call in all the languages and
sciences to aid us in exhuming its long-buried treasures, in order that
the wayfaring man, though a fool, may appropriate them. And as to the
church, who would say aught against our venerable mother? We love her
dearly. We confess, indeed, that we love the green fields and gray
mountain-rocks better than her Sabbath services; nor do we have much
respect for her Sabbath at all. But we cherish her memories, and are
proud of her glory. Yet the people do not understand her mysteries well
enough. They do not love her as much as we do. Therefore we will stir
them up to the performance of long-neglected duties. They ignorantly
cling too proudly to her forms and confessions. But we will aid them to
behold her in a better light. We know the true path of her prosperity,
for do you not see that we have been born and bred within her dear fold?
Let everybody follow us. We will bring you into light." Had outspoken
enemies of the church and inspiration, though doubly gifted and
multiplied in number, set themselves to the same destructive work that
engaged the labors of these so-called friends, they could not have
inflicted half the injury. They had razed to the ground tower after
tower of the popular faith before their designs were discovered. And yet
we must do them the credit to say that they did not intend to do the
harm that they eventually accomplished. But human agencies achieve their
legitimate results without regard to the motives that give them impulse.
No doubt, many a Rationalist, as he looked back from his death-bed on
the ruin to which he had contributed, trembled with astonishment at the
poisonous fruit of his labors. Christ beheld a broader field than we can
see, when he said, "A man's foes shall be they of his own household."

This religious exterior has been a powerful auxiliary to the growth of
Rationalism. In the earlier stages of its history, every utterance
regarding the authenticity of any books of Scripture was carefully
guarded. The boldest stroke that this species of skepticism has made has
been a recent one, Strauss' _Life of Jesus_; but that work was only the
outgrowth of long doubt, and the honest, frank expression of what a
certain class of Rationalists had been burning to say for a century.
Parents who sent their sons to the university to listen to such men as
Semler, Thomasius, and Paulus, had not the remotest idea that
institutions of such renown for learning and religion we