Conclusion.  

In drawing this discussion to a close, it seems proper to state, in a summary form, what the author seems to himself to have accomplished.  

After stating in the introduction the position of the parties to the discussion, and the exact issue between them, we have taken up, one by one, all of the evidences, from whatever source derived, which have been relied upon by the friends of the analytical theory as decisive proof of the late date which they , assign to the Book of Deuteronomy, and have carefully considered their merits. We have presented these evidences in the words of such scholars as have set them forth in their most convincing forms. We have not knowingly failed to present the arguments by which these evidences are enforced, in their full strength. We have aimed to look at them from every point of view. We have dealt with them as an antagonist, but not, as the author knows himself, with the desire or the willingness to take any unfair advantage of them. The subject has been on the author's mind as a subject of serious thought, and during long periods a subject of absorbing thought, for more than forty years. Nothing of special importance that has been written on either side in that time has escaped his notice. He considers himself, therefore, competent to express a judgment en the course of the argumentation, and he can not feel that he is egotistic in expressing the conviction that he has refuted in Part First of this work all of the arguments supposed to The decisive in support of the so-called critical theory of Deuteronomy. That the final decision of believing scholars will be against that theory he can not doubt.  

On the other hand, while the array of evidence in proof of the Mosaic authorship which has been presented, is not exhaustive, the author feels thoroughly convinced of its conclusiveness; and he will hereafter, as heretofore, implicitly trust the representation which the book makes of itself, and which is made of it by our Lord and his inspired apostles. I can afford to believe what the apostles believed, what Jesus believed, and be satisfied. Humbly trusting that this product of my profoundest study and my maturest years may be blessed of God to help my readers into the same satisfaction, I now, with a sigh of relief from a severe and long-continued mental strain, commit my work to the fate which the Disposer of all things has prepared for it.