586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Free Church of Scotland on account of his work in scriptural 

 research, was welcomed into a professorship at Cambridge, and 

 other men, no less loyal to the new truths, were given places 

 of controlling influence in shaping the thought of the new gen- 

 eration. 



Nor did the warfare against biblical science produce any dif- 

 ferent results among the dissenters of England. In 1862 Samuel 

 Davidson, a professor in the Congregational College at Manches- 

 ter, published his Introduction to the Old Testament. Independ- 

 ently of the contemporary writers of Essays and Reviews, he had 

 arrived in a general way at conclusions much like theirs, and he 

 presented the newer view with fearless honesty, admitting that 

 the same research must be applied to these as to other Oriental 

 sacred books, and that such research establishes the fact that all 

 alike contain legendary and mythical elements. A storm was at 

 once aroused ; certain denominational papers took up the matter, 

 and Davidson was driven from his professorial chair ; but he la- 

 bored bravely on, and others followed to take up his work, until 

 the ideas which he had advocated were fully considered. 



So, too, in Scotland the work of Robertson Smith was con- 

 tinued even after he had been driven into England, and, as vota- 

 ries of the older thought passed away, men of ideas akin to his 

 were gradually elected into chairs of biblical criticism and inter- 

 pretation. Wellhausen's great work, which Smith had intro- 

 duced in English form, proved a power both in England and 

 Scotland, and the articles upon various books of Scripture and 

 scriptural subjects generally, in the ninth edition of the Encyclo- 

 paedia Britannica, having been prepared mainly by himself as 

 editor or put into the hands of others representing the recent 

 critical research, this very important work of reference, which 

 had been in previous editions so timid, was now arrayed on the 

 side of the newer thought, insuring its due consideration wher- 

 ever the English language is spoken. 



In France the same tendency was seen, though with striking 

 variations from the course of events in other countries varia- 

 tions due to the very different conditions under which biblical 

 students in France were obliged to work. Down to the middle of 

 the nineteenth century the orthodoxy of Bossuet, stiffly opposing 

 the letter of Scripture to every step in the advance of science, had 

 only yielded in a very slight degree. But then came an event 

 ushering in a new epoch. At that time Jules Simon, afterward 

 so eminent as an author, academician, and statesman, was quietly 

 discharging the duties of a professorship, when there was brought 

 to him one day the visiting card of a stranger bearing the name of 

 " Ernest Renan, Student at St. Sulpice." Admitted to M. Simon's 

 library, Renan told his story. As a theological student, even 



