to the end, if he will but hear and obey its voice,
interpreted by reason.

The reader will recall the opinion I reached concerning the Bible after
my special course of study and the process of reasoning that followed
it. But after fifteen years of continued study I changed my opinion
about it again. When I took a different perspective I got a different
view. First, I was confronted with the fact that _the Bible is here_.
And while all my inherited opinions as to its origin, meaning and
purpose were gone forever, the second question remained unanswered:
_How came it here_? After all these years of study and investigation I
found an answer to this question satisfactory to myself, which I have
already indicated above, but will here more fully elaborate as a part
of my New Confession of Faith.

The Old Testament is but a record preserved and handed down to us,
first of events, legends, opinions and beliefs that existed in crude
form as traditions, long before a line of it was written; and
thereafter, for a period covering approximately a thousand years, it is
a record, tho evidently imperfect, of the progressive development of
the Jewish race, nation and religion, which are so inseparably bound
together that they cannot be separated. Let us go a little more into
detail. No one claims that a line of the Old Testament was written
before Moses. (And it is here immaterial whether Moses wrote the
Pentateuch or not. The Jews believed he did.) Yet the Jewish system
of religion, at least in its fundamental features, had been in
existence since Abraham, some five hundred years before, to say nothing
of previous peoples back to Noah, or even to Adam and his sons. Yet
none of these had any Bible whatever. If it is claimed by any one that
Moses was the originator of the Jewish system, it leaves Abraham and
all his posterity, down to the time of Moses, but pious pagans. But
according to the record, Moses added nothing to the _principles_ of
religious worship as practiced by Abraham and the other patriarchs. He
simply reorganized, systematized, refined and somewhat elaborated the
ancient system of worship, and at most reduced it to regularity and
order.

It was quite natural that Moses should then reduce to writing the
traditions and practices of his people, and make a more or less
complete record of their laws, regulations, and civil and religious
institutions; and especially of that system of religious worship which
h