502 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



by the captivity. 1 It follows, then, that he was 

 verbally inspired to misquote. If St. Stephen 

 was inspired to misquote, why may not the Deu- 

 teronomist have been inspired to misreport? 



But this is not all. A distinguished living 

 clergyman told me that he considered the strong- 

 est passage in the Bible to be one where God, by 

 the mouth of Jeremiah, disowned the entire cere- 

 monial law. 2 The explanation of this passage 

 probably is, that Jeremiah, like Ezekiel, felt that 

 the Mosaic law contained statutes which, accord- 

 ing to the moral standard of his own age, " were 

 not good;" but that, whereas Ezekiel concluded 

 that those unworthy statutes were given by God 

 penally, Jeremiah more rationally concluded that 

 they were not given by God at all. At any rate, 

 Jeremiah's statement is incompatible with the 

 divine authorship of the Pentateuch. How, then, 

 is it to be reconciled with Christ's observance of 

 the Passover, and his injunction to " offer the 

 gift that Moses commanded ? " I refrain from 

 pressing this difficulty. Enough has been said to 

 explain why it is that, on the approach of sound 

 criticism, the orthodox landmarks, which but late- 

 ly seemed so steadfast, are one by one being re- 

 moved. 



A Greek sage once laid down three rather 

 sweeping propositions : 1. Nothing exists. 2. 

 If anything exists, it may not be known. 3. If 

 anything exists and may be known, the knowl- 

 edge may not be communicated. Now, if in 

 these propositions for " thing " be substituted 

 " good argument against orthodoxy," they will be 

 found to correspond with three objections com- 

 monly urged against inquiries like the present. 

 With the first class of objectors — those who de- 

 ny the existence of plausible arguments for ra- 

 tionalism — we have already dealt. There remain 

 the other two sets of objectors. There are those 

 who maintain that such plausible arguments ex- 

 ist indeed, but exist only to try our faith ; the 

 fruit of this tree of knowledge should be es- 

 chewed on pain of death. And there are those 

 who complain that, in imparting to them this 

 fruit, we have made them unhappy, and have 

 driven them, as it were, out of paradise : we 

 have taken away their Lord, and they know not 

 where we have laid him. This last objection 



1 Acts vii. 43. This practice was after the manner 

 of the age. In Isaiah ix. 12, the LXX. did not scruple 

 to render "Philistines" by^'EXA^ey, their object being, 

 according to a high authority, to make the prophecy 

 refer to the Ptolemies and Seleucidje. (See Mackay's 

 " Progress of the Intellect.") 



* Jeremiah vii. 22. 



shall be discussed first, and very briefly. That 

 the popular creed is in itself not a happy one, we 

 have shown. Indeed, the application of the 

 name " Gospel " to a system containing such 

 doctrines as the imputation of Adam's guilt — 

 "th' enormous faith of many" damned "for 

 one " — may be called the irpwrov iJ/eGSos of or- 

 thodoxy : insomuch that it is the Christian Uni- 

 versalists who are on the side of the angels ; and this 

 time it is the popular theology which, in repre- 

 senting itself as having received from the angels 

 the glaring misnomer of good tidings of great 

 joy, suggests what is little short of blasphemous. 

 Still, although that theology is in itself a very 

 Kakangel, there is no doubt that by many the 

 KaKayyeXros &XV is unfelt. Our " sister while 

 she prays " is generally able to enjoy " her early 

 heaven, her happy views," and blissfully to ignore 

 her early hell and most depressing views. And 

 this is a reason against heedlessly airing modern 

 opinions in general conversation, when one's 

 hearer is almost at one's mercy. But it is not 

 a reason against putting forth those opinions in 

 writings, which no one is compelled to read. 

 Moreover, the orthodox, who practise self-decep- 

 tion as to the unsound portions of their creed, 

 will find their task daily more difficult, and there- 

 fore more demoralizing. As was said in a former 

 article, "the bracing intellectual air that we now 

 breathe will bring the latent diseases of our re- 

 ligion out ; " and perchance, if we limit overmuch 

 the action of that bracing air, it will work un- 

 mixed harm — it will have time to bring the dis- 

 eases out, but not time to cure them. It is on this 

 account that too mild a treatment of those dis- 

 eases may be perilous to the entire body of Chris- 

 tian sentiment and practice — not merely to the 

 letter that killeth, but to the spirit that giveth 

 life: if thine hand or thy foot offend thee, says 

 the Scripture, cut it off. And thus, when we ex- 

 horted Christians manfully to renounce the devil 

 and all his angels, and to drop hell out of the 

 Bible, we acted under a conservative impulse : 

 for we doubted whether to Christianity itself the 

 presence of those nether flames, if they are suf- 

 fered to go on smouldering, will be wholly free 

 from risk. Behold, how great a matter a little fire 

 kindleth ! 



The other objection is, in effect, that " man 

 is not made to question, but adore:" it is safer 

 to accept undoubtingly whatever our Bible or 

 Church tells us of God, even if the evidence for 

 those statements be inconclusive; nay, had the 

 evidence been conclusive, where would be the 

 room for our faith ? Of this faith unfaithful we 



