t long in coming, and even in the
epistles there are many places which show that the Christians regarded
themselves as the true heirs of the promise.

This transference of the Jewish scriptures to the Christian Church was
probably almost as important for the future history of Christianity as
the change which made Jesus the centre of a cult offering private
salvation, instead of the prophetic herald of the Kingdom of Heaven,
destined by God to be his representative at the End of the Age. It
meant that Christianity shared with Judaism the advantage, which no
other religion in the Empire had, of being a religion with a Book.
Nevertheless the obvious fact that the Book was not originally
Christian was destined in the long run to lead to considerable
difficulty. Though the Old Testament is not always susceptible {71} of
the meaning given to it by Jewish rabbis, it is essentially a Jewish
book, and the attempt to find in it a series of prophecies foretelling
the coming of Jesus was radically wrong. It could not be supported by
any straightforward interpretation, which gave to the Old Testament its
original historical meaning. The result was the inevitable growth of
an unnatural symbolical interpretation which had little difficulty in
extracting anything from anything. It is difficult to estimate whether
the result has been more good or evil. It produced good, in that it
very soon necessitated the growth of a Christian canon--the New
Testament added to the Old--and this preserved much great literature
for the advantage of future generations, and was a check upon
extravagances of thought. Perhaps most important of all, it provided
an ethical standard which successive generations of Christians have
never succeeded in practising. They have indeed frequently tried to
explain away the contrast between their scriptures and their deeds when
it became too oppressive, but they have never quite succeeded, or been
able entirely to satisfy themselves by these methods: the letter of
scripture has constantly remained a salutary protest against the
interpretation put upon it. All this has been of enormous advantage
for the Christian Church. But on the other hand the infallibility
ascribed to the Bible has been an easy weapon for obscurantism, and a
drag on intellectual progress. It has prevented the Church from
adopting the discoveries of science and {72} criticism in such a way as
to make them applicable to religious life. Bible