PREFACE IX 



several of the most important Pentateuchal narra- 

 tives prove to be utterly unworthy of credit, what 

 pretence is there for accepting other uncorrobo- 

 rated stories of a no less improbable character? 

 If the writers of the gospels have taken fiction 

 for truth, the survivals of pagan superstition for 

 religion, in one department of spiritual knowledge, 

 what guarantee have we for their infallibility in 

 other departments ? If the " human element " 

 must be admitted to have already encroached so 

 largely beyond the bounds, erstwhile thought to 

 be set by Divine authority, what justification is 

 there for imagining that any limit can be set to 

 the discovery of further invasions ? 



The truth is that the pretension to infallibility, 

 by whomsoever made, has done endless mischief; 

 with impartial malignity it has proved a curse, 

 alike to those who have made it and those who 

 have accepted it ; and its most baneful shape is 

 book infallibility. For sacerdotal corporations and 

 schools of philosophy are able, under due compul- 

 sion of opinion, to retreat from positions that have 

 become untenable ; while the dead hand of a book 

 sets and stiffens, amidst texts and formulae, until it 

 becomes a mere petrifaction, fit only for that func- 

 tion of stumbling block, which it so admirably per- 

 forms. Wherever bibliolatry has prevailed, bigotry 

 and cruelty have accompanied it. It lies at the 

 root of the deep-seated, sometimes disguised, but 

 never absent, antagonism of all the varieties of ec- 

 clesiasticism to the freedom of thought and to the 



