22 PROLOGUE I 



with the knowledge essential to the right 

 guidance of life (and who sincerely desired to do 

 so), imagined they were discharging that most 

 sacred duty by impressing upon my childish mind 

 the necessity, on pain of reprobation in this world 

 and damnation in the next, of accepting, in the 

 strict and literal sense, every statement contained 

 in the Protestant Bible. I was told to believe, 

 and I did believe, that doubt about any of them 

 was a sin, not less reprehensible than a moral 

 delict. I suppose that, out of a thousand of my 

 contemporaries, nine hundred, at least, had their 

 minds systematically warped and poisoned, in the 

 name of the God of truth, by like discipline. I am 

 sure that, even a score of years later, those who 

 ventured to question the exact historical accuracy 

 of any part of the Old Testament and a fortiori of 

 the Gospels, had to expect a pitiless shower of 

 verbal missiles, to say nothing of the other dis- 

 agreeable consequences which visit those who, in 

 any way, run counter to that chaos of prejudices 

 called public opinion. 



My recollections of this time have recently been 

 revived by the perusal of a remarkable document, l 

 signed by as many as thirty-eight out of the 

 twenty odd thousand clergymen of the Established 

 Church. It does not appear that the signataries 

 are officially accredited spokesmen of the ecclesias- 



1 Declaration on the Truth of Holy Scripture. The 2\mcs 9 

 18th December, 1891. 



