738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



religious and moral truths thus disengaged from the old masses 

 of myth and legend are all the more beautiful and serviceable, 

 and that all individual or national life of any value must be 

 vitalized by them.* 



Nor should there be omitted a tribute to the increasing justice 

 and courtesy shown in late years by leading supporters of the 

 older view. During the last two decades of the present century 

 there has been a most happy departure from the older method of 

 resistance, first by plausibilities, next by epithets, and finally by 

 persecution. To the bitterness of the attacks upon Darwin, the 

 Essayists and Reviewers, and Bishop Colenso, have succeeded, 

 among really eminent leaders, a far better method and tone. 

 While Matthew Arnold, no doubt, did much in commending 

 " sweet reasonableness " to theological controversialists, Mr. Glad- 

 stone, by his perfect courtesy to his opponents, even when smart- 

 ing under their heaviest blows, has set a most valuable example. 

 Nor should the spirit shown by Bishop Ellicott, leading a forlorn 

 hope for the traditional view, pass without a tribute of respect. 

 Truly pathetic is it to see this venerable and learned prelate, one 

 of the most eminent representatives of the older biblical research, 

 even when giving solemn warnings against the newer criticisms, 

 and under all the temptations of ex cathedra utterance, remaining 

 mild and gentle and just in the treatment of adversaries whose 

 ideas he evidently abhors. Happily, he is comforted by the faith 

 that Christianity will survive ; and this faith his opponents fully 



share, f 



Thus at last, out of the old conception of our Bible as a collec- 

 tion of oracles a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful in 

 wrangling interpretations, which have given to the world long 

 and weary ages of " hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness," of 

 fetichism, subtlety, and pomp, of tyranny, bloodshed, and sol- 

 emnly constituted imposture, of everything which the Lord Jesus 

 Christ most abhorred has been gradually developed through the 

 centuries, by the labors, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of a 

 long succession of men of God, the conception of it as a sacred 

 literature, a growth in obedience to divine light in the mind and 

 heart and soul of man. No longer an oracle, good for the " lower 



* For plaintive lamentations over the influence of this atmosphere of scientific thought 

 upon the most eminent contemporary Christian scholars, see the Christus Comprobator, by 

 the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, London, 1893, and the article in the Contemporary 

 Review for May, 1892, by the Bishop of Colchester, passim. For some less known exam- 

 ples of sacred myths and legends, inherited from ancient civilizations, see Lenormant, Les 

 Origines de l'Histoire, passim, but especially chapters ii, iv, v, vi. See also Goldziher. 



f As examples of courtesy between theologic opponents may be cited the controversy 

 between Mr. Gladstone and Prof. Huxley, Principal Gore's Bampton Lectures for 1891, and 

 Bishop Ellicott's Charges, published in 1893. 



