We look back with
astonishment on the Rabbinical interpretations of the Old Testament, and
all the more because of the really great and true thoughts that are
sometimes to be found in the midst of their fanciful conceits. We can
trace the mischief they did to true Religion by the perverted reverence
with which they regarded the words and even the letters, and the very
shapes of the letters, in which their sacred books were written. Their
perversions of the law of God, their subtle refinements of
interpretation, their trivial conceits, their false and misleading
comments and inferences, all certainly tended to encourage the hypocrisy
which our Lord rebuked, and against which St. Paul contended. But we
still see something of the same spirit in the attempt to maintain a
verbal and even literal inspiration of the whole Bible, filling it not
with the breath of a Divine Spirit, but with minute details of doctrine
and precept often questionable, and, whenever separated from the
principles of the eternal law, valueless or even mischievous. God's
Word, instead of leading us to Him, is made to stand between and hide
His face.

But, secondly, there is a serious risk that if the mind be fastened on
things external in some way connected with, but yet distinct from the
substance of Revelation, it may turn out that these external things
cannot hold the ground on which they have been placed. They have to be
given up by force at last, when they ought to have been given up long
before. And when given up they too often tear away with them part of the
strength of that faith of which they had previously been not only the
buttress outside but a part of the living framework. It is distinctly
the fault of religious, not of scientific men, that there was once a
great contest between the Bible and Astronomy, that there has since been
a great contest between the Bible and Geology, that there is still a
great contest between the Bible and Evolution. In no one of these cases
was the Revelation contained in the Bible in danger, but only the
interpretation commonly put on the Bible. It is easy long afterwards to
condemn the opponents of Galileo and speak of their treatment of him
and his teaching as fanaticism and bigotry; and such condemnation has
not unfrequently been heard from the very lips that nevertheless
denounced the teaching of the geologists. But in all these cases the
principle has been the same, and believers have insisted that the Bible