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proudly prejudges the case. If we hold that account, with Dr. MacCaul, to 
be a real history, and not a series of unreal visions, wholly unlike what ac- 
tually occurred, we make a vain attempt to uphold Revelation by insecure 
proofs, and shall bring it down with a crash. This Institute, if it defends the 
Bible on the footing on which I have defended it, in common with nearly all 
divines of past ages, that it is true in its statements of facts, as well as its 
moral precepts, “ instead of being a foster-mother of religion, will become 
unconsciously one of its worst and deadliest toes. 
After these strong censures and dogmatic statements of my friend, the 
words of Horace, “ Quis Merit Gracchos,” apply fully to his warm com- 
plaints against me for censoriousness and dogmatism in the tour or five pages 
of defensive reply. I am conscious that I forbore to say much that I was 
tempted to say, simply because the Canon had long been an acquaintance 
and personal friend. But truth is no respecter of persons. The paper pro- 
fessed to lay down a code or rule directly for the guidance of all future 
champions of the faith. Indirectly it was a strong condemnation of my own 
previous works. I was bound either to abandon the task of writing my 
paper or to offer some reasons why I believe the proposed law to be wholly 
untrue, and its adoption fatal to the object it is meant to secure, and that 
the paper answers to its own description of the Bible, and is utterly indif- 
ferent to the duty of expressing itself with exactness on scientific theories.” 
I cannot, of course, reply in detail to all the objections to my paper 
from different sources — Dr. Currey, Canon Titcomb, and the Chairman. 
The last of these offered the only remark "on the main thesis, which 
formed two-thirds of the whole, and I think I can easily show that 
the stricture was groundless. He said that it was perfectly easy to con- 
ceive the motion or rest of a mathematical point of empty space. But 
this is a mental illusion. What can be conceived as moving is an un- 
extended monad, and not a mere point of empty space. So Newton has 
remarked, “ that the primary places of things should be movable is absurd.” 
Whatever is moved, by the very conception ceases to be a mere position, and 
has acquired some degree or measure of real, actual being. 
To the other objections, all on the first pages, which clear the way to my 
main object, I must content myself with a very few words of reply. I 
respect my opponents, but cannot honestly accept the truth of any one 
stricture they have made. I cannot admit to Dr. Currey that I have hastily 
misrepresented the maxim of the Fifth Essay. I have given it the only 
meaning it can bear, unless we make it refer to faculties which do not exist, 
and thus turn it into mere nonsense, and reduce it to ashes. The remarks 
are not hasty, for they merely condense ten pages on this same topic in The 
Bible and Modern Thought, written | sixteen years ago. Dr. Currey has a 
perfect right to refute them, if he is able, but not to charge me with having 
written in thoughtless haste. I cannot admit to my friend that I have mis- 
stated his opinions. On the contrary, I have taken pains to extract his true 
