age my opponent; I had
rather do the contrary; but he did not properly and adequately
understand the great question which he undertook to discuss. Hence he
got involved in inextricable difficulties, and, in spite of all he could
do, his attempted defence of the Bible was, to a great extent, a
failure.

He said a many good things about the Bible. He proved a many things in
its favor. He made the impression, at times, that there was something in
its teachings of a most powerful and blessed tendency; that it was a
book of infinite value,--that it was a wonderful teacher and a mighty
comforter,--that it had done a vast amount of good, and was calculated
to do a vast amount more,--that it was a friend and patron of all things
good and glorious,--that it was the nurse of individual and national
virtue, and the source of personal, domestic, and national happiness. He
said many good things about the excellency of Christ's precepts, and the
beauty and glory of His example. A hundred good things he said, both in
favor of the Bible, and in opposition to infidelity. But the one great
point which he had pledged himself to prove he did _not_ prove. It could
not be proved. It was not true. So that though he won a substantial
victory; he sustained a logical defeat. And if he had been twenty times
more learned, and twenty times more able than he was, he would have been
defeated. If a man attempts the impossible, failure is inevitable; and
if he has a skilful, wary, and able opponent, his failure will be seen
and felt, even by his most ardent friends, and greatest admirers. And so
it was in the case of Dr. Berg.

But the error was not his alone; it was the error of his friends; the
error of his patrons; the error of his times. What learning, and talent,
and zeal, and skill in debate, considerably above the average of his
profession, could do, he did; and that was a good deal: and his failure
was chargeable not on himself, so much as on the faulty theology of the
school in which he had been trained, and to which he still belonged.

So far as the general merits of the Bible were concerned, I was in the
wrong. But the fact was not made so plain, so palpable to the audience,
as it should have been, and as it might have been, if I had had a wiser,
a warier, and an abler opponent, and one who had no false theory of
Bible inspiration or abstract perfection to defend. A man thoroughly
furnished for the work, and free from foolish and unauthori