The poor stuff that has passed current too long among us as Biblical criticism is altogether unworthy of English scholars and theologians. The great shafts that have been driven into Christian antiquity, the mines that have been opened by the patient labours of German students, have not received sufficient attention at our hands. If some of our commentators timorously venture to their mouths, it is only to shrink back again scared at the gnomes their imagination pictures as haunting those recesses, or at the abysses down which they may be precipitated, that they suppose lie open in those passages.
This spirit is neither courageous nor honest. God's truth is helped by no man's ignorance.
It may be that we are dazzled, bewildered by the light and [pg xxx] rush of new ideas exploding around us on every side; but, for all that, a cellar is no safe retreat. The vault will crumble in and bury us.
The new lights that break in on us are not always the lanterns of burglars.
S. Baring-Gould.
East Mersea, Colchester,
November 2nd, 1874.