[I may here add a word or two upon some of the critical conclusions reached in Vol. I., which have been recently contested. The student will find strong grounds offered by Canon Driver in his _Joel and Amos_[1] for the authenticity of those passages in Amos which, following other critics, I regarded or suspected as not authentic. It makes one diffident in one’s opinions when Canon Driver supports Professors Kuenen and Robertson Smith on the other side. But on a survey of the case I am unable to feel that even they have removed what they admit to be “forcible” objections to the authorship by Amos of the passages in question. They seem to me to have established not more than a possibility that the passages are authentic; and on the whole I still feel that the probability is in the other direction. If I am right, then I think that the date of the apostrophes to Jehovah’s creative power which occur in the Book of Amos, and the reference to astral deities in chap. v. 27, may be that which I have suggested on pages 8 and 9 of this volume. Some critics have charged me with inconsistency in denying the authenticity of the epilogue to Amos while defending that of the epilogue to Hosea. The two cases, as my arguments proved, are entirely different. Nor do I see any reason to change the conclusions of Vol. I. upon the questions of the authenticity of various parts of Micah.] The text of the nine prophets treated in this volume has presented even more difficulties than that of the three treated in Vol. I. And these difficulties must be my apology for the delay of this volume.