To the Editor of the "Norta-Cama Dairy News."
Sir,-I do not invite "Bookworm" to further correspondence by this letter, as we are not likely to agree, but I offer a few comments on his replies.
In a former letter he showed that he relied on Huxley for his views of the origin of Chr i and that his other historia thorities were certain, persons whose researches apparently had satisfied them that there was but slender evidence for the existence of Jesus! All I can say is that these are not the quarters to which I should Jock with any confidence for guidance as to the origin of supernatural religion, or for the display of amy particular critical acumen either.
In his reply to me he refers me to the article in the Encyclopedia Britannica on The Religion of the Shemites, and to the articles of the Encyclopedia Biblica for answers to my request for a few facts. But these are the last place to which I should go for facts on the Jewish and Christian history and religion, and for these reasons.
The Encyclopedia Britannica in its articles on religion adopted, and was largely instrumental in introducing into England, the theories of the German sceptics, Graf and Wellhausen. But T have seen those theories thoroughly examined and so effectively demolished, and they are now being so discredited in the land of their birth, that I would never again go to disciples and imitators of Graf and Wellhausen in search of facts, As to the Eneyclodedia Biblica have just read the following statement made last July at a public meeting in London "The plates of the Encyclopedia Biblica, edited by the late Canon Cheyne, which volume, amongst other things, reduced the trustworthy saying of our Lord Jesus Christ to seven, have now been bought and are being published by the Rationalistio Press as an in-tegal part of their printed propaganda." Here again I should prefer a different guide on the history of supernatural religion.
"Bookworm"? says that the Bible has boon. given up "ages ago." So it has by some people, at least 100 years, when Voltaire predicted its disappearance within a century, and again 50 years ago when Tom Paine wrote in his "Age of Reason" that within 50 years it would be obsolete and forgotten.
But, for all its being given up for lost, if has never had a wider circulation, or been more talked about, or asserted itself more persistently, than in our own day.
"Bookworm" says too that there no distinctive Christian tenet which is not now: publicly sur-yendered by some prominent. mem-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.