Taking the narratives as we have them, documents stamped with the hall-mark of the centuries, "declaring," as a body of clergymen proclaimed recently, "incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records, both of past events, and of the delivery of predictions to be thereafter fulfilled," we learn that Jesus accepted the accuracy of the sacred writings of his people; that he spoke of Moses as the author of the Pentateuch; that he referred to its legends as dealing with historical persons, and as reporting actual events. All these beliefs are refuted by the critical scholarship of to-day. We need not go to Germany for the verdict; it is indorsed by eminent Hebraists, officials of the Church of England. Canon Driver, Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, says that "like other people, the Jews formed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth and man"; that "they either did this for themselves, or borrowed from their neighbours," and that "of the theories current in Assyria and Phoenicia fragments have been preserved which exhibit parts of resemblance to the Bible narratives sufficient to warrant the inference that both are derived from the same cycle of traditions." If, therefore, the cosmogonic and other legends are inspired, so must also the common original of these and their corresponding stories be inspired. The matter might be pursued through the patriarchal age to the eve of the Exodus, showing that, here also, the mythical element is dominant; the existence of Abraham himself dissolving in the solution of the "higher criticism." As to the Pentateuch, the larger number of scholars place its composition, in the form in which we have it--older documents being blended therein--about the sixth and fifth centuries B. C. Jesus spoke of the earth as if it were flat, and the most important among the heavenly bodies. Knowledge of the active speculations that went on centuries before his time on the Ionian seaboard; prevision of what secrets men would wrest from the stars centuries hence--of neither did he dream. That Homer and Virgil had sung; that Plato had discoursed; that Buddha had founded a religion with which his, when Western activity met Eastern passivity, would vainly compete; these, and aught else that had moved the great world without, were unknown to the Syrian teacher.