religious and moral truths thus disengaged from the old masses of myth and legend are all the more beautiful and serviceable, and that all individual or national life of any value must be vitalized by them.[1]
Nor should there be omitted a tribute to the increasing justice and courtesy shown in late years by leading supporters of the older view. During the last two decades of the present century there has been a most happy departure from the older method of resistance, first by plausibilities, next by epithets, and finally by persecution. To the bitterness of the attacks upon Darwin, the Essayists and Reviewers, and Bishop Colenso, have succeeded, among really eminent leaders, a far better method and tone. While Matthew Arnold, no doubt, did much in commending "sweet reasonableness" to theological controversialists, Mr. Gladstone, by his perfect courtesy to his opponents, even when smarting under their heaviest blows, has set a most valuable example. Nor should the spirit shown by Bishop Ellicott, leading a forlorn hope for the traditional view, pass without a tribute of respect. Truly pathetic is it to see this venerable and learned prelate, one of the most eminent representatives of the older biblical research, even when giving solemn warnings against the newer criticisms, and under all the temptations of ex cathedra utterance, remaining mild and gentle and just in the treatment of adversaries whose ideas he evidently abhors. Happily, he is comforted by the faith that Christianity will survive; and this faith his opponents fully share.[2]
Thus at last, out of the old conception of our Bible as a collection of oracles—a mass of entangling utterances, fruitful in wrangling interpretations, which have given to the world long and weary ages of "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness," of fetichism, subtlety, and pomp, of tyranny, bloodshed, and solemnly constituted imposture, of everything which the Lord Jesus Christ most abhorred—has been gradually developed through the centuries, by the labors, sacrifices, and even the martyrdom of a long succession of men of God, the conception of it as a sacred literature, a growth in obedience to divine light in the mind and heart and soul of man. No longer an oracle, good for the "lower
- ↑ For plaintive lamentations over the influence of this atmosphere of scientific thought upon the most eminent contemporary Christian scholars, see the Christus Comprobator, by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, London, 1893, and the article in the Contemporary Review for May, 1892, by the Bishop of Colchester, passim. For some less known examples of sacred myths and legends, inherited from ancient civilizations, see Lenormant, Les Origines de l'Histoire, passim, but especially chapters ii, iv, v, vi. See also Goldziher.
- ↑ As examples of courtesy between theologic opponents may be cited the controversy between Mr. Gladstone and Prof. Huxley, Principal Gore's Bampton Lectures for 1891, and Bishop Ellicott's Charges, published in 1893.
