I PROLOGUE 25 



patriotic romance of the second century B.C. ; 

 that the words of the writer of the fourth Gospel 

 are not always to be distinguished from those 

 which he puts into the mouth of Jesus. Conser- 

 vative, hut conscientious, revisers decide that 

 whole passages, some of dogmatic and some of 

 ethical importance, are interpolations. An uneasy 

 sense of the weakness of the dogma of Biblical 

 infallibility seems to be at the bottom of a 

 prevailing tendency once more to substitute the 

 authority of the " Church " for that of the Bible. 

 In my old age, it has happened to me to be taken 

 to task for regarding Christianity as a " religion 

 of a book " as gravely as, in my youth, I should 

 have been reprehended for doubting that proposi- 

 tion. It is a no less interesting symptom that 

 the State Church seems more and more anxious 

 to repudiate all complicity with the principles of 

 the Protestant -Reformation and to call itself 

 " Anglo-Catholic." Inspiration, deprived of its 

 old intelligible sense, is watered down into a 

 mystification. The Scriptures are, indeed, in- 

 spired ; but they contain a wholly undefined and 

 indefinable " human element " ; and this unfortu- 

 nate intruder is converted into a sort of biblical 

 whipping boy. Whatsoever scientific investigation, 

 historical or physical, proves to be erroneous, the 

 "human element" bears the blame; while the 

 divine inspiration of such statements, as by their 

 nature are out of reach of proof or disproof, is 



