NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 585 



centuries, and should keep them in happy ignorance of the re- 

 forming spirit of the sixteenth and the scientific spirit of the 

 nineteenth century. 



The new college thus founded bore the name of the poet most 

 widely beloved among high churchmen; large endowments 

 flowed in upon it; a showy chapel was erected in accordance 

 throughout with the strictest rules of medieval ecclesiology. As 

 if to strike the keynote of the thought to be fostered in the new 

 institution, one of the most beautiful of pseudo-niedireval pictures 

 was given the place of honor in its hall, and the college, lofty and 

 gaudy, loomed high above the neighboring modest abode of Ox- 

 ford science. Kuenen might rage in Holland, and Wellhausen in 

 Germany, and Robertson Smith in Scotland even Professors 

 Driver, Sanday, and Cheyne might succeed Dr. Pusey as ex- 

 pounders of the Old Testament at Oxford but Keble College, 

 rejoicing in the favor of a multitude of leaders in the Church, 

 including Mr. Gladstone, seemed an inexpugnable fortress of the 

 older thought. 



But in 1889 appeared the book of essays entitled Lux Mundi, 

 among whose leading authors were men closely connected with 

 Keble College and with the movement which had created it. 

 This work gave up entirely the tradition that the narrative in 

 Genesis is a historical record, and admitted that all accounts in 

 the Hebrew Scriptures of events before the time of Abraham are 

 mythical and legendary ; it conceded that the books ascribed to 

 Moses and Joshua were made up mainly of three documents rep- 

 resenting different periods, and one of them the late period of the 

 exile; that "there is a considerable idealizing element in Old 

 Testament history"; that "the books of Chronicles show an 

 idealizing of history" and "a reading back into past records of a 

 ritual development which is really later," and that prophecy is not 

 necessarily predictive "prophetic inspiration being consistent 

 with erroneous anticipations." Again a shudder went through 

 the upholders of tradition in the Church, and here and there 

 threats were heard ; but the Essays and Reviews fiasco and the 

 Colenso catastrophe were still in vivid remembrance. Good sense 

 prevailed, and Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, instead of 

 prosecuting the authors, himself asked the famous question, 

 " May not the Holy Spirit make use of myth and legend ?" * 



In the sister university the same tendency was seen. Robert- 

 son Smith, who had been driven out of his high position in the 



* Of Pusey's extreme devotion to his view of the book of Daniel there is a curious evi- 

 dence in a letter to Stanley in the second volume of the latter's Life and Letters. For the 

 views referred to in Lux Mundi, see pages 3-i5-S5 f J ; also, on the general subject, Bishop 

 Ellicott's Christus Comprobator. 



