" In
fact, the stream of tendency towards Naturalism, the course of which I
have briefly traced, has, of late years, flowed so strongly, that even
the Churches have begun, I dare not say to drift, but, at any rate, to
swing at their moorings. Within the pale of the Anglican
establishment, I venture to doubt, whether, at this moment, there are
as many thorough-going defenders of "plenary inspiration" as there
were timid questioners of that doctrine, half a century ago.
Commentaries, sanctioned by the highest authority, give up the "actual
historical truth" of the cosmogonical and diluvial narratives.
University professors of deservedly high repute accept the critical
decision that the Hexateuch is a compilation, in which the share of
Moses, either as author or as editor, is not quite so clearly
demonstrable as it might be; highly placed Divines tell us that the
pre-Abrahamic Scripture narratives may be ignored; that the book of
Daniel may be regarded as a patriotic romance of the second century
B.C.; that the words of the writer of the fourth Gospel are not always
to be distinguished from those which he puts into the mouth of Jesus.
Conservative, but conscientious, revisers decide that whole passages,
some of dogmatic and some of ethical importance, are interpolations.
An uneasy sense of the weakness of the dogma of Biblical infallibility
seems to be at the bottom of a prevailing tendency once more to
substitute the authority of the "Church" for that of the Bible.
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