those days, in
more places than one, as in the case of the slaughter of the
Canaanites, shocks us now. There are errors, too, in the Old Testament
of a physical kind, such as those in the account of creation and the
belief in the revolution of the sun. Of the New Testament the most
important books, the first three Gospels, our main authorities for the
life of Christ, are manifestly grafts upon a stock of unknown
authorship and date. They betray a belief in diabolical possession, a
local superstition from which the author of the Fourth Gospel, who
evidently was not a Palestinian Jew, was free. There is discrepancy
between the first three Gospels and the fourth, notably as to the day
and consequent significance of Christ's celebration of the Passover.
It is incredible that God in revealing himself to man should have
allowed any mark of human error to appear in the revelation.

We have, moreover, to ask why that on which the world's salvation
depended should have been withheld so long and communicated to so few.

There remains of the Old Testament, besides its vast historical
interest, much that morally still impresses and exalts us. Of the New
Testament there remains the moral ideal of Christ, our faith in which
no uncertainty as to the authors of the narratives, or mistrust of them
on account of the miraculous embellishment common in biographies of
saints, need materially affect. The moral ideal of Christ conquered
the ancient world when the Roman, mighty in character as well as in
arms, was its master. It has lived through all these centuries, all
their revolutions and convulsions, the usurpation, tyranny, and
scandals of the Papacy. The most doubtful point of it, considered as a
permanent exemplar, is its tendency, not to asceticism, for Christ came
"eating and drinking," but to an excessive preference for poverty and
antipathy to wealth which would arrest human progress and kill
civilization. We have, however, a Nicodemus and a Joseph of Arimathea,
as well as a Dives and a Lazarus. Nothing points to a Simeon Stylites.
Self-denial, though not asceticism proper, is a necessary part of the
life of a wandering preacher, which also precluded the exhibition of
domestic virtues. The relation of Jesus with his family seems to have
been hardly domestic; we have no record of any communication between
him and Joseph; in his last hour he provides a retreat for his mother.

We cannot appeal from reason to faith. Fait