Apostles of the Lord Jesus—so much I will here assume—had their illusions both during, and after, the life of their Master; if the early Christians had their illusions also concerning the speedy coming of Christ; if in the Mediæval Church and in the later Roman Catholicism there have predominated vast illusions about transubstantiation, the powers of the priesthood, and the infallibility of the Pope; if the Protestant Churches themselves have not been exempt from illusions about the literal inspiration and absolute infallibility of the Bible; is it not the mark of astounding presumption to suppose that for the Anglican branch of the Reformed Church there should have been reserved a unique immunity from an otherwise universal law?
But possibly you think that the Gospels have been so long in our hands, and the Christian religion so long in practice and under discussion, that nothing new can now be said of thought about them? Just so Francis Bacon, in 1603, expressed his conviction (the innocent philosopher!) that there had at last come about a complete "consumption of all things that could be said on controversies of theology." Reflect a moment. How long have the stars been with us "under discussion"? And how recent have been our discoveries of the real truth about them! How recently have these discoveries been even possible? In the same way the exact criticism of the New Testament has only become recently practicable. The subject matter and thought could of course be appreciated centuries ago, and often perhaps by the simple-minded and unlearned as well as by the subtle and profound theologian; though, even as to the thought of the New Testament, I often think that we are greatly to blame if our increased knowledge of history and psychology does not illuminate much that was dark in its pages for those who had not our advantages. But we are speaking of that kind of
