of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religions,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty,
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths: all these have vanished."

CREDIBILITY OF THE SCRIPTURES. Schenkel affirms that Rationalism
consists in giving up all the historical characteristics of Christianity
and of Christian truths, and in the reduction of religion to the
universal conclusions of reason and morality. The accuracy of this
definition is very perceptible when we consider the wantonness of the
assaults of the Rationalists upon the Scriptures as the canon of faith
and practice. This period was marked by desperate attempts to overthrow
the early history of all countries, and to convict historians of stating
as fact what was only vague tradition. As the Bible was alleged by the
supernaturalists to be the oldest historic record, great pains were
taken to dissipate the mist from its accounts of supposed verities. The
writers of the Scriptures, the friends of Rationalism held, were only
men like ourselves. They had our prejudices and as great infirmities as
we have. They were as subject to deception and trickery, and as full of
political and sectarian rancor as partisans in these times. All through
the Old Testament we find traces of biased judgment, Jewish national
pride, sectional enmity, sectarian superstition, and rabbinical
ignorance. It is but little better in the New Testament, for the
disciples of Christ and the writers of the gospels were as susceptible
of error and bigotry as their predecessors.[41]

The writers of the Scriptures were utterly destitute of any such great
designs as the orthodox attribute to them. They had no intention of
writing for posterity, and were the mere chroniclers of what they had
heard from others and seen for themselves. The Bible is, like the essays
of Seneca, an excellent book for elevating the people by its moral tone.
As a revelation of God's will it only takes its place beside others
which God had previously made, and has been making in a natural way,
ever since.[42] All ages and nations have their communications of
knowledge, and the setting forth of any truth in a clearer light is a
revelation.[43] There are many steps necessary for the education of the
race and for its intellectual and moral development. The Scriptures are
a very good aid to such a great consummation.[44