“About a century ago” (he observed in 1861) “German theology, which was mystical, became by the law of reactions critical. There gradually arose a school of philosophical theologians which introduced a new system for the interpretation of Scripture. Accepting the sacred narrative without cavil, they explained all the supernatural incidents by natural causes. This system in time was called Rationalism.... But where now is German Rationalism, and what are its results? They are erased from the intellectual tablets of living opinion. A new school of German theology then arose, which, with profound learning and inexorable logic, proved that Rationalism was irrational, and successfully substituted for it a new scheme of scriptural interpretation called the mythical.[103] But if the mythical theologians triumphantly demonstrated ... that Rationalism was irrational, so the mythical system itself has already become a myth; and its most distinguished votaries, in that spirit of progress which, as we are told, is the characteristic of the nineteenth century, and which generally brings us back to old ideas, have now found an invincible solution of the mysteries of human existence in a revival of Pagan pantheism.” This he defined elsewhere as “Atheism in domino.” Since Disraeli’s death the German school has made further strides. There has been a brisk export of fresh theories “made in Germany.” We are now told that the Old Testament is Babylonian, and that the New springs out of Aryan ideas; and side by side with this _tour-de-force_ of paradox, an orgy of anarchical hysteria threatens the sanctions of authority, the secular as well as the spiritual. Disraeli would probably meet it by what he retorted in the ’sixties, that when the periodical deluge subsides, the ark is seen resting at the summit of the mountain.