ON THE HISTORICAL TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 211 



Christians a^^ainst others. Just as still in Jerusalem in the 

 (•hurch of the Holy Sepulchre on the anniversary of the 

 liesurrection of the Saviour, it is necessary to have Turkish 

 soldiers on the spot to prevent the rival sects from teariug one 

 another to pieces, so now in Britain, while you can raise fifty or 

 a hundred thousand pounds to fight a rival sect, you would not 

 find it easy to raise a hundred pence from the same class of 

 people to place the history of the New Testament or of the Old 

 on an infinitely higher level of historical attestation. While 

 you can get as many great leaders as you want for any inter- 

 Christian war, you might ask in vain any of those leaders to 

 speak a word in favour of the enterj^rise which I am now speak- 

 ing about. In a controversy about education in England, which 

 to a mere Scotchman is an unintelligible and trifling point, 

 a mere question " about words and names and your own law," 

 exaggerated into realities by hot controversialists on both 

 sides, both equally far removed from wisdom and calm judgment, 

 I understand that a certain great demonstration cost as much 

 as would have excavated half a dozen great Bible cities and 

 given priceless knowledge. And in Scotland, for equally trifling 

 differences, invisible to the unaided eye of an Englishman, we 

 spend ten times as much as you spend in England. And so the 

 wordy war goes on in endless succession of years, and we learn 

 nothing, but sacrifice the whole essence and life of Christianity 

 to fight with our brothers and countrymen. This constant war- 

 fare is the shame of Christianity, as well as its weakness. A 

 Gallio, if he had to try the case in the year 1907, would not be 

 content to drive them from the judgment seat, he would be 

 strongly inclined, in the interest of peace and order, to hang ten 

 of the principal leaders on each side, stringing them up side by 

 side in alternation. We wonder that the Greek Christian and 

 the Slav Christian loathe one another ; we do the same our- 

 selves, but the stroma arm of the law and a more law-abidincj 

 instinct prevents us from carrying our mutual hatred so far as 

 Slav and Greek carry it. 



Discussion. 



Eev. Canon Girdlestone. — Canon Girdlestone expressed the 

 thanks of the meeting to Sir W. Eamsay, who had bravely fought 

 his way to the truth amid difficulties of many kinds. He had 



