rded for ages as
divine truth. The critical spirit of the age, the inquiring condition
of human thought, which instead of being discouraging is distinctly a
mark of human growth, stands in bold antithesis to the dark ages, when
speculation and progress were outlawed in many fields of research, and
spirituality suffered an eclipse behind the pomp, form, and show of
theology, when to a great degree mental stagnation prevailed. Yet this
critical spirit has been one of the most potent factors in
liberalizing thought. Another cause for the radical change of views
among Bible scholars is found in the rich results of archaeological
research during the past generation. This with a critical, or
scientific study of the Bible, the early church, and profane history,
contemporaneous with the rise of Christianity, has led thousands of
the most profound and sincere religious thinkers into broader fields,
giving to them a loftier view of life, eternity and God than was
possible under the old conceptions. What diligent research on the part
of scholarship has effected among critical students, the recent
revision of the Bible has accomplished among the people. The old-time
reverence for the letter of the law, or what is commonly known as
verbal inspiration, is disappearing as mist before the sunshine,
owing, in this latter case, to the people becoming acquainted for the
first time with the fact that there are passages in the Bible
confessed by the most orthodox scholars to be spurious. They found in
the revised scriptures passages in some instances containing many
consecutive verses enclosed in brackets, as, for example, the story of
the woman taken in sin in the Gospel of John from vii. 53 to viii. 11
inclusive. Consulting the foot-note they found that these passages
were spurious or added by a later hand. I well remember the
explanation made by a scholarly and devout professor in theology,
while at the Kentucky University, regarding the passage referred to
above. "The incident doubtless occurred much as it appears," asserted
the professor, "but while omitted from the earlier copies, was handed
down by tradition, and at a later day incorporated into the text."
Such explanations in the very nature of things, however, were by no
means calculated to satisfy the doubts which had been raised in the
minds of those who had from infancy been taught to believe in the
verbal inspiration of the Bible. Naturally the question arose in the
minds of th