Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/190

 the Bible was considered to rest upon scientific accuracy. A miscellaneous collection of writings, certainly of great, but of variously computed antiquity, was to be absolutely right (which no other documents of anything like the same age have ever been) on scientific facts; otherwise it could not be retained as a text-book of the churches. The latter (sometimes themselves claiming inspiration} had declared the Bible to be directly inspired: and by some people inspiration was taken to imply literal and detailed truth, though literal and detailed truth would certainly have made the collection utterly incomprehensible by the persons who have used it during all but the last comparatively insignificant portion of its existence, and to most persons even then. Evidently such a conception of the Bible, accompanied by the opinion that religion could only exist on the basis of the Bible, was dangerous to popular religion in proportion as the opinions here summarised met with public support.

Hardly less dangerous was the endeavour of some apologists to assist the difficulty of belief by attenuating the minimum required of it, The exposure of their rather circular arguments—basing Faith on the inspired Bible, and the inspiration of the Bible on its internal evidence—titillated in the untrained thinker who had rejected (as he was encouraged to reject) the claim of the Church to