rthodoxy) is, I have always supposed, the right of every Cambridge
man; and I was therefore the more shocked, for the sake of free
thought in my University, at the appearance of a book which claimed
and exercised a licence in such questions, which I must (after
careful study of it) call anything but rational and reverent. Of
the orthodoxy of the book it is not, of course, a private
clergyman's place to judge. That book seemed dangerous to the
University of Cambridge itself, because it was likely to stir up
from without attempts to abridge her ancient liberty of thought; but
it seemed still more dangerous to the hundreds of thousands without
the University, who, being no scholars, must take on trust the
historic truth of the Bible.

For I found that book, if not always read, yet still talked and
thought of on every side, among persons whom I should have fancied
careless of its subject, and even ignorant of its existence, but to
whom I was personally bound to give some answer as to the book and
its worth. It was making many unsettled and unhappy; it was (even
worse) pandering to the cynicism and frivolity of many who were
already too cynical and frivolous; and, much as I shrank from
descending into the arena of religious controversy, I felt bound to
say a few plain words on it, at least to my own parishioners.

But how to do so, without putting into their heads thoughts which
need be in no man's head, and perhaps shaking the very faith which I
was trying to build up, was difficult to me, and I think would have
been impossible to me, but for the opportune appearance of your
admirable book.

I could not but see that the book to which I have alluded, like most
other modern books on Biblical criticism, was altogether negative;
was possessed too often by that fanaticism of disbelief which is
just as dangerous as the fanaticism of belief; was picking the body
of the Scripture to pieces so earnestly, that it seemed to forget
that Scripture had a spirit as well as a body; or, if it confessed
that it had a spirit, asserting that spirit to be one utterly
different from the spirit which the Scripture asserts that it
possesses.

For the Scripture asserts that those who wrote it were moved by the
Spirit of God; that it is a record of God's dealings with men, which
certain men were inspired to perceive and to write down: whereas
the tendency of modern criticism is, without doubt, to assert that
Scripture is inspired by the sp