when all traditions had been fatally uprooted, we find the natural opportunity for priestly innovations.

From these data the important inference is drawn that the history of the Hebrew religion is not a supernatural exception to the law of evolution, but that it is a perfectly natural and ordinary growth. This point is, of course, the rock that divides the stream of criticism; but, if we take a purely scientific estimate of the three documents, in that character and of that period which the vast majority of the critics assign to them, we are constrained to regard them as marks of the successive stages through which the religion has passed. The early narrative depicts a period without priest, or temple, or ritual—if it does not indeed lead us back to a pre-monotheistic period, as the "advanced" critics maintain; Deuteronomy marks an early stage of the growth of sacerdotalism, and of the decay of religion; the later writing describes the complete inauguration of an elaborate ritual and hierarchy. Every religion, even Christianity, has had a similar growth; to scientific critics, unembarrassed with doctrinal prepossessions, the unveiling of Israel's growth was but a confirmation of an anticipation which general principles had led them to form. Unfortunately for historical science, it was brought once more into conflict with an important religious doctrine; Christendom was already convinced that Hebrew religion had not been a natural growth, but that its fabric had been revealed and ordained by Jehovah amid the thunders of Sinai, and its principles committed to writing and partially carried out (especially in the creation of the Aaronic priesthood) by Moses himself. That belief has been completely undermined; even orthodox critics (such as Robertson Smith) admit that the religious institutions of the Hebrews have been a gradual growth, the centralization of worship a natural development, the rise of the Aaronic family to power a secondary growth out of the institution of Levites in the wilderness. They maintain that this process has been presided over and directed by an all-ruling providence, and "a triumph of spiritual religion over opposing forces;" that, therefore, no real doctrinal sacrifice is involved in its