348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



that simply because the " Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah/' 

 by that learned scholar and able writer, Dr. Edersheim, whose 

 recent loss is so much to be deplored, does not " translate " all the 

 Gospel narratives into natural occurrences, therefore it is essen- 

 tially bad history. The story has been the same throughout. 

 The whole German critical school, from the venerable Karl Hase 

 — and, much as I differ from his conclusions, I can not mention 

 without a tribute of respect and gratitude the name of that great 

 scholar, the veteran of all these controversies, whose "Leben 

 Jesu," published several years before Strauss was heard of, is 

 still, perhaps, the most valuable book of reference on the subject 

 — all, from that eminent man downward, have, by their own re- 

 peated confession, started from the assumption that the miracu- 

 lous is impossible, and that the Gospels must, by some device or 

 other, be so interpreted as to explain it away. " Affection " there 

 is and ought to be in orthodox writers for venerable, profound, 

 and consoling beliefs ; but they start from no such invincible 

 prejudice, and they are pledged by their principles to accept 

 whatever interpretation may be really most consonant with the 

 facts. 



I have only one word to say, finally, in reply to Prof. Huxley. 

 I am very glad to hear that he has always advocated the reading 

 of the Bible and the diffusion of its study among the people ; but 

 I must say that he goes to work in a very strange way in order 

 to promote this result. If he could succeed in persuading peo- 

 ple that the Gospels are untrustworthy collections of legends, 

 made by unknown authors, that St. Paul's epistles were the 

 writings of " a strange man," who had no sound capacity for judg- 

 ing of evidence, or, with Mrs. Ward's friends, that the Pentateuch 

 is a late forgery of Jewish scribes, I do not think the people at 

 large would be likely to follow his well-meant exhortations. But 

 I venture to remind him that the English Church has anticipated 

 his anxiety in this matter. Three hundred years ago, by one of 

 the greatest strokes of real government ever exhibited, the pub- 

 lic reading of the whole Bible was imposed upon Englishmen ; 

 and by the public reading of the lessons on Sunday alone, the 

 chief portions of the Bible, from first to last, have become stamped 

 upon the minds of English-speaking people in a degree in which, 

 as the Germans themselves acknowledge,* they are far behind us. 

 He has too much reason for his lament over the melancholy 

 spectacle presented by the intestine quarrels of churchmen over 

 matters of mere ceremonial. But when he argues from this that 

 the clergy of our day " can have but little sympathy with the old 

 evangelical doctrine of the ' open Bible,' " he might have remem- 

 bered that our own generation of English divines has, by the 



* See the preface to Riehm's " Handworterbuch." 



