Take next what Dr. Farrar calls "the pathetic story of Hosea," the prophet who was ordered by God to marry a prostitute--not to use the more downright language of the English Bible. Dr. Farrar suggests that there is some doubt as to the meaning of the original. Hosea's wife may have turned out a baggage after the nuptials, instead of being one before. "It was the anguish caused by her infidelity," he says, "that first woke Hosea to the sense of Israel's infidelity to Jehovah." And read in the light of this "modern criticism" the story of Hosea is "in the highest degree pure and noble." How pretty! All that remains for Dr. Farrar to do is to explain away as equally "pure and noble" the imagery of Ezekiel in reference to Aholah and Aholibah. There is no reason why "modern criticism" in the hands of gentlemen like Dr. Farrar should not transform Priapus into a Sunday-school teacher. Not only are there very gross stories in the Bible, many of which are too beastly to dwell upon, but its language is often gratuitously disgusting. And every scholar knows that the Hebrew text is sometimes far more "purple" than our English version. Dr. Farrar admits that if the "exact meaning" of certain passages were understood, they "could not be read without a blush." "Happily," he says, they are "disguised by the euphemisms of translations." That is to say, the inspired Bible writers, or penmen of the Holy Ghost, as old divines called them, were often indecent and sometimes positively obscene. Dr. Farrar's explanation is, that "ancient and Eastern readers" were not easily shocked, and that our modern "sensibility" is of "recent growth." But this proves again that "inspiration" is in no sense the cause of progress, and does not anticipate it in the slightest degree. VII. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS "The Bible," Dr. Farrar says, "is inextricably mingled with all that is greatest in human history." This is a fair specimen of his roystering style. We presume he has contracted it through long years of preaching from the coward's castle of the pulpit, where a man can exaggerate as much as he pleases without the slightest fear of contradiction. Dr. Farrar does not say that the Bible is mixed up with _much_ of the greatest in human history; no, it must be mixed up with _all_ the greatest--which is a transparent falsehood and a no less transparent absurdity. What did Greece and Rome owe to the Bible? Absolutely nothing. There is no evidence that they were acquainted with any part of the Old Testament, and Greece had become a mere name before a line of the New Testament was written. Some of the greatest things in the world were done and said by the "heathen." Greek philosophy, Greek literature, Greek art, are imperishable. Roman jurisprudence and Roman government are the basis of every civilised polity. Plutarch's heroes are all Pagans, and let Dr. Farrar match them if he can in the history of Christendom.