chelling.

In the philosophical movement, the outline of which we have suggested,
what one may call the _nidus_ of a new faith in Scripture had been
prepared. The quality had been forecast which the Scripture must be
found to possess, if it were to retain its character as document of
revelation. In those very same years the great movement of biblical
criticism was gathering force which, in the course of the nineteenth
century, was to prove by stringent literary and historical methods, what
qualities the documents which we know as Scripture do possess. It was to
prove in the most objective fashion that the Scripture does not possess
those qualities which men had long assigned to it. It was to prove that,
as a matter of fact, the literature does possess the qualities which the
philosophic forecast, above hinted, required. It was thus actually to
restore the Bible to an age in which many reasonable men had lost their
faith in it. It was to give a genetic reconstruction of the literature
and show the progress of the history which the Scripture enshrines.
After a contest in which the very foundations of faith seemed to be
removed, it was to afford a basis for a belief in Scripture and
revelation as positive and secure as any which men ever enjoyed, with
the advantage that it is a foundation upon which the modern man can and
does securely build. The synchronism of the two endeavours is
remarkable. The convergence upon one point, of studies starting, so to
say, from opposite poles and having no apparent interest in common, is
instructive. It is an illustration of that which Comte said, that all
the great intellectual movements of a given time are but the
manifestation of a common impulse, which pervades and possesses the
minds of the men of that time.

The attempt to rationalise the narrative of Scripture was no new one. It
grew in intensity in the early years of the nineteenth century. The
conflict which was presently precipitated concerned primarily the
Gospels. It was natural that it should do so. These contain the most
important Scripture narrative, that of the life of Jesus. Strauss had in
good faith turned his attention to the Gospels, precisely because he
felt their central importance. His generation was to learn that they
presented also the greatest difficulties. The old rationalistic
interpretation had started from the assumption that what we have in the
gospel narrative is fact. Yet, of course, for the rationalists,