[42] Busenbaum, quoted by Dr. J.H.  Newman, Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, p. 65.

CHAPTER XII.

UNIVERSAL HISTORY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

    Oh the little more, and how much it is,
    And the little less, and what worlds away!—­Robert Browning.

And now we come to the last objections left us, of those which modern thought has arrayed against the Christian Revelation; and these to many minds are the most conclusive and overwhelming of all—­the objections raised against it by a critical study of history.  Hitherto we have been considering the Church only with reference to our general sense of the fitness and the rational probability of things.  We have now to consider her with reference to special facts.  Her claims and her character, as she exists at present, may make perhaps appeal overpoweringly to us; but she cannot be judged only by these.  For these are closely bound up with a long earthly history, which the Church herself has written in one way, binding herself to stand or fall by the truth of it; and this all the secular wisdom of the world seems to be re-writing in quite another.  This subject is so vast and intricate that even to approach the details of it would require volumes, not a single chapter.  But room in a chapter may be found for one thing, of prior importance to any mass of detail; and that is a simple statement of the principles—­unknown to, or forgotten by external critics—­by which all this mass of detail is to be interpreted.

Let us remember first, then, to take a general view of the matter, that history as cited in witness against the Christian Revelation, divides itself into two main branches.  The one is a critical examination of Christianity, taken by itself—­the authorship, and the authenticity of its sacred books, and the origin and growth of its doctrines.  The other is a critical examination of Christianity as compared with other religions.  And the result of both these lines of study is, to those brought up in the old faith, to the last degree startling, and in appearance at least altogether disastrous.  Let us sum up briefly the general results of them; and first of these the historical.

We shall begin naturally with the Bible, as giving us the earliest historical point at which Christianity is assailable.  What then has modern criticism accomplished on the Bible?  The Biblical account of the creation it has shown to be, in its literal sense, an impossible fable.  To passages thought mystical and prophetic it has assigned the homeliest, and often retrospective meanings.  Everywhere at its touch what seemed supernatural has been humanized, and the divinity that hedged the records has rapidly abandoned them.  And now looked at in the common daylight their whole aspect changes for us; and stories that we once accepted with a solemn reverence seem childish, ridiculous, grotesque, and not unfrequently