"[His] work deals with the ancient writings....but...he ignores two small points- first that they are ancient, and, secondly, that they are writings."

....Mr. Baron's work deals with the ancient writings, on which he argues ingeniously enough, but about which he ignores two small points- first, that they are ancient, and, secondly, that they are writings. A man cannot comprehend even the form and language of the Psalms without a literary sense. For what are the essential facts? A great though rude and wandering people lived thousands of years ago who had, by what, from any point of view, may truly be called an inspiration, a sudden and startling glimpse of an enormous philosophical truth...the unity of creation. Opulent empires and brilliant republics all round them were still in the nets of polytheism, but this band...knew better. This is the immortality of the Jews. Them we can never dethrone: they discovered the one central thing no modern man can help believing...

This awful simplification of things they discovered, as it has since been discovered by innumerable sages. But their unique historic interest lies in this: that by a strange circumstance, that has every resemblance to a miracle, they discovered it in the morning of the world, in an age when men had and needed no philosophic language. Hence they threw it into poetical language. They spoke of this startling speculative theory with the same bold, brisk, plain-coloured imagery with which primitive ballads commonly speak of war and hunting, women and gold... But Mr Baron in attempting an estimate of the relation of the Jews to the Old Testament is merely interested in the theological and dogmatic side of the matter. He does not seem to be aware that the Bible is rather a fine book. He deals with the central interest of the whole matter the gradual emergence in Job and the Prophets of this sublime monism out of a tribal creed and still under the literary forms of a tribal poem but he does not seem to see it. He thinks like all conventional dogmatists that a sentence or two in the style of the Daily Telegraph will elucidate the style of Scripture which is as straightforward as a nursery rhyme. He really supposes that to say that God is not "under obligation" for an "animal sacrifice" contains all that is contained in such a daring simple unfathomable sentence as "If I were hungry I would not tell thee."

-March 2, 1901, The Speaker