cult to see what end the author proposed to attain by all
this literary browbeating. In the course of my examination I shall be
constrained to adopt many a view which has been denounced beforehand as
impossible and absurd; and I shall give my reasons for doing so. If by
an 'apologist' [22:3] is meant one who knows that he owes everything
which is best and truest in himself to the teaching of Christianity--not
the Christless Christianity which alone our author would spare, the
works with the mainspring broken, but the Christianity of the Apostles
and Evangelists--who believes that its doctrines, its sanctions, and its
hopes, are truths of the highest moment to the wellbeing of mankind, and
who, knowing and believing all this, is ready to use in its defence such
abilities as he has, then a man may be proud to take even the lowest
place among the ranks of 'apologists,' and to brave any insinuations of
dishonesty which an anonymous critic may fling at him.

There is however another more subtle mode of intimidation which plays an
important part in these volumes. Long lists of references are given in
the notes, to modern critics who (as the reader would infer from the
mode of reference) support the views mentioned or adopted by the author
in the text. I have verified these references in one or two cases, and
have found that several writers, at all events, do not hold the opinions
to which their names are attached [23:1]. But, under any circumstances,
these lists will not fetter the judgment of any thoughtful mind. It is
strange indeed, that a writer who denounces so strongly the influence of
authority as represented by tradition, should be anxious to impose on
his readers another less honourable yoke. There is at least a
presumption (though in individual cases it may prove false on
examination) that the historical sense of seventeen or eighteen
centuries is larger and truer than the critical insight of a section of
men in one late half century. The idols of our cave never present
themselves in a more alluring form than when they appear as the 'spirit
of the age.' It is comparatively easy to resist the fallacies of past
times, but it is most difficult to escape the infection of the
intellectual atmosphere in which we live. I ask myself, for instance,
whether one who lived in the age of the rabbis would have been
altogether right in resigning himself to the immediate current of
intellectual thought, because he saw, or seemed to