it is to base the defence of Christianity on the evidence of miracles
rather than on appeals to the conscience, the moral sense, the innate
religiousness, the deep spiritual cravings of human nature.

Such views, though now sufficiently commonplace, seemed very novel in
England when Milman wrote. Dean Stanley described his work as 'the
first decisive inroad of German theology into England; the first
palpable indication that the Bible could be studied like another book;
that the characters and events of sacred history could be treated at
once critically and reverently.' But though Milman was very well
acquainted with German theology, he resented the notion that he was
its interpreter or representative. He contended that in restricting
the province of inspiration to the direct inculcation of religious
truth he was following a sound Anglican tradition. He quoted the
authority of Paley and Warburton, of Tillotson and Secker. In such
principles of interpretation he said he had found 'a safeguard during
a long and not unreflective life against the difficulties arising out
of the philosophical and historical researches of his time.' They had
enabled him 'to follow out all the marvellous discoveries of science,
and all those hardly less marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of
historical, ethnological, linguistic criticism, in the serene
confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of
Christianity.' 'If on such subjects,' he concluded, 'some solid ground
be not found on which highly educated, reflective, reading, reasoning
men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but a wide, a
widening--I fear, an irreparable--breach between the thought and the
religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly Catholic
Christianity which knows what is essential to religion, what is
temporary and extraneous to it, may defy the world.'

These words are taken from the later preface to which we have
referred. In the same preface, and also in his 'History of
Christianity,' may be found some interesting remarks on the German
school of Biblical criticism, the greater portion of which has arisen
since the original publication of the 'History of the Jews.' In many
of its conclusions he had anticipated it, and he was quite as sensible
as the German writers of the hopelessness of seeking scientific
revelations in the Biblical narrative; of the worthlessness of most of
the common schemes for reconciling science and theolo