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the choice, not travel at all. Such well-bred camels, moreover, need special knowledge on the part of their grooms, and the British soldier has always cut a poor figure with camels unless natives are given direct control. The camel, though in ordinary circumstances more hardy than any other quadruped trained to the service of man, is subject to sudden collapse, and European veterinary lore has no remedy for such seizures. Not always, indeed, can natives avert a fatal termination. Some travellers are more fortunate than others in their experiences; but a single case of sudden death, with no substitute procurable for days, and the immediate problem of distributing the four hundredweight in the suarri of the latelamented, might well distress even the most resourceful. Camels' bones are plentiful enough by the trek, but never a living camel is to be had for love or money, and any of the survivors given so much as a pound above their capacity would simply kneel in the stony sand and decline to budge until the unearned increment had been removed. The camel's unerring instinct will thwart a too exacting employer more promptly than the most vigilant trades-union. The moral of such risks is clearly to load each beast in the caravan short of its maximum carrying power, with a view to allowing a margin for deaths by the way; but in an age of economy like the present such generous provision against possible defection would hardly commend itself to even the European.

The right-minded native would rate such foresight more heinous than simultaneous repudiation of all the articles of his creed.

The camel is no fair-weather servant. Friend it never is. Slavery and the camel reached Africa together, and they are inseparable institutions, for the camel obeys only the goad. As already indicated, its virtues are purely physical. The mind is of a low order. Kindness to camels would involve their attendants in considerable risks, for the camel's bite is something to be dreaded, and, although sometimes afraid to strike, it is never unwilling to wound. Were the animal in common use in this country, the R.S.P.C.A. would have either to make itself continually ridiculous or else to accept a special code of conduct for camel - drivers. Most of the creature's body is as insensible as its mind, and only the nervous muzzle carries the right message to its dull brain. A man might thwack the rest of the camel till he died of the exertion without eliciting more of response than he would from a beaten carpet. The knowledge of this weakness of the camel's muzzle is man's guarantee of dominion. The discoverer must have been a genius, and countless generations have reaped the reward of his research. A blow on the nose is the only way of averting the danger with which the boorish behaviour of camels on the highroad, and more especially in the narrow alleys, continually threatens inexperienced horsemen. It must be borne in mind that in a country like

Morocco, increasingly the property of the tourist, the saddle is the only means of getting about, and very inexperienced horsemen are more common than even at home. There is nothing in which a file of camels takes greater delight than collision with a whitefaced stranger mounted on a nervous barb, and there are barbs to which the scent of a stallion camel are as disquieting as the fumes of Tophet to a saint. They will prance and curvet and sideslip, and generally make a misery of their rider's life. The distress is not all of the body. Even if the average Moor is not perhaps the finished equestrian that romancers have made believe, yet the veriest yokel in that empire can sit a horse after a fashion, and the European, observed of all observers, keenly feels the shame of being unseated before the scornful natives who squat silent in the bazaars and merely spit their contempt as the unbeliever comes between the wind and their nobility. He may be a better all-round horseman than the more showy Arab in his powder play, though his nationality and his tailor conspire to make him unpicturesque and uncouth side by side with Eastern dignity and habiliment. Yet he is badly handicapped if his barb is shy of camels. The beasts come on in single file, swerving neither to right nor left, their sinister stupid faces looming nearer and more near, and he has but one chance of a dignified exit from an awkward predicament. As soon as he is within striking distance of the

leader, he must sit well down in the saddle, yet leaning slightly forward, an attitude sufficiently familiar on the polo - ground, then, just as the slavered jaws are darted in his direction, he firmly grasps the riding-crop and brings the handle sharply down on the muzzle, just above the cloven lip. The camel does the rest. For one instant perhaps the yellow teeth are bared; then discretion gets the better of valour, and the brute and its fellows digress, maybe into an open doorway on the off side, and talk matters over with the outraged janitor. He forthwith roars home - truths about their mothers, and the stranger mops the sweat from off his brow and rides on with thanksgiving.

Should the string of camels be headed by a little ass, either bestridden by a coal-black rider, or even trotting on its own initiative, all will go well, for the camels follow the ass with an obedience appropriate to their lower intellect, and the ass is comparatively a gentleman. In Morocco camels will be seen carrying only such unpicturesque merchandise as goat-skins bursting with the oil of olive or argan; but in Algeria there is fairer freight on the road. There the beasts sometimes bear elegantly embroidered canopies that conceal the wives of the wandering faithful from the offending gaze of the forsworn, who recite not the Koran, yet have an eye for a pretty woman when she is another man's property.

Useful, for all its ungentle nature, under so great a variety of conditions, it was only to be

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expected that the hardy Asiatic should extend its restricted range under man's protection. Yet it may perhaps be agreed that there should be limits to this State-aided immigration, and that Europe lies outside of them. In lands like Morocco and Arabia, where sand and scrub predominate, and where the conditions of life are such as would break the spirit of any self-respecting pack-horse, the camel has long been necessary of existence. Even in other regions of Africa and Asia, though not perhaps indispensable, it has done excellent work, and may add considerably to the comfort of the colonist. The same may be said of certain tracks of Australia and, nearer home, of Canaries, where its forebears were introduced by Jean de Bethencourt early in the fifteenth century. In Europe, however, in a setting of glad vineyards and well-timbered hills, the camel has no place. Its frame should be adversity. Algerian camels have been tried on French soil and were always found wanting. The Moors

the

introduced their favourite beast of burden into Spain, and, after a long tenure, the feral camels of Andalucia are no more. Tunisian camels were for years established at Pisa. They too are gone.

No: the camel is an Asiatic pure and simple, and, with other Asiatics, it has made itself thoroughly at home in the politically interesting strip of fertile land that separates the Atlas from the Mediterranean. It has always been recognised that herdsmen and their charges

approximate in character, and even in physique. There is an ovine simplicity about many a shepherd, and the driver of a bullock-team will display an unmistakable preponderance of beef over brain. In no case surely is this sympathetic modification so mutually apparent as between the Arab and his camel. The same stiff-necked obtuseness, the same contentment, with an amazing low standard of living, the same capacity for infinite laziness when given a free hand, and for infinite toil when driven, characterise the man and the brute. And the camel is as inveterate a fatalist as any worshipper that ever entered mosque. He takes the rough and the smooth with blackness maybe in his heart, but with the same calm acceptance of what was written. Perhaps some of what has been said here would be discounted in the light of a closer native sympathy, that would see better points in a brute that to European eyes is morally past redemption. Yet this article, too, is for European eyes, and so it may stand. The homebound traveller should be chary of bringing back a Moorish camel. When quite young, it may be sufficiently tractable for even a private garden, but in its full-grown stage it develops a degree of savagery that baffles even the authorities at the Zoo. A camel which the writer presented to that institution several years ago, lately became so violent that the superintendent had to destroy it. It nearly destroyed itself first.

BENEFACTORS

OR

BLASPHEMERS?

A HIGHER CRITICISM INQUIRY.

BY SIR ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B., LL.D.

RELIGIOUS problems may be viewed from the standpoint either of the spiritual Christian or of the honest-hearted man of the world. Writing for the pages of 'Blackwood,' it is from this second point of view that I propose to deal with certain great questions which now occupy public attention.

which Christianity can live in presence of that apostasy. It is to Christianity what the Navy is to commerce,—not a part of it, but a protection against dangers that would be fatal to it. Or if any one insists on a wider meaning for the term, then Protestantism dates from the Epistles of the This preface is not by way New Testament, in which inof an apology. For in view spired apostles warned the of the Reformation, no apology body of believers against any is needed for such a treatment departure from the faith on of religious questions. The the part of ordained officers Reformation had а twofold and accredited ministers of character. It was an in- the Church. "What, then, is tensely Christian movementthe greatest of all spiritual revivals. But it was also an intellectual and political revolt. Had it not been for the revolt -the man-of-the-world side of the Reformation-the Church would have entered on a campaign of blood and fire, that would have made short work of the revival. And it is this man-of-the-world movement to which the title of "Protestant" properly belongs. It reminds us of the brave men of the Diet of Spires, who, with armed forces at their back, declared against coercion in the spiritual sphere.

The "Protestant religion" is but a whitewashed version of the apostasy of Christendom. True Protestantism is not a religion, but a bulwark behind

Apollos? and what is Paul?” the greatest of the apostles demanded. And he gives the answer, "Ministers through whom ye believed" (1 Cor. iii. 5, Ř.V.). Believed what? Believed the divinely inspired "Word of God." And having thus believed, the converts were in such а real sense "brought to God," that they were charged with the responsibility of sitting in judgment upon the future teaching even of the apostles themselves. In this spirit it was that he wrote to the Galatians, "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you, let him be accursed.'

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It was not, of course, that they were to fling off apostolic authority as to their life.

These exhortations related to their beliefs, and to their beliefs in the sphere of fundamental and vital truth "once for all delivered." And as the Epistles of John and the second Epistle of Peter make emphatically clear, the errors warned against related specially and primarily to the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, His deity and His authority as a teacher.

This digression thus ends by leading me back to my special subject. For it is error of this character that is charged against the movement known

as

the "Higher "Higher Criticism." And this question I propose to discuss from what I have called the man-of-theworld point of view. Nothing, indeed, is further from my purpose than to take sides with so-called "orthodoxy" against the fullest and freest criticism of the Bible, if only it be fair and intelligent and reverent. The standard of orthodoxy, moreover, is "the teaching of the Church." And as the Thirty-nine Articles insist, Churches have erred and may err, and they have no authority to coerce faith. More than this: the apostolic injunctions already cited make it a duty to resist "the Church" if its teaching clashes with Scripture. Therefore, as every Protestant is a heretic in esse, so every true Christian is a heretic in posse.

I cannot refrain from adding that the present revolt against faith has been stimulated and embittered by the narrowness and blindness of Evangelical orthodoxy. I say this reluctantly, but I say it with em

VOL. CLXXVI.—NO. MLXVIII.

phasis and feeling; for I myself was at one time drawn toward scepticism by this very influence. And my escape was mainly due to my turning away from creeds and theologies to an earnest, sustained, and independent study of Holy Scripture.

But here and now, my aim is merely to subject the new critics to criticism of the kind to which they subject "the Biblical writers." I write, not as a Christian for Christians, but as a man of the world for men of the world. Not that I assume my readers are not Christians, but it is not as Christians I am addressing them. If I appeal to the Bible, it will be as to a classic with which all educated people are familiar. Beyond this I ask my readers to use, not their Bibles, but their brains.

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A "test case will serve to explain and illustrate my position. 'The Nineteenth Century and After' boasts of being the exponent of the highest culture of our day. The July number contains a brief article on "The Virgin Birth." If, the writer declares, the Fourth Gospel be the work of the apostle John, "the truth of the story of a miraculous birth must be altogether discarded." For, he adds, "the writer of it had no knowledge of His miraculous and divine birth.” I meet this statement by merely setting out the opening sentences of the Fourth Gospel. Here are the well-known words:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the 2 M

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