The men
who are leading in the higher criticism of the Bible and who are now
being assailed so bitterly by the American Bible League, are
representative scholars of the world, scientific thinkers, leaders,
teachers, who have given us a new universe, a new conception of God, a
new idea concerning the origin and nature of man. They are not seeking
to support or to undermine anything. They are seeking for the truth as
the only sacred thing on earth.

"I would like to consider what this book is about over which all this
controversy is raging. It is really not one book, but sixty-six small
volumes. They were written during a period of nearly a thousand years,
in different countries, by different people. The first book was written
about eight hundred years before Christ. The first five books of the
Bible were written between five and six hundred years before Christ. The
historical books tell us about the day of Judges, then of Kings, the
wars of Israel, until the time of captivity. Then the book of Job,
purely anonymous, and no one knows who wrote it. Then the book of the
Psalms, the hymn-book of the people of Israel, and the books of the
prophets. It would be more proper to call them preachers, for they make
no effort to foretell anything, but merely told the people that if they
followed certain lines of conduct certain things would happen.

"No book was placed in the Bible by anything that claimed to be divine
authority. No law concerning the Biblical canon was ever issued by the
church earlier than the sixteenth century and that changed nothing; it
simply recognized what had come to be a fact. These books drifted
together and came to be bound as one, by force of gravity, by common
consent, and there are one or two books in the New Testament which
scholars could miss without feeling any the poorer.

"Nobody, then, is assaulting the Bible, for the simple reason that the
Bible as such has never made any claim. The Bible does not claim to be
inspired; it does not claim to be infallible. No writer of one book is
authorized to speak for the author of any other book. One verse is
sometimes referred to as meaning something. The writer of the last book
in the Bible utters a curse against anybody who should presume to add to
or take from the words of that book. He does not say that the book is
infallible; he simple curses anybody that interferes with it, as
Shakespeare uttered a curse against anybody who interfered with his
bones