I PROLOGUE 23 



tical corporation to which they belong ; but I feel 

 bound to take their word for it, that they are 

 " stewards of the Lord, who have- received the Holy 

 Ghost," and, therefore, to accept this memorial as 

 evidence that, though the Evangelicism of my early 

 days may be deposed from its place of power, 

 though so many of the colleagues of the thirty-eight 

 even repudiate the title of Protestants, yet the 

 green bay tree of bibliolatry flourishes as it did sixty 

 years ago. And, as in those good old times, whoso 

 refuses to offer i ncense to the idol is held to be guilty 

 of " a dishonour to God," imperilling his salvation. 

 It is to the credit of the perspicacity of the 

 memorialists that they discern the real nature of 

 the Controverted Question of the age. They are 

 awake to the unquestionable fact that, if Scripture 

 has been discovered " not to be worthy of un- 

 questioning belief," -faith "in the supernatural 

 itself" is, so far, undermined. And I may con- 

 gratulate myself upon such weighty confirmation 

 of an opinion in which I have had the fortune to 

 anticipate them. But whether it is more to the 

 credit of the courage, than to the intelligence, of 

 the thirty- eight that they should go on to pro- 

 claim that the canonical scriptures of the Old 

 and New Testaments " declare incontrovertible 7 

 the actual historical truth in all records, both of 

 past events and of the delivery of predictions to 

 be thereafter fulfilled," must be left to the coming 

 generation to decide. 



