on the other hand, has before him a wealth of conflicting data
from which he must painfully and tentatively construct a picture of the
tendencies at work at different periods. He must test the genuineness
of his sources, weigh the prejudices of the writer, and decide whether
he was in a position to know exactly {66} what was happening.
Consequently, he will speak in a qualified language where the average
citizen will deliver himself of emphatic assertions.

Yet the investigator of American history is possessed of an abundance
of material and deals with a time for which printing existed. The
language in which these documents are written is his own or else a
well-known one. The student of comparative religions has none of these
advantages. For the ancient world, the inscriptions are archaic and
condensed. In the case of the biblical literature, he may be dealing
with accounts edited from older manuscripts in other languages. These
narratives conflict among themselves and contain surprisingly little
information on important points. Hence, the investigator is almost
overwhelmed by the difficulty of his task and the fewness of his
certain results. The ordinary confessing Christian, on the contrary,
is blissfully unaware of these problems. He opens his English
translation and reads the familiar words in the light of inherited
dogmas which blind his eyes to all contradictions and discrepancies.
The truth is, that he is mentally unprepared to compare passages and to
see problems which stare the trained man in the face. He reads
subjectively for edification. The ecclesiastical atmosphere is such
that his spiritual advisors have either desired to keep modern critical
work from his notice, or have been afraid to arouse the bigotry of
their keepers, or have themselves lacked a modern education. The
consequence is that the average Christian has the most naive notions in
regard to the authorship and authenticity of the gospels and of the
real meaning of many of the verses. Palestine is conceived in terms of
the color-prints which illustrate his bible, while the mental {67}
atmosphere of the Year One is that of the present day in America with,
perhaps, an exotic touch here and there.

Let us glance over some of the facts which investigation is making ever
clearer and which are not as generally known as they deserve to be.
What is said here should be read with remembrance of the results of the
previous chapters. Such a b