Many seem to think that, when it is admitted that the ancient
literature, contained in our Bibles, has no more claim to
infallibility than any other ancient literature; when it is proved
that the Israelites and their Christian successors accepted a great
many supernaturalistic theories and legends which have no better
foundation than those of heathenism, nothing remains to be done but to
throw the Bible aside as so much waste paper.
I have always opposed this opinion. It appears to me that if there is
anybody more objectionable than the orthodox Bibliolater it is the
heterodox Philistine, who can discover in a literature which, in some
respects, has no superior, nothing but a subject for scoffing and an
occasion for the display of his conceited ignorance of the debt he
owes to former generations.
Twenty-two years ago I pleaded for the use of the Bible as an
instrument of popular education, and I venture to repeat what I then
said:
"Consider the great historical fact that, for three centuries, this
book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in
English history; that it has become the national Epic of Britain and
is as familiar to gentle and simple, from John o' Groat's House to
Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians; that it is
written in the noblest and purest English and abounds in exquisite
beauties of mere literary form; and, finally, that it forbids the
veriest hind, who never left his village, to be ignorant of the
existence of other countries and other civilisations and of a great
past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the oldest nations in
the world.
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