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stories. For him the stories are alive with the ideals and struggles of man's soul; this is the content of prophecy, and the Jews actually called a large part of their historical literature by the name 'prophecy' (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings). The stories are for the man of religion to be compared with the parabolic teaching of our Lord. There is an artistry in parable or allegory that carries the living truth across from soul to soul. It may leap across the space of 1800 years and lose but little energy; and not much more is lost in a leap of 2700 years. Professor Jordan shows us how to make a devout use of criticism. It is the religion of a struggling growing life that engages his attention.

Hermann Gunkel of the University of Giessen has written a good deal on this theme and has illustrated the advantages of his method by such studies as those of Elijah and the Genesis narratives. No one has done the same for English readers. Alexander Whyte's Bible Characters are vigorous and most illuminating studies: they draw the veil so that you see deep into Whyte's own experience. Some of Dr. A. B. Davidson's sermons show the ripe fruits of the method. It is fortunate for those to whom the duty of public interpretation falls-we may remember that our Lord gives his Church 'pastors and teachers', apparently not 'preachers' (Ephesians 4: 11-13)-it is fortunate to find so skilful and experienced a guide as Dr. Jordan. He has been a rare expositor. Prophecy, psalm, parable are willing to yield up their meaning to him. In most men's company they may be taciturn; but Dr. Jordan is like a tried and understanding friend-they speak freely with him.

The first sixty pages are devoted to a general discussion of the expositor's use of Old Testament story. The rest of the book (more than three-quarters of the whole) is occupied with the treatment of the main stories. Eight are taken from Genesis; the ninth is the story of Moses. The adventure of settlement in Canaan provides five memorable incidentsthose connected with the names of Achan, Deborah, Gideon, Samson, Micah. In these the dramatic movement involves none but elemental traits of character. The treatment of

Samuel, of Saul, and especially of David, has to be broader

and more complex; the material is so abundant and varied. One is glad to see that Dr. Jordan rescues David's royal person from the frivolous judgement of recent casual historians. Uriah's wife is but an episode in the story of a great life; Bathsheba has dazzled others besides David. In the later stories, of Ruth, of Job, of Jonah and Nehemiah, of Daniel and Esther, the austere figure of Elijah towers above all the rest-a moral giant, and a biographer to match him.

Knox College.

RICHARD DAVIDSON.

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VOL. XXX

January, February, March, 1923

No. 3

SIR DOUGLAS HAIG'S COMMAND

Sir Douglas Haig's Command, December 19, 1915-November 11, 1918. By G. A. B. Dewar and Lieut.-Colonel J. H. Boraston, C.B. Constable, London, Two vols., 42s.

We had imagined that the question as to the high capacity of Sir Douglas Haig to command the British Armies in France during a period of unparalleled strain and through the most vital crisis of our history had been finally and absolutely settled. We had thought of him as a man who had the faculty of kindling in those who knew him best an admiration that stopped little short of idolatry; we knew him to be a fine Christian gentleman, of sterling strength of character, simple in his tastes, loyal to his friends, capable of holding silence under extreme provocation and vexatious meddling; we conceived him as a product of a certain pre-war school and of a somewhat stereotyped English social environment, slow in the reception of new ideas and unskilful in readjusting his mental horizon to their necessary assimilation, who fought a good fight with the weapons that lay to his hand, and who finished his course by sheer dogged persistence and tenaciousness, who committed tactical errors of the very gravest consequence, and never revealed the requisite qualities of scientific imagination necessary in modern warfare; we imagined him as a good, decent man struggling, at the advice of a Staff unaccustomed to think in terms of European conflicts or on a colossal scale, with forces themselves rendered immobile by their very complexity, and who, being responsible for the disastrous failures of the Somme and of Passchendaele, gladly accepted Foch as Generalissimo, was given a definite task against the broken armies of Germany, and carried out with preponderating force and weight of arms, tanks and ammunition, his final share in the operations of the last four months of the war with credit and success. It seems, however, that we were

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