other alternative, that he
shared the popular ignorance. And to those who hold the latter view
sarcasm is dealt out with no niggard hand.

But they will find it difficult to persuade mankind that, if He
could be mistaken on a matter of such strictly religious
importance as the value of the sacred literature of His
countrymen, He can be safely trusted about anything else. The
trustworthiness of the Old Testament is, in fact, inseparable
from the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ; and if we
believe that He is the true Light of the world, we shall close
our ears against suggestions impairing the credit of those
Jewish Scriptures which have received the stamp of His Divine
authority. (p. 25)

Moreover, I learn from the public journals that a brilliant and
sharply-cut view of orthodoxy, of like hue and pattern, was only the
other day exhibited in that great theological kaleidoscope, the pulpit
of St. Mary's, recalling the time so long passed by, when a Bampton
lecturer, in the same place, performed the unusual feat of leaving the
faith of old-fashioned Christians undisturbed.

Yet many things have happened in the intervening thirty-one years. The
Bampton lecturer of 1859 had to grapple only with the infant Hercules of
historical criticism; and he is now a full-grown athlete, bearing on
his shoulders the spoils of all the lions that have stood in his path.
Surely a martyr's courage, as well as a martyr's faith, is needed by any
one who, at this time, is prepared to stand by the following plea for
the veracity of the Pentateuch:--

"Adam, according to the Hebrew original, was for 243 years contemporary
with Methuselah, who conversed for a hundred years with Shem. Shem was
for fifty years contemporary with Jacob, who probably saw Jochebed,
Moses's mother. Thus, Moses might by oral tradition have obtained the
history of Abraham, and even of the Deluge, at third hand; and that of
the Temptation and the Fall at fifth hand....

"If it be granted--as it seems to be--that the great and stirring events
in a nation's life will, under ordinary circumstances, be remembered
(apart from all written memorials) for the space of 150 years, being
handed down through five generations, it must be allowed (even on more
human grounds) that the account which Moses gives of the Temptation and
the Fall is to be depended upon, if it passed through no more than four
hands between him and Adam." [6]