ible carries the refutation of this claim upon the face of its
writings._

They thrust upon the attention of all who are not blind the traces of
human imperfection, of a kind and an extent which precludes any notion of
a clean copy of a perfect script let down from the skies.

The Old Testament historians contradict each other in facts and figures,
tell the same story in different ways, locate the same incident at
different periods, ascribe the same deeds to different men, quote
statistics which are plainly exaggerated, mistake poetic legend for sober
prose, report the marvellous tales of tradition as literal history, and
give us statements which cannot be read as scientific facts without
denying our latest and most authoritative knowledge. I shall not enumerate
these "mistakes of Moses," and of others. That is an ungracious task for
which I have no heart. It may be needful to remind the children of a
larger growth, who persist in believing a saintly mother's beliefs to be
final authority in their studies, that she is not infallible. But one does
not care to catalogue her mistakes and taunt her with them.

That which carries no such reproach in it, but is, when rightly read, an
honor to the Bible, may be pointed out, as the Biblical writers, indeed,
do for us themselves.

The marks of a patient and noble literary workmanship are in every
writing.

We can see this as our fathers could not see it, because the glasses
through which to read literature critically have been ground within our
century. Literary criticism is the study of literature by means of a
microscopic knowledge of the language in which a book is written, of its
growth from various roots, of its stages of development and the factors
influencing them, of its condition in the period of this particular
composition, of the writer's idiosyncrasies of thought and style in his
ripening periods, of the general history and literature of his race, and
of the special characteristics of his age and of his contemporary writers.

Every educated person knows something of the working of this criticism on
other books. You have read your Shakespeare with intelligence, and have
felt many misgivings as to the genuineness of a few plays, and of passages
in many plays. The brutalities and beastlinesses of Titus Andronicus
seemed impossible to the author of "The Tempest" and the "Midsummer
Night's Dream." The historic plays seemed to you often "padded." But there
was no