Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. BIBLICAL CRITICISM. " A Great man," says Hegel, " condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The remark applies to great books as well as to great men. It would be difficult to name any book which has brought forth more attempts at explanation than the Bible. Controversy of all sorts has raged round it, both on the literary and theological sides. On the theological side the controversy has been exceptionally keen. The reason is obvious. For tens who are interested in the Bible as literature, hundreds are interested in it as theology. The human mind is so constructed that while, for a little, it may find interest in the literary handling of life, in the end it goes deeper, and demands not merely a description but an explanationof life. The Bible professes to give such an explanation. For centuries this book held sway over the Western mind by reason of its claims to be an authoritative revelation from heaven to man. For centuries the highest intellects of Europe were employed upon studying this book, expounding it as a philosophy of life and as a rule of ethics. A time came when the authoritative basis of the Bible received a shock. When at the Reformation the weight of authority was shifted from the Church to the individual, there arose a spirit of inquiry, not to say scepticism, which has produced an amount of theological literature which quite appals the average man. What is the average man to do ? In his lonely moments, in his hour of sorrow, he looks around for consolation ; he listens intently for the voices of the old celestial messengers, and behold, they are silent. With the Bible discredited, the riddle of life presses upon him with painful insistence. What is he to do ? A German writer has remarked that the wounds which knowledge has caused, kno...