enthusiastically by the infidel school, a very large portion of
the men by whom they were made, and of those who were convinced of
their truth, were men of a very different character. They were
simple earnest seekers after truth as it is displayed in God's
works. Their belief in the Bible rested in most cases on the
authority of others. They had not investigated for themselves its
external evidences; in many cases they had neither the ability nor
the opportunity to do so; nor had many of them as yet become
practically familiar with that internal evidence which the
faithful Christian carries within him, though in time they might
have become so, had they not been driven into infidelity by the
reception which was given to their discoveries. When men of this
character were informed by those to whom they were accustomed to
look up as teachers in religious matters, that the discoveries, of
the truth of which they were so firmly convinced, and in which
they took such justifiable pride, were contradictory to the
teaching of the Bible, they were placed in a position of extreme
difficulty. For this statement was, in fact, a demand made upon
them that they should give up these discoveries as erroneous, or
else renounce their belief in the Bible. But their belief in the
Bible rested in the main on the authority of others; they felt
themselves incompetent judges of the evidence on which it rested,
while they were fully acquainted with, and competent judges of,
the grounds on which their own discoveries were based. The
evidence on which they acted was, to their minds, quite as
convincing as the Biblical evidence was to the minds of their
antagonists. Two things, then, were pronounced incompatible by
what seemed to be a competent authority; they could not adhere to
both, and the natural consequence was that their assent was given
to those statements which rested on evidence which they thoroughly