have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal
period of Rome--what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine,
which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the
authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who,
on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for
solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian
dogma upon legendary quicksands?

But these may be said to be merely the carpings of that carnal
reason which the profane call common sense; I hasten, therefore,
to bring up the forces of unimpeachable ecclesiastical authority
in support of my position. In a sermon preached last December,
in St. Paul's Cathedral,<2> Canon Liddon declares:--


For Christians it will be enough to know that our Lord Jesus
Christ set the seal of His infallible sanction on the whole of
the Old Testament. He found the Hebrew canon as we have it in
our hands to-day, and He treated it as an authority which was
above discussion. Nay more: He went out of His way--if we may
reverently speak thus--to sanction not a few portions of it
which modern scepticism rejects. When He would warn His hearers
against the dangers of spiritual relapse, He bids them remember
"Lot's wife."<3> When He would point out how worldly engagements
may blind the soul to a coming judgment, He reminds them how men
ate, and drank, and married, and were given in marriage, until
the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the Flood came and
destroyed them all.<4> If He would put His finger on a fact in
past Jewish history which, by its admitted reality, would
warrant belief in His own coming Resurrection, He points to