which are not true or are gravely disputed, why not other historical statements which have got into ecclesiastical currency?
Usually, however, the attitude of the writer seems to be one of culpable indifference to the truth or untruth of the statements he makes. He finds in some previous writer a statement which supports his case, and he reproduces it without inquiry. If he were a mere layman, engaged in some branch of profane culture, he would not dare to repeat, without further inquiry, statements which he found made in his own sectarian interest by men of no high authority or original scholarship. The clergy, however, do this habitually, and one is compelled to conclude that they are more or less indifferent about the truth of their assertions, if those assertions are favourable to religion. Just as I write the press reports Dr. R. F. Horton telling a congregation that a British regiment was saved at Mons by the appearance of a legion of angels, and assuring his audience that this silly myth is “repeated by so many witnesses that if anything can be established by contemporary evidence it is established.” The story has gone the round of our pulpits and religious press.
I am speaking, however, from a particularly wide experience of religious literature. For thirty years—ten years as a clerical student or professor, and twenty years as an interested observer of religious controversy—I have devoted much time to books and journals of this kind, and I repeat that there
