* George P. Marsh, Lectures on the English Language (Murray), pp. 441, 445.
Dr. Farrar is entirely wrong in declaring that the Bible created the prose literature of England. Even if he only means that English prose was vastly profited by the religious literature which followed upon the heels of the Reformation, it is easy to reply that this literature was mainly controversial and never remarkable for the higher graces and dexterities. For those virtues, prior to the time of Taylor and South, we must turn to secular and even to "profane" compositions; a fact which is well known to every real student of English literature.
The next device of Dr. Farrar's advocacy would be astounding if one did not know the muddle-headed public for whom he writes. He devotes a monstrous number of pages to the citing of a "cloud of witnesses to the glory and supremacy of the Holy Scriptures," beginning with the great John Henry Newman and winding up with the notorious Hall Caine. Sandwiched between these dissimilar "witnesses" are Heine, Goethe, Rousseau, Wesley, Emerson, Carlyle, Huxley, Arnold, Ruskin, and a host of others. Most of them were Christians, and afford a partisan testimony which is not very valuable. In any case, there is no real argument in a list of names. When a man is being tried on a definite charge, it is idle to recite a catalogue of his distinguished friends. Witnesses to character are only heard in mitigation of sentence after the jury has returned a verdict of Guilty. Perhaps this fact had its influence on Dr. Farrar's mind; at any rate, he calls his "cloud of witnesses" when he has ended all he had to say in the form of argument.
These witnesses, moreover, are jumbled together without the slightest discrimination. Let us take a few illustrations to show the futility of Dr. Farrar's method.
John Wesley cried "Give me the book of God! Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be a man of one book." Yes, and John Wesley believed in witchcraft, and honestly declared that to throw over witchcraft was to throw over the Bible. He had, also, his own way of proving "the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures." He wrote a "Clear and Concise Demonstration," from which we take the following extract:--