Note 36 — Chapter VIII · CONCLUSION

The days of obscurantism are numbered. “Many a man in the workshop to-day knows more about the Bible and Church history than many a monk and bishop a few generations ago.”36 The Church of England cannot “shut herself in behind walls of tottering traditions.”37 Christian Fathers can no longer publish their own writings in the names of disciples and apostles in order to insure their acceptance. Evidence against the truth of Christianity can no longer be destroyed or suppressed by persecution. “Miracles” can no longer be worked, except where people are still grossly credulous or ignorant. True it is that passages of the Bible can still be read in church which every educated man knows to be (to use a mild term) unhistorical, and which, to console his conscience, he calls allegorical. True, in our churches, with but few exceptions, the white lie of silence is daily told. But even mild pious frauds of this nature will soon be a thing of the past. The Higher Critics and the advanced school of the Church will see to it. They are beginning to speak out—why should not you?