In 1896 appeared ‘The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture,’ revised and enlarged from _Good Words_. The argument appears to be that in the science and history of the Holy Bible there may be detected a degree of accuracy plainly supernatural and miraculous. With great warmth he owns his desire to prevent his countrymen from relaxing their hold on the Bible, which Christendom regards as ‘an inestimable treasure,’ and thus bringing on themselves ‘inexpressible calamity.’ He adopts towards Hebrew specialists an attitude neither defiant nor abjectly submissive. The meaning of Hebrew words must, of course, be determined by Hebrew scholars; but he argues that we must not forget the risks to which specialists themselves are exposed. ‘Among them,’ he writes, ‘as with other men, there may be fashions of the time and school, which Lord Bacon called idols of the market-place, and currents of prejudice below the surface, such as to detract somewhat from the authority which each inquirer may justly claim in his own field, and from their title to impose these conclusions upon mankind.’ And so often has it already happened that the Bible was supposed to be submerged by some wave of opinion, which proved, after all, to be passing and ephemeral, that we may have confidence in its power of weathering storms. He holds that if, even for argument’s sake, one concession were to be made to specialists of all they can be entitled to ask respecting the age, the authorship, the text of the books, he may still invite his readers to stand with him on the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. Apart from all that science or criticism may say, he can still challenge men to accept the Scriptures on the moral and spiritual and historical ground of their character in themselves. In the course of his work he treats successively of the creation story as told in the first chapter of Genesis, of the Psalms, of the Mosaic legislation, of the Deluge, and of recent corroborations of Scripture from history and natural science. In 1848 Mr. Gladstone wrote a Latin version of Toplady’s hymn, ‘Rock of Ages,’ though it did not appear till 1861, when it was published in a volume of translations by himself and Lord Lyttelton, issued by them in memory of their marriage to two sisters. The following is the translation: ‘Jesu, pro me perforatus, Condar intra Tuum latus. Tu per lympham profluentem, Tu per sanguinem tepentem, In peccata mi redunda, Tolle culpam, sordes munda. ‘Coram Te, nec justus forem, Quamvis totâ vi laborem, Nec si fide nunquam cesso, Fletu stillans indefesso, Tibi soli tantum munus; Salva me, Salvator unus! ‘Nil in manu mecum fero, Sed me versus crucem gero; Vestimenta nudus oro, Opem debilis imploro; Fontem Christi quæro immundus Nisi laves, moribundus.