That Ezra was the restorer of the destroyed law seems to have been the opinion of almost all the early church Fathers. "Whether you choose to call Moses the author of the Pentateuch, or Ezra the restorer of the same book, I make no objection," wrote St. Jerome. Clement, of Alexandria, another church Father, writes, that, "The writings having been destroyed, Ezra, the Levite, having become inspired, prophesied, restoring again all the old writings." Eusebius and Irenaeus seem to be of the same opinion, and the famous Tertullian, a pillar of the church, gives his testimony that, "Jerusalem having been destroyed by the Babylonian siege, it appears that every instrument of Jewish literature was restored by Esdras." If Esdras, indeed, restored the burned book, which Hilkiah had found in the Temple after it had been lost for three hundred and fifty years, then, the question whether Moses was inspired or not,--a question which has vexed the world so much--loses all its importance. Was Ezra inspired? That is the crucial question? If he was not, how can Moses' inspiration help us since his writings were burned by the Persians, even if they were not stolen from the ark and revised by Hilkiah? The inventor of the Old Testament was Ezra, "a scribe of the words of the commandment of the Lord," that is to say, the clerk or amanuensis of God, a title which aptly describes not the interpreter, but the author of the Book of the Law. What kind of a man was this compiler or inventor of the Book of the Law? What does Christian Scholarship think of his character? Let us hear the doctors of divinity on Ezra. The authors of the _Encyclopedia Biblica_ whom we nave already quoted, admit that the man who bears the name of Ezra manipulated, if he did not invent, the narrative which he tells in the Bible:--"He partly mutilates it by removing a portion, partly makes it almost unintelligible by placing it in a connection to which it does not belong, and by making interpolations, etc." Could we ask for a stronger proof that the Bible is the work of men--and not of honest men, at that? But is it fair to include the whole Bible in this accusation? I wish I could feel that some portions of the Bible are free from suspicion, but I cannot. Alas! it is impossible to point to a single book in the Bible of the authorship of which we may speak with assurance. The marks of political and theological imposture in the Bible are like leopard's spots, they cannot be removed.