vi LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 205 



If these utterances were true when they fell from 

 the lips of a Bampton lecturer in 1859, with how 

 much greater force do they appeal to us now, when 

 the immense labours of the generation now passing 

 away constitute one vast illustration of the power 

 and fruitfulness of scientific methods of investiga- 

 tion in history, no less than in all other depart- 

 ments of knowledge. 



At the present time, I suppose, there is no one 

 who doubts that histories which appertain to any 

 other people than the Jews, and their spiritual 

 progeny in the first century, fall within the second 

 class of the three enumerated. Like Goethe's 

 Autobiography, they might all be entitled " Wahrheit 

 und Dichtung " " Truth and Fiction." The pro- 

 portion of the two constituents changes indefinitely; 

 and the quality of the fiction varies through the 

 whole gamut of un veracity. But " Dichtung " is 

 always there. For the most acute and learned of 

 historians cannot remedy the imperfections of his 

 sources of information ; nor can the most impartial 

 wholly escape the influence of the "personal 

 equation " generated by his temperament and by 

 his education. Therefore, from the narratives of 

 Herodotus to those set forth in yesterday's " Times," 

 all history is to be read subject to the warning that 

 fiction has its share therein. The modern vast 

 development of fugitive literature cannot be the 

 unmitigated evil that some do vainly say it is, 

 since it has put an end to the popular delusion of 



