In the year 1874 a work issued from the English press impugning the foundation upon which our Gospels rest; this, Christians have been accustomed to believe, was laid in the first century of our era. Learning, dissociated from accuracy, has been employed with practiced ability by the anonymous writer of " Supernatural Religion," to deprive us, if possible, of this belief. The work we have mentioned leaves " the reader when he closes it with the feeling that the Bible stands before him like a fair tree all stripped, torn and defaced, not at all like a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations:" so writes Matthew Arnold. In the course of the present inquiry
* "God and the Bible," page 13.
we shall ascertain whether or not the several Christian books suffer from the processes of historical criticism, and if such an investigation of the sources of faith teach not other lessons, than " Supernatural Religion " was meant to instill into the minds of English people.*