Could anything be more childish than this ridiculous play upon the word "invention," and this absurd supposition that "good men" and "bad men" are two sharp divisions of the human species? We know that all men are mixtures, and that honest men may be mistaken, and tell falsehoods without lying. We are therefore able to measure the value of John Wesley's "demonstration" that the Bible is inspired. John Ruskin thanks his mother for daily reading the Bible with him in his childhood, and daily making him learn a part of it by heart. This is seized upon by Dr. Farrar, who places it in his list of testimonies. But it might have been wise--it would certainly have been honest--to tell the reader how Ruskin views the Bible. This great writer has formulated four theories of the Bible, the third of which he has declared to be "for the last half-century the theory of the soundest scholars and thinkers in Europe." And what is this theory? Here it is in Ruskin's own words:-- "That the mass of religious Scripture contains merely the best efforts which we hitherto know to have been made by any of the races of men towards the discovery of some relations with the spiritual world; that they are only trustworthy as expressions of the enthusiastic visions or beliefs of earnest men oppressed by the world's darkness, and have no more authoritative claim on our faith than the religious speculations and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Indians; but are, in common with all these, to be reverently studied, as containing a portion, divinely appointed, of the best wisdom which the human intellect, earnestly seeking for help from God, has hitherto been able to gather between birth and death."* * Time and Tide, pp. 48, 49. It should be noted that the Letters in this pregnant little volume were written by Ruskin as far back as 1867. Surely this is a very different view of the Bible from the one which is presented by Dr. Farrar. Setting aside a little religious phraseology, a Freethinker might endorse Ruskin's theory of the Bible. Everything is substantially granted to the Freethinker when it is admitted that the Bible has "no authoritative claim on our faith." Whatever truth and beauty it contains may then be thankfully accepted.