A DEFENSE OF MODERN THOUGHT. 783 



does not profess that these doctrines can stand by themselves apart 

 from a belief in revelation. The issue between the bishop and those 

 whom he styles agnostics is not really as to these two abstract doc- 

 trines, but as to the validity of the whole miraculous system of which 

 his lordship is a responsible exponent. If we can imagine a person 

 simply holding, as the result of his own individual reasonings or other 

 mental experiences, a belief in God as a spiritual existence animating 

 and presiding over the works of Nature, and a further belief in a fu- 

 ture existence for the human soul, I do not see that there would neces- 

 sarily be any conflict between him and the most advanced representa- 

 tives of modern thought. No, the trouble does not begin here. The 

 trouble arises when these beliefs are presented as part and parcel of a 

 supernatural system miraculously revealed to mankind, and embracing 

 details which bring it plainly into conflict with the known facts and 

 laws of Nature. To detach these two doctrines, therefore, from the 

 system to which they belong, and put them forward as if the whole 

 stress of modern philosophical criticism was directed against them in 

 particular, is a controversial artifice of a rather unfair kind. 



We are reminded by the right reverend author that no chain is 

 stronger than its weakest link, and we are asked to apply the principle 

 to the doctrine of evolution, some of the links of which his lordship 

 has tested and found unable to bear the proper strain. The principle 

 is undoubtedly a sound one ; but has it occurred to his lordship that it 

 is no less applicable to the net-work of doctrine in which he believes 

 than to the doctrine of evolution ? Some links of that net- work are 

 snapping every day under no greater strain than the simple exercise of 

 common sense by ordinary men. It is a beautiful and well-chosen 

 position that his lordship takes up as champion of the doctrines of 

 God and immortality against " agnostic " science ; but it would have 

 argued greater courage had the banner been planted on the miraculous 

 narratives of the Old and New Testament. A gallant defense of the 

 scriptural account of the taking of Jericho, of the arresting for a some- 

 what sanguinary purpose of the earth's rotation, of the swallowing of 

 Jonah by a whale, and his restoration to light and liberty after three 

 days and nights of close and very disagreeable confinement, of the 

 comfortable time enjoyed by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in 

 the fiery furnace, of the feeding of five thousand men with five loaves 

 and two fishes and the gathering up of twelve basketfuls of the frag- 

 ments — a gallant defense, I say, of these things would be very much 

 more in order ; for these are the links that criticism has attacked and 

 which the common judgment of the nineteenth century is daily invali- 

 dating. Modem philosophy in its negative aspect is simply a revolt 

 against the attempt to force such narratives as these upon the adult 

 intelligence of mankind — against the absurdity of assigning to Hebrew 

 legends of the most monstrous kind a character of credibility which 

 would be scornfully refused to similar productions of the imagination 



