AN OUTLINE OF THE MANIFESTATION OF GOD IN THE BIBLE, IN BY JOHN R. BEARD, D.D. "I am the way, the truth, and the life.". 6. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., STATIONERS' HALL Court. BOSTON (UNITED STATES): WILLIAM V. SPENCER. PREFACE. HE tide of a religious revolution is at this hour sweeping over society. Like all great providential movements, the present one will, at least as a final result, produce far more good than evil. If excesses are occasioned, they will be countervailed by corresponding advantages, provided always due care be taken to sift the chaff from the wheat. Truth owes its might not only to its own intrinsic qualities, but also to the faithfulness with which they are set forth and recommended. Defenders must not be lacking when assailants are busy. Indeed, it is only from the activity of the two opposing forces that we can expect that resultant which is often better than either positive dogmatism or unsparing polemics. If, from the actual crisis, the religion of Jesus emerges in a form nearer its own essential simplicity, loveliness, and power, the issue will be satisfactory to all its genuine friends. The destructive current to which I have referred, having in part a philosophical, in part a theological hue, and springing from one source in certain social tendencies, has for years been bearing down old modes of thought, and that to such an extent as now to threaten to leave erect nothing but what is in accord with itself. One of the most recent representatives in England of this crusade against positive and revealed religion is ERNEST RENAN, whose numerous and effective writings are extensively read in cultivated circles throughout the civilised world, and whose Vie de Jésus (“Life of Jesus") has been extensively circulated, especially by extracts and translations, among such as speak the English tongue. The qualified acceptance which these facts indicate is owing in part to the charms of the able and learned author's style, but chiefly to his constant use of religious phraseology, by which the unwary have been misled so as to regard as a reformer one who, in truth, is a revolutionist. Yet, it must be pronounced strange that any who bear the name of Christ should fail to discover the true character of a writer who has thrown so many aspersions on Him who is honoured for his spiritual wisdom and pure morality, even by those who are not members of his Church. The levelling tendency of these negative forces has made itself felt, not least in quarters where true allegiance to religious liberty leaves the door open to opinions of all kinds. Accordingly, the Bible has been lowered, first, to the position of other sacred books, and then to that of books in general; the Lord Jesus Christ, its central figure, denuded of his scriptural features and functions, is reduced to little more than the proportions of a second Socrates; and his resur |