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cliate work is over, and above all by tlie immortal “ Analogy 
of Religion.” 
PERIOD OF SCIENTIFIC DOUBT. 
III. The end of the last and commencement of the present 
century witnessed the rise of a new school of opponents of 
Revealed religion : a new workshop for offensive weapons was 
opened, and a new style of weapon fabricated. The clumsy 
Deism of a past age was succeeded by a far more elegant and 
refined Theism, and the rude arguments or ruder denials of 
the previous generation were exchanged for something very 
different. Men began to patronize rather than to repel. 
“ How beautiful the poetry of Scripture, how wise many of its 
precepts, how lovely the character assigned to the alleged 
Founder of Christianity ! what a pity we cannot accept the 
Bible ! what a real pain wo feel at being precluded from 
believing in the Christ ! ” The period which now commenced, 
contemporaneously with and because of the rise and increasing 
study of inductive and experimental science, may well be 
termed that of Scientific Doubt; as the one which preceded it 
may be called that of Unscientific Denial. 
The method of historical criticism which is connected with 
the name of Niebuhr was probably the first, certainly the 
earliest which became conspicuous, among the weapons of the 
sceptical armoury. Niebuhr had shown that many obviously 
legendary tales which are mingled with early history (particu- 
larly early Roman history) are not absolutely to be rejected as 
pure figments of a poet’s or a rliapsodist’s brain: they contain 
the truth, though in the letter they do not express it ; they 
can all be interpreted by means of the higher criticism, 
and hermeneutic intuition of the historian, and yield to us 
valuable information as to the thoughts and modes of feeling, 
the political sentiments and revolutions of opinion, of ages long 
gone by. It was natural enough to suggest that this higher 
criticism should be applied to the sacred writings. The Greek 
term myth, lately introduced into the language to express tho 
significant legend handed down from unliistoric or prehistoric 
times, was seized upon with avidity, and applied to the 
histories in the Old and New Testament. Abraham and Moses, 
Elijah and Daniel, became mere personified conditions of 
national excitement; the story of Joseph and his brethren, 
which seems to us to carry the impress of truth in its touching 
simplicity and artless pathos, is a mythical representation of 
an early trade between Egypt and Syria, and of some myste- 
