A more significant admission, as showing the rapid increase of the radicals, or liberals, as the upholders of the destructive criticism are called, will be found in the following statement concerning the same theological faculties. "The so-called liberal wing has increased from ten to thirty during the last twenty-five years; and the conservatives have been reduced from fifty to forty-three." Of the American universities where the destructive criticism obtains, Dr. Behrends names eight; [9] and eighteen where "conservative criticism holds its ground." [10] It should be remembered that these are admissions of one upholding the conservative criticism as against radical criticism. The claims of the radical school for the success of their methods are much more sweeping than the admissions allow. But taking the extent to which the destructive criticism obtains, even at the estimate of those who are opposed to it, and who for that reason reduce its triumphs to a minimum, yet it must be admitted that it has succeeded in making very marked progress. It permeates all Protestant Christian countries; and all Protestant Christian sects. It is more in evidence in the churches than in the schools; and tinctures all Protestant religious literature. There is scarcely any necessity for unbelievers in the Bible assailing it from without; the destruction of faith in it as an authentic, credible, authoritative revelation from God, whose truths when rightly understood are to be accepted and held as binding upon the consciences of men, is being carried on from within the churches who profess to hold the Bible in reverence, more effectually than it could be by profane infidels. Doctors of Divinity are more rapidly undermining the faith of the masses in the Bible than ever a Voltaire, a Paine, a Bradlaugh or an Ingersoll could do; and that may account for the singular circumstances of absolute silence at present on the part of popular infidel writers and lecturers. [11]