168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cerning the Old Testament) are nothing more than deductions, 

 which, at any rate, profess to be the result of strictly scientific 

 thinking, and which are not worth attending to unless they really 

 possess that character ? If it is not historically true that such and 

 such things happened in Palestine eighteen centuries ago, what be- 

 comes of Christianity ? And what is historical truth but that of 

 which the evidence bears strict scientific investigation ? I do not 

 call to mind any problem of natural science which has come under 

 my notice, which is more difficult, or more curiously interesting as a 

 mere problem, than that of the origin of the synoptic Gospels and 

 that of the historical value of the narratives which they contain. 

 The Christianity of the churches stands or falls by the results of 

 the purely scientific investigation of these questions. They were 

 first taken up in a purely scientific spirit just about a century 

 ago ; they have been studied, over and over again, by men of vast 

 knowledge and critical acumen ; but he would be a rash man who 

 should assert that any solution of these problems, as yet formu- 

 lated, is exhaustive. The most that can be said is that certain 

 prevalent solutions are certainly false, while others are more or 

 less probably true. 



If I am doing my best to rouse my countrymen out of their dog- 

 matic slumbers, it is not that they may be amused by seeing who 

 gets the best of it, in a contest between a " scientist " and a theo- 

 logian. The serious question is whether theological men of sci- 

 ence, or theological special pleaders, are to have the confidence of 

 the general public ; it is the question whether a country in which 

 it is possible for a body of excellent clerical and lay gentlemen to 

 discuss, in public meeting assembled, how much it is desirable to 

 let the congregations of the faithful know of the results of bibli- 

 cal criticism, is likely to wake up with anything short of the grasp 

 of a rough lay hand upon its shoulder ; it is the question whether 

 the New Testament books, being as I believe they were, written 

 and compiled by people who, according to their lights, were per- 

 fectly sincere, will not, when properly studied as ordinary histori- 

 cal documents, afford us the means of self-criticism. And it must 

 be remembered that the New Testament books are not responsible 

 for the doctrine invented by the churches that they are anything 

 but ordinary historical documents. The author of the third Gos- 

 pel tells us as straightforwardly as a man can that he has no claim 

 to any other character than that of an ordinary compiler and ed- 

 itor, who had before him the works of many and variously quali- 

 fied predecessors. 



In my former papers, according to Dr. Wace, I have evaded 

 giving an answer to his main proposition, which he states as fol- 

 lows: 



