The one fatal blunder of the Protestant Reformers was to found their system of theology upon a written book of the origin of which so little is known, and yet regarding which so much is known that it is impossible for persons of a rational, judicial mind to accept it as an infallible supernatural revelation. The conclusion is inevitable that in the absence of everything that, by even a strain of language, can be called _evidence_ as to the genuineness and authenticity, of our Gospels we cannot safely accept them as an infallible authority in religious matters. We have a right to examine them critically, just as we would read and study any other ancient writings of uncertain authorship and date. The Reformation was in part the substitution of a _book_ which was pronounced _infallible_, but which has proved to be very _fallible_, for a Church which claimed infallibility, but which had shown itself not only very fallible, but exceedingly corrupt and dangerous. Infallibility belongs to neither men nor books. Infallibility in books is an absurdity. A religion founded upon a printed book must submit to examination of both the origin and character of that book, and must shoulder the imperfections and errors which the discoveries of modern research have fully exposed. The principles of true religion inherent in human nature, an ineradicable constituent of the constitution of man, as has been shown, are to-day obscured and shackled by the false position in which its professed friends have placed it. It will be shown before these papers are concluded that a religion manacled by a printed book claiming infallibility, and made to depend solely upon an _historical character_ who, if admitted to be historical, wrote nothing himself and commissioned no one to write anything for him, and of whose verbal teachings and actual mode of life we can never be sure,—a religion thus encumbered must suffer great loss, if not total failure, as men shall progress in knowledge and science shall uncover the past and demonstrate the absurdities of the superstitious dogmas of the ancient faiths. It is impossible to compress the largest brains of the nineteenth century into the smallest skulls of the twelfth century. The true friend of religion is the fearless man who dares attempt to rescue it from the accretions and perversions of the Dark Ages, and to establish its eternal principles of truth and righteousness in the very nature of man, in the elevation of moral character, in strict agreement with the demonstrated facts of the present, as opposed to the bigoted and degrading fancies of the past. To defend religion from the follies of its mistaken champions, and show that its foundations are secure and its ultimate triumph certain, may now be denounced as treason to the Church, but in coming years it will be seen to have been the work of men of whom the Church of to-day is not worthy.