As the critical movement proceeded in England it came about that an admired dignitary of its Church, Bishop Colenso, was convinced on common-sense lines of the utterly unhistorical character of the main Pentateuchal narrative, and courageously published his views (1862). From that point the European criticism of the Old Testament, which had been proceeding on the assumption of the genuineness of the narrative, took a new course with such rapid success that within a generation the whole mass of the Old Testament had been either decisively or provisionally reduced, chiefly by Dutch and German scholars, to a variety of sources never wholly in accordance with the traditional ascription, and representing collectively a vast historical process of fabrication. In the face of the facts, the claim of "inspiration" still made for the books by some of the scholars who expound the process of their composition is naturally treated with indifference by educated men not professionally committed to such a position. With whatever bias the problem be approached, all really critical study of the documents latterly tells against the Christian position. Writers who, like Renan, have treated Christian origins in a spirit of literary sympathy with that of belief, none the less undo faith, and offer at best a sentimental historical construction in place of the destroyed tradition. The orthodox defence, on the other hand, grows rapidly less confident in the hands of scholarly men. The later development of professional study, as set forth in the English Encyclopædia Biblica shows a progressive collapse of the traditional belief on almost every detail, some continental theologians now going further in their rejection of it than many professed rationalists. The general result of two generations of critical research and controversy is that practically all Biblical students have accepted the main results of the "higher criticism," whatever debate there may still be over details. There is tacit or overt agreement that the Hexateuch is a composite body of writings of many periods; that the Mosaic authorship is a myth; that the quasi-historical books are similarly works of redaction; that the Psalms are not Davidic and the Solomonic books not Solomonic; and that the prophets are endlessly manipulated. Even the view that all the prophets are post-Maccabean finds some acceptance. And the dissolution of the Old Testament tradition necessarily involves the New. Though the rigorous documentary analysis of that lagged behind the criticism of the Hebrew books, the general conceptions of miracles and of inspiration have long lacked serious defence. Arnold's "Miracles do not happen" startled only those who had been inattentive to the whole movement of scientific and historical thought.