Replying to those who quote the Will of Shakespeare to prove his piety, Birch says that the Will is not in the poet's handwriting; that the signature, alone, was his, the rest being the customary form of legal documents drawn by lawyers for such occasions. The real sympathies of Shakespeare, Mr. Birch thinks, may be inferred from such lines as the following:-- An idiot holds his bauble for a God, * and again: By that same God, _what God soe'er it be_, * --which seems to imply, according to this Christian critic of Shakespeare, that there are as many Gods as there are fancies. * Titus Andronicus. The reason which Mr. Birch assigns for the indifference of Shakespeare's contemporaries to his works and fame was his non-Christian teachings, which made him rather an object of distrust and fear than of admiration. The world of his day was religious, says Mr. Birch, and, therefore, it was glad enough to forget Shakespeare and remember the men who had left monuments of piety behind. The opposition of the religious element is thus given as one of the reasons for the absence of any recognition of his genius and the oblivion to which he seems to have been condemned before a less pious or puritanic age discovered with ecstasy the wealth and glory of his thousand souls. Milton's joyous exclamation echoes the gratitude of the intellectual world: Thou, in our love and astonishment Hast found a life-long monument. But the majority of the apologists of supernaturalism, appreciating the value of Shakespeare as an ally, have stoutly claimed him as a Christian believer. Bishop Wordsworth has written a voluminous work to show how much of the Bible there is in Shakespeare. Mr. George Brandies, with much justice, calls this pious bishop's book "unreadable." Another Christian interpreter of Shakespeare offers the following apology for the poet's seeming indifference to the tenets of orthodox religion: "Doubts have been entertained as to Shakespeare's religious belief, because _few_ or _no_ notices of it occur in his works. This ought to be attributed to a _tender_ and _delicate reserve_ about holy things, rather than to inattention or neglect." The above shows how indispensable to the interests of Christian doctrine Shakespeare's approval of them had come to be regarded by the later Christians. His was too great and shining a name not to have it listed on their side, and so was invented "a tender and delicate reserve" on the part of the poet, to explain his open protests against their creeds, which they mildly call his failure to take "notice" of them.