As in our modern conflicts against the onesided inferences from physical investigations we are wont to say that the truths of nature cannot contradict those of revelation, both being of God, and as we are apt to regard as truths of nature what sometimes are only deductions from partially ascertained facts, and as truths of revelation what, after all, may be only our own inferences, sometimes from imperfectly apprehended premises, so the Hellenist would seek to conciliate the truths of Divine revelation with those others which, he thought, he recognized

in Hellenism. But what were the truths of Divine revelation? Was it only the substance of Scripture, or also its form, the truth itself which was conveyed, or the manner in which it was presented to the Jews; or, if both, then did the two stand on exactly the same footing? On the answer to these questions would depend how little or how much he would 'hellenise.

One thing at any rate was quite certain. The Old Testament, leastwise, the Law of Moses, was directly and wholly from God; and if so, then its form also, its letter, must be authentic and authoritative. Thus much on the surface, and for all. But the student must search deeper into it, his senses, as it were, quickened by Greek criticism; he must 'meditate' and penetrate into the Divine mysteries. The Palestinian also searched into them, and the result was the Midrash. But, whichever of his methods he had applied, the Peshat, or simple criticism of the words, the Derush, or search into the possible applications of the text, what might be 'trodden out' of it; or the Sod, the hidden, mystical, supranatural bearing of the words, it was still only the letter of the text that had been studied. There was, indeed, yet another understanding of the Scriptures, to which St. Paul directed his disciples: the spiritual bearing of its spiritual truths.