However, since these cultivated ecclesiastics smile at our criticism of the Old Testament, and see nothing improper in a deception of the ignorant, of which any body of professional laymen would be incapable, let us turn to the New Testament. It is always useful to consider the attitude of the clergy in its historical perspective. A hundred years ago they were defending against the Deists the absolute truthfulness of the Old Testament. Christ had promised the Holy Spirit to the Church: the Holy Spirit could not possibly tolerate untruth: therefore the teaching of the Church for sixteen centuries must be right. Within two generations they have, in a great number, abandoned the inerrancy of the Old Testament, without abandoning the Holy Spirit. It seems only the other day when Cardinal Newman pleaded wistfully that we were not compelled, under pain of eternal damnation, to believe that Tobit's dog did really wag its tail. However, outside Scotland clergymen do seem to be free to form their own opinions on such allegations as that a whale swallowed a man and housed him for three days. But in thus admitting that "inspiration" was consistent with error, they have put the New Testament also in the hand of the critic. It is well to remember, too, that this modern criticism of the Bible is conducted almost entirely by divines. The average churchgoer has an impression that these terrible people who are known as "the Higher Critics" are anti-clerical laymen: possibly lascivious gentlemen whose real ambition is to undermine the salutary discipline imposed by the Churches. They are, of course, on the contrary, nearly all ordained clergymen, and very conscientious clergymen, of some branch of the Church. Rationalists never criticise the Bible. It has become a branch of theological scholarship. I once--having been challenged by the local clergyman, who promptly disappeared when I arrived--gave a lecture on the divinity of Christ to an audience of Presbyterian artisans, and assured them that the views and arguments I put before them were taken solely from the works of distinguished and highly honoured theologians. Their amazement and horror were most amusing. They had not the dimmest idea that controversy on these points lay merely between advanced and not-advanced members of the Christian clergy; and that their local oracle had, in effect, merely been imposing on them the opinions of the less learned divines in opposition to the more learned.