"The Bible in the Nineteenth Century" will yet form an interesting subject for a volume. The writer of it will recount the attacks made upon the sacred volume by unbelievers, and the defense of it by faithful Christian and Jewish scholars. He will also be under the necessity of writing the history of the betrayals of the Holy Scriptures by pretended friends; and he will say such betrayals were more mischievous than the attacks of avowed enemies. He will balance the harm done by the attacks and the betrayals, against the good accomplished by the defenses, and give the net result of gain or loss. Which will preponderate? The nineteenth century was prolific in both assaults and defenses; and much valuable material was collected from unexpected quarters for the defense of the Scriptures; but for all that it is doubtful if in what is recognized as the Christian world the faith of the Christians in the Bible, as the veritable word of God, was as sound and absolute at the close of the nineteenth century as it was at the commencement of it. This is not saying that what is regarded as old fashioned faith in the Bible has been entirely banished, or totally eclipsed. There are those, and many of them, thank God, who still revere the Bible as the word of God, and therefore hold it true, and take it as a lamp to their feet, as a guide to their path. But there has arisen within Christendom itself--and chiefly within the nineteenth century--a class of Bible scholars who have done much mischief to faith in the Bible; who make it part of their boast that in their study of the Bible they have dropped the theological attitude towards it, viz., the preconception that the Bible is the word of God, on which conception men were wont to reason: God is a God of absolute truth; the Bible is the word of God; therefore the Bible is absolutely true. This position they now abandon and take up what they are pleased to call the "literary attitude or method." That is, they approach the Bible without any preconception whatsoever. They take up the collection of books forming the Bible as they would take up any other body of literature; as they would English, French, or German literature. "This method," says one high in authority in the new school of critics, "assumes nothing. It leaves the conclusion of the questions whether the Bible came from God, in what sense it came from God, how far and to what extent it came from God, all to be determined by examination of the book itself. This I call the literary method." [1] "This method," says another, "leads to the investigation of the origin, authorship, and meaning of the several books of the Bible, and the credibility of the history which it contains." [2] Concerning in what those of the Literary school are agreed, and in what their method results, as to the Old Testament, I quote the following: