166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of science." * I have already admitted that vaticination is not 

 in my line ; and I can not so much as hazard a guess whether 

 the spirit of prophecy which has descended on the bishop comes 

 from the one or the other of the two possible sources recognized 

 by the highest authorities. But I think it desirable to warn 

 those who may be misled by phraseology of this kind, that the 

 antagonists in the present debate are not quite rightly repre- 

 sented by it. Undoubtedly, Dr. Wace is a theologian ; and I 

 should be the last person to question that his whole cast of 

 thought and style of argumentation are pre-eminently and 

 typically theological. And, if I must accept the hideous term 

 " scientist " (to which I object even more than I do to " infidel "), 

 I am ready to admit that I am one of the people so denoted. 



But I hope and believe that there is not a solitary argument I 

 have used, or that I am about to use, which is original, or has 

 anything to do with the fact that I have been chiefly occupied 

 with natural science. They are all, facts and reasoning alike, 

 either identical with, or consequential upon, propositions which 

 are to be found in the works of scholars and theologians of the 

 highest repute in the only two countries, Holland and Germ any, f 

 in which, at the present time, professors of theology are to be 

 found, whose tenure of their posts does not depend upon the re- 

 sults to which their inquiries lead them. J 



It is true that, to the best of my ability, I have satisfied myself 

 of the soundness of the foundations on which my arguments are 

 built, and I desire to be held fully responsible for everything I 

 say. But, nevertheless, my position is really no more than that 

 of an expositor ; and my justification for undertaking it is simply 

 that conviction of the supremacy of private judgment (indeed, of 

 the impossibility of escaping it) which is the foundation of the 

 Protestant Reformation, and which was the doctrine accepted by 

 the vast majority of the Anglicans of my youth, before that 

 backsliding toward the "beggarly rudiments" of an effete and 

 idolatrous sacerdotalism which has, even now, provided us with 



* "Popular Science Monthly" for May, 1889, p. 84. 



f The United States ought, perhaps, to be added, but I am not sure. 



\ Imagine that all our chairs of Astronomy had been founded in the fourteenth cent- 

 ury, and that their incumbents were bound to sign Ptolemaic articles. In that case, with 

 every respect for the efforts of persons thus hampered to attain and expound the truth, I 

 think men of common sense would go elsewhere to learn astronomy. Zeller's " Vortrage 

 und Abhandlungen " were published and came into my hands a quarter of a century ago. 

 The writer's rank, as a theologian to begin with, and subsequently as a historian of Greek 

 philosophy, is of the highest. Among these essays are two—" Das Urchristenthum " and 

 " Die Tubinger historische Schule " — which are likely to be of more use to those who wish 

 to know the real state of the case than all that the official " apologists," with their one eye 

 ©n truth and the other on the tenets of their sect, have written. For the opinion of a 

 scientific theologian about theologians of this stamp see pp. 225 and 22V of the " Vcrtragc." 



