Now there can be no doubt, that of all assaults upon the faith, the most effective in this age are those which have been made upon the documents which compose the New Testament. The reason for this is obvious. An investigation into the authenticity of any ancient book demands an amount of knowledge and critical ability, a soundness and keenness of judgment, which are the very rarest of qualifications. Turn to secular literature, and you will find critics arguing for ages, without any approximation to a settlement, touching the genuineness of works attributed to men whose peculiarities of genius and of style would seem to defy imitation. Who would venture on his own judgment to determine how much of the Homeric poems belong to "That Lord of loftiest song, Who above others like an eagle soars?" "Quel Signor dell' altissimo canto, Che sovra gli altri com' aquila vola."[159] Look at the controversy between Grote, Jowett, and the latest German critics touching the authenticity of no small portion of the Platonic dialogues. Taken simply as a question of critical inquiry, no man of sense would venture to determine, on internal data, the authorship of any book in the New Testament, without years of laborious preparation. I will add, no prudent man at all conversant with the history of criticism would accept assertions, however confident, of critics whose known and avowed prepossessions would make it _à priori_ certain that they would be averse to the acceptance of documents which, if genuine, supply substantial grounds for belief in supernatural works and a supernatural Person.