y possess the
historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was
not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if
the "ten words" were not written by God's hand on the stone tables; if
Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story
of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the
creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed
narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than
have the stories of the regal period of Rome--what is to be said about
the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated?
And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New
Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions
for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma
upon legendary quicksands?

But these may be said to be merely the carpings of that carnal reason
which the profane call common sense; I hasten, therefore, to bring up
the forces of unimpeachable ecclesiastical authority in support of my
position. In a sermon preached last December, in St. Paul's Cathedral,
[2] Canon Liddon declares:--

"For Christians it will be enough to know that our Lord Jesus Christ set
the seal of His infallible sanction on the whole of the Old Testament.
He found the Hebrew canon as we have it in our hands to-day, and He
treated it as an authority which was above discussion. Nay more: He went
out of His way--if we may reverently speak thus--to sanction not a few
portions of it which modern scepticism rejects. When He would warn His
hearers against the dangers of spiritual relapse, He bids them remember
'Lot's wife.' [3] When He would point out how worldly engagements may
blind the soul to a coming judgment, He reminds them how men ate, and
drank, and married, and were given in marriage, until the day that Noah
entered into the ark, and the Flood came and destroyed them all. [4] If
He would put His finger on a fact in past Jewish history which, by its
admitted reality, would warrant belief in His own coming Resurrection,
He points to Jonah's being three days and three nights in the whale's
belly (p. 23)." [5]

The preacher proceeds to brush aside the common--I had almost said
vulgar--apologetic pretext that Jesus was using _ad hominem_ arguments,
or "accommodating" his better knowledge to popular ignorance, as well
as to point out the inadmissibility of the